ABUSE TRACKER

UNITED STATES
The Freethinker (UK)

A US district who jailed an Indiana pastor for 12 years for having sex with an under-age girl is expected to consider an appeal against the sentence next month.

Former mega-church pastor Jack A Schaap, 56, (above) is asking judge Rudy Lozano to overturn his 12-year sentence:

Due to the aggressiveness of (the girl) that inhibited impulse control …

According to this report, Schaap is taking a risk with his appeal. Said one lawyer, who asked to remain anonymous:

Judge Lozano may give him more time.

Schaap pleaded guilty to transporting a female student of the church’s high school to Illinois and Michigan for sexual encounters. He also had sex with her in his church office in June and July 2012.
The girl wrote in her victim impact statement.

I was raised by my parents and teachers to trust and obey my pastor. He was a celebrity to me, a father figure and a man of God. As my pastor, I sought guidance and counseling from (Schaap) when I was in need of help.

Schaap is being held in the Federal Correctional Institute in Ashland, Kentucky, and he isn’t eligible for release until April 20, 2023.

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AUSTRALIA
Courier-Mail

JILL PENGELLEY THE ADVERTISER JUNE 22, 2014

THE Anglican Church is in “real financial strife” in up to a third of its 23 dioceses across Australia, a spokeswoman says.

Dr Muriel Porter says the finances will be discussed at the church’s General Synod in Adelaide, which starts on Sunday.

“We have quite a few dioceses that look to be on the brink of bankruptcy,” she said yesterday.

“That’s a huge game-changer.

“We have the second-largest church (after the Catholic Church) with a number of its dioceses in real financial strife.”

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TEXAS
Roman Catholic Archdiocese of San Antonio

The Archdiocese of San Antonio recently received a credible allegation of clergy sexual abuse from a woman who, as a minor, was abused at St. James Catholic Church in San Antonio in the late 1970’s. During the course of our investigation, we determined that Rev. Bruce MacArthur was at St. James from 1979-1980 and 1983-1984 and was at St. Dominic from 1980-1982. Our investigation further confirmed that Rev. MacArthur was convicted of attempted rape of a vulnerable adult prior to 1979, and of Sexual Intercourse with a Child and Indecent Behavior with a Child in Wisconsin in 2008. Rev. MacArthur is since deceased.

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ITALY
Inquirer (Philippines0

AFP

ROME — Italian police dressed as priests have ensnared two would-be blackmailers who were threatening to publish wiretaps of an erotic conversation with a clergyman, local media said Sunday.

Police in the Lombardy region of northern Italy donned priestly garb late Saturday to trap two Romanian men in the town of Lomellina who were trying to get the local church to pay them 250,000 euros ($340,000) not to hand the tape over to the media.

The recording allegedly captures an unnamed local priest having an erotic conversation with one of the two men, the reports said.

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AUSTRALIA
WA Today

June 22, 2014

Ross Peake
Senior reporter for The Canberra Times

A sacked Catholic bishop will tell a Canberra audience this week he was treated unfairly by Pope Benedict.

“I was deprived of natural justice as I was in no way able to appeal the judgments or decisions that were made,” Bill Morris says.

He was forced out of his position in Toowoomba after a group of conservative “temple police” parishioners complained directly to the Vatican about his preaching which included discussion about ordaining women and married men.

He has written a book about his experience – Benedict, Me and the Cardinals Three – but says he has no bitterness.

Instead he has learnt to “breathe underwater”.

“That’s the freedom to be able to move with life in such a way that you can absorb the various difficulties, the good things, the bad things and all the time with a great respect for everything around you,” he said.

The book says he told Pope Benedict XVI in a personal meeting of a sex abuse case at a Toowoomba school but the Pope dismissed the bishop’s request to remain at his post to deal with it.

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AUSTRALIA
The Canberra Times

June 20, 2014

Jack Waterford
Editor-at-large, The Canberra Times

It’s been a humiliating week for the Marist Brothers and the Royal Australian Navy, each associated with terrible abuse of young people in their charge, and forced, in public, to confront the fact that all too little was done about it, whether at the time, or after its existence became clear and the devastating effects were obvious.

The shame washes over more than the perpetrators. It also goes on those, including myself, who had some inklings of what was going on and did all too little about it. Who played some role in cultures of denial, or who, in relation to physical abuse, sometimes even pretended that it was character-forming or bonding.

The royal commission into child sexual abuse has provided an opportunity for many victims to describe what happened and to give witness to their suffering. But its focus has been equally on how abuse became to a degree institutionalised, and how, sometimes, even ordinarily good men and women were in denial of the problem or its impact, covered up to protect the reputations or assets of the agencies concerned, treated victims as enemies, and, often, unwittingly or otherwise, allowed known violators the scope to carry on violating more and more victims.

In the cold light of day, it often emerges that perpetrators were themselves victims of just such abuse as they later inflicted upon others, or that there were aspects of their physical, social and moral development that help explain, without excusing, the enormities of their behaviour. It was sometimes embarrassing, over recent weeks, to hear authority figures from the Marist Brothers seem abysmally ignorant of matters sexual, and completely inept in discussing or dealing with it. Some of this seemed like prevarication and probably was, because that order, like others, behaved for a while shamefully. But, I suspect, some of the institutional deafness, blindness and silence arose from religious cultures simply unable to cope with and confront human sexual imperfection, however much it was inured and experienced at dealing with other aspects of the growth and development of children and adolescents.

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IRELAND
Journal

THE MINISTER FOR Local Government and Public health in 1946 warned local authorities to keep up with the administration of mother and baby homes.

A circular sent on behalf of the minister at the time, Fianna Fáil’s Seán MacEntee, stated that the minister had received “representations” that many local authorities were not “paying attention” to the administration of the registration of maternity homes under the Maternity Homes Act 1934.

Particular attention is drawn also to Section 11 of the Act regarding the obligation imposed on the person registered to report to the chief executive officer of the supervising authority any death which occurs in the home.

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IRELAND
Journal

MATERNITY HOMES OF the past have recently hit the headlines, with an inquiry now underway into mother and baby homes.

A number of state files were recalled from the National Archives by the Department of Health following the revelations about the deaths of almost 800 children at a mother and baby home in Tuam.

The department states that the documents were recalled for the Commission of Investigation that was announced by the Minister for Justice Frances Fitzgerald.

The documents recently recalled by the department include the registration documents of maternity homes for the years ending 1953, 1952, 1951, 1950, 1948-50, 1946-49, and maternity home exemptions 1946-47.

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IRELAND
Sunday Independent

John-Paul McCarthy
Published 22/06/2014

FORMER President Mary McAleese made a welcome return to the national stage this week as she accepted UCD’s handsome Ulysses medal.

In deference perhaps to James Joyce’s own aversion to theocracy, our eighth president used the occasion to reflect on some recent rumblings from the Holy See.

By all accounts the current Pope is hoping to get some advice on family life from the next Catholic synod.

Mary McAleese responded by insisting: “The very idea of 150 people who have decided they are not going to have any children … so they have no adult experience of family life as the rest of us know it – but they are going to advise the Pope on family life; it is completely bonkers.”

These vigorous insights dovetail with her contribution to an important profile of Pope Francis in last December’s New Yorker magazine.

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IRELAND
Sunday Independent

Comic PJ Gallagher: ‘I was born in Bessborough but I got away with it. I feel guilty and lucky’

Mary-Elaine Tynan
Published 22/06/2014

IT’S unusual for much-loved funnyman PJ Gallagher to tweet about serious matters; normally he reserves his observations for hilarious comments about life and his passion for bikes and dogs.

Early this month, however, his followers were greeted with the unexpected tweet: “I was born in Bessbourough [sic] House, reading this has upset me more than a little this morning”.

The article attached described the unusually high death rate for children born in the Cork mother and baby home in the early Forties.

Until around 10 years ago, this statistic would have been almost irrelevant since all PJ knew about his life was that he was born in April 1975, was placed briefly in foster care and then adopted by his parents through a Dublin agency.

Until he was in his 20s, PJ’s family home in Clontarf doubled as a care facility for people with mental illnesses, many of whom had previously been in institutions. From his conversations with the people his mother cared for, PJ realised that most were still traumatised from those same institutions. And so, even before he learned the circumstances surrounding his own birth, he always felt great compassion for anybody in institutions.

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IRELAND
Irish Mirror

Jun 22, 2014 By Emma McMenamy

Film-maker Amy Berg: Oliver O’Grady must be closely monitored

The award-winning documentary maker who interviewed paedo ex-priest Oliver O’Grady has warned he still poses a serious threat to children.

O’Grady, 68, was dubbed the “Hannibal Lecter” of child sex attackers after it emerged he had abused up to 50 kids.

He was freed from Dublin’s Arbour Hill Prison in April after being convicted on child pornography charges.

The defrocked priest, who is originally from Limerick and served in dioceses in California in the 1970s, has claimed he no longer poses a danger to youngsters.

But Amy Berg, who directed the controversial 2006 Oscar-nominated documentary Deliver us from Evil, which centred on O’Grady, said he is not to be trusted.

Speaking to the Irish Sunday Mirror from her home in California, Ms Berg said O’Grady needs to watched closely by authorities.

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ZIMBABWE
The Standard

June 22, 2014

President Robert Mugabe has called on youths to desist from engaging in early sexual activities, while also taking a dig at older people who are abusing children.

BY WINSTONE ANTONIO

Speaking during the official opening of the 22nd session of the Junior Parliament of Zimbabwe in Harare yesterday, Mugabe said government was concerned about the increasing cases of child abuse including the rape of minors.

“Something has gone wrong with the social and moral fibre of our society. The problems of child sexual abuse, child neglect and even infanticide now need to be addressed at all levels of the society,” he said.

“The government is going to intensify the necessary social and policing interventions in order to eradicate what is turning into an epidemic.”

Mugabe also opened up about his boyhood saying children must not rush into early sexual activities. The Zanu PF leader said when he was young, even his late mother Bona, was worried that he could not court girls because of his love for books which made him what he is today.

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ZIMBABWE
The Standard

Notwithstanding that Zimbabweans are of diverse religions and faith, our Constitution says we are a Christian nation.

CONELIA MABASA SUNDAY VIEW

The charter also provides for the right to freedom of worship. That we are a Christian nation makes the goings-on in churches matters of national interest.

Recently a group of men from an apostolic faith church made the news for all the wrong reasons after they beat up police officers who were escorts for an elder who wanted to ban their church for abuse of women and children.

While they have been granted bail on the case of assault, women’s groups and child rights activists are waiting for formal reports and investigations into the allegations of abuse, especially that fathers insert their dirty fingers into their daughters’ vaginas every week to test for virginity and give away daughters as compensation to men who married non-virgins. Virginity-testing is largely referred to as sexual assault, but I believe it must be upgraded to be treated as a form of rape.

Some sections of society also want to know if Johannes Ndanga [president of the Apostolic Christian Council of Zimbabwe] had the mandate to ban the church and if he used the right channels to carry out the mandate. His actions could have been interpreted as provocation and an infringement on the right of the vapostori’s freedom of worship. If any crimes were committed, then it is the role of the police to investigate and get the perpetrators to be prosecuted.

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NEW JERSEY
The Record

JUNE 21, 2014
BY AARON MORRISON
STAFF WRITER
THE RECORD

WOODCLIFF LAKE – The Bergen County Prosecutor’s Office and the Archdiocese of Newark united Saturday for a daylong series of child-safety workshops, presented to adults who work with children within and outside of the parish.

More than 100 church-affiliated leaders, parents involved with scouting and coaches were registered for the programs — held in the recreation room of Our Lady of the Mother Church — on child sex abuse prevention, Internet safety and drug-abuse prevention.

Karen Clark, the archdiocese’s child-safety director, said the partnership with County Prosecutor John Molinelli, who’s a member of the parish, proves each other’s commitment to keeping the area’s children safe.

Last year, Molinelli had criticized the archdiocese over its follow-up monitoring of Michael Fugee, a now defrocked priest who had been accused of groping boys. But Molinelli and an archdiocese spokesman said last week that that the workshop partnership had nothing to do with the Fugee matter.

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MASSACHUSETTS
Boston Globe

By Hattie Bernstein | GLOBE CORRESPONDENT JUNE 22, 2014

On the Sunday before Memorial Day, the Rev. Brian F. Manning stood on the landing outside St. Mary Catholic Church in Franklin watching families hurry across the busy street and up the flight of granite steps, on their way to the 10:30 a.m. Mass.

“In American culture, people don’t run on time. There’s so much traffic, so many obligations. They’re doing the best they can,” said the pastor, not a trace of disdain in his voice.

It wasn’t like this in the 1950s when the priest was growing up in the Sacred Heart parish in Roslindale. In those days, 10 Masses were held on a Sunday, and rarely did you see anyone rushing into the church at the last minute, or the pastor, poised like God’s crossing guard, at the front door.

But on this day, people spill into the pews in the 900-seat church moments before the Rev. John Sullivan begins the service. …

The kind of attendance at St. Mary is rare in churches in the Boston Archdiocese, which in response to declining Mass attendance, a shortage of priests, and a corresponding drop in collections has closed and sold church properties, and consolidated parishes across the region in recent years.

For more than a decade a drumbeat of bad news about the church, including reports on sexual abuse by priests, has diminished the number of local Catholics active in their faith.

St. Mary has not been immune to the troubles.

In 2002, the Globe reported allegations that the Rev. Anthony J. Rebeiro had sexually abused a woman while a priest at St. Mary in 1983. The woman’s husband said he was rebuffed by the pastor at the time, a regional bishop, and then-archbishop Bernard Law when he complained in 1984 about the abuse. But the archdiocese paid for psychotherapy for the woman in 1994, according to the Globe.

Rebeiro was placed on administrative leave in 2002 after a report that he had molested a child at another parish in the 1970s, the Globe reported. He has denied all allegations.

“He remains on administrative leave and is not in ministry,” archdiocesan spokesman Terry Donilon said last week.

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VATICAN CITY
Boston Globe

By John L. Allen Jr. | GLOBE STAFF JUNE 21, 2014

ROME — An old saying about the Vatican holds that the pope is never sick until he’s dead. It is a subject — pontiff’s health — on which Vatican officials come by their reputation for denial the old-fashioned way, because over the years they’ve certainly earned it.

On Aug. 19, 1914, for instance, the semiofficial Vatican newspaper L’Osservatore Romano published a stinging editorial denouncing unnamed commentators who had suggested the day before that the reigning pope at the time, Pius X, was suffering from a cold.

Less than 24 hours later, Pius X was dead.

More recently, despite the fact that speculation began to surface in the mid-1990s that Pope John Paul II might be suffering from the symptoms of Parkinson’s disease, the Vatican never officially confirmed the ailment until shortly before the pontiff’s death.

Even in John Paul’s twilight, the effort to make the pope seem stronger than he actually was continued.

After he underwent a tracheotomy in late February 2005, a Vatican spokesman claimed the next day that the pope had eaten a light breakfast including 10 cookies, leaving embarrassed physicians to correct the record; a patient with a tracheal tube, they said, would not be in a position to swallow cookies.

Needless to say, the media didn’t swallow the story either.

All this brings us to this week’s alleged “health scare” regarding Pope Francis, after news broke that the pontiff has canceled his general audiences and morning Masses for the month of July.

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IRELAND
Seasons of Grace

June 20, 2014 By Kathy Schiffer

Associated Press has issued an apology for its errant reporting regarding claims of a mass grave for children of unwed mothers on the grounds of Tuam Home, an Irish home for unwed mothers.

Since the disturbing story broke early this month regarding the Tuam Home for unwed mothers in Ireland, where 796 babies were purportedly “dumped into a septic tank”, the Patheos bloggers have been on the case.

I had, early on, been concerned that the facts might not be as reported. I didn’t blog about it here, but over on Facebook, we had a spirited discussion in which I encouraged people to relax and wait for facts: Had the Irish Sisters been simply overwhelmed, with no one available to help them bury the bodies of the children who died? Was the burial site, in fact, not a “septic tank” as AP reported, but a cylindrical brick burial chamber, common in Ireland at the time? Were there really “no more than 20″ babies buried at that site?

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IRELAND
Telegraph (UK)

By Tim Stanley
Last updated: June 21st, 2014

The Associated Press has issued an apology for its inaccurate reporting on the fate of the Tuam babies – 796 children at a home in Ireland who were reportedly “dumped” in a septic tank after they died (an accusation that I, along with several Catholic bloggers, called into question). T

hey were, said some commentators, victims of Church doctrine. The AP’s apology now suggests otherwise:

In stories published June 3 and June 8 about young children buried in unmarked graves after dying at a former Irish orphanage for the children of unwed mothers, The Associated Press incorrectly reported that the children had not received Roman Catholic baptisms; documents show that many children at the orphanage were baptized. The AP also incorrectly reported that Catholic teaching at the time was to deny baptism and Christian burial to the children of unwed mothers; although that may have occurred in practice at times it was not church teaching. In addition, in the June 3 story, the AP quoted a researcher who said she believed that most of the remains of children who died there were interred in a disused septic tank; the researcher has since clarified that without excavation and forensic analysis it is impossible to know how many sets of remains the tank contains, if any. The June 3 story also contained an incorrect reference to the year that the orphanage opened; it was 1925, not 1926.

Make no mistake: the Tuam children’s home was an awful place with terrible conditions that reflected an ignorantly low opinion of “illegitimate” children held across the so-called civilised world in the early 20th century. But what happened there was not a reflection of Catholic doctrine, which cherishes life.

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IRELAND
Miami Herald

BY SHAWN POGATCHNIK
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

DUBLIN — In stories published June 3 and June 8 about young children buried in unmarked graves after dying at a former Irish orphanage for the children of unwed mothers, The Associated Press incorrectly reported that the children had not received Roman Catholic baptisms; documents show that many children at the orphanage were baptized. The AP also incorrectly reported that Catholic teaching at the time was to deny baptism and Christian burial to the children of unwed mothers; although that may have occurred in practice at times it was not church teaching. In addition, in the June 3 story, the AP quoted a researcher who said she believed that most of the remains of children who died there were interred in a disused septic tank; the researcher has since clarified that without excavation and forensic analysis it is impossible to know how many sets of remains the tank contains, if any. The June 3 story also contained an incorrect reference to the year that the orphanage opened; it was 1925, not 1926.

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UNITED STATES
POPE FRANCIS the CON-Christ.

Updated June 21, 2014

Paris Arrow

Pope Francis in his Vatican Radio homily the other day spoke that “Even some prelates are corrupt” . Unfortunately Catholic churches worldwide are corrupt because they are an equal part of the Vatican Pyramid – especially after all the crimes committed by evil bestial pedophile priests – revealed by the JP2 Army – John Paul II Pedophile Priests Army – and now their female counterparts, the Catholic Irish Nuns akin to Nazis, are also being revealed. No matter what the Opus Dei Beast PR Deceits Team try to do to salvage the Vatican Titanic sunken deep in the ocean of moral bankruptcy, all priests and all Catholic churches are part of that Vatican Pyramid Evil Empire. Read our 6 suggestions for Pope Francis, the Pharaoh of the Vatican Pyramid with three equal sides: corrupt politicians, corrupt businessmen, corrupt clergy http://popecrimes.blogspot.ca/2014/06/6-suggestions-for-pope-francis-as-he.html

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MINNESOTA
St. Cloud Times

The Associated Press 5:28 p.m. CDT June 21, 2014

WINONA — The Diocese of Winona says the reason it’s still paying a monthly pension to a defrocked pedophile priest is because it’s legally obligated to do so, even though he committed “horrific crimes” against children.

Thomas Adamson acknowledged in a legal deposition that he sexually abused 12 teens as he was moved from one parish to another from the 1960s to the mid-1980s. He’s been laicized but he continues to receive a monthly pension of about $1,650 from the diocese.

A Winona Daily News report on Saturday says the diocese is now responding, a week after the revelations were made public by a law firm suing the diocese.

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IRELAND
Irish Times

Patsy McGarry

Fri, Jun 20, 2014

Some people have taken offence on behalf of Pope Francis because Mary McAleese, the former president, threw the word “bonkers” in his direction. One figure in the Catholic Church said it was unbecoming of a former head of state to speak this way. A letter writer to this paper described her remarks as terribly unfair.

Speaking at University College Dublin last Monday, to mark her receipt of the university’s Ulysses medal, McAleese criticised the pope’s plan to ask a synod of bishops next October to advise him about church teaching on the family.

There was “something profoundly wrong and skewed” about asking “male celibates” to review the church’s teaching on family life, she said. “The very idea of 150 people who have decided they are not going to have any children, not going to have families, not going to be fathers and not going to be spouses – so they have no adult experience of family life as the rest of us know it – but they are going to advise the pope on family life, it is completely bonkers.”

Last year the Vatican circulated a questionnaire to Catholics worldwide seeking feedback on pastoral issues of marriage and family. In her interview last Monday McAleese said: “I wrote back and said I’ve got a much simpler questionnaire, and it’s only got one question, and here it is: ‘How many of the men who will gather to advise you as pope on the family have ever changed a baby’s nappy?’ I regard that as a very, very serious question.”

It’s doubtful whether the plain-speaking Pope Francis would take offence at any of this. He may disagree with the substance of what McAleese said, but its manner of expression would hardly faze him. After all, this is the pope who advised his clergy to get down and dirty among the people so they smell of them and who has spoken about the narcissism of popes and theologians.

As for McAleese, she is just being consistent.

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ILLINOIS
Chicago Tribune

John Kass
June 22, 2014

Church should be a place of peace and understanding, where you go for answers.

But those are hard to come by as a Greek Orthodox priest in Glenview faces a felony charge in the theft of more than $100,000 from his former church in Milwaukee.

Two Greek Orthodox churches, in Glenview and Milwaukee, have been roiled in controversy. And late Friday, the Glenview priest, the Rev. James Dokos, was put on unpaid administrative leave from Sts. Peter and Paul Greek Orthodox Church in Glenview.

He won’t be singing the liturgy on Sunday, church officials said.

The whistleblowers who dared complain about the allegedly high-rolling priest have found themselves locked in an ugly battle with Bishop Demetrios of Mokissos, the No. 2 ranking official in the Greek Orthodox Metropolis of Chicago that administers several Midwestern states.

They accuse him, he accuses them.

“Has the Metropolis been harmed? No. But it is hurtful,” Bishop Demetrios told me. “These are reflective of the times we live in, and the brokenness of human nature is being played out in the press.”

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KENTUCKY
WBKO

ALLEN COUNTY, Ky. (WBKO) — An Allen County pastor was arrested Thursday night at a church in Scottsville.

Now, with the pastor is behind bars, detectives are trying to figure out how many victims are involved in this sex abuse scandal.

“He has been a faithful, dedicated pastor to the church. He’s worked hard. He’s worked at the church with no salary,” said Stephen Bratcher, the interim pastor at the church.

46-year-old Roy Yoakem has been involved with New Gospel Outreach Church for six years, but he won’t be preaching there Sunday after being arrested on several charges, including rape and sodomy.

“He’s a predator and he doesn’t need to be on the street. I’m glad we got him,” said Detective Chad Keen with the Allen Co. Sheriff’s Dept.

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BOSTON (MA)
BBC World Service

Pope Francis has reinvigorated the Catholic Church. His most recent apology for the “moral damage carried out by men of the Church” was considered his strongest statement on the worst crisis to hit the Church in centuries. We return to the epicentre of that crisis – the American city of Boston. In a profile of the city, we hear the personal faith journeys of Catholics whose faith was shaken by the deep betrayals that emerged from the sexual abuse crisis. Parish priests provide revelations on how they consoled their parishioners and tried to maintain their congregations. Survivors of abuse share their stories, including the first victim to meet Pope Benedict XVI. Everyday and extraordinary parishioners describe their agonising decisions to leave their spiritual home or stand by the Church.

In an intimate portrait of the shell-shocked city, we ask whether the Church can rebuild the all-important element of trust and bring Catholics back.

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HAWAII
The Worthy Adversary

Posted by Joelle Casteix on June 21, 2014

Hawaii Governor Neil Abercrombie just signed the bill that extends Hawaii’s two-year civil window for sex abuse victims. Victims in public schools are also eligible for accountability under the new law!
Thank you Senator Maile Shimabukuro for your tireless work on behalf of victims.

From the Honolulu Star Advertiser:

New law adds time to file abuse suits

By Derrick DePledge

Gov. Neil Abercrombie on Friday signed a bill into law that will extend a window for another two years to file lawsuits over decades-old childhood sexual abuse and allow suits to be brought against the state and counties.

Dozens of child sex abuse lawsuits have been filed in Hawaii against the clergy, churches and others over the past two years after the state temporarily lifted the statute of limitations to bring claims. The new law extends the window until April 2016 and adds the state and counties as potential defendants.
Victims must prove gross negligence on the part of private organizations or the state — a legal standard meant to discourage frivolous accusations.

The Roman Catholic Church and others have opposed lifting the statute of limitations on lawsuits, arguing that it is difficult to defend against abuse claims that could be decades old. But the church had urged that the state and counties be covered by the law if it were extended, contending it was unfair to hold only private organizations financially accountable for abuse.

Abercrombie vetoed a similar bill in 2011, citing concerns about due process rights and the unknown financial liability to the state.

“I think the issue trumps the state’s interest as expressed then,” the governor said Friday. “I think you have to put the human condition first.”

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MINNESOTA
Duluth News Tribune

By Verne Wagner on Jun 20, 2014

As recently reported, a priest, Fr. Timothy Backous, who was appointed to work in Duluth at St. Michael’s parish and at Essentia Health, was accused of sexually abusing a 13-year-old in the early 1990s (“Priest on leave after allegations aired,” June 13). When asked about it, diocesan officials from Duluth and the Twin Cities pleaded ignorance to knowing about his past. Instead of properly vetting this man’s credentials and work history, they relied on a letter from the head of St. John’s Abbey in Collegeville, Minn., who said Backous had a clean record and was fit to work with children with no restrictions.

When questioned later, a head of St. John’s Abbey said he didn’t feel the accusations against the priest were proven. The parents of the young, 13-year-old boy, however, were told by the head of the abbey in the 1990s that Backous would receive treatment for his behavior and would be transferred out of the area and never allowed to work with children again.Back in the 1990s this was how bishops and other church leaders handled sexual abuse. Tell the parents we are sorry, we’ll provide counseling for your son, and we’ll get the priest into treatment and transfer him out of the area. We know now that type of response only leads to more children being abused by clergy pedophiles.

Now we see the Duluth Diocese putting children at risk by not properly vetting Backous. Saying we didn’t know is not an acceptable excuse in today’s world. Did Backous actually receive treatment? And if he was transferred, to where? Did he molest children in other parishes? What type of investigation was conducted on Backous and by whom? How can we trust the Duluth Diocese to protect our children if it doesn’t review a priest’s history and ask questions like where he worked, whether he ever was in trouble, and why was he transferred so much? Were there any complaints issued against him for sexual abuse?

We cannot allow the Catholic Church or any other institution that has access to our children or vulnerable adults to not properly and professionally vet prospective employees.

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UNITED STATES
The New York Times

By MARK OPPENHEIMER

The sexual abuse scandal in the Roman Catholic Church broke into the news around 2000, just as Paul Elie was writing his book “The Life You Save May Be Your Own.” His topic was the intertwining friendships of four great Catholic thinkers and writers, some of the best people in his tradition: Dorothy Day, Walker Percy, Flannery O’Connor and Thomas Merton.

Meanwhile, he was reading, in the news, about the abuse of children.

When Mr. Elie published his book, in 2003, news of the abuse and the cover-ups was still coming. A practicing Catholic, and an alumnus of Fordham, a Catholic university, he felt that the only story people heard about his church was an evil one.

“I felt a pain about my tradition,” Mr. Elie said when I met him for an interview in Brooklyn last month. “Something was broken here, and there must be something in the way we tell our stories that could help to make it better. I’m in the story business. So how could I help to heal it, somehow?”

As it happened, Mr. Elie vaguely knew Dave Isay, the MacArthur “genius” grant winner and founder of StoryCorps; as an editor at Farrar, Straus & Giroux, he had edited a book by Mr. Isay’s future wife. StoryCorps is an oral history project that has recorded more than 55,000 Americans telling stories from their lives to interviewers they have chosen. An edited version of one story airs on NPR every Friday, and all the stories are archived at the Library of Congress.

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MINNESOTA
Winona Daily News

By Jerome Christenson

The Diocese of Winona has offered a public explanation of why it continues to pay pension benefits to a defrocked pedophile priest, a week after the revelation was made public by a law firm suing the diocese.

“Recently, there has been criticism of the Diocese of Winona for providing former priest, Thomas Adamson, with his pension benefits,” reads a statement released first to parishioners, then to the public.

“The provision of Mr. Adamson’s benefit is not discretionary or voluntary, it is required by law,” the statement continues.

Adamson is paid out of the diocesan Priest Pension Fund, created to provide retirement income and health-care benefits to retired diocesan clergy. A priest who has served the diocese and made contributions to the retirement fund for 10 years is vested in the plan, and his right to be paid benefits from the plan is protected by state and federal law.

According to the diocese: “The Diocese cannot elect to withhold vested pension benefits from employees even when the employee has committed misconduct. The Diocese of Winona strictly adheres to the legal obligations associated with the pension plan.”

Adamson, ordained a priest in 1958, continued in active ministry until 1985, after allegations became public that he had sexually abused boys in parishes where he had been assigned. In 2009 he was laicized — officially removed from the Roman Catholic priesthood — by Pope Benedict XVI on the recommendation of Bishop Bernard Harrington.

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UNITED STATES
Fresno Bee

BY ANNE BIGGS
Fresno
June 20, 2014

In Ireland, at 14, my birthmother was raped on her way home from school. Three months into her pregnancy, she was transported to Castlepollard, one of many of the mother-baby homes throughout Ireland, to anticipate my delivery. While she waited, her name was changed, and her belongings taken from her. She toiled in the fields, washed walls and cleaned floors, but it was never enough. The Catholic sisters demanded 90 pounds to cover her maternity costs. Her family couldn’t pay, so she was sent to the Magdalene Laundries to pay off her debt to society.

We newborns were taken from our mothers because the Catholic Church deemed them sinners in the eyes of God, and unfit to care for us. We were labeled “bastards,” and later “banished babies.”

We were kept a secret to the outside world. Only when a chance for adoption came was care taken to meet standards required by the government to leave Ireland. When my time came, I didn’t meet their requirements. Sisters immediately provided me with the temporary care necessary to be adopted. Why weren’t we all treated as well, every day?

I spent the first four years of my life with the Sisters of the Sacred Heart in Ireland. They were responsible for my care. My health issues, plainly put, were abuse and neglect.

I survived that mother-baby home in Ireland and, in 1953, I was carried off a plane and handed into the arms of my shocked adoptive parents. The sisters wrote them, stating I was “fragile.” Their definition of fragile must have been: unable to walk or talk, severe malnutrition, intestinal parasites, rickets, epilepsy and emotionally stunted.

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IRELAND
Irish Times

Catholic Church should set up its own commission of investigation following mother and child home controversy

Vincent Twomey

Thu, Jun 19, 2014

‘Unwed mothers and their infants were an affront to morality. They were spurned and ostracised both by the public relief and charitable institutions.” This statement could well describe the attitude to children born out of wedlock and their mothers in the first half of 20th-century Ireland, an attitude the Tuam scandal has once again painfully brought to our attention. It is taken from the article Bastardy and Baby Farming in Victorian England by Dorothy L Haller.

The New Poor Law of 1834 of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland made all illegitimate children the sole responsibility of the mother, letting the putative father off scot-free, not for the first time. The main reason for amending the previous law was to make the “fallen women” serve as examples to other women and to inspire virtue, thus putting an end to the birth of illegitimate children.

Lord Althorp remarked that making the victims of the seducer’s art maintain their own resulting children is “a boon to the female population”, since, as Haller put it, they “would serve as examples to others and inspire virtue thus putting an end to the birth of illegitimate children”.

This led in time to the malpractice of the so-called baby farmers, women who would solicit as many sickly infants as possible, charge a fee to adopt them and then let them die of thrush brought on by malnutrition. It took various horrors of multiple infanticides at the end of the 19th century before the government intervened. An Act passed in 1897 empowered the local authorities to seek out “baby farms and lying-in houses, to enter homes suspected of abusing children, and to remove those children to a place of safety. It also redefined improper care of infants.” That remained in force up to 1957, according to Haller. Is it still part of Irish law?

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IRELAND
Irish Times

Pamela Duncan

Sat, Jun 21, 2014

The department of local government and public health’s 1930 report on the mother and baby home in Pelletstown in Dublin was upbeat in its assessment: “The health of the institution was excellent during the year. The death rate fell considerably.”

Despite the mortality rate of over 19 per cent, 1930 did signify an improvement on previous years, according to government documents accessible at the National Library.

“The fall in the death rate is attributed to the improved accommodation, better milk supply and better nursing,” the annual report notes.

Pelletstown, on the Navan Road in Dublin: departmental reports acknowledge a “deplorable loss of life” in 1925 and 1926. Photograph: Adoption Rights AllianceMore than 660 children died in home over seven years

One in five died

While fatalities had undeniably fallen, the fact remained that 66 – or almost one in five – of the 336 children housed in Pelletstown died in the year to March 31st, 1930.

Half the children housed in the institution died in 1925, with a measles epidemic cited as the explanation for the high death rate . The following year, more than a third died. The death rate rose to 42 per cent in 1927 before falling to under 20 per cent in 1930.

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IRELAND
Irish Times

Pamela Duncan

Sat, Jun 21, 2014

More than 660 infants and children died in Pelletstown mother and baby home in Dublin during a seven-year period up to the end of March 1930, State records show.

The reports also contain figures compiled by the Registrar General that show the mortality rate among “illegitimate” infants in 1925 and 1926 was five times that of infants born within marriage, something the departmental reports acknowledge as a “deplorable loss of life”.

Department of Local Government and Public Health reports show there were 662 deaths in the institution on the Navan Road between April 1st, 1924 and March 31st, 1930.

Mother and baby homes were established in Ireland in the 1920s and 1930s to house unmarried mothers and their children. …

The institution was run by the Sisters of Charity of St Vincent de Paul but was “provided and administered by Poor Law authorities”. It closed in 1985.

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AUSTRALIA
Queensland Times

Jessica Grewal | 21st Jun 2014

COUNTLESS children at an Ipswich Queensland boys’ home were raped, tortured and forced to live in filth under the watch of the Salvation Army and the State Government, the royal commission into child sexual abuse is expected to find.

A damning submission from counsel assisting the inquiry into four of the Army’s boys’ homes – Riverview near Ipswich, Alkira at Indooroopilly and two others in NSW – calls on the commission to find cultural problems within the Salvation Army structure allowed the systematic abuse of children to occur “on a wide scale and over a considerable period of time”.

The inquiry had looked at five predators – Victor Bennett, Lawrence Wilson, Donald Schultz, John McIver and an officer known only as X17 – were allowed to move around all four homes despite allegations of child abuse.

Describing the failure as “a very dark period in the history of the Salvation Army”, Simeon Beckett said victims, many of whom were already vulnerable and grieving the loss of their parents, were forced to live in homes where the “authoritarian nature … widespread and excessive use of physical punishment created a climate of fear … and provided officers and employees who wanted to sexually abuse children sufficient cover to escape detection”.

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IRELAND
Irish Central

Sinead O’Shea @irishcentral June 20,2014

At the root of the “Home Babies” scandal in County Galway was a dark reminder of how ruthless and cruel Ireland has been in its treatment of anyone who did not fit the national narrative, the nation’s idealization of itself.

That oppression has by no means ended, as filmmaker and journalist Sinead O’Shea makes clear in a fine article from today’s Guardian newspaper, which delves into shocking allegations that the Irish government arranged for abortions abroad for young women who got pregnant while staying in government homes.

In her hard-hitting piece, below, O’Shea echoes W.H. Auden in her sense of what blighted the nations development in the 20 century: “Those to whom evil is done/Do evil in return.”

By failing to grapple adequately with our own broken past, Ireland careened wildly from abused to abuser, a post-colonial horror show both infantalized and infantilizing, where special contempt was reserved for our weakest citizens.

To grow up, to move beyond each crisis that beset us, will require a new era of candid truth telling. That is why her article today is already striking such a chord internationally. – Cahir O’Doherty

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NEW YORK
The Journal News

Steve Lieberman, slieberm@lohud.com

A 55-year-old New Square educator, the father of 20 children and brother of a sex offender, has been indicted on charges of sexually abusing a pre-teen boy from 2001 to 2006.

Moshe Menachem Taubenfeld faces a charge of second-degree course of sexual conduct, a felony count covering a variety of sexual acts over a period of time. The count carries a maximum prison sentence of seven years.

The indictment accuses Taubenfeld of sexually abusing the boy, who was under age 13 at the time, on multiple occasions between September 2001 and May 2006, District Attorney Thomas Zugibe said Friday.

While prosecutors declined to identify the young man, Zugibe spoke with The Journal News before Taubenfeld’s arrest in January by Ramapo police.

The boy, Laiby, said the abuse started Sept. 11, 2001, when he went to Taubenfeld seeking comfort after the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, police said. The abuse allegedly continued until he turned 13 in 2006.

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NEW YORK
Failed Messiah

Rabbi Moshe Menachem Taubenfeld, a 55-year-old teacher in the Skvere hasidic village of New Square, New York, has been indicted on charges of sexually abusing a pre-teen boy over a five-year period from 2001 to 2006

New Square Hasid Charged With Child Sex Abuse
Shmarya Rosenberg • FailedMessiah.com

Rabbi Moshe Menachem Taubenfeld, a 55-year-old teacher in the Skvere hasidic village of New Square, New York, has been indicted on charges of sexually abusing a pre-teen boy over a five-year period from 2001 to 2006, the Journal News reported tonight.

Taubenfeld – who is the brother of convicted pedophile Herschel Taubenfeld – is charged with charge of second-degree course of sexual conduct, a felony that carries a maximum prison sentence of seven years.

He was arrested on January 17.

It is unclear when Taubenfeld was indicted or why the indictment may have taken so long to be filed.

The alleged victim, identified only as Laiby, told the Journal News the abuse started on September 11, 2001 and continued until he turned 13 in 2006.

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MEXICO
Star Media

La Arquidiócesis de la ciudad fronteriza norteña de Tijuana, donde estaban adscritos los sacerdotes, aseguró que los siete fueron suspendidos y no pueden ejercer el ministerio mientras dure la investigación de una comisión eclesial que no tiene plazo para concluirla.

Los nombres de los sacerdotes no han sido revelados por la Iglesia católica, aunque un grupo de víctimas de abuso sexual a manos de religiosos reveló que uno de ellos es el reverendo Jeffrey Newell, acusado de abuso cuando estuvo en la Arquidiócesis de Los Angeles.

Tras una consulta de The Associated Press, en la Arquidiócesis de Tijuana se limitaron a decir el viernes que es correcto que Newell es uno de los siete sacerdotes suspendidos y bajo investigación, aunque no se dieron más detalles ni se revelaron los otros nombres.

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OHIO
Toledo Blade

BY JENNIFER FEEHAN
BLADE STAFF WRITER

A dying Catholic priest who was convicted of killing a nun has turned to a federal court judge to ask that he be allowed to return to Toledo, possibly to spend his final days in the care of nuns who have agreed to take him in.

Gerald Robinson, 76, is in a hospice unit at Franklin Medical Center in Columbus, a hospital run by the Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Correction. His attorney, Rick Kerger, filed a petition for equitable relief Friday in U.S. District Court in Cleveland.

“In this instance what is sought is an act of grace for a dying man, relief the state cannot fashion,” Mr. Kerger wrote in the petition. “Yet the fact that the state has not provided for such relief does not mean that the federal court is impotent.”

Ohio law governing the release of dying prisoners states, “No inmate is eligible for release under this section if the inmate is serving … a sentence for aggravated murder or murder,” and an earlier appeal to Gov. John Kasich failed.

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HAWAII
SF Gate

By CATHY BUSSEWITZ, The Associated Press

HONOLULU (AP) — Hawaii Gov. Neil Abercrombie signed 16 bills into law Friday afternoon on proposals ranging from modernizing the electric grid to stopping police officers from having sex with prostitutes in the line of duty.

Several of the proposals dealt with protecting children from harm and restoring justice to victims of Internet crimes. …

— CHILD SEX ABUSE: A pair of proposals lengthen the amount of time victims of child sex abuse have to file claims. One bill (SB 2687) extends the amount of time that victims of child sexual abuse have to file civil lawsuits until 2016 if the date of their claim had already passed the statute of limitations. A flurry of lawsuits had been filed before a deadline. Another bill (HB 2034) removes the statute of limitations on filing criminal child sex abuse claims for continuous abuse or abuse in the first and second degrees.

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MEXICO
The Republic

E. EDUARDO CASTILLO Associated Press
June 20, 2014

MEXICO CITY — The Roman Catholic Church in Mexico confirmed on Friday that it has suspended seven priests, including one accused of abuse while serving in Los Angeles, from its diocese in the border city of Tijuana pending an investigation into alleged sexual harassment and abuse.

The Archdiocese of Tijuana didn’t reveal the names of the priests but it did confirm to The Associated Press that Rev. Jeffrey Newell was among them.

Newell was first mentioned as being a part of the priests under investigation in a statement by the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests, which is the main U.S. group of victims of abuse by priests.

In 2010, a U.S. man filed a lawsuit in California against the Los Angeles archdiocese alleging that church leaders engaged in fraud and negligence by allowing Newell to continue working around children after he went to church officials to accuse Newell of abuse.

“It’s tragic that this predator priest has apparently struck again,” the U.S. victims group said in a statement. “Fr. Newell should have never been given a church job in Mexico.”

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NEW YORK
The Journal News

Steve Lieberman, slieberm@lohud.com

A former South Nyack church youth group leader is expected to surrender to serve a sentence of three years in state prison for sexually abusing a 4-year-old girl, after a court denied his appeal.

Todd Retallack, 50, once married with children, is expected to surrender Tuesday. He was convicted by a Rockland County jury on Dec. 8, 2012, of first-degree sexual abuse and endangering the welfare of a child.

He was a friend of the child’s family and had been babysitting when the abuse occurred, authorities said.

Retallack, who officials said also once served as a youth group leader at the Living Christ Church in Nyack, was arrested by South Nyack-Grand View police in May 2011.

“This case called for a prison sentence to both punish the defendant and to serve as a warning to other individuals who prey on children,” Rockland District Attorney Thomas Zugibe said.

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UNITED STATES
The Nuance

June 20, 2014 By Zach Hoag

After spending the first half of my life in the church, I’ve come to the conclusion that evangelical culture is largely dysfunctional in its understanding of “forgiveness.”

And nowhere is this more clearly seen than in the recent report by Al Jazeera America on Bob Jones University.

BJU is fundamentalist to be sure, but their demonstrated approach to “forgiveness” is very common – perhaps even pervasive – in broader evangelical culture. And when abusive and harmful people are part of the equation, the results are especially egregious. I’ve experienced abuse from family/church authority. I’ve been counseled repeatedly by the church to “forgive” and “reconcile.” The results have always been disastrous, causing even greater destruction and harm.

A threat that often came from the church – and still painfully rings in my ears at times – is that to not “forgive” and “reconcile” with my abuser would mean the lifting of God’s blessing from my life. My calling would become invalid. My life would become worldly and meaningless.

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MILWAUKEE (WI)
Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

By Annysa Johnson of the Journal Sentinel June 20, 2014

U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Susan V. Kelley ruled Friday that she does not have jurisdiction to approve the Archdiocese of Milwaukee’s reorganization plan while key questions in a related lawsuit over $60 million it holds in trust for the maintenance of cemeteries are pending before the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals.

The decision is a victory for the creditors committee, which had sought to block approval of the plan until the appellate judges rendered their decision — a process some have said could take a year. And it has forced the cancellation of the October confirmation hearings, at least for now — a setback for the archdiocese.

James Stang, lead attorney for the creditors committee, called Kelley’s ruling “an important step in preserving our rights against the cemetery trust while the appeal is pending.”

Archdiocese spokesman Jerry Topczewski said the church’s attorneys are studying the ruling, but he added: “After nearly four years in bankruptcy, we remain committed to doing what we can to continue to move this proceeding forward.”

At issue before the 7th Circuit is whether forcing the archdiocese to put even $1 of the cemetery trust into the bankruptcy estate — and ultimately a settlement for clergy sex abuse survivors — would violate its free exercise of religion under the First Amendment and the 1993 Religious Freedom Restoration Act.

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UNITED STATES
Moscow Villager

By Kelsey Dallas
Posted Jun. 18, 2014

Publishing a youth pastor-turned-sexual-predator’s account of his crime may be one way to attract readers. But, as Christianity Today’s Leadership Journal learned this week, controversial posts can cause more harm than good.After posting a first-person account of statutory rape, Leadership Journal addressed the overwhelmingly negative response by first editing and then removing the initial post.The piece, titled “From Youth Minister to Felon,” was posted by Leadership Journal on June 9. Although it has been replaced by an apology, the original story is available in the online archive (subscription required).Harold Smith, the president and CEO of Christianity Today International, and Marshall Shelley, the editor of Leadership Journal, penned the apology, explaining they regretted the post’s focus on consent and mutuality and the youth pastor’s failure to acknowledge the harm he caused his teenage student.”The post, intended to dissuade future perpetrators, dwelt at length on the losses this criminal sin caused the author, while displaying little or no empathetic engagement with the far greater losses caused to the victim of the crime and the wider community around the author,” Smith and Shelley wrote.The initial piece brought a flurry of responses, some that were published on Christianity Today branded sites.

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ZIMBABWE
News Day

THE president of the Chiefs’ Council, Chief Fortune Charumbira, on Thursday vowed traditional leaders would crack the whip on rapists and people who engaged in incest under the guise of culture, saying they were in the same class as murderers.

VENERANDA LANGA

He said chiefs were going to form a coalition with churches in order to root out fly-by-night sects which were coming up with questionable regulations for their members, resulting in sexual abuse of minors and women.

Chief Charumbira was part of the speakers during the launch of the national campaign against rape where female participants accused traditional leaders of taking young and underage girls as wives.

He said traditional leaders who did that should be prosecuted.
“Whites removed criminal jurisdiction from traditional leaders and now we hear there are bribes being paid to law enforcement agents to sweep rape cases under the carpet or give lighter sentences,” Chief Charumbira said.

“Chiefs’ courts should be strengthened because we derive our powers from God and as chiefs, we are going to crack the whip and facilitate nationwide investigations on people who sexually abuse children and women in the guise of culture.”

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NIGERIA
Daily Post

By Emmanuel Uzodinma on June 20, 2014

The Police in Enugu State have arrested one Timothy Ngwu, the General Overseer of Vineyard Ministry of the Holy Trinity, located at Ihe/Owerre, Nsukka in Enugu State.

Before his arrest on Friday, the self acclaimed Pastor, who said he was obeying God’s command, has put no less than 20 members of his church in a family way.

DailyPost gathered that Ngwu does not spare married women in his evil act.

The spokesman of the Enugu State Police Command, Ebere Amaraizu, DSP, disclosed that “the pastor claims to be obeying prophetic/spiritual injunction to do the will of God, which is to impregnate any one chosen and revealed by the Holy Spirit, irrespective of whether the woman is married or not.

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POLSKA
Gosc

My, biskupi, wyznajemy że zbyt często – zamiast postawić na pierwszym miejscu dobro dzieci – dawaliśmy się zwieść oszustwu, dwulicowości i „mechanizmom negacji” sprawców zbrodni pedofilii. Zawstydzeni i skruszeni prosimy o przebaczenie. Prosimy Boga i prosimy ludzi skrzywdzonych przez kapłanów! – powiedział 20 czerwca w Krakowie bp Piotr Libera.

Przekazanie ognia podczas pierwszego w Polsce nabożeństwa pokutnego za grzechy pedofilii w Kościele, które odbyło się w kościele Najświętszego Serca Pana Jezusa w Krakowie 20 czerwca.

W homilii podczas liturgii pokutnej „za grzechy wykorzystania seksualnego dzieci i młodzieży przez duchownych” wyraził ubolewanie, że “pewna część naszego Kościoła” wciąż nie potrafi wysłuchać ofiar i uczciwie nazwać pedofilii zbrodnią.

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POLSKA
Gazeta Krakow

– My, biskupi, wyznajemy, że dawaliśmy się zwieść sprawcom zbrodni pedofilii, zamiast uwierzyć skrzywdzonym dzieciom – te mocne słowa wypowiedział bp Piotr Libera podczas pierwszej w historii polskiego Kościoła mszy pokutnej za grzech pedofilów w sutannach.

– Kiedy duchowny wykorzystuje dziecko, które powinien prowadzić do Boga, to sam odrzuca i zdradza Boga. Krzywda zostaje z dzieckiem na całe życie. To tak jakby ten duchowny odprawiał czarną mszę – tymi słowami, wypowiedzianymi kiedyś przez papieża Franciszka, zaczął homilię mszy pokutnej “za grzechy wykorzystania seksualnego dzieci i młodzieży przez duchownych” biskup płocki Piotr Libera.

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POLAND
GlobalPost

AFP

Poland’s powerful Catholic Church apologised on Friday for paedophilia committed by its priests during an unprecedented ceremony attended by top clergy and abuse victims.

“Ashamed and contrite, we ask for forgiveness from God and the priests’ victims,” bishop Piotr Libera said during a special liturgy in the southern city of Krakow.

Church leaders in the heavily Catholic country had already apologised at press conferences but never before had the gesture taken such a solemn form, Jesuit priest Jacek Prusak told AFP.

The event was part of a two-day conference on preventing church paedophilia that was attended by experts from abroad and several victims.

Priest paedophilia has long been a taboo topic in Poland.

“Compared to the United States or Ireland, Poland’s Church is only at the very beginning of the road,” said Father Adam Zak, youth coordinator for the Polish bishops’ conference.

Several high-profile cases have rocked the nation in recent months, including that of Archbishop Jozef Wesolowski, who is alleged to have had sex with boys while serving as a papal envoy in the Dominican Republic.

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MASSACHUSETTS
WGGB

[with video]

(WGGB) — Survivors of child sexual abuse are applauding a bill that recently passed the Massachusetts House and Senate.

The bill extends the statute of limitations for victims to file lawsuits against their abusers.

Kathy Picard of Ludlow is one of the prime movers behind this latest piece of legislation. For a long time, she repressed her abuse and finally feels that now she can begin the healing process.

“Mine…it was a family member that sexually abused me at a young age,” Picard explains.

Picard became a victim of sexual abuse by a family member at the age of 7 and the abuse lasted ten years.

She repressed the abuse until she came forward 21 years later.

“It’s impacted my life tremendously and it will always be a part of my life. Being a survivor of sexual abuse…it’s something that is always going to be part of 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.

MICHIGAN
Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests

For immediate release: Friday, June 20, 2014

Statement by David Clohessy of St. Louis, Director of SNAP, the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests ( 314 566 9790, SNAPclohessy@aol.com )

A Christian radio host is accused of child sex crimes. This is a real test for officials at WCSG Family Christian Radio.

[MLive]

They can fall prey to the temptation to stay quiet. Or they can step up and help police. They can do nothing. Or they can use their airwaves to beg others who may have seen, suspected or suffered crimes by John Baylo to call prosecutors, expose wrongdoers, and protect others. We hope station staff acts responsibly and take action to protect the vulnerable and heal the wounded.

We hope everyone who knows or works with Baylo will aggressively reach out to those who may have been hurt and may be suffering in silence, shame and self-blame.

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.

NORTH CAROLINA
Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests

For immediate release: Friday, June 20, 2014

Statement by David Clohessy of St. Louis, Director of SNAP, the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests ( 314 566 9790, SNAPclohessy@aol.com )

Innocent children and wounded victims have lost and serial wrongdoers have won today in a Charlotte courtroom, as clergy sex abuse and cover up cases against Charlotte Catholic officials have been tossed out.

We’re deeply saddened by this ruling.

It’s heartbreaking every time Catholic officials successfully exploit legal technicalities to deny abuse victims their day in court and evade responsibility for their heinous behavior.

We hope everyone who saw, suspected or suffered clergy sex crimes or cover ups in North Carolina won’t be deterred by this ruling. We hope they will find the courage to come forward, get help, and call police.

It’s pretty clear, based on the actions of church and law enforcement officials, that Fr. Joseph Kelleher and Fr. Richard Farwell are child molesters. But Charlotte Catholic officials care more about their reputations and comfort than about children’s safety, so they’re using every legal maneuver possible to block trials, maintain secrecy and discourage victims.

We hope the bishop fails. We hope this ruling will inspire others who have been assaulted by Catholic priests, nuns, seminarians and brothers to overcome their fears, expose pedophile priests and seek justice.

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

CHILE
Entorno Inteligente

CHILE: Iglesia determina que obispo de San Felipe es inocente tras ser acusado de abuso sexual

[Summary: The San Felipe bishop announced this morning result of the investigation against Bishop Christian Contreras of that city who was accused of sexual abuse. It was determine that the bishop is innocent of the allegation. Contreras said he always said the accusation was false.]

la tercera / Esta mañana el obispado de San Felipe dio a conocer el resultado de la investigación en contra del obispo de esa localidad, Cristián Contreras , quien fue acusado de abuso sexual.

La investigación que dio como resultado la inocencia del religioso, se inició cuando llegó una carta enviada por un sacerdote de la Provincia de Petorca -cuyo nombre se mantiene en reserva- al Arzobispado de Santiago, el 8 de agosto pasado, en la que se relataba un episodio en el que el religioso supuestamente abusaba de un menor de 16 años.

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POLAND
Independent Record

WARSAW, Poland (AP) — Leaders of Poland’s Catholic Church apologized on Friday to the victims of child sex abuse by priests and admitted they have long ignored the problem.

Abuse victims and experts on child psychiatry and sex abuse from Germany and the U.S. attended a conference behind closed doors in Krakow. The first day closed with a Mass held in apology.

“Ashamed and repentant, we ask for forgiveness,” said presiding Bishop Piotr Libera. “We ask God and we ask people who were hurt by the priests.”

He said Poland’s bishops “too often” instead of protecting the child gave credence to the “negation coming from the perpetrators of the crime of pedophilia” and to their insistence that the child was “imposing itself and trying to seduce.”

The media were only allowed to attend the opening and the evening apology Mass. Friday was the first day of the two-day conference led by Krakow Archbishop Cardinal Stanislaw Dziwisz, who was previously personal secretary to Pope John Paul II.

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POLAND
Leadership (Nigeria)

— June 20, 2014
Stanislaw Dziwisz, Polish Cardinal said on Friday that every possible step must be taken to put an end to the scourge of sexual abuse within the Catholic Church.

He made the call in Krakow (Poland) at the opening of a two-day conference for church representatives and lay people to discuss how sexual abuse by priests, against youth can be stopped.

Dziwisz was a close aide to late pope John Paul II, who was accused of not doing enough to tackle clerical sex abuse scandals during his 1978-2005 papacy.

“The church must do everything to make sure these situations are not repeated,” he said.

Catholic Church has been plagued by accusations and guilty verdicts as more and more children have stepped forward to claim they were sexually abused by priests.

The church stands accused of, for years, trying to hide the problem by moving alleged wrongdoers to districts far away from their accusers in an attempt to sweep the controversy under the rug.

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UNITED STATES
Religion News Service

Boz Tchividjian | Jun 20, 2014

There are some days when I am thrilled to report positive developments within the Protestant world about the slow but steady shift taking place on issues relating to child sexual abuse. Just a few years ago, there was very little private or public discourse within most Protestant circles about abuse within the Church. Besides the ignored cries of survivors and a few advocates, public acknowledgment and dialogue on this subject was off limits. As a result, children continued to be at risk in our churches and survivors continued to be silenced through blame and false pity.

In the past year, I have encountered more and more folks who are beginning to realize that the Church has been largely silent — and this silence has had excruciatingly dark and grave consequences for countless individuals and for the very soul of the Church. Through some amazing (and many very painful) set of circumstances, I believe a growing number within the Protestant community are finally beginning to realize that there is an epidemic of child sexual abuse within the Church and that silence and inaction are unacceptable.

Three years ago, I was invited by a major Protestant denomination to lead a seminar that focused on issues facing the church related to child sexual abuse. Five people attended. Though I was a bit disappointed, I was encouraged to be able to connect with some abuse survivors who had been deeply hurt by their church. So when I was asked this year to lead a similar seminar, I was expecting a low turnout. To my amazement, the room was full. What an encouragement to witness the thawing hearts of professing Christians who acknowledge that we have much to learn about protecting children, serving survivors and demonstrating repentance to those we have hurt or ignored.

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.

NORTH CAROLINA
Charlotte Observer

By Michael Gordon
mgordon@charlotteobserver.com
Posted: Friday, Jun. 20, 2014

A Mecklenburg County judge has thrown out two lawsuits against the Catholic Diocese of Charlotte stemming from decades-old abuse cases against two priests.

Superior Court Judge Robert Bell issued his ruling Friday. Attorneys for the diocese had argued last month that the four plaintiffs missed the state’s deadline for filing such complaints.

Charlotte attorney Sam McGee, who represents one of the plaintiffs, said Friday that an appeal of Bell’s decision is likely.

“Something awful happened here,” he said. “Even if it takes a long time for the victim to process, which is the typical pattern in this kind of trauma, what this ruling says is, ‘Well, there is not a legal way to address that wrong.’ ”

The alleged abuse by the Revs. Joseph Kelleher and Richard Farwell occurred in the 1970s and 1980s in Charlotte, Albemarle and Salisbury. The lawsuits against the diocese were filed in 2011 and 2012.

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MICHIGAN
WOOD TV

GAYLORD, Mich. (WOOD) – A local Christian radio personality has been arrested on a state criminal sexual conduct charge, according to federal authorities.

WCSG’s John Balyo was arrested Friday at a Christian music festival in Gaylord following an investigation by Michigan State Police, Battle Creek police and Homeland Security Investigations, authorities said. As part of the investigation, police raided Balyo’s home in Caledonia, searching his house, a car and the garage.

Federal authorities said Balyo, 35, is facing a charge of first-degree criminal sexual conduct.

Balyo allegedly paid a man identified as the subject of a separate HSI child pornography investigation to arrange sexual encounters with minor victims.

Investigators are working to identify any other potential victims.

Chris Lemke, the general manager of Cornerstone University-owned WCSG, issued the following statement Friday afternoon:

“We are shocked and deeply saddened to learn of the arrest and allegations against John Balyo, WCSG morning radio host. He has been put on indefinite paid administrative leave pending further investigation and the legal process. Our thoughts and prayers are with those involved in the investigation.”

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.

MICHIGAN
Fox 17

GRAND RAPIDS, Mich. – A radio personality at a Grand Rapids radio station was arrested Friday afternoon, suspected of criminal sexual conduct.

John Balyo is the host of the morning show on WCSG radio at Cornerstone University, according to his Twitter page.

Battle Creek Police told FOX 17 Friday afternoon the case is connected to the arrest of a man earlier this month at a Battle Creek home.

In the wake of Balyo’s arrest, WCSG general manager Chris Lemke issued the following statement: “We are shocked and deeply saddened to learn of the arrest and allegations against John Balyo, WCSG morning radio host. He has been put on indefinite paid administrative leave pending further investigation and the legal process. Our thoughts and prayers are with those involved in the investigation.”

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.

MICHIGAN
WOOD Radio

Posted Friday, June 20th 2014

Christian radio personality, John Balyo, for WCSG has been arrested on a state criminal sexual conduct charge, according to federal authorities.

Balyo was arrested Friday in Gaylord at a Christian music festival.

WOOD TV reports Balyo’s home in Caledonia was raided along with a car and garage, by police as part of an investigation by Michigan State Police, Battle Creek police and Homeland Security Investigations.

Federal authorities said Balyo, 35, is facing a charge of first-degree criminal sexual conduct.

Allegedly Balyo paid a man, identified as the subject of a separate HSI investigation for child pornography, to arrange sexual encounters with minor victims.

Balyo is currently held at the Calhoun County Jail. Investigators a working to identify other potential victims.

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

MICHIGAN
WZZM

Bob Brenzing and Christopher Zoladz, WZZM

GAYLORD, Mich. (WZZM) — A WCSG Family Christian Radio personality has been arrested on charges of first-degree criminal sexual conduct.

35-year-old John Balyo of Caledonia, was arrested Friday by Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) with officers from Michigan State Police and the Battle Creek Police Department.

Authorities say Balyo allegedly paid another person, who is a defendant in another child exploitation case, to arrange for sexual encounters with minor victims. Further details are being withheld until Balyo appears in court.

Authorities say the investigation was conducted under HSI’s Operation Predator, an international initiative to protect children from sexual predators.

WCSG general manager Chris Lemke released the following statement Friday afternoon: “We are shocked and deeply saddened to learn of the arrest and allegations against John Balyo, WCSG morning radio host. He has been put on indefinite paid administrative leave pending further investigation and the legal process. Our thoughts and prayers are with those involved in the investigation.”

Below is a news release from the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement Department:

HSI arrests gospel radio DJ on criminal sexual conduct charges

GAYLORD, Mich. – A Caladonia man was arrested Friday on state charges of criminal sexual conduct following an investigation by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s (ICE) Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) and the Michigan State Police Internet Crimes Against Children.

HSI special agents and officers with the Michigan State Police and Battle Creek Police Department arrested John Baylo, 35, Friday, without incident on state charges of first-degree criminal sexual conduct. Baylo is an on-air personality at Grand Rapid’s Family Christian Radio station, WCSG.

According to the investigation, Baylo allegedly paid a defendant, who is the subject of a separate HSI child-exploitation investigation, to arrange sexual encounters with minor victims. Further details about the investigation are being withheld pending the defendant’s appearance in court to answer to the charges.

A defendant is entitled to a fair trial in which it will be the government’s burden to prove guilt beyond a reasonable doubt.

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MICHIGAN
MLive

By John Tunison | jtunison@mlive.com
on June 20, 2014

GAYLORD, MI — John Balyo a radio personality for Christian station WCSG, has been arrested on a sex assault charge.

Police arrested the 35-year-old Balyo, of Caledonia, on charges of first-degree criminal sexual conduct.

He was arrested after an investigation involving Homeland Security Investigations, the state police and Battle Creek police.

According to a statement issued by HSI, Balyo “allegedly paid a defendant, who is the subject of a separate HSI child-exploitation investigation, to arrange sexual encounters with minor victims.”

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

ILLINOIS
The Doings LaGrange Park

Jane Michaels
jmichaels@pioneerlocal.com |

LaGrange Park resident Ken Kaczmarz didn’t lace up running shoes much before 2009. Since then the 43-year-old electrical engineer has run eight marathons and has his sights set on a grueling Ironman competition Sept. 7 in Madison, Wis. to benefit World Vision’s child protection programs.

Q. Why did you start running?

A. I had some deadline projects at work. It was very stressful. I’m director of the electrical engineering department for CompX International, Inc. in Grayslake. I started running one day to the end of the block, and after a few months, I ran a 5K. As I got into it, my church, Christ Church of Oak Brook, had a team for World Vision. I joined their team and did the Chicago Marathon in 2011. …

Q. This cause is also highly personal?

A. One of the reasons I became involved was because as a kid, I was molested by a priest. I was extremely active in the Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests from 2002 to 2006. I was one of the leaders in Chicago, but I had to get out of it. It was absorbing my life. I’ve helped hundreds of survivors, so I saw what sexual abuse does and how it destroys lives.

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AUSTRALIA
The Canberra Times

June 20, 2014

David Ellery
Reporter for The Canberra Times.

Gregory Sutton
The Canberra hearings of the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses into Child Sexual Abuse began on June 10 with the formal lifting of the suppression order on Gregory Sutton’s name that had been in effect (but sometimes breached) since his trial in 1996.

Sutton, who now “lives in the community”, was released from prison after serving 12 years in 2008. His original 18-year-sentence, for 67 counts of child sexual assault, is due to expire at the end of this year. He is 62-years-old, was in regular contact with his lawyer, Greg Walsh, during the Canberra hearing and, through him, apologised to a number of his victims.

Sutton taught for the Marist Brothers from 1973 to 1987 and, over that time, is known to have committed offences at six different schools including Marist College Canberra where he abused seven boys, all aged between 10 and 11, from 1980 to 1983.

The first allegation that Sutton may have been abusing children was made by Denis Doherty, the headmaster of his first school, in 1974.

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
Sydney Morning Herald

June 20, 2014

The Canberra Times

The harrowing ultra-marathon that is the royal commission on institutional responses to child sexual abuse left Canberra on Thursday after public hearings centred almost entirely on abuses by two former teachers, and how their employer, the Marist Brothers religious order, responded to the allegations surrounding their activities.

So egregious were these abuses, and so transparently lacking the Marist Brothers’ response, that they have become almost a byword for institutional abuse in religious schools in NSW, Queensland and Canberra. Indeed, the Catholic Archbishop of Goulburn and Canberra, Christopher Prowse, wrote to parishioners before the two weeks of proceedings began to prepare them for the “public testimonies of the very sad experiences of some victims’’.

The crimes of John William Chute, also known as Brother Kostka, are familiar to many Canberrans. Chute was jailed in 2008 after pleading guilty to a string of offences committed when he was a teacher at Marist College in Pearce, between 1985 and 1989. Seven charges dating from before then – Chute’s teaching career spanned 1952-93 and included stints at 12 Marist Brothers schools in NSW – had to be dropped because of statute of limitations issues.

The identity of the other Marist teacher – which had been the subject of an 18-year-old suppression order after his conviction and jailing in 1996 on multiple child sexual abuse charges – was revealed at the royal commission last week as Brother Gregory Sutton. Like Chute, Sutton taught at a number of schools throughout NSW before coming to Canberra, leaving behind him a trail of victims. Many have never overcome their psychological trauma, as they detailed to the hearing.

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AUSTRALIA
The Australian

Dan Box
Crime Reporter
Sydney

EVIDENCE given under oath by the Salvation Army’s Sydney leader James Condon about his handling of child sexual abuse committed by another officer was “highly improbable”, the NSW government has said.

The criticism, in a written submission to the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse, is supported by one of the church’s internal ­investigators, whose submission states “the evidence given by Commissioner Condon is not plausible”.

The dispute is detailed in documents published yesterday by the commission, which also state there is evidence suggesting more than 100 boys suffered brutal physical and sexual abuse at Salvation Army-run children’s homes across Australia.

This included being beaten, raped or locked in a “cage”, often for weeks at a time, a submission from the commission’s counsel, Simeon Beckett, said.

Senior Salvation Army officers “failed to investigate” allegations of many of these crimes, Mr Beckett said. “Structural, systemic and cultural problems permitted the sexual abuse of children to occur on such a wide scale” and over several decades before 1983.

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ROME
GlobalPost

Jason Berry
June 20, 2014

In the latest installment of Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone’s bad luck blues, the former Vatican secretary of state, 79, has responded to critical news coverage by defending the renovation of his 6,500-square-foot apartment and denying anything was amiss in a $20 million Vatican Bank loan he helped steer to Lux Vide, an Italian TV production company.

The German daily Bild Zeitung cited unofficial sources in reporting last month that a Vatican investigation of Bertone was underway for that transaction.

“I don’t understand these attacks,” Bertone told ANSA, the Italian news agency. “I am in harmony with the pope…He likes me.

In his airplane news conference returning from Israel to Rome, Francis responded to a question about Bertone’s role in the loan. “It’s something being studied,” the pope said, according to Catholic News Service. “It’s not clear. Maybe it’s the truth but at this moment it’s not definitive.”

For six months, Bertone worked to cement good will with the pope by staying on as the second-highest Vatican official under Francis, assisting in the transition.

The secretary of state is traditionally viewed as the pope’s prime minister, the public face of a papacy. Bertone was a highly public figure for the shy, retiring Benedict.

When Francis emerged as a commanding personality, at ease in public, Bertone took a long back seat in his final months in office. He was wise to do so. Bertone had baggage, lots of it.

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CZECH REPUBLIC
Prague Post

Prague, June 20 (ČTK) — Czech Social Democrat (ČSSD) lawmaker Igor Jakubčík caused outrage with his statement that the Catholic Church was an ally of Nazi Germany and approved of Jews’ murders in the Chamber of Deputies today.

“The Catholic Church did not suffer during World War II. It was one of the biggest allies of Nazi Germany. The Catholic Church approved of the transfers and murders of Jews,” Jakubčík said.

He took part in a debate on a draft amendment by some ČSSD lawmakers, which extends the deadlines for the assessment of churches’ applications for the return of property to churches confiscated from them by communists and for checking the restitution decisions. The law on restitution took effect in January 2013.

Jakubčík also said the church assisted Nazi criminals when leaving for South America after the war.
František Laudat (opposition TOP 09/STAN) called on Jakubčík to make an apology.

Government Christian Democrat (KDU-ČSL) deputies Ludvík Hovorka and Jaroslav Klaška said Jakubčík’s statement is unfortunate and ill-advised.

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UNITED STATES
Ring of Fire

Posted on June 20, 2014
by Chandler Carney

Conservative Christian colleges across the United States have taken it upon themselves to conduct rape and sexual assault investigations, which have transpired into a ferocious game of victim-blaming and PR cover-ups. The administrator’s “investigations” have left many students feeling more traumatized than before they sought assistance.

The issue is that these institutions are not legally bound to comply with federal laws intended to address rape. They have opted out of receiving federal funding, which makes them exempt from Title IX requirements regarding sexual violence. “Title IX says schools must hold a separate investigation independent of a criminal investigation to ensure that victims can change dorms and class arrangements, get campus restraining orders, and receive help filing a police report if they choose to do so,” states New Republic writer Kiera Feldman.

Patrick Henry College in Virginia is one right-wing private Christian school that prides itself on not accepting any assistance from the government in order to not comply with Federal regulations aimed at student safety, education or financial assistance. The school’s website states that “in order to safeguard our distinctly Christian worldview, we do not accept or participate in government funding.”

The Dean of Patrick Henry College, Sandra Corbitt, has taken it upon herself to conduct investigations, as many other unqualified administrators have done at fundamentalist universities. One victim remembers Corbitt stating that “it’s my job to poke holes in your story. I have to make sure that you’re not lying to me…I don’t think you’re wholly innocent in this situation.”

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MASSACHUSETTS
Carmen Durso

On Wednesday the MA House of Representatives, and on Thursday the state Senate, each unanimously passed House Bill 4126, an act which substantially extends the civil statute of limitations on suits against those who sexually abuse children.

This bill opens the Courthouse doors to thousands of childhood sexual abuse survivors who were previously barred from obtaining justice, or being able to name their abusers in a public forum. And it particularly important for those whose opportunity to file a criminal case is forever barred.

Prompted by news of the 552 victims in the Boston Archdiocese clergy abuse crisis of 2002-2003, this process started 11 years ago, with a bill filed by Representative Ronald Mariano, (D) Quincy, now House Majority Leader. Despite strong opposition from affected institutions, Rep. Mariano continued to refile, and strongly support, this measure in each session since then.

In 2012, two additional legislators, Rep. John Law, (D) Watertown, and Sen. William Brownsberger, (D) Belmont, joined this effort, and with the strong support of House Speaker DeLeo, and Senate President Murray, were able to craft a bill which garnered the approval of all interested parties.

Over the past 11 years, numerous abuse survivors, individual supporters, advocacy organizations, legislators, mental health professionals, lawyers, parents, clergymen and media reporters, have all played a significant role in keeping this issue alive, by demonstrating how wide spread child sex is and putting a human face on the affected victims.

Because there are still significant time limitations to bring suit, it is important to understand what the bill does:

A child who is sexually abused may file a civil suit against the perpetrator of the abuse, or the employer/supervisor of the abuser, until age 53.

The provision allowing claims against the perpetrator is retroactive. So someone abused in the past, will have until age 53 to bring suit. Suits against the employer/supervisor of the abuser are prospective only, that is, they can only be brought for abuse which occurs after the effective date of the new law.

However, there is also a new 7 year discovery rule with regard to both perpetrators of abuse, or the employer/supervisor of the abusers. This means that, regardless of the victim’s age, s/he may bring suit within 7 years after s/he first understands that s/he has been harmed by the abuser’s conduct. This provision is retroactive as to BOTH abusers and employer supervisors.

The 7 year discovery rule applies, regardless of the age of the survivor.

For more information, contact:

Carmen Durso
LAW OFFICE OF CARMEN L. DURSO
175 Federal Street, Suite 1425
Boston, MA 02110-2287
T: 617-728-9123
F: 617-426-7972

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CZECH REPUBLIC
Ceske Noviny

Prague – Czech Social Democrat (CSSD) lawmaker Igor Jakubcik caused outrage with his statement that the Catholic Church was an ally of Nazi Germany and approved of Jews´ murders in the Chamber of Deputies today.

“The Catholic Church did not suffer during World War Two, it was one of the biggest allies of Nazi Germany. The Catholic Church approved of the transfers and murders of Jews,” Jakubcik said.

He took part in a debate on a draft amendment by some CSSD lawmakers, which extends the deadlines for the assessment of churches´ applications for the return of property to churches confiscated from them by communists and for checking the restitution decisions. The law on restitution took effect in January 2013.

Jakubcik also said the church assisted Nazi criminals when leaving for South America after the war.

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VATICAN CITY
Vatican Information Service

Vatican City, 19 June 2014 (VIS) – The Holy Father has appointed Bishop Mitchell Thomas Rozanski, auxiliary of the archdiocese of Baltimore, U.S.A., as bishop of Springfield in Massachusetts (area 7,306, population 871,000, Catholics 248,800, priests 181, permanent deacons 85, religious 362), U.S.A. He succeeds Bishop Timothy Anthony McDonnell, whose resignation from the pastoral care of the same diocese upon reaching the age limit was accepted by the Holy Father.

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CANADA
CBS News

Twenty-four names have been engraved in a stone erected outside a Chapel Island school.

The newly-unveiled monument erected outside of Mi’kmawey School recognizes members of the community forced to endure residential schools.

Between 1923 and 1967, many native children were taken from their families and sent to the Shubenacadie School, where some were subjected to physical, emotional and sexual abuse.

Thursday’s unveiling ceremony honoured the victims — but also focused on those living in the community now.

During the ceremony, elementary school children read the names of those uprooted from their home community many decades ago and sent to Shubenacadie.

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NORTHERN IRELAND
Derry Journal

The body investigating historical claims of abuse at Derry care homes for children has been forced to issue an apology – after an error led to a number of names of witnesses who requested anonymity appearing on the inquiry’s official website.

The Derry Journal was contacted by a former of resident of St. Joseph’s Boys home in Termonbacca earlier this week who said he had been able to find reference not only to himself but to his siblings by name in daily transcripts published on the Historical Institutional Abuse Inquiry website.

The ‘Journal’ examined a sample of daily transcripts and found a number of other witness names.

The majority of these privacy breaches related to the indexing of the day’s hearing.

The man told the ‘Journal’: “A lot of very bad things happened to me at Termonbacca. What we went through…

“When I decided to give evidence

“I was asked if I wanted to waive my anonymity – and I replied that I did not. To find my name… to me it just says they considered us worse than dogs on the street. We deserved respect – and we feel betrayed.”

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CALIFORNIA/MEXICO
Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests

For immediate release: Friday, June 20, 2014

Statement by David Clohessy of St. Louis, Director of SNAP, the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests ( 314 566 9790, SNAPclohessy@aol.com )

A priest who worked in and was sued in Los Angeles for child sex crimes has quietly been working in Mexico but was recently suspended by his bishop.

Fr. Jeffrey Newell is one of seven Tijuana priests who have been temporarily ousted for alleged child sexual abuse.

[U-T San Diego]

[USA Today]

It’s tragic that this predator priest has apparently struck again. It’s even more tragic because these devastating crimes could have been prevented if only Catholic officials in Los Angeles and Mexico had acted responsibly. They have many resources – parish bulletins, websites and pulpit announcements – that they could and should have used to warn families about Fr. Newell.

Fr. Newell should have never been given a church job in Mexico. At the least, he should have been suspended – if not defrocked – years ago. Catholic bishops in both places should be ashamed of themselves for knowingly letting this dangerous cleric be around children.

We hope that every single person who saw, suspected or suffered Fr. Newell’s crimes will speak up, get help, call police, expose wrongdoers, protect kids and start healing

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MISSOURI
Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests

For immediate release: Friday, June 20, 2014

For more information: David Clohessy of St. Louis, SNAP Director (314 566 9790 cell, SNAPclohessy@aol.com

Church lawyer says that priest is defrocked
Victims blast MO bishop for violating church policy
SNAP to Jeff City diocese: “End the continuing secrecy”
Catholic officials let pedophile legally change his name
Then they sent him from NJ to “unsuspecting families” in MO

A lawyer for Catholic church officials disclosed Wednesday that a twice-convicted predator priest who pled guilty this week to sexually assaulting three Missouri boys has been formally defrocked by the Vatican.

A support group for clergy sex abuse victims is blasting Jefferson City Bishop John Gaydos for keeping this news secret for almost two years and begging him to “aggressively seek out” others who may have “seen, suspected or suffered” the cleric’s crimes.

In an email to the director of SNAP, the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests, attorney Charles Carella of Roseland NJ (973 994 1700, CMCarella@carellabyrne.com) said Fr. Carmen Sita (known in Missouri as Fr. Jerry Howard) was permanently ousted from the priesthood in September of 2012 by then-Pope Benedict. Carella represents the Newark archdiocese, which ordained Sita/Howard.

(Here’s a link to the actual defrocking document:

[SNAP]

“Catholic officials in Missouri callously kept this fact hidden from parents, police, parishioners and the public, which essentially rubbed even more salt into the already-deep wounds of this serial predator’s victims and their families,” said David Clohessy of SNAP. “It would have been a real comfort to many victims and to many concerned Catholics to know that Fr. Howard was off the payroll and kicked out by the Vatican. But instead of sharing this information, Bishop Gaydos hid it.”

SNAP also charges that the bishops’ secrecy “clearly violates the U.S. bishops formal and allegedly binding national abuse policy, which mandates ‘openness and transparency’ in clergy sex abuse cases.”

At least five New Jersey men have settled civil cases stemming from child sexual abuse they say they suffered at the hands of Sita/Howard, according to New Jersey attorney Greg Gianforcaro (908 859 2200 phone, 908 310 4624 cell, gianforcarolaw@msn.com).

At least one former Missouri man has settled a civil case involving Sita/Howard. He is Mark McAllister, who grew up in Boonville, but now lives in Virginia (540 520 8674, macmd@cox.net).

In 1982, Fr. Sita pled guilty in Jersey City to molesting a boy and giving him liquor. Then, Newark Archdiocesan officials let Sita change his name to Gerald “Jerry” Howard and sent him to the Jefferson City Missouri diocese, under then-Bishop Michael McAuliffe. McAuliffe assigned Fr. Howard to Sts. Peter & Paul Catholic parish in Boonville.

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UNITED STATES
Philadelphia Daily News

BY JASON NARK, Daily News Staff Writer narkj@phillynews.com, 215-854-5916
POSTED: June 19, 2014

SOMETIMES THEY turn on the television in the office, to scramble the sound of babies screaming.

They’ll jump up from their computers and suggest a coffee break, hoping sunlight and some conversation will fade the images they’ve just seen.

Some go running, letting rage push their pace, tears and sweat mixing over the miles.

No matter what they do to decompress, the investigators, lawyers and forensic analysts who handle child-pornography cases say they can’t outrun the first image they saw on the job, let alone the thousands of other horrors their eyes and ears have witnessed.

“When you choose to do this job, you are going into that world and it is permanently traumatic to your psyche in a way that can’t be reversed,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Michelle Morgan, who has handled hundreds of cases involving child pornography, recently said at her Center City office.

“It’s the darkest underside of humanity, and that’s what we have to deal with every day. Once you do it, there’s no turning back. There’s no taking it away.”

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IRELAND
The Guardian

Roy Greenslade

Filmmaker and journalist Sinéad O’Shea interviewed me for her 2008 documentary “The McCanns v The Media”. She has made films and reports from all over the world. In recent years she has worked on child abuse investigations for the BBC, Al-Jazeera English and RTÉ.

I am carrying this guest blog in part because she touches on a topic I often mention – the failure of mainstream Irish media to do their job properly. But she goes way beyond the lack of inadequate reporting to consider the darker side of her home country.

I want to stress that this is her view, and not mine, but I do think her piece needs an airing. Absent a forum within Ireland, I am delighted to provide one here…

In the past couple of weeks Ireland’s problem with itself has again become the subject of global headlines.

Four years ago Catherine Corless began collecting testimonies from former residents of the Bons Secours mother and baby home in Tuam, Co Galway.

The institution was run by the clergy and funded by the state to house unmarried mothers, the “untouchables” of Irish life.

Corless remembered the place from her own childhood surrounded by eight-foot walls with “broken bottles on top.” There were so-called “home babies” in her school too.

They were, said Corless, kept to “one side of the classroom, arriving and leaving at different times so there would be no interaction with ‘ordinary’ schoolgirls.”

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AUSTRALIA
ABC News

By Irena Ceranic

The headmaster of a private Perth school has told the royal commission into child sexual abuse the school has improved its policies for mandatory reporting.

The commission is investigating how a teacher was able to molest students for 10 years from 1999, despite several colleagues raising suspicions.

The current headmaster joined the school in 2011, after the teacher was convicted.

The school’s child protection policies were inspected in 2012 by an independent consultant, who made 21 recommendations.

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MASSACHUSETTS
Cape Cod Times

By The Associated Press
June 20, 2014

BOSTON — Massachusetts House and Senate negotiators will begin work soon to hammer out a compromise bill designed extend the statute of limitations for victims of childhood sex abuse to file lawsuits.

On Thursday the Senate approved a bill extending the time an individual can file a claim of sexual abuse from 3 years after the act occurs to 35 years, taking effect when the victim has reached 18 years old.

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CAMBODIA
Cambodia Daily

BY OUCH SONY AND ALEX CONSIGLIO | JUNE 20, 2014

SA’ANG DISTRICT, Kandal province – The chief monk of Tuol Krasaing pagoda was defrocked on Wednesday after crashing his sport utility vehicle while drinking and driving and wearing a military police uniform, according to police.

Phang Meas, a 70-year-old monk at Tuol Krasaing pagoda, was in the car with the chief monk, Khan Heng, at the time of the crash.

Phang Meas said Mr. Heng stopped to buy beers on the way to his father’s funeral and began drinking them while driving. That’s when he put on a military police uniform labeled with the name “Second Lieutenant Sen Theavy” over his robes.

“He was wearing the uniform so that people would not know a monk was driving the car,” Phang Meas said. “I’m happy he’s not coming back. He was always drinking wine and scolding other monks.”

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IRELAND
Irish Independent

Sarah MacDonald
Published 20/06/2014

A LEADING theologian has criticised Mary McAleese’s claim that the Pope’s synod is “bonkers” saying her comments were “not in keeping with what you would expect from an ex president”.

The retired professor of moral theology at St Patrick’s College in Maynooth, Fr Vincent Twomey, rejected Mary McAleese’s hard hitting criticisms, saying they were “not serious comments”.

Ms McAleese made headlines earlier this week when she criticised the Catholic Church’s forthcoming synod on the family, in Rome.

On Monday, Dr McAleese dismissed the synod as “bonkers” because the views of celibate bishops would be canvassed.

She said there was “something profoundly wrong and skewed” about asking “150 male celibates” to review the Catholic Church’s teaching on family life.

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ITALIE
La Croix (France)

[Summary: A Sicilian bishop is being blamed for a nearly $5.6 million euro debt, according to Panorama, the Italian weekly. ]

L’hebdomadaire italien Panomara publie ce mercredi 18 juin une enquête sur le risque de faillite d’un petit diocèse en Sicile, Mazara del Vallo, qui a notamment engagé de fortes dépenses pour la construction d’une église.

En couverture, le pape François l’air soucieux, « scandale » écrit en grosses lettres. À l’intérieur, mise en page avec photos d’un évêque portant une chasuble signée Armani et d’une église au coûteux chantier : l’hebdomadaire Panorama daté du mercredi 18 juin met en cause la gestion de Mgr Domenico Mogavero, 67 ans, évêque de Mazara del Vallo, pittoresque chef-lieu d’un petit diocèse côtier au sud de Palerme, en Sicile, non loin de Marsala, qui a donné son nom au fameux vin doux.

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ITALIA
Panorama

«C’è un meccanismo perverso che sta emergendo a me, sta emergendo in queste settimane in cui io finalmente ho potuto accedere, nonostante io l’avessi chiesto 10 mila volte, alla effettiva situazione economica della diocesi», così monsignor Domenico Mogavero, vescovo di Mazara del Vallo, si rivolge ai preti della diocesi nel corso di una drammatica riunione nella quale espone il bilancio con debiti che sfiorano i sei milioni di euro.

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MEXICO
Milenio

[Summary: A minor who once served at the parish of Our Lady of the Annunciation has filed a complaint with the attorney general of San Luis Potosi state saying he was raped and sexually abused by priest Eduardo Bautista Cordova.]

ANTONIO GONZÁLEZ VÁZQUEZ
19/06/2014
San Luis Potosí

Un menor de edad que en su momento fungía como sacristán de la Parroquia de Nuestra Señora de la Anunciación, a cargo del ahora ex sacerdote Eduardo Córdova Bautista, presentó denuncia en la Procuraduría General de Justicia del Estado por violación, abuso sexual calificado, corrupción de menores, privación ilegal de la libertad y otros en contra de Córdova quien se encuentra prófugo.

En un comunicado de prensa, los abogados de coadyubancia legal en apoyo las víctimas de Córdova dieron a conocer que la denuncia fue presentada el pasado lunes, con lo que se inició la averiguación previa número 74/2014.

El comunicado dice lo siguiente.

La víctima, cuyo nombre se mantiene en reserva para su protección, presentó formal denuncia en contra de Eduardo Córdova Bautista, cuyo paradero se desconoce y en contra de la Arquidiócesis de San Luis Potosí, respecto de los hechos que se relatan en el contenido del escrito que fue presentado con el objeto de ser constitutivos de alguno de los delitos previstos en la Ley, para que se proceda en términos del Código Procesal Penal vigente en el Estado para consignar en relación con la posible comisión de los Delitos de violación, abuso sexual calificado, corrupción de personas menores de dieciocho años de edad, privación ilegal de la libertad, encubrimiento y lo que resulte.

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UNITED KINGDOM
The Sun Daily

HUNDREDS of children are believed to have been kidnapped in Africa and brought to Britain for brutal voodoo rituals, a UN watchdog said, urging London to do more to combat the scourge.

“We’re concerned about reports that hundreds of children have been abducted from their families in Africa and trafficked to the UK, especially London, for religious rituals,” said Kristen Sandberg, head of the United Nations Committee on the Rights of the Child (CRC).

“They are used in so-called voodoo rituals, and are also raped and sexually abused. The number of convictions is extremely low,” the former Norwegian supreme court judge said Thursday.

British police are reported to have recorded scores of cases over the past decade of children who have faced torture and abuse as part of witchcraft rituals.

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AUSTRALIA
Daily Mail (UK)

By AUSTRALIAN ASSOCIATED PRESS
PUBLISHED: 19:55 EST, 19 June 2014

A mysterious memo about “Frater Bart”, an email from a lawyer suggesting a pedophile brother be kept under wraps after doing time and a sudden journey to Canada.

All three surfaced at a royal commission hearing into how the Marist Brothers Australia handled child sex abuse allegations against two men who over decades molested children at schools in the ACT, Queensland and NSW.

Below the surface is the devastation of victims.

The commission sitting in Canberra this week heard first from survivors. There were the victims of Gregory Sutton, jailed for 12 years in 1996 after pleading guilty to 67 charges of sexually assaulting 15 different children, and those who as children fell foul of predator John Chute, known as Brother Kosta, who was sentenced to six years’ jail in 2008.

The mysterious memo was revealed when Brother Alexis Turton – who has been vice-provincial and provincial, and until 2012 head of the order’s professional standards office – entered the witness box.
The confidential memo for the attention of church lawyers detailed Sutton’s history with the order back to 1974 – when he was grooming and molesting boys at a north Queensland primary school – up to August 18, 1989, when Turton sent him to a Canadian therapy centre.

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MASSACHUSETTS
Boston Globe

By Travis Andersen, Derek J. Anderson and Jennifer Smith | GLOBE STAFF | GLOBE CORRESPONDENTS JUNE 20, 2014

The Massachusetts Legislature is on the verge of finalizing a bill that will give alleged child sexual abuse victims an additional 32 years to file civil lawsuits, a move one specialist said will open the door to thousands of new cases.

The bill would extend the statute of limitations for filing suits against alleged perpetrators and, in future cases, the people or institution supervising them. Under the legislation, the victims would be able to file suits up to age 53, instead of the current limit of age 21.

The Senate passed the measure Thursday, after it was approved by the House Wednesday.

Lawmakers expect to send a bill to Governor Deval Patrick’s desk soon, after a few more procedural votes, said Senator William N. Brownsberger, the Senate cochairman of the Joint Committee on the Judiciary.

“We’re very glad we were able to get this done,” said Brownsberger. “It is going to protect children in the future. It really is.”

Carmen L. Durso, a lawyer for sexual abuse victims and a vocal supporter of the bill, also hailed its passage. “It will open the doors of the courthouse to thousands, literally thousands of people who have otherwise been excluded from being able to file suits,” Durso said by phone. “This will give them the opportunity to name their perpetrators and do what almost all of them want to do, which is make sure their perpetrators can’t get to other victims.”

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INDIANA
The Journal Gazette

Rosa Salter Rodriguez | The Journal Gazette

FORT WAYNE – Two representatives of the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests on Thursday urged the bishop of the Fort Wayne-South Bend Catholic Diocese to account for the whereabouts of two priests removed from ministry after credible sexual abuse allegations.

Judy Jones, SNAP’s Midwest region associate director, said the group wants Bishop Kevin C. Rhoades to post the information on the diocese’s website, as 30 other U.S. bishops have done.

“If they are too dangerous to work in a parish somewhere,” she said, “they are too dangerous to be out amongst other places where they have access to kids.”

Jones and SNAP member Steven Spaner, both of the St. Louis area, stood in front of the diocese’s offices at 915 S. Clinton St. for about an hour beginning at 10:30 a.m., speaking to the media and holding pictures of male and female child victims.

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CANADA
Edmonton Journal

BY BRENT WITTMEIER, EDMONTON JOURNAL

EDMONTON – Evidence given by residential school abuse survivors in closed-door hearings should never see the light of day, the lawyer in charge of abuse settlement process says.

Dan Shapiro, chief adjudicator of the Independent Assessment Process, says Canada will be courting a potential “privacy disaster” if it doesn’t destroy the 800,000 audio recordings, transcripts and other documents associated with 38,000 claims of sexual abuse, physical abuse and other heinous acts.

Destruction is the only way to show “proper respect” to aboriginal Canadians who were abused and victimized at Canada’s residential schools, Shapiro said Thursday, following a presentation at the University of Alberta’s access and privacy conference.

“The records contain some of the most intimate, private information,” Shapiro said. “Even the perception that their information will be made public can cause great harm emotionally and revictimize those individuals and create ripple effects in their communities.”

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CALIFORNIA
KTLA

JUNE 19, 2014, BY MELISSA PAMER

A church volunteer accused of molesting at least five boys and girls in an El Monte congregation where his arrest prompted prayers appeared in court in Pomona Thursday.

Johnny Beserra III, who pleaded not guilty last month to 13 felony counts and one misdemeanor in connection with an ongoing child molestation investigation, appeared for a preliminary hearing setting conference but the proceeding was postponed to July 16.

The May 24 arrest of the 20-year-old shocked officials at United Pentecostal Church in El Monte, where Beserra attended Sunday school and later graduated from the church’s K-12 school, El Monte Christian Academy, according to a pastor at the church.

“We’ve known him for many, many years. It was definitely a shock,” said Nathan Cupoli, a youth minister.

Church officials took the “news” about Beserra to El Monte police within an hour being alerted, Cupoli said Wednesday.

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MASSACHUSETTS
New England Public Radio

[with audio]

by: Henry Epp
JUNE 19, 2014
SPRINGFIELD, Mass.

Catholics in western Massachusetts are getting a new leader. Pope Francis picked Mitchell Rozanski of Baltimore to replace retiring bishop Timothy McDonnell.

At a press conference in Springfield, Bishop McDonnell introduced his successor with a little humor.

“They scoured the earth, and found the right man to take my place. Unfortunately, he’s from south of the Mason-Dixon line,” McDonnell said.

That regional difference leaves plenty of work for the incoming Bishop. The 56-year-old Rozanski had never been to western Massachusetts before this week. But he says he’s ready to immerse himself in the community. …

Parishioner Anne Lynch of Springfield has something else she wants Rozanski to focus on. After Mass at St. Michael’s Cathedral, Lynch said she hopes the new bishop brings young people back to the church, who may have been alienated by the sexual abuse scandals of the last few decades.

“These kids aren’t as trusting as we were as kids. I mean, you never thought the priests did anything wrong, and these kids know that they’ve done wrong, and it’s going to take time,” Lynch says.

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MASSACHUSETTS
Berkshire Eagle

Pope Francis has made his first direct impact upon Western Massachusetts with the appointment of Bishop Mitchell Thomas Rozanski, of Baltimore, to succeed the retiring Bishop Timothy McDonnell and become the ninth bishop of Springfield. Ideally, as a bishop he will use the pope as an example in setting policies and engaging in the many issues facing the church.

Bishop Rozanski is an encouragingly young 55, and his Polish heritage will please the many Berkshire residents of Polish ancestry. The parishioners of St. Stanislaus Kostka in Adams went over Bishop McDonnell’s head in successfully persuading the Vatican to allow it to remain open after it was closed by the Springfield diocese six years ago. It was reopened as a mission of the St. John Paul II Parish in Adams, and we hope Bishop Rozanski will consider returning the church to parish status, as desired by members.

So far in his tenure as pope, Francis has put an emphasis on civil rights and economic fairness and de-emphasized the social and political issues that have consumed the church for years. An example came two years ago when Bishop McDonnell, along with the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, denounced the Affordable Care Act because of its requirement that contraception be included in employees’ health benefits. That was one narrow aspect of a law that has been and will be of great benefit to poor Americans, including Catholics, who cannot otherwise afford health care, and encourage Bishop Rozanski to look at the big picture when it comes to programs that help the needy. …

The twin scandals of sexual abuse by priests and the cover-ups of this abuse by church leaders exploded in the Archdiocese of Boston courtesy of Cardinal Bernard Law — still enjoying his Vatican sanctuary — and touched Springfield as well. Two months ago, Pope Francis became the first pontiff to ask forgiveness on behalf of the Catholic Church for the decades-old pedophile scandal, which should signal dioceses around the country that they should exchange defensiveness for aggressiveness in addressing this problem.

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AUSTRALIA
ABC – PM

NICK GRIMM: A warning now – this next story from the royal commission into child sexual abuse contains disturbing details.

The headmaster of an Anglican school in Perth says the conviction of a former teacher has been etched into the minds of the school community.

The primary school teacher is now in jail for molesting five of his students, but he was able to “groom” the boys for years before he was arrested.

A public hearing has been told that the concept of grooming behaviour is still absent from the school’s child protection policy, even after the man went to trial twice.

Thomas Oriti reports.

THOMAS ORITI: The 12th case study of the royal commission told a harrowing story. It’s a story spanning more than a decade where a primary school teacher, known as “YJ”, lured boys inside his classroom and sexually abused them.

When one victim turned 18, he went to the police. He told the hearing the abuse changed his life forever.

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UNITED STATES
POPE FRANCIS the CON-Christ

Paris Arrow

Hola Francisco, ¿cómo está usted? Es la corona papal demasiado pesada para la cabeza? ¿Se siente solo en la cima de la Pirámide del Vaticano? Lee nuestros 6 sugerencias sobre cómo se puede cambiar el mundo sea un lugar mejor antes de morir … porque realmente, usted ha cometido el robo más grande en la historia de la humanidad! Y el único lugar donde se vaya a es el lago de fuego – si usted no devuelve el robo por parte de los imperialistaslos acumulado en bancos suizos del Vaticano a las naciones pobres del Tercer Mundo. http://popecrimes.blogspot.ca/2014/06/6-suggestions-for-pope-francis-as-he.html

So what’s the matter, podgy Francisco, you thought the papacy was an easy job like dancing the Argentina tango or waving the child duck dance of wibble wobble as you papal fart at 1.2 billion Catholics with Opus Dei Beast PR Deceits Team lies, lies, lies day after day like an old OD fool on the Vatican hill? Can’t you stand anymore the frantic Francis-Maniacs adulation at St. Peter’s Square every Wednesday – the guaranteed money machine of millions of dollars audience – that brings in hundreds of thousands of pilgrims to gather and pray the robotic Angelus with you?

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AUSTRALIA
The Canberra Times

Royal commission told lawyer tried to silence ‘regrettably upfront’ sex offender Kostka Chute

June 19, 2014

David Ellery
Reporter for The Canberra Times.

A lawyer acting for the Marist Brothers visited serial paedophile Kostka Chute in jail in a bid to prevent him from making disclosures that would endanger the order’s insurance cover, it was alleged at the sex abuse royal commission.

Peter O’Brien, who is representing victim and whistleblower Damian De Marco, put it to the former head of the order, Brother Alexis Turton, on Thursday that significant steps had been taken to ensure Catholic Church Insurance (CCI) would not withdraw its cover of crimes committed by Chute.

The Marist Brothers, through its insurers, has paid out $6.84 million to 38 of Chute’s victims.

Brother Alexis had been the order’s professional standards officer at the time of Chute’s Canberra trial and the class action that followed.

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MEXICO
Arquidiocesis de Tijuana

Escrito por Administrator
martes, 17 de junio de 2014
Tijuana, B.C. a 17 de junio de 2014.

La Arquidiócesis de Tijuana desea comunicar a los fieles católicos y a todas las personas de buena voluntad una situación que le está tocando vivir con dolor.

En comunión con la Iglesia Católica Universal en lo que respecta a la atención de casos de abuso a menores por parte de clérigos, esta Iglesia particular participa en algunas revisiones que la Santa Sede está llevando a cabo.

La Iglesia siempre ha indicado los criterios doctrinales respecto a la vida de los presbíteros. Estos criterios han sido incluso acentuados por el Papa emérito Benedicto XVI, y asumidos y continuados por el Papa Francisco, quien insiste a tiempo y a destiempo en revisar y afrontar las situaciones irregulares que puedan darse en algunos clérigos de las diversas diócesis del mundo.

En tal sintonía, la Arquidiócesis de Tijuana asume sus deberes morales y espirituales y colabora con la Santa Sede en juicios eclesiásticos en los que se analizan acusaciones hechas a algunos clérigos pertenecientes a esta Iglesia particular.

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MEXICO
El Solde Tijuana

Laura Bueno Medina

La arquidiócesis de Tijuana reconoció que se están investigando siete casos, en su mayoría, por abuso sexual, por parte de las instancias eclesiásticas del Vaticano, en donde se determinará la acción y sentencia que se ejerza contra los hoy acusados de acoso o agresión sexual.

Se acusa a un sacerdote, no precisamente de un abuso completo, sino sencillamente de acoso, pero sin llegar a mayores, y se dice que es menor (la víctima), no un niño, no hay ningún caso de niños, si de menor, porque se puede considerar que con quien haya tenido que ver es menor de edad, explicó el líder de la arquidiócesis de Tijuana, Rafael Romo Muñoz.

Asimismo el arzobispo Rafael Romo Muñoz informó que de los siete sacerdotes implicados, las recomendaciones de la Santa Sede fueron que se retirara a cinco de los padres de manera temporal de su tarea de oficiar misa, mientras que los dos restantes siguen celebrando en sus respectivas parroquias.

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MEXICO
20 Minutos

La Arquidiócesis de Tijuana informó que analiza las acusaciones qen contra de siete sacerdotes por abuso de menores, de los cuales sólo uno ha sido separado temporalmente de su cargo.

Las investigaciones en torno de los sacerdotes continúan por la Arquidiócesis En conferencia de prensa, el arzobispo Rafael Romo Muñoz indicó que este caso ya era seguido por El Vaticano desde 2012 con continuidad en 2013, pero sólo hasta de manera reciente recibieron los resultados de las primeras indagatorias por parte de Roma.

Aclaró que no existe ninguna denuncia de tipo penal, sino que sólo se han dado algunas medidas cautelares, y aseguró que la Arquidiócesis continuará con las indagatorias en tanto se recibe la segunda recomendación de El Vaticano.

Señaló que, sin embargo, las investigaciones en torno de los sacerdotes continúan por la Arquidiócesis, aunque anotó que “la emisión de un juicio definitivo queda reservada a las instancias competentes, cuando los procesos concluyan”.

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