ABUSE TRACKER

UNITED STATES
Catholic Culture

By Dr. Jeff Mirus February 05, 2013

That I believe Catholic bishops have no justification for recycling priests guilty of sexual abuse is clear from yesterday’s essay, Cardinal Mahony’s Therapeutic Excuses. But this does not mean there is nothing to be said on the other side. Let me list some of the ancillary concerns. They are not necessarily related to each other, and I do not intend to treat them in detail.

•Priests as people: I once knew a priest who was an abuser. He felt as if he were caught in a net he could not escape. It constantly weighed him down. Bishops have (or certainly ought to have) a fatherly and/or brotherly concern for their priests. The desire to “redeem” the priest must be very strong, along with the natural hope for rehabilitation.

•First-time mistakes: Without prior experience, it may be difficult not to be swayed by expert opinion or common practice the first time a bishop must deal with the problem. In reality, the recidivism of abusers should have been well-known in many Catholic dioceses by, say, 1950 (if not earlier). But so should it have been known to the experts, except the whole problem was hushed up and glossed over everywhere, before the sexual revolution. Bishops who were badly burned for their handling of sexual abuse should have had experience and documentation to rely on from their predecessors.

•Problematic evidence: Realistically, sex abuse is difficult to substantiate, and abusers are often effective dissemblers. A certain reticence in believing unsubstantiated claims is understandable; a lack of such reticence can destroy a good priest. Handling the complaint, rumor and report pipeline is not necessarily simple.

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LOS ANGELES (CA)
Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests

Posted by Barbara Blaine on February 05, 2013

The LA school district needs to thoroughly and independently investigate the hiring of a pedophile priest, Jose Piña.

Piña, who was credibly accused of abusing kids in the 1970’s, and was defrocked by the church in 2006. Shortly after that, he got a job working in the Los Angeles Unified School District. Because no criminal charges were ever filed, Piña was able to avoid being forced to register as a sex offender. His story, however, was well covered in the media.

If indeed the district was told about the child sex allegations against him, someone should be fired. The investigation should also look at who saw news accounts of Piña’s suspension and didn’t follow through and kept him on the payroll.

At the same time, however, Superintendent John Deasy should be praised for agreeing to check his/her employees list against lists of proven, admitted and credibly accused child molesters in the Catholic archdiocese and Scouting. By taking this step, Deasy is making sure that a situation like the one with Piña is far less likely to occur.

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IRELAND
An Phoblacht

TAOISEACH Enda Kenny’s refusal to issue a public apology immediately on the publication of the report on Tuesday afternoon by Senator Martin McAleese into the state’s involvement in the Magdalene Laundries has disappointed campaigners.

Thousands of women were used as unpaid labour in ten laundries operated by religious orders with the knowledge, compliance and active support of the state.

Of the 10,000 who went through the laundries’ doors from 1922 to 1996 – often because of poverty or family break-up but for many reasons – one in four was referred by the state, including the courts. State agencies gave contracts to the laundries. The Garda and Government colluded with the system.

Speaking in the Dáil on the publication of the report, Sinn Féin deputy leader Mary Lou McDonald TD (right) said she is seriously disappointed with the Taoiseach’s statement to the Dáil, which even RTÉ described as “a qualified sorry” to the survivors of the laundries, estimated to be less than a thousand.

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IRELAND
Deutsche Welle

A probe in Ireland has found that the state was complicit in the “Magdalene laundries,” where thousands of women were subjected to forced labor until 1996. Ireland’s premier has expressed sympathy to the victims.

Irish governments referred more than a quarter of the estimated 10,000 women and girls sent to Ireland’s Magdalene laundries over a period of seven decades, according to a report released on Tuesday. Previously, the state had denied involvement in what it had described as private institutions run by several Catholic orders of nuns. …

The women who had been sent to these institutions were portrayed over the years as “fallen women.” However, Tuesday’s reported sought to dispel the idea that many of the victims were prostitutes or mothers who then gave birth within the confines of the institutions, saying that “the reality was much more complex.”

Referrals fell into the two main categories, the report found. Non-state entities, including Industrial Schools, agencies and families, accounted for cases in which women were forced to live and work in a Magdalene laundry without being told why or for what duration they were to stay.

By contrast, the criminal justice system and social services stipulated both the reason and the sentencing.

“The majority … described the atmosphere in the [laundries] as cold, with a rigid and uncompromising regime of physically demanding work and prayer, with many instances of verbal censure, scoldings or even humiliating put downs,” the introduction to the report said.

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IRELAND
Irish Independent

By Sarah Stack

Tuesday February 05 2013

MAUREEN SULLIVAN is the youngest known survivor admitted to one of the Magdalen laundries.

She was an innocent 12-year-old child when taken from her school in Co Carlow and put in the Good Shepherd Magdalen Laundry in New Ross, Co Wexford, because her father died and mother remarried.

Ms Sullivan said she was told that this 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.

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IRELAND
Washington Post

By Jamie Smyth | Financial Times

Tuesday, February 5

DUBLIN — The inscription above the door claims it was a place of refuge. But for Margaret Bullen and thousands like her, the Magdalene laundry on Sean McDermott Street in Dublin’s city center was a prison and a workhouse.

In 1967, a 16-year-old Bullen was sent to the laundry, which was run by nuns, from an industrial school for neglected children. She did not leave until it closed in 1996. She remained institutionalized until she died in 2003 and was buried in a communal grave.

“It was white slavery,” said Samantha Long, one of the twin daughters who were taken from Bullen by the nuns and put up for adoption. “Margaret never got paid and wasn’t allowed to leave. There was never enough food, just enough to keep them working.”

For more than a decade, the Irish government has denied responsibility for the 10 Magdalene laundries across the country, which were operated by religious orders from the 19th century until the mid-1990s.

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IRELAND
The National

Omar Karmi

Feb 6, 2013

LONDON //A government panel in Ireland has found “significant” state involvement with workhouses run by the Roman Catholic church that have been singled out for mistreating tens of thousands of women over a period of 70 years.

The panel’s report yesterday prompted an immediate but qualified apology from Enda Kenny, the Irish prime minister, who said he was “sorry for the conditions” in which those women had lived.

But during an initial debate in the Irish parliament, he stopped short of offering a full official apology, as had been called for by campaigners, and cautioned against “glib” comments about a report that he said should be studied and would be debated again in two weeks.

Since 2001, the Irish government has conceded that women were abused in the Magdalene laundries but held that, since they were privately run, there was no state responsibility.

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IRELAND
Gazette

Survivors of Catholic run workhouses in Ireland have rejected a government apology for the incarceration of thousands of women in the Magdalene laundries.

As an inquiry found 2,124 of those detained in the institutions were sent there by the state, campaigners accused Taoiseach Enda Kenny of a “cop out”.

Records have confirmed that 10,012 women spent time in the laundries between 1922 and 1996. Justice for Magdalenes and Magdalene Survivors Together claimed thousands of women forced into slavery and torture deserved a full state apology and compensation.

Mari Steed, whose mother Josephine Murphy was in a laundry in Sunday’s Well, Cork when she was adopted by a family in America, described the Government’s response as horrifying, saying: “What we witnessed today was absolutely shameful, I can’t recall ever been so angry.”

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NEW JERSEY
New Jersey Newsroom

BY BOB HOLT
NEWJERSEYNEWSROOM.COM

A Newark priest who has been barred from having unsupervised contact with children has been named co-director of the Office of Continuing Education and Ongoing Formation of Priests.

Archbishop of Newark John Myers announced the appointment of 52-year old Rev. Michael Fugee, who was charged with criminal sexual contact and child endangerment for allegedly fondling a 13-year-old boy in 2001.

In 2002, American bishops reached an agreement called the Dallas Charter, which removes all priests credibly accused of sexually abusing children. According to NorthJersey.com, David Clohessy, executive director of the Survivor Network of Those Abused by Priests said, “I think it’s a clear violation of the Dallas Charter, not to mention simple common sense and decency.”

But he said the Catholic Church had not enforced the charter evenly.

According to patheos.com, the decision to convict Fugee was reversed on a technicality. A Bergen County jury heard Fugee describe himself as bisexual or homosexual, and the appeals court said that statement could have led to a conviction because of the “unfounded association between homosexuality and pedophilia.” Instead of being retried, Fugee was placed in a rehab program for first-time sex offenders, and barred from being alone with children for the rest of his life.

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LOS ANGELES (CA)
The Legal Examiner

Nick Kahl
Attorney

The Archdiocese of Los Angeles posted files concerning child-abusing priests on its website—more than 12,000 pages of documents—after being order to do so by the Federal Court.

In a letter to the faithful, Archbishop Jose Gomez addressed the release of documents, and the failures of his predecessors to protect the children of the parish. Archbishop Gomez veered widely from the standard Church language by acknowledging “The behavior described in these files is terribly sad and evil. There is no excuse, no explaining away what happened to these children.”

However, the National Catholic Reporter is not satisfied with the response, taking Archbishop Gomez to task in an editorial decrying his “we didn’t know” defense. Some within the clergy are also not satisfied, and are speaking up on behalf of saddened, disillusioned parishioners.

The release of these files demonstrates that the tragedy here is manifold.

It is tragic for the victims of abuse and their families. But, it is also tragic for all the faithful that the institution of the church showed great concern for protecting the institution qua institution — and no concern for protecting the very people that the church exists to nurture, guide, and protect.

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LOS ANGELES (CA)
LA Daily News

By Barbara Jones Staff Writer
dailynews.com
Posted: 02/05/2013

LAPD detectives who investigate sex-abuse cases are combing through the newly released files of scores of problem priests to determine whether any of the cases can be prosecuted, authorities said Tuesday.

The department’s Sexually Exploited Child Unit has joined with prosecutors in poring over some 12,000 pages of documents disclosed under court order by the Los Angeles Archdiocese.

“We have copies of the list and we’re going through the names, comparing them to cases we have to see if there’s anything new or different,” said Cmdr. Andrew Smith, the chief spokesman for the Los Angeles Police Department.

Smith said detectives are in contact with the District Attorney’s Office, which previously said it is reviewing the files of 124 priests identified in litigation as having sexually abused children.

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LOS ANGELES (CA)
The Worthy Adversary

Statement by Joelle Casteix of Newport Beach, SNAP Volunteer Western Regional Director

To put it simply: this is what victims have fought for all along.

The only way to stop the cycle of child sex abuse and cover-up is to punish child predators and anyone who covers up for them. Empty apologies by bishops and promises of prayers do nothing to keep children safe or help victims heal. Vigorous police investigations and criminal prosecutions do.

LA’s victims of child sexual abuse by clergy have fought for more than eight years to get these files publicly released. They did that for two reasons: to alert the public about past crimes and help law enforcement prosecute criminals who are within the statute of limitations. It is our hope that this investigation by the LAPD puts wrongdoers behind bars. It is also our hope that any police investigation exposes other predators still under the protection of the Archdiocese and secret files that have yet to be turned over.

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IRELAND
The Journal

THE COUNTRY’S largest trade union has called for the survivors of abuse at Magdalene Laundries to be given financial compensation in return for their forced labour.

SIPTU made the call following the publication of a report by an inter-departmental committee outlining major State involvement in the Laundries, including a direct State role in the admission of over 2,000 women.

The union’s equality and campaigns organiser Ethel Buckley said the scale of abuse that took place at the Laundries could “no longer be denied”.

“The mental anguish these women and their families endured can never be undone,” she said.

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IRELAND
The Journal

MAGDALENE LAUNDRIES BARELY broke even and were not run on a commercial or even profitable basis, the report by Senator Martin McAleese has said.

The report notes that despite a common perception that the laundries were highly profitable, this was rarely the case.

It found that laundries would have been unable to survive financially if they had not received income through donations, bequests and financial support from the State.

The figures were reached by using records from the time which were kept by the religious organisations involved in the laundries and which were given to the investigating committee behind the report.

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IRELAND
CBS News

DUBLIN Ireland has admitted some responsibility for workhouses run by Catholic nuns that once kept thousands of women and teenage girls against their will in unpaid, forced labor.

The apology comes after an expert panel found that Ireland should be legally responsible for the defunct Magdalene Laundries because authorities committed about one-quarter of the 10,012 women to the workhouses from 1922 to 1996, often in response to school truancy or homelessness.

“To those residents who went through the Magdalene Laundries in a variety of ways, 26 percent of the time from state involvement, I am sorry for those people that they lived in that kind of environment,” said Prime Minister Enda Kenny on behalf of the Irish government, according to Reuters.

Survivors said they were unsatisfied with the prime minister’s response. Steven O’Riordan, spokesperson for Magdalene Survivors Together, told Irish paper The Journal the apology was a “cop out.”

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IRELAND
Irish Times

“I was about 14 years old. You would get up very early, the van men brought it in. You’d check the customer of the dirty laundry, mark it and put it in baskets… We had to leave the room when the van men came. It was repetition all the time.”

“I thought I’d be there for life and die in there. I was frightened.”

“I was a young virgin, I don’t know why I was put there.”

“Two ladies were standing there [on admission], not nuns but dressed in navy. I was left with those two [then ordered to remove clothing and stand on a stool before being] punched by one of them, one side to another.”

“You couldn’t speak and needed permission for the toilet… The recreation time you were making beads and aran sweaters.”

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IRELAND
BBC News

Irish Prime Minister Enda Kenny has apologised for the stigma and conditions suffered by women who were inmates of the Magdalene laundries.

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

About 10,000 women passed through the laundries in the Irish Republic between 1922 and 1996, a report has revealed.

The laundries were Catholic-run workhouses that operated in Ireland.

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IRELAND
Irish Independent

By Ed Carty

Tuesday February 05 2013

RELIGIOUS orders which operated the Magdalene laundries have insisted that they believe their role was to provide care and refuge.

The Sisters of Mercy, which ran institutions in Galway and Dun Laoghaire, said it accepts the “limitations of the care” it provided.

“Their institutional setting was far removed from the response considered appropriate to such needs today. We wish that we could have done more and that it could have been different,” the order said.

“It is regrettable that the Magdalene homes had to exist at all.

“Our sisters worked in the laundries with the women and, while times and conditions were harsh and difficult, some very supportive, lifelong friendships emerged and were sustained for several decades.”

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IRELAND
Corkman

Tuesday February 05 2013

Nuns who ran the Magdalene laundries were given a sympathetic hearing as the inquiry team noted their profound hurt over the years of public debate.

The investigation committee reported that the four religious orders in charge of workhouses regret any pain caused to women routinely stripped of their identities when locked up.

In their defence the report repeated claims from nuns involved that they did the best they could to care for the residents.

“Their position is that they responded in practical ways as best they could, in keeping with the charism of their congregations, to the fraught situations of the sometimes marginalised girls and women sent to them, by providing them with shelter, board and work,” the report said.

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LOS ANGELES (CA)
LAist

In the wake of the recent release of a set of files held by the Los Angeles Roman Catholic Archdiocese detailing child abuse at the hands of clergy comes word the Los Angeles Police Department will be giving the material a look to see if there are any cases to be prosecuted.

Detectives are in the process of reviewing the files to ascertain what’s contained therein and if there are any possible violations of laws, and if those instances fall within the statute of limitations, according to L.A. Now.

The likelihood, however, of any cases stemming from this material is slim, because the law “only allows the prosecution of incidents since 1988,” and “many of the files appear to pre-date that year.”

The LAPD will be taking a look exclusively at priests mentioned in the files who are or were based in Los Angeles. The files detail allegations made against 122 priests, as well as the measures the Archdiocese went to in order to keep the accusations within the church and skirt prosecution.

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IRELAND
The Telegraph (United Kingdom)

Survivors of the Magdalene Laundries have rejected an apology from the Irish prime minister about the conditions in the church-run laundries where women and girls toiled.

By Rachel Cooper, and agencies
5:20PM GMT 05 Feb 2013

Enda Kenny, Ireland’s prime minister, said he was sorry thousands of women had to live in austere conditions in the convent-run institutions after a report said the state was responsible for sending many women and girls to the laundries.

“To those residents who went into the Magdalene Laundries through a variety of ways, 26pc from state intervention or state involvement, I am sorry for those people that they lived in that kind of environment,” Mr Kenny said in parliament in Dublin today.

“I want to see that those women who are still with us, anywhere between 800 and 1000 at max, that we should see that the state provides for them with the very best of facilities and supports that they need in their lives.”

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MILWAUKEE (WI)
National Catholic Reporter

by Tom Roberts | Feb. 5, 2013

A priest from the Milwaukee archdiocese has proposed replacing a talk from retired Cardinal Roger Mahony at a spring meeting of priests with a wide-ranging conference on the priest sex abuse crisis.

Fr. Jim Connell, an advocate for victims of clergy sex abuse, sent an open email to Milwaukee Archbishop Jerome Listecki asking for the cardinal’s spot to be given to a range of experts as well as those directly affected by the scandal. Mahony, who was recently publicly rebuked for failing to protect children, is scheduled to give a speech titled “In Christ, There Is No East or West: Embracing Our Diversity and the Social Message of Jesus” during the May 6-8 Spring Assembly of Priests.

Los Angeles Archbishop Jose Gomez relieved Mahony, who retired two years ago as the city’s archbishop, of all of his public and administrative duties upon the Jan. 31 release of approximately 12,000 pages of documents that detail sex abuse by dozens of priests and the attempts by Mahony and others to hide the crimes and protect the priests from detection.

Gomez said he found the files “brutal and painful reading”; their contents, “terribly sad and evil.”

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LOS ANGELES (CA)
KTLA

Los Angeles Police Department detectives who specialize in child sexual abuse cases have begun examining a trove of newly disclosed priest abuse files to determine whether there are cases that can be prosecuted.

Capt. Fabian Lizarraga said detectives “are currently reviewing the [files], to see exactly what we have…. Then we’ll have to see what, if any, laws apply and if they’re within statute,” he said.

Detectives are limited by a law that only allows the prosecution of incidents since 1988. Many of the files appear to pre-date that year.

Lizarraga said the LAPD will be focusing specifically Los Angeles-based priests.

The LAPD decided to launch the review after the Los Angeles Roman Catholic Archdiocese last week posted on its website tens of thousands of pages of previously secret personnel files for 122 priests accused of molesting children.

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GERMANY
Spiegel

A German archbishop is under fire for appearing to liken recent criticism of the Catholic Church to a Nazi-era pogrom. The cleric, Gerhard Ludwig Müller, had said that “targeted discrimination campaigns” against the church sometimes reminded him of a “pogrom sentiment.”

The doctrinal watchdog of the Catholic church, German Archbishop Gerhard Ludwig Müller, has run into criticism from politicians for saying the church was being subjected to a “pogrom sentiment” because of its position on the ordination of women, same-sex partnerships and the celibacy of priests.

In an interview with the newspaper Die Welt published on Friday, the archbishop said: “Targeted discreditation campaigns against the Catholic Church in North America and also here in Europe have led to clerics in some areas being insulted in public. An artifcially created fury is growing here which sometimes reminds one of a pogrom sentiment.”

Müller was appointed last year as head of the Vatican’s Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, a position Pope Benedict XVI occupied for 24 years before his election to the papacy.

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IRELAND
ITV

The majority of women forced into Magdalene laundries were there for minor offences such as theft and not paying for a train ticket.

A small number of women were there for prostitution – despite the stigma attached to those who were sent to the laundries and became known as Maggies, a slang term for prostitute.

The report also confirmed that a garda could arrest a girl or a woman without warrant if she was being recalled to the laundry or if she had run away.

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IRELAND
Irish Independent

By Caitriona Palmer

Tuesday February 05 2013

TO account for a missing decade of her life, 79-year-old Josephine Murphy uses a comforting euphemism: she tells friends and family that between 1947 and 1957 she was simply, “with the nuns”.

A product of Ireland’s industrial school system, Josephine is a formidable character. A tiny woman with a steely interior, her back-breaking work ethic is the product of nearly three decades spent in Ireland’s gulag. This remarkable woman has suffered personal tragedies that would have left most human beings inconsolable.

As a child, Murphy – not her real name – was taken from her unmarried mother and sent to live in an industrial school in Waterford. As a naive 26-year-old, after a life spent in institutions, Josephine fell pregnant and was put in a mother-and-baby home in Bessboro, Cork city.

There she gave birth to a little girl, a baby she adored for 18 months before the child was taken from her by the nuns and sent to live with another family in America.

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NORTHERN IRELAND
Amnesty International

Posted: 05 February 2013

Amnesty International has issued a call for former residents of Magdalene Laundry-type institutions in Northern Ireland to come forward to report their experiences to the Historic Institutional Abuse Inquiry.

But the human rights group warned that there was now a clear “justice gap” emerging for women who experienced abuse in such institutions in Northern Ireland.

On the day that the Irish Government published a review showing state involvement in the operation of ten Magdalene Laundries in the Republic of Ireland, Amnesty called for women who had been resident in similar institutions in Northern Ireland to consider giving evidence to the Historic Institutional Abuse Inquiry recently established by the Stormont government.

Patrick Corrigan, Northern Ireland Programme Director of Amnesty International, said:

“The truth must now also emerge about the experiences of abuse suffered by girls and women in Magdalene Laundry-type institutions in Northern Ireland, which operated until 1977. Those who suffered abuse as children are now eligible to come forward to the Inquiry, recently established by the Northern Ireland Executive, and we would encourage them to consider doing so. 165 people have now registered with the Inquiry, and 61 of them have already described their experiences to the Acknowledgement Forum.

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IRELAND
Breaking News

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

Survivors of the Magdalene Laundry have quickly rejected the Taoiseach’s apology, and demanded a fuller and more frank admission from government and the religious orders involved.

Maureen Sullivan, Magdalene Survivors Together, said: “That is not an apology.

“He is the Taoiseach of our country, he is the Taoiseach of the Irish people, and that is not a proper apology.”

Mary Smyth said she endured inhumane conditions in a laundry, which she said was worse than being in prison.

“I will go to the grave with what happened. It will never ever leave me,” said Ms Smyth, also of the group.

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IRELAND
Irish Times

AOIFE CARR

The four congregations who operated the Magdalene laundries have welcomed today’s report and apologised to women who experienced hurt in their care.

In a statement, the Sisters of Our Lady of Charity of Refuge said it was with “deep regret” that women did not experience refuge under their care.

“For the past 160 years in Ireland our intention has been to offer refuge to women in need. The laundries which were attached to refuges were hard and demanding places to work. Many women used our refuges as a place of last resort. There are also many who found themselves in a refuge through no choice of their own,” it said.

“Regardless of why a woman was in a refuge or how she came to be there, we endeavored to provide care. 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. Further, it is with sorrow and sadness that we recognize that for many of those who spoke to the Inquiry that their time in a refuge is associated with anxiety, distress, loneliness, isolation, pain and confusion and much more.

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IRELAND
Irish Times

Taoiseach Enda Kenny’s response to the Magdalene laundries report is a “cop out”, a group of survivors has said.

Maureen Sullivan, who was in a laundry in New Ross, said the response was “not enough” and she said wanted a full apology. The report itself showed there was still “denial” about the profits the religious congregations made from the unpaid labour of the women who worked in them, she added.

“Those comments from Enda Kenny are a complete and utter cop out,” said Steven O’Riordan of the Magdalene Survivors Together.

He said the Taoiseach was “so sneaky and so quiet” about dealing with the banking crisis and if he put as much effort into the Magdalene report as that “maybe we would get the results that we require”, he added.

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IRELAND
Galway News

February 5, 2013

The committee set up to inquire into the Magdalen laundries has found clear evidence of state involvement in the religious run work houses.

it notes that there was a legal basis for the way the State operated.

The report, written under the chairmanship of Senator Martin McAleese, finds that more than a quarter of 10-thousand women who entered the laundries were referred there by the State.

However, according to Justice for Magdalenes the statistics compiled by the Senator omit the records of the Mercy run Galway and Dun Laoighre magdalene laundries.

The sisters of mercy operated the magdalene laundry at Forster street in the city.

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IRELAND
Irish Times

Some statistics published by the ‘Report of the Interdepartmental Committee to establish the facts of State involvement with the Magdalen Laundries’ are laid out below.

Admissions

Number of women who spent times in laundries since 1922: 10,012*

Known admissions, including repeat admissions, from 1922: 14,607*

Admissions for which referrals route known: 8025

Number of referrals made or facilitated by the State 26.5% (2,124)

Average/Median age at time of entry 23.8 years/ 20 years

Age of youngest known entrant :9

Age of oldest known entrant: 89

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IRELAND
Irish Times

PAMELA DUNCAN

The Government should establish a compensation process which includes the provision of pensions, lost wages, health and housing services and redress to women admitted to the Magdalene laundries, the advocacy group Justice for Magdalenes has said.

The group made its comments following the publication of a report into State involvement in the laundries which found that over a quarter of the 10,000 women referred to the laundries between 1922 and the closure of the last laundry in 1996 were made or facilitated by the State.

“Magdalene survivors have waited too long for justice and this should not be now burdened with either a complicated legal process or a closed-door policy of compensation,” a spokeswoman for the group said in the wake of this afternoon’s publication.

Justice for Magdalenes has welcomed the findings of the inquiry, which it said, showed that the State was “directly and fundamentally involved” in the Magdalene laundries.

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IRELAND
The Guardian (United Kingdom)

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

Henry McDonald in Dublin
guardian.co.uk, Tuesday 5 February 2013 11.25 EST

Ireland has officially recognised the state’s guilt in the “enslavement” of more than 30,000 women, most of whom were sent against their will into church-run institutions where they received no pay, no pension and no social protection.

Labelled the “Maggies”, the women were sent to the Magdalene laundries where they worked for nothing, serving in some cases “life sentences” simply for being unmarried mothers or regarded as morally wayward.

On Tuesday, a report headed by Irish senator Martin McAleese found that the state and the Irish police force bore a major responsibility for sending the women there and failing to protect their rights as workers. The laundries were not private and the vast majority of women and girls were sent there against their own wishes.

The McAleese report also concluded that the women were used as free labour and that Irish labour laws from the state’s foundation were continually broken inside the laundries.

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IRELAND
The Journal

THE IRISH BRANCH of Amnesty International has called on the State to accept its role in the human rights abuses that occurred at the Magdalene Laundries.

The call came after the official report of an Inter-Departmental Committee discovered that the State had an active role in the admission of 2,124 women to Magdalene Laundries from 1922 onwards.

“The State must now finally accept its own role in what the report reveals,” Amnesty International Ireland director Colm O’Gorman said this afternoon.

“It is has ducked and denied its responsibility for what happened to these women and children, including to the UN Committee Against Torture, for far too long.”

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IRELAND
ITV

The Justice for Magdalenes group said it was aware of at least 988 women who are buried in laundry plots in cemeteries across Ireland and therefore must have stayed for life, however, the inquiry could only certify 879.

The last laundry, Sean MacDermott Street in Dublin’s north inner city, closed in 1996.

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IRELAND
Reuters

Tue Feb 5, 2013

(Reuters) – An official report said on Tuesday the Irish state was responsible for sending many women and girls to the now-notorious “Magdalene Laundries”, where they were subjected to a harsh regime of intimidation, prayer and unpaid work.

The institutions, run by Catholic nuns, have been accused of treating inmates who were sometimes put in their care for sexual misdemeanours or simply for illegitimacy, like “slaves” for decades of the 20th century.

Irish governments had in the past insisted the Laundries operated purely privately. But the report by an inter-departmental committee said one in four of the inmates were sent there by the state.

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IRELAND
Corkman

The Irish Government has apologised to the thousands of women locked up in Catholic-run workhouses known as Magdalene laundries between 1922 and 1996.

As an inquiry found 2,124 of those detained in the institutions were sent by the authorities, Taoiseach Enda Kenny expressed his sympathies with survivors and the families of those who have died.

“To those resident who went into the Magdalene laundries from a variety of ways, 26% from state involvement, I’m sorry for those people that they lived in that kind of environment,” he said.

Records have confirmed that 10,012 women spent time in Magdalene laundries across the country between 1922 and 1996.

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IRELAND
Global Edmonton

DUBLIN — An expert panel has found that Ireland should be legally responsible for workhouses run by Catholic nuns that once kept thousands of women and teenage girls against their will in unpaid, forced labour.

Tuesday’s report analyzing the defunct Magdalene Laundries found state authorities committed about one-quarter of 10,012 women to the workhouses from 1922 to 1996, often in response to school truancy or homelessness.

Ireland stigmatized them as “fallen” women — prostitutes — but most were simply unwed mothers or daughters of them.

The report found that 15 per cent lived in the workhouses for more than five years, and police caught and returned women who fled. They endured 12-hour work days of washing and ironing.

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IRELAND
Irish Independent

By Michael Brennan Deputy Political Editor

Tuesday February 05 2013

TAOISEACH Enda Kenny has declined to apologise for the state’s role in admitting women to the Magdalene Laundries.

Around 10,000 women were kept in the ten laundries run by four religious congregations between 1922 and 1996.

The Dail has heard that a new report by former Senator Martin McAleese that the state was involved in the admittance of around one quarter of the women.

Mr Kenny told the Dail that the women had been sent into the laundries during a time when there was a harsh, uncompromising and authoritarian Ireland.

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IRELAND
Irish Times

GENEVIEVE CARBERY

Some 10,000 women and girls entered Magdalene laundries since 1922 with more than a quarter of referrals made or facilitated by the State, a report has found.

The ‘Report of the Inter-Departmental Committee to establish the facts of State involvement with the Magdalen Laundries’ was published this afternoon. It found “significant” State involvement in the laundries.

In the report, the committee said it found “no evidence” to support the perception that “unmarried girls” had babies in the laundries or that many of the women were prostitutes.

“The reality is much more complex” committee chairman Dr Martin McAleese writes in the introduction.

The women admitted to the laundries “have for too long felt the social stigma” of the “wholly inaccurate characterisation” of them as “fallen women”, he said. “[This is] not borne out of facts.”

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IRELAND
BBC News

By Shane Harrison
BBC NI Dublin correspondent

Irish Prime Minister Enda Kenny has apologised for the stigma and conditions suffered by women who were inmates of the Magdalene laundries.

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

About 10,000 women passed through the laundries in the Irish Republic between 1922 and 1996, a report has revealed.

The laundries were Catholic-run workhouses that operated in Ireland.

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IRELAND
Breaking News

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

The committee set up to inquire into the Magdalene laundries has found clear evidence of state involvement in the religious run work houses.

However, it notes that there was a legal basis for the way the state operated.

The report, written under the chairmanship of Senator Martin McAleese, finds that more than a quarter of 10,000 women who entered the laundries were referred there by the state.

But it paints a more benign picture of life in the laundries than may be popularly believed.

Between 1922 and 1996 around 10,000 women are known to have entered Magdalen laundries, working for no pay in what were lonely and frightening places.

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IRELAND
Breaking News

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

The Taoiseach has stopped short of issuing a full apology to the women detained in Magdalene laundries.

Speaking in the Dáil this afternoon, Enda Kenny said he was sorry that the stigma of being in the laundries was not removed, sorry that people lived in the environment and sorry that it took until July 2011 to instigate the McAleese committee report.

The report, which will be published at 4pm today, found clear evidence of state involvement in the religious-run workhouses but says there was a legal basis for the state’s actions.

Senator McAleese’s report finds that more than a quarter of 10,000 women who entered the laundries were referred there by the state.

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IRELAND
Irish Independent

By Louise Hogan

Tuesday February 05 2013

SURVIVORS of the Magdalene Laundries have told how they feel let down by the report and the State.

Steven Riordan, spokesman for Magdalene Survivors Together, said the women wanted an apology from both Taoiseach Enda Kenny and the religious orders involved in the Magdalene Laundries.

Mr Riordan said a compensation scheme should be put in place for the survivors as they were “denied their constitutional rights”. He was speaking after meeting with Senator Martin McAleese to get a first look at the 1,000-plus page report.

“The reality is we forced women in Irish society to participate in slavery,” he said. “The women never got the opportunities it was said they would get by entering these institutions. The constitutional rights of these women were completely obliterated.”

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IRELAND
Department of Justice and Equality

Introduction by the Chair, Senator Martin McAleese

Executive Summary

Acknowledgements

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IRELAND
ITV

An 18 month inquiry into Magdalene laundries chaired by Senator Martin McAleese has identified five areas where there was direct state involvement in the detention of women in 10 laundries run by nuns.

They were detained by courts, gardai, transferred by industrial or reform schools, rejected by foster families, orphaned, abused children, mentally or physically disabled, homeless teenagers or simply poor.

Inspectors, known as “the suits” by the women, routinely checked conditions complied with rules for factories.

Government paid welfare to certain women in laundries, along with payments for services.

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IRELAND
The Journal

A REPORT COMPILED following an 18-month investigation has found the Irish State was directly and fundamentally involved in the Magdalene Laundry system.

Senator Martin McAleese’s report, published this afternoon, reveals that more than 2,500 women who were incarcerated in the Magdalene Laundries were sent in directly by the State. In reality, that number is higher but many records did not survive.

McAleese said he hopes the findings bring “healing and peace of mind to all concerned, most especially the women whose lived experience of the Magdalene Laundries had a profound and enduring negative effect on their lives”.

Advocacy group Justice for Magdalenes welcomed the report, stating it ensures that the State can no longer claim the institutions were private, as has happened in the past, or that the majority of Magdalenes entered voluntarily.

According to the report, the State gave lucrative contracts to the 10 Magdalene Laundries, located across the country. It did so without complying with Fair Wage Clauses and in the absence of any compliance with Social Insurance obligations.

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IRELAND
Herald

By Michael Lavery

Tuesday February 05 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.

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IRELAND
UTV

The Irish Government has apologised to the thousands of women locked up in Magdalene laundries between 1922 and 1996.

An 18 month long inquiry found 2,124 of those detained in the Catholic-run workhouses were sent by the authorities.

Taoiseach Enda Kenny expressed his sympathies with survivors and the families of those who have died.

“To those residents who went into the Magdalene laundries from a variety of ways, 26% from state involvement, I’m sorry for those people that they lived in that kind of environment,” he said.

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MINNESOTA
Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests

Posted by David Clohessy on February 05, 2013

A serial predator cleric who is alleged to have abused at least 80 kids in Pennsylvania and Ohio also molested a boy in Minnesota in the late 1970’s.

On Saturday, a Youngstown Ohio radio station reported that Br. Stephen Baker of the Franciscan order molested Douglas Larson when he was in eighth grade in 1977. Larson later settled a case with the St. Paul/Minneapolis archdiocese in 2005.

Baker was assigned to St. Patrick’s Church in Inver Grove Heights, MN between 1978 and 1981. That parish had long been staffed by priests and brothers from the Franciscan order. SNAP believes there is a good possibility that Baker abused more kids in the Twin Cities area.

“Since the initial allegations against Br. Baker were announced, no church official in the Twin Cities area came forward to say ‘yes, he abused kids here too,’” said David Clohessy, Director of SNAP, the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests. “Knowing not that Baker abused at least one kid here, we want to know if there were any other victims.”

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LOS ANGELES (CA)
Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests

Posted by David Clohessy on February 05, 2013

Los Angeles archdiocesan officials are being accused of defying a judge’s order and withholding records about clergy sex crimes and cover ups.

Their strategy has been clear from the outset: at all costs, delay, delay, delay, in the hopes that outrage will subside, victims will give up and their lawyers will walk away. Shame on these Catholic officials. Five years ago, they made a promise to hundreds of victims and thousands of parishioners. But they’ve spent every day since then reneging on that promise. They continue to renege even now.

LA Catholic officials, including Archbishop Gomez, have fought long and hard to keep as many secret as long as possible. We see no evidence that this defiant arrogance and selfishness is changing in any way.

Gomez can say anything he wants about Mahony. But as long as he keeps acting like Mahony, nothing in the archdiocese will change.

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IRELAND
Newstalk

[with live stream]

The Taoiseach Enda Kenny is being called on to make a full apology to the women who were detained in Magdelene laundries ahead of the publication of a report into the scandal this afternoon.

Survivors of the laundries want an apology and compensation, and where necessary prosecutions for the abuses which took place at the catholic-run work houses.

The committee which compiled this report was chaired by Senator Martin McAleese who resigned from politics last Friday.

The report which will be discussed by the cabinet today will outline the extent of the Irish government’s knowledge of the abuses that took place at the Magdalene laundries, the last of which only closed in 1996.

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LOS ANGELES (CA)
Spiritual Politics

Mark Silk | Feb 5, 2013

Mea minima culpa, cries the beleaguered Cardinal Roger Mahony, as he dukes it out with his successor in the See of Los Angeles, Archbishop Jose Gomez. It won’t wash.

Let’s go back to the summer of 1986, when Mahony was Los Angeles’ newly minted archbishop. It was the dawning of the sexual abuse crisis, and he was, according to himself, doing his darnedest to get his arms around the problem.

Nothing in my own background or education equipped me to deal with this grave problem. In two years [1962—1964] spent in graduate school earning a Master’s Degree in Social Work, no textbook and no lecture ever referred to the sexual abuse of children. While there was some information dealing with child neglect, sexual abuse was never discussed.

Shortly after I was installed on September 5, 1985 I took steps to create an Office of the Vicar for the Clergy so that all our efforts in helping our priests could be located in one place. In the summer of 1986 I invited an attorney-friend from Stockton to address our priests during our annual retreat at St. John’s Seminary on the topic of the sexual abuse of minors. Towards the end of 1986 work began with the Council of Priests to develop policies and procedures to guide all of us in dealing with allegations of sexual misconduct.

But here’s the thing. In the summer of 1986, Mahony also happened to be dealing with the situation of Msgr. Peter Garcia, who had been sent to New Mexico for treatment after being credibly accused of sexually abusing two teenage boys. On July 22, he wrote to the treatment center explaining why why “it would not be possible” for Garcia to return to California: “I believe that if Monsignor Garcia were to reappear here within the Archdiocese we might very well have some type of legal action filed in both the criminal and civil sectors.”

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CALIFORNIA
Orange County Weekly

By Gustavo Arellano
Tue., Feb. 5 2013

Everyone and their mother is freaking out about all the revelations coming out of the sex-abuse scandal in the Archdiocese of Los Angeles after they released a bunch of once-secret personnel files on their pedo-priests. To that, we say “YAWN.” There is very little new in those documents not already revealed in years past by enterprising reporters, of which there were really two in LA: former Los Angeles Times scribe William Lobdell (that is, before he became one of the biggest tools in Orange County spinning for Jim Righeimer in Costa Mesa) and Ron Russell of the late, great New Times LA.

Nevertheless, the LA archdiocese should be commended for their act, if only for this point: they are doing what the Diocese of Orange never did, and will probably never do.

For all of its self-backslapping about how transparent they were, the diocese under former Bishop Tod D. Brown NEVER released any priestly personnel files–they didn’t find it important. I once asked Brownie during a press conference if he would ever make parishes provide those files the way he made them post his laughable Covenant with the Faithful, and His Eminence seethed. Brownie also kept around Monsignor John Urell, the crypt keeper to all the pederast secrets that all the bishops in Orange kept.

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IRELAND
The New York Times

By DOUGLAS DALBY

Published: February 5, 2013

DUBLIN — Ireland is preparing to publish an extensive report on Tuesday on the Magdalene Institutions, workhouses operated by Catholic religious orders where an estimated 30,000 girls and young women were detained between 1922 and 1996.

A dwindling group of survivors of the laundries are seeking a state apology for their treatment and payment for years of unpaid labor and pension payments. The “Maggies,” as the women and girls were called, were excluded from a previous compensation scheme for those who suffered in state-run institutions on the basis that the laundries were never inspected or regulated.

In an opinion piece in The Irish Times this morning, Jim Smith, an associate professor at Boston College and a committee member of the Justice for Magdalenes campaign group, said: “These women were abused in the past, and have been abandoned in the present.”

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IRELAND
Irish Examiner

The Taoiseach Enda Kenny is being called on to make a full apology to the women who were detained in Magdalene laundries, ahead of the publication of a report into the scandal this afternoon.

The report prepared under the chairmanship of Senator Martin McAleese gives details of the state’s involvement.

Survivors of the laundries – who have seen the report this morning – want an apology from the government.

Martina Keogh, a survivor of the Gloucester Street Laundry who was interviewed by Dr McAleese’s inquiry, says she deserves compensation.

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UNITED STATES
Irish Central

[Why Did the Pope Shame LA’s Mahony, But Not Brady of Ireland? – Christian Catholicism]

By
PATRICK COUNIHAN,
IrishCentral Staff Writer

Published Tuesday, February 5, 2013

A leading Catholic lawyer and commentator has slammed the Pope for publicly shaming Los Angeles Cardinal Roger Mahony over clerical child abuse whilst treating Irish Cardinal Sean Brady in an entirely different matter.

Harvard educated Jerry Slevin has aired his views in a hard hitting article published on the popular website ChristianCatholicism.com.

He claims that Cardinal Mahony could be criminally prosecuted after he was ‘publicly shamed’ by Pope Benedict XVI and removed from public life last week.

And he demands to know how the LA Cardinal has been treated so differently to his Irish counterpart.

Slevin writes; “The Pope’s pawn, Archbishop Gomez, publicly referred to Mahony’s child abuse cover-up conduct as evil.

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LOS ANGELES (CA)
Los Angeles Times

By David Horsey
February 5, 2013

Cardinal Roger Mahony has been relieved of his public duties by Los Angeles Archbishop Jose Gomez. Auxiliary Bishop Thomas J. Curry has quit his job as regional bishop in Santa Barbara. And the website of the Catholic archdiocese of L.A. is displaying tens of thousands of pages of formerly secret files detailing accusations of child molestation against 122 priests — all the church’s dirty laundry that Mahony and Curry did their best to hide for many years.

For a decade now, the sex abuse scandal has rocked the Roman Catholic Church in city after city. The scandal in Los Angeles led to a settlement between the church and 500 abuse victims in 2007, but the archdiocese had resisted opening personnel files. Now, though, the files are wide open and the stark evidence of a cover-up has brought to disgrace one of the most powerful and admired men in the church, Cardinal Mahony. The good works of a lifetime are tainted by the fact that he saw evil, had the authority to stop it and, instead, tried to keep it in the darkness by giving offending priests out-of-state assignments and barring them from talking to therapists who might blow the whistle on their misdeeds.

It goes without saying that the Catholic hierarchy from Rome on down has long been engaged in a cynical effort to protect the institution of the church by hiding pedophile priests. Still, there is also an element of Christian idealism at work here. At the heart of the faith is the principle that any sinner, no matter how wicked, can be redeemed by God’s forgiveness. That goes for priests, too. In the context of church teaching, there is logic in allowing clergy to repent and ask forgiveness, rather than turning them over to the police. But it is a naïve logic that depends on a miracle cure for a disorder that even years of therapy cannot always remedy.

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LOS ANGELES (CA)
Canberra Times

February 6, 2013

Barney Zwartz

Jose Gomez has set a stunning example of what the church should be doing.

‘IFIND these files [about priests who sexually abused children] to be brutal and painful reading. The behaviour described in these files is terribly sad and evil. There is no excuse, no explaining away what happened to these children. The priests involved had the duty to be their spiritual fathers and they failed.”

These are the words, last Thursday, not of a victim nor an advocate, a lawyer, policeman or judge. They are the words of Los Angeles Catholic Archbishop Jose Gomez. Of themselves, they are perhaps franker than the usual church apology, but what made them really remarkable is what came next.

”My predecessor, retired Cardinal Roger Mahony, has expressed his sorrow for his failure to fully protect young people entrusted to his care. Effective immediately, I have informed Cardinal Mahony that he will no longer have any administrative or public duties.” In a striking and unprecedented humiliation of the cardinal, Archbishop Gomez also had Mahony’s former right-hand man in handling abuse allegations, Thomas Curry, resign as regional bishop of Santa Barbara.

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CANADA
CBC News

A retired Roman Catholic priest who has already admitted to dozens of sexual abuse charges involving young people has pleaded guilty to the latest count against him.

George Smith’s case was called in Supreme Court of Newfoundland and Labrador in Corner Brook on Monday.

His lawyer entered the plea on his behalf.

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CONNECTICUT
Beaumont Enterprise

HARTFORD, Conn. (AP) — A Connecticut man has pleaded not guilty to allegations that he helped a Roman Catholic priest sell methamphetamine.

Fifty-two-year-old Kenneth Devries of Waterbury pleaded not guilty to drug and conspiracy charges Monday in federal court in Hartford. The Connecticut Post reports (http://bit.ly/WW0aXV ) jury selection in Devries’ case tentatively was set for April 14 and he remains detained.

Federal prosecutors say Devries played a key role in the alleged drug operation of Monsignor Kevin Wallin, former pastor of Roman Catholic Churches in Bridgeport and Danbury. The Diocese of Bridgeport has suspended Wallin from public ministry.

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IRELAND
Irish Central

Survivors of Catholic run workhouses in Ireland are awaiting an apology today, when an Inter-Departmental Committee report is published into the State’s involvement in their detention and exploitation.

Sensitive information contained in the report investigation the State’s involvement in Magdalene laundries, will not be contained in the report, which is due to be published online at 4pm on Tuesday.

The Irish Times reports that ‘appropriate safeguards’ were implemented to ensure “the sensitivity and confidentiality of the records”.

The report said, “in no case would such sensitive personal data be published or made available to the public without the consent of the data subject”.

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IRELAND
Galway News

February 5, 2013

Groups supporting survivors of Magdalene laundries say it’s a momentous day for the women involved and their families.

However, they say the issue will not rest with the publication of Martin McAleese’s report into the laundries, including the Galway one, later today.

The Justice For Magdalenes Group wants the government to act swiftly – to apologise to the Magdalene women, and to set up a redress scheme that will compensate them.

Galway Labour Senator, Lorraine Higgins is supporting the call for compensation scheme for the survivors of the laundries.

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IRELAND
Irish Central

By
IrishCentral Staff Writers

Published Tuesday, February 5, 2013

Up to 2,000 children were illegally exported from Magdalene laundries in Ireland to adoptive parents in the U.S., mainly to wealthy families.

Many of those children are now demanding justice for their birth parents and an apology from the Irish government who they say were totally complicit in the cover-up of what went on. Activists believe the McAleese report is the first step in the right direction.

The children were taken away from their mothers who worked under near slave conditions in the Magdalene Laundry system set up by the state and religious orders.

The Justice for Magdalenes campaign group, founded in the U.S. by a ‘Magdalene baby’ Mari Steed, has fought a 10-year campaign for an official apology from the Irish State and Catholic Church, and for compensation for all who are still alive.

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IRELAND
Evening Echo

Tuesday, February 05, 2013

“MY LIFE has been devastated — I was left without a mother, without love, without a home, without everything a human being should have.”

Mary Smyth, who spent time in a Magdalene Laundry in Cork, was speaking this morning just hours before a report was released on whether there was State involvement in the incarceration of thousands of women and girls in laundries where they were forced to do unpaid work.

Mary, who was in the Good Shepherd Magdalene Laundry in Sundays Well, was one of several women who told their stories to the interdepartmental committee who have prepared the 1,000-page report.

The committee was chaired by Senator Martin McAleese.

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IRELAND
Scotsman

Published on Tuesday 5 February 2013

A NEW report is today expected to lay bare the extent of responsibility that successive Irish governments must accept for what went on in Magdalene laundries.

• Over 74 years, thousands of women were put to work in detention, mostly in laundries run by nuns

• 18-month investigation into the Catholic-run workhouses will formally reveal state involvement and knowledge

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

A committee chaired by Senator Martin McAleese, who has since resigned from politics, spent 18 months establishing the role official Ireland played in the for-profit Church-run operation.

Survivors have been campaigning for the last 10 years for an apology from state and Church and a transparent compensation scheme.

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LOS ANGELES (CA)
LA Weekly

By Dennis Romero
Mon., Feb. 4 2013

Our jaw dropped a little when a state-and-local professional standards board revealed that porn-star-turned-teacher Stacie Halas’ adult career had been found out by two other school districts before a third appeared to end her stint in California public classrooms.

Well, it happens.

KCET tonight is reporting that Joseph Pina, a “disgraced” ex-priest who had sexual relations with a teenage girl, ended up at the L.A. school district despite the local Catholic church’s warnings:

Yeah, when asked by the district about Pina, the L.A. Archdiocese tells KCET that it gave the ex-priest, who resigned in 1998, a resounding thumbs down for potential employment around children.

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IRELAND
Irish Independent

By Ralph Riegel

Tuesday February 05 2013

AN ELDERLY priest has admitted subjecting a teenage boy to eight years of sexual assaults.

Fr Vincent Mercer (66), right, pleaded guilty before Cork Circuit Criminal Court to 15 sample counts of sexual assault against the teenage boy between 1986 and 1994. Fr Mercer, of Black Abbey, Kilkenny, had faced a total of 39 counts of sexual assault.

The cleric was charged with assaulting the teen at various locations in Munster between January 1, 1986, and February 22, 1994 when the boy was aged between 11 and 17.

Fr Mercer is a serving member of the Dominican Order though he is not now in ministry.

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ARIZONA
The Arizona Republic

[Lawrence Lovell – Los Angeles archdiocese]

[Kevin Barmasse]

By Michael Clancy
The Republic | azcentral.com
Mon Feb 4, 2013

Two allegedly abusive priests who served in Arizona came from the Los Angeles Diocese, where they had abused prior to their transfers, documents show. The information comes from the Los Angeles Archdiocese’s court-ordered release of more than 12,000 pages of files on 124 priests who had been accused of abuse.

The two priests who came to Arizona were Lawrence Lovell, who served in the Phoenix Diocese, and Kevin Barmasse, who was sent to the Tucson Diocese.

The file on Lovell is small. Lovell was a member of the Claretian religious order, not a diocesan priest. The Claretians have not released his full file.

He served in Prescott; San Gabriel, Calif.; and Phoenix before an allegation surfaced in California in 1985.

He immediately was removed from ministry. Later, allegations surfaced in Prescott and Phoenix.

He currently is in prison after pleading guilty to cases in Yavapai and Maricopa counties.

The file on Barmasse is far more detailed.

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LOS ANGELES (CA)
KCET

[with video]

Reporter: Jennifer London
Producer: Karen Foshay
Associate Producers: Lata Pandya and Miguel Contreras
Editor: Jack Moody

February 4, 2013

From the moment that secret personnel files of the L.A. Archdiocese became public last week, nearly everything about the festering church abuse scandal has changed. The hierarchy was shaken, and the faithful were tested like never before. And some victims feel vindicated, but their anger is boiling over.

Val talks to victims’ attorney Ray Boucher and reporter Jennifer London, who this weekend broke the story of Joseph Piña, one of the defrocked priests accused of sexual misconduct with a minor, who gained employment with the Los Angeles Unified School District. The findings are astounding.

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LOS ANGELES (CA)
Press-Telegram

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 anytime 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 in a line going back to St. Peter.

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.

And this crime deserves punishment. That was made clear by the heartbreaking letters that were made public last week.

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INDIANA
Journal Gazette

His title alone gave authority and distinction to Bishop John D’Arcy, but it was his actions and character that earned widespread respect and admiration from Catholics and non-Catholics alike in northern Indiana.

D’Arcy was the spiritual leader of the Fort Wayne-South Bend Roman Catholic Diocese both by position and in practice, always maintaining the dignity and reverence demanded of a Catholic bishop while remaining approachable and personable.

While D’Arcy will be remembered locally for his guidance and leadership of more than 150,000 Catholics in northern Indiana, he was also a beacon of light during the dark pedophile priest scandal that enveloped the Catholic Church. Far too often, the church leadership’s response was to keep the transgressions quiet, moving guilty priests to new parishes where they found more victims. D’Arcy, working for Cardinal Bernard Law in the Boston diocese, began sounding the warning in 1978. In 2004, the National Review Board for the Protection of Children and Young People cited D’Arcy as “a voice in the wilderness.”

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MISSOURI
Fulton Sun

By Don Norfleet

Tuesday, February 5, 2013

Gerald James Howard, 67, a priest who may have worked as a counselor in Callaway County during the 1980s, remains in Cooper County Jail after a judge rejected a motion to dismiss charges against him.

Howard is facing a series of child sodomy and kidnapping charges in Cooper County. He will remain in Cooper County Jail with his bond set at $1.5 million.

On Thursday Cooper County Circuit Judge Robert L. Koffman denied a motion by Howard’s defense attorney to dismiss the charges against Howard, contending the statute of limitations prohibited prosecution.

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UNITED STATES
Christian Catholicism

Jerry Slevin

Sexually violating an innocent child in one’s care is unthinkable. Sexually violating more than 200 deaf children in one’s care is beyond unthinkable! HBO’s current award winning documentary, “Mea Maxima Culpa” shows, horribly, that this is what a lone Milwaukee priest allegedly did. The Vatican, its complicit hierarchical subordinates and subservient local prosecutors evidentally failed repeatedly to curtail it.

Moreover, too many reliable reports, catalogued extensively and accessible to all at BishopAccountability.org, make it clear that the unthinkable has been, and continues to be, pervasive in religious organizations, especially in my Catholic Church, in the USA, as well as in Australia and so many other countries.

This revealing documentary captures the common pattern found in too many U.S. Catholic dioceses, from Los Angeles and San Diego in the West and Philly, New York and Boston in the East and many cities in between. While papal apologists try to obfuscate the pattern in mystical smokescreens, it is mainly and simply about ACCESS, OVERSIGHT and ACCOUNTABILITY.

The recurring pattern is:

(1) EASY ACCESS: Spirtual “power” enables many sexual predators to abuse young children very easily;
(2) BAD OVERSIGHT: Religious leaders, like bishops, frequently fail to curtail the abusers, who then abuse others; and
(3) NO ACCOUNTABILITY: Local prosecutors bend to bishops’ political power permitting abusers to continue abusing.

ACCESS and OVERSIGHT are mainly under bishops’ control. ACCOUNTABILITY is mainly under your control, if you exercise it.

In only 30 seconds you can help change this continuing pattern by applying your political clout. Just click on, as many others are now doing, and sign the petition to President Obama:

[Click here for the petition.]

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LOS ANGELES (CA)
National Post (Canada)

Araminta Wordsworth | Feb 5, 2013

Full Comment’s Araminta Wordsworth brings you a daily round-up of quality punditry from across the globe. Today: After more than a decade of bad press over its handling of child-molesting clerics, there are signs the Roman Catholic Church has learned its lesson.

The diocese of Los Angeles obeyed a court order Thursday, publishing the personnel files of 124 pedophile priests, 12,000 pages of records stretching back decades.

The files made abundantly clear, Cardinal Roger Mahony, the former archbishop, was a major part of the pedophile problem. He quietly moved culprits to other parishes, failed to inform police and seemed more worried about matters of liturgy than the victims.

The other shoe was quick to drop. Friday Archbishop José Gomez banned Mahony and his sidekick, auxiliary bishop, Thomas Curry from acting in any public capacity for the diocese. (As a cardinal Mahony can still help elect the next pope if this event occurs before his 80th birthday.)

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OHIO
Tribune-Democrat

Associated Press

YOUNGSTOWN, Ohio —

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 Monday 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 taught and coached there.

The 62-year-old Baker was found dead of a self-inflicted knife wound at the St. Bernardine Monastery in Hollidaysburg, Pa., on Jan. 26, 10 days after the disclosure of financial settlements in 11 alleged abuse cases at Kennedy.

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NEW JERSEY
The Record

Monday February 4, 2013

BY ABBOTT KOLOFF, KAREN SUDOL AND EVONNE COUTROS

STAFF WRITERS
The Record

Critics accused the Newark Archdiocese on Monday of violating a bishops’ agreement to bar abusive priests by allowing a former Wyckoff assistant pastor to serve as a cleric years after he admitted to fondling a teenager.

The Rev. Michael Fugee, 52, has been a priest in good standing since an archdiocesan review board determined several years ago that he could continue as a cleric as long as he has no unsupervised contact with children, said James Goodness, a spokesman for Newark Archbishop John J. Myers.

Fugee, was an assistant pastor at St. Elizabeth’s Church in Wyckoff from 1997 to 2001, when he was charged with criminal sexual contact and child endangerment for allegedly groping a 13-year-old boy. He now works in the archdiocese’s administrative offices, where he is in charge of raising money for missionary work, Goodness said.

Critics said Fugee should be barred from working as a priest based on an agreement known as the Dallas Charter that American bishops reached at a conference in 2002 to remove from ministry all clerics credibly accused of sexually abusing a child. Goodness said Fugee is not allowed to work in a parish. He declined to say how the review board came to the conclusion that he could continue working at all.

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IRELAND
Irish Examiner

Survivors of Catholic-run workhouses in Ireland are awaiting an apology from State and Catholic church over their forced detention in the institutions.

A report being published tomorrow is expected to formally reveal the extent of the Irish Government’s knowledge, involvement and responsibility for what happened in Magdalene laundries.

A committee, chaired by Senator Martin McAleese who has since resigned from politics, spent 18 months establishing the role that the State played in the operation of the institutions between 1922 and 1996.

Over the 74 years, thousands of single mothers and other women were put to work in detention, mostly in industrial for-profit laundries run by nuns from four religious congregations.

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IRELAND
Sky News

By Vicki Hawthorne, Ireland Correspondent

A report into the running of the Magdalene laundries in Ireland is due to be published.

The religious-run institutions started in the late 1700s as places to rehabilitate so-called “fallen” women.

It is estimated that around 30,000 women, mainly single mothers and teenage girls, were placed in the laundries to work.

There were 10 Magdalene laundries across Ireland and the last one closed its doors in 1996.

In the years since, women who lived in the laundries have spoken out about the harsh and gruelling work they had to carry out.

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IRELAND
BBC News

[with video]

A report published today is expected to detail Irish government knowledge of what went on in Magdalene Laundries.

The laundries were Catholic-run workhouses that operated in Ireland from the 1920s to the mid-1990s.

Girls considered “troubled” or what were then called “fallen women” were sent there by families or the courts.

Sally Mulready, a survivor of the Magdalene Laundries, told the Today programme’s John Humphrys that she was put to work using large washing machines.

“You had to do that or die with starvation,” she explained.

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IRELAND
Irish Independent

KEY files on the Magdalene laundries have gone missing, former senator Martin McAleese will reveal in a long-awaited report today.

An estimated 30,000 single mothers and other women were detained over a period of more than seven decades in the laundries operated by four religious orders.

However, it is understood that Dr McAleese’s report into the State’s involvement in the laundries won’t accuse any order of deliberately destroying or withholding files.

It appears that the records were untraceable despite concerted efforts to find them.

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IRELAND
RTE News

The report of the committee investigating State involvement with the Magdalene Laundries between 1922 and 1996 is to be published this afternoon.

It is expected to respond to allegations by former residents that the State colluded with the Catholic Church to illegally incarcerate thousands of women and girls and to make them do unpaid work.

The report is the fruit of an 18-month inquiry by a committee representing six Government departments and independently chaired by Doctor Martin McAleese.

The report runs to over 1,000 pages.

An estimated 30,000 single mothers and other women were detained or resident in ten laundries.

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IRELAND
The Guardian (United Kingdom)

Henry McDonald Dublin
guardian.co.uk, Tuesday 5 February 2013

Elderly survivors of Ireland’s notorious Magdalene laundries are threatening to go on hunger strike if the Irish government fails to establish a financial redress scheme for women held in the institutions.

The Fine Gael-Labour coalition will receive a report on Tuesday that will establish the Irish state’s role in a system that the UN Committee on Torture described as slavery.

Girls described as “troubled” or deemed to have been morally “fallen” – mainly unmarried young mothers – were ordered by courts to work unpaid in the laundries run by the Irish Catholic church. The workhouses operated from the early 1920s until 1996.

Steven O’Riordain, a representative of the Magdalene Survivors Together, has warned some women will go on hunger strike if the government does not meet their demands.

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NEW JERSEY
The Star-Ledger

By Star-Ledger Editorial Board
on February 05, 2013

How is it possible that Catholic bishops, scorned for their bungling of the church’s sex abuse scandal, remain so consistently tone-deaf when it comes to their kid-gloves treatment of accused priests?

What else explains Newark Archbishop John J. Myers’ appointment of the Rev. Michael Fugee — a priest forbidden to be alone with children after admitting he groped a boy in his parish — to a prestigious position in the archdiocese?

A spokesman says the archdiocese “has every confidence” in Fugee, that he won’t be left alone with kids. That’s an extraordinary vote of confidence for a man who confessed to touching a young boy — escaping only on a technicality.

Sadly, this isn’t surprising. It’s Myers’ pattern of misplaced faith in men who abused the church’s youngest parishioners.

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MARYLAND
Times-News

ERIC TUCKER Associated Press

WASHINGTON — A Las Vegas man has been charged in Maryland with molesting multiple boys in the 1980s while assisting with youth ministries at a church targeted in a child sex abuse lawsuit.

Nathaniel Morales, who had been working as a pastor in Nevada, is accused in an indictment of sexually abusing the boys when he worked with Covenant Life Church in Gaithersburg. That church until December was associated with Sovereign Grace Ministries, a Kentucky-based evangelical church group accused in a lawsuit in Maryland last fall of covering up allegations of child sex abuse by its members. The lawsuit was amended last month to name Covenant Life Church as among the new defendants.

An indictment returned in December charged Morales, 55, with 10 counts of either sex abuse or sex offense and with committing sex acts against four boys between 1985 and 1990. Police said Morales helped with youth ministries during that time and also taught at a Christian school and hosted sleepovers.

Morales is scheduled for a pretrial hearing on Friday in Montgomery County Circuit Court. His lawyer did not return calls seeking comment and a telephone listing for Morales could not be found.

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LOS ANGELES (CA)
Contra Costa Times

By Barbara Jones, Staff Writer
dailynews.com
Posted: 02/04/2013

The Archdiocese of Los Angeles said Monday that it raised red flags with Los Angeles Unified about a pedophile priest before the district hired him as a community liaison in 2002.

Monsignor Craig Cox filled out a reference questionnaire in 2001 for former priest Joseph Pina, saying he was “not the most stable of individuals” and recommending that he not be hired.

Cox also answered “no” when asked if Pina had carried out his job with the archdiocese in an “ethical and safe manner” and whether he’d be hired again.

The questionnaire was provided Monday by the archdiocese as officials scrambled to determine how a priest implicated in the clerical abuse scandal had gone on to work for the school district.

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CALIFORNIA
Patch

[Albert Duggan – Los Angeles archdiocese]

[Cleve Carey]

By John Crandall and Richard Core

February 4, 2013

At least two of more than 100 LA County priests accused of sexual misconduct with a minor had ties to Los Alamitos and Seal Beach, newly released church records show.

Last week, the Los Angeles Catholic Archdiocese released roughly 12,000 pages of clergy personnel files as part of a $660 million 2007 settlement with about 500 alleged sexual-abuse victims. Included in the files is a former priest at St. Isidore in Los Alamitos.

The documents indicate Rev. Albert Duggan was serving as pastor of St. Isidore’s Parish in Los Alamitos from 1948 to 1950. He died in 1979. Additionally, accused Rev. Cleve Carey was living in Los Alamitos from 1976 to 1977 and in Seal Beach from 1977 to 1982. Carey died in 1988.

According to a 2003 report to Archdiocese parishioners, Carey and Duggan were among 210 church officials accused of sexual misconduct with minors since 1930. Casey’s alleged crimes occurred from 1963 to 1966 and involved two accusers. Duggan allegedly assaulted three youths between 1963 and 1971.

A Los Angeles Judge’s decision to require the priests to be identified in the personnel files was the culmination of years of legal wrangling over whether priests’ names should be redacted from the paperwork.

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INDIANA
The New York Times

By PAUL VITELLO

Published: February 4, 2013

Bishop John D’Arcy, who was ignored by his superiors in the 1980s when he warned about priests who later figured in the sex-abuse scandal that rocked the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Boston, died on Sunday at his home in Fort Wayne, Ind., where he had led the Diocese of Fort Wayne-South Bend for 24 years. He was 80.

The cause was cancer, said Sean McBride, a diocese spokesman.

Bishop D’Arcy, who retired in 2009, drew national attention that year when he led a boycott to protest the University of Notre Dame’s invitation to President Obama to speak at its commencement ceremony.

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LOS ANGELES (CA)
The New York Times

[Clergy Files Produced by Archdiocese of Los Angeles]

By LAURIE GOODSTEIN and JENNIFER MEDINA

Published: February 4, 2013

The Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Los Angeles released 12,000 pages of internal files last Thursday on priests accused of sexually abusing children, saying that it was finally abiding by a settlement it signed with victims six years ago to make the painful history public.

But it now appears that the files the church released with much fanfare are incomplete and many are unaccounted for, according to the abuse victims’ lawyers. In addition, on many documents the names of church supervisors informed of abuse allegations were redacted by the archdiocese, in apparent violation of a judge’s order.

At issue is whether the survivors of abuse and the public will ever learn which church officials were responsible for mishandling or covering up allegations of sexual abuse.

Abuse victims had insisted that the Archdiocese of Los Angeles release the records as part of a settlement in 2007, which provided $660 million to more than 500 victims. Other Catholic dioceses that have settled with victims have released similar records.

“We know we have not gotten a complete disclosure,” said Jeff Anderson, who is among the lawyers representing the victims. “They have removed things that should not have been removed, some of which we have seen before, so we know that they exist. It’s more deception, deceit and secrecy.” …

Terrence McKiernan, co-director of BishopAccountability.org, a victims’ advocacy group that collects documents on sexual abuse by clergy members, said he found many omissions by comparing the files on priests released by the Archdiocese of Los Angeles with those released by the Diocese of Orange. The Orange Diocese used to be part of the Los Angeles Archdiocese, so there is an overlap in some files.

“They seem to be trying to protect the names of supervisors not only in Los Angeles, but in other dioceses as well,” Mr. McKiernan said.

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IRELAND
Irish Times

JAMES M SMITH

Opinion: She remains anonymous by choice. She values her privacy above all. She lives alone and never married. She attends daily Mass. She will never again live in Ireland. She celebrated her 78th birthday recently. She is a survivor of the Magdalene laundries.

Her mother died when she was seven. At 14, her father remarried but she and a younger sister were unwelcome in the new family household, the only home they ever knew. Poverty was her only crime.

She was taken to the Good Shepherd convent in New Ross, her younger sister sent by train to the congregation’s Limerick house. The Good Shepherds managed industrial schools for children at both locations and a reformatory school for girls in Limerick.

But the two sisters were put to work in the Magdalene laundry with its population of adult women workers. For the next five years she washed society’s dirty laundry and received no pay. When she refused to work the nuns cut her hair as punishment. The hair grew back but to this day the loss of her education angers her. To her, it was a prison in all but name. There was no inspector, no child welfare officer. She was abandoned and no one cared.

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IRELAND
Irish Times

Tuesday, February 5, 2013

PATSY McGARRY, Religious Affairs Correspondent

The interdepartmental committee report on State involvement with Magdalene laundries will be presented to women who were in the laundries and their advocacy groups in Dublin this morning.

It will also be presented to the Government at its weekly meeting today.

The report was prepared under the chairmanship of Senator Martin McAleese and the committee was set up in July 2011 “to establish the facts of State involvement with the Magdalene laundries, to clarify any State interaction, and to produce a narrative detailing such interaction”.

The report will be published this afternoon.

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LOS ANGELES (CA)
National Catholic Reporter

by Joe Ferullo | Feb. 4, 2013

A few years ago, an official of the Los Angeles archdiocese pulls me over for a private conversation. This attack on the church for “child sex abuse” is inaccurate, he asserts. The vast majority of victims are in their late teens; they are “youths,” he notes, not really “children.” I am stunned for a moment, then advise him this is not an argument he might ever want to make to the general public. The official nods slowly.

At a dinner around the same time, a high-ranking cleric in the archdiocese complains to me and another person sitting next to us. Several states, including California, were then pushing through bills to extend the statute of limitations on child sex abuse as the sandal was gathering steam. This, the official charges, is unfair — this, he says, is changing the legal rules mid-stream. The church, he argues in all seriousness, just wants to play by the rules.

And so it went here out west, year after year, until the bubble burst, as we knew it eventually would, over the last few days. Los Angeles’ new archbishop, Jose Gomez, made public church files that details the depths of abuse and the lengths the cover-up went to in order to protect the church in the eyes of the law and the people.

The stories of abuse are harrowing, but the cover-up is worse. News accounts detail how parents and brothers and police investigators all reached out to Cardinal Roger Mahony and other church officials, firm in belief they would do the right thing in the face of such depravity. But as we have known for too long a time now, they did not.

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LOS ANGELES (CA)
Catholic Culture

By Dr. Jeff Mirus February 04, 2013

Call me naïve, but I was somewhat surprised to see Cardinal Roger Mahony issue an open letter to Archbishop José Gomez in which, at this late date, he seeks once again to excuse himself for his irresponsible handling of sexual abuse by his clergy, especially in the late 1980s. Apparently the Cardinal wants us to understand that his failure to remove pedophile priests from ministry can be explained as a mistake caused by inadequate training and knowledge.

The problem with Cardinal Mahony’s explanation is that we can grant all of his premises and still not come close to justifying his behavior, or the behavior of other bishops who acted in exactly the same way. First, we can grant that Mahony was not instructed in sex abuse when he earned a Master’s Degree in Social Work in the 1960s. But all this means is that he did not study the problem of sexual abuse in an academic setting, nor the steps that might be taken to reduce its incidence, nor the reparative therapies which may or may not have worked for either abusers or their victims.

If Cardinal Mahony were a social worker, a counselor, a psychologist or a doctor attempting to treat people who engaged in or were harmed by sexual abuse, then we could be sympathetic to the difficulty of breaking new ground, of operating without guidance. But he was none of those things. He was a Catholic bishop. His responsibility was not to provide the best therapy to priests and victims. His responsibility was the spiritual and moral well-being of the faithful in his diocese. And his first task in fulfilling this responsibility was to ensure the moral and spiritual quality of his clergy, including their fitness for the priesthood in general.

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LOS ANGELES (CA)
Chicago Tribune

By Dan Whitcomb

LOS ANGELES, Feb 4 (Reuters) – The Los Angeles Unified School District has severed its ties with a priest accused in files released by the Catholic Archdiocese of Los Angeles of molesting a teenage girl, a district spokesman said on Monday.

Father Joseph Pina, one of dozens of priests named in 12,000 pages of records made public by the archdiocese last week after years of legal battles, was hired as a community outreach organizer by the school district in 2002, said Tom Waldman, director of media relations for the LAUSD.

Waldman said Pina, 66, was laid off last year in a wave of downsizing but continued to work occasionally at district events, a practice the spokesman said would end now that his name had surfaced in the archdiocese’s priest abuse scandal.

“He (Pina) apparently alerted the district on Thursday that his name was included in the files,” Waldman told Reuters in an interview. There was no indication Pina was ever arrested or charged in connection with the allegations.

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MISSOURI
KRZK

By: Sally Kaucher
Posted: Thursday, January 17, 2013

Sentencing is delayed for an Alabama man who pleaded guilty in Taney County to multiple counts of sexual misconduct.

Twenty-three year old Lee Bradberry of Auburn, Alabama had been scheduled for sentencing today. Pursuant to an agreement with prosecutors, Bradberry pleaded guilty in September to four counts involving boys ages 9 through 12. The boys attended Kanakuk Kamp in the summer of 2011, while Bradberry was working as a student counselor.

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OHIO
WKBN

[with video]

The mother of a former Warren John F. Kennedy High School student who committed suicide in 2003 said she believes her son’s death was caused by alleged sexual abuse by Brother Stephen Baker, who has been accused of abusing dozens of students in four states.

The former teacher and coach, a member of the T.O.R. Franciscan Order, committed suicide last month after his students accused him of sexual abuse.

Barbara Aponte said when the news of Baker’s alleged sexual abuse at Warren JFK broke last month, the reason behind her son’s 2003 suicide suddenly hit her.

“A flood of memories and images rushed at me and I was thrown right back into the agony of Luke’s death as if it just occurred. What never made sense to me suddenly became clear and guilt overwhelmed me,” Aponte said.

Her son, Luke Bradesku, attended JFK from 1990 to 1994. Aponte said he played football, ran track and received good grades.

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OHIO
WFMJ

YOUNGSTOWN, Ohio (AP) – Youngstown Bishop George Murry has appealed for information from former students about alleged sexual abuse by a Franciscan brother who killed himself after the allegations emerged.

Bishop Murry said Monday 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 taught and coached there.

The 62-year-old Baker was found dead of a self-inflicted knife wound at the St. Bernardine Monastery in Hollidaysburg, Pa., on Jan. 26, 10 days after the disclosure of financial settlements in 11 alleged abuse cases at Kennedy.

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OHIO
Tribune Chronicle

February 4, 2013

AUSTINTOWN – A former Warren John F. Kennedy High School employee plans to discuss her son’s suicide and the matter of Brother Stephen Baker at a news conference here today.

“She is coming out now because she wants to reach others who have had the same experiences,” victim advocate Dr. Robert Hoatson said late Sunday about the 11 a.m. event at the Fairfield Inn on state Route 46. “She has not decided whether she will file suit. She may announce her intention.”

It was not clear when her son took his own life or who may be sued.

Allegations about Baker surfaced in a similar news conference on Jan. 16 in Braceville in which Michael Munno, of Cortland, and an unnamed man announced they had been sexually abused by the Franciscan friar while they were students at JFK in the mid-1980s. It was also announced at that time that the two men were among nine others who had reached a financial settlement with the Youngstown diocese and the Third Order Regular Franciscans over the allegations.

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UNITED STATES
SNAP Wisconsin

CONTACT:
Peter Isely, SNAP Midwest Director (Milwaukee):
414.429.7259

Widely acclaimed by critics across the United States, HBO will begin airing tonight Oscar winner Alex Gibney’s devastating and meticulously researched new film, Mea Maxima Culpa: Silence in the House of God, documenting the sexual assault of at least 200 children at St. John’s School for the Deaf, operated by the Archdiocese of Milwaukee, and the decades long cover up of these crimes by church officials in Milwaukee and Rome, including the current Pope, Benedict XVI.

The film premieres tonight, February 4, 8:00 CST and will run through the month. It is also available on demand.

“Everyone needs to see this film but especially Catholics of the Milwaukee Archdiocese and most of all Archbishop Jerome Listecki and his 29 lawyers,” says Arthur Budzinski of West Allis, Wisconsin. Budzinski was sexually assaulted as a child by Fr. Lawrence Murphy who operated the boarding school. Budzinski is centrally featured in the film, along with several of his classmates. “Listecki,” continues Budzinski, “has done nothing but fight St. John’s victims and other victims of child sex assault by priests in Milwaukee Federal Bankruptcy Court, just as all the archbishops before him. After seeing this film, Milwaukee Catholics must tell him it’s time to stop.”

The Milwaukee Archdiocese filed for chapter 11 bankruptcy in January 2010 in order to resolve “all claims of sexual abuse by priests,” according to Listecki at the time. “But two years and 10 million dollars in lawyers’ fees later, Listecki has done nothing but shamelessly try to throw out of court every single case filed by Murphy’s deaf victims along with over 500 other victims,” according to Peter Isely, the longtime Midwest Director of SNAP, the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests. Isely, from Milwaukee, was interviewed for the film and is himself a childhood victim of a Wisconsin priest.

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