ABUSE TRACKER

AUSTRALIA
The Australian

Royal commission into child sexual abuse will be asked to suggest new rules and preventive action

Phillip Hudson
From:Herald Sun
November 20, 2012

THE royal commission into child sexual abuse will be asked to suggest new rules to prevent future attacks, procedures to follow when allegations are raised and how to deal with abuse that has occurred.

A discussion paper released by the Federal Government also says the commission can suggest new laws as well as policies to make government agencies better able to respond.

It will also be asked to identify roadblocks inside institutions and organisations that prevent proper notification and investigation of claims.

State governments will be asked to hand over information to ensure no individual, institution or organisation “can avoid scrutiny”.

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AUSTRALIA
Adelaide Now

A GREENS MP has renewed his bid to introduce NSW legislation that would allow victims of sexual abuse to sue the Catholic Church.

Under state laws that have been in place since 1936, the Catholic Church does not exist as an individual legal entity.

Now that a royal commission into the abuse scandal has been announced, David Shoebridge wants victims to be offered a legal remedy and have larger compensation payments made available to them.

“We have achieved the royal commission, so now it is essential that we press forward with this legislation. It needs to be part of the commission’s terms of reference,” Mr Shoebridge said on Monday.

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AUSTRALIA
SBS

19 Nov 2012 – Source: AAP

The government wants victims of child sexual abuse to make suggestions for the terms of reference for a royal commission into the matter.

The federal government has allowed barely a week for Australians to help shape the terms of reference for a royal commission into child sexual abuse.

The tight deadline reflects Prime Minister Julia Gillard’s wish for the inquiry, which is likely to take years and involve thousands of individuals, to be established by the end of this year so it can begin its work in early 2013.

Ms Gillard last week announced the planned a royal commission to investigate how child sex abuse allegations have been handled by religious, community and state institutions.

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AUSTRALIA
ABC News

The Federal Government is calling for public feedback on the terms of reference for its royal commission into child abuse.

The inquiry was announced last week after the latest in a series of paedophilia allegations, most of which were directed at the Catholic Church.

The Government today released a consultation paper that will be used to help frame the inquiry.

Stakeholders are being encouraged to give their views on how the commission should be conducted, who should be in charge and how long it should take.

“We want all stakeholders, especially survivors of child sexual abuse, their families and their advocates, to help shape the development of the royal commission,” Attorney-General Nicola Roxon said in a statement.

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UNITED STATES
Deadline

By NANCY TARTAGLIONE, International Editor | Monday, 19 November 2012

Alex Gibney won an Oscar for his 2007 documentary Taxi To The Dark Side about U.S. policy on torture and interrogation. He was also nominated for 2005’s Enron: The Smartest Guys In The Room. His latest film, Mea Maxima Culpa: Silence In The House Of God, taps into a subject that has, in various forms, increasingly made headlines this year. As allegations of the sexual abuse of minors by trusted figures have continued to surface – think: the Penn State scandal and the ongoing crisis over BBC kids’ show host Jimmy Savile – Gibney’s film is a damning investigation into pedophilia in the Catholic Church. Shining a light on what it calls “an international conspiracy of silence” that reaches all the way to the Vatican, the documentary “teaches us that we must recognize that the worst predators often consciously use their own personal charisma and the prestige of their institutions to commit and cover up their crimes,” Gibney says.

At the outset, the story is told from the point of view of four deaf men who attended a Milwaukee Catholic boys school in the 50s and 60s where Father Lawrence Murphy abused them as well as what is believed to be over 200 others over time. Interweaving the boys’ saga, which the now-adult men recount in sign language voiced over by actors Chris Cooper, Ethan Hawke, Jamey Sheridan and John Slattery, the story travels to two of the world’s most Catholic countries: Ireland and Italy. There, stories of similar sex abuse cases are revealed as well as the actions of members and friends of the Holy See. Mea Maxima Culpa debuted in Toronto and won the documentary feature prize at the recent London Film Festival. It was released in NY and LA on Friday for its Oscar-qualifying run and will air on HBO on February 4. It was also, surprisingly given the subject matter, picked up for distribution in both Ireland (Element Pictures) and Italy (Feltrinelli), although it was refused by recent Italian festivals. I recently had the chance to catch up with Gibney and our coversation follows:

DEADLINE: How will the film be released in Italy?
ALEX GIBNEY: Feltrinelli is a classic publisher. They will release it theatrically first and then as a DVD in bookstores. They really wanted to take this on after they saw it and liked it. They’re courageous and tough and imaginative. They may also do a simultaneous stunt release by beaming it out across Italy with Q & A sessions.

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SAN JOSE (CA)
KGO

SAN JOSE, Calif. — A Catholic bishop issued an apology today to parents and community members after a registered sex offender was issued a letter allowing him to attend an elementary school festival last month.

Bishop Patrick McGrath, head of the Diocese of San Jose, said that it was a “mistake” that allowed Mark Christopher Gurries to attend and volunteer at a Saint Frances Cabrini Parish festival on Oct. 6.

“Our policy is clear: no one who has been found guilty of sexual abuse of a minor or vulnerable adult can be hired as an employee or allowed to volunteer in any activity that involves children, young people, or vulnerable adults,” McGrath wrote.

“I am deeply troubled and I apologize to you that this policy was not followed,” he said.

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AUSTRALIA
Armidale Express

By Phillip Coorey
Nov. 19, 2012

The Royal Commission into child sexual abuse is prepared to hear testimony from anybody who has ever been abused and will pass information onto police along the way, rather than than wait ”years” until the Commission has concluded.

A discussion paper released late Monday by the secretariat of the Royal Commission into Child Sexual Abuse says the Commission ”should provide an opportunity for those affected by child sexual abuse to share their experiences if that is their wish”.

”The Commission will be able to refer matters to the relevant police authorities. This could be done during the course of the Royal Commission, but investigation and prosecution would ultimately be a matter for the relevant authorities to pursue.”

The paper has been sent to state and territory leaders as part of the consultation process to develop the terms of reference and is open to comment for a week.

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UNITED STATES
PR Web

Child Sexual Abuse by Catholic Priests, Athletic Coaches, Teachers, Family Members & Neighbors on Dr. Carol Francis Radio Talk Show for Sexual Abuse Awareness Event

Author James Dunlap’s newest novel MILLSTONE depicts the grooming of children by authorities such as Catholic Priests and Athletic Coaches for chronic sexual abuse. Dunlap’s novel, based on true events, bravely cracks the barrier of cover-ups which enable sex-offenders to be sheltered. On the Dr. Carol Francis Radio Talk Show, Author Dunlap is joined by Joelle Casteix and Officer Tom Townsend. Casteix is the leading national spokesperson for victims of child sexual abuse and the Western Regional Director for SNAP, Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests.

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AUSTRALIA
Eureka Street

Geoffrey Robinson
November 15, 2012

In two weeks’ time the Australian bishops will meet in their biannual meeting. It is obvious the Royal Commission into sexual abuse will be a major topic. I respectfully suggest some matters for their attention.

I suggest they invite as many leaders of religious institutes as possible to be present and join in the discussion.

Individual bishops have already promised ‘full cooperation’ with the Commission, but the gathered bishops and religious need to have a serious discussion concerning exactly what ‘full’ cooperation will mean. It is vital that all agree in detail on this point.

I suggest that they invite a couple of experts to speak to them on what the Commission will probably require. For example, they might seek out some persons who were involved in the Wood Royal Commission in 1996. They then need to ensure that they are all on exactly the same page.

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SAN JOSE (CA)
Mercury News

By Julia Prodis Sulek and Mark Gomez
Staff Writersmercurynews.com

Posted: 11/18/2012

SAN JOSE — Bishop Patrick McGrath apologized during a family Mass on Sunday for “a failure at the diocese level” that gave permission to a convicted child molester to volunteer at the St. Frances Cabrini parish festival last month.

“I take full responsibility,” McGrath told the congregation from the podium moments before the service began at Cabrini, located on Camden Avenue in San Jose. “I pledge to you I will do everything in my power to make sure this doesn’t happen again.”

Although the bishop said he hoped his remarks and a letter he included in the parish bulletin would “answer some of your questions,” neither explained how or why a letter was written and signed by someone at the diocese vouching for pedophile Mark Gurries. The 51-year-old engineer, married to a former teacher at St. Francis Cabrini, was convicted just two years ago of “lewd and lascivious conduct” on a minor under 14 years old. He served nearly a year in county jail and remains on probation. The victim was a relative.

“As a matter of record, it was a mistake that allowed Mr. Gurries to be a parish volunteer and to be present at the festival,” the bishop wrote in the letter included in the bulletin. “Our policy is clear: no one who has been found guilty of sexual abuse of a minor or vulnerable adult can be hired or allowed to be a volunteer that involves children, young people or vulnerable adults. ”

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AUSTRALIA
Fraser Coast Chronicle

[M’boro priest would break silence to out child sex abusers]

Father Paul Kelly |
19th Nov 2012

I WRITE to clarify my position in relation to the Catholic sacrament of penance, (reconciliation), or “confession” as it is often called.

1. I am not at odds with my church, nor am I intending to go against my church or go outside of my church.

The issue of sexual abuse of minors and vulnerable adults is one that is abhorrent to us all. It is an horrendous crime and the article rightly indicated that I and the church I belong to want no part in anything that even unwittingly hides or fosters the continuation of these devastating crimes that have far reaching and unspeakable effects on the lives of its victims.

In the interview, in which I felt I was not getting my thoughts on this at all clear because it is so complex and with many issues, I tried to indicate that confession is for the purpose of allowing those who have done wrong to admit and face the full reality of their wrongdoing in front of God.

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AUSTRALIA
Sydney Morning Herald

November 16, 2012

Bernard Toutounji

So once again we see the inner workings of the Catholic Church being dissected by an audience that has little understanding of, or care for, matters of faith. Interestingly while commentators are usually quick to point out perceived trespassing by the church into the domain of the state, there doesn’t seem to be quite the same concern about calls for the state to come wandering into the inner sanctum of the church. With a royal commission having being called into the sin of child sexual abuse, the latest target is, somewhat ironically, the very sacrament that exists to forgive sin – confession.

The criticism stems around the thousand-year-old church law which binds priests to never disclose anything they learn from penitents during the course of the sacrament. This confidentiality between priest and penitent is the oldest kind of confidential communication that exists. It has been upheld by priests down the ages and around the world regardless of where they may sit on the theological spectrum. It doesn’t take much logic to consider why the seal of confession is essential to the integrity of the sacrament. Without anonymity people would simply not pursue sacramental forgiveness. While some might respond “who cares”, the truth is that confession has a greater potential for effect on the citizens of a nation than a hundred royal commissions.

The sacrament of confession is easily mocked, especially by those who went once as a child but never came to understand its value in the faith of an adult pursuing a life of virtue. The sacrament involves the full disclosure of serious sin to a priest who, ordained to act in the person of Jesus Christ, becomes, in one sense, the channel of God’s forgiveness. Now of course Father X has no more power to personally forgive sin than I have the power to fly, which is why when he says “I absolve you of your sins in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit” the “I” is referring to the direct forgiveness of Christ through the instrumentality of that particular priest.

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AUSTRALIA
Otago Daily Times

Mon, 19 Nov 2012
Editorial

The announcement by Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard last week that its Government will set up a Royal Commission of inquiry into institutional child sexual abuse is a major step towards shining a light on the dark deeds, secrets, lies and cover-ups of the past – and hopefully providing victims with an opportunity for recognition and justice in the future.

Although its terms of reference are yet to be outlined, it appears the investigation will be the most comprehensive inquiry into child sexual abuse in Australia’s history, focusing not just on abuse in religious organisations, but also state-care providers and not-for-profit bodies. It will also examine the responses of child-service agencies and police.

There had been calls for a national and wide-ranging inquiry after allegations by a senior New South Wales police investigator that the Catholic Church covered up evidence involving paedophile priests, thwarting attempts to investigate hundreds of allegations of abuse in the Hunter region since the mid-1990s. Ms Gillard said “the allegations that have come to light recently about child sexual abuse have been heartbreaking”.

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MISSISSIPPI
WREG

[with video]

November 16, 2012, by Michele Reese

(New Albany, MS) It was the third day of school at Victory Christian Academy in New Albany when a father, who we’re not identifying in order to protect his daughter, says she got a Facebook message from her teacher 25-year-old Benjamin Bishop.

“He asked her to get on an app called Voxer and it is a highly encrypted cell phone app,” he said. “It’s very hard to trace. As a matter of fact police could not even pull those messages off of her phone they had to have the phone itself.”

He says more than a dozen messages were exchanged between his daughter and Bishop. He found them on his daughter’s phone after she confided in a family member.

The messages are so sexually explicit, he says, he doesn’t feel comfortable sharing them.

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AUSTRALIA
Central Western Daily

By LOUISE EDDY
Nov. 19, 2012

PRIESTS would likely go to jail rather than break the confessional seal, says Bathurst Catholic Bishop Michael McKenna.

A royal commission into child sexual abuse, announced last week, will have the power to compel priests to answer questions about what they have been told in the confessional.

But Bishop McKenna said priests had gone to jail in the past for refusing to betray the confessional seal, though he hoped it did not come to this in Australia.

“If a priest cannot give this assurance to people who approach him for the sacrament, he cannot hear confessions,” he said.

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NORTHERN IRELAND
UTV

A west Belfast priest, who stepped down after the church received claims about his alleged conduct, will not be prosecuted following a police investigation.

Father Hugh Kennedy was administrator of St Peter’s Cathedral when he stepped aside in September 2011.

At the time, the church said that information had been passed by church officials to social services and police.

Fr Kennedy, who was already on sick leave at that point, had said he took the decision after talks with Bishop of Down and Connor Noel Treanor.

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MASSACHUSETTS
The Republican

By Elizabeth Roman, The Republican
on November 18, 2012

EAST LONGMEADOW – James Scahill, 65, has been charged with operating under the influence after a minor accident on the corner of Harnkness Avenue and North Main Street Friday, police said.

In 2010 Scahill, pastor at St. Michael’s Parish, attracted international attention for suggesting that Pope Benedict XVI should resign if he did not take stronger action to confront the church’s sexual abuse scandal.

Sgt. Patrick Manley said Scahill was involved in a three-car accident on Friday at 5:20 p.m. There were no injuries.

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NEW JERSEY
The Star-Ledger

By Ben Horowitz/The Star-Ledger
on November 15, 2012

MORRIS TOWNSHIP — The Delbarton School in Morris Township is suing an attorney it says violated a confidentiality agreement by publicly disclosing terms of a 1988 settlement of a lawsuit filed by a teenager who was a victim of sexual misconduct by a monk at the school.

The suit, filed in Superior Court in Morristown by the Order of St. Benedict of New Jersey, says attorney Gregory Gianforcaro of Phillipsburg “breached the agreement” made with a previous attorney when, among other things, he “trumpeted a seven-figure settlement” during a news conference June 29 outside the Morris County Courthouse in Morristown.

The suit filed by Delbarton accuses Gianforcaro of trying to “advance (his) own financial interests by attempting to improperly inflate the value of cases (he) has pending” against Delbarton and by trying to attract additional clients.

Gianforcaro also represents six other men who joined a lawsuit earlier this year alleging decades-old sexual abuse and/or sexual misconduct by Delbarton monks.

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AUSTRALIA
Monash Weekly

By DANIEL TRAN
Nov. 19, 2012

THE Gillard government’s decision to launch a royal commission into child sex abuse in Australia has left survivors and their families elated.

Oakleigh’s Chrissie and Anthony Foster, whose daughters Katie and Emma were abused by a Catholic priest, last week welcomed the news.

The couple, who are ambassadors for Adults Surviving Child Abuse, have long campaigned for a royal commission into abuse.

Mrs Foster said the establishment of the commission was wonderful news. “All of us have been heard and believed,” she said. “This is justice … It’s wonderful.”

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AUSTRALIA
The Age

November 19, 2012

Barney Zwartz

LAWYERS for Susan Sharkey, who runs the counselling, co-ordination and support office for the Catholic Church in Melbourne, have sent threatening letters to two witnesses to the state inquiry into how the churches handled child sex abuse.

The letters warn victims’ advocates Helen Last and Judy Courtin that if there is ”any publication” by them to a journalist or anyone that defames Ms Sharkey ”our client will not hesitate to take legal action against you without further notice”.

The letters were sent on November 2, but Ms Last – a consultant for the Melbourne Victims Collective – only received it on Thursday due to various circumstances.

Ms Last, who gave evidence to the inquiry last Monday, said the letter from Wisewould Mahony partner Robert McGirr misrepresented her and intimidated her.

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AUSTRALIA
Adelaide Now

HEINOUS crimes such as paedophilia have devastating consequences that last a lifetime, writes Alexander Downer.
———–

One thing we can all universally abhor is paedophilia. For most people such disgusting behaviour is unimaginable.

But like murder and other forms of brutality, it always seems to be with us. Somewhere, there’s a paedophile out there.

The consequences for the victims and hence society can be horrific.

According to a study by America’s National Institute of Justice, abused and neglected children are 11 times more likely to be arrested for criminal behaviour as a juvenile, and 2.7 times more likely to be arrested for violent and criminal behaviour as an adult.

Studies have found abused and neglected children to be at least 25 per cent more likely to experience problems such as delinquency, teen pregnancy, low academic achievement, drug use and mental-health issues.

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AUSTRALIA
The Age

November 19, 2012

Michelle Grattan
Political editor of The Age

ALMOST every Australian voter backs the royal commission on child sex abuse in an Age-Nielsen poll that shows little change in support for the parties or leaders.

An extraordinary 95 per cent support the inquiry, which has bipartisan backing although it does not as yet have terms of reference. It is highly unusual for a political decision to have such a level of support.

The Coalition would win an election held now on a two-party vote of 53 per cent (up a point since last month) to 47 per cent (down one point). In Victoria, the split is 50-50.

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AUSTRALIA
Herald Sun

AAP
November 19, 2012

THE decision by Prime Minister Julia Gillard to establish a royal commission into child sexual abuse has the backing of almost every Australian, according to a Fairfax/Nielsen poll.

The poll shows 95 per cent of voters support the royal commission, while only three per cent are against it.

Nielsen poll director John Stirton told Fairfax he could not recall a poll issue ever receiving such universal support.

The royal commission, which will inquire into all institutions, not only churches, has the support of all political parties, state and federal.

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NORTHERN IRELAND
Gorey Guardian

Sunday November 18 2012

No criminal charges are to be brought against a west Belfast priest who stepped down after the church received claims about his conduct.

Father Hugh Kennedy was asked to temporarily stop working in St Peter’s Cathedral last year while church authorities passed the information to the police and social services. He was already on sick leave at that point.

Specific allegations were not outlined, but at the time Fr Kennedy issued a statement insisting he was not a child molester.

Police have confirmed that their investigation is now complete. No file will be passed to the Public Prosecution Service.

The priest will remain on leave from duties while a separate internal investigation by the Catholic church is conducted.

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NORTHERN IRELAND
BBC News

A police investigation into a well-known Catholic priest in Belfast has ended and he will not be prosecuted.

Father Hugh Kennedy stepped down as administrator of St Peter’s Cathedral in west Belfast more than a year ago.

When Fr Kennedy stepped down from his post, the church said it had received information about him which it passed on to the police and social services.

A spokesman said Fr Kennedy, who had been on sick leave, had agreed to step aside pending inquiries.

The details of the information in question was not disclosed, but the Church said it was not connected to the boys’ choir at St. Peter’s.

In a statement at the time, Fr Kennedy said that he had never violated or molested a child.

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AUSTRALIA
The Australian

Greg Craven
From:The Australian
November 19, 2012

THERE are some ideas so bad they need to be killed quickly. Not just to protect those affected by them, but those pushing them.

Breaking the seal of the Catholic confessional is such an albatross. Pursue it, and Australia will carry a human rights cross through a constitutional minefield. The appeal is obvious. Why should a criminal priest unburden himself to his brethren without fear of disclosure?

The obvious fact that criminal clergy do not go to confession, and would not receive absolution unless they agreed to turn themselves in, is ignored. And if the seal is withdrawn, so will be the disclosures. But beyond this are immense constitutional and human rights problems.

First Section 116 of the Constitution bans the commonwealth from prohibiting the “free exercise of religion”. Few outside the Catholic Church understand confession. The sacrament is central to being a Catholic. Catholics must confess, and priests must hear their confession in absolute secrecy. The priest acts as the ear of God. In other words, a priest cannot be a priest and a Catholic cannot be a Catholic without the sealed confessional.

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LOUISIANA
Houma Today

By Katie Urbaszewski
Staff Writer

Diocese of Houma-Thibodaux officials have said they had not heard reports of any predatory behavior by a former priest before a man came forward, accusing the priest of molesting him as an altar boy.

However, people who claim to have had sexual relationships with the Rev. Etienne LeBlanc said they felt preyed on by an authority figure who took advantage of them, even if they were not victims in the eyes of criminal law.

A civil suit against LeBlanc and the diocese, filed by Morgan City native Jared Ribardi, was settled last month, and LeBlanc, who couldn’t be reached for comment, has never been arrested under any criminal charges.

The alleged encounters happened at Holy Cross Catholic Church in Morgan City, which is part of the Diocese of Houma-Thibodaux. LeBlanc has also worked at Annunziata Catholic Church in Houma and is now retired.

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SAN JOSE (CA)
NBC Bay Area

A Catholic bishop issued an apology today to parents and community members after a registered sex offender was issued a letter allowing him to attend an elementary school festival last month.

Bishop Patrick McGrath, head of the Diocese of San Jose, said that it was a “mistake” that allowed Mark Christopher Gurries to attend and volunteer at a Saint Frances Cabrini Parish festival on Oct. 6.

“Our policy is clear: no one who has been found guilty of sexual abuse of a minor or vulnerable adult can be hired as an employee or allowed to volunteer in any activity that involves children, young people, or vulnerable adults,” McGrath wrote.

“I am deeply troubled and I apologize to you that this policy was not followed,” he said. By state law, Gurries, as a registered sex offender, is only allowed on a school property around children if he can produce written permission from a school administrator, according to the Santa Clara County Sheriff’s Office.

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SAN JOSE (CA)
San Francisco Chronicle

Bay City News Service

Published 9:11 p.m., Saturday, November 17, 2012

A Catholic bishop issued an apology today to parents and community members after a registered sex offender was issued a letter allowing him to attend an elementary school festival last month.

Bishop Patrick McGrath, head of the Diocese of San Jose, said that it was a “mistake” that allowed Mark Christopher Gurries to attend and volunteer at a Saint Frances Cabrini Parish festival on Oct. 6.

“Our policy is clear: no one who has been found guilty of sexual abuse of a minor or vulnerable adult can be hired as an employee or allowed to volunteer in any activity that involves children, young people, or vulnerable adults,” McGrath wrote.

“I am deeply troubled and I apologize to you that this policy was not followed,” he said.

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NEW JERSEY
The Record

Sunday, November 18, 2012

BY MARY JO LAYTON
STAFF WRITER
The Record

As Richard Schultz tells it, his childhood ended in a trailer at a Boy Scout camp when his troop leader stripped him, tied him up and took Polaroids of the 13-year-old boy “modeling” Stations of the Cross.

“Rape victims talk of having this disconnected feeling from the body and going numb, which is how I was,” Schultz said.

Seven weeks later, his younger brother Christopher was sexually assaulted by the same troop leader. It happened, Schultz said, on his brother’s 12th birthday.

The abuse is described in graphic detail in File No. 1524 in recently released documents from the Boy Scouts of America, which identify thousands of scoutmasters and other volunteers the organization suspected of molesting children.

The faded police statements, letters warning of a predator and other documents in the file tell the story of the Schultz family: The molestation did more than damage two boys, it triggered a series of events that ripped the family apart. A child was lost, a marriage imploded. Thirty-five years later, Richard Schultz continues to be haunted by what happened in that trailer.

Schultz is now a 48-year-old police sergeant in Fair Lawn, always in uniform, always on patrol, a voice for victims in the most recent sex-abuse scandal sweeping the nation. He speaks about the abuse in candid detail — how Robert E. Coakley, a Franciscan friar who also taught at the Catholic school the boys attended in Emerson — lured him into that trailer at the Scout camp in New York State.

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MASSACHUSETTS
Boston Globe

By Martine Powers
Globe Staff
November 18, 2012

While watching the morning news recently, Jerry Sypek learned that the Boy Scouts of America had released its so-called perversion lists.

Then he heard one of the names on the list: Paul A. Hightower, accused in the documents of assaulting one scout and masturbating in front of others at troop meetings.

“I almost choked on my coffee,” said Sypek, 50. When Sypek was an orphan in a Jamaica Plain children’s home between 1968 and 1971, he was abused by a former seminary student by the same name. Decades later, he settled a claim with the Catholic Church. “I was horrified. I thought to myself, ‘This is not the same guy.’ ”

But it was. Hightower died in 1994.

“It brought back some really hard memories for me,” Sypek said. “When you have a name that’s so familiar to you come up in the news, it’s like, ‘Oh my goodness.’ You think you’re going to be OK, but you’re not.” …

For David Clohessy, director of the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests, the release of the Boy Scouts files was heartening — it is important for abuses to be uncovered and documented, he said — but he was also saddened.

“I wanted to believe desperately that the disclosures wouldn’t be as damning as, in fact, they are,” said Clohessy, who was abused by a Catholic priest for four to five years, ending when he was 16 years old.

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NEW MEXICO
ABQ Journal

By Rene Romo / Journal South Reporteron Sun, Nov 18, 2012

LAS CRUCES – Federal court records show that the cash-strapped Diocese of Las Cruces lent its former contract attorney $385,000, but the money will not be easily recovered, because the attorney died in August, and his widow filed for bankruptcy protection a short while later.

A diocese attorney, however, disputes that the religious organization lent money to its former general counsel, the late Daniel Dolan.

Instead, what the bankruptcy case filed by Dolan’s widow, Linda, “lists as a loan to Mr. Dolan appears to be a loan to an entirely separate entity that the Diocese viewed as a land investment,” diocese attorney David McNeill Jr., said in an emailed response to Journal questions.

However, in a different part of the email, McNeill wrote that the money was advanced to Dolan. He said, “That matter is still under investigation.”

McNeill added that Bishop Ricardo Ramirez “had no knowledge of that transaction until recently and did not approve it.”

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UNITED KINGDOM
Mirror

Jimmy Savile abused schoolgirls in the vestry of a Catholic cathedral, new ­testimony claims.

In an appalling new low, the ­disgraced star is said to have lain in wait at a weekly Mass attended by girls aged between five and nine.

An ex-pupil of the school involved, who wishes to remain anonymous, says Savile – given a papal knighthood by the Pope in 1990 – was banned from the cathedral in his home city of Leeds over claims he molested girls there.

The woman says pupils at her nearby primary school, now closed, were told by teachers not to sit near Savile, who always arrived before them when they visited ­Leeds ­Cathedral in the 1960s. She says there were ­rumours at the time that the DJ, whose flat was nearby, abused a young girl in the vestry only yards from unsuspecting priests.

“I remember it so very clearly,” she says. “As we trooped in he would be waiting. He would turn and grin. We were told to sit away from him, because of talk he had taken a girl into the vestry. Despite that, teachers and priests let him stay.

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VATICAN CITY
NEWS.com.au

WHEN Pope Benedict XVI announced last month he was transferring his respected sex crimes prosecutor to Malta to become a bishop, Vatican watchers questioned whether the Holy See’s tough line on clerical abuse was going soft – and if another outspoken cleric was being punished for doing his job too well.

After all, several senior Vatican officials who ran afoul of the Vatican’s entrenched ways have recently been transferred in face-saving “promote and remove” moves as the Vatican deals with the fallout from a high-profile criminal trial over leaked papal documents, a mixed report card on its financial transparency and its controversial crackdown on American nuns.

But in an interview on the eve of his departure, Bishop-elect Charles Scicluna insisted he wasn’t the latest casualty in the Vatican’s turf battles and Machiavellian personnel intrigues.

Rather, he said, his promotion to auxiliary bishop in his native Malta was simply that – “a very good” promotion – and more critically, that his hardline stance against sex abuse would remain because it’s Benedict’s stance as well.

“This is policy,” he said. “It’s not Scicluna. It’s the Pope. And this will remain.”

Besides, he said laughing over tea at a cafe on Rome’s posh Piazza Farnese, “If you want to silence someone, you don’t make him a bishop.”

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MALTA
Malta Independent

When Pope Benedict XVI announced last month he was transferring his respected sex crimes prosecutor to Malta to become a bishop, Vatican watchers immediately questioned whether the Holy See’s tough line on clerical abuse was going soft — and if another outspoken cleric was being punished for doing his job too well.

After all, several senior Vatican officials who ran afoul of the Vatican’s entrenched ways have recently been transferred in face-saving “promote and remove” moves as the Vatican deals with the fallout from a high-profile criminal trial over leaked papal documents, a mixed report card on its financial transparency and its controversial crackdown on American nuns.

But in an interview with the Associated Press on the eve of his departure, Bishop-elect Charles Scicluna insisted he wasn’t the latest casualty in the Vatican’s turf battles and Machiavellian personnel intrigues. Rather, he said, his promotion to auxiliary bishop in his native Malta was simply that — “a very good” promotion — and more critically, that his hardline stance against sex abuse would remain because it’s Benedict’s stance as well.

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SAN JOSE (CA)
KTVU

KTVU And Wires

SAN JOSE, Calif. —

A Catholic bishop issued an apology Saturday to parents and community members after a registered sex offender was issued a letter allowing him to attend an elementary school festival last month.

Bishop Patrick McGrath, head of the Diocese of San Jose, said that it was a “mistake” that allowed Mark Christopher Gurries to attend and volunteer at a Saint Frances Cabrini Parish festival on Oct. 6.

“Our policy is clear: no one who has been found guilty of sexual abuse of a minor or vulnerable adult can be hired as an employee or allowed to volunteer in any activity that involves children, young people, or vulnerable adults,” McGrath wrote.

“I am deeply troubled and I apologize to you that this policy was not followed,” he said.

By state law, Gurries, as a registered sex offender, is only allowed on a school property around children if he can produce written permission from a school administrator, according to the Santa Clara County Sheriff’s Office. Registered sex offenders who walk onto a school property without authorization when children are present are subject to arrest for a misdemeanor.

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AUSTRALIA
The Examiner

By CALLA WAHLQUIST
Nov. 18, 2012

THE church organisation that ran Burnie’s Marist Regional College when students were sexually abused is preparing to be called before the royal commission, the head of the Marist Fathers has said.

“I’m expecting the royal commission to be held all over Australia, and that when the Tasmanian part of it is held there will be a requirement for the Marist Fathers to participate,” Marist provincial Paul Cooney said.

“Certainly, we will participate in any way that we are asked to.”

Two Marist priests who taught at the school around the 1970s were charged in 2004 with sexually abusing students in their rooms at the school. Both men were convicted and have served time in jail.

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MALTA/CANADA
Malta Independent

Sunday, 18 November 2012

One of the two paedophile priests whose prison sentences were confirmed by the Appeals Court last Tuesday is still wanted in Essex County, Ontario to face sexual abuse charges.

Defrocked priest Godwin Scerri fled back to Malta from Ontario 20 years ago. Windsorstar.com, the website of Ontario daily newspaper Windsor Star, reported this week that, in 1993, a 22-year-old man had told Ontario Provincial Police that Scerri had abused him between 1983 – when he was 12 years old – and 1987 in the town of Emeryville and on Pelee Island, both in Essex County, Ontario.

Scerri had worked as a priest in Ontario from 1981 to 1991. He served as an associate pastor of St William’s Church, Emeryville, from 1981 to 1987 and then as pastor from 1987 to 1991.

He was arrested by Ontario Provincial Police in June 1993 on charges of sexual assault and gross indecency but fled to Malta before the case went to trial.

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AUSTRALIA
Herald Sun

Alan Howe
From:Herald Sun
November 19, 2012

THE London newspaper shouted “It was The Sun wot won it” the morning after the slim, unlikely and widely untipped Conservative victory in Britain’s 1992 elections.

The Sun had robustly campaigned for the Tories and was boldly taking the credit for their unexpected win.

I thought of that amusing headline last week when Catholic Cardinal George Pell curiously blamed the media for the pressure that last week led Prime Minister Julia Gillard to call a royal commission into child sexual abuse.

But it’s not “the Herald Sun wot won it”. Persistently unavoidable reports in this newspaper and others, and on radio and television, merely reinforced the fact that such an inquiry was needed, and inevitable.

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UNITED STATES
Bilgrimage

Another extremely important essay by Harvard-trained former Wall Street lawyer Jerry Slevin. Jerry argues that “it is the right time for President Obama to act” to protect children from childhood sexual abuse, as the Catholic hierarchy clearly remains intent on stonewalling, diverting, and covering up. What follows is Jerry’s essay:

This year, 2012, has been crucial in the horrible history of organized child sex abuse in the USA, especially in the Catholic Church. After over more than a quarter century of mainly Vatican diversions, distractions and/or deceptions, experts at a public Vatican abuse symposium in February estimated here that so far there have been over 100,000 young victims of priest child sex abuse in the USA alone, with no end in sight.

These abuse survivors and their families usually bear the painful psychological and other adverse effects of these sexual assaults for the remainder of their lives, often at great costs to society at large. Outrageously, most priest sexual predators and almost all predator-protecting bishops in the USA have so far escaped any accountability for their crimes, mainly as a result of the Catholic hierarchy’s political and media clout, as well as the lack of fortitude of most US political leaders and media executives and reporters.

This pressing and worsening problem is a national one and cannot be resolved adequately at the local state, county or city level only, since the bishops’ political clout has generally been very effective at controlling local lawmakers and prosecutors, as has been demonstrated repeatedly, most recently in Philadelphia, as noted here. While private lawyers for abuse survivors have caused some US bishops and their dioceses significant financial pain, the bishops often appear to settle the lawsuits before all of the stark details of the bishops’ cover-up misconduct reach the public record.

Private civil lawyers’ main objective in abuse cases generally is to get maximum payments for their abused clients, and not full disclosure for citizens of bishops’ misconduct.

With only rare exceptions, most US media organizations lack the staff, budgets and “appetite” for covering priest child sexual abuse cases consistently and in the detail often required. Unfortunately, there does not yet exist any national organization of lay Catholics that comes even remotely close to presenting a credible challenge to the US bishops’ political, financial and media clout.

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NEW MEXICO
Westport News

ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. (AP) — An Albuquerque man has settled a suit he filed against the Archdiocese of Santa Fe and a Catholic ministry group that helps troubled priests over molestation he claims he suffered at the hands of a priest beginning in the mid-1960s.

The attorney representing Clifford Esquibel tells the Albuquerque Journal (http://bit.ly/QP7TXD ) the diocese and the Servants of the Paraclete settled the case for an undisclosed amount.

Esquibel alleges the Rev. John George Weisenborn sexually molested him when Esquibel was a seventh-grade altar boy at St. Francis Xavier Parish in Albuquerque.

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VATICAN CITY
Vatican Insider

The Secretariat of State’s computer technician, Paolo Sciarpelletti, is appealing against the Vatican tribunal’s sentence

Giacomo Galeazzi
Vatican City

He risks dismissal, has two children and will not accept being called a poison pen letter writer. Paolo Sciarpelletti, the Secretariat of State’s computer technician who was tried for his involvement in the Vatican document leak scandal, has presented an appeal against the sentence handed down from the Vatican tribunal. Sciarpelletti was sentenced to four months in prison but the court that granted extenuation reduced this period to two. The sentence was suspended for five years.

Sciarpelletti’s lawyer had stated that the defence would be appeal against the sentence because a suspension put his client at risk of being dismissed from his position. Sources close the Sciarpelletti say he had rejected jobs offering him 10 thousand Euros a month just to serve the Holy Father. Now, it’s back to the courtroom for a new chapter in the Vatileaks legal battle. Claudio Sciarpelletti set up the Vatican’s cloud system so the delicate nature of the documents handled makes the computer technician’s trial a very “sensitive” event.

Unlike the Pope’s former butler, Paolo Gabriele, Sciarpelletti has decided to fight. He presented his appeal Tuesday, at the end of the three day deadline established by the Vatican Code of Penal Procedure. The reasons for the court’s decision will be published in the next few weeks. The Vatican Promoter of Justice, Nicola Picardi sentenced Sciarpelletti on charged of “obstructing the search for the truth” regarding the theft and publication of confidential letters belonging to the Pope, obstructing the course of justice.

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AUSTRALIA
Sydney Morning Herald

November 18, 2012

Peter FitzSimons

Amid all Cardinal George Pell’s bluster about the forthcoming royal commission, it is clear he does not have the first clue as to what is happening here.

Allow me, Cardinal, to spell it out. While you are free to worship whatever god you choose, it is now clear that generations of Australian children have been interfered with by your sex-maddened priests and, just as is happening all over the world, your church is now going to be called to account for both these actions and its appalling cover-ups.

As to those who, outrageously, support Cardinal Pell in his statement that ”the seal of the Confessional is inviolable” – as in all Australians should obey the laws requiring the reporting of sexual abuse, except the very group identified as being most responsible for that abuse – give yourselves an uppercut.

To be intellectually consistent on this, you would have to also support the imposition of the even more appalling sharia for those who worship Allah.

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IRELAND
WA Today (Australia)

November 18, 2012

What angers people most is the cover-up, writes Karen Kissane from Dublin.

MARIE Collins was 13 and in Our Lady’s Hospital for Sick Children when she was abused. It was the hospital chaplain, a Catholic priest. He went to jail for it, many years later, like so many of his colleagues in Ireland, but only after decades of misery for Ms Collins.

”I never connected his abuse with the church,” she says. ”I thought it was somehow my fault and that I was a bad person who had brought it on myself. I had years of depression and agoraphobia that included nine admissions to psychiatric wards.”

As a young adult, anxious that other children not be hurt as she had, she told a priest in her parish. ”He told me it was probably my fault, that I must have led the poor man on, but that I was forgiven and I could go away and forget about it.”

Ms Collins did go away, into more years of silence and depression. The misery did not lift until after her attacker, Father Paul McGennis, was jailed in 1997 over offences involving her and another child he abused 18 years after Collins. He was later convicted of having raped a third girl, 24 years after he attacked Ms Collins.

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UNITED STATES
Catholic Culture

By Phil Lawler

It’s open season on Catholicism. In Ireland and in Australia, public opinion is being whipped into frenzy in crusades against Church teachings. In both cases the arguments are thoroughly irrational.

•In Ireland, Savita Halappanavar died a horrible, painful, needless death. But rather than mourning her death, and demanding a full accounting of where the doctors went wrong, pundits are blaming the tragedy on teachings of the Catholic Church. We really don’t know, at this point, what caused her death. But one thing is quite clear already: it was not due to Catholic teaching, nor to Catholic influence on Ireland’s laws.

•In Australia, there are angry demands for Catholic priests to break the confessional seal. This campaign is fueled by the notion that the seal has protected perpetrators of sexual abuse. There is zero evidence—zero—to support that notion. And there is ample evidence that the campaign against the Catholic Church is tinged by political motives.

Let’s examine each case rationally.

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UNITED STATES
Hitfix

Interview: Alex Gibney on exposing the Catholic Church and giving voice to the deaf in ‘Mea Maxima Culpa’

By Guy Lodge Friday, Nov 16, 2012

From misplaced questions to accidental transcription errors, interview fumbles are obviously to be avoided under any circumstances, but you particularly want to be on your game when the subject is one of America’s preeminent documentarians – someone whose own profession is built on a level of journalistic expertise. So you can imagine my mortification when my iPhone recently took it upon itself to wipe its own memory clean – deleting, among other things, all aural evidence of my face-to-face conversation with Alex Gibney at last month’s London Film Festival.

The prolific filmmaker, an Oscar-winner in 2007 for his devastating legalized-torture study “Taxi to the Dark Side,” was in town for the European premiere of his superb new film “Mea Maxima Culpa: Silence in the House of God,” which would win him the festival’s Best Documentary award the very next day. The film, which hits US theaters today, is not the first to examine the horrific history of sexual abuse within the Catholic Church, but it is arguably the most penetrating, methodically tracing a dense network of crime and cover-up all the way from Milwaukee to the Vatican itself. It could well earn Gibney a deserved third Oscar nod.

Speaking over the phone from his New York office earlier this week, Gibney casually waves off my apologies for having to restage the interview. “Trust me, I’ve been there,” he says with a light laugh, his crisp, deliberate voice sounding rather less exhausted than it did in the bar of London’s Mayfair Hotel a month ago. It’s hard to imagine interviews – or any information, for that matter – slipping through the director’s fingers, so keen and diligent is his filmmaking style across a broad range of subjects, from the fall of Enron to the fizz of Hunter S. Thompson. “Mea Maxima Culpa” is among his most perspicacious works: weaving a profoundly moving story of human heroism through a tough-minded analysis of a global scandal, he carves out new angles in a story he admits initially fearing had already been adequately exposed.

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MINNESOTA
Inforum

By: Erik Burgess , INFORUM

BARNESVILLE, Minn. – The teenager who was not confirmed at the Catholic church here after he publicly supported same-sex marriage was not the only student who was denied the religious sacrament for backing gay marriage, the church’s priest said in a letter made public Friday.

In the letter, addressed to the parish of Assumption Church at 307 Front St. N., the Rev. Gary LaMoine says “a couple of candidates chose not to enter into full communion with the Catholic community because of their disagreement with the teaching of the Church concerning marriage.”

LaMoine also apologizes in the letter for the actions of 17-year-old Lennon Cihak’s family, who went public Wednesday with their claims that LaMoine denied their son confirmation after he posted a pro same-sex marriage photo on Facebook last month.

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NEW MEXICO
ABQ Journal

By Olivier Uyttebrouck / Journal Staff Writer on Sat, Nov 17, 2012

An Albuquerque man who filed a lawsuit alleging he was sexually abused as a child by a Roman Catholic priest has reached a “mutually agreeable” settlement with the Archdiocese of Santa Fe and the Servants of the Paraclete, his attorney said Friday.

Clifford Esquibel filed the lawsuit in October 2011, alleging the Rev. John George Weisenborn sexually molested him beginning in 1966 or 1967 when Esquibel was a seventh-grade altar boy at St. Francis Xavier Parish in Albuquerque.

The abuse continued until Esquibel was a 15-year-old student at Albuquerque High School, the lawsuit said.

Court records show that Weisenborn, who is now deceased, had lived since 1964 at Via Coeli, a treatment facility for priests in Jemez Springs operated by the Servants of the Paraclete.

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AUSTRALIA
ABC News

ABC breakfast radio presenter Eoin Cameron has urged all victims of child abuse to tell their stories to the royal commission.

Mr Cameron was repeatedly raped and sexually abused by a Marist Brother while he was student at a Catholic school in South Australia in the 1960s.

He says not a day goes by where he is not haunted by the memories of the abuse but he is prepared to give evidence to help ensure the full extent of institutional child abuse is exposed.

He has told the ABC’s 7:30WA he understands why many victims may feel reluctant to speak out.

“Now the Royal Commission has been called, it’s the opportunity for people not perhaps to go through something as stressful as I did,” he said.

“It’s a chance for them to tell their story, but already I’m hearing from people, I couldn’t, I want to but it would kill my Mum and Dad.”

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AUSTRALIA
Illawarra Mercury

By PETER NEWELL
Nov. 17, 2012

When the sun’s first rays creep over the horizon this morning and gently kiss, warm and illuminate the Illawarra coastline, they may be on a special mission.

First, they will touch the Pacific Ocean, and then its foaming surf and the beaches on to which it cascades.

Seconds later they will make landfall, bringing the birth of another day to all, and to two places in particular – the Bulli and Lakeside Kanahooka cemeteries. There lie at rest two special souls and, after political events this week, their headstones deserve to be bathed in sunshine.

Indeed, I wouldn’t be surprised at all if both these grave sites seem to have a particular sparkle about them today – a sort of celestial salute to good men, if you like.

Bulli is the resting place of the earthly remains of Peter Hugh Cullen, former Illawarra Mercury editor and, I’m proud to say, my mate. At Kanahooka rests Father Maurie Crocker, a man of great courage who saw evil flourishing and felt it his duty to do something about it while others turned a blind eye.

Although no longer here, years ago each played his own particular role in this week’s announcement by Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard of a wide-ranging royal commission into paedophilia across the country. It has been a long time coming, but I am sure each of them would cheer its arrival with gusto.

Peter and Maurie tackled this evil abuse of children in the Illawarra, and its cover-up, when it was not fashionable in some circles to expose such matters – back in 1993. I was the Mercury’s general manager at the time, having been its editor previously with Peter as my deputy, so our relationship was close.

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UTAH
Standard-Examiner

By Loretta Park
Standard-Examiner staff

FARMINGTON — A Centerville man facing child sex abuse charges has a felony arraignment hearing set for Dec. 4.

Timothy William Bothell, 43, appeared in 2nd District Court on Friday. He is charged with two first-degree felony counts of aggravated sexual abuse of a child and four counts of Class A misdemeanor charges of lewdness involving a child.

Bothell served on a local Stake High Council for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and was also employed by the LDS Church at the time of his arrest in August, police said.

According to court documents the abuse happened between Dec. 1, 2011, and Aug. 9, 2012.

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NEW YORK
Playbill

By Andrew Gans
16 Nov 2012

Theatre for the New City will present a reading of Frank J. Avella’s Vatican Falls, a play “set against the backdrop of the Catholic sex abuse scandal,” Dec. 3 at 7 PM.

Directed by Laura Caparrotti, the reading will feature the talents of Francesco Andolfi, Carlotta Brentan, Drew Bruck, Matthew Crooks, Joshua Dixon, Cali Gilman, Kalen J. Hall, Salvatore Infantino, Maggie LaMonica, Devon Talbott and Rob Ventre. Alexander Haynes will read the stage directions.

Based on factual material, Vatican Falls, according to press notes, “follows the life of one survivor who struggles with understanding how those closest to him could damage him the deepest. The multi-genre, non-linear play probes the conflicting feelings involved in most sexual abuse situations and dares to confront the truth about the ever-growing scandal and the Church’s complicity in it.”

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CALIFORNIA
Mercury News

By Mark Gomez
mgomez@mercurynews.commercurynews.com

SAN JOSE — Melanie Borrelli was home for the weekend, enjoying the annual festival at her old school, when she saw something that alarmed her. It was a familiar face connected with a horrible rumor.

The 19-year-old college sophomore recognized the man working a sound booth as Mark Gurries, who — she had heard — had been convicted of molesting a girl she knew. Borrelli took out her smartphone, Googled his name and found his mug shot on the Megan’s Law website.

She couldn’t believe it. Here was a registered sex offender working at a parish festival with hundreds of children around, including Borrelli’s two younger sisters. Melanie Borrelli found her mom.

“What is he doing here?” she asked her mom, pointing at Gurries and showing her the mug shot.

Parents in the Saint Frances Cabrini Catholic Parish are still waiting for answers to that question first posed Oct. 6 by Melanie Borrelli, a former student at the parish’s Catholic elementary school in San Jose. She and others were even more incredulous that night when, they said, parish priest Father Lieu Vu told them Gurries — convicted in 2010 of molesting a young relative — had a right to be there. In fact, he possessed a letter from the church giving him explicit permission to be a volunteer.

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CANADA
London Free Press

By Randy Richmond, The London Free Press

Friday, November 16, 2012

A bishop of the Old Roman Catholic Church has waded into the debate about whether a Londoner with a criminal past is a priest.

Terry Mertick is indeed “a priest in good standing,” Bishop Gilles Tremblay said in a news release Friday.

“Father Terry Mertick is a validly ordained priest under my episcopal jurisdiction here in Montreal P.Q.,” the statement reads.

The Old Roman Catholic Church officially dates to 1870 and exists apart from the Roman Catholic Church, Tremblay said in his statement.

The Roman Catholic Diocese of London issued a news release Thursday that said Mertick was impersonating a priest and conducting services at area funeral homes.

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WASHINGTON
Kirkland Reporter

November 16, 2012

A child sex abuse claim, which involved a Kirkland church, has been settled. A trial was scheduled to begin against the Seattle Archdiocese next Monday but the parish district settled for $635,000 on Thursday.

Former youth minister Jim Funnell at St. John Vianney Church in Kirkland allegedly sexually abused the plaintiff, identified by his initials D.E., in the mid-1980s for more than one year. It is said others were abused as well.

D.E. was living in Kirkland at the time of the abuse but now resides in Bothell.

Funnell was hired, which the plaintiff claims, during the time when former Seattle Archbishop Raymond Haunthausen and other Catholic bishops were collaborating on how to address the emerging sexual abuse crisis in the Catholic church.

However, the Archdiocese failed to adequately warn its employees and timely adopt the policies regarding child sex abuse, and Funnell slipped through the cracks because church officials failed to conduct a proper background check, said the victim.

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UNITED STATES
Voice from the Desert

[Bob Hoatson reflects on last night’s election results]

Tom Doyle

When I first saw Bob’s reflections on the election joined with his reflections on VOTF I was struck by how much on target Bob is with his thoughts on both. I suggested that his thoughts get as wide a circulation as possible.

The one aspect of the election campaign that irritated me the most was the clumsy and insulting intrusion of the U.S. Bishops. They viewed the campaign and the office of president pretty much the way they view everything: an entity subordinate to them and an entity that must submit to their scrutiny and their demands. For as long as anyone can remember the bishops have held themselves out to be the official, divinely instituted arbiters and interpreters of moral law, theology and the meaning of the scriptures. Whether their interpretation was true mattered little. If they said it was so that was it! In their way of thinking it is always been better to be right than to be true!

Well, they said what was true about a number of issues over the centuries and in time, usually much time, they were proven wrong and had to admit it. The clarion example is Galilleo who waited over three centuries for posthumous vindication and even then the mitered wizards led by the pope could not come out and simply say “we were wrong.”

The bishops’ collective efforts to unseat the president were an embarrassment to many Catholics who had come to the conclusion that they are adults and can make electoral choices on their own.

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UNITED STATES
The Wrap

By Sharon Waxman
Follow @sharonwaxman

Alex Gibney is ready to take on the Pope in his new documentary, “Mea Maxima Culpa: Silence in the House of God,” which opens this weekend.

Gibney, who has taken on hot topics from lobbyist Jack Abramoff to biking champion Lance Armstrong to Enron, digs into a new aspect of the sexual-abuse scandal in which deaf children in Catholic boarding schools were preyed upon by pedophile priests.

One of those children, now grown, has sued the Pope. The film raises the tantalizing question of whether private individuals can sue the Vatican, which is a sovereign country.

“So you can understand the magnitude of this scandal, it’s a concerted systematic cover-up of childhood sexual abuse that goes all the way to top of Vatican,” he told me.

He said that the sins of the Wisconsin priest at the deaf school, Lawrence Murphy, “leads you on a journey, like the film ‘Chinatown,’ from Milwaukee to Ireland all the way up to the top of the Vatican, to the Pope himself.”

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AUSTRALIA
Herald Sun

CARDINAL George Pell looked more like a politician than a priest this week, ducking and weaving and spinning his answers to lay blame everywhere but in his own backyard.

It’s been that refusal of the church and its hierarchy to deal properly and openly with decades of accusations that has led to the widespread public cynicism and criticism it now faces.

Its official response has been minimalist and reluctant, hidden in legalese and spin, all aimed at protecting the reputation of the church first, and helping the victim second.

Pell’s public performance shows nothing has changed, and that’s not only a sad indictment on the church (not its people, who do good things every day) but a hurtful and unwise approach before the royal commission.

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UNITED STATES
dotCommonweal

November 16, 2012

Posted by Eric Bugyis

Over at The Dish, Andrew Sullivan praises a new HBO documentary, “Mea Maxima Culpa: Silence in the House of God,” by Alex Gibney (“Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room”) on the perpetration and cover-up of sex abuse in the Catholic Church that traces the corruption all the way to the Pope. None of this, I think, will be news to many of us who have been following this horrifying story for more than a decade, but Sullivan offers an interesting comment on how the loss of moral credibility among the hierarchy has created two parallel churches:

One feature of this last election was the complete failure of the Vatican hierarchs to dictate the vote to the flock. American Catholics voted for Obama over Romney. The docile fools in dresses – from Dolan to Chaput – were ignored as they now routinely are, and should be. They actually think they still have moral authority. But moral authority has to be earned with each generation, and the corruption in the Vatican is so deep and so rotten and so incapable of self-reflection it has effectively created two Catholic churches in America: those few in the pews who still listen to the bishops and those who exist almost in a parallel church, focused on their own parish, their own priest, and their own faith, which remains, for many of us, undimmed.

I have also found the idea of inhabiting a parallel Catholic Church to be one way of sustaining my own faith through the dark time of scandal, pastoral malfeasance, and political cynicism that continues to undermine the hierarchical Church. The wonderful community at my local parish and the excellent priests that serve us have kept me coming back every week in spite of the continual heartbreak that comes from seeing certain bishops and their friends take the public stage with a militant defensiveness, a hunger for power, and a litigiousness that seems to be the very antithesis of the Gospel’s message of self-sacrifice, humility, and love. Now more than ever, I find that spending Sunday mornings in prayer with my spouse and our friends a the Church of Loretto is essential to sustaining a spiritual life away from the daily silliness that has become the public witness of institutional Catholicism.

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UNITED STATES
The Daily Beast

[with video]

Andrew Sullivan

Earlier this week, I was privileged to attend a screening of Alex Gibney’s latest piece of documentary brilliance, “Mea Maxima Culpa: Silence in the House of God.” It’s released today. To be honest I want to see it one more time before writing a length about it. It’s about the Catholic Church’s sexual abuse crisis – and the criminal conspiracy reaching right to the current Pope that will one day surely bring the whole house of cards down, so that the church can be rebuilt amid the ruins created by deeply sick and psychologically crippled men at its core. No one is more implicated in covering up this institutionalization of sexual abuse and secrecy than the man who controlled and oversaw every single case of clerical sex abuse in the world from 2001 onwards: Pope Benedict XVI, who knows more than anyone else on the planet about the horrifying psycho-sexual truth beneath the ermined, bejewelled veneer.

One feature of this last election was the complete failure of the Vatican hierarchs to dictate the vote to the flock. American Catholics voted for Obama over Romney. The docile fools in dresses – from Dolan to Chaput – were ignored as they now routinely are, and should be. They actually think they still have moral authority. But moral authority has to be earned with each generation, and the corruption in the Vatican is so deep and so rotten and so incapable of self-reflection it has effectively created two Catholic churches in America: those few in the pews who still listen to the bishops and those who exist almost in a parallel church, focused on their own parish, their own priest, and their own faith, which remains, for many of us, undimmed.

But every now and again, that parallel church actually encounters – and cannot elide – the hierarchy. In Minnesota, where a third of the population is Catholic, the hierarchy insisted that the state amend its constitution to keep gay couples out of civil society and civil marriage. The hierarchy failed – as miserably as they failed in their trumped up “war on religion” nonsense. The Amendment didn’t pass. You cannot be exposed as an institution that is responsible for covering up the rape and torture of thousands of children and have any moral authority when it comes to the constitutional equality of gay citizens or the contraceptives that 99 percent of Catholic American women use at some point.

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UNITED STATES
Associated Baptist Press

By Bob Allen

A network of Reformed church plants accused in a class-action lawsuit of covering up sexual abuse of children appealed to a First Amendment defense in a statement Nov. 14.

Sovereign Grace Ministries, which recently relocated from Maryland to Louisville, Ky., in the wake of recent internal strife, initially declined comment until receiving a copy of the lawsuit filed Oct. 17 in Montgomery County, Md.

An “updated” statement by Tommy Hill, Sovereign Grace’s director of administration, said the organization could not comment on specific allegations in the lawsuit, but upon review “it appears the complaint contains a number of misleading allegations, as well as considerable mischaracterizations of intent.”

Hill said the lawsuit, which does not allege child abuse by any current or former pastor involved with the network of about 90 churches, involved “biblical and spiritual direction” given by request of those seeking counsel.

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SCHWEIZ
Tages Anzeiger

Von Eva Waiblinger

Die Historikerin Francisca Loetz untersuchte Fälle sexueller Gewalt in Zürich von 1500 bis 1850. Männer hatten damals das Recht, ihre Sexualität auszuleben. Für Frauen zählte vor Gericht einzig die Ehre.

Überlandstrasse. Ein Zeuge hört Schreie und beobachtet, wie Jakob A. (24) mit offenem Hosenladen Reissaus nimmt. Im Strassengraben findet der Zeuge dann die junge Barbara U. (17): wimmernd, mit zerzausten Haaren und zerrissenen Kleidern. Der Fall kommt vor Gericht. Die Zürcher Richter erachten es als erwiesen, dass Jakob A. die Frau vergewaltigt hat, sehen jedoch von einer Bestrafung des Angeklagten ab, wenn dieser Barbara U. am darauffolgenden Samstag ehelicht. Barbara U. muss ihren Peiniger heiraten. Ein empörend ungerechtes Verdikt – nach heutigem Empfinden. Nicht so im Jahr 1656, als das Zürcher Gericht dieses Urteil fällte. Damals sah die Gesellschaft ein solches Urteil als angemessen und sinnvoll an.

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MISSOURI
Missourinet

November 16, 2012 By Jessica Machetta

A former Kansas City catholic priest linked to several sexual abuse incidents has died. John Tulipana, 66, had been banned from the ministry in 1994. The Kansas City Diocese settled two complaints against him that year. The diocese in 2008 paid $10 million to settle a lawsuit filed by 47 people who had complained Tulipana and other priests had abused them in the 1970s.

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MIAMI (FL)
CBS Miami

MIAMI (CBSMiami) – The Miami Archdiocese again finds itself the target of a child abuse lawsuit, this time involving an accused serial molester already being held in the Broward County jail in a criminal case.

According to CBS 4 news partner The Miami Herald, a lawsuit alleges Fr. Neil Doherty drugged and sexually molested Dennis Montero almost three decades ago as the priest “blessed him” and told the then 15-year-old “his job was to share God’s love.’’

“He drugged me repeatedly and raped me repeatedly. This guy is a monster,” Montero, 43, said Thursday. “I ended up punishing myself with drugs and alcohol to deal with the pain.’’

Doherty, 69, already named in more than two dozen sex-abuse lawsuits, is in jail awaiting trial on a charge of sexually assaulting a minor in Broward County.

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UNITED STATES
Religion Dispatches

By Elizabeth Drescher

For all Il Papa’s social media encouragement the last few years, the Roman Catholic Church continues to struggle with digital ministry practice, particularly where new media intersects the church’s medieval sacramental structure.

In 2011, a new smartphone app aimed to support preparation for and the practice of confession ended up generating more confusion than contrition when a not particularly social design invited people to conclude that absolution was granted by way of the Confession app itself rather than, according to Catholic teaching, through the mediation of the priest.

No wonder Pope Benedict XVI’s Message for World Communications Day earlier this year highlighted silence and listening—the heart of Christian practices of contemplation—by way of encouraging the development of “a kind of ‘eco-system’ that maintains a just equilibrium between silence, words, images and sounds.” And, we might add, actions.

Blog a bit, tweet a bit, share your favorite liturgical recipes on Facebook if you like, the Holy Father seemed to be saying to the Catholic faithful, but once in a while, for the love of God, zip it.

All in all, not a bad idea, but I suspect the silence His Holiness had in mind had nothing to do with the kind of creepy, panoptical Facebook surveillance that led the Rev. Gary LaMoine of Assumption Church in Barnesville, Minnesota to prevent 17-year-old Lennon Cihak from receiving the sacrament of confirmation, a rite of passage usually administered to Catholic teenagers to “perfect the work of baptism” (the first of the sacraments, in Roman Catholic teaching) and mark their maturity as Catholic Christians. Likewise, the boy’s family members have been prevented from receiving the sacrament of Holy Communion at the church.

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PROVIDENCE (RI)
Seattle PI

PROVIDENCE, R.I. (AP) — A Connecticut man has sued the Legion of Christ, accusing the disgraced Roman Catholic order of using “predatory” means to persuade his father to donate his retirement savings.

The suit filed in federal court in Rhode Island seeks to recoup some $1 million of James Boa-Teh (bo-AH’-teh) Chu’s savings and $10 million in damages. Chu was a Yale University professor who died in 2009.

Paul Chu’s lawsuit says his father’s health was declining when Legion representatives convinced him to donate his savings.

A Legion spokesman denies the claim.

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AUSTRALIA
The Standard

By PETER COLLINS
Nov. 17,

THE chairman of a national council of Catholic priests has revealed how he worked and lived with priests later convicted of child abuse who had kept their dark perversions secret from other clergy.

Father Eugene McKinnon, who was raised and served in the south-west, said the offenders had kept that part of their lives hidden until confronted by outside authorities.

“I knew three of the paedophile priests,” he said.

“I lived in the same parish presbytery with a bloke who was later jailed, but I didn’t pick up on what he was doing.

“You could eat and talk with him and you never knew there was another part of his life.

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GEORGIA
Savannah Morning News

By Bryan County Now

A priest who once worked at Holy Cross Church in Pembroke, Fr. Robert Poandl, was indicted by federal authorities on child sex crimes Thursday.

According to the Associated Press the Rev. Robert Poandl, of the Cincinnati-based Glenmary Home Missioners, voluntarily surrendered to authorities after he learned of the charges and was in Butler County Jail in southwest Ohio following an order by a federal magistrate judge that he be taken into custody.

The indictment against Poandl, opened in Cincinnati federal court on Wednesday, accused the priest of taking a 10-year-old boy to West Virginia for sex in 1991.

A statement released by Glenmary, said Poandl was serving as pastor of Glenmary’s missions in Claxton, Pembroke and Sand Hill until Feb. 11 of this year when he was relieved of his ministerial duties following an allegation of sexual misconduct.

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CALIFORNIA
Santa Monica Mirror

Posted Nov. 15, 2012

Brenton Garen / Editor-in-Chief

Former Santa Monica St. Anne’s Church priest Rafael Venegas pleaded to one count of misdemeanor battery and one count of furnishing alcohol to a minor last Friday, Nov. 9.

Venegas was sentenced to one day in jail, 364 days of probation, 160 hours of community service, and counseling through the archdiocese, which must contain a segment dealing with sexual compulsion.

The sentencing stems from a Santa Monica Police Department investigation that began on July 1, 2012.

A 20-year-old woman, who was not a parishioner of St. Anne’s, reported that a sexual assault involving Venegas occurred on the property of St. Anne’s Parish at 2017 Colorado Avenue in Santa Monica in September 2011.

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AUSTRALIA
The West Australian

EXCLUSIVE Gary Adshead, The West Australian
Updated November 17, 2012

A mother who discovered 18 years after her teenage son committed suicide that he had been molested by an Anglican priest in Gosnells will ask the national royal commission into child sex abuse to investigate the case.

David Dossett was 13 in 1976 when he overdosed on sleeping tablets, leaving his mother Margaret baffled until detectives with evidence about the crimes of Rev. Michael Roderick Painter knocked on her door in 1994. Mrs Dossett has spoken publicly for the first time about her son’s suicide and her belief that Painter abused many children before taking his life.

She described the heartache of finding out that the priest, who prayed for her son while he lay dying in hospital and later conducted his funeral service, was responsible for David’s death.

“I’d wish I’d had the strength to confront Michael Painter and say, ‘What have you done to my son’,” Mrs Dossett said. “But I didn’t have that strength. It is my big regret.”

Painter killed himself four months after police officers told Mrs Dossett that entries in his diaries would result in the priest being charged with molesting her son between 1974 and 1976.

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AUSTRALIA
The West Australian

Gary Adshead, The West Australian
Updated November 17, 2012

Reverend Michael Painter didn’t stay long after laying 13-year-old David Dossett to rest during a small but gut-wrenching funeral service at Karrakatta in 1976.

The boy’s mother Margaret assumed the family priest, who she says had taken David on youth group trips, found it too upsetting.

Almost two decades later she learnt the real reason Painter disappeared early on that terrible day. He was a shame- ridden paedophile who robbed David of his innocence and drove him to suicide.

Mrs Dossett’s memory of the circumstances surrounding David’s death was vivid.

She knew the names of the constables who were at the bush site in Thornlie where David was found at 4.50pm on August 12, 1976, having been lying unconscious and out of sight all day.

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AUSTRALIA
The West Australian

Andrew Tillett Canberra, The West Australian

The head of the Catholic Church in Perth warns that forcing priests to report sex offenders could be counterproductive and still put children at risk.

Archbishop Timothy Costelloe told _The Weekend West _ yesterday that the confidentiality of the confession box may be the only way of getting predators to admit and deal with their crimes.

In the wake of Julia Gillard announcing a national royal commission this week into child sex abuse, a raft of politicians – including the Prime Minister, Opposition Leader Tony Abbott and Premier Colin Barnett – said priests had a responsibility to pass on claims of child sex abuse to the authorities.

In WA, priests are not bound by the same mandatory reporting requirements as teachers, doctors, nurses and police.

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AUSTRALIA
Newcastle Herald

By JOANNE McCARTHY
Nov. 17, 2012

IT’S the investigation that has everything – a defrocked priest, a former Newcastle lord mayor, spying allegations, and questions about the professional standards of a professional standards director.

Newcastle Anglican Diocese is keeping tight-lipped about a complaint involving its professional standards director Michael Elliott and his alleged attempts to view a service organised by a defrocked priest.

The diocese has confirmed it received a complaint after Mr Elliott was asked to leave the enclosed backyard of a unit for vulnerable people, including domestic violence victims, on October 26.

The unit complex overlooks a former church building in the Newcastle area.

Mr Elliott is alleged to have identified himself when challenged, and to have told a complex employee he was looking for a vantage point to observe a service organised by defrocked Newcastle priest John Gumbley.

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AUSTRALIA
Geelong Advertiser

Mandy Squires | November 17th, 2012

GEELONG priest Kevin Dillon says a public rally against the handling of Catholic Church abuse claims could help send a message to the church’s leaders.

Ordinary Catholics should consider letting the “blind and deaf” church hierarchy know they do not agree with the way abuse claims have been handled and want a new way forward, Father Dillon of St Mary’s Basilica said.

A rally would also show support to abuse victims, he said.

“Maybe what we need is a march up Bourke St like we had for Jill Meagher a few weeks ago, to say to church leaders we want a different approach,” Father Dillon said.

“We want people who have been violated and had their lives ruined to be looked after and we’re sick and tired of this business of being told how good it (the Catholic Church’s own system for handling abuse claims) is, when it hasn’t been able to produce one victim to actually say that.”

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CONNECTICUT
Patch

By Paul Petrone

After his lawyer cited a need to look further into his medical records, today Fr. Dennis Carey’s case was continued again until January 7 by Judge Susan B. Handy.

Carey, the former head paster of Waterford’s St. Paul in Chains Rectory, was arrested in July on a charge of first-degree possession of child pornography after police allegedly found more than 300 files of child pornography on Carey’s computers inside the rectory. Carey has since said he wants help for his addiction to child pornography and has spent time in a mental health institution.

Today he appeared in New London Superior Court with his lawyer, Ron Stevens. His appearance lasted less than 30 seconds, with Handy saying the state had no opposition to Stevens’ request for more time and rescheduled his court date for January 7.

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NEW ZEALAND
New Zealand Herald

By Catherine Masters , Greg Ansley

5:30 AM Saturday Nov 17, 2012

Calls mount for New Zealand involvement in a top-level Australian inquiry into the widespread sexual abuse of children by Catholic priests and other authority figures. Greg Ansley and Catherine Masters report

Former priest Denis McAlinden was defrocked following sexual abuse allegations involving minors in Australia. He spent six months in Tokomaru Bay’s church. Photo / Supplied

The Catholic church in Tokomaru Bay, Gisborne, is like many in small-town New Zealand – a picture of safety and innocence.

It’s hard to imagine that the pretty little wooden chapel with the blue roof has been caught up in a top-level inquiry into the sexual abuse of children, which was launched in Australia but is likely to extend to this country.

Among the practices to be investigated is that instead of prosecuting paedophile priests, the Catholic church transferred them from diocese to diocese – sometimes shipping them across the Tasman to New Zealand and vice versa.

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MISSOURI
KCTV

Posted: Nov 15, 2012

By Laura McCallister, Multimedia Producer
By Betsy Webster, News Reporter

MONITEAU COUNTY, MO (KCTV) –
A Missouri church is facing criticism from within its own ranks over a pastor accused of child sex crimes who refuses to step down.

Pastor Travis Smith has been exonerated of two child sex crimes cases, and now charged in two more.

Baptist leaders are concerned, while his congregation is steadfast in their support.

In several small mid-Missouri towns surrounding the county seat of California, MO, Smith’s name can invoke the response, “Say no more.”

Before being pastor at the First Baptist Church in Stover, MO, Smith was youth pastor at Pilot Grove Baptist Church.

“The whole thing just made me sick. The whole thing was sickening,” said a woman who didn’t want to reveal her identity.

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UTAH
Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests

Posted by Barbara Dorris on November 16, 2012

A West Valley City minister has been removed for failing to quickly report allegations of child abuse.

We are grateful for this move. Too often, those who abuse kids get away because church officials refuse to or delay reporting allegations. When predators are brought to justice, those who enabled and protected them get off scot free, and allowed to remain in their positions. Only when those who enable and cover up child sex abuse are punished for their actions will the tide begin to turn against the child sex abuse epidemic.

We hope that Rev. Eddie Kelemini, who has stepped into the position left vacant by Rev. Havili Mone’s ouster, will be a friend to victims and an advocate for those who have been hurt by the church. We urge Rev. Kelemini to search within his church for others who may be suffering in silence and use every resource at his disposal to help them heal and seek justice.

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CLEVELAND (OH0)
Fox 8

[with video]

November 14, 2012, by Bill Sheil

A FOX 8 I-Team investigation looks into how the Cleveland Catholic Diocese has handled one particular priest.

The priest took a leave of absence ten years ago, just after the priest sex abuse scandal exploded into public view.

The FOX 8 I-Team’s Bill Sheil tells you what the priest is doing now.

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OHIO
Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests

Posted by David Clohessy on November 16, 2012

Cleveland’s Catholic bishop is restoring to ministry a priest who “groomed” a teenager and tried to abuse him.

In a nine minute televised investigative report, based largely on “hundreds of pages of documents from the Lake County prosecutor,” Fox 8 investigative reporter Bill Sheil reports that Bishop Richard Lennon is putting Fr. Jeffrey M. Weaver back on the job for the first time in a decade.

Read the story.

Leaders of a support group called SNAP, the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests, are blasting the move as “reckless, callous and deceitful.”

According to the records released by prosecutors, in 1996, Fr. Weaver

–“bought the teenager a large number of alcoholic drinks,”
–“then tried to French kiss him” while victim pushed him away in the Immaculate Conception rectory,
–“rubbed his legs above the knee, approaching his penis one time,”
–“locked his legs together over the victim’s legs, saying ‘isn’t this nice,’” and
–“put the victim’s hands on his (the priest’s) legs.”

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WASHINGTON
Sky Valley Chronicle

November 16, 2012

(SEATTLE, WA) — The Seattle Archdiocese has decided to settle a 1980’s sex abuse lawsuit for $635,000 payable to the man who said he was victimized by a former lay youth minister.

Rolfe Eckmann alleged he was abused in the mid-80s by Jim Funnell, a former youth minister at Saint John Vianney Catholic Church in Kirkland.

In the lawsuit he filed Eckmann contended the Archdiocese hired Funnell without a background check while at the same time the church was also implementing its sex abuse prevention policies.

In 1989, Funnell was charged with sexually assaulting a different boy and was fired from his job. He pleaded guilty to a lesser charge.

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UNITED KINGDOM
EADT 24

Friday, November 16, 2012

A RETIRED priest from Suffolk who sexually abused teenagers will not be sentenced today because of administrative reasons.

Father John Haley Dossor had been due to receive his punishment after pleading guilty at an earlier hearing to six indecent assaults against two boys aged between 13 and 17.

The 71-year-old, of Kirton, near Felixstowe, had denied a further nine charges relating to attacks on men and boys and they will remain on file.

But the hearing at Norwich Crown Court could not take place.

Dossor will be sentenced at a date yet to be confirmed.

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AUSTRALIA
Brisbane Times

November 17, 2012

Mike Carlton

Grave of mien, choosing each word with studied care, every inch a prince of Rome, Cardinal George Pell defied the accusers.

The sexual abuse of children by Catholic priests had been exaggerated, he told a news conference in Sydney on Tuesday. There was a “press campaign” against the church, with “general smears that we are covering up and moving people around”.

“We object to being described as the only cab on the rank … because there is a persistent press campaign focused largely on us, that does not mean we are largely the principal culprits.”

With those few sentences, Australia’s most senior Catholic churchman flung aside any lingering shred of moral authority attached either to his person or his office as the Cardinal Archbishop of Sydney. There were one or two perfunctory remarks about “shame” delivered in that familiar treacly baritone, but that was it. Strip away the apostolic airs and he could have been a flack for James Hardie assuring the world that the dangers of the company’s asbestos products had been rather overblown.

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AUSTRALIA
Brisbane Times

November 17, 2012

Chrissie Foster

I COULD never stand to live in a world without justice and truth: at last there will be a platform for both. Prime Minister Julia Gillard’s announcement of a royal commission on child sexual abuse has brought to an end the cries from victims and victim supporters. Of course, there have been many tears this week. More will be shed. But the royal commission is a cause for celebration.

For my family, the struggle to achieve this breakthrough began 16 years ago, on March 26, 1996. This was the day my daughter Emma, after almost a year of starving her 13-year-old body to an emaciated 41 kilograms, numerous self-harming horrors and attempts to take her own life, disclosed that our parish priest had sexually assaulted her. Not once, but on many occasions over her primary school years.

Fifteen months later more horror and heartbreak surfaced through a half-finished suicide note from our second daughter, Katie. She had hidden the note in a shoebox. It was written in her very neatest handwriting. Katie had been another victim of our parish priest.

There was no cure for my much-loved daughters. The pain never leaves. After years of subsequent torment, Emma took her own life at the age of 26. Katie, while drunk after binge drinking, was hit by a car in 1999 (she was 15) and still receives 24-hour care as a result of her injuries.

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AUSTRALIA
The Australian

JAMIE WALKER
From:The Australian
November 17, 2012

THE spiritual leader of Australia’s 3.5 million Anglicans, Phillip Aspinall, believes that priests may be able to report child abuse revealed during the rite of confession without breaking the seal of the confessional, putting him at odds with Catholics.

The Anglican Primate says the sanctity of the confessional should be examined by the royal commission into child sexual abuse called this week by Julia Gillard, which he regards as being a decade overdue.

Dr Aspinall’s predecessor as Archbishop of Brisbane, Peter Hollingworth – who lost his job as governor-general after a scandal erupted over his handling of sex-abuse cases in the diocese – also backed the inquiry.

Dr Hollingworth warned yesterday that the abuse of children was “more widespread than previously thought”, and welcomed the royal commission as an important national initiative and a means to help victims.

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AUSTRALIA
The Australian

PETER CRAVEN
From:The Australian
November 17, 2012

IT’S fortunate that when Julia Gillard announced on Monday that she would hold a royal commission into child abuse, she emphasised it would not confine itself to any one religious institution, or to religious institutions at all: government childcare, non-profit private bodies such as the Scouts – all would be scrutinised.

If the process was going to take years, then fair enough, in the Prime Minister’s view – there could (and should) be no shortcuts in this business.

It was an appropriate way to announce a royal commission, because the immediate provocation for one was that there had been more reports of abuse involving the Catholic Church.

They were hellish reports: of Catholic brothers committing pack rapes of children in orphanages, of offending priests being posted to new parishes where they offended again.

Premier Ted Baillieu in Victoria has an investigation under way and his NSW counterpart Barry O’Farrell has announced one too. Former prime minister Malcolm Fraser, independent senator Nick Xenophon and independent federal MP Tony Windsor had all called for a royal commission.

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UNITED KINGDOM
The Independent

Tom Pugh

Friday 16 November 2012

Police investigating allegations of sex offences against boys and young men by a retired Church of England bishop said seven more people have come forward claiming they were abused.

The Rt Rev Peter Ball, 80, was arrested at his home near Langport, Somerset, on Tuesday on suspicion of sex offences against eight boys and young men aged from 12 to their early 20s in East Sussex and elsewhere in the late 1970s and 1990s, sources said.

Since his arrest, Sussex Police said a further seven people have come forward making allegations of abuse against them.

A number of people have also stepped forward with potentially useful information, although not alleging that offences had been committed against them.

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IRELAND
Irish Independent

Friday November 16 2012

AN ELDERLY priest has been charged with sexually assaulting a teen over an eight-year period two decades ago.

Fr Vincent Mercer (66) of Black Abbey, Kilkenny, was remanded on bail after being charged before Cork District Court with a total of 39 counts of sexual assault.

Fr Mercer faces 39 charges of sexual assault against a juvenile at various locations in Cork and Limerick between January 1, 1986 and February 22, 1994.

The juvenile was aged between 11 and 17 over this period.

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UNITED KINGDOM
EADT 24

Friday, November 16, 2012

A RETIRED priest from Suffolk who sexually abused teenagers is due to be sentenced.

Father John Haley Dossor pleaded guilty at an earlier hearing to six indecent assaults against two boys aged between 13 and 17.

The 71-year-old, of Kirton, near Felixstowe, had denied a further nine charges relating to attacks on men and boys and they will remain on file.

He will be sentenced at Norwich Crown Court and has been warned he could be jailed.

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MIAMI (FL)
Miami Herald

By Audra D.S. Burch
aburch@miamiherald.com

The Miami Archdiocese faces another child abuse lawsuit involving an accused serial molester already being held in the Broward County jail in a criminal case.

In a lawsuit, Fr. Neil Doherty is accused of drugging and sexually molesting Dennis Montero almost three decades ago as the priest “blessed him” and told the then 15-year-old “his job was to share God’s love.’’

“He drugged me repeatedly and raped me repeatedly. This guy is a monster,” Montero, 43, said Thursday. “I ended up punishing myself with drugs and alcohol to deal with the pain.’’

Doherty, 69, already named in more than two dozen sex-abuse lawsuits, is in jail awaiting trial on a charge of sexually assaulting a minor in Broward County.

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UNITED STATES
Reuters

By Andrea Burzynski

NEW YORK | Fri Nov 16, 2012

(Reuters) – Four deaf Wisconsin men were some of the first to seek justice after suffering childhood sexual abuse at the hands of a priest, and a new documentary about the Catholic Church’s poor handling of such cases stemming from the Vatican seeks to make their voices heard.

“Mea Maxima Culpa: Silence in the House of God” explores the impact of the Roman Catholic Church’s protocol as dictated from the Vatican for dealing with pedophile priests. It opens in U.S. cinemas on November 16, and will air on cable channel HBO in February.

Though American media coverage about child sex abuse by clergy has been extensive since a slew of cases came to light in Boston in 2002, Oscar-winning documentary director Alex Gibney wanted to connect individual stories with what he sees as systemic failures stemming from the top of the church.

“A lot of individual stories had been done about clerical sex abuse, but I hadn’t seen one that really connected the individual stories with the larger cover-up by the Vatican, so that was important,” Gibney told Reuters in an interview.

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MAINE
Bangor Daily News

By Julia Bayly, BDN Staff

FORT KENT, Maine — Members of St. John Vianney Parish could have their former spiritual leader back in time for Christmas following word Thursday from the Roman Catholic Diocese of Portland that the Rev. James Nadeau is returning after a 7-month voluntary leave of absence.

Nadeau stepped down from his position as pastor of the St.John Valley parish in the wake of a Maine attorney general’s office investigation into possible embezzlement of parish funds.

Earlier this month, that office decided to not pursue criminal charges against Nadeau, citing lack of evidence supporting the allegations which had been brought by an unidentified third party.

Nadeau met for two hours in Portland Thursday afternoon with Bishop Richard J. Malone, Apostolic administrator of the diocese, according to Dave Guthro, communications director with the diocese.

Guthro declined to provide further details about the investigation, but said Thursday’s meeting between Malone and Nadeau “went very well. The two men wanted to keep that meeting a private conversation between Father Nadeau and the Bishop [and] it sounded like it went well with no rancor.”

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UNITED STATES
The Star-Ledger

By Stephen Whitty/The Star-Ledger

Alex Gibney’s new film begins with dark shots of Gothic architecture, ominous figures moving through murky shadows and, in the background, faintly chanted Latin. It feels a bit like a monster movie.

It is, too.

Sadly, though, “Mea Maxima Culpa: Silence in the House of God” is a documentary about real-life horrors – the sexual abuse (and coverups) that have tortured countless innocents, bedeviled the Catholic Church and caused many to question their faith.

The Summit-based documentarian, always a careful filmmaker, begins by focusing on a single, albeit monstrous case – a priest who, for decades, abused boys at a Wisconsin boarding school for the deaf.

But then, it slowly widens its gaze – to see similar horrors taking place in Ireland, in Italy, in Latin America. And to uncover a pattern of deceit that both denied the victims help and practically ensured their abusers could continue the assaults.

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ST. LOUIS (MO)
St. Louis Post-Dispatch

By Robert Patrick rpatrick@post-dispatch.com

ST. LOUIS  •  An advocacy group for victims of sexual abuse praised on Thursday the extradition order that will send a former University City man to Australia to face child sexual abuse charges.

The Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests called U.S. Magistrate Judge Nannette Baker’s extradition order last month a “win for victims everywhere,” and urged any victims of David Kramer to come forward to police.

Australian authorities claim Kramer fondled or otherwise indecently assaulted four male students, ages 10 and 11, who attended the school where Kramer taught. The abuse was alleged to have occurred from 1989-92, while Kramer was teaching at a school in St. Kilda, a Melbourne suburb.

Officials charged Kramer last December, months before he was released from a Missouri prison after serving a seven-year sentence for sexual misconduct and statutory sodomy. Prosecutors said he fondled a 12-year-old boy and masturbated in front of him in an apartment in University City. Kramer pleaded guilty in 2008.

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OHIO/WEST VIRGINIA
WLWT

[with video]

CINCINNATI —
A federal grand jury has indicted a Fairfield priest with transportation of a minor across state lines for illicit purposes.

A grand jury in West Virginia indicts a Cincinnati priest on child sex charges.
More

The indictment, issued Wednesday, said 71-year-old Robert Poandl, known as “Father Bob,” took a 10-year-old boy to West Virginia in 1991 and sexually assaulted him there. …

“I was yelling hooray for the victims and for kids,” said Judy Jones, associate director of the Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests. “Hopefully they can’t be harmed anymore by this predator.”

Jones said Poandl was indicted in this same case two years ago but the charges were dismissed.

Glenmary’s president issued this statement saying, “We have just learned of these charges today, and we are working to fully comply with the subpoena and cooperate with investigators.”

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AUSTRALIA
ABC – PM

TONY EASTLEY: The Federal Government’s Royal Commission into Child Sexual Abuse may have been sparked by incidents within the Catholic Church but it’s not the only organisation that will be subject to scrutiny.

Many people who were abused in foster care or at boys’ and girls’ homes also hope the Royal Commission will bring some recognition of what they went through.

The Care Leavers Australia Network hopes that compensation will be considered.

A warning: Timothy McDonald’s report contains material that some listeners might find distressing.

TIMOTHY MCDONALD: Jeffrey Myers says he suffered horrific abuse as a child at the Royalston Boys Home in Glebe in inner Sydney.

He’s in his 70s now and the abuse happened decades ago, but he still has a hard time talking about it.

JEFFREY MYERS: Well I will go as far as saying that there was penetration by objects in my body. That’s about as far as I’ll go mate, as far as the torture side of it was concerned. And I did black out.

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AUSTRALIA
Herald Sun

Emily Portelli and Shannon Deery
From:Herald Sun
November 16, 2012

A FORMER priest who allegedly drugged then raped students at a Catholic boys’ school will face the charges against him at trial.

David Rapson, 59, allegedly abused seven boys between 1973 and 1990 at various schools including Salesian College Rupertswood, in Sunbury.

Magistrate Gregory McNamara today committed Rapson to stand trial after a four-day hearing in which previous students gave evidence about the alleged offences.

“I’m satisfied there is evidence of sufficient weight to support convictions in relation to all of these charges,” Mr McNamara said.

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AUSTRALIA
The Australian

Jamie Walker, Queensland Bureau Chief
From:The Australian
November 16, 2012

ANGLICAN Primate Phillip Aspinall says the planned national royal commission into child sex abuse should have been called a decade ago, when he first approached then prime minister John Howard to set up such an inquiry.

In a statement today strongly backing the inquiry announced this week by Julia Gillard, the spiritual leader of the country’s 3.6 million Anglicans said it offered a historic opportunity to protect children and called for bipartisan support from MPs to make it well-resourced, independent and free from political agendas.

Dr Aspinall, the Archbishop of Brisbane, also reminded the Prime Minister that “all victims of child sex abuse” would be looking to the royal commission for answers and validation, including the vast majority who were harmed in family settings.

“Of the nearly 3.6 million Australians who call themselves Anglican, statistically, one in four women and one in eight men are victims of abuse, so it is something that affects our church on many levels,” he said.

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AUSTRALIA
7 News

ABC
Updated November 16, 2012

Anglican Church Primate Phillip Aspinall said the royal commission into child sex abuse would be an historic opportunity to protect children.

Archbishop Aspinall, visiting Adelaide for a meeting of the General Synod standing committee, said he approached then-prime minister John Howard a decade ago about abuse within institutions such as the church, but nothing was done.

“I thought it was worth doing 10 years ago and I approached the prime minister. At the time he declined. I approached the state premier in Queensland, he declined so the church did what we could in Brisbane. I welcome the fact that we’re taking a more comprehensive approach,” he said.

He urged the commission’s terms of reference be full and fearless and that it be properly resourced.

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AUSTRALIA
Goulburn Post

By ANTONY DUBBER
Nov. 16, 2012

THE Administrator of the Canberra/Goulburn Catholic Archdiocese has come out in support of a Royal Commission into child sexual abuse.

Monsignor John Woods is also calling for meaningful recommendations on a possibly long-running inquiry.

He told the Post that child abuse was a ‘cancer’ that needed to be addressed not only in the Catholic Church but across a broad spectrum of society.

Msgr Woods said the Royal Commission could run for a number of years, as was the case in Ireland, when the church there carried out a thorough and all-encompassing investigation which took nine years.

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