ABUSE TRACKER

UNITED STATES
Washington Post

U.S. nuns meet to discuss Vatican criticism, their affiliation with Rome

By Michelle Boorstein

It seems hard to imagine, but it’s possible this week that American nuns could take a huge — if symbolic — step away from the Vatican.

Many, many Catholic eyes are on St. Louis as the Leadership Conference of Women Religious, by far the largest representative body of U.S. nuns, has their annual meeting. On the agenda for the Silver Spring, Md.-based organization: Whether the group should remain an official arm of Rome, or become independent.

This is their first meeting since April, when the Vatican’s doctrine-guarding arm issued a report saying the Conference isn’t focusing enough on abortion and traditional marriage and is dabbling dangerously in “radical feminist” ideas such as whether women could be priests. The report said the group needs to be “reformed” and is calling for essentially a takeover and monitoring of the Conference, whose members represent about 80 percent of the country’s sisters.

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

MONTANA
Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests

Posted by Barbara Dorris on August 07, 2012

These brave victims from the Blackfeet Indian reservation deserve gratitude for coming forward and reporting heinous child se crimes. It could not have been easy, but we are glad that, by speaking out, these victims are helping to expose at least 26 child molesting clerics. We hope that others who may have been abused by those clergy or any other Catholic employee in Montana will find the courage to break their silence and add their name to the list of these survivors.

Bishop George Thomas and Bishop Michael Warfel should immediately use all of their resources – websites, newsletters, parish bulletins and personal appeals – to reach out to others within Montana who may be hurting. They should urge those who saw, suspected, or suffered clergy abuse to immediately contact police, so that those who commit and conceal child sex crimes can be prosecuted and so that kids can better be protected, and so that victims can better heal.

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

MICHIGAN
The Detroit News

By Christine Ferretti and George Hunter
The Detroit News

Dearborn— A Catholic priest has been suspended after he was arrested last week on allegations of drunken driving and indecent exposure.

The Archdiocese of Detroit in a Tuesday statement said Father Peter Petroske, pastor of Sacred Heart Parish in Dearborn, was placed on administrative leave Monday.

The 57-year-old is charged with misdemeanor counts of operating while intoxicated and disorderly/obscene conduct, according to officials with Dearborn’s 19th District Court.

The Archdiocese said Petroske was arrested by Dearborn Police late Thursday while driving unaccompanied in his vehicle

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MICHIGAN
Press & Guide

By Julie Walker Altesleben
Press & Guide Newspapers

DEARBORN — The Rev. Peter Petroske was arrested Thursday and charged with drunken driving and indecent exposure, according to reports.

Petroske is the head pastor at Sacred Heart Catholic Church and School in Dearborn. He was placed on administrative leave Monday by the Archdiocese of Detroit.

Petroske joined Sacred Heart in 2008.

Calls and emails Tuesday morning to Sacred Heart and to Petroske were not returned. The archdiocese released the following statement:

“Father Peter Petroske, pastor of Sacred Heart parish in Dearborn, was placed on administrative leave of absence on Monday.

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

VATICAN CITY
International Business Times

By Palash R. Ghosh

August 7, 2012

The Vatican has rejected a proposed ambassador from Bulgaria, because the candidate wrote a novel that featured the themes of homosexuality and prostitution.

Kiril Marichkov’s highly successful novel, “Clandestination,” offended Vatican officials, placing his nomination to the Holy See in jeopardy.

The 39-year-old attorney, who speaks five languages and is married to an Italian woman, is also the grandson of the first Bulgarian ambassador appointed to the Vatican after the fall of communism.

Despite his sterling credentials, the Vatican will not approve his appointment.

His book is about illegal immigrants who escape Eastern Europe for Rome after the fall of the Berlin Wall. The principle character, a man named Ivan, is forced by poverty to sell himself to men for sex on the streets.

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

VATICAN CITY
Jakarta Globe

The Vatican said Tuesday it has not accepted Bulgaria’s proposed ambassador to the Holy See, apparently rejecting diplomat Kiril Marichkov for writing a racy novel featuring gay sex and prostitution.

Vatican spokesman Federico Lombardi said that “the proposal has not been agreed to,” leading observers to surmise that Marichkov had been rejected over a graphic scene in his successful 2005 novel “Clandestination”.

The book, based on the lives of illegal immigrants in Italy, features one scene where a desperate young eastern European man prostitutes himself with a man he picks up on a Rome street, before begging God’s forgiveness.

Lombardi would not comment on Sofia’s chosen candidate for the post, but confirmed there was no current Bulgarian ambassador at the Vatican.

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

CONNECTICUT
The Hartford Courant

By DAVE ALTIMARI, daltimar@courant.com
The Hartford Courant

3:01 p.m. EDT, August 7, 2012
The Norwich diocese is arguing that a civil trial involving charges that one of its priests sexually abused a 12-year-old girl should be postponed because of publicity surrounding the Penn State sex abuse scandal.

Attorneys for the church requested the delay to at least October, arguing that publicity surrounding the Penn State case “creates an adverse and hostile public sentiment” that would make it hard for the diocese to get a fair trial. The civil trial is scheduled to start in Hartford Superior Court this week. The judge has not ruled on the request for a delay.

The case involves now-deceased priest Thomas W. Shea. It was filed by a woman who claims Shea abused her more than 35 years ago.

West Hartford In his motion, attorney Kevin G. Smith of Milano & Wanat argued that in nearly all of the articles written about the Penn State case “the media equates the Pennn State situation to sexual abuse allegations against the Catholic Church.”

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INDIANA
Post-Tribune

By Teresa Auch Schultz tauch@post-trib.com
August 7, 2012

A Valparaiso man will serve a 10 year sentence in connection with trying to entice a 15-year-old boy.

Wayne E. Wigglesworth, 71, said little during his sentencing Tuesday morning at the U.S. District Court in Hammond and looked down as U.S. District Judge James Moody read his sentence.

“No, I do not your honor,” Wigglesworth said when he was asked if he had anything to say on his behalf.

Wigglesworth, who was an ordained priest in Baltimore in the 1960s through the 1980s, was originally arrested in 2009 in Chicago when police pulled him over for a traffic stop. They discovered the 15-year-old boy in the car with him, and the boy eventually told police he had met Wigglesworth on a website for teenagers. The two exchanged phone numbers, and Wigglesworth asked the boy to meet him to perform sex acts.

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

ST. LOUIS (MO)
Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests

Posted by David Clohessy on August 07, 2012

■SNAP will try to hand deliver letter to head of nuns’ group
■They want names of predatory Catholic sisters posted on line
■And victims urge nuns – “Don’t investigate crimes internally”
■An independent source cites at least 77 sexually abusive women religious

WHAT:
Holding signs and childhood pictures, outside a hotel where Catholic nuns are meeting, clergy sex abuse victims will hold a news conference, urging the sisters to post, on their websites,

— notices urging victims and witnesses to report child sex crimes to police, not church officials, and
–the names, photos and whereabouts of proven, admitted and credibly accused child molesting nuns on church websites.
They will also prod nuns to
–stop requiring gag orders when civil lawsuits against abusive nuns are settled, and
–actively reach out to victims of nun abuse

They will try to hand deliver a letter to the head of the nuns’ organization expressing frustration over the unwillingness of Catholic sisters to take proactive steps to address nuns’ sex crimes, heal the wounded and protect the vulnerable.

WHEN:
Tuesday, August 7,—-1:00 p.m.

WHERE:
Outside the Millennium Hotel, 200 S. Fourth (between Clark & Walnut) in downtown St. Louis.

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

UNITED KINGDOM
National Secular Society

Posted: Tue, 07 Aug 2012 13:37 by Alistair McBay

Back in 2009, the Roman Catholic Archbishop of Westminster, Vincent Nichols, held a private seminar entitled “Leadership in the financial sector: a moral and spiritual challenge?” for top City financiers to explore the relevance of Pope Benedict’s encyclical on social teaching, Caritas in Veritate, for the financial sector. The Pope even sent a personal message to the meeting, the underlying theme of which was to see how the financial sector would be much more ethical with Christian principles.

The list of delegates to that 2009 City seminar now makes interesting reading. For example, you will find the Catholic Marcus Agius, then chairman of Barclays Bank, now soon to be its ex-chairman in the wake of the Libor-fixing scandal that was clearly well established by the time of that seminar but about which Agius says he knew nothing at that point. Another delegate was Stephen Green, (no, not that one!) then Group Chairman, HSBC Holdings and now Lord Green, Coalition Minister for Trade & Investment. Much has been made of Lord Green’s Christian belief — he is an Anglican lay preacher or ‘non-stipendiary minister’ — in influencing his business career, not least in his own book Serving God, Serving Mammon. In a typically obsequious piece in the Times (one of several, including one titled “The banker with God on his side”) the Anglican journalist Ruth Gledhill said “A senior manager (in the banking industry) told The Times that he believed it no accident that the world’s strongest private-sector bank, HSBC, criticised in the “good times” for being too conservative but now well placed to survive the crisis, is headed by an Anglican lay preacher, Stephen Green. Mr Green has made no secret of how his religious convictions inform his business life.” The inference here is all too clear.

But how does it stack up three years on, I wonder?

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UNITED STATES
These Stone Walls

by Fr. Gordon J. MacRae on August 1, 2012

The Catholic Press Association’s June convention handed out lots of awards, but none was for covering the story of Catholic priests falsely accused.

This is Part II of a post I wrote at this time last year entitled “The High Cost of Father Marcial Maciel and Why I Resent Paying It.” To explain exactly what I resent and why, I have to first tell you an old story.

When I was twelve years old, another boy in my neighborhood had a beautiful dog, a German shepherd, kept tethered 24/7 in his backyard. It used to break my heart to watch as this spoiled bully tormented his dog for hours on end. He would stand just beyond the limits of the tether, and taunt the dog mercilessly. This dog would bark and stretch his tether to the point of exhaustion. I feared the poor dog would go mad.

The bully and I were the same age. I tried to intervene using reason, but diplomacy got nowhere and day after day the taunting continued. One Saturday morning, I felt I had no choice but to take a more direct approach. I climbed over the fence, and told him I was going to knock him on his ass if he did it again. He never did it again.

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UNITED STATES
These Stone Walls

by Fr. Gordon J. MacRae on July 13, 2011

After 9/11, religious profiling in the war on terror was deemed unjust, yet many use sexual abuse by one high profile Catholic priest to imply the guilt of others.

Remember the Juan Williams fiasco at National Public Radio? I wrote about it last November in “At the Twilight’s Last Gleaming.” To refresh your memory, the story began when FOX News commentator Bill O’Reilly declared on “The View” that not all Muslims are terrorists, but all the terrorists who attacked the United States on September 11, 2001 were Muslims. This sparked a loud media fury about religious profiling and whether it is fair and just. The Bill O’Reilly episode culminated in Whoopi Goldberg and Joy Behar storming in protest off the set of “The View.”

The next evening, appearing on “The O’Reilly Factor” on FOX News, National Public Radio news analyst Juan Williams expanded the fray. He said that he’s sometimes uncomfortable when he sees people in Muslim garb board a plane he is on. The next day, NPR fired Juan Williams for exhibiting a religious insensitivity that did not reflect NPR’s journalistic standards – standards which have apparently never applied to NPR’s treatment of Catholics.

Imagine, for a moment, what might have happened if the entire affair was about priests and sexual abuse. What if Bill O’Reilly had said on “The View” something like, “Not all Catholic priests are sexual abusers but too many sexual abusers have been Catholic priests.” It would have been blatantly unfair and irresponsible, but do you think Whoopi and Joy would have stormed off the set over it? What if Juan Williams had said something like, “Sometimes when I see a Catholic priest board a plane I’m on with my grandchildren I feel uncomfortable”? Would NPR have fired him for that?

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

UNITED STATES
Vatican Insider

It’s the moment of truth for the American nuns who have been put by the Vatican under external administration, as they gather for their yearly assembly in St. Louis from the 7th to the 11th of August

Maria Teresa Pontara Pederiva
Rome

After the executive Council sent the accusations back to the sender, after a long period of silence when it was just the lay people who chose to take action with public demonstrations, after influential testimonies and shows of support by male clerics and after a radio sparring match between president Pat Farrel and bishop Blair, a member of the commission sent by Rome, tomorrow 7th of August the nuns will gather at their yearly assembly in St. Louis, Missouri.

The traditional August week-long gathering of the LCWR (Leadership Conference of Women Religious, which includes 80% of American sisters, mostly over 70) will centre around the subject “Mystery Unfolding: Leading in the Evolutionary Now”. The keynote speaker will be Barbara Marx Hubbard, a lay woman born in 1929, who studied at L’Ecole des Sciences Politiques at La Sorbonne in Paris and who is a prolific futurist author.

This gathering, says the website, provides members with opportunities for education, reflection on issues pertinent to religious life leadership, networking, prayer and celebration. The assembly also provides time for the members to vote for officers and on resolutions.

Many read between the lines a reference to the “Vatican issue”, which sister Farrel recently reiterated to journalists should not be considered a “challenge”.

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ST. LOUIS (MO)
National Survivor Advocates Coalition

Editorial

We know the 900 Sister leaders representing 320 religious communities at the Leadership Conference of Women Religious (LCWR) have a full plate for their meetings that begins today in St. Louis.

We don’t think anything on the plate should keep the Sisters from opening the door to the survivors that will be outside the hotel where they are meeting.

The Sisters are made of strong stuff. Plenty of Catholics have attested to that in the public discussions in both the religious and secular news media regarding the Vatican and the Sisters, before, during and after the recent Nuns Bus Tour, as well as in multitudes of private conversations.

We are not saying that the support is not justified.

We are saying that the Sisters, to date, have chosen the Bishops’ route for the most part in dealing with sexual abuse by their members: silence and lawyering up.

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

MAINE
Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests

Posted by Robert Gossart on August 06, 2012

Penobscot County Sheriff Glen Ross put his friendship with Fr. Robert Carlson, an admitted child predator, over the needs of victims by warning him of an ongoing investigation.

“I did it not to warn him, but to prevent his access into the jail,” Ross said. “You cannot fault somebody for trying to make sure they’ve protected their inmates and their agencies. That’s my job as a sheriff.”

“It boggles the mind that Ross would try to claim he was putting the safety of adult prisoners over the safety of innocent children” said Robert Gossart, SNAP Maine leader. After getting the sheriff’s warning, who knows how many victims Carlson may have intimidated, how many witnesses he might have threatened, how many whistleblowers he may have discredited, how much evidence he may have destroyed?

Carlson took his own life after being warned by Ross. SNAP hopes that Bishop Richard Malone will use his considerable resources, diocesan newspaper, website, church bulletins and pulpits, to reach out to anyone who may have been hurt by Carlson.

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

PENNSYLVANIA
Reading Eagle

A former Roman Catholic priest admitted Monday in Berks County Court that he stole money donated to a Reading parish, but disputed the amount.

Richard Nachajski, 66, of York pleaded guilty to theft for taking money donated to St. Anthony of Padua Roman Catholic Church, Millmont, between 1997 and 2009.

He was pastor there from 1992 until 2009, when he was granted a leave of absence for personal reasons.

Nachajski admitted taking more than $100,000, but denied it was more than $400,000, as investigators charged.

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PHILADELPHIA (PA)
Philadelphia Daily News

By Mensah M. Dean
Daily News Staff Writer

A PHILADELPHIA judge on Monday denied bail to Monsignor William Lynn, the Catholic priest who was sentenced last month to serve three to six years in state prison for his role in enabling another priest to sexually abuse an altar boy.

After a brief hearing, Common Pleas Judge M. Teresa Sarmina said Lynn, 61, had no constitutional right to receive bail while his case is being appealed. Lynn, who served as secretary for clergy for the Archdiocese of Philadelphia from 1992 to 2004, was not at the hearing.

Sarmina, who presided over Lynn’s three-month trial, said she denied the defendant bail because of the serious nature of his crime and because he was convicted of a felony.

Lynn’s attorney, Jeff Lindy, decried the ruling and Lynn’s conviction on one count of endangering the welfare of a child.

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PHILADELPHIA (PA)
Catholics4Change

August 7, 2012 by Susan Matthews

Click here to read: “Judge Denies Bail for Monsignor While Archdiocese Battles Its Own Lawyers Over Money for Appeal,” by Ralph Cipriano, Philadelphia Priest Abuse Trial Blog, August 6, 2012
Excerpt: “That prompted a bizarre two-paragraph response from the archdiocese public relations office that baffled the archdiocese’s own lawyers:

“Msgr. Lynn’s counsel is strongly convicted that there were many errors at trial and the sentence is disproportionate to other punishment meted out to administrators for this same charge. This strong belief and care for Msgr. Lynn and his family has resulted in Msgr. Lynn’s primary counsel, Tom Bergstrom, deciding to complete the appeal for Msgr. Lynn largely on a pro bono basis.”

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HAMMOND (IN)
NW Times

By Matthew Saltanovitz

The firing last week of the Rev. Jack Schaap as pastor of Hammond’s First Baptist Church came as a certain surprise and shock to Northwest Indiana residents.

The pastor of the 15,000-member megachurch and patron of Hyles Anderson College in Schererville was recognized nationwide as a leader of the fundamentalist brand of religion.

The church, under his leadership, carried on programs ranging from a Hispanic Ministry to annual pastor and youth conferences. It operates a fleet of buses to bring the faithful to worship – often children from Chicago neighborhoods.

He and his wife, daughter of First Baptist legendary preacher Rev. Jack Hyles, authored a book on marriage.

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VIRGINIA
The Virginian-Pilot

By Bill Sizemore
The Virginian-Pilot
August 7, 2012

For decades, Paul Traub bottled up memories of what happened to him as a child in Virginia Beach. Whenever he tried to talk about it, it seemed no one wanted to listen. He felt there was no place to turn.

Through all those years of silence, the anger inside him smoldered. The father of three sons saw two marriages crumble. Often, trying to dull the pain, he drank himself into a stupor.

His girlfriend of seven years, Kathleen Cleary, says Traub’s struggle to deal with his emotions has affected their relationship, too.

“He told me about it on our second date,” she said. “I wasn’t prepared for how bad it’s been.”

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UNITED STATES
Pew Research Center

Roughly eight-in-ten Catholics say they are very or somewhat satisfied with the leadership provided by Catholic nuns and sisters in the U.S. (83%), and 82% express satisfaction with the leadership provided by their parish priests.

Nearly three-quarters of Catholics (74%) say they are satisfied with the leadership provided by their bishop, and 83% the same percentage expresses satisfaction with the pope’s leadership. Seven-in-ten Catholics say they are very (24%) or somewhat satisfied (46%) with the leadership of the American bishops in general.

The percentage of Catholics who say they are satisfied with the leadership of American bishops is significantly higher than it was a decade ago, at the height of the church’s child sex abuse scandal (70% today, 51% in 2002).

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

ST. LOUIS (MO)
The Wall Street Journal

By BEN KESLING

Leaders of Catholic nuns and sisters in the U.S. are gathering this week for their first major meeting since the Vatican ordered the women to abandon controversial positions and closely hew to official teachings.

During the weeklong event in St. Louis, which starts Tuesday and is estimated to draw 900 participants, the Leadership Conference of Women Religious is expected to solidify its response to church authorities. Any policy changes will be announced Friday, a conference representative said.

The group represents 80% of American nuns and sisters. Nuns are cloistered, while sisters typically serve in the fields of education, health care and service to the needy.

In April, the Vatican issued its report on the group following a four-year doctrinal review by Catholic bishops. The scrutiny was prompted by concerns that the group, which comprises the senior leadership of some 56,000 nuns and sisters in the U.S., had widespread policies of dissent against church authorities, and espoused “radical feminism,” according to the Vatican report.

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ST. LOUIS (MO)
Catholic Culture

CWN – August 06, 2012

Archbishop J. Peter Sartain of Seattle, who has been charged by the Vatican with responsibility for supervising a reform of the Leadership Conference of Women Religious (LCWR), has been told by the group’s leaders that his presence “would not be helpful” at the LCWR’s annual assembly this week.

As the LCWR prepared for the annual meeting, at which members will discuss the Vatican’s demand for reform, the group’s president, Sister Patricia Farrell, told reporters that the group would continue to question Church teachings. She expressed concern that in the Vatican’s eyes, “that questioning is seen as defiance.”

“I would also say that there are very few doctrines in the Church that are not discussable, that are absolutely infallible,” the LCWR president said. She voiced her conviction that the women religious of the LCWR would “continue raising and responding to questions, according to our own consciences and according to new information and questions that arise in our day.”

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UNITED STATES
dotCommonweal

August 6, 2012, 10:07 pm

Posted by Eric Bugyis

The Immanent Frame has been continuing to post a series of articles from the “Sex Abuse and the Study of Religion” conference hosted at Yale by Kathryn Lofton last September. I commented on Lofton’s provocative opening post here. In that piece, she argued that for scholars of religion the perpetration and cover-up of sexual abuse in the Catholic Church ought to be understood, among other things, as a case of religious praxis. Given that the abuse took place in the context of theologically coded relationships, often occurred in ecclesial spaces, and was systematically covered-up by a hierarchy who claim a divine mandate to protect the institution from scandal, Lofton argued that an analysis of the abuse crisis that explains it primarily against the backdrop of secular culture, as the John Jay reports did, is short-sighted.

Not surprisingly, Lofton’s piece raised several difficult questions concerning the substantive role of theological rhetoric in the perpetration and cover-up of abuse. Was theology simply deployed by abusers to “rationalize” their behavior, or is there something problematic in some of the Church’s traditional theological tropes themselves that lent moral plausibility to such abuse? Did the clinical language of psychopathology give clarity or confusion to those charged with responding to cases of abuse? Was the perpetuation of abuse aided by the monarchical ecclesiology of the Church, or was it caused precisely by the more permissive, democratizing, and secularizing ecclesiastical influences of Vatican II? Mark Jordan addresses these questions in his recent contribution to the forum. Here’s a key paragraph on the first question:

The possibility of authorizing abuse theologically follows too easily from the always exceptional status claimed for modern church power. In modern Catholic contexts, official languages often pretend to be exempt from qualification, questioning, or appeal. They are absolute languages. They function in a state of exception. When that rhetorical character is extended to traditional images of a masculinized God or angel who ravishes—rapes—souls that are gendered as feminine, then erotic domination seems to receive divine blessing.

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VIRGINIA
The Virginian-Pilot

By Elisabeth Hulette
The Virginian-Pilot
August 7, 2012

VIRGINIA BEACH

Police have charged a minister with sexually abusing a 16-year-old boy about six years ago.

Gregory Douglas Forehand, 40, of the 600 block of Brisa Court in Chesapeake, has been charged with taking indecent liberties with a child.

Forehand was identified by police as the youth minister at Real Life Christian Church on N. Centerville Turnpike. The church’s website has Forehand listed as lead minister. He has been released on bond.

The police department’s Special Victims Unit learned Aug. 4 of allegations of sexual abuse taking place between May 2005 and June 2006.

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COLOMBIA
Caracol Radio

El Cuerpo Técnico de Investigaciones de la Fiscalía acaba de capturar, en el norte de Bogotá, a Alexandra Castro, de quien se dice es pareja sentimental del pastor Álvaro Javier Gámez Torres, investigado por varios casos de abuso sexual en el departamento de Nariño.

El juez que lleva el caso del pastor ordenó la captura de su compañera quien sería vinculada a una investigación por el delito de acto sexual en persona indefensa y en incapacidad de resistir.

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COLOMBIA
Diario del Sur

En un operativo conjunto del CTI de Pasto y de Bogotá, fue privada de la libertad Johana Alexandra Castro Becerra, acusada como coautora del delito de actos sexuales con persona puesta en incapacidad de resistir.

En un baño de un apartamento del norte de Bogotá trató de esconderse Johana Alexandra Castro Becerra, la mujer que es acusada de ser la principal cómplice del pastor Alvaro Gámez Torres, sindicado de haber abusado sexualmente de varias integrantes de la Iglesia Evangélica Salem que tiene su sede en la ciudad de Pasto.

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VIRGINIA
WTVR

VIRGINIA BEACH, Va. (WTVR) — A pastor in Virginia Beach is facing charges of sex crimes against a teen.

On August 4th, the Virginia Beach Police Special Victims Unit was notified of a case of sexual abuse from 2005 to 2006.

Police say the victim reported being abused by the Youth Minister of his church.

The victim was 16 years old at the time of the alleged abuse according to officials. It was reported this had happened on several occasions at the suspect’s home.

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

COLOMBIA
Colombia Reports

Courtney Scott

Colombian authorities have captured the partner of the pastor accused of sexually abusing at least 27 women, local media reported Monday.

Alexandra Castro was captured Monday by authorities north of Bogota on the charge of being accomplice to Reverend Alvaro Javier Gamez Torres, a pastor accused of sexually abusing members of his congregation.

The religious leader fled after evidence was submitted against him with implications of abusing many members of his Christian church “Salem” in the southern Nariño department, many of which were reportedly minors. The reverend surrendered in the country’s capitol after being on the run for one month.

Investigations into the case implicated Castro as the pastor’s partner, and the order for her capture was submitted. Allegedly, Castro was responsible for contacting the women and organizing meetings with the pastor where sexual abuse took place.

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

MONTANA
Bradenton Herald

By MATT VOLZ — Associated Press

HELENA, Mont. — New claims of sexual abuse at the hands of Roman Catholic clergy are coming from the Blackfeet Indian reservation, bringing to at least 280 the total number of plaintiffs in two lawsuits seeking damages from the diocese that oversees western Montana.

One lawsuit alone has 200 plaintiffs after eight more were added Monday. Many are Native Americans who claim they were abused as children at schools, in orphanages, in church or in their homes.

They say the Roman Catholic Diocese of Helena knew or should have known about the abuse, but covered it up instead of stopping it. The lawsuit says 26 clergy members were involved in the abuse that stretches back to the 1940s.

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

PHILADELPHIA (PA)
Philadelphia Priest Abuse Trial Blog

Ralph Cipriano

Judge M. Teresa Sarmina today denied a defense motion that would have allowed Msgr. William J. Lynn out on bail pending an appeal of his historic conviction. Lynn, the first Catholic administrator in the country to be convicted in connection with clerical sex abuse, has been in jail since June 22, when a jury convicted him of one count of endangering the welfare of a child, a third-degree felony.

On July 24, Judge Sarmina sentenced Lynn to three to six years in prison for failing to protect a 10-year-old altar boy back in 1999 from a predator priest. The defense argued that by the time an appeal is heard, the monsignor may have already served his prison sentence, which is why Lynn’s defense lawyers thought the monsignor should be freed during the appeal process.

Judge Sarmina, however, rejected that motion. She said that technically under the law, Lynn was not entitled to bail because his sentence was more than two years in duration. Jeff Lindy, one of Lynn’s defense lawyers, argued that although Lynn did not have a right to bail, it was within the judge’s powers of discretion to grant him bail.

Lindy cited extraordinary circumstances, namely that Lynn had been the first supervisor in the history of Pennsylvania to be charged under the 1972 state statute for endangering the welfare of a child. Normally, those charged under the child endangerment statute had direct contact with children, such as teachers, parents or guardians. Lynn, however, never laid eyes on the victim in this case, the former 10-year-old altar boy, until he took the witness stand during the monsignor’s trial.

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PHILADELPHIA (PA)
Philadelphia Inquirer

By Joseph A. Slobodzian
Inquirer Staff Writer

Citing the “serious nature of his conduct,” a Philadelphia judge denied a request Monday by lawyers for Msgr. William J. Lynn to free the 61-year-old former archdiocesan official on bail while he appeals his child-endangerment conviction.

Common Pleas Court Judge M. Teresa Sarmina rejected the motion by defense lawyers Jeffrey M. Lindy and Alan J. Tauber after an often-acrimonious 15-minute hearing.

On July 24, Sarmina sentenced Lynn to three to six years in prison after a jury found him guilty of child endangerment in the landmark Catholic clergy sex-abuse trial.

Lynn was not at the hearing. He had waived his right to be present and is at the state prison at Camp Hill, near Harrisburg.

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VATICAN CITY
Rome Reports

[with video]

August 6, 2012. (Romereports.com) The scandal known as Vatileaks that shook hierarchy of the Catholic Church has been a long story with many details. Here is a look back at how it all started and where the case stands now.

On January 25, the Italian television program known as ‘The Untouchables’ first revealed the letters written by the Vatican official, Monsignor Carlo Maria Viganò, in which he complained to the Pope that many of the construction and work projects payed for by the Holy See were being charged much more than a normal price. He was right, but his complaints upset many inside the Roman Curia.

In response, the Pope decided to send Viganò to the United States as a nuncio. Afterward, in another letter, he asked the Pope that his new position not be seen as a retaliation, he then named some of those who opposed his management of the Vatican State. Quien?

The next day, on January 26, the Vatican spokesperson, Federico Lombardi, made a statement expressing his “bitterness over the release of classified documents” and left open the possibility of legal action.

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VATICAN CITY
AFP

VATICAN CITY — Pope Benedict XVI’s butler is likely to be charged with leaking confidential papers, his lawyer said Monday, days before a Vatican judge is expected to rule on whether Paolo Gabriele will stand trial.

“We expect a formal charge,” lawyer Carlo Fusco told Italian news agency ANSA. The Vatican has said the decision over whether Gabriele will be charged with “aggravated theft” is expected some time between Thursday and Saturday.

The 46-year-old was arrested in May during an investigation into the leak of private papal documents to the media. He was held for 53 days in a Vatican cell before being put under house arrest in July to await the judge’s decision.

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NEDERLAND
Parool

Een rapport van een rechtspsycholoog dat is opgesteld in opdracht van de van misbruik betichte pastoor Jan Schafraad uit Maastricht, mag donderdag gewoon worden gebruikt. Op die dag wordt een zitting over Schafraad gehouden van het meldpunt seksueel misbruik binnen de RK kerk.

Twee misbruikslachtoffers spanden maandag een kort geding aan tegen de pastoor. Zij willen dat het rapport niet wordt gebruikt omdat er privégegevens over hen in staan. De rechter doet pas over twee weken uitspraak in dit geding. Hierdoor kan het rapport tijdens de zitting van het meldpunt aan de orde komen.

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VATICAN CITY
The Independent (United Kingdom)

Michael Day
Milan

Tuesday 07 August 2012

The Vatican has been accused of rejecting Bulgaria’s new choice of ambassador to the Holy See because he wrote a novel containing a gay sex scene.

Kiril Maritchkov, a 39-year-old lawyer who speaks five languages including Italian, and is married to an Italian woman, would appear to be an ideal choice for Sofia’s representative at the Vatican.

However, Bulgarian newspapers and the Italian press are reporting that an explicit encounter between a young Eastern European male prostitute and a Roman in Mr Maritchkov’s popular novel, ‘Clandestination’, has upset officials at the Holy See, despite the Catholic church’s less-than-spotless record on sexual transgression.

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PHILADELPHIA (PA)
The Associated Press

By By MARYCLAIRE DALE

PHILADELPHIA (AP) — A Roman Catholic church official will remain in prison while he fights his landmark conviction for failing to protect a boy from a predator priest.

A judge on Monday deemed Monsignor William Lynn’s conduct too serious to warrant bail, despite defense arguments that the felony conviction may well be overturned, because Lynn wasn’t the immediate supervisor of any accused priests.

“This is the first case in the history of the commonwealth where (endangering the welfare of a child) has been applied to a supervisor on Monsignor Lynn’s level,” defense lawyer Jeffrey Lindy said. …

Lynn’s lawyers are “strongly convinced that there were many errors at trial and the sentence is disproportionate to other punishments meted out to administrators for this same charge,” the archdiocese said in a statement. “We hope that the ultimate decision in Monsignor Lynn’s regard is just and merciful.”

The church spent millions on defense lawyers during an extraordinary 10-year criminal investigation. The late Cardinal Anthony Bevilacqua, Lynn and other church leaders testified repeatedly — with lawyers at their side — before the first of two grand juries. Prosecutors concluded that at least 63 predator-priests had worked in Philadelphia, often for decades.

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VIRGINIA
WVEC

13News

Posted on August 6, 2012

VIRGINIA BEACH — A Virginia Beach youth minister has been charged with sexually abusing a child in 2005 and 2006.

Police say Gregory Douglas Forehand, 40, is accused of abusing a boy who was 16 years old at the time.

The victim said the abuse took place at Forehand’s home between May 2005 and June 2006.

Investigators say children would stay over at the minister’s home for church events.

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VIRGINIA
WAVY

Published : Monday, 06 Aug 2012

Rachel West

VIRGINIA BEACH, Va. (WAVY) – Virginia Beach Police are searching for possible victims after officers arrested a local pastor accused of sexually abusing a teen between 2005 and 2006.

Grazia Moyers with the Virginia Beach Police Department said officers received information from a victim that a youth pastor at Real Life Christian Church sexually abused him when he was 16-years-old. The reported events were said to have occurred at the pastor’s home as well as in hotel rooms during church events.

The suspect, identified as Gregory Douglas Forehand, 40, of Chesapeake has been arrested and charged with indecent liberties with a child in connection to the accusations.

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UNITED STATES
Patrick J. Wall

It ain’t what you don’t know that gets you into trouble. It’s what you know for sure that just ain’t so — Mark Twain

Experience tells me that Twain’s words are wise. Heed his warning to reconsider and reevaluate your core assumptions and beliefs.

Most people in the United States were born into one of the monotheistic religions. The three most common are Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. I emphasize being born into a religion because our belief systems are planted into our core from birth — almost akin to a reptilian response.

Religion vs. Spirituality

Judaism, if boiled down, is about Righteousness; Christianity is about Salvation; and Islam is about Surrender. All three are core elements of western spirituality. Each share different “holy buildings”: Temples, Churches and Mosques. Each religion has a Holy Book or books interpreted with authority by Rabbis, Priests/Ministers and Mulah’s. They have different initiation rites, liturgies, languages and cemeteries. And each proposes to teach their youngest followers what to think and how to live a religious life.

But the spiritual life is very different. The spiritual life, in complete constrast from religion, demands that we question our basic beliefs, ditch the bad habits we have picked up over the years and consider that sometimes we have to go into exile in order to find our way home.

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UNITED STATES
Austin Daily Herald

By Wallace Alcorn

Two names from Pennsylvania in recent news coverage should shamefully remind us of the same lesson, which is terribly important to learn and use. The names are the late Joe Paterno, who had retired as Penn State’s head football coach, and the other is Father William Lynn, former aide to the Roman Catholic archbishop in Philadelphia. Whatever value there may be in protecting an institution from scandal, the overwhelming goal is to care for the needs of victims of sexual misconduct and help them recover.

Both men are guilty without either themselves perpetrating any sexual offense. The offense is protecting perpetrators — and thereby their institutions — when the concern should have been hurrying to the aid of their victims and helping them recover from abuse for which they had responsibility. While we must be fair even with perpetrators and avoid vindictiveness, our overwhelming concern must be the welfare of victims. Whatever aid and support is due to offenders, it must not be at the cost of the victims. Yet, this appears to be the single most serious and frequent reason offenders have been getting away with their behavior and victimizing yet others.

Through the years, I have been called in by Protestant churches of different denominations to consult when their pastor has become guilty of sexual misconduct. In listening to their lay leaders, I have accumulated most unpleasant data about the frequency and seriousness of this tragedy. It has not only deeply hurt the victims as well as the clergy, it has inflicted harm on the churches from which some may never recover.

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UNITED STATES
The Worthy Adversary

Posted by Joelle Casteix on August 6, 2012

St. John’s University in Collegeville, MN calls itself a “College of Distinction.” But in courtrooms in California and Minnesota, the Benedictine university also being called a predatory fundraiser and has been slapped with allegations of elder abuse.

Patrick Marker at Behind the Pine Curtain broke the story that:

Employees of the Order of Saint Benedict OSB (including St. John’s University and Saint John’s Abbey) engaged in “financial elder abuse” and “predatory fundraising”.

According to legal documents, Saint John’s is accused of:

1. Liability of Gratuitous Tranferee of Trust Property
2. Liability of Gratuitous Tranferee of Personal Property
3. Constructive Fraud
4. Participation in Breach of Trust
5. Breach of Fiduciary Duty
6. Financial Elder Abuse

The story is still developing, and I will report more as I learn it.

For those of you who don’t know about St. John’s: more than fifty members of the St. John’s community – including OSB monks, priests, visiting priests, seminarians and lay personnel – have been credibly accused of abuse since 1940. That’s a huge number of predators from a school as small as St. John’s, which only has approximately 2000 students. It’s smaller than the average high school.

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PHILADELPHIA (PA)
CBS Philly

By Tony Hanson

PHILADELPHIA (CBS) — The prosecution called a defense request for bail pending appeal for Monsignor William Lynn a waste of the court’s time.

The judge has found Monsignor Lynn has no right to bail pending appeal, and she ruled accordingly.

“Denied, the bail situation is denied. The judge said that she wouldn’t consider a bail application now pending appeal and she really didn’t want to hear any argument. I snuck some argument in, but she really didn’t want to hear any argument,” defense attorney Jeffrey Lindy said.

And there’s more bad news for Lynn. Lindy says the Archdiocese, which has been paying Lynn’s defense, has drastically cut back funds. So Lindy and co-counsel, Alan Tauber, are out, but two other attorneys will continue on the case.

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PHILADELPHIA (PA)
ABC News

By MARYCLAIRE DALE Associated Press

PHILADELPHIA August 6, 2012 (AP)

Another church-abuse trial is set to start next month in Philadelphia, and a Roman Catholic monsignor is fighting his recent conviction.

The Rev. Charles Engelhardt and former teacher Bernard Shero are charged with raping the same altar boy in the late 1990s in northeast Philadelphia. Their trial is set for Sept. 4.

Their accuser was a key witness at Monsignor William Lynn’s trial. In June, a jury convicted Lynn of child endangerment for failing to oust then-priest Edward Avery after a 1992 complaint. Avery admits sexually assaulting the boy in 1999.

The same man says Shero and Engelhardt also assaulted him.

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IRELAND
Irish Central

By
PATRICK COUNIHAN,
IrishCentral Staff Writer

Published Monday, August 6, 2012

A recruitment campaign by the Catholic Church in Ireland has failed to find even one potential priest.

A series of ads in newspapers and newsletters across the diocese of Elphin has attracted no response.

The recruitment drive across Sligo, Roscommon, Westmeath, and Galway was aimed at getting young men to join the priesthood.

But the Irish Sun newspaper reports that the initiative has proved ‘holy’ unsuccessful despite dole figures in excess of 400,000.

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PHILADELPHIA (PA)
Philadelphia Inquirer

By Joseph A. Slobodzian
INQUIRER STAFF WRITER

A Philadelphia judge this morning denied a motion for bail pending appeal for Msgr. William J. Lynn, the former Archdiocese of Philadelphia church official convicted of child endangerment in the recent clergy sex abuse trial.

Common Pleas Court Judge M. Teresa Sarmina rejected the motion by defense attorneys Jeffrey Lindy and Alan Tauber after a 15-minute sometimes-acrimonious hearing at the city’s Criminal Justice Center.

“I’m denying the motion based on the serious nature of the conduct Msgr. Lynn committed,” Sarmina said. …

Lynn’s attorneys argued that he should be released on bail pending appeal because there is “better than a 50-50 chance” that the state Superior Court will find the prosecution’s extension of the child endangerment statute improper in charging a church official who acted solely in a supervisory role.

Assistant District Attorney Patrick Blessington argued that, under state criminal court rules, a criminal defendant convicted and sentenced to more than two years in prison has no right to bail.

Shortly after he was sentenced, city prison officials transferred Lynn from the city’s Curran-Fromhold Correctional Facility in the Northeast to the state prison in Graterford, Montgomery County. He then went to Camp Hill.

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PHILADELPHIA (PA)
NBC 10

By Lauren DiSanto

Monday, Aug 6, 2012

Monsignor William Lynn was denied bail on Monday. His lawyers went to court to ask that the convicted priest be released on bail during the appeals process.

Lynn was convicted of felony child endangerment in June and sentenced to serve three to six years behind bars.

He was the first U.S. church official to be convicted over his handling of complaints of pedophile priests.

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PHILADELPHIA (PA)
News 9

Posted: Aug 06, 2012

By MARYCLAIRE DALE
Associated Press
PHILADELPHIA (AP) – A Roman Catholic monsignor from Philadelphia will not be released on bail while he appeals his conviction for hiding abuse complaints against a priest.

Common Pleas Judge M. Teresa Sarmina denied the request Monday, citing what she called the serious nature of Monsignor William Lynn’s conduct that led to his conviction of child-endangerment in June. Lynn is serving a three- to six-year term.

Lawyers for the 61-year-old Lynn say they will take their appeal of that conviction to a state appeals court.

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ST. LOUIS (MO)
Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests

Posted by David Clohessy on August 06, 2012

As hundreds of American Catholic nuns meeting this week in St. Louis, clergy sex abuse victims will protest outside urging them to address the under-reported issue of clergy sex crimes and cover ups by nuns.

A nationwide self-help group called SNAP, the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests, is upset with the main organization of nuns, the Leadership Conference of Women Religious (LCWR). SNAP says the LCWR “refuses to take any real steps to heal the wounded or protect the vulnerable.”

“It’s stunning, really, to see nuns moving more timidly and slowly on child sex crimes and cover ups than bishops,” said Barbara Dorris of St. Louis, SNAP’s outreach director. “Abuse by nuns is certainly more common than anyone suspects, and inaction by nuns’ groups contributes to this secrecy.”

For at least eight years, SNAP has repeatedly prodded the sisters’ organization to
–let childhood sexual victims to speak at the nun’s conference,
–actively reach out to victims of nun abuse, and
–post the names, photos and whereabouts of proven, admitted and credibly accused child molesting nuns on church websites.

SNAP’s first protest will be tomorrow, Monday, August 6,from 8:45 p.m. until 10:15 p.m. outside the Millennium Hotel, 200 S. Fourth (between Clark & Walnut) in downtown St. Louis.

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OSTERREICH
Kurier

Er kämpft für Tierschutz, hat den Papst geklagt und eröffnete Heimkindern eine neue Möglichkeit, Entschädigungen zu bekommen: Der deutsche Anwalt Christian Sailer, 76, wird mit Anfragen aus Österreich überhäuft.

Wie der KURIER berichtete, hat der Jurist für die 68-jährige Heike K. (Name von der Redaktion geändert) eine staatliche Pension nach dem Verbrechensopfergesetz (VOG) erwirkt (siehe Zusatzbericht unten). Das österreichische Bundessozialamt sieht es als erwiesen an, dass unter anderem sexueller Missbrauch im Tiroler Kinderheim St. Martin Grund für die spätere Berufsunfähigkeit Heike K.s war. Sie bekommt nun ein Vielfaches ihrer nur rund 260 Euro betragenden Pension vom Staat ausgezahlt.

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DEUTSCHLAND
MissBiT

Das Krankenhaus im Kreis Neuwied, an dem ein katholischer Geistlicher mit pädophiler Vergangenheit beschäftigt war (siehe NR-Kurier-Bericht vom 1. August) hat sich von dem Seelsorger getrennt. Das erklärte ein führernder Mitarbeiter des Krankenhauses gestern gegenüber dem NR-Kurier.

Der Krankenhaus-Mitarbeiter sagte, es sei am Mittwoch ein Schreiben verfasst und an das Bistum Trier geschickt worden, in dem das Bistum aufgefordert worden sei, den Pfarrer von seinen Pflichten im Krankenhaus zu entbinden. Der Pfarrer verrichte seitdem auch keine Dienste mehr in diesem Krankenhaus. Es gibt dort einen weiteren, hauptverantwortlichen Pfarrer, der nun die komplette Seelsorge übernimmt.

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DEUTSCHLAND
MissBiT

Unser „Ich-bin-wirklich-Doktor“ und Pressesprecher des Bistums Trier, Stephan Kronenburg, äußert sich zum Fall Lebach wie folgt:

„Es gilt natürlich die Unschuldsvermutung, nichts desto trotz ermittelt die Staatsanwaltschaft in Saarbrücken und das ist für uns dann schon Anlass genug, um da auch Maßnahmen zu ergreifen. Es sind vorläufige Maßnahmen: Er ist also vorläufig beurlaubt, bis der Sachverhalt dann wirklich geklärt ist. Aber wir hielten es wirklich für notwendig, aufgrund dieser staatsanwaltschaftlichen Ermittlungen, jetzt schon diese Maßnahmen zu ergreifen.“

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PHILADELPHIA (PA)
CBS Philly

By Al Novack

PHILADELPHIA (CBS) – Monsignor William Lynn plans to seek bail Monday while his attorneys appeal his conviction in the church sex abuse scandal.

Monsignor Lynn will go into court and ask that he be released while his attorneys appeal a conviction of a six-year prison sentence stemming from a child endangerment conviction handed down in June.

His lawyers strongly believe they have a good chance to overturn that conviction.

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ZIMBABWE
ZimEye

Staff Reporter

Published: August 6, 2012

At least six priests in the oldest Christian organisation, the Roman Catholic church have in the past eight years alone been kicked out of holy service after being found guilty of sex affairs as was in the manner of the disgraceful exposure of his Grace the Most Reverend Dr. Pius Alick Mvundla Ncube in 2007.

This was revealed during an interview of the current Archibishop of Harare Robert Ndlovu.

Archbishop Ndlovu speaking to the weekly Standard paper’s deputy editor Walter Marwizi, would not disclose the full statistics raising belief that the number of ‘immoral’ priests may by far exceeds six.

“Well, I wouldn’t give you statistics but I know for instance since I came to Harare, I can say more or less with certainty five or six priests have been told to leave the priesthood,” he said.

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BELGIE
De Morgen

Door: Peter Adriaenssens − 04/08/12

Enkel het juridische luik van het dossier lijkt belangrijk te zijn, stelt Peter Adriaenssens, kliniekhoofd en hoofddocent kinderpsychiatrie aan het UZ Leuven en directeur van het Vertrouwenscentrum Kindermishandeling.

De gepaste straf voor daders als Dutroux en Martin is een complexe opdracht. Twee doelen moeten bereikt worden. In de eerste plaats is er de sanctie, daar zijn transparante wetten voor. Zoals deze dagen genoeg gezegd werd, is het gevaarlijk dat daaraan wijzigingen gebeuren louter op basis van het debat over een zaak. Het tweede doel is dat van bescherming. De bescherming van de slachtoffers en hun families die hersteld moet worden. Wat ze moet toelaten een leefbaar leven terug te vinden. Tenslotte moet ook de samenleving zich opnieuw beschermd voelen.

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CONNECTICUT
RKnieuws (Nederland)

HARTFORD (RKnieuws.net) – De beslissing van het Vaticaan om het Amerikaanse bisdom Norwich in de Staat Connecticut niet toe te laten een pedofiele priester te ontslaan kan een rol spelen in het proces dat de slachtoffers tegen het bisdom inspannen. Dat meldt The Hartford Courant.

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UNITED STATES
Pope Crimes & Vatican Evils…

Updated August 5, 2012

Paris Arrow

The Vatican after proving for over half a century that it has no morals when it comes to protecting its most vulnerable members, the hundreds of thousands of long-suffering children who were sodomized by the JP2 Army-John Paul II Pedophile priests Army, the Vatican is now reinforcing its last voice as a totalitarian regime by attacking its next vulnerable victims, the American nuns or women. So now they want two or three Bishops to control these nuns with out-of-touch-with-reality policies and autocratic agendas written from their Bishops Palaces as they twiddle with their misogynist fingers while these American nuns live amidst the poor brethren of Christ. The Vatican echelon is out-of-touch with the people like the last Tsars of Russia and the aristocracy in the last days before the French Revolution.

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Chiesa

Resources page updated August 6, 2012. With one addition: “National Catholic Register”

> News.va. The new global portal of Vatican information. With official bulletins, the newspaper, radio, television, etcetera.

> YouTube. The Vatican’s channel. Daily news videos on the pope and the Holy See.

> La Civiltà Cattolica. Historic voice of a Jesuit community in Rome. With the papal imprimatur.

> Vatican Insider. What news.va doesn’t tell you. Copyright “La Stampa,” Turin. In Italian, English, and Spanish.

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PHILADELPHIA (PA)
San Francisco Chronicle

PHILADELPHIA (AP) — A Roman Catholic monsignor from Philadelphia will ask to be released on bail Monday while he appeals his conviction in the church sex-abuse scandal.

Monsignor William Lynn is serving a three- to six-year term after his child-endangerment conviction in June.

Lawyers for the 61-year-old Lynn argue they have a strong chance of overturning the conviction.

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AUSTRALIA
Newcastle Herald

06 Aug, 2012

The NSW Government needs to hold a royal commission into the Catholic Church’s handling of sex abuse matters.

To join the call for the royal commission, add your name to the petition here.

This petition follows an overwhelming public response to the disappearance and death of John Pirona, who left a letter saying he was in ‘‘too much pain’’ following his sexual abuse by a priest as a child.

It also follows Maitland-Newcastle Bishop Bill Wright’s ‘‘broad support’’ for an inquiry into the sex abuse issue, after acknowledging growing public calls for a royal commission.

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PHILADELPHIA (PA)
Philadelphia Inquirer

When defense lawyers go before Philadelphia Common Pleas Court Judge M. Teresa Sarmina on Monday to ask for bail pending appeal for Msgr. William J. Lynn, the guest of honor will not be present.

The 61-year-old cleric, sentenced July 24 to 3 to 6 years in prison after a jury found him guilty of child endangerment in the landmark clergy sex abuse trial involving the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Philadelphia, is already more than 100 miles away in the state prison at Camp Hill near Harrisburg.

At sentencing, Lynn told his lawyer he did not want to be returned to Philadelphia for his bail hearing, which would have required a rigorous prison bus ride as well as a likely stay at the state prison at Graterford in Montgomery County before his court date.

Lynn was the archdiocesan secretary for clergy from 1992 to 2004, a job in which he was responsible for investigating allegations that priests sexually abused minors. Though Lynn personally was never accused of sexual abuse, city prosecutors maintained that he enabled deviate priests to prey on children by moving them among Philadelphia-area parishes.

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ZIMBABWE
allAfrica

5 August 2012

The Standard

INTERVIEW

Archbishop Robert Ndlovu heads the Harare diocese of the Roman Catholic Church which covers 63 555 square kilometres and boasts of a Catholic population close to 500 000 people. The Standard deputy Editor Walter Marwizi, was granted an exclusive chance to meet the man of cloth, and in excerpts below he speaks candidly about errant priests, politics and the future of the church.

What is the state of Roman Catholic Church in Zimbabwe: Is it growing or declining in terms of numbers?

Well, I would say it’s growing judging by the number of people and records that we have, of those that are being baptised, those that are being confirmed it’s grown, but there is an element that we have to look at. In the past few years, within the last 10 years or so, a good number of Catholics have gone to the diaspora and we can feel that in our parishes. But otherwise in terms of growth, I can say it is balancing.

There are critics who say the church is losing members especially the youth because it has remained too conservative on matters such as condoms and birth control. What is your comment?

We believe that sex is something sacred and it is to be used within a relationship, and therefore it’s an expression of love of two people and they realise in so doing they are co-operating with their creator. And that is God…So if it is morally wrong it does not become morally right because someone has invented a condom…

Let’s turn to the problems in the priesthood. The church has been criticised for failing to rein in wayward priests. Is the church addressing these problems?

You always have problems and a rotten apple here and there because we are human beings and I think action is being taken, a good number of priests have been suspended once they were found out. A good number have just been told to leave the priesthood.

Do you have numbers?

Well, I wouldn’t give you statistics but I know for instance since I came to Harare, I can say more or less with certainty five or six priests have been told to leave the priesthood. And I think two or three were sent on suspension because it depends on the gravity of the matter, some of them are not really (serious offences) but for discipline’s sake we have to do that… But also look at it from this point of view; we are recruiting from a society that we all know. I like to use the term a wounded society, so sometimes these temptations don’t stop because someone has become a priest…

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ST. LOUIS (MO)
Beacon

By Patricia Rice, special to the Beacon

No matter how cool the air-conditioning in the ballroom of the Millennium Hotel downtown next week, no matter how determined 900 leaders of Catholic religious sisters are to be civil with well-modulated voices, many already are hot under the collar.

Tuesday American Catholic sisters who hold leadership roles in 320 Catholic religious communities will be in St. Louis to participate in the four-day Leadership Conference of Women Religious annual summer assembly. These communities take in 80 percent of U.S. sisters.

The leadership group and many of their supporters are deeply concerned about a mandate for change issued this spring by the Vatican. It calls on the conference to reorganize and more strictly observe church teachings.

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NEW YORK
Voice from the Desert

Annual meeting of nuns in Saint Louis excludes discussion of nun sexual abuse

New York rally to pray for nuns does not include victims of sexual abuse

What: A demonstration and leafleting outside a Greenwich Village Church where Catholics will rally in support of the annual meeting of the Leadership Conference of Women Religious convention in Saint Louis, MO, later this week.

The demonstration will call on Catholics to support victims of nun and clerical sexual abuse and not religious orders of nuns that do not give victims of sexual abuse a fair hearing at their convention or when abuse allegations are reported.

Where: On the sidewalk outside St. John in the Village Church, 224 Waverly Place at West 11th Street, NY, NY 10014.

When: Sunday, August 5, 2012 from 6:30 PM to 8:30 PM

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AUSTRALIA
The Australian

Dan Box
From: The Australian
August 06, 2012

AS an eight-year-old, “Kirsty” became the first known victim of pedophile priest Denis McAlinden, whose alleged abuse was reported to the Catholic Church. Today, she regrets no one passed that information on to the police.

Like other pupils at St Joseph’s Primary School in Merriwa, in country NSW, Kirsty — who asked that her real name not be used — was often sent to church for confession, either on her own or with friends.

“I just have a vivid memory of being sat on Father McAlinden’s lap in the church. I was fully clothed but he would pat me on the crotch,” she said. “Being so young, I knew that it was not right. I remember feeling very uncomfortable and didn’t want to be there.”

The alleged abuse went on for months. Some of Kirsty’s childhood friends told her they had suffered worse treatment at the priest’s hands.

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NEDERLAND
RKnieuws

MAASTRICHT (RKnieuws.net) – Pastoor Jan Schafraad uit Maastricht heeft gisteravond in Nieuwsuur aangekondigd te vechten tegen de beschuldigingen van seksueel misbruik. ’Ik ben onschuldig en dat zal ik bewijzen’ zei hij in de tv uitzending, ’de beschuldigingen zijn fantasie’.

Enkele parochianen steunen de pastoor, waaronder Ad Appels. ’Ik geloof in zijn onschuld’, zei hij. Een van de drie klagers heeft zich inmiddels teruggetrokken. Volgens de pastoor omdat hij toegaf gelogen te hebben. Volgens de andere klagers zou er sprake zijn van chantage.

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UNITED STATES
National Catholic Reporter

by Alice Popovici on Aug. 02, 2012 Sisters Under Scrutiny

Vigils in support of Catholic sisters are planned in more than 30 cities as the Leadership Conference of Women Religious prepares for its annual meeting in St. Louis, Mo. Individual locations are listed here.

Here’s a statement about the vigils, released today by the Nun Justice Project, a group of organizations that support the LCWR:

Nuns gather to prepare response to Vatican; Catholics across country prepare “Sister City” vigils in support

Washington, DC – While the Leadership Conference of Women Religious (LCWR) is meeting August 7-11 in St. Louis, MO to discern a response to the Vatican mandate, Catholics will be holding “Sister City” vigils across the country to demonstrate their support with the sisters.

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BELGIE
De Morgen

In Malonne zijn vanmorgen om 10.30 uur een zeventigtal mensen opgedaagd voor een manifestatie tegen de komst van Michelle Martin naar het clarissenklooster in de gemeente. De betoging verliep rustig. .

De deelnemers droegen foto’s bij zich van de slachtoffers van Marc Dutroux en spandoeken met daarop boodschappen als “30 jaar is 30 jaar” en “Zwarte mars”.

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AUSTRALIA
The Armidale Express

STEPHEN JEFFERY

03 Aug, 2012

A SENIOR cleric at the centre of the ‘Father F’ sex abuse scandal has become embroiled in new allegations of concealing evidence of sex offences following a police investigation in the Hunter region.

Australian Bishops Conference general secretary Father Brian Lucas (pictured) is one of three persons of interest to Strike Force Lantle, which has investigated how the Catholic Church handled paedophile priest Denis McAlinden.

McAlinden, who died in 2005 without facing charges, is believed to have sexually assaulted possibly hundreds of girls over four decades in the Maitland-Newcastle diocese.

Although the Church reported McAlinden’s offences to authorities in 2003, it is alleged Father Lucas knew of his actions as early as 1993.

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Vatican Insider interviews the Holy See’s lawyer, Jeffrey Lena who says other countries have a higher money laundering risk rating

Andrea Tornielli
Vatican City

Moneyval assessors claim the Vatican still has a lot of work to do…

“Your statement confirms part of the problem: saying that the Vatican still has a lot of work to do, without comparing its report to those of other countries gives the impression that the Vatican is an exception. If we look at all the reports, one thing is obvious: the results of every single report for each country show that they still have a lot of work to do, because standards are often far more up to date and ahead in terms of the domestic laws of participating countries. One thing that does not appear in all reports but is present in the Holy See one, is that assessors noticed and appreciated the openness and ability of the IOR and the entire Vatican to work hard and effectively and to adapt and make progress in real time, even during the assessment process.”

Why does the report refer to the Vatican situation last November?

“The report illustrates a precise moment in time: November 2011. This is when Moneyval assessors paid their first visit. It should also be noted that the Holy See had until 26 January 2012 to introduce necessary reforms. So the score we achieved for the period being examined is very good. It does not however reflect the situation in the Vatican on the date on which the report was published, July that is. Much progress in the improvement of the money laundering system was made after January 2012, but these further modifications are only mentioned in the report’s footnotes, not in the main body of the text. These footnotes demonstrate that the anti-money laundering system, the IOR’s especially, is in fact a lot more advanced than nine months ago. So the real picture is even better than that painted by the report.”

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WORCESTER (MA)
Telegram & Gazette

By Bronislaus B. Kush TELEGRAM & GAZETTE STAFF
bkush@telegram.com

WORCESTER — The Rev. Charles M. Abdelahad — the longtime pastor of St. George Antiochian Orthodox Cathedral, who was convicted in May of physically assaulting a female parishioner during counseling sessions — will complete his jail sentence at the Worcester County Jail and House of Correction on Tuesday.

But his church superiors remain tight-lipped about whether he will be able to resume his ministry in Worcester or elsewhere.

“No decision has been made,” said Bishop Nicholas Ozone, a spokesman for the Most Rev. Philip Saliba, the metropolitan of the Self-Ruled Antiochian Orthodox Christian Archdiocese of North America.

Bishop Nicholas said he had little information to share, adding only that Rev. Abdelahad’s future will be determined “in a while.”

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BOSTON (MA)
Boston Herald

By Christine McConville
Sunday, August 5, 2012

Don’t worry about us, a proud member of Boston’s Polish community said yesterday in the wake of the disturbing news that a Catholic priest who served the tight-knit community is facing child pornography possession charges.

“We’re tough and we’ll survive,” said Artur Marek, 42, a Dorchester carpenter whose young children are involved in activities at Our Lady of Czestochowa in South Boston. “It may sound like a paradox, but after something like this, we’ll come out stronger.”

The Rev. Andrzej “Andrew” Urbaniak, 41, a priest at Our Lady of Czestochowa, the Catholic parish that has served Boston’s Polish community since the late 1800s, pleaded not guilty Wednesday to charges of possession of child pornography and dissemination of images of a nude child.

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IBN Times

Boston: The men came from different walks of life on two continents: a children’s puppeteer in Florida, a hotel manager in Massachusetts, an emergency medical technician in Kansas, a day care worker in the Netherlands. In all, 43 men have been arrested over the past two years in a horrific, far-flung child porn network that unraveled like a sweater with a single loose thread.

In this case, the thread was a stuffed toy bunny.

The bunny, seen in a photo of a half-naked, distraught 18-month-old boy, was used to painstakingly trace a molester to Amsterdam. From there, investigators made one arrest after another of men accused of sexually abusing children, exchanging explicit photos of the attacks and even chatting online about abducting, cooking and eating youngsters.

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BOSTON (MA)
Boston Globe

By Zachary T. Sampson and Gal Tziperman Lotan
| Globe Correspondents
August 05, 2012

Days after their priest was arrested in the church rectory for possession of child pornography, parishioners at Our Lady of Czestochowa in South Boston arrived for evening Mass on Saturday expressing shock.

Many said they were troubled by the charges against the Rev. Andrzej J. Urbaniak who had been well-liked and two people left the church in tears. Others said they maintained confidence in him.

“I liked him,” said George Greenan, a 69-year-old Savin Hill resident who serves as head usher on Saturdays. “A lot of people are upset about it — I’m upset about it — but it could happen at any church.”

Urbaniak was arrested Tuesday and charged with possessing and distributing child pornography. Authorities said he confessed to downloading and sharing pornographic pictures of children, most of whom appeared to be between the ages of 8 and 10.

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UNITED STATES
Los Angeles Times

DOCUMENTS: Read the Boy Scouts files

By Jason Felch and Kim Christensen, Los Angeles Times

August 5, 2012
For nearly a century, the Boy Scouts of America has relied on a confidential blacklist known as the “perversion files” as a crucial line of defense against sexual predators.

Scouting officials say they’ve used the files to prevent hundreds of men who had been expelled for alleged sexual abuse from returning to the ranks. They’ve fought hard in court to keep the records from public view, saying confidentiality was needed to protect victims, witnesses and anyone falsely accused.

“It is a fact that Scouts are safer because the barrier created by these files is real,” Scouts Chief Executive Robert Mazzuca said in video posted on the organization’s website in June.

That barrier, however, has been breached repeatedly.

A Los Angeles Times review of more than 1,200 files dating from 1970 to 1991 found more than 125 cases across the country in which men allegedly continued to molest Scouts after the organization was first presented with detailed allegations of abusive behavior.

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IOWA
WOWT

Sentencing is delayed for a 67-year-old Iowa pastor who pleaded guilty to sexually abusing a teenage boy.

Dennis Brown of Eldora was to be sentenced next Friday for third-degree sexual abuse. His sentencing hearing has been reset for September 4th in Bremer County District Court. Brown faces up to 10 years in prison.

Brown met the boy online and then in person in Waverly. The boy’s family alerted authorities to the encounter.

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DOVER (DE)
The News Journal

Written by
Robin Brown
The News Journal

A longtime Department of Transportation employee who also is a church pastor faces 46 felony charges after an investigation into allegations he had sexual contact decades ago with two girls who were then 8 and 10 years old.

All of the charges filed Thursday against Odell L. Wright, 57, of the Dover area, are felonies, Delaware State Police Master Cpl. Gary E. Fournier said Saturday.

Wright was arraigned on 39 counts of first-degree unlawful sexual intercourse, six counts of unlawful sexual contact and one charge of continual sexual abuse of a child, Fournier said. He was being held in Vaughn Correctional Center near Smyrna on $215,000 secured bail.

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CALIFORNIA
The Press Democrat

By GUY KOVNER
THE PRESS DEMOCRAT

Reversing his stance on a sensitive issue, Bishop Robert Vasa is allowing the Santa Rosa Diocese to continue offering child safety training in its schools and to participate in a nationwide audit that determines whether dioceses have provided the training intended to prevent child sex abuse.

Auditors working for the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops will visit the diocese for two days this month. They will examine records and interview the bishop, some priests and other church officials, including members of the review board that handles sex abuse complaints.

Santa Rosa was among the Catholic dioceses that passed last year’s audit for compliance with the child safety standards, including training for children and adults, adopted by the bishops conference in 2002. …

Facts

‘CIRCLE OF GRACE’ PROGRAM

Catholic schools in the Santa Rosa diocese use a program called Circle of Grace to teach students how to recognize and avoid sexual abuse.

The curriculum, developed by the Archdiocese of Omaha, blends Catholic faith with child psychology, said Mary Beth Hanus, a social worker and mental health provider who manages Omaha’s Office of Victim Outreach and Prevention.

“It is clinically sound and it’s faith-based,” said Hanus, an author of the program now used by 18 Catholic dioceses.

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CONNECTICUT
The Hartford Courant

By DAVE ALTIMARI, daltimar@courant.com
The Hartford Courant

6:58 p.m. EDT, August 4, 2012

The Vatican’s refusal to let the Norwich diocese remove an accused pedophile from the priesthood is expected to play a role in the upcoming trial involving a New London woman who says the priest molested her when she was 12.

Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger received the Norwich request days before being elected pope in 2005. It’s unclear, though, if Ratzinger himself decided against laicizing Father Thomas Shea, who was accused of molesting as many as 15 girls at 11 different parishes throughout the Diocese of Norwich in a career that started in 1953.

One of accusers, using the pseudonym Jane Doe, sued the diocese in 2008 alleging that Shea made her perform oral sex on him while he was pastor of St. Joseph’s Church in New London.

As a priest in good standing, Shea was being paid by the diocese a pension of about $15,000 annually and all of his health insurance costs, including his nursing home bills.

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HAMMOND (IN)
Christian Post

By Ed Stetzer, Christian Post Guest Columnist

August 4, 2012

Jack Schaap was the pastor of First Baptist Church of Hammond, Indiana, the largest Independent Fundamental Baptist church in America. If you do not know his name, you may know the name of the church’s founder and his father-in-law, legendary fundamentalist, Jack Hyles.

Schaap has been caught up in what many are calling an “adultery scandal” and was fired this week. Yet, what many are missing is particularly important and requires immediate change.

It is time to stop calling this “adultery” and time to call it what it is, “abuse.”

If you’re not familiar with the situation, here’s a short recap from The Chicago Tribune:

An evangelical megachurch pastor has lost his job and is being investigated by the Lake County, Ind., Sheriff’s Department after admitting that he had an “improper relationship” with a young woman, a spokesman for First Baptist Church of Hammond said.

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HAMMOND (IN)
Atheist Media Blog

[with video]

Jack Schaap, mega-church pastor at First Baptist Church (Indiana) has been fired and is under investigation by the FBI for taking a minor across state lines to have sex. He is married and is infamous for his misogynistic and anti-gay sermons. He is also the chancellor of the Hyles–Anderson Bible College.

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DEUTSCHLAND
MissBiT

Samstag, 4. August 2012

Kronenburg: “Aber wir hielten es wirklich für notwendig, aufgrund dieser staatsanwaltschaftlichen Ermittlungen, jetzt schon diese Maßnahmen zu ergreifen.”

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NEDERLAND
NOS

De commissie-Samson ontvangt veel meldingen van seksueel misbruik of geweld die niet onder de onderzoeksopdracht vallen. De commissie kijkt alleen naar misbruik van kinderen die door de overheid in instellingen zijn geplaatst.

Ongeveer een op de drie meldingen gaat over misbruik in andere sectoren. De commissie vindt dat veel en daarom wordt ook naar die meldingen gekeken. In het eindrapport zal daar meer informatie over gegeven worden.

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DEUTSCHLAND
netzwerkeB

netzwerkB 03.08.2012

Offener Brief an:

Bundesministerin für Familie, Senioren, Frauen und Jugend
Dr. Kristina Schröder
Platz der Republik 1
11011 Berlin
Fax: 030 18555 4400

Sehr geehrte Frau Dr. Schröder,

Wir nehmen Bezug auf Ihr Schreiben vom 01.08.2012 in dem Sie uns mitteilen, dass es Ihnen nicht möglich ist, unseren Antrag auf Kostenübernahme im Rahmen der Unterstützung von Betroffenen-Initiativen zu unterstützen.

Zur Koordination der über 500 Opfervereine gründete sich am 20. August 2011 die Bundesinitiative der Betroffenen von sexualisierter Gewalt und Missbrauch im Kindesalter e.V. (BI) und wurde am 2. Dezember 2011 im Vereinsregister des Amtsgerichtes Charlottenburg eingetragen unter: 95 VR 31053 B. Anspruch war es, den aufwändigen Dialog zwischen den Betroffenen zu koordinieren und eine einheitliche Position der verschiedenen Betroffenenverbände für den Runden Tisch zu erfassen. Es dürfte klar sein, dass sich allein aus diesem Anspruch noch kein Alleinvertretungsanspruch der BI für die Betroffenen ergab. Ein halbes Jahr nach Gründung der BI steht die Einlösung des Anspruchs dieser Initiative mehr als in Frage. Gerade fünf Vereine sind noch Mitglied. Dennoch gilt die Initiative der Regierung als repräsentative Stimme der Betroffenen und wird nun mit mehr als 27.000 Euro finanziert.

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UNITED STATES
OpEd News

By
Rev. Dan Vojir

The Country’s Most Misogynist Minister Proves That Hypocrisy From The Pulpit Has No Bounds.

“At this time, we deeply regret the need to announce that First Baptist Church has dismissed our pastor, Dr. Jack Schaap, due to a sin that has caused him to forfeit his right to be our pastor. First Baptist Church is in full cooperation with our local authorities in their investigation of this matter. Our church grieves over the need to take this action and the impact it will have on our people.” – First Baptist Church of Hammond

The “sin” was extreme hypocrisy in the mode of Bishop Eddie Long and Creflo Dollar.

And the set up to that “sin” could not have been a more “perfect storm” of religious hypocrisy:

– The First Baptist Church of Hammond boasts a huge congregation as far back as 1978: 30,000, with the claim that it ran the “world’s largest Sunday School.” In 2006, it was listed as the 24th most influential chuech in the United States.

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SANTA MONICA (CA)
Santa Monica Mirror

Posted Aug. 3, 2012

Brenton Garen / Editor-in-Chief

The arraignment of St. Anne’s Church priest Rafael Venegas on a sexual battery charge was continued to August 21.

Venegas was originally scheduled to be arraigned at the LAX Courthouse earlier today on two charges – sexual battery and providing a minor under the age of 21 with alcohol. The courthouse’s public information office did not give the reason why the arraignment was moved.

Venegas turned himself into the Santa Monica Police Department on Monday – accompanied by his lawyer – and was released after posting $20,000 bail.

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SANTA MONICA (CA)
Patch

By Kate Parkinson-Morgan

The arraignment of a St. Anne’s Catholic Church and Shrine priest accused of sexual battery is delayed until later this month.

Rafael Raygoza Venegas, 38, was booked and charged Monday with two misdemeanors, sexual battery and supplying alcohol to someone younger than 21.

The date of the arraignment, during which Venegas will plead either guilty, not guilty or no contest to the charges brought against him, is set for August 21.

Accompanied by his attorney, Venegas came to the Santa Monica Police station Monday afternoon and surrendered after the Santa Monica City Attorney’s office filed charges.

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BOSTON (MA)
Boston Globe

Editorial

August 04, 2012

The sentence given to Rabbi Stanley Z. Levitt, the former religious instructor who pleaded guilty to four counts of indecent assault and battery on children, harks back to the long-discredited view that shame alone is enough to punish a prominent person who violates his position of authority. The 66-year-old Levitt was given 10 years of probation and ordered to stay away from children, register as a sex offender, and wear a GPS bracelet. It’s not enough. He should have been put behind bars.

Not all sex-abuse cases are alike, but Levitt’s followed a now-familiar pattern of a teacher or religious leader who shattered the trust that parents placed in him. Levitt’s crimes took place 37 years ago, when he was a teacher at the Orthodox Jewish Maimonides School in Brookline. He touched three boys in a sexual manner, and all were prepared to testify against him.

Though Judge Geraldine Hines could only consider these offenses, Levitt also was charged with molesting three boys in Philadelphia after he left the Boston area in 1980. As Mitchell Garabedian, the lawyer who took on the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Boston in sex-abuse cases, pointed out, “This could be just the tip of the iceberg.”

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HAMMOND (IN)
Christian Post

By Stoyan Zaimov, Christian Post Reporter

August 3, 2012

Jack Schaap, the former pastor of First Baptist Church of Hammond in Indiana who was fired earlier this week for an alleged adulterous affair, has confessed to cheating on his wife with a teen girl belonging to the megachurch.

The Board of Deacons addressed the scandal at a church meeting Wednesday night, WGN-TV revealed, and said that Schaap, 54, has admitted to the inappropriate relationship with a church member who was not named. The girl, currently 17, was 16 years old when her relationship with Schaap began.

The former pastor, who had led the 15,000-member congregation for the past 11 years, has not yet made any public remarks on his firing nor the affair. The FBI reportedly has launched an investigation into Schaap’s involvement with the young girl – although the age of consent in Indiana is 16, so it is unclear if the married father of two will face any criminal charges.

According to Trisha Kae, a former church member who maintains a Facebook page for ex-congregants, Schaap had forgotten his phone one night at the pulpit, and a deacon who saw it picked it up to return it to the pastor.

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INDIANA
Chicago Tribune

By Dennis Sullivan and Lisa Black, Chicago Tribune

August 5, 2012

The FBI confirmed Friday that it is investigating whether the former pastor of an Indiana megachurch broke any laws during a relationship with a now-17-year-old girl that led to his ouster from First Baptist Church in Hammond.

Former Pastor Jack Schaap, 54, admitted to adultery and “improper behavior” with the teenager, leading a board of deacons to fire him Monday, church spokesman Eddie Wilson has said.

Church officials contacted the Lake County, Ind., sheriff’s office Tuesday and have been cooperating with investigators from the county and federal agency since, Wilson said.

“There is an allegation we’re trying to prove or disprove that the pastor crossed state lines and engaged in an improper sexual relationship with an underage female,” said Robert Ramsey, spokesman for the FBI’s office in Merrillville, Ind.

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DOVER (DE)
Newark Post

Delaware State Police detectives arrested a Dover man Thursday after two victims, now both in their 30s, disclosed he sexually abused them when they were children.

Detectives from Troop 3 Major Crimes Unit arrested Odell L. Wright, 57, of Dover and charged him with 46 sex-related crimes stemming from incidents that allegedly occurred in the late ‘80s and early ‘90s, according to a press release from Delaware State Police. The two female victims were 8 and 10 years old at the time of the alleged offenses.

The 8-year-old victim, now 30, told detectives she was sexually abused by Wright between December 1989 and December 1991, when he lived with her family in a house in Cheswold.

The 10-year-old victim, now 32, alleges she was sexually assaulted between July 1992 and July 1995, while attending church functions at the Rescue House of Prayer in Felton, where Wright at the time was a deacon.

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DOVER (DE)
Dover Post

By Staff reports
GateHouse News Service

Dover, Del. —

A Dover man is charged with sexually abusing two children in the late 80s and early 90s.

Odell L. Wright, 57, is accused of 46 sex-related crimes ranging from unlawful sexual intercourse to continuous sexual abuse of a child.

Police say a then-8-year-old victim, who is now 30, told detectives she was sexually abused when Wright lived with her family on Seven Hickories Road in Cheswold.

Another woman, 32, told investigators she was 10 years old when Wright sexually abused her at church functions in Felton where he was a deacon at the time.

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ALABAMA
Fox 54

[with video]

A special prayer service will be held Friday night after a music minister accused of child sex abuse was fired from First United Methodist Church in Sheffield.

“Words can not describe the pain and sorrow that comes with something like this. It’s impossible,” said church spokesman Billy Don Anderson.

Last Friday, Anderson along with other church leaders confronted 78 year old Oliver Brazelle about rumors of sexual misconduct between Brazelle and youth in the church over the years. Shortly after, church leaders said that he confessed.

“After hearing of the admission, he was told immediately under the circumstances he couldn’t continue to be an employee of the church,” said Anderson.

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COLORADO
The Colorado Catholic Herald

8/3/2012

COLORADO SPRINGS. Father C. Robert Manning, in a brief appearance in El Paso County District Court on July 19, waived his right to a preliminary hearing on charges of sexual assault on a minor by a person in a position of trust and contributing to the delinquency of a minor.

An arraignment is scheduled for Aug. 23.

Father Manning, a priest of the Archdiocese of St. Louis who resigned as St. Gabriel pastor in January, turned himself in to Colorado Springs police on May 22 after an arrest warrant was issued.

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CANADA
Times Colonist

The Canadian Press
August 3, 2012

Lawyers representing sexual abuse victims of former New Brunswick priest Levi Noel have filed 11 lawsuits alleging that members of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Bathurst covered up his crimes.

A statement of claim filed Friday in the province’s Court of Queen’s Bench alleges clergy failed to properly respond to Noel’s conduct and promoted “a culture of secrecy with respect to the sexual misconduct of clergy which was intended to benefit the diocese rather than stop the misconduct or assist the victims.”

In January 2010, Noel was sentenced to eight years in prison after pleading guilty to 22 charges of sexual assault against 18 boys between 1958 and 1980.

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IOWA
WCF Courier

WAVERLY — Sentencing for Dennis Brown, a pastor accused of committing sexual acts with a teenage boy, will be pushed back a month, according to court records.

Brown, 67, of Eldora, pleaded guilty to third-degree sexual abuse and was scheduled to learn his fate Aug. 10. His sentencing hearing is now set to begin at 10 a.m. Sept. 4 in Bremer County District Court.

According to court documents, Brown met his alleged victim online and then in person in Waverly. The boy’s family members alerted authorities to the encounter.

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KANSAS CITY (MO)
Catholic News Agency

By Hillary Senour

Kansas City, Mo., Aug 3, 2012 / 11:37 am (CNA/EWTN News).- The Diocese of Kansas City-St. Joseph voiced deep sympathy for victims harmed by a diocesan priest who plead guilty in federal court Aug. 2 to child pornography charges.

“The diocese expresses its profound concern for anyone who may have been harmed by Shawn Ratigan and urges prayer for all affected by his actions,” the diocese said in a statement Monday.

Fr. Ratigan, who served as pastor of parishes throughout the diocese, plead guilty to the charge of producing or attempting to produce child pornography in federal court, over a year after his initial arrest.

“The diocese is fundamentally committed to ensure that every report of sexual abuse, boundary violation or misconduct is addressed thoroughly and immediately,” the statement said.

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AUSTRALIA
Newcastle Herald

JOANNE MCCARTHY

04 Aug, 2012

The state government must hold a royal commission into child sex abuse within the Catholic Church. Comment by Joanne McCarthy.

LAST Saturday I sent an email to a fair number of Australia’s bishops after Maitland-Newcastle Bishop Bill Wright acknowledged growing calls for a royal commission into the Catholic Church’s handling of child sex abuse cases, and said he was ‘‘broadly supportive’’ of a public inquiry.

I asked one question: ‘‘Do you support a royal commission into the church’s handling of child sex abuse cases?’’

A Victorian bishop responded fairly quickly, saying he was willing to assist that state’s parliamentary inquiry into church abuse matters. He didn’t respond to my follow-up question: ‘‘But not a royal commission?’’

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CANADA
Montreal Gazette

By The Canadian Press
August 3, 2012

BATHURST, N.B. – A law firm representing sexual abuse victims of former New Brunswick priest Levi Noel has launched 11 lawsuits alleging members of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Bathurst covered up the crimes.

In January 2010, Noel was sentenced to eight years in prison after pleading guilty to 22 charges of sexual assault against 18 boys between 1958 and 1980.

A statement of claim filed today in the province’s Court of Queens Bench alleges clergy failed to properly react to Noel’s conduct and promoted “a culture of secrecy” that didn’t help the victims.

The Ontario-based Ledroit Beckett law firm has filed 20 lawsuits in total against Noel and the diocese, but no statements of defence have been filed.

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AUSTRALIA
Newcastle Herald

BY JOANNE MCCARTHY

04 Aug, 2012

IN a car on the side of the road a man wept yesterday for the mates he has lost from St Pius X, Adamstown.

Phil Crosbie, 48, of Jewells, was also angry – at the church that protected a paedophile priest, and at governments that have a responsibility to bring the Catholic church to account.

‘‘I’d like to see every one of these bastards brought to account. Even if they’re dead, I’d like to see it acknowledged what they did, or who they protected,’’ Mr Crosbie said.

‘‘I’d like governments to act. They have a responsibility, but they don’t have the courage because it’s the Catholic church. They don’t have the ticker.’’

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