ABUSE TRACKER

BELGIE
HLN

Bewerkt door: Hanne Adriaen
14/11/12

Een 41-jarige aalmoezenier, verbonden aan de Gentse gevangenis, heeft ontslag genomen na klachten van seksueel grensoverschrijdend gedrag. Dat meldt de VRT-nieuwsredactie en wordt bevestigd door het parket van Gent en de woordvoerder van het gevangeniswezen.

Bij het parket van Gent kwamen de afgelopen dagen drie klachten binnen van vrouwen die opgesloten zaten in de Gentse gevangenis. Twee van de vrouwen waren geïnterneerd. Het parket startte daarop een onderzoek wegens mogelijk seksueel grensoverschrijdend gedrag. De aalmoezenier zou de vrouwen ongepast hebben betast.

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BELGIE
Het Nieuwsblad

donderdag 15 november 2012,

Auteur: Sander Luyten en Cedric Lagast

GENT – De Gentse gevangenis heeft een van zijn aalmoezeniers aan de deur gezet omdat hij drie vrouwen betastte. Minstens twee van hen waren geïnterneerd. Opmerkelijk: aalmoezenier Ives D.M. (41) nam het net openlijk op voor het lot van deze groep psychiatrische gevangenen.

Twee weken geleden vertelde een vrouw in de Gentse gevangenis aan directeur Luc Stas dat ze betast was door de aalmoezenier. De vrouw is geïnterneerd: ze zit in een speciale afdeling van de gevangenis voor psychiatrische patiënten. Ze vertelde dat aalmoezenier Ives haar tijdens een gebedsessie plots begon te betasten.

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AUSTRALIA
The Global Mail

By Stephen Crittenden
November 15, 2012

A royal commission into child sexual abuse could go a long way to acknowledging the pain of victims, and allowing Christians to once more have faith in their institutions. But how should the terms of inquiry be framed, and how long might the cleansing take?

Australia’s Cardinal George Pell gave the worst media performance of his career at his press conference in Sydney on Tuesday. It was lazy, half-hearted and a complete waste of everyone’s time. He looked more than ever like yesterday’s man.

No wonder Pell’s former auxiliary in Sydney, retired bishop Geoffrey Robinson, said on ABC Radio’s The World Today program on Wednesday that George Pell was “an embarrassment”. Bishop Robinson also disagreed with the cardinal about the inviolability of the seal of confessional in cases where a paedophile priest makes a confession to another priest.

Tony Abbott, Australia’s most high-profile lay Catholic, also came out on Wednesday disagreeing with the cardinal on the same issue. “If they become aware of sexual offences against children, those legal requirements must be adhered to,” he told reporters. “The law is no respecter of persons, everyone has to obey the law, regardless of what job they are doing, what position they hold.”

That’s a measure of how isolated Pell now is within the Catholic Church in Australia. It was an extraordinary day for Australian Catholics. But then so was Tuesday, and the day before, when Prime Minister Julia Gillard announced there would be a national royal commission into the sexual abuse of children.

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UNITED STATES
National Catholic Reporter

by Maureen Fiedler | Nov. 14, 2012

When I read stories about the current meeting of Catholic bishops in Baltimore, I don’t know whether to laugh or cry.

The bishops gathered after suffering electoral defeats across the board. Despite their thinly veiled electioneering, Obama was re-elected. More specifically, the majority of the Catholic vote went for Obama. And voters approved all four referenda on marriage equality for gay and lesbian couples, despite the bishops’ opposition. Even Heidi Heidkamp – a Democrat in “red state” North Dakota – won her senate race despite specific electioneering against her by the Bishop of Bismarck.

You would think it would be time for soul-searching and a new approach to the world of public policy. But no!

There was no sign that they planned to re-visit their positions on birth control and religious freedom (in relation to the Affordable Care Act) or marriage equality.

They could not even come to grips with current economic realities and put them in the light of Catholic social teaching. What was supposed to be a major statement on the economy failed to pass… and it sounds like deserved to fail. It did not even mention the rising income inequality in the United States. It contained only one sentence on the right of workers to organize. It failed to reference the bishops’ 1986 Pastoral, Economic Justice for All. And in spite of an explicit recommendation from the bishops themselves, the committee that wrote this failed document did not consult an economist.

Then… Cardinal Dolan of New York told the assembled bishops to repent and confess their sins. But neither Dolan nor the assembled bishops chose to discipline Bishop Robert Finn of Kansas City, MO who sat as part of the group, although he is a convicted felon because he covered up sex abuse crimes in his diocese. So much for repentance.

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UNITED KINGDOM
The Daily Beast

by Tom Sykes Nov 15, 2012

The UK’s spiraling child-abuse scandal has already reached Prince Charles once – he was a good friend of the children’s TV presenter Jimmy Savile who was hailed as an eccentric saint in his lifetime but has been unmasked as a predatory paedophile in death – and now the prince’s judgment is being called into question again, after it emerged that a retired Church of England bishop arrested yesterday by police investigating historic allegations of child sex abuse was given a free house to live in by Charles after the bishop resinged in disgrace having received a police caution for committing acts of gross indecency against a 17-year old trainee monk.

Sussex police arrested the 80 year-old Rt Rev Peter Ball, former bishop Gloucester, on Tuesday morning on suspicion of eight sex offences against eight boys and young men in the late Eighties and Nineties, after carrying out a “comprehensive and painstaking” analysis of internal church files “relating to certain child safeguarding issues within the Chichester diocese from between 20 and 25 years ago”, the Guardian reported.

Ball was created bishop of Gloucester in 1991 at a ceremony attended by Prince Charles. But in 1993, Ball resigned in disgrace after receiving a police caution for committing an act of ‘gross indecency’ against a teenage trainee monk. The young man involved, Neil Todd, spoke out about Ball’s ‘mental, sexual and physical’ abuse on the BBC in May.

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AUSTRALIA
CathNews

The Prime Minister took the only course open to her in agreeing to a Royal Commission into child sexual abuse in our country. There has been more than enough media coverage to convince any fair-minded person of the terrible damage done through the abuse of children, writes Bishop Pat Power in Eureka Street.

Over the past 20 years I have listened to people who have suffered such abuse, sometimes many years ago, and every time I hear a heartrending story I see another facet of the horror of this criminal behaviour.

The loss of childhood innocence, the secrecy which means little ones carry a burden they can share with no one, the misguided sense of guilt they often carry for many years, blaming themselves for what someone else has done to them, their shame before God; all of which may be compounded at times when they do try to unburden their troubled souls and find they are not believed or understood.

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AUSTRALIA
Canberra Times

November 15, 2012

The cardinal’s lack of empathy reflects a leadership deficit.

THE Catholic cardinal, George Pell, is wrong on so many levels. In his response to the Gillard government’s decision to hold a royal commission, which will examine how allegations of sexual abuse were handled by Australian institutions, Dr Pell suggests the church has been unfairly targeted by the media. He claims it has been maligned by ”smears”, and that the extent of ”misdoing” inside the Catholic Church has been ”exaggerated”. He calls for statistics to demonstrate the media’s focus on the Catholic Church is out of proportion to the incidence of sexual abuse inside the church.

Statistics are one thing, but this is not a game of numbers. The church has attracted appropriate scrutiny for the appalling way that its leaders have handled allegations and evidence of sexual abuse in past years and more recently. It has, rightly, been strongly criticised for failing to do the proper, decent thing that any Australian would do, which is to report instances of criminal wrongdoing to the police.

Dr Pell bemoans how the church has been ”unable to convince public opinion” of its changed ways since 1996, when it put in place protocols for dealing with allegations of sexual abuse. On that much at least, Dr Pell is correct. It has failed to convince the public because there is plenty of evidence that all is not fixed. Victims of sexual abuse say as much, and so does Victoria Police, which told the state parliamentary inquiry how the Catholic Church hindered police investigations and dissuaded victims from reporting abuse. Police noted that not one of the hundreds of abuse allegations handled by the Catholic Church in Victoria has been referred by it to police. Serving NSW police officers also complain, saying the church has thwarted official investigations at every turn.

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AUSTRALIA
Lawyers Weekly

15 November, 2012 Stephanie Quine

A Royal Commission into child sexual abuse in religious institutions will help to give victims some peace, according to a senior counsel.

Barrister and spokesperson for the Australian Lawyers Alliance (ALA), Dr Andrew Morrison SC (pictured), said victims of sexual abuse could never get back to where they were, but might get some satisfaction if they are listened to and feel that justice will ultimately be done.

Morrison said Barry O’Farrell’s proposed “very limited” inquiry into police and Church handling of abuse by Catholic Church clergy in the Hunter Valley would leave 99 per cent of the victims in NSW feeling that their needs were being ignored.

“The Murphy Inquiry in Ireland was cathartic, it needed to be because there was a huge cultural change required,” said Morrison.

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NEW ZEALAND
The Farming Show

By: Newstalk ZB staff | New Zealand News | Thursday November 15 2012

As the Australian government sets up a Royal Commission to investigate how institutions like schools and churches have dealt with accusations of abuse – there are calls for the same to happen here.

The Catholic Church is coming in for the most attention.

Australian Police have indicated they want to speak to members of St John of God in New Zealand in relation to incidents at Marylands school in Christchurch where three Catholic brothers were convicted of historical abuse.

National manager of the Male Survivors of Sexual Abuse Trust, Ken Clearwater, says many other victims came forward after those cases went to court – highlighting the scope of the issue in New Zealand.

“It’s widespread throughout New Zealand and the Catholic Church in New Zealand have tried to downplay it and I think now they may have to open it up.”

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AUSTRALIA
Northern Rivers Echo

Andy Parks
15th Nov 2012

They say a week is a long time in politics.

It was only last Friday that I met up with Robbie Gambley to talk about the Blue Knot Day event he was organising to support victims of childhood sexual abuse.

That very morning on the radio I’d heard a senior NSW police detective break ranks and claim investigations into child sexual abuse were being blocked by the Catholic Church in what he called a systematic cover-up. That same day The Age newspaper in Melbourne ran a story about a ring of 15 religious brothers and an ‘alpha paedophile’ suspected of the unreported murder of two boys and the abuse of 40 more in the 1960s.

Calls for a Royal Commission have been made loudly and repeatedly over many years, and on that Friday morning as I heard the latest news reports and also listened to Robbie bravely tell The Echo his story, I never thought we’d have a Royal Commission announced within the week.

But now it’s happened and victims’ support groups all over the country are starting to feel that finally, a light may be shone into some very dark places.

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AUSTRALIA
Green Left Weekly

Thursday, November 15, 2012

By Karl Hand

“The time has come for judgment to begin in the house of the Lord,” said the Apostle Peter to the early Christian Church (1 Peter 4:17). Very different issues were being faced then, but not too different. The church was facing intense public scrutiny, and Peter said that the suffering would be a cleansing experience. Those who were guilty (murderers, thieves and criminals, v. 15) would be exposed for what they are, and the innocent (v. 16) would be vindicated.

But ever since the alliance of church and state power, beginning in the fourth century, and coming to its climax when Pope Innocent IV appointed the Holy Roman Emperor in the 13th century, the Christian Church has managed to avoid the spiritual purification that comes from being held accountable for your actions by a secular state.

Sleaze

The sexual abuse of children by priests, and the systematic cover-ups by the church hierarchy, are the manifestation of a deeper rot – a lack of insight into the appropriate use of pastoral power.

Michel Foucault has described pastoral power as control over the destiny of a group of people, and individuals within that group, rationalised on the basis of the ancient oriental metaphor of a shepherd caring for sheep. According to Foucault, the acquisition of this kind of power by the medieval church laid the foundation for the governments of modern nation-states.

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AUSTRALIA
ABC Religion and Ethics

By Patrick Parkinson
ABC Religion and Ethics
15 Nov 2012

As is now well known, the prevalence of child sexual abuse is a major issue for the Catholic Church. There have been many priests and members of religious orders jailed, and many more identified offenders who died without ever being brought to justice. We have witnessed a stream of allegations for well over a decade now.

There are comparatively few allegations of child sexual abuse by ministers of religion in other churches. There are some, as there are in all other organizations involved in work with children and young people. With colleagues I have done a study of the prevalence of abuse in the Anglican Church across Australia. I have some knowledge also of what has happened in other churches. Reliable statistics are not available, but in my opinion, and based on the available data, there has been around six times as much child sexual abuse by clergy and religious in the Catholic Church as there is by ministers of religion in all the other churches in Australia combined – and I would regard that as a conservative figure.

Admittedly, the Catholic Church is the largest denomination in Australia, and it is also one in which priests and religious have been involved in schools and orphanages, unlike ministers of other churches. Even still, the reality is that the levels of abuse in the Catholic Church are strikingly out of proportion with any other church – and, from what I have seen, this is an international pattern. That makes it inevitable that a great deal of the focus of the national royal commission, so far as it concerns churches and faith-based organisations, is bound to be on the Catholic Church. This is also so because of the very serious allegations raised first by the Victorian Police and then echoed from the experience of a long-serving senior detective in NSW.

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UNITED STATES
A.V. Club

by Alison Willmore November 15, 2012

Director: Alex Gibney
Cast: Documentary
Rated: Not Rated
Running time: 106 minutes

Whether or not audiences are already familiar with the Catholic Church’s mishandling of sexual-abuse cases, Mea Maxima Culpa: Silence In The House Of God is primed to deliver a heady dose of outrage via a broad overview of systemic cover-ups tracing to the Vatican, as well as a specific and heartbreaking case in Wisconsin. The latest film from prolific Oscar-winning documentarian Alex Gibney (Taxi To The Dark Side), Mea Maxima Culpa is not gentle about placing blame on a structure that elevates priests above the rest of mankind and prioritizes maintaining an appearance of pious perfection over addressing some grievous wrongs committed. Victims of abuse face not only an organization unwilling or unable to dispense justice, but also fellow members of the faith who are encouraged not to believe their accusations or to urge them to keep silent.

That metaphorical silence is also a literal one in the film’s central story, about a group of men who were abused as boys attending the St. John’s School for the Deaf in Milwaukee. Attending the school in the ’60s, they were molested by Father Lawrence Murphy, and faced added challenges of communication that kept them isolated from anyone who could help them. As college students, they took up the fight to reveal the truth about Murphy, going to the police, the church, and the district attorney, and putting up flyers when no one would take their side. The men tell their story in sign, with the likes of Ethan Hawke, John Slattery, and other actors voicing their words, a clever choice that allows the viewer to focus on the anguished emotion on their faces rather than on subtitles.

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LOUISIANA
Acadia Parish Today

MARKSVILLE – A former pastor pleaded guilty on one count of indecent behavior of a juvenile and has been sentenced to eight years in prison with no benefit of probation, parole or suspension of sentence.

12th Judicial District Court. District Court Judge Billy Bennett sentenced Allen Chris Gintz who restricted the offender to house arrest until he reports to prison.

He can not leave his home unless it is to places approved by the court. Judge Bennett ruled Gintz could not even go to church.

Bennett gave Gintz two weeks to get his affairs in order before reporting to prison on Nov. 26.

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UNITED STATES
Orange County Weekly

By MARSHA MCCREADIE Thursday, Nov 15 2012

It’s a good thing documentary filmmaker Alex Gibney is an ex-Catholic; it takes the rage of the disillusioned to so zealously rip the veil as he does in Mea Maxima Culpa: Silence In the House of God. Yet even non-believers will get angry deciding which is worse: the sexual abuse of deaf children (mostly, though not exclusively, boys) at St. John’s School for the Deaf in Milwaukee from the 1950s through the early ’70s, or that the Church worked so hard to hide it.

Putting a face on misery, as he did in his Oscar-winning Taxi to the Dark Side, Gibney begins with four of the 200 boys abused by Father Lawrence Murphy—Terry Kohut, Gary Smith, Pat Kuehn and Arthur Budzinski—all as brave today for being filmed as they were when they first tried to out Murphy in 1973, handing out fliers proclaiming, “Serial Child Abuser Is Loose in Milwaukee” and turning him in to the police to no avail. (The men’s stories are given voice by actors including Chris Cooper, Ethan Hawke and John Slattery.) Terry describes Murphy as wolf-like; in one of the movie’s re-enactments, we watch his nightly visitations stalking the dorm, looking especially for boys whose parents didn’t sign and couldn’t be told.

Though Murphy admitted to some wrongdoing in a Church-supervised internal investigation, defending himself by saying he was taking the sexual sins of adolescents upon himself, he was, as with so many abusive priests, simply moved to another diocese. The film also exposes secret million-dollar settlement funds, even an attempt to buy an island in the Caribbean for pederastic priests. Cute, but instead, they were also recycled, not expelled. A ratatat spray of documents and expert testimony from sex counselors, priests with and without collars, and journalists including religion reporter Laurie Goldstein demonstrates who knew what and when they knew it. Vatican chronicler Marco Politi asserts that Church archives date child abuse to the 4th century.

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AUSTRALIA
ABC News

The Catholic diocese of Ballarat will provide all its documentation on sexual abuse to the national royal commission.

The Federal Government has begun consulting with victims, support groups and state governments about the terms of reference for the national inquiry.

Ballarat has been at the centre of many cases of clergy abuse in Victoria, with four former clergymen convicted with hundreds of child sex offences.

Bishop Paul Bird says the local diocese will provide all of its records.

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AUSTRALIA
Green Left Weekly

Thursday, November 15, 2012

By Barry Healy

Late on November 12, Julia Gillard announced a federal Royal Commission into child abuse in Australian institutions. The announcement came after growing scandals about paedophilia within the Catholic Church had reached the point where it was politically untenable for the government to continue with inaction.

With a Victorian parliamentary inquiry and a NSW Special Inquiry already underway, independent members of parliament, the Greens leadership and ALP MPs were demanding action. The leadership of the Catholic Church has been anxious for an investigation that is broader than the Church so that it can hide behind the fig leaf that other institutions may have also failed to act.

At the peak of society, a clash is beginning between modern, opportunist politics and arcane religious thought patterns.

But, most importantly, this clash is being driven from below by a demand for justice that is so deeply felt and widely spread that it could explode not just the Australian Catholic Church hierarchy but destabilise the Labor/Liberal mainstream political duopoly as well – that is, if the Royal Commission probes into major party political collusion with the Church.

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AUSTRALIA
3AW

Posted by: Derryn Hinch | 15 November, 2012

I was off-air yesterday obviously, attending the funeral of dear friend and AW colleague Paul Barber. And I expressed some of my thoughts on the AW website. It was a lovely funeral.

As my grandma would say: ‘They done him proud’. It was a Catholic service at the Immaculate Conception church in Hawthorn. Before the service I had a private chat with the celebrant, Father Kevin Dillon of Geelong. A fine man of the cloth.

He has appeared several times on this program as long ago as when Pope John Paul II visited Melbourne. Father Dillon is actually a listener and he applauded my on the marathon campaign I have waged against child abusers. Especially in his church.

And it got me thinking. How hard it must be right now… how hard it must have been for years.. for decent, honourable clergymen having to (by association) wear the revulsion and opprobrium we have for paedophile priests.

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AUSTRALIA
Courier Mail

Shannon Deery
Herald Sun
November 15, 2012

A MAN who was allegedly drugged then raped by a former priest at a Catholic boys’ school has described his attacker as “like the devil”.

The man, who cannot be identified for legal reasons, told the Melbourne Magistrates’ Court today he was 12 years old when he was raped by former Salesian priest David Rapson.

The man said the abuse had led to a life-time problem with drug and alcohol abuse and depression.

Rapson, 59, is charged with abusing seven boys between 1973 and 1990 at various schools including Salesian College Rupertswood, in Sunbury.

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AUSTRALIA
My Daily News

A CATHOLIC bishop says priests who hear the confessions of paedophiles have the option of urging the “criminals to turn themselves in” or refusing them forgiveness, but should not break the “sacred” Seal of Confession.

The Most Reverend Anthony Fisher, who is the Bishop of Parramatta, wrote to members of the diocese this week after Prime Minister Julia Gillard called for a royal commission into child abuse.

Child abuse across a range of institutions will be the subject of the royal commission, not just the Catholic Church.

There have been calls for priests who hear the confessions of paedophiles to appear before the royal commission.

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AUSTRALIA
The West Australian

Luke Eliot, The West Australian
November 15, 2012,

A leaked document shows Emeritus Archbishop Barry Hickey rejected recommendations when he was Archbishop of Perth to move a priest accused of child sex abuse to a ministry without a school.

The West Australian has obtained a confidential document written by Archbishop Hickey, who retired this year. It referred to Father Richard Joseph Doyle, who is now retired.

The report was signed in June 2000 and was a response to an internal assessment regarding Father Doyle, who, it stated, was the subject of child sex abuse allegations.

The assessment found there was no evidence to support a claim that a “small boy” was abused in Bruce Rock but that “on the balance of probabilities there are grounds to the complaint in respect of the girls”, relating to women who said Father Doyle dealt with them inappropriately when they were children.

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MISSOURI
ABC 17

A priest already convicted of sex crimes and accused of molesting Mid-Missouri children is at the center of another investigation.

Boone County prosecutors confirmed today there is an ongoing investigation into allegations Fr. Gerald Howard sexually abused a boy in Columbia in the 1980s. Howard is currently in jail in Cooper County on similar charges.

Authorities say the abuse happened while Howard was serving as a priest in Boonville in the 1980s, after a conviction on sex crimes against a child.

The Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests, also known as SNAP, says after leaving Saints Peter and Paul Catholic Church in Boonville, Howard worked as a counselor in Columbia and then Fulton. The Callaway County Prosecutor says he has been made aware of the potential for victims there.

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AUSTRALIA
National Survivor Advocates Coalition

A star is rising in the East.

That would be Australia where Prime Minister Julie Gillard announced this week a royal commission would investigate sexual abuse and the institutional response to it.

She said the royal commission, the highest level of investigation in Australia, was not targeting any one church but you’d have to be deaf, dumb, blind and dead not to realize the trigger for this monumental action was the series of revelations regarding pedophile priests in the Catholic Church.

In making the announcement, the prime minister, Ms Gillard said: “There have been too many revelations of adults who have averted their eyes from this evil. I believe in these circumstances that it is appropriate for there to be a national response through a royal commission.”

Senior Police Office Peter Fox said in a letter to the New South Wales state Premier Barry O’Farrell, “I can testify from my own experience that the church covers up, silences victims, hinders police investigations, alerts offenders, destroys evidence and moves priests to protect the good name of the Church.”

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AUSTRALIA
Eureka Street

Michael McVeigh November 14, 2012

The Royal Commission into child sexual abuse can only be a good thing for the Catholic Church. It is a chance to account for the betrayal and crimes of priests and other church representatives who committed acts of abuse against the vulnerable, and for the careless, even callous way in which many church officials responded to complaints against their own. This will be a long overdue first step in moving forward.

However, while victims have been calling for a Royal Commission for a long time, and while the bishops have welcomed it, the fact that it has taken government intervention for a proper account of the crisis to take place represents in part a failure of the Church’s response.

The Church’s defenders point to the policies and procedures put in place to protect children, the establishment of the National Committee for Professional Standards, and the Towards Healing processes for providing compensation and support for victims unwilling to make complaints against abusers through the legal system.

Most abuse cases today are from more than 20 years ago, indicating a change in Church practice and in cultural attitudes, providing better protection for young people. The Church’s current procedures are part of a laudable move towards a response centred on the needs of victims, and a greater awareness of the problem in general.

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FRANCE
Sud Ouest

Ce frère mexicain de 42 ans, déjà condamné à Angoulême en février, était poursuivi pour une nouvelle agression sexuelle.

La justice des hommes avant celle de Dieu… Hier, le tribunal correctionnel de Mâcon a condamné Roberto San Augustin Gomez – de son nom d’église frère Luigi Gonzaga – à vingt-cinq mois de prison ferme pour l’agression sexuelle d’un lycéen de 17 ans, le 25 mai 2001 à Cluny, en Saône-et-Loire. Les faits s’étaient déroulés dans une chambre d’hôtel, où le religieux avait convié sa victime, avec qui il avait partagé quelques bières.

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AUSTRALIA
The Morning Bulletin

Kerri-Anne Mesner |
15th Nov 2012

THE royal commission into child sex abuse, announced by Prime Minister Julia Gillard on Monday, should look at two points – the abuse and how much has been done to support victims.

This is what Catholic Bishop of the Diocese of Rockhampton Brian Heenan said yesterday.

“There is so much pain and confusion around the practice of sexual abuse across all society in Australia,” he said.

“It (the commission) should bring clarity to this confused situation.”

Bishop Heenan, who supports the commission and has experience supporting child abuse victims of a former Rockhampton Catholic priest (here in the 1960s), said the Catholic Church felt terribly ashamed about what had happened.

“There’s no point in denying it,” he said.

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UNITED KINGDOM
Vatican Insider

Retired bishop, Peter Ball, allegedly abused eight children between the 80’s and 90’s. A former pastor has also been arrested

Vatican Insider staff
Rome

A former Anglican bishop and a priest who are now retired were arrested today on charges of sexual abuse against minors as well, British media have reported.

The arrests were made following an inquiry into reports of cases of sex abuse in the Church of England. Charges were principally lodged against eighty year old former bishop, Peter Ball, and are to do with acts of abuse against young people aged between 12 and 20 in the 80’s and 90’s.

Ball was arrested at his home in Somerset. He apparently had acquaintances in the Royal family, referring to Prince Charles as his “loyal friend”.

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UNITED KINGDOM
Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests

Posted by Barbara Dorris on November 13, 2012

We are grateful to police for arresting Bishop Peter Ball. Simply because he is elderly and has retired does not mean that he is safe around children. In fact, his age and “grandfatherly” image may actually make him more dangerous.

Especially in cases of abuse involving prominent men like Bishop Ball, it is rare for victims to come forward while these men are still in positions of respect. We hope that with his arrest today, those who may have seen or suspected crimes by Bishop Ball will come forward and make a report to police. Only by breaking this silence will kids truly be kept safe.

Officials within the Church of England should immediately use all of their resources to try to find others who may have been hurt by Bishop Ball or the other unnamed priest who was detained. Church leaders should make announcements in bulletins, at the pulpit, and personally to churchgoers at each parish where either of these men worked.

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UNITED STATES
Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests

Posted by Barbara Blaine on November 13, 2012

Globe editor Martin Baron is moving on to the Washington Post. Every parent in the US should be grateful to him.

In an unprecedented and brave move, he gave the Globe’s superb investigative team the green light to thoroughly investigate widespread clergy sex crimes and heinous cover ups, first in Boston, then across America. As a result of his courage and their incredible skill and determination, thousands of child molesting clerics and hundreds of corrupt Catholic officials have been publicly exposed. Some of the criminals have been prosecuted and many of them have been ousted from schools and parishes. Literally tens of thousands of girls and boys are safer because of Baron’s bold and compassionate decision and the Globe’s tenacious and solid reporting.

We wish Mr. Baron well at the Washington Post and will always be deeply grateful for his historic role in the on-going global movement to safeguard children from predator priests and complicit bishops.

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AUSTRALIA
Newcastle Herald

By Phillip Coorey
Nov. 15, 2012

POLITICIANS of all persuasions, from Julia Gillard and Tony Abbott down, say Catholic priests must not be exempt from having to report child abuse to police should they hear it in the confession of a colleague.

MPs said the royal commission into sexual abuse should examine the issue and recommend that, where necessary, state criminal codes be harmonised to mandate that priests go to the police in child sexual abuse matters.

The federal Attorney-General, Nicola Roxon, who is charged with setting up the commission, agreed the seal of Confession should be looked at, but she cautioned against too much focus on the issue.

Ms Roxon said the commission’s remit would be much broader than just the Catholic Church.

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CANADA
Windsor Star

A pedophile priest who fled southern Ontario two decades ago, only to be convicted of abusing boys at an orphanage in Malta, will spend five years in prison there after a failed bid to overturn his sentence.

Defrocked priest Godwin Scerri — still wanted in Essex County for alleged sex abuse in Emeryville and on Pelee Island — was convicted in 2011 of abusing boys in Malta. His lawyer immediately launched plans to appeal the five-year conviction.

The Malta Today news agency is reporting that Scerri was handcuffed and taken to jail this week after a judge dismissed the appeal.

Scerri abused an undisclosed number of boys at an orphanage in Malta. But he was cleared of a rape charge on a technicality, because the crime allegedly took place in a different location than the one listed on the charge sheet.

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AUSTRALIA/NEW ZEALAND
Stuff

ALISTAIR BONE

A Waikato-based enquiry has been launched to find victims of a serial-paedophile priest who previously worked in the region.

Father Denis McAlinden is thought to have abused hundreds of girls aged between four and twelve in Australia and has at least one known victim in New Zealand.

But a researcher into sexual abuse by Catholic priests is certain the prolific Australian paedophile abused more than just one girl while he was working in the Hamilton Diocese in the 1980s.

Father McAlinden spent six months in the region in 1984, but only a single victim from his time here has so far come forward.

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MISSOURI
Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests

Posted by David Clohessy on November 14, 2012

Clergy sex abuse victims are blasting Kansas City’s controversial Bishop Robert Finn for “staying silent” about the recent death of an alleged predator priest who has been sued several times for molesting kids.

Leaders of SNAP, the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests, says Finn should have “honored his pledge to be ‘open’ about clergy sex crimes” by notifying the public and his parishioners about Fr. John R. Tulipana, who apparently died last week.

Obituary.

“As best we can tell, there’s nothing on diocesan or church websites about Fr. Tulipana’s passing,” said Barbara Dorris, SNAP’s outreach director. “Yet just weeks ago, Finn again promised he would be more forthcoming about child sex cases in his diocese. He continues to ‘talk the walk’ while refusing to ‘walk the walk.’”

According to the KC Star, Tulipana worked at eight area churches (six affiliated with schools) from 1976 to 1994, when he resigned after The Star reported that the diocese had paid $150,000 in 1989 to a man who had accused Tulipana of sexually abusing him as a teen.

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MISSOURI
Survivors Network of Tthose Abused by Priests

Posted by Barbara Dorris on November 14, 2012

What will Archbishop Robert Carlson do about one of his priests – accused of fondling a girl earlier this year – whose criminal trial has just been scheduled for March.

Will Carlson do what Catholic bishops almost always do – nothing? Or will he display real leadership and courage and compassion by using his vast resources help police and prosecutors build a strong case and successfully keep a child molester away from other kids?

This isn’t rocket science. It’s common sense and common decency. Through church bulletins and parish websites and archdiocesan publications, Carlson can – and should – send a simple but crucial message: “If you have any information that might help law enforcement convict Fr. Xiu “Joseph’ Jiang, please step forward right away.”

Why is this crucial?

Because child molesters rarely strike only once.

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AUSTRALIA
Sydney Morning Herald

November 15, 2012

Josh Gordon
State political editor for The Age.

It was the Victorian decision that finally got the ball rolling.

THE announcement of a sweeping royal commission on the sexual abuse of children must have come as a much-needed political gift for Ted Baillieu as he approaches the two-year anniversary of his election win.

After a bruising year, the Premier can now justifiably claim some credit for the historic decision: finally Australia will fling open the curtains and shine some light on decades of allegations of institutional sexual abuse and church cover-ups.

It was, after all, his government that got things rolling by setting up a parliamentary inquiry after the Cummins inquiry into child welfare.

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MALTA
Times of Malta

Victims of two former priests whose prison sentences for child abuse were confirmed by an Appeals Court yesterday have called on the Government to investigate the files of similar cases that were being “hidden” by the Church.

Speaking on the steps of the court shortly after a judge confirmed the imprisonment of their abusers, Lawrence Grech said he wanted to appeal to the Government to investigate other claims.

He said he also wanted to appeal to victims of sex abuse to come forward and make their claims known to the police.

The files of abuse cases were being hidden by the Church in the Curia, he claimed.

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MISSOURI
KSDK

Written by
Dave Keiser

Bowling Green, MO (KSDK) – The associate pastor of the Cathedral Basilica in the Central West End of St. Louis is set to stand trial March 7th and 8th, 2013.

29 year old Reverend Xiu “Joseph’ Jiang was charged last summer with first degree child endangerment after reportedly trying to fondle a 16 year old girl several times in early 2012. The Catholic priest, who was a friend of the victims family, is also charged with felony witness tampering.

In court Tuesday, motions to dismiss the child endangerment charge was denied. He’s now scheduled to stand trial next year in Pike County where the case was moved from Lincoln County on a change of venue.

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AUSTRALIA
WA Today

November 15, 2012

Joseph Wakim

The royal commission into ”institutional responses to child abuse” will not have the authority to review one vexed issue: the mandatory vow of clergy celibacy.

While we should be careful not to confuse correlation with causation, one compelling question cannot be avoided – why do Eastern Catholics and other churches with married clergy rarely encounter claims of child sex abuse?

As a Maronite Catholic, with an uncle who was a married priest with four children, this choice of celibacy or marriage has been functional since the church’s foundation.

Catholic churches in the East, the birthplace of Christianity, have always had married clergy.

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AUSTRALIA
NEWS.com.au

Gemma Jones
The Daily Telegraph
November 15, 2012

THE Catholic church honoured a paedophile priest – who died in jail – with a marble headstone which listed his achievements.

One of James Patrick Fletcher’s victims yesterday said the burial in the priests’ section of Sandgate Cemetery near Newcastle was the “final insult”.

A brass plaque records the deviant’s career as a priest. In death he kept his title of Reverend Father.

A court found the 65-year-old had committed “a gross and inexcusable breach of trust” when he raped an altar boy, a crime for which he was sentenced to almost eight years prison, where he died in 2006.

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IRELAND
NEWS.com.au

IRELAND’S landmark inquiry into Catholic Church child sex abuse uncovered more than 100 cases of rape and assault involving at least 21 priests in only one small county diocese.

The 2005 Ferns Report found the church, police and government failed in their duties to protect children.

It said the church hierarchy considered rape and sexual assault a moral issue rather than a criminal matter.

Only two priests were convicted over the scandal in County Wexford. A third priest charged committed suicide in the late 1990s before his case went to court.

Almost half the accused priests had died by the completion of the report, one of four major child abuse inquiries in Ireland over the past decade including the Cloyne Report, the Murphy Report and the Ryan Report.

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AUSTRALIA
The Australian

FOR Catholics who wish to remain in a state of grace, the church offers the service of the confessional, whereby the priest conducts an audit of the soul on behalf of the Almighty. Since the penitent is considered to be confessing to God alone, in the presence of his servant, the information is protected under the seal of the confessional.

A priest who tried to withhold information gained in this way from a royal commission could be jailed for contempt. In practice, a wise royal commissioner would first explore every other avenue to establish the truth, knowing that the fabric of society is best preserved by avoiding pushing the theoretical conflict between church and state to the ultimate test. For its part, the church takes a pragmatic approach, in so far as its divine obligations will allow. Priests are adept at guiding penitents in the direction of the local police station when needed, quietly and without fanfare. George Pell has gone further, advising priests not to hear a confession when they suspect that criminal behaviour might be revealed.

Those who simply want to put a stop to child abuse will see this debate as entirely confected. It is unlikely to come to a head at the forthcoming royal commission, assuming goodwill on behalf of the commission and the church. Those who see an opportunity to discredit the Catholic Church, however, will milk it for all it is worth.

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CALIFORNIA
TheMediaReport

Southern California contingency lawyer John Manly, who has pocketed millions of dollars by suing the Catholic Church, has now admitted that his office has obtained clients for abuse lawsuits by making unsolicited phone calls to Catholic Church parishioners.

This startling new revelation in the Catholic Church abuse narrative was exclusively reported by Sue Nowicki at The Modesto Bee newspaper.

According to Nowicki’s piece, numerous individuals in the Diocese of Stockton (Calif.) have said that they received unsolicited phone calls to their homes from a woman hired by Manly. These calls, they claim, left them to conclude that Manly was “fishing” for victims in the case of an accused Catholic priest, Fr. Michael E. Kelly.

Manly has admitted that he hired the woman, but only to “investigate” Kelly.

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PHILADELPHIA (PA)
Catholics4Change

November 14, 2012 by Susan Matthews

Recent institutional sex abuse coverups within the Philadelphia Catholic Church and Penn State University mobilized a group of professionals, parents and advocates to form CSA: Let’s Face It. Through its Web site and events, the new nonprofit offers support to adult survivors and hopes to raise awareness of the public health crisis created by child sex abuse.

The statistics are staggering. One in four girls and one in six boys are sexually abused before the age of 18. One in five has received a sexual approach or solicitation from an adult via the Internet in the past year. Medical expenses related to rape and sexual abuse of children tops $1.5 billion and indirect costs exceed an estimated $69 billion (CDC 2001). There is so much more to know.

“This is information we have to get into the community,” said president Maureen Martinez. “We think one of the most effective ways to do that is by offering an online resource hub.” Their Web site, www.csaletsfaceit.org, extends beyond well beyond numbers and facts. The home page shares a public service announcement featuring a former Philadelphia Eagle and other survivors from all walks of life. Others can share their own stories by submitting video blogs. A resource page provides links to other non-profits that focus on specific needs related to child sex abuse.

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UNITED STATES
Democracy Now

[with video]

“Mea Maxima Culpa: Silence in the House of God,” a new documentary by Oscar-winning filmmaker Alex Gibney, investigates how a charismatic priest in Milwaukee abused more than 200 deaf children in a Catholic boarding school under his control. The young students were molested again and again by Father Lawrence Murphy, who stalked them in their dorm rooms at night, on trips to his rural cabin, and even in the confessional booth. Gibney, whose past films include “Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room” and the Academy Award-winning “Taxi to the Dark Side,” joins us to discuss his new exposé, which opens this Friday in theaters in New York City and Los Angeles, and will debut on HBO in February 2013. [includes rush transcript]

Guest:
Alex Gibney, Oscar-winning documentary filmmaker. His latest film is called Mea Maxima Culpa: Silence in the House of God. His past films include Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room and the Academy Award-winning Taxi to the Dark Side, which focuses on an innocent taxi driver in Afghanistan who was tortured and killed at Bagram Air Force Base in 2002. Mea Maxima Culpa: Silence in the House of God opens this Friday in theaters in New York City and Los Angeles, and will debut on HBO in February 2013.

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AUSTRALIA
Stock & Land

WESTERN AUSTRALIA

Catholic

Archdiocese of Perth Gerard William Dick was sentenced in 1995 to 3½ years jail for 10 incidents of indecently dealing with boys aged between eight and 10 at a Christian Brothers’ orphanage in Western Australia.

Diocese of Bunbury Adrian Richard Van Klooster pleaded guilty to four counts of indecently dealing with children under the age of 13 and was found with child pornography on his computer.

St Andrew’s Hostel A former hostel warden at St Andrew’s Hostel in Katanning from the 1970s to early 1990s, DJK, is serving his second jail term for abusing 11 boys.

WA government

Children’s homes The WA government confirmed 22 government-run institutions were named by child victims of abuse lodged under the Redress WA scheme.

Fairbridge farm More than 200 child migrants who were among those sent to Pinjarra’s Fairbridge farm school for child migrants, between 1930 and 1981, have been awarded more than $1.1 million.

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AUSTRALIA
J-Wire

November 14, 2012

The Rabbinical Council of Victoria has welcomed the Royal Commission into sexual abuse perpetrated against children.

Rabbi Yacov Glasman told J-Wire: “Given the surfacing of child sexual abuse allegations in Jewish communities around the world ranging from secular to religious, the Rabbinical Council of Victoria welcomes a nationwide Royal Commission and commends the Federal Government on its decision. The RCV reaffirms its utmost condemnation of those who perpetrate such evils against children or turn a blind eye to them and reminds the community that alleged ‘Halachic’ reasons to refrain from reporting abuse to the police or other relevant authorities are completely without foundation.”

Rabbi Chaim Ingram of the Rabbinical Council of New South Wales added: “Judaism teaches that all forms of abuse – physical, emotional and sexual – of one human being by another is heinous and wrong. This is particularly true of the abuse of a child by an adult.

Judaism also teaches that dina de-malchuta dina, that in civil matters “the law of the land is law”.

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AUSTRALIA
NEWS.com.au

•Tory Maguire
•From: News Limited Network
•November 14, 2012

I’ve only ever been to confession twice, both times when I was a young child. The first time I couldn’t think of anything to confess to so I made up some sins and was rewarded with penance of two Hail Marys.

In hindsight the Hail Marys were probably for lying to God. Our parish priest was a good man who would have known when an 8-year-old was talking it up.

But even then it felt very weird to me that children would be expected to enter a dark little box on their own and open up the conversation with: “Forgive me Father for I have sinned”.

Even stranger was that if you’d done something wrong that was the end of it, the priest wouldn’t even tell your Mum.

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AUSTRALIA
ABC News

[with video]

By Josie Taylor

Cardinal George Pell has made a court application to find out sensitive information about a sex abuse victim, before Australia’s most senior Catholic gives evidence at Victoria’s parliamentary inquiry into church abuse.

The ABC was the only media present in the hearing before Judge Roy Punshon in the Victorian County Court this morning.

Barrister Marcus Hoyne, acting for Cardinal Pell, said the matter was somewhat urgent, as his client might have to give evidence at the inquiry before the end of this month.

Mr Hoyne told the court Cardinal Pell was seeking evidence from the trial of convicted paedophile and former Christian brother Robert Best.

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AUSTRALIA
NEWS.com.au

CHILD sex abuse is not a secret priests should keep, prominent Catholics say.

Sydney priest Father Chris Riley, founder of Youth Off The Streets, says he refuses to take confessions because he could not listen to a child sex abuser without reporting them to police.

Melbourne priest and radio host Father Bob Maguire says if a pedophile confessed his sins he’d tell him he would report him. And controversial NSW married priest Father Kevin Lee says he would convince an offender to seek outside help.

Australia’s most powerful Catholic, Cardinal George Pell, is looking increasingly at odds with the Catholic community with his strident defence of the seal of Confession, which means that child sex abusers can confess their sins to a priest and not be reported to police.

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AUSTRALIA
Sky News

The idea that the confessional stays confidential even when people use it to admit to crimes is ‘medieval’, an independent senator says, as senior Liberals call for the practice to be overturned.

Australia’s most senior Catholic, Cardinal George Pell, has insisted ‘the seal of confession is inviolable’ even if a priest confesses to child sex abuse.

Cardinal Pell said on Tuesday priests should avoid hearing confession from colleagues suspected of committing child sex abuse to avoid being bound by the seal of confession.

Independent senator Nick Xenophon says that’s an anachronism.

‘This is a medieval law that needs to change in the 21st century,’ he told reporters in Canberra on Wednesday.

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AUSTRALIA
Sky News

Prime Minister Julia Gillard says using the seal of the Catholic confessional to cover up child abuse is a ‘sin of omission’ because all adults have a duty of care towards children.

Ms Gillard says the terms of reference for the federal royal commission announced on Monday haven’t been set, and nor has the way evidence will be gathered and witnesses questioned.

‘That is going to be a matter for the royal commissioners we appoint,’ she told reporters in Brisbane.

She said all parties including institutions and victims would be consulted carefully on the terms of reference.

When asked if the commission should examine the Catholic Church’s seal of the confessional, the prime minister agreed that it wasn’t good enough that some adults had been ‘averting their eyes’ from the problem of child abuse.

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AUSTRALIA
The Age

November 15, 2012 15

Michelle Grattan

THE royal commission on child sex abuse might become a joint federal-state inquiry, Attorney-General Nicola Roxon has flagged.

Ms Roxon said the government was keen to discuss with the states ”whether there are advantages to doing it jointly and whether there’s an interest in doing so”.

It was common in the 1970s and 1980s to have the Commonwealth and a number of states jointly establish commissions that were looking at issues that crossed jurisdictional boarders, she said.

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AUSTRALIA
The Age

November 15, 2012

Steve Butcher

LAWYERS acting for Cardinal George Pell have applied to a Melbourne judge to inspect a court file from a trial of convicted paedophile and Catholic brother Robert Charles Best.

It is believed the material sought includes a transcript of evidence by one of Best’s victims who has recently alleged Cardinal Pell was present when the boy complained of being raped by Best.

Cardinal Pell has described the victim’s claim as ”irresponsible, untrue” and said that they were ”absolutely denied”.

The Archbishop of Sydney has said he was not in Ballarat in 1969 when the boy was raped and was not appointed to the diocese until 1973.

It is believed that the victim, during his trial evidence, did not raise the allegation about Cardinal Pell and that he was unsure who had been there.

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AUSTRALIA
Brisbane Times

November 15, 2012

Josephine Tovey, Phillip Coorey

MEMBERS of the clergy would face jail for failing to report knowledge of sexual abuse gained during confession, with pressure growing to lift the confidentiality laws that protect them.

Exemptions exist for members of the clergy, medical workers and social workers among a small number of professions in NSW if they conceal a crime from authorities if it was gained in their professional duties.

Yesterday Julia Gillard and Tony Abbott added their voices to calls that Catholic priests not be exempt from having to report child abuse to police if they hear it in the confessional.

MPs said the forthcoming royal commission on sexual abuse should recommend that state criminal codes be harmonised to mandate priests to go to the police in child sexual abuse matters.

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AUSTRALIA
Brisbane Times

November 15, 2012

Phillip Coorey
Sydney Morning Herald chief political correspondent

POLITICIANS of all persuasions, from Julia Gillard and Tony Abbott down, say Catholic priests must not be exempt from having to report child abuse to police should they hear it in the confession of a colleague.

MPs said the royal commission into sexual abuse should examine the issue and recommend that, where necessary, state criminal codes be harmonised to mandate that priests go to the police in child sexual abuse matters.

The federal Attorney-General, Nicola Roxon, who is charged with setting up the commission, agreed the seal of Confession should be looked at, but she cautioned against too much focus on the issue.

Ms Roxon said the commission’s remit would be much broader than just the Catholic Church.

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AUSTRALIA
JTA

November 14, 2012

SYDNEY (JTA) – The announcement by Australia’s Prime Minister of a royal commission into the “vile and evil” scourge of child sex abuse has reignited the controversial issue inside the Jewish community.

Julia Gillard announced Monday that the inquiry would include children under the care of all religious organizations and that it would focus on the response of the institutions to the alleged sex abuse cases.

Yeshivah College, an Orthodox school run by Chabad in Melbourne, has recently been at the center of controversy since allegations broke last year that students had been victims of sexual abuse.

Its principal, Rabbi Yehoshua Smukler, issued a statement Wednesday saying: “Child abuse is abhorrent and has a traumatic consequences for victims and their families. Victims of abuse deserve support and closure and a royal commission is a very positive and welcome step.”

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MALTA
Times of Malta

Everyone can breathe a sigh of relief that this court case is finally over.

Two former priests who have used every legal tool at their disposal to drag out a very sad episode will finally go to prison for abusing children in their care after an Appeals Court confirmed their convictions yesterday.

Godwin Scerri and Charles Pulis, formerly members of the Missionary Society of St Paul, were sentenced in August 2011 to five and six years’ imprisonment respectively for sexually abusing boys in their care at St Joseph Home in Santa Venera. However, rather than show contrition for what they had done, they chose to prolong the pain for their victims.

Their approach, though legally permissible, was not morally commendable – even if at the conclusion of the appeal yesterday the presiding judge found that the charges filed in relation to one of the victims against Mr Pulis was time-barred and that Mr Scerri was not guilty of abusing one of the boys from several who made allegations. Ultimately, this was of little consequence because Mr Justice David Scicluna felt it made no difference to the prison sentences they were handed by a magistrate last year.

The primary relief comes for the victims themselves. The incidents took place many years ago and all of them now are grown men, some with families of their own. But their psychological scars have been clearly visible throughout. These are the indelible marks that the former priests have left on these human beings.

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AUSTRALIA
The Economist

Nov 14th 2012, 6:52 by R.M. | SYDNEY

AFTER mounting public pressure Julia Gillard, Australia’s prime minister, announced on November 12th a sweeping public inquiry into what she called the “evil” of child sexual abuse. The inquiry will take the form of a royal commission, with wide investigative powers. Like its brief, its duration is open-ended. The hearings may take years, and promise to confront Australians with harrowing evidence.

Earlier this year, the state parliament in Victoria set up an inquiry into child abuse “by religious and other organisations”. The spark for Ms Gillard’s national inquiry was struck on November 8th by Peter Fox, a police detective chief-inspector in the neighbouring state of New South Wales. Mr Fox wrote an open letter to Barry O’Farrell, his state’s premier, and then gave an explosive television interview to the Australian Broadcasting Corporation. He accused the Catholic Church of covering up child sexual abuse, particularly in the Hunter Valley region north of Sydney, where he works. Mr Fox wrote:

“I can testify from my own experience that the church covers up, silences victims, hinders police investigations, alerts offenders, destroys evidence and moves priests to protect the good name of the church. None of that stops at the Victorian border.”

The culture of cover-up may not be confined to churches. Mr Fox says some in the police force have tried to smear him as mentally unstable since he came out as a whistleblower: “I knew when I decided to speak out that it was a one-way door, and there’s no going back.”

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AUSTRALIA
The Examiner

By CALLA WAHLQUIST
Nov. 14, 2012

FOUR per cent of the victims who accessed a Northern sexual assault support service last year said they were abused by an authority figure outside their family.

Laurel House manager Marg Dean said child sexual abuse that took place in an institution, such as a church or a school, was the third most common story counsellors at the Launceston-based service heard.

According to the service’s latest annual report, 31 per cent of clients said they were abused by a family member, and 29 per cent named a friend or acquaintance.

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AUSTRALIA
Canberra Times

November 15, 2012

Barnaby Joyce

Paedophilia and the associated sexual abuse and exploitation of children inspire the intense and immediate disgust of all civilised people. If there was an inverted hierarchy, then the perpetrators would dwell in the cesspit of the human condition.

It is quite obviously a no-brainer that when addressing an issue such as paedophilia we must seek whatever is within our power to stop those who seek pleasure from destroying children, and seek justice for those who have suffered because of this perversion.

The pursuit of the criminal perpetrators must not be limited to one church or institution. There cannot be the differentiation that means one person’s crime is somehow less or greater than another’s when it is the same action of an adult sexually exploiting a child.

If paedophilia and sexual abuse occurred in a Catholic school it must be investigated and brought to justice. If it occurred in a juvenile detention centre or in a youth group, our law must be diligently upheld. If it is condoned or overlooked in a community or if there is implicitly a blind eye turned by reason of political correctness or cultural hesitation, then we are not fulfilling the task that we state is imperative.

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AUSTRALIA
Adelaide Now

ANDREW Bolt speculates on the direction of Australia’s wide-ranging royal commission into child sex abuse.
———-

I AGREE, we need a royal commission into the sexual abuse of children. The air must be cleared.

Yet this royal commission called by the Prime Minister already risks going badly off the rails and becoming not a force for good but of cultural destruction.

Here are the three greatest dangers:

1) It becomes an anti-Catholic crusade

Many in the largely anti-clerical media want to use this excuse to smash a church that lectures on modesty, duty, faithfulness and other fun-killers.

On ABC TV, columnist Joe Asten put the main lines of the media attack: “It’s quite clear that almost exclusively this is an issue within the Catholic Church.

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AUSTRALIA
The Daily Telegraph

Tommy Campion
The Daily Telegraph
November 15, 2012

WHEN I saw Prime Minister Julia Gillard on TV announcing there would be a royal commission into child abuse in churches and other institutions I was overwhelmed.

I wept uncontrollably. I became breathless. I walked the floor struggling to breathe, trying to comprehend what I had heard.

It was later I realised it was about time the truth was revealed, perhaps it was time for hope and happiness, not sadness.

I lived in the Church of England North Coast Children’s Home in Lismore from 1949 to 1964. Most of those years were full of hatred, bloody brutal floggings, bashings, starvation and sexual abuse. It was a home of hell and fury.

In the time I was there more than 200 innocent children were verbally, physically and sexually assaulted. Fear ruled our lives

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AUSTRALIA
The Australian

Gemma Jones, James Campbell
From:Herald Sun
November 15, 2012

PRIESTS and clergy who refuse to break the seal of confessional before the Royal Commission face being jailed for six months.

Cardinal George Pell pledged this week confession was “inviolable” but the sweeping powers of a royal commission into the cover-up of child sexual abuse will compel priests to answer questions.

Constitutional lawyer George Williams said he expected clergy to face jail rather than divulge what they have been told inside a confessional.

“Royal commissions have the discretion to go behind the confessional seal if need be to compel evidence of what occurred in the confessional box,” he said.

“You would need to think very carefully (about using the power), you would probably find priests willing to go to jail.”

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AUSTRALIA
7 News

By Suzanne Smith, ABC
Updated November 14

The senior lawyer who reviewed the Catholic Church’s Towards Healing protocol says he can point to alleged contemporary cover-ups.

Professor Patrick Parkinson was cited by Cardinal George Pell as the man who had reviewed the church’s protocols on two occasions and had given it his tick of approval.

But Professor Parkinson has told the ABC’s Lateline program he has withdrawn his support for the protocol because the church failed to take action over clergy who do not comply.

He alleged a cover-up in the church, as late as 2005, put children at risk.

The Professor of Law at Sydney University also says allegations made by New South Wales Detective Chief Inspector Peter Fox and Victorian police amount to “organised criminality”.

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UNITED KINGDOM
Western Daily Press

A retired Church of England bishop, one of two clergymen arrested by police investigating historic allegations of child sex abuse, was released last night on medical grounds.

Peter Ball, 80, was held at his home near Langport, Somerset, on suspicion of eight sex offences against eight boys and young men aged from 12 to their early 20s in East Sussex and elsewhere in the late 1980s and 1990s, sources said.

Sussex Police said last night that he was released at his home on medical advice and it was their intention to interview him at a later date.

He has in the past described Prince Charles as a ‘loyal friend’ and lived for a decade in the Somerset village of Aller in a Duchy of Cornwall property after he resigned from the church in mysterious circumstances in 1993.

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UNITED KINGDOM
Eastbourne Herald

Published on Wednesday 14 November 2012

POLICE have released the former Bishop of Lewes after arresting him yesterday on suspicion of sex abuse in East Sussex dating back more than 20 years.

The Right Reverend Peter Ball was released on medical advice following his arrest. Sussex Police have said it is their intention to interview him at a later date.

The former bishop of Lewes and Gloucester, is being held on suspicion of abusing eight boys and men in the late 1980s and early 1990s. All of the victims were in their late teens or early twenties, except one who was 12. He was arrested at his home near Langport, Somerset.

In a statement, Sussex Police said: “We will continue pursue allegations of sexual offending robustly.

“Investigations must always include proper regard for the health and welfare of suspects, as well as for that of victims, and we also comply with the requirements of the Police and Criminal Evidence Act in relation to the treatment of people under arrest.”

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AUSTRALIA
The Age

November 14, 2012

Mark Russell

As former Catholic priest David Rapson began to abuse boys one night at the Salesian College Rupertswood, he told another priest who was urging him to resist the temptation: “God made us this way and it’s his fault”, a court heard today.

One of Rapson’s alleged victims claimed the priest had given a number of boys a cup of Milo which had an acrid taste before abusing them.

Rapson, 59, has been charged with one count of rape, five counts of indecent assault, four counts of indecently assaulting a child under 16, and one count of gross indecency for alleged offences between 1973 to 1990.

Rapson had been a teacher and former vice-principal at Rupertswood.

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AUSTRALIA
ABC News

[with video]

By court reporter Sarah Farnsworth

The Melbourne Magistrates Court has heard a former Catholic priest accused of abusing boys told another priest “you know what we do here”.

David Rapson was a former teacher and vice-principal at the Salesian College Rupertswood in Sunbury, north of Melbourne, when it is alleged he abused seven boys.

In a statement tendered in court at a committal hearing, an alleged victim said he had spent the night in the infirmary in the late 1970s when several boys were brought in.

“I remember thinking how strange it was that everyone got sick at the same time,” he said.

The court heard Rapson then gave the boys a hot drink, forcing it on them if they refused.

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AUSTRALIA
Big Pond News

Wednesday, November 14, 2012

Opposition Leader Tony Abbott says all Australians should report knowledge of child abuse, even what priests are told in confession.

This follows the call from senior opposition frontbencher Christopher Pyne that priests have a responsibility to report crimes to police even if the details are given to them during confession.

Australia’s most senior Catholic, Cardinal George Pell, on Tuesday told reporters ‘the seal of confession is inviolable’ even if a priest confesses to child sex abuse.

Mr Abbott says everyone has to obey the law.

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AUSTRALIA
ABC News

[with video]

By Anthea Kissell

The Catholic Bishop of the Northern Territory says the people of the Tiwi Islands should decide if a Royal Commission is to revisit an alleged child sexual abuse case.

Brother John Hallett was accused of systematically abusing boys at the Francis Xavier Boys School at Nguiu from the mid-1980s to 2003.

He was found guilty of a number of offences by a Darwin jury but his convictions were later quashed on appeal.

At least forty children had claimed they were sexually abused by Brother Hallett.

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AUSTRALIA
Sydney Morning Herald

The Religious Write
Barney Zwartz is religion editor of The Age

George Pell has been a beacon for criticism over the years and even more so this week. Much of it is richly deserved. But some of it is, frankly, silly and shows a culpable ignorance (at least, if you want to be a commentator) of the Catholic Church.

George Pell is Australia’s only active cardinal, but he is not Australia’s chief Catholic. No one is. If there were such a position it would belong to the cardinal’s close friend and colleague, Melbourne Archbishop Denis Hart, as the chairman of the Australian Catholic Bishops Conference.

Each bishop of Australia’s 30-odd Catholic dioceses is theoretically autonomous, answerable to the Pope, not Pell. So to say he should have done this in Newcastle or that in Ballarat is to miss the point: he has no authority there; he is the Archbishop of Sydney.

But that doesn’t let him off the hook when it comes to talking about the Catholic Church in Australia. As he said in Tuesday’s press conference in Sydney, he has considerable moral influence, which he uses to comfort some and discomfort others.

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AUSTRALIA
Hobsons Bay Weekly

By GOYA DMYTRYSHCHAK
Nov. 13, 2012

AN ALTONA Meadows woman, who was molested from age eight to 11 by a priest, says a federal royal commission into sexual abuse by the Catholic Church will weed out paedophiles and protect potential victims.

But Mairead Ashcroft , who will this month address the state parliamentary inquiry into sex abuse by the clergy, warned it would be a tough time for survivors and urged them to seek help.

“Just imagine your worst nightmare is being forced over and over and over and over on the news,” she said. “That’s OK for me because I’ve come to terms with it and I’m working on it, but for those people who have been holding it a secret — for some of them, decades — it must be stirring them up something shocking.

“Some of them will be overwhelmed and some traumatised, but that’s not the fault of the commission; that’s the fault of their abusers.”

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AUSTRALIA
Macquarie Port News

By Judith Ireland and Michelle Grattan
Nov. 14, 2012

Senior federal Liberal frontbencher Christopher Pyne has declared that priests should report child sex abuse crimes revealed in the confessional to police.

On Wednesday, Mr Pyne – who is a practising Catholic – said that as a member of Parliament, it would be wrong of him to advise citizens not to report crimes, particularly something as serious as child abuse.

”If a priest, or anyone else, is aware of the sexual abuse of children that is going on, I think there is an obligation on them to report it to the appropriate authorities,” he told ABC Radio.

On Tuesday, in the wake of Prime Minister Julia Gillard’s announcement of a royal commission on child abuse, Cardinal George Pell said that the seal of confession was ”inviolable”.

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AUSTRALIA
ABC News

The ACT Public Advocate says the terms of reference for the Royal Commission into sexual abuse should be broadened to include emotional abuse.

Prime Minister Julia Gillard has announced a wide-ranging inquiry will investigate child abuse in institutions such as schools, churches and foster homes.

The terms of reference are yet to be announced, but Public Advocate Anita Phillips says it should cover government-run institutions and the abuse of women.

“Many of them, whether they were in single-mothers homes, or young women in organisations run by nuns, they were subjected to physical and emotional abuse,” she said.

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AUSTRALIA
News 24

Sydney – Attorney-General Nicola Roxon said on Wednesday it was “abhorrent” for priests not to report paedophilic acts revealed in the confessional, and urged Australia’s child sex inquiry to investigate the issue.

Australia has announced a royal commission into how religious organisations, not-for-profit bodies, state agencies, schools and police have responded to child sex abuse in a wide-ranging inquiry set to take years.

Roxon said one of the issues it could consider was whether the protection of the confessional should be removed.

“I think the royal commission needs to look very carefully… at institutional barriers, at systematic problems, of course that might include those very sensitive issues for religious organisations,” she said.

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AUSTRALIA
7 News

AAP
Updated November 14, 2012

Priests could forced to break the “inviolable” Catholic seal of the confessional, after calls for the royal commission into the handling of child sex abuse to examine the controversial church rule.

Prime Minister Julia Gillard says using the seal of the confessional to cover up child abuse is a “sin of omission” because all adults have a duty of care towards children.

“It’s not good enough for people to engage in sin of omission and not act when a child is at risk,” she said.

Australia’s most senior Catholic, Cardinal George Pell, insisted on Tuesday the seal of confession was inviolable, even if a fellow priest confessed to child sex abuse.

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AUSTRALIA
Malaysia Chronicle

A FORMER priest charged with sexually abusing seven boys over an 18-year period blamed God for making him do it, a court has been told.

David Rapson, 59, is charged with abusing the boys while teaching at Salesian College Rupertswood, in Sunbury, between 1973 and 1990.

The former college vice-principal is charged with one count each of rape and gross indecency and a string of indecent assault charges.

The Herald Sun revealed last year up to seven priests and brothers at the college have been linked to secret payouts to students who alleged they were abused between the 1960s and the 1990s.

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MALTA
Times of Malta

Wednesday, November 14, 2012 by
Waylon Johnston

Two former priests yesterday sat impassively as an appeals court judge confirmed a magistrate’s decision to send them to jail for sexual abuse crimes committed against children in their care.

Godwin Scerri, 75, and Charles Pulis, 64, bothformer members of the Missionary Society of St Paul, were sentenced in August last year to five and six years’ imprisonment respectively for sexually abusing 11 boys in their care at St Joseph Home in Sta Venera some 20 years ago.

Mr Justice David Scicluna spent two hours reading out a meticulous and studied judgment. The men were then led away surrounded by six police officers and taken in a prison van to begin their jail term.

The case first came to light in 2003 when the victims and, namely, Lawrence Grech, who became the unofficial spokesman for them, spoke up about what went on in the home when he was a teenager.

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AUSTRALIA
7 News

By Tim Palmer, ABC
Updated November 14, 2012

A retired bishop has slammed Australia’s most senior Catholic, Cardinal George Pell, as an embarrassment, saying priests must be prepared to break the confessional seal if it is for the “greater good”.

Bishop Geoffrey Robinson says Cardinal Pell is out of step with the majority of Australia’s bishops and should no longer speak for the Catholic Church in Australia on the issue of sexual abuse by the clergy.

He was speaking to The World Today after Attorney-General Nicola Roxon said the issue of whether priests should be forced to reveal information given to them in the confessional would be considered by the upcoming royal commission into institutionalised sexual abuse.

Bishop Robinson, who won international attention for his published work on the need for the church to confront the abuse problem, told Tim Palmer that he believed Cardinal Pell was “not a team player”.

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UNITED KINGDOM
The Guardian

Robert Booth
The Guardian, Tuesday 13 November 2012

The arrest of Bishop Peter Ball on suspicion of sexual offences against boys and men at addresses in East Sussex and elsewhere is the latest development in a wide-ranging and often contentious series of official inquiries into decades of alleged child protection failures in the diocese of Chichester on England’s south coast.

Sussex police said on Tuesday that Ball is suspected of committing offences during the late 1980s and early 90s, when he was Bishop of Lewes, with responsibility for most of the parishes of East Sussex.

But alleged crimes and indecent behaviour by some priests linked to the diocese involving children, young church members and trainees date back further than that. Over the last four years church officials in Chichester, as well as at Lambeth Palace, the office of the archbishop of Canterbury, and Sussex police have all been involved in trying to get a grip on abuse allegations in the area.

Ball is the highest-profile church figure yet to be arrested, but the attention the scandal is likely to receive is only set to rise. Between now and next April, three separate child abuse cases against priests in the diocese of Chichester will be heard at Lewes crown court.

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LOUISIANA
Avoyelles Today

A former Marksville pastor reached a plea deal and plead guilty on one count of indecent behavior of a juvenile and has been sentenced to eight years in prison with no benefit of probation, parole or suspension of sentence. The plea deal for Allen Chris Gintz was reached on Thursday, November 8 in 12th Judicial District Court. District Court Judge Billy Bennett sentenced Gintz to prison. Because Gintz plead guilty to a sex crime, he must serve the entire eight years in prison.

Gintz was ordered to remain under house arrest and wear an ankle bracelet until he reports to prison. He can not leave his home unless it is to places approved by the court. Judge Bennett ruled Gintz could not even go to church.

He gave Gintz two weeks to get his affairs in order before reporting to prison on the Monday after Thanksgiving. Gintz had requested 30 days but Judge Bennett refused the request giving him just two weeks.

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AUSTRALIA
The Daily Telegraph

AAP
November 14, 2012

FEDERAL Attorney-General Nicola Roxon says the debate surrounding Catholic priests who admit to pedophilia in confession points to the failure of institutions and not religion.

Australia’s most senior Catholic, Cardinal George Pell, on Tuesday told reporters “the Seal of Confession is inviolable” even if a priest confesses to child sex abuse.

Ms Roxon described the situation as unacceptable.

“No one thinks it’s acceptable that if you knew about a crime of child abuse, that you would not protect the child, let alone report the matter to police,” Ms Roxon told ABC radio on Wednesday.

She said the federal government’s royal commission into child abuse would look beyond religion.

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AUSTRALIA
9 News

Victorian Catholic priest has disagreed with Cardinal George Pell over the role of the media in reporting child sex abuse in the Catholic Church, saying most Catholics would be grateful for the exposure.

Cardinal Pell, Australia’s most senior Catholic, said on Tuesday the church was not interested in denying misdeeds but objected to it being exaggerated in the media.

But Father Kevin Dillon, of the St Mary of the Angels Catholic Parish in Geelong, said he disagreed with Cardinal Pell and believed the media had played an important role in its focus on child sex abuse in the Catholic Church.

“I believe most Catholics are probably rather grateful to the media for a focus on something which they find enormously shameful and greatly distressing,” Father Dillon told ABC Radio on Wednesday.

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AUSTRALIA
Herald Sun

Lawyers should be required to report evidence of child abuse to police, says Child Safety Commissioner Bernie Geary

LAWYERS should be required to report evidence of child abuse to police if they aware that a client they are defending is guilty, says Child Safety Commissioner Bernie Geary.

Mr Geary told 3AW radio that both lawyers and priests should be legally compelled to report evidence of abuse to authorities.

“I think it’s one in all in. I can’t see any reason that anybody who is aware of a child being maltreated, abused, should hold that information. For the sake of the child we all should be looking after children,” he said.

“Professional people are compelled to report, social workers and the like. There’s a list of mandated people. Lawyers too, yes. If they are aware of the person that they were defending is guilty, of course, professionally they need to acknowledge that. I do think that we do make rules for some and not for others.

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AUSTRALIA
The Standard

By ANDREW THOMSON
Nov. 14, 2012

A Warrnambool detective has revealed abusive priests were relocated by the former head of the Catholic Church.

THE former head of the Catholic Church in western Victoria knew about sex abusing priests but just kept moving them, the Warrnambool detective who led two investigations into clergy abuse has revealed.

Detective Senior Constable Colin Ryan headed the investigations into former Catholic priests Paul David Ryan and Brian Coffey which led to convictions.

He has also passed on a large amount of information about the activities of the two paedophiles to the state parliamentary inquiry.

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AUSTRALIA
The Australian

Jared Owens
From:The Australian
November 14, 2012

CARDINAL George Pell has moved to release abuse victims from any confidentiality agreements signed with the Catholic Church in exchange for compensation but is resolute that priests who have heard pedophiles’ confessions should not answer questions at the proposed royal commission.

Australia’s most senior Catholic said yesterday the wide-ranging inquiry into child sexual abuse across religious, state and community institutions would be a “welcome” opportunity to “separate fact from fiction”.

The Archbishop of Sydney also lashed out at the media for “exaggerating” abuse in Catholic institutions, and denied any “widespread public cynicism” about the church’s efforts to bring abusers to justice.

Asked whether the church would seek to uphold historic confidentiality clauses to prevent witnesses testifying at the commission, Cardinal Pell said witnesses should be “free to say what they want”.

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AUSTRALIA
The Australian

Lanai Vasek and Peter Wilson
From:The Australian
November 14, 2012

ATTORNEY-General Nicola Roxon says the royal commission into child abuse will determine if the confidentiality of the Catholic confessional should be broken to ensure pedophile priests are reported to authorities.

Ms Roxon said she was currently consulting with her state counterparts to determine the terms of reference of the commission and expected “several commissioners” to be chosen to work on the inquiry.

She said it would be up to the commission to work out if Catholic priests would be compelled to report confessed child abusers.

“I think we are asking the royal commission to look at what went wrong in particular institutions,” Ms Roxon told ABC radio.

“I don’t think we should be ruling in and out any issues that might be raised at the commission.

“We know that there are delicate matters and ultimately that’s why I think it’s important to pick commissioners with high standing and considerable experience and let them do the job that the government and the community is asking them to do.”

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UNITED STATES
Village Voice

By Marsha McCreadie Wednesday, Nov 14 2012

It’s a good thing that documentary filmmaker Alex Gibney is an ex-Catholic; it takes the rage of the disillusioned to so zealously rip the veil as he does in Mea Maxima Culpa: Silence in the House of God. Yet even nonbelievers will get angry deciding which is worse: the sexual abuse of deaf children (mostly, though not exclusively, boys) at St. John’s School for the Deaf in Milwaukee from the 1950s through the early ’70s or that the church worked so hard to hide it.

Putting a face on misery, as he did in his Oscar-winning Taxi to the Dark Side, Gibney begins with four of the 200 boys abused by Father Lawrence Murphy—Terry Kohut, Gary Smith, Pat Kuehn, and Arthur Budzinski—all as brave today for being filmed as they were when they first tried to out Murphy in 1973, handing out flyers proclaiming “Serial Child Abuser Is Loose in Milwaukee” and turning him in to the police to no avail. (The men’s stories are given voice by actors including Chris Cooper, Ethan Hawke, and John Slattery.) Kohut describes Murphy as wolflike; in one of the movie’s re-enactments, we watch his nightly visitations stalking the dorm, looking especially for boys whose parents didn’t sign and couldn’t be told.

Although Murphy admitted to some wrongdoing in a church-supervised internal investigation, defending himself by saying he was taking the sexual sins of adolescents upon himself, he was like so many abusive priests simply moved to another diocese. The film also exposes secret million-dollar settlement funds, and even an attempt to buy an island in the Caribbean for pederastic priests. Cute, but instead they too were recycled, not expelled. A rat-a-tat spray of documents and expert testimony from sex counselors, priests with and without collars, and journalists including religion reporter Laurie Goldstein demonstrates who knew what and when they knew it. Vatican chronicler Marco Politi asserts that church archives date child abuse to the fourth century.

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BALTIMORE (MD)
National Catholic Reporter

by Jerry Filteau | Nov. 13, 2012

Baltimore —
Update: The U.S. bishops failed to pass a proposed statement on the economy, titled “The Hope of the Gospel in Difficult Economic Times.” The document failed to get the required two-thirds needed for passage. The vote was 134, yes, 84 no, with nine abstentions.

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MISSOURI
Fox 4

[with video]

November 13, 2012, by Sarah Clark

INDEPENDENCE, Mo. — The admitted killer of 27-year-old Bethany Deaton made his first court appearance Tuesday morning.

Micah Moore, 23, confessed to suffocating Deaton because he feared she would reveal the ongoing sexual abuse she endured by him and others to her therapist

Jackson County prosecutors said Moore lived with Deaton, her husband and other men. A probable cause statement reveals Moore told a detective he and the other men in the home, including Deaton’s own husband, drugged her and sexually assaulted her for months.

The statement said witnesses called this a “religious community” where they had sex with each other. According to the witness statements, Deaton’s husband, Tyler Deaton, was the spiritual leader. He has not been charged with any wrongdoing in connection to the death of his wife.

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AUSTRALIA
ABC – PM

[with audio]

MARK COLVIN: One of Australia’s foremost child protection experts, Dr Freda Briggs, believes that millions of Australians have been victims of child abuse.

She says a royal commission can only deal with that by restricting its terms of reference to the systems which ignored or covered up the abuse, and she hopes the inquiry will come up with a new jurisdiction to deal with child sex abuse cases.

Emeritus Professor Briggs spoke to Alexandra Kirk.

ALEXANDRA KIRK: No doubt the royal commission will be a very painful experience for victims and their families; do you have advice as to how they should prepare themselves?

FREDA BRIGGS: Yes, you’re absolutely right because I was involved helping quite a few of the men who went to the Mullighan Inquiry and it is extraordinarily difficult for men to be able to go and talk about what happened to them because they very often haven’t told anybody.

They’re worried that other people will find out. I mean what they need is an absolute assurance of confidentiality and privacy unless they themselves want their story published, possibly anonymously.

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AUSTRALIA/IRELAND
ABC News

[with video]

The judge who ran an inquiry into child abuse and neglect in Irish institutions says the Australian Government should not put an arbitrary time frame on its royal commission into child sexual abuse.

Ireland is the only other country to have launched a national child abuse inquiry similar to that announced on Monday by Australia’s Prime Minister.

The majority of allegations investigated by the commission, led by high court judge Sean Ryan, related to 60 residential schools operated by the Catholic Church, who were funded and supervised by Ireland’s department of education.

After nine years of inquiries, the commission reported its findings in 2009.

It said rape and abuse of Irish children in Catholic care was endemic: the entire system that held 30,000 children treated them more like prison inmates and slaves than people with legal rights and human potential, and that some religious officials encouraged ritual beatings and consistently shielded their orders amid a culture of self-serving secrecy.

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AUSTRALIA/IRELAND
The Australian

Peter Wilson, Europe correspondent
From:The Australian
November 13, 2012

THE IRISH judge who conducted the only national child abuse inquiry similar to that proposed by Julia Gillard has urged her not to impose restrictive time limits on Australia’s royal commission, and to stop it getting bogged down in hundreds of miniature criminal trials.

High Court Justice Sean Ryan said the success of his 2009 report into abuse in Ireland owed much to its strategy of choosing “samples” of abusive incidents rather than getting tied down in the details of every allegation made against an institution.

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AUSTRALIA
Sunshine Coast Daily

Adam Davies
14th Nov 2012

FORMER Toowoomba Catholic priest Dr Jim Madden said the announcement of a royal commission into the sex abuse of minors was well overdue.

In announcing the royal commission, Prime Minister Julia Gillard said the investigation would not focus solely on the Catholic Church.

She said it would include religious organisations, state-run institutions, church and state-run schools and not-for-profit organisations, including sporting clubs and Scouts.

Mr Madden, who served as a priest for 16-years, said the Catholic Church was only reluctantly playing ball because it had been forced to do so by public pressure.

“The church has for a long time turned a blind eye to it all,” Dr Madden said.

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AUSTRALIA
The Daily Telegraph

AAP
November 14, 2012

SENIOR opposition frontbencher Christopher Pyne says priests have a responsibility to report crimes to police even if the details are given to them in a confession.

Prime Minister Julia Gillard announced on Monday a royal commission to investigate how institutions have dealt with cases of child sex abuse following fresh allegations of cover-ups by the Catholic Church and police in the NSW Hunter.

Australia’s most senior Catholic, Cardinal Pell, said on Tuesday “the Seal of Confession is inviolable” even if a priest confesses to child sex abuse.

Mr Pyne, a Catholic, says the laws of the nation come before canon law.

“If a priest hears in a confessional a crime, especially a crime against a minor, the priest has the responsibility in my view to report that to the appropriate authorities,” Mr Pyne told ABC Radio on Wednesday.

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AUSTRALIA
The Courier

By Rick Feneley
Nov. 14, 2012

SMALL blessings. At last, it’s not all about the Catholic Church. This royal commission, says Cardinal George Pell, is ”an opportunity to clear the air, to separate fact from fiction … We object to being described as the only cab on the rank.”

It was a crowded rank indeed when Cardinal Pell, the Archbishop of Sydney, faced media on Tuesday at the Catholic Church’s city headquarters, on the fifth floor of Polding House. The air might have benefited from some clearing as Cardinal Pell castigated the press for smearing and scapegoating the church with exaggerations and generalisations. The church acknowledged its shame, he said. But when it came to the ”percentages” of abuse, the church was far from the only culprit – and the commission would establish that.

Cardinal Pell agreed he would likely be called before the inquiry – ”I should hope so” – to answer past claims that he covered up for abusing priests, allegations he has consistently denied.

He then got the the kind of grilling he might expect at the commission. Hadn’t victims been paid compensation to shut them up, to block legal action? ”I’ve never been involved in a case where people have been offered money so they wouldn’t go through the courts.”

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NEW ZEALAND
Radio New Zealand

A group that investigates church-related sexual abuse says clergymen from New Zealand are among those that Australian police want to interview.

The federal government is setting up a Royal Commission to investigate how institutions including schools, foster homes and churches have handled accusations of abuse.

The Catholic church in New Zealand says its officials will investigate the handling of a paedophile priest who came from Australia to Hamilton in the 1980s.

But John McNally of Broken Rites, a support group in Australia, says that case is the tip of the iceberg, and the police want to talk to some members of the Catholic order, St John of God.

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AUSTRALIA
Armidale Express

By Jane Lee
Nov. 14, 2012

THE royal commission into child abuse will expose hundreds more victims who have been attacked in state care to the present day, victims’ advocates say.

Prime Minister Julia Gillard announced a federal royal commission into child abuse on Monday, bowing to pressure surrounding the Victorian inquiry and the New South Wales government’s announcement of a special commission in the Hunter region.

While the government has yet to release its terms of reference, Ms Gillard said it would not be limited to the Catholic church, and would cover a range of institutions including state authorities, boy scouts and sports groups.

The Victorian inquiry faced criticism that it was only charged with investigating religious and non-government organisations, not public orphanages or children’s homes.

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AUSTRALIA
Eureka Street

Pat Power
November 13, 2012

The Prime Minister took the only course open to her in agreeing to a Royal Commission into child sexual abuse in our country. There has been more than enough media coverage to convince any fair-minded person of the terrible damage done through the abuse of children.

Over the past 20 years I have listened to people who have suffered such abuse, sometimes many years ago, and every time I hear a heartrending story I see another facet of the horror of this criminal behaviour.

The loss of childhood innocence, the secrecy which means little ones carry a burden they can share with no one, the misguided sense of guilt they often carry for many years, blaming themselves for what someone else has done to them, their shame before God; all of which may be compounded at times when they do try to unburden their troubled souls and find they are not believed or understood.

Some experience failed marriages; speaking to such people it becomes clear that sexuality, which is meant to be God’s joyous gift, has been a source of confusion and hurt because of their destructive childhood experiences. Every person’s experience will be different, but I believe the present publicity, painful though it be, will give more people the opportunity to unburden themselves and thus take the first steps towards finding healing and peace.

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AUSTRALIA
Stock & Land

RACHEL OLDING

14 Nov, 2012

TONY HERSBACH and his son were in their kitchen on Monday evening putting in some timber fittings when they heard Julia Gillard announce on the radio a royal commission into institutional child abuse.

Mr Hersbach, 59, was overwhelmed. He was elated, terrified, satisfied and exhausted. It has been more than 40 years since his parish priest, the man who assumed the role of surrogate father, repeatedly molested him. He is still waiting for the truth.

”That’s what I’ve struggled with for so many years,” he said. ”That the whole story has never come out. I’m still trying to get the church to admit what they did. I’m still trying to get over what happened. It affects me every single day.”

Father Victor Gabriel Rubeo sexually abused Mr Hersbach when he was 11 years old until he was 18 at a house in Laverton in Melbourne’s west.

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