ABUSE TRACKER

IRELAND
Galway Advertiser

February 07, 2013.

By Kernan Andrews

Women who spent time in the Galway Magdalene Laundry have been invited to meet with The Congregation of the Sisters of Mercy, who ran the institution.

The sisters invitation comes following the McAleese Report into the extent of State involvement with the controversial laundries. In a statement issued yesterday, the order said it was “regrettable that the Magdalene Homes had to exist at all”.

The Sisters of Mercy, who ran the Dun Laoghaire and Galway laundries welcomed the report, saying they hoped it would lead to “greater understanding and healing”.

The sisters said the Galway laundry was “already in operation before coming under our care” and that “many of the women who resided in the Galway home remained voluntarily in our care for the remainder of their lives”.

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UNITED KINGDOM
Evening News 24

Exclusive by Tom Bristow Thursday, February 7, 2013

A Norfolk priest was one of two men arrested yesterday by detectives probing allegations of child sex abuse centring on a guesthouse and a children’s home.

The priest, Father Tony McSweeney, 66, from St George’s Church in Norwich, and another man aged 70 from East Sussex were arrested yesterday morning on suspicion of sexual offences.

The allegations, dating from the early 1980s, are linked to the former Elm Guest House and the now closed Grafton Close children’s home in Barnes, south west London.

Detectives are probing claims the guest house was used by people to abuse boys from the home.

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UNITED KINGDOM
Daily Mail

Revealed: Face of boy abused in Elm House scandal as Catholic priest and head of boys’ home are arrested

Smartly dressed in his school uniform, the 12-year-old boy is a picture of youthful innocence.

But within two years of this photograph being taken, Peter Hatton-Bornshin’s life had been ripped apart.

He was orphaned following his mother’s suicide and then suffered appalling sexual abuse while in the care of social services in the early 1980s. Tormented by his experience at the council-run Grafton Close Children’s Home in West London, Peter took his own life in 1994. He was 28.

The first picture of Peter, whose tragic life was revealed by the Mail last Saturday, emerged today as two men were arrested by detectives investigating allegations that a VIP paedophile ring preyed on Grafton Close boys at the gay-friendly Elm Guest House in Barnes, South-West London.

A former deputy head of Grafton Close, John Stingemore, 70, was detained during a dawn raid at his housing association flat in St Leonards-on-Sea, East Sussex, over claims he sexually abused several boys in his care three decades ago.

A Roman Catholic priest from Norfolk – Father Tony McSweeney, 66 – was also arrested on suspicion of indecently assaulting boys at Grafton Close.

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LOS ANGELES (CA)
CBS 12

February 06, 2013

By GILLIAN FLACCUS Associated Press

The Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Los Angeles says it will release more documents from clergy abuse files amid complaints that the 12,000 pages released last week are missing critical pages and contained excessive redactions.

The archdiocese acknowledged it had erred in keeping some documents sealed after The Associated Press inquired about them on Wednesday.

The documents from the file of former priest Michael Baker span a 14 year-period — from 1986 to 2000 — and provide insight into how Cardinal Roger Mahony and other church leaders dealt with him.

The AP obtained a complete copy of the Baker file last month that contains the documents that are left out of the archdiocese release.

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UNITED KINGDOM
BBC News

A Catholic priest has been arrested in connection with alleged child abuse at a London guest house during the early 1980s, his diocese has confirmed.

Operation Fernbridge is looking at claims that senior political figures and others sexually abused boys at the Elm Guest House in Barnes.

One of those arrested is 66-year-old priest Father Tony McSweeney from Norfolk.

The other is a 70-year-old man who was arrested in East Sussex.

Father Mark Hackeson, of the Diocese of East Anglia, said: “The church diocese takes safeguarding of children very seriously and so we will be co-operating fully in any way with the police investigation.”

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MILWAUKEE (WI)
Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

By Annysa Johnson of the Journal Sentinel

Feb. 6, 2013 3:05 p.m.

UPDATE: Retired Los Angeles Cardinal Roger Mahony, censured by his successor last week for his handling of the sex abuse crisis there during his tenure, will not speak as planned at a Milwaukee area priests conference in May, organizers said today.

The Archdiocese of Milwaukee said Mahony canceled his appearance weeks ago, along with all of his 2013 commitments, before his sanction and before a local priest called on Archbishop Jerome Listecki to disinvite Mahony in an open letter earlier this week.

Former Vice Chancellor and victim advocate Father James Connell of Sheboygan was responding to the announcement in an archdiocesesan newsletter distributed last week saying Mahony would be among the speakers. Archdiocese spokeswoman Julie Wolf attributed the incorrect information to busy schedules and crossed wires.

Instead of Mahony, Connell asked Listecki to instead invite victim-survivors, their familes and friends, advocates, clergy and lay workers hurt by the scandal and others to speak, and that the conference be open to the media.

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IRELAND
Bock the Robber

What’s the most powerful human emotion?

You might say fear, since it’s the primal impulse to survive, but you’d be wrong. You might say anger. Bah. That hardly counts as an emotion at all. Even insects get angry. Romantics will of course say love, while cynics will say greed, but it’s none of the above. The most powerful, overwhelming, all-dominating human emotion is shame. Salman Rushdie set out this concept in his novel of the same name, describing how an entire nation, its people and its beliefs could be defined by shame, and what holds true for a vast population like Pakistan’s is equally valid for a tiny bunch of disordered famine-survivors like the Irish.

You think I joke? You think it’s stretching it a bit to describe us as famine survivors, with our well-fed bellies and our ostentatious double-breasted houses (even if we are a bit down on our luck these days)?

Think again. The Irish famine is but a blink away in history yet it shaped every last thing about who we are today. There are few degrees of separation: my grandfather knew many people who lived through the famine. They swaddled him as a baby and perhaps they bounced him on their bony old knees. They told him stories in his cot, but one tale they never told was the tale of how they survived when so many did not. This was not a tale to be passed down the generations, because it carried not one, but two great shames embedded in its broken heart.

The first was the shame of survival and the second was the shame of oppression.

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IRELAND
Irish Times

The Government will seek a “clear strategy and a clear plan” as to how best to deal with the findings of the report into the Magdalene laundries, Taoiseach Enda Kenny has said.

The Government came under renewed criticism today following the refusal of Mr Kenny to issue a full apology to the women who spent time in the laundries, despite the fact that more than a quarter were sent there by the State.

Some Labour TDs say an apology is needed.

Minister of State for Mental Health Kathleen Lynch said it was her personal opinion that there should be an apology.

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IRELAND
Independent

06 February 2013

THE findings by Senator Martin McAleese are a welcome, if predictable, outcome to an impressively swift and efficient investigation of material that has become well known to all of us over the past decade. And no one could take issue with his wish that the report will bring “healing and peace of mind” to those women whose lives were mostly wrecked by their incarceration in one or other of these hideously cruel and vicious places.

That being said, it must also be recognised that the putting right of these innumerable wrongs comes too late for a vast number of the victims who endured the Magdalene Laundries. The system was worse than the industrial schools, where the inmates, who were prisoners, were subject to the law. The young people sent to them served their time and were released at the end of their term imposed by the courts.

Those at the Magdalene Laundries had no end date to their “sentences” and many spent their lives in slavery. Often they were beaten, starved, had their heads shaved as punishment, their identity stripped from them, their names changed, and were kept in captivity for years longer than the industrial school victims.

The tragedy lies in the fact that the Magdalene Laundry system was fully known about from the birth of the State. Its operation has been acknowledged in various ways covered by Mr McAleese’s report.

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IRELAND
Independent

06 February 2013

WHEN Taoiseach Enda Kenny stood up in the Dail yesterday afternoon he had the look of a man who wished he was somewhere else. Soon it was clear why. He wasn’t about to deliver the fulsome apology to the Magdalene Laundry victims that the country expected.

The failure of the State to say sorry to the thousands of women who suffered harsh conditions over seven decades in Ireland’s notorious Magdalene Laundries has outraged many. Retribution was being sought by the ‘inmates’ of these harsh institutions, and their families.

The report into the Magdalene Laundries was to be the women’s day, their vindication, and the time for the State to put its hands up to verify and reaffirm stories we have heard over the years of the suffering they have endured.

There are undoubtedly legal reasons why the Taoiseach was guarded and didn’t make an outright apology. His own backbenchers were said to be upset and puzzled by his omission. One can assume that one of the reasons he didn’t go further was that it would open the flood gates when it comes to the question of compensation.

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IRELAND
The Independent (United Kingdom)

The Magdalene Laundries report confirms the need to keep church and state matters separate in Ireland

John Walsh

It takes an age to squeeze much remorse out of the Irish government, doesn’t it? In 1999, after decades of child abuse in Catholic-run organisations, it finally issued “a sincere and long-overdue apology” to the victims and set up a Commission to Inquire into Child Abuse, which took nine years to present its findings.

Now the government has been told – by a report prompted two years ago by the UN Committee Against Torture – that the Irish state colluded in sending 30,000 women to the infamous Magdalene Laundries between 1922 and 1996.

The prime minister, Enda Kenny, didn’t apologise to the families of the women who’d been incarcerated in these hellish institutions despite committing no crime. He said: “The stigma [of] the branding together of all the residents… in the Magdalene Laundries needs to be removed.” No, it doesn’t. The stigma of the Laundries will survive as a reminder of how inhumanly innocent people can be treated by supposedly charitable institutions.

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IRELAND
RTE News

The Labour Parliamentary Party tonight said the Government needs to address the issue of an apology to the Magdalene survivors in the context of honouring and vindicating them.

Labour TDS and Senators said the treatment inflicted on the women was a historical wrong that had to be put right.

The statement follows a meeting which heard widespread criticism of the Government’s handling of the issue.

Minister of State Kathleen Lynch earlier today said that it was her personal view that there should be an apology.

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LOS ANGELES (CA)
Los Angeles Times

[Joseph Pina – Los Angeles archdiocese]

Los Angeles County sheriff’s detectives have launched an investigation of an ex-priest and L.A. school district employee about a sexual relationship he allegedly had with a 16-year-old in the late 1980s, The Times has learned.

The inquiry into the actions of Joseph Pina, 66, may be the first to result from the recent release by the Los Angeles Archdiocese of documents laying out the church’s handling of clergy accused of sexual misconduct.

Pina started working for the Los Angeles Unified School District in 2002, performing community outreach for its school-construction program. The job brought him into frequent contact with families, but no reports of problems in that role have emerged. The construction program is winding down and Pina was working only occasionally in recent months. L.A. schools Supt. John Deasy said he ordered Pina’s dismissal as a result of the recent revelations about his past.

The Los Angeles Police Department also is reviewing church files, looking for new cases or more information about old ones.

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MILWAUKEE (WI)
Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

By Annysa Johnson of the Journal Sentinel

Feb. 6, 2013

A prominent Wisconsin priest and advocate for clergy sex abuse victims is asking Milwaukee Archbishop Jerome Listecki to disinvite disgraced Los Angeles Cardinal Roger Mahony from a spring assembly of local clergy, in light of the cardinal’s recent sanction over his role in covering up clergy sex abuse for more than two decades.

Father James Connell of Sheboygan, former vice-chancellor of the archdioces, is asking that Listecki instead invite victim-survivors, their familes and friends, advocates, clergy and lay workers hurt by the scandal and others to speak, and that the conference be open to the media.

“Truly, this is a moment to generate hope,” said Connell in an open letter sent to Listecki and distributed to media. A public accounting of the crisis and ongoing effects of the scandal would generate “optimism for the future of the Catholic Church,” he wrote.

Mahony is scheduled to speak in May at the spring priests assembly. The archdiocese did not immediately return e-mails and telephone calls seeking comment.

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CALIFORNIA
Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests

Posted by David Clohessy on February 06, 2013

Dear Mr. Birotte and Ms. Lacey;

We are members of a support group called SNAP, the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests (SNAPnetwork.org). Our mission is to protect the vulnerable, heal the wounded and expose the truth.

We are urging you both to convene new grand juries to investigate possible criminal charges against current and former LA Catholic officials for committing perjury, obstructing justice, destroying evidence, and similar offenses.

We’re aware that the LAPD has announced it is combing through the files, and we have confidence in the police.

But we believe a grand jury is a better approach, in part because of its subpoena powers. We also feel that if a grand jury is empanelled, other victims, witnesses and whistleblowers (including some with information about more recent wrongdoing by church officials) may voluntarily step forward.

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OHIO
Youngstown Dispatch

YOUNGSTOWN — A Roman Catholic bishop in Ohio has appealed for information from former students about alleged sexual abuse by a Franciscan brother who killed himself after the allegations emerged.

Bishop George Murry of Youngstown said yesterday that he has sent letters to about 1,200 adults who attended John F. Kennedy High School in Warren from January to June 1978 and August 1985 to January 1992, while Brother Stephen Baker worked there.

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IRELAND
Herald

Michael Lavery– 06 February 2013

TAOISEACH Enda Kenny, pictured, was under increasing pressure today to issue a full State apology.

Survivors expressed their disappointment and anger at the Taoiseach’s response to the report’s findings.

The issue was due to be raised in the Dail today and at Fine Gael and Labour parliamentary party meetings this evening.

Justice Minister Alan Shatter said today the Government needed to reflect on all the information in the report.

The State needed to see what could be done to help individuals whose lives had been “blighted and burdened” by long stays in the laundries, he said.

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MINNESOTA
Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests

Posted by Bob Schwiderski on February 06, 2013

Minnesota Catholic officials – with the Franciscans and the St. Paul-Minneapolis archdiocese – made a secret settlement seven years ago with a clergy sex abuse victim and have stayed silent about the child molesting cleric even though more than 70 kids in three states now say he molested them.

Why are they keeping this secret and how many other secret settlements are being made by the St. Paul-Minneapolis archdiocese and by Catholic religious orders in Minnesota?

Since the initial allegations against Br. Baker were announced (in Ohio last month), no church official in the Twin Cities area came forward to say ‘yes, he abused kids here too.’

Knowing that Baker abused at least one kid here, we want to know if there were any other victims.

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VATICAN CITY
Vatican Insider

The Vatican’s new sexual crimes prosecutor, Fr. Oliver, confirmed this. The number of reports filed for sexual abuse against minors by priests reached its peak in 2004, at 800

Alessandro Speciale
Vatican City

A year has passed since the “Towards Healing and Renewal” Symposium – organised by the Gregorian University with the support of numerous dioceses and the Vatican Curia – which was intended as an occasion to reflect on and share the progress made by the Catholic Church in dealing with the sex abuse scandal.

Twelve months on, a meeting was held at the same university for the presentation – in 12 languages – of the proceedings of that Symposium. An occasion to look at all that has been done in terms of prevention and training since the suggestions were made at the Symposium. The Gregorian University’s Center for Child Protection is putting together an online programme – the project is still in its experimental phase which started a few months ago – that will allow all Church staff, from priests to catechists to volunteers, to prevent and respond to cases of abuse.

The goal of this initiative – which for the moment is being aimed at 250 people in 8 pilot countries – is to show that “we intend to take the word “path” seriously,” said Fr. Hans Zollner, head of the university’s Institute of Psychology and one of the Symposium’s promoters on 2012. The “road [to combating sex abuse against minors in the Church] will be long and difficult because of resistance, conflicts and tensions,” the Jesuit admitted, but the Gregorian University’s initiative “has created increased awareness of the extent of the problem in many parts of the world” and was “a crucial step in the efforts being made to achieve justice for abuse victims.”

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IRELAND
Herald

Michael Lavery– 05 February 2013

A 1,000-page report into State involvement in the Magdalene laundries is expected to lead to fresh calls for a compensation scheme for the women.

An 18-month investigation into the Catholic-run workhouses will formally reveal State involvement with Magdalene laundries and knowledge of the harrowing life women in the institutions endured between 1922 and 1996.

The report, due to be published this evening, will respond to allegations by former residents that the State colluded with the Catholic Church by illegally incarcerating thousands of women and girls and forcing them to carry out unpaid work.

detained

An estimated 30,000 single mothers and other women were detained or resident in 10 laundries throughout the State.

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IRELAND
Herald

Cormac Murphy– 06 February 2013

PUBLIC demonstrations in support of Magdalene survivors will be held on the streets of Dublin unless Taoiseach Enda Kenny steps up and makes a full and proper apology.

Claire McGettrick, of the Justice For Magdalenes group, today warned that the fight for justice for the women who lived in slave-like conditions in institutions run by nuns is far from over.

Redress

The comments come following the publication yesterday of an 18-month inquiry headed by outgoing Senator Martin McAleese.

So far there has been no official apology from the State or any commitment to provide a a redress scheme for the survivors.

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IRELAND
Irish Examiner

By Claire O’Sullivan and Conall Ó Fátharta
There was a stark contrast yesterday between the horrific stories we have heard over many years from the survivors of the Magdalene laundries and the report that was published yesterday.

The committee found no evidence that unmarried girls had babies there or that many of the girls were prostitutes. It found no evidence of torture or physical abuse. Martin McAleese has gone so far as to say that some of the women had “confused” their negative experiences in the industrial schools with their time at the laundries. The committee also stated that anybody who came to the homes via the State, from social services and the criminal justice system, were not locked up indefinitely but were aware why they were there and when they would leave.

This is entirely at odds with evidence, provided by Justice for Magdalenes and Magdalene Survivors Together, of women sent to laundries by the courts and who remained there for the rest of their lives.

The report instead said it was the girls whose families sent them to the nuns or who came from industrial schools that were “abandoned”, unaware of when they’d ever leave the laundry.

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IRELAND
Irish Examiner

Wednesday, February 06, 2013

Yesterday’s Magdalene report joined a litany of eviscerating documents detailing our past of neglect, abuse, and harrowing inhumanity.

And though we, as individuals, can sidestep the burden of guilt those horrors bequeath us, we cannot avoid the responsibility of making amends or belatedly showing some simple humanity to those so long denied it.

There have been so many reports — Ferns, Cloyne, the Murphy report on the diocese of Dublin, Raphoe, and too many others — that we might prefer to look away, to consign the horrors of the past to the past, but we cannot. We cannot, if we want to imagine ourselves a moral and decent people, pretend again that we do not know that there are hundreds if not thousands of women in our society who have been misused and betrayed in the name of cruel, medieval mores.

Thousands more died before we finally acknowledged that their lives, or at least a good portion of them, had been denied them, that they had been held against their will in a peculiarly self-righteous Irish gulag.

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IRELAND
Irish Eaminer

By Conall Ó Fátharta
Irish Examiner Reporter

Just one of the religious orders that ran Magdalene laundries has offered a specific apology to the women who suffered in their care.

The Religious Sisters of Charity, which ran laundries in Donnybrook, Dublin, and Peacock Lane, Cork, offered an apology but also said it acted in good faith.

“We apologise un-reservedly to any woman who experienced hurt while in our care. In good faith we provided refuge for women at our Magdalene homes in Donnybrook and Peacock Lane. Some of the women spent a short time with us; some left, returned and left again and some still live with us,” said a statement.

However, the remaining orders insisted they acted in good faith.

The Good Shepherd Sisters, which ran laundries in Limerick, Waterford, Cork, and New Ross, said in a statement: “We were part of the system and the culture of the time.

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IRELAND
Irish Examiner

By Sarah Stack

She was 12 when taken from her school in Co Carlow and put in the Good Shepherd Magdalene Laundry in New Ross, Co Wexford, because her father died and mother remarried.

Ms Sullivan said she was told the place would further her education, but she never saw her schoolbooks again.

For 48 years she had been haunted by memories of a lost childhood and slave labour and is demanding a full apology from the Government and religious orders for stealing her education, name, identity, and life.

“I feel that they are still in denial, but other parts of this report clearly state that we were telling the truth,” she said.

By day she worked in the laundry, was fed bread and dripping, and then made Aran sweaters or rosary beads before going to bed at night in St Aidan’s Industrial School.

“I remember being hidden in a tunnel when the school inspectors came,” said the 60-year-old. “I can only assume that this was due to the fact that I should not have been working in the laundry.”

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LOS ANGELES (CA)
National Catholic Reporter

by Mario T. García | Feb. 6, 2013

This is my first blog of the new year because of other deadlines as well as the start of the winter quarter at UC Santa Barbara, where I teach Chicano studies, and this is always a hectic time. I thought my first entry this year would be on the second inauguration of President Barack Obama, and I have to say that I was very moved by his inspiring speech aimed at bringing about needed reforms on immigration, gun control, the environment, and dealing with the growing gap between the rich and middle classes and the poor. I am very hopeful that progress along these lines will occur, though Republicans seem to remain intransigent on many if these issues. Obama will have to be more forceful in his second term to push his agenda, but it will also require those of us who believe in that agenda to pressure from below for these reforms.

But I also want to write in my first blog of 2013 about the recent and startling revelations of the priest sexual abuse cases in southern California, where I live. A little more than a week ago, a court order forced the Los Angeles archdiocese to reveal all of its previously unreleased records on these cases, including the information as to how church officials dealt with them.

The church has stonewalled for a number of years in doing so, arguing that it would serve no purpose and only refuel the controversy. In fact, as these released records reveal, the intent was shamelessly to protect not only the abusing priests, but also Cardinal Roger Mahony and his top aides on this matter. One of his top aides — in fact, his major aide in these cover-ups and accessory to the crimes committed — was Auxiliary Bishop Thomas Curry of Santa Barbara.

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VATICAN CITY
Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests

Posted by Barbara Blaine on February 06, 2013

The Pope’s top aide on clergy sex abuse, Fr. Robert Oliver, just told the AP that the pope “had spoken clearly about the need for transparency and justice in order to regain the trust of the faithful.”

We agree.

But the trouble is that the pope’s actions contradict his words. And his priorities are backwards.

Catholic officials must start truly protecting kids, exposing truth, and punishing wrong-doers, both those who commit and those conceal child sex crimes. That’s “job one.” When that happens, the “trust of the faithful” will be restored.

When the Pope denounces, disciplines, demotes or defrocks Bishop Robert Finn, Cardinal Roger Mahony and dozens of their corrupt colleagues, then “the trust of the faithful” will be restored. Even more crucial, then the safety of children will be enhanced and the cover ups of future abuse will be discouraged.

It’s ironic that Fr. Oliver is talking about “complacency.” A decade ago, in the beleaguered Boston Archdiocese, Fr. Oliver helped alter an archdiocese policy “to curtail access by alleged victims of abuse to church records — a move that surprised lay leaders who sat on the Cardinal’s Commission for the Protection of Children.”

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VATICAN CITY
The Republic

By NICOLE WINFIELD Associated Press
February 06, 2013

VATICAN CITY — The Vatican’s new sex crimes prosecutor has insisted on the need for transparency about the church’s failures to protect children from sex abuse by priests.

In his first public comments since taking office, the Rev. Robert Oliver quoted Pope Benedict XVI in saying the church must recognize the “grave errors in judgment that were often committed by the church’s leadership.” For decades, bishops around the globe actively covered up abuse by priests in their care, while Vatican officials in Rome often turned a blind eye.

Oliver, previously a canon lawyer in the Boston archdiocese — ground zero of the U.S. abuse scandal — spoke days after thousands of pages of personnel files of abusive priests were released by court order in Los Angeles. They showed how retired Cardinal Roger Mahony and other top archdiocese officials protected the church by shielding priests and not reporting child sex abuse to authorities.

The archdiocese agreed to release the files as part of a $660 million settlement with abuse victims in 2007. Attorneys for individual priests fought for five years to prevent the papers from being made public and the archdiocese tried to blot out large sections of the files, including the names of hierarchy involved in decision-making. The Associated Press and Los Angeles Times fought successfully to have the names of Mahony and top church officials made public.

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IRELAND
RTE News

Three Labour TDs have called on the Taoiseach to make an urgent apology to residents of the Madgalene laundries.

Labour TD for Dublin North Sean Kenny said that two weeks is too long to wait for an apology, after Taoiseach Enda Kenny earlier told the Dáil he wanted to use the next two weeks to decide how best to deal with the needs and requirements of the Magdalene survivors.

However, speaking on RTÉ’s News at One, Sean Kenny said that he believes the Taoiseach should have been more decisive about when an apology should be forthcoming.

He said that he was going to bring this up at a meeting with his parliamentary colleagues, and he added that the issue of compensation needed to be addressed in more detail.

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UNITED STATES
The New York Times

By FRANK BRUNI

Published: February 4, 2013

Last week, the Obama administration proposed a further tweak to its rules about insurance coverage of contraception, trying to quiet religious organizations’ complaints that the edict tramples on their beliefs. Roman Catholic officials have been especially vociferous. Their moral conviction, they insist, cannot be slave to secular convention.

Except, that is, when it works to their advantage. When it profits them. And this two-tracked approach was illustrated by another recent news story, one that flickered onto and then off the public’s radar more quickly than it should have, and deserves a closer look.

The news story brought to light a wrongful-death suit by a widower, Jeremy Stodghill, in regard to his wife and the twin 28-week-old fetuses inside her when she died in a Catholic hospital, St. Thomas More, in Cañon City, Colorado.

The hospital’s lawyers argued that the woman’s death couldn’t have been prevented. As to whether proper medical attention might have yielded the delivery of two healthy baby boys, lawyers argued that the question was ultimately irrelevant, because wrongful death can apply only to people and, legally speaking, fetuses aren’t human lives. …

We’ve been getting a fresh and galling peek into that with the court-compelled release of documents from the Los Angeles Archdiocese, which engaged in a pattern of willful blindness and outright cover-up so egregious that the current archbishop, José Gomez, took the shocking step last week of publicly reprimanding his predecessor, Cardinal Roger Mahony.

The documents show that Mahony and his lieutenants repeatedly failed to report allegations to law enforcement officials and urged accused priests to leave or stay out of the state, lest they face prosecution. They decided, in short, that the church’s representatives and reputation mattered more than justice: that the church could hold itself above laws that governed everybody else.

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IRELAND
The Journal

GOVERNMENT DEPARTMENTS AND State agencies used Magdalene laundries to do their washing over a period of many years, the report into the laundries has found.

The report notes that the State giving business to the laundries could be considered “indirect financial support”.

However it notes that there was no evidence to suggest a “deliberate policy or preference by State agencies for use of Magdalene or other institutional laundries over non-religious-operated laundries”.

Where the Magdalene Laundries won a contract from the State, it was either the only or else the cheapest tender that was submitted.

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IRELAND
Galway Independent

Galway writer and artist Patricia Burke Brogan has expressed her disappointment that the report on the Magdalen Laundries has softened the reality of life in the laundries.

Ms Burke Brogan spent a short time in the laundry on Forster Street in Galway City as a young novice and was interviewed by report author and former Senator Martin McAleese, the independent chairperson of the inter-Departmental Committee charged with establishing the facts of the State’s involvement with the laundries.

Commenting on the report’s publication yesterday, Ms Burke Brogan, whose play ‘Eclipsed’ highlights the plight of women in the Magdalen Laundries, told The Galway Independent her initial reaction to the report was one of “disappointment”.

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IRELAND
Limerick Leader

By David Hurley
Published on Wednesday 6 February 2013

ALMOST 100 women died at the Good Shepherd convent in Limerick between 1922 and 1982, the report of the Inter-Departmental Committee to establish the facts of State involvement with the Magdalene laundries has found.

The report, which was published by the Department of Justice yesterday afternoon, states that a total of 93 women died at the Clare Street convent over the 60-year period.

The report examined reasons why women and girls entered the 10 religious-run laundries which were operating in the State between 1922 and 1996.

It found that in a quarter of cases girls and women were send to the laundries by the State.

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IRELAND
The Journal

THE DEPARTMENT OF Justice neither sought nor received any specific legal advice from the Attorney General’s office prior to responding to the report on the State’s involvement in the Magdalene Laundries.

The government’s decision to not issue a full apology following the publication of a report which found the State responsible for admitting over a quarter of the women to the institutions between 1922 and 1996 has drawn widespread criticism.

It has also led to claims that the government was advised to avoid offering a full apology on behalf of the State for its role in the women being incarcerated in the laundries as it would amount to admitting full liability and open it up to claims from survivors.

Responding to a query from TheJournal.ie today, the Department said that the Attorney General received a copy of the report at the same time it went to the government at a Cabinet meeting yesterday morning.

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IRELAND
Irish Times

MARIE O’HALLORAN and MICHAEL O’REGAN

A former Fianna Fail minister has apologised for not investigating the Magdalene laundries when the party was in government.

Party leader Micheál Martin, who chaired the committee dealing with industrial school abuse, told the Dáil he was “sorry we didn’t deal with the Magdalene laundries at the time”.

Mr Martin said the committee led to a State apology to survivors of industrial schools. He told Taoiseach Enda Kenny that the 1,400 page report published yesterday on the Magdalene laundries “doesn’t take any stigma away. The report doesn’t take any stigma away. The only effective way for the stigma to be removed by the State is to apologise,” the Fianna Fail leader said, with “no ifs and no buts”.

The Fianna Fáil leader was speaking during leaders questions when the Taoiseach was repeatedly pressed to give a full and proper apology to the women in the laundries. Mr Martin said that the “most fundamental need articulated to me above and beyond redress” was for somebody to say that what was done was wrong.

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LOS ANGELES (CA)
KABC

[with video]

Amy Powell

LOS ANGELES (KABC) — With last week’s release of thousands of church documents on clergy abuse, the LAPD is stepping in. Investigators say new legal charges are possible.

Detectives are focusing on the cases of about a dozen previously investigated priests and are auditing those past cases to see if anything was missed. They are also going over files of all the 122 priests made public last week by a court order.

“Most of these files have already had investigations done, and we weren’t able to get a prosecution or we couldn’t get to anything in terms of statue, so we’re going to go back, kind of re-audit everything that we’ve done before,” said LAPD Cmdr. Andrew Smith.

Authorities want to know if any crimes, such as failure to report child abuse, occurred.

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CALIFORNIA
The Monterey County Herald

Posted: 02/05/2013

The horror, the sordidness of the awful abuse of children by figures of spiritual authority is not much assuaged by current Archbishop Jose Gomez relieving Cardinal Mahony of “all public duties” after mounting evidence showed he shielded pedophile priests from law enforcement.

So Mahony won’t be overseeing the Sacrament of Confirmation at Our Lady of the Angels any time soon. But he is not only still a priest who can perform Mass— he is still one of the 120 cardinals who form the leadership of a church with more than 1.1 billion adherents worldwide.

Given what we now know about Mahony’s active efforts to protect known and suspected sexual abusers in clerical collars, this removal of him from public life is not only not enough — it’s no punishment at all.

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AUSTRALIA
Courier Mail

OPPOSITION Leader Tony Abbott vouched in court for the good character of a Catholic priest later struck off the clergy list by the Vatican following a child abuse case.

Fr John Gerard Nestor, who attended Sydney’s St Patrick’s Seminary with Mr Abbott in the 1980s, was a priest in the Wollongong diocese in NSW when he was charged with the indecent assault of a 15-year-old altar boy in 1991.

Fr Nestor, then aged 44, was convicted in Wollongong Local Court on February 18, 1997, and sentenced to 16 months in jail, with the magistrate describing the case as a ”gross breach of trust”.

In court, the priest admitted he had – while dressed in boxer shorts and a singlet – slept on mattresses on a floor in the presbytery with the boy and his younger brother some time between June and September 1991.

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NEW JERSEY
The Georgia Bulletin

WASHINGTON (CNS) — The assignment of a priest who at one time admitted inappropriately touching a teenage boy to a new administrative post in the Archdiocese of Newark, N.J., will not lead to unsupervised contact with children, an archdiocesan spokesman said. Father Michael Fugee was named as co-director of the Office of Continuing Education and Ongoing Formation of Priests in October by Newark Archbishop John J. Myers. Jim Goodness, archdiocesan spokesman, said that in the position Father Fugee primarily seeks out and forwards information on seminars, courses and books that night help clergy in their ministerial work. The information mostly is shared via email, Goodness said. “It’s important to note we’re not looking at a high, prestigious position,” Goodness told Catholic News Service Feb. 5.

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NEW JERSEY
NorthJersey.com

Wednesday, February 6, 2013

Herald News

IN THE wake of widespread sexual scandals involving its clergy, U.S. Catholic bishops established a series of procedures at a 2002 bishops’ conference in Dallas: The Charter for the Protection of Children and Young People. Newark Archbishop John J. Myers should reread it.

As reported this week, the Rev. Michael Fugee, a former Wyckoff assistant pastor who admitted fondling a 13-year-old boy in 2001, is still serving as a cleric.

Fugee has been the director of the archdiocese’s Office of the Propagation of the Faith, which raises funds for missionary work. In October, Fugee was also named the co-director of the Office of Continuing Education and Ongoing Formation of Priests, an office providing educational material to clerics.

Fugee was convicted by a Bergen County jury on a count of sexual contact for groping the boy. But the verdict was overturned by an appellate panel because it found Fugee’s statement to police questioning his sexual orientation should not have been admitted as evidence. Fugee said at trial that he playfully wrestled with the boy, but had given a statement to police earlier in which he admitted grabbing the boy’s crotch to satisfy an urge.

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IRELAND
Deutsche Welle

The Vatican used to be able to count on Irish clergy to follow the rules. But now a group of Irish priests are openly questioning the Vatican’s conservative approach to Catholicism, despite the threat of excommunication.

On Sunday, January 20, during a news conference in Dublin, Father Tony Flannery became the unlikely face of the modern Irish Catholic. Unlikely, because Flannery supports allowing women and married men to become priests. He embraces the role of lesbians and gays in the Catholic Church. Flannery also questions the legitimacy of the Vatican’s hierarchy, and he warns that unless power is decentralized and free thought is encouraged, church attendance in Ireland will continue to stagnate.

These views would seem to be counter to the regular average Irish churchgoer, who, according to numerous polls and surveys, is older and slightly more conservative than the general population.

But Flannery has been embraced. The well-known 66-year-old Irish priest has been inundated with e-mails, texts and handwritten letters from supporters all over the country.

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IRLAND
ORF

Irlands Ministerpräsident Enda Kenny hat sich gestern für die Ausbeutung junger Frauen in katholischen Arbeitshäusern in Irland entschuldigt. In den Jahren 1922 bis 1996 wurden nach einem Bericht einer Regierungskommission bis zu zehntausend Frauen in den Arbeitshäusern entrechtet und ausgebeutet.

Zeuginnen berichteten, ihnen seien von den dort tätigen Nonnen neue Namen gegeben worden und sie hätten von früh bis spät unentgeltlich arbeiten müssen. Kindern wurde jede Bildung vorenthalten. Nutznießer der Arbeitshäuser, die „Wäschereien“ genannt wurden, waren unter anderem die Regierung, die Armee und Privatunternehmen, die Verträge mit ihnen unterhielten.

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IRLAND
20 Minuten

Irlands Ministerpräsident Enda Kenny hat sich am Dienstag für die Ausbeutung junger Frauen in katholischen Arbeitshäusern in Irland entschuldigt. In den Jahren 1922 bis 1996 wurden laut einem Regierungsbericht bis zu zehntausend Frauen in den Institutionen entrechtet und ausgebeutet.

Zeuginnen berichteten, ihnen seien von den dort tätigen Nonnen neue Namen gegeben worden und sie hätten von früh bis spät unentgeltlich arbeiten müssen. Kindern wurde jede Bildung vorenthalten. Nutzniesser der Arbeitshäuser, die «Wäschereien» genannt wurden, waren unter anderem die Regierung, die Armee und Privatunternehmen.

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IRLAND
Nachrichten Heute

Irische Regierung akzeptiert staatliche Mitschuld bei der Versklavung und Zwangsarbeit von rund 30.000 irischen Frauen in den Jahren 1922 – 1996

Dr. Alexander von Paleske — 5.2. 2013 —
Wir haben bereits mehrfach über die Versklavung, Zwangsarbeit, Medikamentenversuche und sexuellen Missbrauch in den vergangenen 100 Jahren in der sogenannten „zivilisierten Welt“ berichtet:

– Über die Zwangsemigration von englischen Heimkindern nach Australien und dortigen sexuellen Missbrauch und Zwangsarbeit

– über die Zwangsarbeit der Verdingkinder in der Schweiz

– über die Medikamentenversuche an Heimkindern in Österreich

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IRLAND
Neue Zurcher Zeitug

Martin Alioth, Dublin

Der erste Bericht über das Schicksal von rund 10 000 irischen Frauen in Wäschereien katholischer Frauenorden im Zeitraum zwischen 1922 und 1996 ist am Dienstag in Dublin vorgestellt worden. Frühere, aufsehenerregende Berichte über systematischen Missbrauch in kirchlichen Anstalten hatten die sogenannten Magdalenerinnen ausgespart, denn der Staat vertrat bisher die Auffassung, es habe sich bei diesen Wäschereien um private Organisationen gehandelt, in denen diese Frauen freiwillig arbeiteten.

Staatliches Umdenken

Der Bericht bestätigt indessen, was aus den Erinnerungen von Überlebenden schon längst festgestanden war. Angehörige der irischen Polizei brachten geflüchtete Frauen routinemässig zurück in die Wäschereien, die ihrerseits dem staatlichen Fabrikinspektorat unterstanden. Ministerien und die Armee benutzten die Wäschereien auf einer kommerziellen Basis. Der Staat selbst wies ein Viertel der Frauen ein. Doch der irische Premierminister, Enda Kenny, verweigerte am Dienstag im Parlament eine offizielle Entschuldigung im Namen des Staates. Er bedauerte bloss, dass es so lange gedauert habe, bis das Stigma von den Frauen entfernt worden sei, und dass sie unter diesen Bedingungen hätten leben müssen.

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DEUTSCHLAND
MissBiT

Trier: Bistum hat bislang 56 Opfer entschädigt

Im Bistum Trier wurden inzwischen 56 Opfer sexueller Übergriffe in katholischen Einrichtungen entschädigt. Nach Angaben von Bistumssprecher Uzulis wurden alle Anträge bewilligt.

Die Opferinitiative MissBit spricht von zwei weiteren Fällen. Dabei gehe es um sexuelle Übergriffe durch einen Priester in Saarlouis. Das Bistum hat inzwischen weitere Fälle bestätigt.

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OSTERREICH
der Standard

Katharina Mittelstaedt, 5. Februar 2013

Seit drei Jahren wird rund um die Missbrauchsfälle im Stift Kremsmünster ermittelt. Nun wird eine kleine Gruppe von Opfern aktiv. Denn noch diese Woche entscheidet sich, ob der “Haupttäter” vor Gericht kommt

Linz – Der ehemalige Klosterschüler ist inzwischen ein erwachsener Mann, und dennoch – jeden Sonntag aufs Neue holt ihn seine Vergangenheit ein, bis heute. Er bekomme dann zittrige Hände, Schweißausbrüche, werde nervös und sei angespannt. Doch zumindest, so erzählt das Missbrauchsopfer, das nicht namentlich genannt werden möchte, die Albträume von Pater A. habe er inzwischen im Griff.

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VATIKAN
20 Minuten

In letzter Zeit werden immer mehr Missbrauchsfälle in der katholischen Kirche aufgedeckt. Wie der Chefermittler für Missbrauchsfälle des Vatikans nun meldet, werden ihm jährlich etwa 600 neue Fälle zugetragen. Viele davon würden aus den 60er, 70er und 80er Jahren stammen.

Der bisherige Höhepunkt sei im Jahr 2004 mit 800 neuen Vorwürfen erreicht worden, sagte der US-Geistliche Robert Oliver am Dienstag weiter. Er werde nach dem Vorbild von Papst Benedikt XVI. eine Null-Toleranz-Politik gegenüber Kinderschändern verfolgen, kündigte Oliver an.

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IRLAND
kathweb

Mehr als 10.000 Frauen zwischen 1922 und 1996 ohne Bezahlung zu harter körperlicher Arbeit gezwungen

06.02.2013
Dublin, 06.02.2013 (KAP) Die Opfer systematischer Zwangsarbeit in den irischen “Magdalenenheimen” haben die Entschuldigung von Premierminister Enda Kenny abgelehnt. Die Opfergruppe “Justice for Magdalenes” (JFM) bewertete sie laut einem Bericht der Tageszeitung “Irish Independent” (Mittwoch) als unzureichend. Der rechtspolitische Sprecher der größten Oppositionspartei Fianna Fail, Niall Collins, kritisierte, dass sich Kenny nicht ausdrücklich für eine Entschädigung der Opfer ausgesprochen habe.

In den sogenannten Magdalene Laundries (Heime für “gefallene Mädchen” wurden zwischen 1922 und 1996 mehr als 10.000 Frauen ohne Bezahlung zu harter körperlicher Arbeit gezwungen. Eine Untersuchungskommission war zu dem Schluss gekommen, dass der irische Staat die von katholischen Frauenorden betriebenen Heime “direkt und grundsätzlich” unterstützt habe.

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VATIKAN
Radio Vatikan

Beim Vorgehen gegen sexuellen Missbrauch durch Kleriker will der Vatikan seine „Null-Toleranz-Politik“ fortführen; die Sorge um die Opfer soll dabei weiter im Zentrum stehen. Das hat der neue vatikanische Missbrauchsbeauftragte Robert Oliver am Dienstagabend bei einer Konferenz in der päpstlichen Universität Gregoriana in Rom unterstrichen. Der US-Amerikaner war vom Papst am 20. Dezember als Nachfolger von Charles Scicluna, dem „Anwalt der Gerechtigkeit“ in der römischen Glaubenskongregation, eingesetzt worden. Auf der Konferenz wurden die Akten des großen Missbrauchssymposiums vorgestellt , auf dem sich im Februar 2012 Vertreter fast aller Bischofskonferenzen der Weltkirche über Prävention und Folgen von sexuellem Missbrauch durch Kleriker austauschten.

Der Vatikan behandle jährlich etwa 600 Missbrauchsvorwürfe, gab Oliver an. Die Tendenz sei rückläufig, die meisten Fälle bezögen sich auf den Zeitraum 60er bis 80er Jahre. Der bisherige Höhepunkt sei mit 800 neuen Vorwürfen im Jahr 2004 erreicht worden, so der Kirchenanwalt. In den vergangenen drei Jahren sei die Zahl auf 600 pro Jahr zurückgegangen. Oliver lobte die internationale Missbrauchskonferenz von 2012 als wegweisend, was die Aufklärung und die Sensibilisierung für das Thema betrifft:

„Ein großes Problem war schon immer, dass man bei Vorwürfen zuerst alles verneint und zurückdrängt. Deshalb wurde mit der Konferenz von 2012 an der Gregoriana große Arbeit geleistet, weil man das Missbrauchsproblem direkt ansprach. Denn die beste Prävention besteht darin, das Problem von vornherein zu kennen bzw. zu wissen, wie es zu Missbrauch kommen könnte. Wichtig war und ist, dass alle Kirchenmitarbeiter – egal in welcher hierarchischen Position – davon Kenntnis haben.“

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MINNESOTA
Pioneer Press

By Emily Gurnon
egurnon@pioneerpress.comtwincities.com
Posted: 02/05/2013

A Franciscan brother who died by suicide in Pennsylvania after sexual-abuse allegations also molested a Minnesota boy while he served at the Church of St. Patrick in Inver Grove Heights, the victim and his St. Paul attorney said.

The Rev. Stephen P. Baker, 62, was found dead Saturday, Feb. 2, at the St. Bernadine Monastery in Hollidaysburg, Pa., of a self-inflicted knife wound to the heart, according to Blair Township police.

In 2003, Douglas Larson, 49, of St. Cloud came to a settlement with the Third Order Regular Franciscans, Province of the Immaculate Conception, a Catholic order of which Baker was a member, according to Jeff Anderson, a St. Paul attorney who represented Larson and other alleged victims of sexual abuse by clergy.

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VATIKAN
Zeit

Den Vatikan erreichen nach Angaben seines Chefermittlers für Missbrauchsfälle jährlich etwa 600 neue Missbrauchsvorwürfe gegen katholische Geistliche. Viele dieser Fälle stammten aus den sechziger, siebziger und achtziger Jahren, teilte der US-Geistliche Robert Oliver mit. Die bislang höchste Zahl wurde seinen Angaben zufolge im Jahr 2004 mit 800 neuen Vorwürfen erreicht.

Er werde nach dem Vorbild von Papst Benedikt XVI. eine Null-Toleranz-Politik gegenüber Kinderschändern verfolgen, kündigte der neue Chefermittler an. Nach seinen Angaben sind rund Dreiviertel der 112 nationalen Bischofskonferenzen einem Aufruf des Papstes von 2011 nachgekommen und haben Richtlinien im Kampf gegen pädophile Priester ausgearbeitet.

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LOS ANGELES (CA)
Tri-City Herald

By HARRIET RYAN, ASHLEY POWERS AND VICTORIA KIM — Los Angeles Times

LOS ANGELES — In the midst of renewed public outrage over its handling of clergy sex abuse, the Los Angeles Archdiocese is considering a $200 million fundraising campaign that could erase debts brought on by the scandal.

The archdiocese has hired a New York company, Guidance In Giving Inc., to study the feasibility of a large-scale fundraiser that would shore up a bottom line hit hard by costly abuse litigation. It would be the archdiocese’s first capital campaign in 60 years.

The archdiocese’s $660 million settlement in 2007 with more than 500 victims was the largest in U.S. history. According to a December financial report reviewed by the Los Angeles Times, the archdiocese is still paying down loans it used to cover the settlement, and its liabilities now outstrip its assets by $80 million.

The archdiocese is contemplating the fundraiser as a way to repay settlement loans totaling $175 million, according to the report. An archdiocese spokesman confirmed that the capital campaign was being considered but in a statement did not address whether any proceeds would be used to pay down the settlement loan.

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NEW JERSEY
NBC New York

The Newark Archdiocese is under fire for continuing to allow a priest who admitted to fondling a teenage boy to wear the clerical collar. But the church is defending its decision. Brian Thompson reports.

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IRELAND
Irish Examiner

The Taoiseach has again declined to offer a full apology to the survivors of the Magdalene laundries. He appealed for “space” to formulate the Government’s response.

Opposition parties have rounded on Enda Kenny in the Dáil this morning after groups representing the women expressed their outrage that he had not given the apology they expected for the role played by the state in the laundry system.

This morning, the Taoiseach says the report needed to be examined, reflected on and debated in the Dáil in two weeks time.

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IRELAND
Irish Independent

By Fionnan Sheahan

Wednesday February 06 2013

A LABOUR Party minister has broken ranks and said the Government should make a full apology to survivors of the Magdalene Laundries.

Junior Minister Kathleen Lynch said her “personal opinion” is there should be an apology.

“You have to accept that I can’t speak on behalf of the Taoiseach. You have to accept that,” she told Today FM.

“I suppose the Government will take that decision and I don’t sit around the Cabinet table as I have already said.

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IRELAND
Irish Examiner

By Maeve O’Rourke
ON Sept 4, 2009, the minister for education and science rejected Justice for Magdalenes’ proposal for an apology and distinct redress scheme for survivors of the Magdalene Laundries.

The minister said “the situation …… is quite different to persons who were resident in State-run institutions. The Magdalene Laundries were privately owned and operated establishments and did not come within the responsibility of the State. The State did not refer individuals to Magdalen Laundries, nor was it complicit in referring individuals to them.”

Yesterday, on Feb 5, Martin McAleese begged to differ. And the central finding of his report, that the State was indeed directly and fundamentally involved in the Magdalene Laundry institutions, is welcome.

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IRELAND
Irish Independent

By Dearbhail McDonald Legal Editor

Wednesday February 06 2013

WOMEN were sent to Magdalene Laundries for petty crimes, such as failing to buy a train ticket and snatching purses. Others were detained for more serious crimes, such as prostitution, manslaughter, murder and killing babies they had recently given birth to.

One woman who was convicted of stealing a bike and attempting suicide was detained for a year, according to the report.

The vast majority of those who entered laundries through the criminal-justice system were put there on foot of minor crimes.

The most common entry method for girls admitted to laundries was on foot of probation orders requiring them to be resident for up to three years.

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IRELAND
Irish Independent

They were called Fallen Women. But in reality they were Loose Ends. The 10,000 and more women and girls who passed through the gates of the Magdalene Laundries since 1922 were regarded as no more than female flotsam and jetsam which washed up on the shores of the State.

The authorities didn’t know what to do with them, nor particularly care about what befell them. They were loose ends, round pegs in the rigidly square society ordained by the conjoined twins of church and State.

They were orphans, or children of neglected or abusive homes, or rejected by foster parents. They were dirt-poor, unloved, on remand or probation for crimes ranging from non-payment of a train ticket to manslaughter, but mostly convicted of petty offences.

They were unmarried mothers, or children born out of wedlock, or females accused of being morally suspect. They were girls released from industrial schools before the age of 16 and packed off straight to the laundries to see out the rest of their childhood. Some were disabled. Few, very few, were prostitutes.

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IRELAND
Irish Independent

By Louise Hogan and Shauna McLoughlin

Wednesday February 06 2013

SURVIVORS of the Magdalene Laundries branded the Government’s failure to apologise as “cynical” and “deeply disappointing”.

Advocacy group Justice for Magdalenes (JFM) described Taoiseach Enda Kenny’s response as a “half-hearted” acknowledgement of the pain and suffering in light of the report confirming state regulated institutions had allowed slavery within their walls.

JFM spokeswoman Claire McGettrick said the now elderly and vulnerable group of women deserved an apology and a transparent compensation scheme.

Ms McGettrick said if the government politicians were “people of honour” they would have apologised immediately. “By dragging out this process for a group of really vulnerable women who do not have any time left – it is cynical, cruel, it is prolonging the torture and it is simply not good enough.”

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IRELAND
Irish Independent

Wednesday February 06 2013

The Attorney General Maire Whelan was involved in yesterday’s cabinet deliberations about the 1,000-page report by former senator Martin McAleese.

But the Government has refused to say if Mr Kenny has been advised against delivering an apology for legal reasons.

The report has thrown new light on the operation of the 10 Magdalene Laundries in the State between 1922 and 1996. It confirmed, by examining the books of the religious orders, that 10,000 women had been in the laundries over that period – significantly fewer than the previous estimate of 30,000.

It exploded the myth that most of them were prostitutes or unmarried mothers who had their babies there and said the women went into the laundries for a variety of reasons.

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IRELAND
Irish Independent

By Dearbhail McDonald Legal Editor

Wednesday February 06 2013

THE State’s “significant” involvement in the admission of young girls and women to Magdalene Laundries contradicts previous claims by the Government that the “vast majority” entered on a voluntary basis or with parental consent.

Two years ago Sean Aylward, inset, then Secretary General of the Department of Justice, told the United Nations Committee Against Torture (UNCAT) that the vast majority of women who went to Laundries “went there voluntarily or, if they were minors, with the consent of their parents or guardians”.

But the report of the Inter-Departmental Committee (IDC) to establish the facts of State involvement with the Magdalene Laundries found that more than a quarter of referrals were made or facilitated by the State.

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IRELAND
Irish Independent

By Paul Melia

Wednesday February 06 2013

THE authorities were warned over 70 years ago that the Magdalene Laundries were not appropriate places to rehabilitate women convicted of crimes.

A report found that the laundries, which were offered as an alternative to prison, had a “lack of any specialist training” to provide girls with a “fresh start” in life and that education was “absent”.

Written by a probation officer in 1941, the report referred to “young country girls who get into trouble in Dublin, where their inexperience is easily recognised and readily exploited by the depraved”.

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IRELAND
Irish Independent

By Michael Brennan Deputy Political Editor

Wednesday February 06 2013

RTE’s ‘Prime Time’ is standing over its reporting of the money earned by the Magdalene Laundries in the wake of criticism in the official state report.

The Magdalene Laundry report said that the claim in a recent ‘Prime Time’ report about the profits of the Galway Magdalene Laundry in 1968 was “incorrect”.

Instead of making a €1m profit that year, the laundry actually made a loss of around €32,000.

But the Irish Independent has learned that ‘Prime Time’ is insisting that it made no such claim about the profitability of the Galway Magdalene Laundry and is fully standing over its report.

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IRELAND
Irish Independent

By Michael Brennan Deputy Political Editor

Wednesday February 06 2013

THE survivors of the Magdalene laundries had to battle hard for the long-awaited report into the State’s role in their detention.

They were excluded when former Taoiseach Bertie Ahern made an official state apology in 1999 to the victims of abuse in state-run institutions.

And they were excluded from the €1bn compensation scheme set up as a result.

The official state position was that the Magdalene laundries were run by four religious congregations – and that the State had no involvement.

But there were several factors that led to the publication of the report which has found that the State was actually responsible for around one-quarter of the 10,000 women who ended up in the laundries.

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IRELAND
Irish Independent

By Paul Melia

Wednesday February 06 2013

LIFE was harsh in the State’s Magdalene Laundries, with working days lasting from 7am to 6pm and little time for recreation.

The residents or penitents – that is, someone seeking forgiveness from God – normally began their day with Mass at 7am followed by breakfast. They then worked until 12.30pm when dinner was served.

Periods of prayer were observed during the day, including reciting the Rosary which the women would respond to while working and a pause for the Angelus at 12pm and 6pm, and the Sacred Heart prayer at 4pm. Silence was observed at other times. After dinner, work resumed until the evening meal at around 6pm.

Tea breaks were part of the daily routine, and there was a half-day on Thursdays. No laundry was carried out on Sundays, holy days or bank holidays.

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IRELAND
Irish Independent

By Eilish O’Regan Health Correspondent

Wednesday February 06 2013

VULNERABLE women were betrayed by health authorities and ended up in Magdalene Laundries after being in psychiatric hospitals, acute hospitals, foster care and mother and baby homes.

The trail of tears outlined in the report revealed how, even in the 1970s, a girl as young as 11 ended up in a laundry.

“Some referrals were of very young girls and it was not always clear why,” according to the McAleese report.

The youngest referred from a hospital or by a medical professional was just 13 years old and the oldest was 71.

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IRELAND
Irish Independent

By Paul Melia

Wednesday February 06 2013

THE religious orders which ran the Magdalene Laundries have expressed regret that some women did not find them to be places of refuge.

The Congregation of Our Lady of Charity of Refuge, which controlled two laundries in Dublin, said an important value of the report was to give a voice to the women and for their experiences, feelings and stories to be placed on record.

“Regardless of why a woman was in a refuge or how she came to be there, we endeavoured to provide care,” a statement said.

“It is with deep regret that we acknowledge that there are women who did not experience our refuge as a place of protection and care. It is with sorrow and sadness that we recognise that for many . . . their time in a refuge is associated with anxiety, distress, loneliness, isolation, pain and confusion.”

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IRELAND
BBC News

TDs will be able to discuss the report into the Magdalene Laundries in the Irish Parliament later.

On Tuesday, Irish Prime Minister Enda Kenny apologised for the stigma and conditions suffered by the inmates.

Mr Kenny said the laundries had operated in a “harsh and uncompromising Ireland,” but he stopped short of a formal apology from the government.

The issue is also due to be discussed at the parliamentary party meetings of Fine Gael and Labour.

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IRELAND
Irish Examiner

Junior Finance Minister Brian Hayes has indicated the Government may make a full apology to the survivors of the Magdalene laundries, after it reads the report released yesterday.

The report under the chairmanship of Dr Martin McAleese was published yesterday and found there was significant state involvement in the laundries.

The women who spent time in the laundries have expressed their anger at the failure of the Taoiseach Enda Kenny to issue a full apology yesterday.

The issue is expected to be raised by TDs in the Dáil this morning.

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IRELAND
Irish Times

STEPHEN COLLINS and HARRY McGEE

The Government will seek a “clear strategy and a clear plan” as to how best to deal with the findings of the report into the Magdalene laundries, Taoiseach Enda Kenny has said.

The Government came under renewed criticism today following the refusal of Mr Kenny to issue a full apology to the women who spent time in the laundries, despite the fact that more than a quarter were sent there by the State.

The ‘Report of the Inter-Departmental Committee to establish the facts of State involvement with the Magdalen Laundries’ was published yesterday by an interdepartmental committee chaired by Martin McAleese found the women were from many backgrounds.

Some were referred by courts, others released on licence from industrial schools before they reached 16 years of age, while some were young women over 16 years of age who had been orphaned or were in abusive or neglectful homes.

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IRELAND
NPR

by Philip Reeves

February 06, 2013

Ireland has expressed regret that thousands of women and young girls held in workhouses run by Catholic nuns were stigmatized by the label “fallen women.” But Prime Minister Enda Kenny did not apologize for the state’s involvement in decades of harsh treatment for women held in 10 Magdalene Laundries. He was reacting to a report that concluded the government oversaw the workhouses.

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IRELAND
Irish Independent

Johnny Fallon: Enda Kenny must swallow his pride, gather his courage and apologise to the Magdalene survivors

By Johnny Fallon

Wednesday February 06 2013

YESTERDAY was a dark day for Enda Kenny and this government. The failure to give a full and unequivocal apology to the survivors of the Magdalene laundries will haunt them. In time that apology must surely come. Everyone in the country knows that the right time is now.

This is a matter of deep national shame. We have failed as a state and a society in our primary obligation to care for citizens. The laundries were part of an Ireland we would rather forget. An Ireland born out of repressive ideals and dangerous practices enabled by people who consistently turned a blind eye. It was convenient to become convinced of the merits of such systems and it was all too easy to dismiss and abuse those who had no voice and could be shunned.

The part the church and religious orders played in this revolting scheme went against everything Catholicism is supposed to stand for. If Christ had treated Mary Magdalene in the same fashion, scripture and history would be very different. But it is not just a problem we can lay at the door of the church.

No, it’s a problem that involves the state too and this is where Enda Kenny ran into difficulty. We all like to blame someone else; taking responsibility is not an easy thing to do. For too long throughout successive governments these women have been ignored. The state used this system; it participated and enabled it to work. Just like it did in the schools where children were abused.

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IRELAND
Irish Independent

Report of the Inter-Departmental Committee to establish the facts of State involvement with the Magdalen Laundries

Senator Martin McAleese’s report confirms what many of us knew already. Thousands of girls and women were placed in Magdalene Laundries throughout the country. Robbed of their liberty, dignity and forced to work in harsh conditions, in many ways they were denied basic human rights.

The most important fact uncovered in this report is that it finally sheds light on how the Irish State played a direct role in forcing children and women into these laundries, finding that 26.5pc of referrals were made by people acting in an official capacity.

These girls and women were sent there by the courts because of prison overcrowding. Some were sent ‘under supervision’ after spending time in industrial schools. Others were sent there by health authorities when foster care placements broke down or when children were simply homeless.

Once again the report forces us to ask questions about Irish society and the complicit role that we played. It reveals that many children were placed there by their families because of a physical or intellectual disability, while others were forced into the laundries for basic discipline or for breaking social mores.

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IRELAND
RTE news

TDs have raised the report on the Magdalene Laundries at Leaders’ Questions in the Dáil this morning.

Taoiseach Enda Kenny said that he had read much of the 1,000-page report last night and it had made harrowing reading.

Mr Kenny said it was important to reflect deeply on the findings and make the appropriate response in two weeks.

Fianna Fáil leader Michael Martin called on the Taoiseach to make an unequivocal apology on behalf of the Government and the State.

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IRELAND
Irish Independent

By Lyndsey Telford and Fionnan Sheahan

Wednesday February 06 2013

TAOISEACH Enda Kenny came under renewed pressure this morning for a state apology to the thousands of Magdalene Laundries women as a UN envoy urged compensation for the victims.

Mr Kenny again refused today to make a full apology to the remaining survivors.

He turned on Sinn Fein in the Dail for demanding an apology, when it has failed to say sorry for IRA atrocities.

The Taoiseach said the report by former Senator Martin McAleese into the Magdalene Laundries “makes for harrowing reading in many respects”.

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By Carl Bunderson

Newark, N.J., Feb 6, 2013 / 02:02 am (CNA).- The Archdiocese of Newark affirmed its decision to allow a priest accused of abusing a minor to remain in ministry, stressing that they are complying with authorities and prohibiting any interaction alone with children.

“We have not received any complaints from the prosecutor’s office…since Father has been back in ministry,” said Jim Goodness, the archdiocesan communications director.

“We’re doing exactly what we’re supposed to be doing,” he told CNA on Feb. 5.

On Nov. 21, the Catholic Advocate – the archdiocesan newspaper – announced that Father Michael Fugee had been appointed co-director of the office of Continuing Education and Ongoing Formation of Priests. He had been, and remains, director of the Office of the Propagation of the Faith. Both are positions at the Newark chancery.

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IRELAND
Irish Times

A full apology to former inmates of the Magdalene laundries on behalf of the State would represent a positive start in dealing with a harsh and distressing chapter of Irish life spanning more than 70 years. Taoiseach Enda Kenny’s decision to delay debate on an official report for two weeks is cause for concern, however, because of blunt denials of any responsibility by previous governments. Involvement and collusion by the State has now been placed beyond doubt and an early, compassionate response is required.

An inquiry under the chairmanship of Senator Martin McAleese has confirmed extensive official State involvement with the laundries while attempting to dispel public misconceptions and place the institutions in the social context of the time. He considered a wholly inaccurate link between the laundries and “fallen women” as the reason many inmates had declined to detail their experiences. Memories of those women who did come forwards were, however, generally negative.

Allegations of sexual abuse were not made against the sisters and the ill-treatment, physical punishment and abuse prevalent in industrial schools were not repeated. There were complaints of mental, rather than physical, cruelty. Laundries were “cold, with a rigid and uncompromising regime of physically demanding work and prayer”. Former inmates spoke of being exploited; of a deep sense of hurt at being locked up; of being denied their names and refused information on when they would be allowed leave.

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IRELAND
Irish Times

MARIE O’HALLORAN

Taoiseach Enda Kenny refused to be drawn on a Sinn Féin demand that he apologise to women held in the Magdalene laundries rather than try to put a “positive blas” on what happened.

Mr Kenny told Sinn Féin deputy leader Mary Lou McDonald about the just-published Government-commissioned report: “Far from jumping to conclusions, everybody should read this report carefully and reflect on it deeply.”

It will be debated in the Dáil in a fortnight’s time.

He praised the courage of the women who came forward to tell their story to Senator Martin McAleese and his team and said “the stigma that the branding together of all 10,000 residents in the Magdalene laundries needs to be removed and should have been removed long before this and I really am sorry that that never happened”.

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IRELAND
Irish Times

MIRIAM LORD

Dáil Sketch: The stage was set for Enda Kenny. Enda – the emotional Taoiseach, the sympathiser and the empathiser. This is his territory, and he’s good at it.

Everyone knew that a question about the Magdalene laundries would come up during Leaders’ Questions. Everyone expected Enda Kenny to deliver the reply the country wanted, for so long, to hear. Why? Because the Taoiseach’s innate decency and humanity shines through on these occasions. He doesn’t put it on for effect. His sincerity never comes across as contrived. People respect that, and appreciate it.

So there was a certain expectation when he rose to answer Mary Lou McDonald’s question in the wake of the publication of the Magdalene laundries report: “When does the Taoiseach propose to offer – on all our behalves and that of the State – a full apology to these women?”

Enda would speak for all the people who are ashamed and embarrassed and angry by what was done to vulnerable people in State and religious run institutions during harsher and less tolerant times.

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IRELAND
Irish Times

JOE HUMPHREYS

Women admitted to Magdalene laundries described to the committee the “harsh and physically demanding” conditions in which they worked, with routine punishments for slacking or breaking silence during work.

“The overwhelming majority . . . described verbal abuse and being the victim of unkind or hurtful taunting and belittling comments,” the committee found.

While a small number of women reported physical abuse, many more said they were subjected to “mental cruelty”. One of the biggest grievances was “complete lack of information about why they were there and when they would get out”.

One woman said: “In our heads, all we could think of is we are going to die here. That was an awful thing to carry.”

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IRELAND
Irish Times

COLIN GLEESON

Decisions made by the State’s health authorities to approve the transfer of a girl or woman to a Magdalene laundry hinged on the fact that such a transfer was “more cost-effective” than making direct provision for her in a State health facility, the report found.

Of the 10,012 women who spent time in a Magdalene laundry since 1922, the routes of entry are known for 8,025. Some 6.8 per cent of these were referred by the health and social services sector, which are defined as referrals by psychiatric hospitals, social workers, health authorities and county and city homes.

The committee found instances where decisions to approve the transfer of “an indigent, homeless, disabled or psychiatrically ill girl or woman to a Magdalene laundry hinged on the fact that such a transfer was more cost-effective than making direct provision for her in a facility operated by the health authorities”.

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IRELAND
Irish Times

HARRY McGEE, Political Correspondent

The Government has ruled out any consideration of a redress scheme or compensation for the survivors of Magdalene laundries until after the Dáil considers the 1,000 page report prepared by a committee chaired by Senator Martin McAleese.

Taoiseach Enda Kenny made no reference to compensation or redress in the course of several statements made to the Dáil yesterday about the report.

While Mr Kenny said he was sorry the stigma faced by laundry “penitents” had not been removed before now, his comments were lambasted by the main Opposition parties and by survivor groups who expressed disbelief that he had refused to issue a formal State apology.

When pressed on this matter later, the Taoiseach’s spokesman said: “I repeat that the Taoiseach, as Taoiseach, has said that no stigma attaches, or should have attached as long as it did. For that he is sorry.”

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IRELAND
Irish Times

JOE HUMPHREYS

A leading academic and researcher on the Magdalene laundries said it was very significant that “nowhere does the report call into question” the testimony of survivors.

James M Smith, associate professor in the English department and Irish studies programme at Boston College, said the committee did “not once call into question any testimony, recollection or memory of any of the survivors; that is an important admission”.

It was “very significant because the State had the option of calling into question” what it had previously depicted as “allegations”, but chose not to do so.

Dr Smith, who is the author of a book on the subject as well as a member of the Justice for Magdalenes advisory committee, said he was disappointed, however, with the Government’s response.

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IRELAND
Irish Times

JUDITH CROSBIE

Family members were responsible for one in 10 women being admitted to Magdalene laundries. Epileptic fits, tuberculosis and a “heart condition” are among the reasons recorded in the laundries’ registers for placement by families. One 13-year-old was put into a laundry in the 1920s by her mother “because of fits”. Her sister took her out after a few days but she was returned a year later.

The youngest girl admitted by her family was just 12, the oldest was 72.

Other non-State routes into the laundries included self-referrals (16.4 per cent), referrals by priests (8.8 per cent) and by charity groups or other organisations and individuals.

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IRELAND
Irish Times

GENEVIEVE CARBERY

Some 8.1 per cent of the women and girls who entered the Magdalene laundries were referred there from the criminal justice system, the interdepartmental committee has found.

Criminal justice referrals included women on remand or on probation, deferred sentences, early or temporary release and referrals after prison.

In his introduction to the committee’s report, Senator Martin McAleese says some women were sent “on foot of criminal convictions ranging from vagrancy and larceny to manslaughter and murder”.

While most referrals had a legislative basis, some much less common informal referrals did not, the report said. These included suspension of sentence on condition of laundry residence.

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IRELAND
BBC News

[with video]

In Ireland, thousands of women who were sent to Magdalene laundries between the 1920s and
1990s are waiting to hear the extent of the Irish government’s involvement.

Girls considered “troubled” or what were then called “fallen women” were sent to the Catholic-run workhouses by families or the courts.

Maureen Sullivan was sent to a Magdalene laundry in New Ross, County Wexford, at the age of 12. She said the women there were treated “worse than prisoners”.

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IRELAND
Irish Times

DAN GRIFFIN

Patricia Burke Brogan joined the Sisters of Mercy to help the poor, but after working briefly in Galway’s Magdalene laundry she decided to leave the order and write about what she had witnessed.

In doing so she became one of the first writers to tackle the subject, with a short story and then in the 1980s with a play. At the time most theatres rejected it as too controversial. “One theatre director wrote back and said: ‘Do you know what you’re saying?’,” she said.

She encountered the laundry on Forster Street as a 21-year-old novitiate doing substitute work. She remembers on her first day being “brought down this long, brown corridor and every time we went through doors they were locked behind”.

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IRELAND
Irish Times

PAMELA DUNCAN

The report on State involvement in the Magdalene laundries cost just over €11,000, compared with €168 million spent on four statutory inquiries preceding it.

The Ferns inquiry cost €2.3 million, the Murphy and Cloyne reports €3.6 million and €1.9 million respectively in 2011. More than €160 million has been paid in legal fees relating to the Ryan report.

The interdepartmental committee was set up in July 2011 by the Government to establish State involvement in 10 Magdalene laundries.

Chaired by Senator Martin McAleese, it looked at records from four religious orders – the Sisters of the Good Shepherd, the Sisters of Our Lady of Charity, the Religious Sisters of Charity, and the Sisters of Mercy. All records were “opened fully and without restriction” to the committee.

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IRELAND
Irish Times

Sisters of Our Lady of Charity , St Mary’s Refuge, High Park, Grace Park Road, Drumcondra, Dublin.

Monastery of Our Lady of Charity, Seán MacDermott Street, (formerly Gloucester Street), Dublin.

Congregation of the Sisters of Mercy

Magdalen Asylum / Home, 47 Forster Street, Galway.

St Patrick’s Refuge, Crofton Road, Dún Laoghaire, Co Dublin.

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IRELAND
Irish Times

GENEVIEVE CARBERY

The interdepartmental committee did not have the “discretion” to extend its mandate beyond the included 10 Magdalene laundries, it said in its report yesterday.

Submissions were made to the committee arguing for the inclusion of four other institutions: St Mary’s Stanhope Street in Dublin, Summerhill in Wexford, Bethany Home in Rathgar, Dublin and Newtownforbes Industrial School in Co Longford.

‘Matter for Government’

Any extension of the committee’s mandate was a “matter for Government” and requests were passed on to the Minister for Justice for consideration, the committee said. “No additions were subsequently made by the Government,” it said.

The committee “understood the desire” of individuals and groups to draw its attention to other institutions and “heard all such submissions”. It was not able to look at other institutions based on their having attached laundry facilities, it said.

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IRELAND
Irish Times

ÁINE McMAHON

The long-awaited report into the Magdalene laundries made headlines around the world when it was published yesterday afternoon.

The Financial Times reported: “No apology for Magdalene laundry inmates.” The BBC website used the headline: “Irish PM: Magdalene laundries product of harsh Ireland.”

‘Enslavement’

A tweet from the BBC breaking news Twitter account earlier that day noted: “Irish PM apologises for conditions in #Magdalene laundries, workhouses where thousands of women were locked up from 1922 to 1996.”

The Guardian’s website covered the story under the heading: “Magdalene laundries: Ireland accepts state guilt in scandal. McAleese report finds police also bore responsibility in ‘enslavement’ of more than 30,000 women in institutions.”

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IRELAND
Irish Times

STEPHEN COLLINS and HARRY McGEE

A political row has erupted over the refusal of Taoiseach Enda Kenny to issue a full apology to the women who spent time in the Magdalene laundries, despite the fact that more than a quarter were sent there by the State.

The official report published yesterday of an interdepartmental committee chaired by Martin McAleese found the women were from many backgrounds. Some were referred by courts, others released on licence from industrial schools before they reached 16 years of age, while some were young women over 16 years of age who had been orphaned or were in abusive or neglectful homes.

The report, which investigated 10 Magdalene laundries run by four congregations found that:

* The number of women who spent time in laundries since 1922 was 10,012;

* Some 2,124 referrals were made or facilitated by the State – 26.5 per cent of the total;

* The average age at the time of entry was 23.8 years;

* The age of the youngest known entrant was nine and the oldest 89;

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LOS ANGELES (CA)
KPCC

Mike Roe | February 5th, 2013

The Los Angeles Archdiocese, amidst dealing with the latest in the ongoing fallout of how it handle priest molestation cases, is looking at a possible $200 million fundraising campaign, the Los Angeles Times reports.

The company Guidance in Giving out of New York was reportedly hired to study whether this campaign to help the $80 million in debt archdiocese was feasible, following 2007’s $600 million settlement with more than 500 alleged priest abuse victims.

The study is set to take six months and includes interviews with all of the archdiocese’s pastors, plus lay leaders, the Times reports. A church spokesman said that early feedback was “very positive,” according to the Times.

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VATICAN CITY
Reuters

By Philip Pullella

ROME | Tue Feb 5, 2013

(Reuters) – The Vatican’s new sexual crimes prosecutor on Tuesday acknowledged that the U.S. media “did a service” to the Catholic Church through its aggressive reporting on child abuse that helped the Church “confront the truth”.

The rare acknowledgement came from Father Robert Oliver, a canon lawyer from the U.S. diocese of Boston, speaking at his first public appearance since becoming the Vatican’s “Promoter of Justice” last week.

“I think that certainly those who continued to put before us that we need to confront this problem did a service,” he said in response to a question on whether the role of an aggressive American media was, in hindsight, a blessing for the Church.

“They (the media) helped to keep the energy, if you will, to keep the movement going so that we would, honestly and with transparency, and with our strength, confront what is true,” he told a news conference.

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LOS ANGELES (CA)
Los Angeles Times

In the midst of renewed public outrage over its handling of the priest molestation cases, the Los Angeles Archdiocese is considering a $200-million fund-raising campaign.

The archdiocese has hired a New York company, Guidance in Giving, to study the feasibility of a capital campaign that would shore up the church’s finances.

The archdiocese is $80 million in debt, according to a recent church financial report. In 2007, the archdiocese agreed to a record $600-million settlement with more than 500 alleged victims of priest abuse.

The consultants conducting the six-month study are interviewing every pastor in the archdiocese, as well as lay leaders.

A spokesman for the church said initial feedback has been “very positive.” The funds used would “be put into various endowments earmarked to support the pastoral priorities of the archdiocese, as well as for the general repair and upkeep of our parish churches and schools,” spokesman Tod Tamberg said in a statement.

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NEW MEXICO
ABQ Journal

By Mike Gallagher / Journal Investigative Reporteron Sun, Feb 3, 2013

A leading Zen Buddhist spiritual leader and teacher sexually abused female students in New Mexico and California for more than 50 years under the guise of Zen teachings, an independent commission of Buddhist leaders has concluded.

The allegations against 105-year-old Joshu Sasaki Roshi (“Roshi” roughly translates to “master”) range from fondling adult female students’ breasts to sexual intercourse during one-on-one study sessions over many years.

The allegations came up time and again beginning in the 1960s and critics, including former followers, say the misconduct was covered up.

Since arriving in the United States from Japan in the early 1960s, Sasaki and his followers established Zen Buddhist centers and retreat houses in Los Angeles, Mount Baldy outside Los Angeles, Albuquerque, Jemez Springs and more than 25 locations throughout the United States, Canada and Europe.

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IRELAND
Irish Independent

Leslie Keegan: There must be an apology to the Magdelen Laundry survivors and appropriate redress

Tuesday February 05 2013

IN June 2011 the United Nations Committee against torture in its 46th Session criticised Ireland for failing to protect girls and women who were involuntarily confined between 1922 and 1996.

It also criticised Ireland for its failure to regulate and inspect the operations of these institutions where it is alleged that physical abuse, emotional abuse and other acts of ill-treatment were committed.

It recommended that Ireland should introduce prompt, independent and thorough investigations into all complaints of torture and other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment committed in the Magdalen Laundries.

In appropriate cases it should prosecute and punish the perpetrators. It also recommended that the State should ensure that all victims obtain redress and have an enforceable right to compensation. This led to the setting up of the McAleese Inquiry which has resulted in the publication of a 1,000 page report.

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IRELAND
CBS News

[with video]

Hard labor, enforced silence, and imprisonment – that was the sentence for more than 10,000 young Irish women sent off to the church-run Magdelen Laundries between 1922 and 1996, a dark chapter in Irish history that Steve Kroft reported on for 60 Minutes in January 1999.

“The women had been virtual prisoners,” Kroft reported. “Confined behind convent walls for perceived sins of the flesh, condemned to a life of servitude.”

Today there was a significant development in the case when the Irish government issued a report acknowledging, for the first time, that the state was directly involved in the laundries, having sent as many as one quarter of the women to these institutions – most of them in their twenties, but at least one as young as age 9.

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VATICAN CITY
Catholic News Service

By Cindy Wooden
Catholic News Service

ROME (CNS) — The Catholic Church’s efforts to prevent clerical sexual abuse and protect children around the world will be “a long-term effort,” said Father Robert W. Oliver, a Boston priest who began work Feb. 1 as the promoter of justice in the Congregation for the Doctrine of Faith.

“All of us — every single person has difficulty coming to understand what this really is and how prevalent it is in our societies across the world,” said Father Oliver, whose position includes monitoring and investigating cases of priests accused of sex abuse.

When one first hears of a case of abuse, he said, “every single one of us begins with denial,” which is why the entire church, at all levels, must make a concerted effort to educate its members about the reality of abuse and the best practices for protecting children.

Speaking at Rome’s Pontifical Gregorian University Feb. 5, Father Oliver said the conference that the university and several Vatican offices sponsored last year for bishops and for superiors of religious orders was an important step forward, as is the pilot project for an online prevention and child protection course being run by the Gregorian-based Center for Child Protection.

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