ABUSE TRACKER

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

BY TIM TOWNSEND • ttownsend@post-dispatch.com > 314-340-8221

The Rev. Charles Manning, 77, a Catholic priest of the Archdiocese of St. Louis, turned himself in to Colorado Springs police Tuesday after a warrant had been issued for his arrest.

Police had been investigating Manning since October.

He was charged with sexual assault on a minor by a person in a position of trust, and contributing to the delinquency of a minor, according to police.

Angie Shelton, the archdiocese’s community relations specialist, said in a statement that Manning had been granted permission to move to Colorado Springs in June 2007.

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IRELAND
Build

Trim Circuit Court heard yesterday a former priest admit to indecently assaulting a number of boys at different locations in the diocese of Meath, including a parochial house.

77-year-old Raymond Brady admitted offences relating to 11 individuals.

When the case was called, State prosecutor Carl Hanahoe said guilty pleas were being entered in relation to 11 offences. He said these pleas were acceptable to the prosecution on the basis of full facts being heard at the sentencing hearing later this year.

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DEUTSCHLAND
Familien-Blickpunkt

von Familien-Blickpunkt.de am 22/05/2012

Erbach (hsm) – Nach Schätzungen des Bundeskriminalamtes werden jährlich 200- bis 300 000 Kinder in Deutschland sexuell missbraucht. „Das ist Mord an Kinderseelen“, erklärte Petra Müller-Klepper, Staatssekretärin im Hessischen Sozialministerium, heute im Rahmen der Fachtagung „Sexualisierte Gewalt gegen Mädchen – Alltag!? Wahrnehmen – Erkennen – Handeln“ in Erbach. In 90 Prozent der Fälle seien die Opfer weiblich. Die Staatssekretärin forderte eine konsequente Ächtung und Bekämpfung sexualisierter Gewalt. „Die Kultur des Wegschauens oder Verschweigens muss von einer Kultur des Hinschauens und Ansprechens abgelöst werden.“

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IRELAND
The Journal

AMNESTY INTERNATIONAL HAS said that the provision of mental health services in Ireland continued to be inadequate in 2011 and has said that conditions in the country’s prisons continue to fall below standards.

In its annual report on human rights in 155 countries and territories, the organisation also criticised the United Nations Security Council, saying it has failed to show the kind of courage that ordinary people have showed during the Arab Spring last year.

For Ireland, Amnesty raised concerns about the lack of prosecutions in the reported cases of violence against children in the State’s religious-run institutions.

It noted the publication of the Cloyne report which said that two-thirds of allegations about clerical sex abuse in the diocese between 1996 and 2009 were not forwarded to Gardaí.

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KANSAS CITY (MO)
The Kansas City Star

By MARK MORRIS
The Kansas City Star

A Jackson County judge on Wednesday set a June hearing to hear lawyers discuss evidence questions in the misdemeanor case against Kansas City’s Catholic bishop and the diocese he serves.

Judge John Torrence blocked out two hours for arguments at the June 15 hearing, according to Jackson County court records.

Bishop Robert W. Finn and the Catholic Diocese of Kansas City St. Joseph each face one count of failure to report suspicions of child abuse. The charges relate to how they handled the Rev. Shawn Ratigan case between December 2010 and May 2011.

Ratigan faces state and federal child pornography charges related to dozens of lewd photos of young girls that diocesan leaders found on his laptop computer.

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AUSTRALIA
The Australian

WESTERN Australia’s inquiry into child abuse at state-run boarding houses has been told of yet another depraved warden.

The inquiry, led by former Supreme Court Justice Peter Blaxell, has focused previously on events at the St Andrew’s Hostel in Katanning in the 1970s and 80s, where convicted pedophile brothers Dennis and Neil McKenna abused children in their care.

Details emerged on Wednesday of the bizarre behaviour of the late Roy Wenlock, who was warden at St Christopher’s Hostel at Northam, 100km northeast of Perth, from 1963 until 1977 when he was forced to resign.

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AUSTRALIA
9 News

A young victim of sexual abuse at a state-run boarding hostel in Western Australia says he tried to kill the warden who indecently assaulted him.

The victim, who was identified as “L” at an inquiry into events at the new defunct St Christopher’s Hostel in Northam from 1963 until 1977, also said he lost all faith in organised religion as a result of the abuse but still believed in god.

The inquiry centres on the bizarre behaviour of the late Roy Wenlock, who was the warden at the facility during this period until he was forced to resign.

Mr Wenlock, who was never charged or convicted of any sexual offence, would bring boys into his unit at the hostel and force them to wrestle with him in their underpants or with their shirts off in acts described by counsel assisting the inquiry, Philip Urquhart, as “simulated sexual intercourse”.

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AUSTRALIA
ABC News

Updated May 24, 2012

An inquiry investigating sexual abuse by a warden at a state-run hostel in regional Western Australia, has heard an Anglican Bishop knew about the warden’s alleged behaviour a year before he was sacked.

Roy Wenlock was the warden at Saint Christopher’s Hostel in Northam for 14 years during the 1960s and 70s.

The inquiry has been told he indecently assaulted boys until he was forced to resign in 1977.

Former boarders of the hostel have told the inquiry it was common knowledge among them that Wenlock was sexually abusing boys.

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MASSACHUSETTS
Boston Herald

By Erin Smith
Wednesday, May 23, 2012

The Vatican yesterday rejected bids from local groups to stave off the shuttering of a half-dozen Hub area churches, ruling that the Archdiocese of Boston has proven its case for closing the parishes.

The news came as just the latest blow in a seven-year battle by impassioned parishioners such as Lorenzo Grasso, a Eucharistic minister who has worshipped at one of the churches, Our Lady of Mount Carmel, for more than four decades.

Grasso is holding out one last hope that his beloved East Boston church will be spared in a final appeal to the higher Vatican Court, the Apostolic Signatura. But last night, he took time with Herald reporter Erin Smith to reflect on what Our Lady of Mount Carmel has meant to him and his family.

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MASSACHUSETTS
Boston Globe

May 23, 2012|Lisa Wangsness

Parishioners of a half-dozen closed Roman Catholic churches fighting to reopen their parishes for many as eight years have suffered another setback, but they are not ready to give up yet.

A Vatican department has rejected all six groups’ appeals of a decision by Cardinal Sean P. O’Malley, the archbishop of Boston, to make the churches available for nonreligious use.

But five of the six churches plan to appeal to the Apostolic Signatura, the Vatican’s highest court, according to their representatives.

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ROME
National Catholic Reporter

May. 23, 2012
By Brian Roewe

In Rome today (May 23), canon lawyers representing St. Patrick Parish of Cleveland, Ohio filed a motion demanding Bishop Richard G. Lennon immediately re-open the church and restore the parish, and if he won’t, have someone else do it.

The motion, a copy (translated from Italian) obtained by NCR, is the second filed by the parish since decrees came from the Congregation for the Clergy in early March ruling in favor of St. Patrick and 11 other parishes that Lennon had attempted to suppress during a string of closings in 2009.

Patricia Schulte-Singleton, a parishioner of St. Patrick and head of parish advocate group Endangered Catholics, said Lennon’s delaying action is “causing distress spiritually, emotionally, economically” for the parish and its parishioners.

“There has been no timetable, no definitive action plan, so you have to wonder when is this going to happen, is he going to stall, does he really want to do this even though he’s been ordered to do it by Rome,” she said.

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MASSACHUSETTS
The Christian Century

May 23, 2012 by G. Jeffrey MacDonald

Religion News Service BOSTON (RNS) Groups of Boston-area Catholics who have waged an eight-year battle to block the sale of parish buildings are running out of options as the Vatican has rejected their appeals.

In rulings dated March through May, Rome’s Congregation for the Clergy upheld the Archdiocese of Boston’s plans to convert six parish buildings from sacred to profane (non-church) use.

Now parishioners, including vigil keepers who’ve occupied two church buildings round-the-clock since a wave of parish closures began in 2004, must decide whether to appeal one more time to the Vatican’s top court.

Five of the six groups are resolving to fight on, according to Peter Borre, co-founder of the Council of Parishes, which represents members of closed parishes. A sixth, St. Jeanne d’Arc in Lowell, has not yet decided on next steps, Borre said.

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PHILADELPHIA (PA)
The Wall Street Journal

By PETER LOFTUS

PHILADELPHIA—A monsignor accused of covering up allegations that Roman Catholic priests sexually abused children testified at his trial Wednesday he had limited authority to take action against the priests he supervised, and was carrying out directions from his superiors.

“I did the best I could within the parameters that were given to me,” said Msgr. William Lynn, who served as secretary for clergy for the Archdiocese of Philadelphia from 1992 to 2004, a job that involved investigating abuse complaints against priests.

Msgr. Lynn took the witness stand for the first time Wednesday, nearly two months after the start of his trial on charges of endangering the welfare of children and conspiracy, to which he pleaded not guilty. Prosecutors say Msgr. Lynn failed to keep certain priests out of assignments involving contact with children, despite being aware of prior allegations of abuse or improper conduct against them. The monsignor doesn’t face abuse allegations himself.

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PHILADELPHIA (PA)
The New York Times

By JON HURDLE

PHILADELPHIA — Msgr. William J. Lynn took the stand on Wednesday in a landmark trial to defend himself against allegations that he failed to prevent fellow Roman Catholic priests from abusing children during his tenure as secretary for clergy at the Archdiocese of Philadelphia.

The most senior Catholic Church official in the United States to be tried on charges related to sexual abuse of children, Monsignor Lynn said that he had little authority to discipline accused priests and that power rested mainly with his superiors.

Asked by a defense lawyer, Thomas Bergstrom, whether he had the power to dismiss priests who were accused of abusing children, Monsignor Lynn replied that he could do so only if pedophilia had been diagnosed or “if they had admitted sexual abuse.”

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PHILADELPHIA (PA)
San Francisco Chronicle

Associated Press

Thursday, May 24, 2012

Philadelphia —

A Roman Catholic church official conceded that a 1994 list he compiled of 35 priests suspected of sexually abusing children in the Philadelphia archdiocese included some “pretty sick individuals.”

Monsignor William Lynn took the stand in his defense Wednesday in a groundbreaking child-endangerment and conspiracy case. Prosecutors blame Lynn for helping keep those priests and many more in ministry, where they had access to countless other children.

Lynn testified that the head of the archdiocese forbade staff from telling accusers their alleged abuser had other victims. He said the late Cardinal Anthony Bevilacqua wouldn’t let parishes announce the real reason an accused priest was being removed.

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NEW YORK
New York Magazine

By Margaret Hartmann

Brooklyn district attorney Charles Hynes has announced that he’ll push for a state law adding rabbis and other religious leaders to the list of professionals required to report allegations of sexual abuse to the authorities. Presumably, this has nothing to do with the Jewish Daily Forward reporting that Hynes was hiding the names of ultra-Orthodox Jews accused of sex crimes and the ensuing New York Times exposé.

Hynes became the subject of intense media scrutiny after he refused to release the names of 85 ultra-Orthodox Jews arrested for sex crimes, due to the “very tight-knit and insular” nature of the Brooklyn community. He was accused of having a far too cozy relationship with leaders of the religious community, and being more lenient with ultra-Orthodox Jewish abusers than others accused of sex crimes. Now Hynes is changing his tune. Last week he revealed plans for a crack down on witness intimidation in child sexual abuse cases in the ultra-Orthodox community (an idea proposed by former Mayor Ed Koch, who publicly criticized Hynes), and declaring that rabbis and other religious leaders should be mandatory reporters of abuse.

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UNITED KINGDOM
Kensington and Chelsea Chronicle

Posted by Greg Burns on May 24

A NOTTING Hill woman has been praised by police for taking the witness stand in a court case against a priest who sexually assaulted her.

The 59-year-old woman was a parishioner at the Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahdo Church of St Mary of Debre Tsion, in Battersea.

The church was led by Gebrehana Semre (pictured) who subsequently used his position to visit the woman in September 2010 to bless her home and welcome her into the church.

He told her that for the blessing to be successful she would need to be naked. Although uncomfortable with his demand, the victim trusted the clergyman and went along with it.

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APPLETON (WI)
The Northwestern

Written by
Jim Collar
Gannett Wisconsin Media

APPLETON — Two brothers who were sexually assaulted at the hands of a priest in 1978 said their civil lawsuit against the Roman Catholic Diocese of Green Bay was about bringing long-held secrets to light, not money.

Todd and Troy Merryfield, who dropped a claim Wednesday seeking punitive damages, the awards handed down in civil cases as punishment for wrongdoing.

They explained pulling back the church’s “veil of secrecy” was far more important than the $700,000 they were awarded already in the lawsuit after a jury decided Tuesday the church had covered up its knowledge of sexual abuse committed by the Rev. John Feeney before he abused the Merryfields.

The Merryfields implored the diocese to make public all it knows about past sexual abuses committed by clergy.

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NEW YORK
The New York Times

By RAY RIVERA

Published: May 23, 2012

The Brooklyn district attorney, Charles J. Hynes, said Wednesday that he would push for state legislation to add rabbis and other religious leaders to the list of professionals required to report allegations of sexual abuse to law enforcement authorities.

The move comes as Mr. Hynes, the city’s longest-serving district attorney, has come under intense scrutiny for his handling of sexual abuse cases in the politically powerful ultra-Orthodox Jewish community. A recent article in The New York Times showed that Mr. Hynes did not object when Agudath Israel of America, an organization representing various Hasidic and other ultra-Orthodox factions, told him last summer that it was instructing adherent Jews to get permission from a rabbi before reporting allegations of sexual abuse to the authorities.

Brooklyn is home to the largest concentration of ultra-Orthodox Jews outside of Israel. The issue of child sexual abuse has divided the community in recent years, and Mr. Hynes has become a central figure in the drama. Victims’ advocates accuse him of bending to the will of the rabbis, many of whom have long insisted that crimes like sexual abuse be handled by rabbinical authorities, who often do not report their findings to the police or prosecutors.

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CANADA
The Cape Breton Post

Published on May 23, 2012
Staff ~ The Cape Breton Post

Retired religious studies professor Charles MacDonald presented a series of talks earlier this year on the troubled state of the Roman Catholic Church and how the Church might be resuscitated.

In a recent letter to the editor, Pat Bates quoted MacDonald as describing the Church of yesterday in this way: “Power rested with the pastors in their glebe houses and the bishop in his residence. The lay people were passive — in their place — the pews.”

The pendulum has swung, and the obsequious parishioner of yesteryear is increasing rare, due in no small part to an ever-widening picture of the repugnant actions of some of those former worthies.

Locally, anxiety among parishioners was originally borne out of ever-increasing sexual abuse allegations — and convictions — against priests.

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BEND (OR)
KTVZ

[with video]

By John Hendricks, KTVZ.COM

BEND, Ore. — In light of a case now in the court system, the biggest challenge for newly ordained Bishop Liam Cary of the Diocese of Baker has ahead of him is making sure his new diocese is compliant with a charter that was put in place to protect kids from sexual abuse.

Over the years, dozens of sex abuse cases involving Catholic priests and children have come to light nationally, four within the Diocese of Baker.

Cary, who was ordained last Friday, is taking that role at an interesting time.

A 2011 report by the United Conference of Catholic Bishops said the Baker Diocese was one of two that refused to be audited for a program designed to curb sexual abuse within the church.

Since the report was published, Bishop Cary says things have changed.

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TULSA (OK)
Tulsa World

By BILL SHERMAN World Religion Writer
Published: 5/24/2012

Tulsa County District Judge Daman H. Cantrell ruled Monday in favor of Bishop Edward J. Slattery and the Diocese of Tulsa in a lawsuit filed against them by an alleged victim of sexual abuse and his father.

“This is the end of the case, unless there is an appeal,” said attorney Joel Wohlgemuth, who represented Slattery and the diocese.

He said the judge granted his motion for summary judgment, ruling in favor of the defendants after determining that there were no disputed facts in the case that would require a jury trial.

Kelly Kirk and his father, Gordon Kirk, alleged that Slattery and the diocese inflicted intentional emotional distress on them. Kelly Kirk also alleged invasion of privacy.

The accusations stem from a 2002 slander lawsuit against the Kirks filed by the Rev. Paul Eichhoff, a priest in the diocese. As a result of that lawsuit, the Kirks’ names were made public.

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LOS ANGELES (CA)
Georgia Bulletin

[Archive of Franciscan Sex Abuse in the Province of St. Barbara – BishopAccountability.org]

LOS ANGELES (CNS) — More than 8,500 pages of material detailing claims of sexual abuse by a group of Franciscan priests and brothers in California were made public May 23. The release of the documents was one unfinished item of business from a 2006 court settlement that awarded $28 million, the vast majority of it from the St. Barbara Province of the Franciscan Friars and Brothers, to settle abuse claims from 25 plaintiffs. The province, based in Oakland, used the proceeds from the sale of a closed seminary, where many of the incidents were alleged to have occurred, to help finance the settlement. The high school seminary closed in 1987. As part of the settlement, the Franciscans agreed to let a judge review for possible public dissemination internal church documents as well as depositions in the litigation, showing how the order handled sexual abuse allegations among its clerics. None of the six priests and three brothers cited in the documents are in active ministry. Some are dead. Others are living at Franciscan residences and restricted from leaving the grounds unaccompanied. In the archive are personnel, psychological, confidential and laicization files, as well as witness depositions.

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PHILADELPHIA (PA)
Philadelphia Priest Abuse Trial Blog

Ralph Cipriano

At 11:10 a.m. Wednesday in Courtroom 304 of the Criminal Justice Center, defense lawyer Thomas Bersgstrom stood up and made a surprise announcement.

“Your Honor, the defense calls Msgr. Lynn.”

The monsignor left the defense table, where he had been held hostage the past eight weeks, and walked over to the witness stand to testify in his own defense.

The courtroom was packed with relatives and men in collars, who turned out to display their support for the archdiocese’s former secretary for clergy. Lynn is on trial for conspiracy to endanger the welfare of children by allowing abuser priests to continue in ministry. He is the first Catholic administrator in the country to be charged for allegedly covering up sex abuse of minors by priests.

In three hours on the witness stand, the monsignor appeared relaxed, smiled often, and never raised his voice, even when the prosecutor was tossing fastballs at his head.

He said he stayed on the job as secretary for clergy for 12 years because, “I thought I was helping people.” Lynn asserted that he provided pastoral care to fellow priests, as well as aid and counseling to victims of sex abuse.

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PHILADELPHIA (PA)
Philadelphia Inquirer

By John P. Martin and Joseph A. Slobodzian
Inquirer Staff Writers

Msgr. William J. Lynn took the witness stand at his landmark trial Wednesday, asserting he “did my best” to weed out sexually abusive priests and battling with a prosecutor who painted him as a liar more concerned with protecting the church than children.

During hours of tense testimony in a Common Pleas courtroom, Lynn tried to counter charges that he spent a dozen years burying sex-abuse claims and shuffling accused priests around the Archdiocese of Philadelphia.

He repeatedly told jurors that his bosses, notably Cardinal Anthony J. Bevilacqua, directed the church’s response to child-sex abuse allegations, and he denied knowingly putting children in harm’s way.

“I thought I was helping people,” Lynn said. “I thought I was helping priests, and in those circumstances, I thought I was helping victims, as much as I could.”

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CALIFORNIA
Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests

Posted by Barbara Dorris on May 23, 2012

We’re disappointed that Fr. Castillo is not facing more severe consequences for his serious wrongdoing.

Even if the prosecutor’s right and Fr. Castillo didn’t intend to be around kids, he could have walked away. He knows the rules and restrictions. And he chose to ignore them. In fact, he violated the most important rule of all for child molesters: he chose to be around kids.

For that, we believe he should have been hit with the toughest penalty possible.

And we call on every single current and former Catholic church official or member who saw, suspected or suffered Castillo s crimes to speak up, call police, expose wrongdoing, protect others and start healing. We strongly suspect that he could – and should – be prosecuted for other sex crimes. And we suspect that aggressive outreach might uncover church employees who might be prosecuted for obstruction of justice, destroying evidence, witness tampering or similar charges.

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CALIFORNIA
KEYT

[Archive of Franciscan Sex Abuse in the Province of St. Barbara – BishopAccountability.org]

Written by KEY News Staff

In 2006 the Franciscan order settled for 28-million dollars with plaintiffs who alleged abuse by priests is Santa Barbara primarily at what was once Saint Anthony’s Seminary. Documents that largely lead to that settlement are helping make their case.

For the first time ever more than eight thousand pages of records documenting a history of catholic priest sexual abuse in Santa Barbara are available to the public on line.

The documents name nine priests who committed sexual abuse and includes personal and psychological profiles of the perpetrators. Documents also contain depositions from victims and witnesses.

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UNITED STATES
Pope Crimes & Vatican Evils…

Paris Arrow

St. Francis of Assisi’s Prayer for Peace is misleading to children because it gives “holy” clouts to Franciscan priests and brothers garbed in brown angelic robes.
Lord, make me an instrument of your peace
Where there is darkness let me sow light…

oh yeah? What light?

St. Francis Prayer for Peace is the Devil’s prayer dressed as an angel. Chidlren are better off to pray the JP2 Army Prayer:

JP2 Army with me, JP2 Army before me, JP2 Army behind me,

JP2 Army in me, JP2 Army beneath me, JP2 Army above me,

JP2 Army on my right, JP2 Army on my left,

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MILWAUKEE (WI)
SNAP Wisconsin

Ten years after resigning in disgrace, Archdiocese still fighting to keep Weakland’s secrets

Thursday marks a decade since the former Archbishop’s half a million dollar hush money payout was revealed, catapulting the Milwaukee Archdiocese into a decade of crisis

Federal Judge Kelley now indicating she is ready to release to the public key portions of Weakland’s recent testimony

But new motion in federal bankruptcy court by church lawyers seeks again to keep testimony sealed

Testimony likely includes never before known details of Weakland’s 1998 meetings with Vatican officials and Cardinal Ratzinger, now Pope Benedict, about abusive priests, including serial predator of deaf children, Fr. Lawrence Murphy

Victims, in marking anniversary, will renew efforts to rename the Cathedral’s “Weakland Center” and remove the “Weakland Shrine” from the Cathedral altar

WHO
Victim/survivors of childhood sexual violence by clergy of the Milwaukee archdiocese, including leaders of SNAP, the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests (SNAPnetwork.org/SNAPwisconsin.com) will hold a sidewalk press conference in front of the “Archbishop Weakland Center” of the Cathedral of St. John the Evangelist marking the tenth anniversary of Weakland’s resignation and discuss:

–progress and setbacks made in resolving the sex abuse crisis for victims and the church over the past decade;

–recent developments in the archdiocesan bankruptcy, including new efforts by the current Milwaukee Archbishop, Jerome Listecki, to keep Weakland’s recent testimony from public release, including what are likely the first questions posed under oath of meetings between Weakland and high level Vatican officials, including Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, now Pope Benedict XVI about sex abuse cases in Milwaukee;

–this week’s landmark decision by an Appleton jury to rule a Wisconsin diocese committed fraud in concealing sex offender clerics and what that decision might mean for the 570 victim/survivors who have filed claims; and

–once again call on Archbishop Jerome Listecki to change the name of the Cathedral’s central complex which is designated in honor of Weakland, as well as remove a large bronze relief, commissioned by Weakland, which depicts him as shepherd and protector of children and serves as a pedestal for one of the altar’s inside the Cathedral church.

WHEN
Thursday, May 24, 1:30 p.m.

WHERE
831 N. Van Buren Street, in front of the sign for the “Archbishop Weakland Center” located on the East side of the St. John the Evangelist Cathedral Complex

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IRELAND
The Irish Times

ELAINE KEOGH

A FORMER priest has admitted indecently assaulting a number of boys at different locations in the diocese of Meath, including a parochial house.

At Trim Circuit Court yesterday, Raymond Brady (77), Baltrasna, Oldcastle, Co Meath, admitted offences related to 11 individuals.

When the case was called, State prosecutor Carl Hanahoe said guilty pleas were being entered in relation to 11 offences. He said these pleas were acceptable to the prosecution on the basis of full facts being heard at the sentencing hearing later this year.

The court was told the injured parties did not wish to be identified, and Judge Michael O’Shea imposed reporting restrictions.

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PHILADELPHIA (PA)
Philadelphia Inquirer

By John P. Martin and Joseph A. Slobodzian
INQUIRER STAFF WRITERS

Msgr. William J. Lynn took the witness stand at his landmark trial Wednesday, asserting he “did my best” to weed out sexually abusive priests and battling with a prosecutor who painted him as a liar more concerned with protecting the church than children.

During hours of tense testimony in a Common Pleas courtroom, Lynn tried to counter charges that he spent a dozen years burying sex-abuse claims and shuffling accused priests around the Archdiocese of Philadelphia.

He repeatedly told jurors that his bosses, notably Cardinal Anthony J. Bevilacqua, directed the church’s response to child-sex abuse allegations, and he denied knowingly putting children in harm’s way.

“I thought I was helping people,” Lynn said. “I thought I was helping priests, and in those circumstances, I thought I was helping victims, as much as I could.”

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PHILADELPHIA (PA)
CNN

By Sarah Hoye, CNN

updated 6:57 PM EDT, Wed May 23, 2012

Philadelphia (CNN) — The highest-ranking cleric to be charged with child endangerment testified Wednesday in the landmark child sexual abuse and conspiracy trial in which he and another Philadelphia priest are defendants.

Dressed in clerical garb, Monsignor William Lynn took the stand inside the packed Common Pleas courtroom under the watchful eye of Judge Teresa Sarmina. He was calm, confident and very matter-of-fact during direct examination by one of his defense attorneys, Thomas Bergstrom.

“I felt I was helping priests and helping victims as best I could,” Lynn told jurors, swiveling in the witness chair.

Lynn is accused of knowingly allowing dangerous priests to continue in the ministry in roles in which they had access to children. Also on trial is the Rev. James Brennan, who is accused of the attempted rape of a 14-year-old. Both Brennan and Lynn have pleaded not guilty.

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UNITED STATES
A Ram in the Thicket

By Ryan A. MacDonald

In October, 2000, Mr. Leo Demers – then a senior editor for a PBS-Boston television station that produced the news program, “Frontline,” approached the Diocese of Manchester after being contacted by “Frontline” producers with an interest in the case of longly imprisoned priest, Father Gordon MacRae. Mr. Demers first called Auxiliary Bishop Francis Christian who flatly refused to discuss any aspect of the MacRae case. Shortly after, Mr. Demers was then summoned to meet with Bishop John McCormack. According to a sworn affidavit of Mr. Demers, Bishop McCormack informed him in this meeting:

“What I am about to tell you must never leave this room. I believe Father MacRae is innocent and his accusers likely lied, but there is nothing I can do to change a jury verdict.”

Mr. Demers decided that he could not in conscience honor the secrecy demand of his bishop when two years later he learned that the bishop sent the case of Father MacRae to the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith in Rome seeking his canonical dismissal from the priesthood based upon no evidence other than the fact of his convictions.

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UNITED STATES
Holy Souls Hermitage

♬ “Kill the priest! ♬ Kill the priest!” ♬ … That’s the raucus, thunderous chant that an accused priest entering his prison cell-block for the first time might hear. That was the foot-stomping, cage-rattling greeting which Father Gordon MacRae heard. He said that it continued on into the night, that it was maddening (here and about). I bet it was maddening, and also character building. Our Lord said something about being slandered in the beatitudes, and there is, by the way, beatitude in the beatitudes (here: Yikes!). I am reminded of Saint Bernadette. She was also mocked, even while many in her family were dying in their poverty:

Excuse my French! I’ll rarely tolerate bad language. Sometimes it’s necessary to prove a point. For instance, the present Rector of the Sanctuaries of Our Lady of Lourdes over in France (where I was a chaplain for two years) gathered the hundreds of workers of the shrines to tell them about Saint Bernadette, emphasizing her name around town back in the day. He related — fully five times during his speech — that she was called, as only the French can manage, La Petite Merdeuse (“The Little Shit”). She and her family lived in an abandoned jail cell whose only window opened on to a mountain of manure, which was also enclosed. It was dark and dank and stank to high heaven. They were “the shit family” and the little saint was called “The Little Shit” by everyone in town. That’s what she suffered. I don’t mind saying it. Her being mocked, as well as Father MacRae being mocked, will come up at the last judgment.

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UNITED STATES
Holy Souls Hermitage

This post was put together by Father George David Byers (About) on Holy Souls Hermitage. Let me say from the start that I’m proud to stand by my fellow priest, Father Gordon MacRae (About) on These Stone Walls, truly a priest’s priest, who provided me with some of the material for this post. I include a photo of myself here as well. I’m not afraid that my picture will be associated with this story. Someone, somewhere has to stand up for the truth. Are there risks with that? Sure. But that’s THE FULL BEATITUDE of the beatitudes in the priesthood.

What is written here is in need of some Pulitzer type investigative journalism. And many journalists have written on the abuse crisis, winning Pulitzers for their efforts. Here’s another opportunity.

What is written here will make very many people livid with anger. Yet, many more will rejoice. This isn’t about sensationalism or disputable points among scholars. This is about the New Evangelization. Scarey for some. For others, that which puts one directly before our crucified and risen Lord Jesus. This is also a matter for civil and criminal courts and ecclesiastic tribunals involving, in the end, the intervention of the Holy Father, for many bishops will be implicated in what is put forth in this post, and rightly so. My incentive is justice and mercy. Period.

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CALIFORNIA
CBS Los Angeles

[with audio]

SANTA BARBARA (CBS) — Thousands of confidential religious files documenting sexual abuse among clergy members in the Roman Catholic church were made made public on Wednesday.

KNX 1070′s Margret Carrero reports the move marks the largest release of religious order documents in the history of the sexual abuse crisis.

The 8,500-page documents posted on BishopAccountability.org includes personnel files of nine Franciscan brothers and priests accused of abusing dozens of children over several decades at St. Anthony’s and the Old Mission in Santa Barbara.

An attorney for the Franciscans said the order was proactive in investigating abuse claims and that the files now made public were divulged to the plaintiffs much earlier.

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CALIFORNIA
Washington Post

Confidential files tell story of systemic abuse within Franciscan religious order

[Archive of Franciscan Sex Abuse in the Province of St. Barbara – BishopAccountability.org]

[with video]

By Associated Press,

LOS ANGELES — Robert Van Handel was a 15-year-old seminarian at St. Anthony’s, a prestigious Franciscan boarding school, when, he said, a priest slipped into the infirmary where he was recovering from a fever and began to molest him. The priest told him it would help draw the fever out.

More than a decade later, Van Handel himself was molesting children while working as a Franciscan priest at the same Santa Barbara boarding school. Van Handel formed a boys’ choir for local children and chose his victims from among its ranks for eight years.

Sexual abuse at a Santa Barbara, Calif. boarding school is detailed in more than 4,000 pages from the confidential files of nine Franciscan religious brothers who were accused of abuse.

The sexual abuse at St. Anthony’s, including Van Handel’s own account of his crimes, is included in more than 4,000 pages from the confidential files of nine Franciscan religious brothers who were accused of abuse. The internal files, coupled with an additional 4,000 pages of sworn testimony obtained by The Associated Press, are the largest release of a religious order’s files to date and paint one of the fullest pictures yet of a pervasive culture of abuse that affected generations of students at the seminary dedicated to training future Franciscans.

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CALIFORNIA
San Antonio Express-News

GILLIAN FLACCUS, Associated Press

Updated 02:50 p.m., Wednesday, May 23, 2012

LOS ANGELES (AP) — Robert Van Handel was a 15-year-old seminarian at St. Anthony’s, a prestigious Franciscan boarding school, when, he said, a priest slipped into the infirmary where he was recovering from a fever and began to molest him. The priest told him it would help draw the fever out.

More than a decade later, Van Handel himself was molesting children while working as a Franciscan priest at the same Santa Barbara boarding school. Van Handel formed a boys’ choir for local children and chose his victims from among its ranks for eight years.

The sexual abuse at St. Anthony’s, including Van Handel’s own account of his crimes, is included in more than 4,000 pages from the confidential files of nine Franciscan religious brothers who were accused of abuse. The internal files, coupled with an additional 4,000 pages of sworn testimony obtained by The Associated Press, are the largest release of a religious order’s files to date and paint one of the fullest pictures yet of a pervasive culture of abuse that affected generations of students at the seminary dedicated to training future Franciscans.

The religious order settled for $28 million in 2006 with plaintiffs who alleged abuse by the nine Franciscans, but Van Handel and other defendants fought the release of their private files for six years in a legal battle that reached the California Supreme Court.

The files were obtained by The Associated Press from a plaintiff’s attorney ahead of them being made public Wednesday.

The documents show how abuse in a religious order can be closely tied to the formation of children who grow up to become brothers and priests, said Terence McKiernan, founder and co-director of Bishop Accountability.org, which collects documents on clergy sex abuse and posted the Franciscan files online Wednesday.

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CLEVELAND (OH)
The Plain Dealer

By Michael O’Malley, The Plain Dealer

CLEVELAND, Ohio —

Cleveland Catholic Bishop Richard Lennon said Wednesday that he hopes to have all the closed churches that won their Vatican appeals reopened by the beginning of August.

He said he wants to begin opening some of them by mid -June. And “by the first of August,” Lennon said. “Done.”

The bishop said that one of the 12 churches – St. Mary’s in Lorain – had appealed only the changing of its name — now Mary Mother of God — after he merged it with another parish.

The bishop made his statements to the editorial board of The Plain Dealer. It was the first time he has publicly discussed a timetable for reopening the churches, which have been closed for two years or more.

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CALIFORNIA
Los Angeles Times

May 23, 2012

Thousands of pages of previously confidential records related to Franciscan clergymen accused of child sexual abuse have been posted online, three years after a Los Angeles judge ordered the documents released.

Posted by Boston-based BishopAccountability.org, the records were produced by the Franciscan Friars of California as part of a 2006 settlement of civil litigation brought by 25 Santa Barbara abuse victims. The Roman Catholic order also paid $28 million to the victims.

The records include personnel files of nine admitted or confirmed molesters, all Franciscan priests and brothers, as well as transcripts of depositions of supervisors, sex abuse survivors and others, the organization said in a news release.

Much of the abuse occurred at St. Anthony’s Seminary, which closed in 1987, and at Old Mission Santa Barbara. The abusers were accused in lawsuits of molesting children, mostly boys, from the 1950s until the early 1990s.

“This is a victory for all of the brave men and women — terribly abused as little boys and little girls — who have forced this historic disclosure,” Bob Eckert, one of the abuse victims and a party to the lawsuit that led to the records’ publication, said in the news release.

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UNITED STATES
Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests

Posted by David Clohessy on May 23, 2012

Yesterday, the Associated Press reported that a now-disgraced, high profile Michigan Catholic priest refused to honor restrictions on his ministry that his supervisor instituted after the priest admitted secretly fathering a child.

He’s Fr. Thomas D. Williams of the controversy-ridden Legion of Christ. He’s a high profile, media-savvy Michigan native who now lives in a Detroit suburb with family, since he stepped down several days ago, after news outlets disclosed his past.

Fr. Williams belongs to a controversial Connecticut-based religious order and spoke last month at a retreat for women in Rhode Island even though his supervisors knew that he had broken his vows of celibacy and secretly fathered a child years earlier.

Yesterday, the AP reported that in 2005, Fr. Williams’ boss, Fr. Alvaro Corcuera asked Williams “to start withdrawing from public ministry” and five years later “placed restrictions on his ministry.” Then, two months ago, Corcuera gave Fr. Williams “explicit indication to fully withdraw from all public ministry.”

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FLORIDA
Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests

Posted by David Clohessy on May 23, 2012

We applaud Florida law enforcement officials for arresting Pastor Angel Perez after the Kissimmee police department received a complaint that Perez had engaged in sexual acts with a 16 year old boy.

Children are better protected with officials act quickly and effectively to apprehend credibly accused child molesters.

We admire the courage it took for the 16 year old boy to come forward with his abuse, even after his mother asked him to lie so DCF would not be notified.

Perez was the pastor at Templo Pentecostal Puerto De Salvation and according to the police report engaged in sexual acts with the victim while he slept. Perez later apologized to the victim and claimed he was possessed by the devil.

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UNITED STATES
Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests

Posted by David Clohessy on May 23, 2012

Yesterday, the embattled head of the controversial Legion of Christ announced a “review” of all clergy sex abuse cases involving Legion clerics. We urge those who saw, suspected or suffered such crimes and cover ups to NOT cooperate with that effort.

Instead, we beg anyone with information or suspicions about child molesting Legion clerics – current or former – to seek out independent sources of support (therapists or self help groups) and report to independent sources of investigation (police or prosecutors).

As recently as this week, Fr. Alvaro Corcuera, the head of the Legion, acted deceitfully & recklessly in cases involving Legion priests and sex abuse. Corcuera was exposed yesterday as having known since 2005 (but kept silent about) the sexual impropriety of Fr. Thomas D. Williams – a charismatic Legion priest who admitted secretly fathering a child years ago. Yet in the seven years that he has had knowledge of sex crimes by priests, Corcuera did virtually nothing until a media exposé forced his hand.

During the time that he was aware of William’s impropriety, Corcuera:

–Let Fr. Williams to continue to act as an expert on teach morality to seminarians, and allowed him to preach ethics on television news programs and in his books

–Secretly put alleged “restrictions” on Fr. Williams but refused to enforce them

–Kept letting Fr. Williams do speaking engagements and act in a public relations capacity.

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ITALY
Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests

Posted by Barbara Dorris on May 23, 2012

Once again the Catholic church hierarchy has missed the boat. Italian bishops have published their first ever sex abuse norms. They stress that bishops “do not have the juridical obligation to report to state judicial authorities news they receive” regarding sex abuse.

These prelates had a chance to do more than the “bare minimum.” And set a good example for their colleagues around the world by putting the safety of children first and foremost, but they chose instead to put the reputation of the church first.

No organization can police itself especially one that is a rigid monarchy ruled almost entirely by elderly white men. Policies will not protect children, actions will. We doubt that anywhere in this document are there pledges to punish those who ignore or conceal horrific child sex crimes. Until that changes, children will continue to be placed at an unnecessary risk.

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IRELAND
Dail Mail (United Kingdom)

By Mark Dooley
PUBLISHED: 13:09 EST, 23 May 2012

The Government of Ireland is currently drafting legislation on the mandatory reporting of suspected child abuse. If passed, this will oblige Catholic priests to break the seal of Confession in order to report those abusers who seek absolution. Many have vowed, on pain of imprisonment, never to break the sacred seal.

In a country which has abandoned its sense of the sacred, it is difficult for many to understand why a Catholic priest would rather face jail than break the confessional seal. Why, people may ask, would a priest knowingly protect a paedophile when he could save a child from further abuse? How could he offer spiritual consolation to someone who violates his vows to prey on the innocent?

For those of us who regard clerical child abuse as a terrible evil, those are difficult questions to answer. For far too long, the confessional was used by abusers to salve their soul before succumbing to the next bout of wickedness. For far too long, they tarnished one of the great sacraments of the Church in order to avoid divine condemnation.

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AUSTRALIA
Maitland Herald

COURTNEY GARNHAM

24 May, 2012

A Hunter priest facing eight child sexual assault charges told a Sydney District Court jury there had been no sexual intent when he wrestled with young boys.

He responded with an adamant “no” when his barrister asked numerous times if he had acted inappropriately toward the four alleged victims.

The accused recalled extraordinary details of the past, using anecdotes of times when he had interacted with a number of boys while he was at university and training to become a priest.

He said wrestling with boys would take place after almost every football game they played and would start with three or four boys hanging off him.

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CALIFORNIA
Daily Bulletin

By Lori Fowler, Staff Writersbsun.com
Created: 05/23/2012

RANCHO CUCAMONGA – An Ontario priest has admitted to violating two terms of his probation, but will be released from jail later today.

The Rev. Alejandro Castillo admitted that he associated with boys under 18 years old as well as minors at a surprise party in his honor.

Castillo’s lawyer and probation officials agreed that his punishment would be the 15 days that he has already served in custody since being arrested for the probation violations.

“First of all, tomorrow report to probation. Second, do not wind up in a place where this sort of situation happens again,” Judge Stephan Saleson said to Castillo. “Were it to happen again, you are to leave.”

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CANADA
24 Hours

By Sonia Lavoie, QMI Agency

SAGUENAY, Que. — A retired priest, already accused of molesting three children, was hit with 63 additional sex charges on Wednesday.

Paul-Andre Harvey, 75, is charged with sexual assaults against 35 children between 1963 and 1995, nearly all of whom were girls between five and 12 years of age.

Police allege the assaults occurred while Harvey worked at various parishes in and around Saguenay, about 200 km north of Quebec City.

Harvey remains free on bail and was ordered not to contact the alleged victims.

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PITTSBURGH (PA)
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

Wednesday, May 23, 2012

By Torsten Ove, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

A Churchill priest pleaded guilty today in U.S. District Court to child pornography charges and faces a minimum of five years in prison.

The Rev. Bartley Sorensen of St. John Fisher Catholic Church was initially charged in state court with possession of thousands of images on his computer of young boys posing naked or engaging in sex acts.

Authorities pursued the case in federal court, where penalties are heavier than in the state system.

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PITTSBURGH (PA)
Tribune-Review

By Brian Bowling
Tribune-Review

Published: Wednesday, May 23, 2012

A Roman Catholic priest pleaded guilty today to federal charges of receiving and possessing child pornography.

The Rev. Bart Sorensen, 63, formerly of St. John Fisher Church in Churchill, admitted he possessed thousands of pornographic images of young boys. U.S. District Judge Alan Bloch scheduled his sentencing for Sept. 13 and revoked his bond because Sorensen is facing a minimum sentence of five years in prison.

Sorensen doesn’t have a plea bargain with the government. Assistant U.S. Attorney Craig Haller said his office never made a formal offer but discussed dropping the possession charge, which doesn’t carry a minimum sentence, in return for Sorensen pleading guilty to the receiving charge that carries the five-year minimum sentence.

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PITTSBURGH (PA)
Youngstown Vindicator

PITTSBURGH (AP) — A suspended Roman Catholic priest has pleaded guilty to possessing and receiving countless images of child pornography on his computer and now faces at least five years in federal prison.

Bartley Sorensen, 63, was a priest at a suburban Pittsburgh parish in December when a church employee saw him viewing a picture of a half-naked boy in his rectory office.

When she contacted a church abuse hotline, Allegheny County detectives and the FBI eventually investigated and found thousands of child pornograpny images on CDs, DVDs and in books in Sorensen’s church residence.

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PHILADELPHIA (PA)
KGAN

By MARYCLAIRE DALE Associated Press
PHILADELPHIA (AP) — A Roman Catholic church official taking the stand in his own defense says Philadelphia’s ex-archbishop ordered staff to keep alleged victims of priest sexual abuse in the dark about other accusers.

Monsignor William Lynn also says the late Cardinal Anthony Bevilacqua wouldn’t let parishes announce the real reason an accused priest was being removed.

There’s been testimony that parishioners were often told their priest had health problems when he left for sex-offender treatment. Lynn says that “mental health” can be a health condition.

That led Assistant District Attorney Patrick Blessington to ask if Lynn remembers the religious teaching on sins of omission.

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AUSTRALIA
Herald

LOUISE HALL

24 May, 2012

A RETIRED Catholic priest and a one-time close personal friend of the NSW Attorney-General, Greg Smith, has appeared in court over the alleged sexual abuse of four children in the 1970s and 1980s.

Father Finian Egan, 77, appeared in Ryde Local Court yesterday to face 16 charges of indecent assault and one charge of rape while he was a priest in Sydney and the central coast. He has not entered a plea.

He has been the subject of a police investigation that began in 2010. The charges related to the alleged assaults of an 11-year-old girl and a 16-year-old girl at Carlingford in 1979 and 1987 and a 17-year-old girl and a 14-year-old boy at The Entrance in 1971-72 and 1973.

The court continued his bail.

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AUSTRALIA
Newcastle Herald

JOANNE MCCARTHY

24 May, 2012

A CATHOLIC priest has denied being sexually aroused by wrestling bouts with young boys, telling a court any contact between his face and a boy’s testicles was unintended.

It was “simply part of the wrestling”, the priest said yesterday as his trial on eight sexual abuse charges involving four boys entered its third week.

The priest, who cannot be identified for legal reasons, has pleaded not guilty to the charges, including indecently assaulting the four boys and unlawfully detaining one of them at a Hunter location for a short period during an alleged indecent assault.

The priest denied wrestling the boys on concrete in a playing field, and in churches and rooms on Catholic properties.

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NEW YORK
The Jewish Week

Tuesday, May 22, 2012

Hella Winston
Special To The Jewish Week

Under fire for his handling of child sexual abuse cases in the ultra-Orthodox community, the Brooklyn district attorney will “possibly” involve some members of the advocacy community on his new task force to combat intimidation of witnesses in such cases, according to a spokesman.

The task force, announced last week after months of media scrutiny on the sex abuse issue, will be “intra-agency, consisting of the heads of our Sex Crimes and Rackets Division, our chief investigator and will be chaired by District Attorney Hynes,” according to the spokesman, Jerry Schmetterer. “The NYPD will also be invited to participate,” he added.

Schmetterer also noted that the substance of the meetings will be confidential.

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MILWAUKEE (WI)
Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

By Annysa Johnson of the Journal Sentinel

May 23, 2012

Two brothers who won a landmark case this week against the Catholic Diocese of Green Bay, for its role in their sexual abuse by a priest in the 1970s, withdrew their bid for punitive damages on Wednesday.

Todd and Troy Merryfield, who were awarded $700,000 by an Outagamie County jury on Monday, made the decision after Judge Nancy Krueger ruled they could call no witnesses or submit additional evidence showing what the archdiocese knew and when about their molester, the now-defrocked Father John Patrick Feeney.

The Merryfields are the first sex-abuse victims to successfully sue the Catholic Church in Wisconsin since 1995, when the state Supreme Court barred negligent supervision lawsuits against religious entities under the First Amendment. It ruled in 2007 that such cases could move forward if they allege fraud.

“It’s tough. Most folks would be excited to win something like this. But it’s a no-win,” said Todd Merryfield of Port Washington, his voice breaking, as he spoke by telephone Wednesday from Appleton.

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PITTSBURGH (PA)
WTAE

PITTSBURGH –
A Catholic priest accused of viewing child pornography at his office in Swissvale and possessing thousands of images of young boys pleaded guilty Wednesday in federal court.

The Rev. Bartley Sorensen, 63, will face at least five years in prison when Senior U.S. District Judge Alan Bloch sentences him for possessing and receiving child pornography.

Defense attorney Patrick Thomassey said Sorensen is upset and is receiving psychiatric care. He said he wants it to be clear that Sorensen never touched any children.

The case began in December, when a female office employee of St. John Fisher Church called the Catholic Child Abuse Hotline after seeing Sorensen allegedly looking at images of child pornography under the caption “Hottie Boys.”

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PHILADELPHIA (PA)
Democrat-Herald

Associated Press | Posted: Wednesday, May 23, 2012

A high-ranking church official accused of moving predator-priests to unwitting parishes took the stand in his own defense Wednesday, telling jurors in the groundbreaking clergy sex-abuse trial that he had no authority to make priest transfers.

Monsignor William Lynn said he also lacked authority to put a priest on leave or suspend him, and could only remove someone on one condition: “The only time I had that authority was if he admitted he had abused someone,” Lynn testified.

Asked who at the archdiocese could transfer or suspend a priest, Lynn replied, “Only the bishop, the cardinal.” …

Lynn’s decision to take the stand Wednesday is risky, giving prosecutors a chance to interrogate him on cross-examination about his handling of 20 accused priest files. The cross-examination was expected Wednesday afternoon.

The dour expression Lynn has shown during nine weeks on trial softened when he took the stand, and he smiled warmly a few times as he answered questions from defense lawyer Thomas Bergstrom. Friends and relatives, several of them priests, filled four rows of seats behind the defense table.

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PHILADELPHIA (PA)
Newsworks

May 23, 2012
By Elizabeth Fiedler

A high-ranking church official accused of transferring sexual-predator priests to unwitting parishes is testifying in his own defense in a groundbreaking Philadelphia clergy sex-abuse trial.

Monsignor William Lynn took the stand just after 11 a.m. Appearing calm and composed, Lynn said when he took the job for secretary for clergy, he expected he would take care of the priests and their needs, but he did not anticipate he would be so involved in investigating the allegations of sexual abuse by priests.

Lynn also said that he followed the reporting chain of command, and that it was the cardinal’s decision to decide if a priest should be transferred.

Lynn is the first Roman Catholic official in the U.S. charged for allegedly helping the church bury abuse complaints.

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CONNECTICUT
CT Post

Michael P. Mayko

Published 04:06 p.m., Wednesday, May 23, 2012

HARTFORD — A Miami psychotherapist who heads up a nonprofit organization to assist sex abuse victims will be meeting with 22 Haitian street boys who claim their were assaulted by Douglas Perlitz over a 10-year period.

Georges Bossous Jr., founder and head of Word and Action, Inc., intends to spend a week in Haiti in late June meeting individually with the victims and family members.

Bossous is expected to develop individual treatment plans for each of the victims.

His June visit was made possible by a $5,000 donation from a Massachusetts person.

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PHILADELPHIA (PA)
RI NPR

(2012-05-23)

(Reuters) –
By Dave Warner

PHILADELPHIA (Reuters) – Monsignor William Lynn testified on Wednesday at his criminal trial in a Philadelphia pedophilia case that he reassigned a predator priest to live in parish housing attached to an elementary school, where he ultimately abused another child.

Lynn, 61, the most senior U.S. clergyman to go on trial in the widespread U.S. Roman Catholic Church scandal, took the stand to defend himself against charges he covered up child sex abuse allegations against priests, many of whom were simply transferred to unsuspecting parishes.

He faces the possibility of 28 years in prison if convicted. The trial is in its ninth week in Common Pleas Court.

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CALIFORNIA
The Press-Enterprise

BY DAVID OLSON The Press Enterprise STAFF WRITER
dolson@pe.com
Published: 23 May 2012

An Ontario priest who served eight months for child molestation will not face additional jail time for violating his probation.

Rev. Alejandro “Alex” Jose Castillo will be released from jail Wednesday, May 23. He has spent two weeks in custody after his arrest May 9 for attending a party at which children were present. The party was given in his honor the day after he finished serving his sentence for child molestation.

In a Rancho Cucamonga courtroom Wednesday, Castillo admitted that he violated his probation. He could have faced up to eight years in prison if the offense had been deemed serious.

But Karen Schmauss, the San Bernardino County deputy district attorney who prosecuted Castillo, said evidence indicates that the party was a surprise and that Castillo didn’t know children would be there. The two weeks he served was sufficient, she said.

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ROM
Swissinfo

Die Italienische Bischofskonferenz hat zwischen 2000 und 2011 135 Fälle sexuellen Missbrauchs Minderjähriger durch Priester registriert.

Diese Zahl nannte ihr Generalsekretär, Bischof Mariano Crociata, am Dienstag in Rom bei der Vorstellung der bischöflichen Leitlinien für den Umgang mit sexuellem Missbrauch. Es war das erste Mal, dass die Italienische Bischofskonferenz genaue Zahlen für Missbrauchsfälle veröffentlichte.

In 77 Fällen kam es nach seinen Angaben zu einem Verfahren vor einem staatlichen Gericht. Dabei seien 22 Priester in erster und 17 weitere in zweiter Instanz verurteilt worden.

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COLORADO
CBS Denver

COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. (CBS4)- A Catholic priest in Colorado Springs will appear in court next week on charges of sexually assaulting a child.

Father Robert Charles Manning is on administrative leave from his post as pastor of St. Gabriel the Archangel Catholic Church.

He’s been arrested on charges of sexual assault on a minor by a person in a position of trust and contributing to the delinquency of a minor. Manning is free on bond. He will appear before a judge on May 30. …

“My heart goes out to that child,” said SNAP member John Murphy.

SNAP stands for the Survivor’s Network of those Abused by Priests.

Murphy said he was abused by a priest at the age of 10. He says if the allegations are true, he has little sympathy for Rev. Manning.

“I don’t have the words of the loathing I feel about anyone who would take the most precious thing that a child has, it is trust, and shatter it,” said Murphy.

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PHILADELPHIA (PA)
CBS Philly

By Tony Hanson

PHILADELPHIA (CBS) — There was high drama in a Philadelphia court room today, as one of the defendants in the Philadelphia priest sex abuse case took the stand in his own defense.

Monsignor William Lynn is charged with endangering minors by allowing priests accused of sexually abusing children to remain in ministry.

Today, Lynn took the witness stand and told the jury that he did not have the authority as the Archdiocese of Philadelphia’s “secretary for clergy” to remove priests from ministry unless they admitted to sexual abuse of minors.

According to Lynn’s testimony this morning, he also did not have the authority to transfer them or put them on administrative leave.

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UNITED STATES
City of Angels

Kay Ebeling

I’ve learned a bit about life in Catholic seminaries, which in the USA produced seven thousand pedophile priests in the last fifty years*, from the book “Unholy Communion: Lessons Learned from Life among Pedophiles, Predators, and Priests.” As an 18 year old seminarian, New Mexico writer Hank Estrada found himself naked in bed with an older priest. The series of molestations, related in the book, led to Estrada abandoning his lifelong ambition to become a priest. Unholy Communion** left this reader seeing seminaries as environments where covert sexual activity is almost inevitable.

“On one occasion, Father John rubbed himself up against me so much that he climaxed right in his walking shorts. I eventually came to realize that Father John believed that as long as he did not physically expose himself or masturbate, he wasn’t really engaging in a sexual act or breaking his celibacy vow.” (From page 26)

Soon after Estrada joined the Western Province of the Claretian Missionary Order in Los Angeles, Father John Raab spotted him as an easy target.

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HAWAII
The Worthy Adversary

Posted by Joelle Casteix on May 22, 2012

Things are looking uglier and uglier for the Irish Christian Brothers at Damien Memorial High School in Honolulu. To date, we have found five known perpetrators who worked at the school, had direct access to students, and abused. There are the three we discovered in January:

Fr. Gerald Funcheon, Br. Robert Brouillette, and Br. Thomas Ford,

And the two latest additions, just discovered in the past week:

Fr. Lawrence Spellen and Br. J.B. Lackie.

Call me crazy for saying it: but it’s looking like Damien was a den of child sex abuse.

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APPLETON (WI)
Post-Crescent

Written by
Jim Collar
Post-Crescent staff writer

APPLETON — Two brothers who were sexually assaulted at the hands of a priest in 1978 said their civil lawsuit against the Roman Catholic Diocese of Green Bay wasn’t about money, but rather to bring long-held secrets to light.

Todd and Troy Merryfield spoke to reporters today at the conclusion of their Outagamie County civil fraud lawsuit against the diocese. The jury reconvened to consider punitive damages. The Merryfields, however, decided to drop that claim.

Punitive damages are awards handed down in civil cases as punishment for wrongdoing.

The case was never about the money, the Merryfields said.

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PHILADELPHIA (PA)
Palm Beach Post

By MARYCLAIRE DALE
The Associated Press

Updated: 12:32 p.m. Wednesday, May 23, 2012

PHILADELPHIA — A high-ranking church official accused of moving predator-priests to unwitting parishes has testified that he had no authority to make priest transfers.

Monsignor William Lynn says he could only remove a priest who admitted abusing a minor. Lynn says he otherwise made recommendations for the cardinal.

And he says Cardinal Anthony Bevilacqua overturned his plan for the Rev. Edward Avery when the accused priest was returning to ministry after inpatient treatment. Avery is now in prison after pleading guilty to sexual assault.

Lynn is testifying in the ninth week of his child-endangerment and conspiracy trial.

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PENNSYLVANIA
Philadelphia Inquirer

May 22, 2012|Ronnie Polaneczky

I wanted to ask state Sen. Anthony Williams what he made of a West Chester high-school swim coach who has been accused of sexual misconduct with a student.

But so many local educators have been charged lately with letting their hands roam where they shouldn’t that I kept mixing up the names, dates and places.

In January, for instance, Delaware teacher Charles Coursey was charged with having sex with a 17-year-old student. The next month, another teacher from the First State, Matthew Pleasanton, was brought up on similar charges.

In March, it was church schoolteacher Nicole Jacques’ turn to be accused. Authorities in Hatfield Township, Montgomery County, say she bedded a 15-year-old who’d been her student.

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VATICAN CITY
Catholic News Service

By Cindy Wooden
Catholic News Service

VATICAN CITY (CNS) — The Italian bishops’ conference released its first ever set of guidelines for handling accusations of clerical sexual abuse, urging bishops to cooperate with civil authorities, but also making it clear that bishops in Italy have no legal obligation to report suspected cases to police.

Bishop Mariano Crociata, general secretary of the bishops’ conference, presented the guidelines to reporters May 22 and told them that 135 cases of clerical sexual abuse of minors had been reported between 2000 and 2012.

The bishop did not give further details about the cases or how they were handled, other than to say that none of the priests involved will be allowed to return to normal pastoral work where they would have contact with children.

The introduction to the Italian guidelines says that a bishop’s first concern must be “the protection of minors, care for the victims of abuse and the formation of future priests and religious.”

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ROME
International Business Times

By Michael Billera

May 23, 2012

Father Gabriele Amorth, who was appointed by Pope John Paul II as the chief exorcist of the Vatican, claims that the a teenage girl who went missing in the 80s, Emanuela Orlandi, was murdered as part of underground Vatican “sex parties” with ties to the organized crime and foreign embassies.

Amorth said that in the summer of 1983, 15-year-old Orlandi was snatched from the streets of Rome and mysteriously vanished without a trace. He said she was forced to perform in sex parties.

“This was a crime with a sexual motive,” said Amorth, reported the Telegraph. “Parties were organized, with a Vatican gendarme acting as the ‘recruiter’ of the girls. The network involved diplomatic personnel from a foreign embassy to the Holy See. I believe Emanuela ended up a victim of this circle.”

For three decades, the fate of Orlandi has consumed Italian police investigators. In an effort to solve the cold case, police acted on an anonymous tip to a popular television show in which a supposed informant claimed Orlandi could be buried in a murdered gangster’s tomb.

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FLORIDA
Christianity Today

Morgan Feddes

A Florida jury found the state chapter of the Southern Baptist Convention liable for the actions of a former pastor currently serving time for the sexual abuse of a 13-year-old boy.

The Lake County jury found that the convention failed to do an adequate background check on Douglas W. Myers, who was recruited to start two churches in the county. Myers pleaded guilty in 2007 to molesting the boy; he is currently in the midst of a seven-year prison sentence.

The victim and his mother sued the convention, alleging it hadn’t done enough to uncover allegations of inappropriate behavior with young boys at Myers’ previous churches in Alabama and Maryland, the Orlando Sentinel reported. Court testimony indicated no convention officials checked Myers’ references or called his previous churches, though a background search of his criminal, credit, and motor-vehicle records raised no suspicions.

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ROME
Sydney Morning Herald

Nick Squires, Rome
May 24, 2012

A TEENAGE girl whose disappearance in Rome has remained a mystery for 30 years was kidnapped for sex parties by a gang involving Vatican police and foreign diplomats, the Roman Catholic Church’s leading exorcist has claimed.

Father Gabriele Amorth, who was appointed by the late John Paul II as the Vatican’s chief exorcist, said Emanuela Orlandi was later murdered.

In the latest twist in one of the Holy See’s most enduring mysteries, he said the 15-year-old was snatched from the streets of central Rome in 1983 and forced to take part in sex parties.

”This was a crime with a sexual motive. Parties were organised, with a Vatican gendarme acting as the ‘recruiter’ of the girls,” Father Amorth, the honorary president of the International Association of Exorcists, told La Stampa newspaper.

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ROME
Christian Post

By Brittney R. Villalva , Christian Post Reporter

May 23, 2012

One of the Catholic Church’s leading exorcists has accused the Vatican of playing a role in the kidnapping of 15-year-old Emanuela Orlandi, who disappeared in 1983.

Father Gabriel Amorth, 85, has become a controversial figure within the Catholic Church for occasionally making charges that for some seem extreme. In 2011, Amorth suggested that yoga was satanic because it could lead to the practice of Hinduism; he has also related Harry Potter and Hitler to the devil.

Amorth’s most recent statement however, carries far more severity and charges that members of the Vatican kidnapped 15-year-old Emanuela and then used her for Vatican sex parties. Amorth originally made the statement to La Stampa, which was then translated by the Telegraph.

“This was a crime with a sexual motive. Parties were organised, with a Vatican gendarme acting as the ‘recruiter’ of the girls,” the Telegraph reported.

The Vatican had been charged in the past with not fully cooperating with the investigation of the missing girl. The Catholic Church however has insisted that it has done everything possible to cooperate. To further assist with the investigation, the Vatican agreed to allow investigators to exhume the body of Italian mobster Enrico De Pedis, who had been linked to the missing girl.

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PHILADELPHIA (PA)
Philadelphia Inqurer

By John P. Martin
INQUIRER STAFF WRITER

Msgr. William J. Lynn took the stand today to testify in his own defense at Philadelphia’s landmark clergy sex abuse trial.

Lynn began testifying shortly after 11 a.m.

His relatives and supporters filled four rows in the third floor courtroom at the Criminal Justice Center as he was sworn in as a witness in his own defense.

The potentially risky decision sets the stage for dramatic testimony from the lead defendant in the unprecedented case about how the Archdiocese of Philadelphia responded to clergy sex abuse claims.

For eight weeks, prosecutors called a parade of witnesses in an effort to portray Lynn as the church official most responsible for failing to remove priests from parishes despite credible evidence they had molested minors or might molest them. As Cardinal Anthony J. Bevilacqua’s secretary for clergy between 1992 and 2004, he is charged with endangerment for allegedly ignoring such signs about two priests who prosecutors say each later sexually assaulted a boy.

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IRELAND
Irish Central

By
HILDA HIGGINS,
IrishCentral Staff Writer

Published Wednesday, May 23, 2012

An archaic Irish law may allow priests to stay silent on allegations of sex abuse that are disclosed to them outside of confessions, it has emerged.

New legislation published in Ireland will make it a crime for clergymen to fail to report allegations of child abuse that are disclosed to them. The primary purpose of the ‘Withholding of Information on Offences against Children and Vulnerable Persons Bill’ is to close an existing loophole in the law, however, it does not remove an exemption given to priests during a court ruling in 1945.

During the High Court case of Cook v Carroll, it was ruled that priests enjoy “sacerdotal privilege”, which gives them the right to “refuse to divulge any confidential communication whatever made to him as a priest.” As a result, any disclosures made to a priest fall into this category.

Emily Logan, The Children’s Ombudsman, has recommended that the legislation be updated to include clauses which will remove sacerdotal privilege.

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COLORADO
Westword

By Michael Roberts
Wed., May 23 2012

The arrest affidavit pertaining to Father Charles Robert Manning, an ex-Catholic priest in Colorado Springs who’s been busted on suspicion of sexual assault on a child by a person in a position of trust, is currently sealed. But comments from a woman who says she reported Manning to authorities suggest that the 77 year old acted like a “jealous lover” in regard to the alleged object of his affection, age fifteen.

The information comes courtesy of the Colorado Springs Gazette, which has been following this story since January. That’s when the Reverend Rafael Torres-Rico told the congregation at St. Gabriel the Archangel Catholic Church that Manning had been asked to step down while he was being investigated for sexually abusing a minor.

Torres-Rico didn’t provide additional details about the accusations. Likewise, the Colorado Springs Police Department released a statement confirming the investigation and praising the church for its cooperation without offering any other information.

The Tuesday arrest of Manning, who came to the Springs from Missouri in 2007 and formally retired from the priesthood in February, wasn’t accompanied by a sudden gusher of factoids from the CSPD. But the Gazette spoke with a woman who became concerned about Manning’s relationship with a fifteen-year-old friend of the family.

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ITALY
AGI

(AGI) Genoa – The magistrate for preliminary investigations Roberta Bossi has rejected a request that Father Seppia be moved to therapy centre, and ruled that the former priest and parish priest of the Church of the Holy Spirit in Genoa must stay in prison in Sanremo. Seppia was recently sentenced by this same judge to nine years, six months and twenty day in detention for the sexual abuse of a minor, the attempted sale of drugs to a minor and attempted inducement to prostitution of a minor.

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CALIFORNIA
BishopAccountability.org

Priest Files, Deposition
Transcripts and Exhibits

This page provides the entire archive – over 8,500 pages of priest files and other documents – obtained by survivors of sexual abuse committed by Franciscan priests and brothers, as stipulated in nonmonetary provisions of a May 25, 2006 settlement. This is by far the largest release of religious order documents in the history of the sexual abuse crisis.

Objections by the accused friars to release of their personnel and confidential files were rejected in a June 18, 2007 opinion by Judge Peter D. Lichtman, and he ruled on specific objections from the accused perpetrators and Franciscan officials in his April 2, 2009 order with detailed exhibits on the objections of the Franciscans, alleged perpetrators, and “bystanders,” including Franciscan managers. His decisions were affirmed on September 10, 2010 by the California Court of Appeals, and on January 19, 2011, the California Supreme Court declined to review the appeals court decision, allowing the release of the documents to proceed.

Although the attempt to prevent the release of documents ultimately failed, the defendants did succeed in aggressively redacting the documents. The names of the provincial ministers and other managers on whose watch the abuse occurred have been redacted from the record. Moreover, redactions and claims of privilege have turned the priest files into a patchwork: complaints documented in the depositions of survivors are frequently not represented in the priest files as released. While names of managers have been redacted, their titles have not. We have compiled a staff list for the provincial office, schools, and houses that readers might find useful.

Despite these issues, the Franciscan Sex Abuse Archive is a major new source of information on the abuse of children by Franciscan priests and brothers, on the enabling of abuse by Franciscan provincial ministers and managers, and on the Franciscan culture within which the abuse of children has thrived for decades.

Below we provide: 1) the Archive of Franciscan Sex Abuse, with links to over 8,500 pages of priest files, depositions, and exhibits; and 2) Selected Documents.

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CALIFORNIA
Catholic Culture

In what the Associated Press describes as “the largest release of a religious order’s files to date,” over 8,000 pages of testimony and internal files have been made public related to abuse allegations against members of the Franciscan friars’ St. Barbara Province in California.

“One offender bringing kids in can set them up to be abused by another offender and those kids in turn grow up to become a member of the order and themselves begin abusing children,” said Terence McKiernan, of BishopAccountability.org.

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CALIFORNIA
The Orange County Register

By GREG HARDESTY / THE ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER

Thousands of pages of files on nine Roman Catholic priests who settled a high-profile clergy abuse lawsuits six years ago were made public Wednesday, providing a detailed look at accusations as well as instances when priests were allowed to interact with children despite their superiors knowing about the allegations.

Two of the former priests whose histories are detailed in the documents are Gus Krumm and Gary Pacheco, both defrocked Franciscan priests who served at Sts. Simon and Jude Catholic Church in Huntington Beach in separate assignments covering most years from the mid-1970s through the late 1990s.

Monsignor Michael Harris, former principal of both Mater Dei and Santa Margarita Catholic high schools, also turns up in the documents, in two previously sealed police reports.

Harris, the founding principal of Santa Margarita Catholic High School, was a defendant in a landmark lawsuit settled for $5.2 million in 2001 that marked the beginning of a national story involving the Roman Catholic Church and clergy sexual abuse.

A court ordered the release of the documents as part of a 2006 settlement between the Franciscan Friars of California and 25 clergy-abuse plaintiffs who sued Krumm, Pacheco and seven other friars.

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PHILADELPHIA (PA)
Chicago Tribune

May 22, 2012|Dave Warner | Reuters

PHILADELPHIA (Reuters) – A priest testified on Tuesday that the Catholic Church had followed the advice of legal counsel in keeping quiet about molestation charges as lawyers for Monsignor William Lynn opened their case in the trial over the Philadelphia child sex abuse scandal.

Lynn, 61, the most senior U.S. clergyman to go on trial in the Roman Catholic Church’s pedophilia scandal, is charged with child endangerment and conspiracy over accusations he covered up child sex abuse allegations against priests, many of whom were simply transferred to unsuspecting parishes.

He faces the possibility of 28 years in prison if convicted.

Monsignor Michael McCulken testified that the church declined to call law enforcement authorities when it learned of child sex abuse claims because “they were beyond the statute of limitations” at the time.

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PITTSBURGH (PA)
Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests

Posted by Judy Jones on May 22, 2012

We hope that Fr Bartley Sorensen will be kept away from children for a long time. And we hope that anyone who may have knowledge or who may have been harmed by Sorenson will have the courage to contact the police, not the church officials. The law enforcement are the proper officials to be investigating sex crimes against kids.

Also keep in mind your silence only hurts, and by speaking up there is a chance for healing, exposing the truth, and therefore protecting others.

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COLORADO
Patch

By Julie Brown Patton

A former priest of the St. Alban Roe Catholic Church in Wildwood was arrested Tuesday on suspicion of sexual assault of a 15-year-old Colorado Springs, CO, male, according to a Tuesday article published in the Colorado Springs Gazette. Father Charles “Robert” Manning served at St. Alban Roe from 1997 to 2001, prior to moving to Colorado Springs.

KSDK-TV St. Louis broadcasters reported on Tuesday’s 10 p.m. newscast that Manning turned himself in after an arrest warrant was issued. Authorities indicated the incident happened Oct. 17, 2011. On Jan. 4, 2012, St. Gabriel the Archangel Catholic Church in Colorado asked him to step down after they were notified of the investigation, according to KSDK reports.

Manning, 77 years old, was booked into the El Paso County jail; he posted a bond of $10,000 Tuesday night.

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COLORADO
Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests

Posted by Barbara Dorris on May 22, 2012

We are grateful to police in Colorado for making this arrest. Children are always safer when predators are behind bars, and today we can be thankful that Fr. Charles Manning will be kept away from kids at least for a while.

Since he was credibly accused in January at his parish in Colorado Springs, Manning has “retired” from the priesthood. We believe this is a weak way of allowing church officials to wash their hands of Manning in case they hear of any other reports of abuse, whether in Colorado or dating back to Manning’s days in Missouri. We want church officials at both the Diocese of Colorado Springs and the Archdiocese of Saint Louis to aggressively seek out other people who may have witnessed Manning’s crimes or been subject to his impropriety.

Manning has worked at schools in Glencoe (St. Alban Roe, 1997-2001), Bridgeton (St. Lawrence the Martyr, 2002-2004), and Imperial (St. John Lateran, 2004-2007), which are all within the Archdiocese of Saint Louis. Archbishop Robert Carlson should personally visit each of these schools and beg anyone who many have seen or suffered his crimes to come forward. He should also contact the parents of any child who was at the school during those years and make them aware that Manning was close to their children and urge them to find out if their child may have been victimized.

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COLORADO SPRINGS (CO)
KSDK

[with video]

Colorado Springs, CO (KSDK) – A former St. Louis priest has been arrested on suspicion of sexually assaulting a child.

Father Charles “Robert” Manning turned himself in Tuesday to Colorado Springs police after an arrest warrant was issued. He has been under investigation since January.

Authorities say the incident happened October 17, 2011.

On January 4, 2012 St. Gabriel the Archangel Catholic Church asked him to step down after they were notified of the investigation.

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UNITED KINGDOM
BBC News

A Church of England priest and an organist have appeared in court over the sexual abuse of two young boys in West Sussex in the late 1980s.

Father Wilkie Denford, 77, who is semi-retired and from Shoreham, and Michael Mytton, a 68-year-old organist from near Lewes, were arrested in November.

The pair are accused of abusing the boys between 1987 and 1990.

Both men were given bail at Mid Sussex Magistrates’ court and are due to appear again on 3 July.

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WISCONSIN
Injury Board Blog Network

by Mike Bryant
May 23, 2012

Jeff Anderson and Associates fought for a victory for justice yesterday in Wisconsin. As NBC26 reported:

A jury finds the Catholic Diocese of Green Bay liable in a civil trial accusing it of fraud.

Todd and Troy Merryfield filed the civil suit against the Diocese after evidence of other victims came out during John Patrick Feeney’s criminal trial. An Outagamie County Judge awarded Todd Merryfield $225,000 and Troy $475,000 in court on Monday.

The case was centered around former priest John Patric Feeney who was convicted in 2004 of sexually assaulting the brothers in the 1970s.

The fight in Wisconsin has been going on for a long time. This is a victory for all of those involved and also sends a message that the justice system works for survivors that have been silenced for far to long.

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KANSAS CITY (MO)
San Antonio Express-News

KANSAS CITY, Mo. (AP) — A Roman Catholic priest accused of abusing a girl in the 1960s has died, leaving only the Diocese of Kansas City-St. Joseph as defendants in a civil lawsuit.

Lawyers representing the alleged abuse victim filed paperwork Monday in Jackson County Circuit Court to formally remove the Rev. Francis McGlynn from the lawsuit. The 84-year-old McGlynn died earlier this month.

The Kansas City Star reports (http://bit.ly/Jx5RYK) the 2011 lawsuit was the fourth filed against McGlynn since 2003. The other three were settled.

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UNITED KINGDOM
Wirral Globe

A Wirral priest accused of sexual activity with an underage teenage boy appeared for the first time at Liverpool Crown Court today.

Father Peter Hooper, from St Luke’s in Bebington, faces ten charges involving sexual activity with the boy and inciting him to engage in such activity.

The offences are alleged to have take place at the St Luke the Physician diocese house in Church Road, Bebington, where regular masses are held in a small chapel.

The charges involving the boy when he was aged 14 and 15 and span a six-month period ending earlier this month.

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GREEN BAY (WI)
SNAP Wisconsin

TO: David L. Lasee, District Attorney, Brown County
FROM: Peter Isely, SNAP Midwest Director
Re: Jury verdict against the Green Bay diocese for fraud in child sex abuse

Mr. Lasee,

We are writing to you as victim/survivors of childhood rape, sexual assault and abuse by clergy in Wisconsin and members of SNAP, the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests. Founded in 1989, SNAP is the nation’s oldest and largest self-help organization for survivors of sexual violence by clergy and other religious figures, with over 10,000 members.

Yesterday, a jury in Outagamie County found that the diocese of Green Bay committed fraud by intentionally concealing and then placing in employment with children a known child sex predator, Fr. John Patrick Feeney. Feeney, who was prosecuted and imprisoned in 2004 is one of at least 50 clerics that Green Bay church officials have received credible and actionable reports of child sex abuse or misconduct on over the past decades. At least 16 of these offenders are members of the Norbertine religious order which is headquartered in the Green Bay diocese under the joint authority and supervision of the Green Bay bishop. This figure is derived from a national study conducted by the John Jay College of Criminal Justice in 2004 and is, unfortunately, the last and only known data available. The study, while commissioned by the US bishops, did not release any other information besides diocesan self-reported numbers of offenders. Since that time, it is likely that the number of offenders and offenses known to the diocese has increased.

Most of these offenders have never been reported to law enforcement. Although the diocese has repeatedly claimed that it has turned over a list of accused clerics to your office, your predecessor has indicated that this is not the case (see the attached 2008 email response to SNAP from former DA John Zakowski). A number is not much use to the public or to parents who are trying to protect themselves from those who have harmed children, especially individuals who have been placed in positions of occupational and professional trust.

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AUSTRALIA
Sydney Morning Herald

LOUISE HALL May 23, 2012

A retired Catholic priest and a one-time close personal friend of the Attorney-General, Greg Smith, has appeared in court over the alleged sexual abuse of four children in the 1970s and ’80s.

Father Finian Egan, 77, appeared in Ryde Local Court this morning to face 16 charges of indecent assault and one charge of rape while he was a priest in Sydney and the central coast.

He has not entered a plea.

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NEW YORK
Times of Israel

Michael J. Salamon

All over the Orthodox world the talk at the Sabbath table, at the synagogue, even outside while walking the dog is not so much about the Asifa at Citifield but how The New York Times took on both a powerful lobby and a powerful District Attorney. In a series of articles which ran just over a week ago reporters Ray Rivera and Sharon Otterman, described the loathsome approach of the Orthodox community of Brooklyn, New York whose members protect child abusers from the authorities and shun those who report them. The topic is not new having been reported by Hella Winston in the Jewish Week and covered by the Forward over the last several years. However, because these newspapers tend to be viewed by a limited readership in the Jewish world and completely ignored by the ultra-Orthodox community the reports were easily be overlooked, even disregarded.

Cloistered Jewish communities would like to believe that pedophilia does not exist in their world and if it does, it is extremely rare. We know that this is a fallacious position. Abuse exists in every community. We also know that not only do certain rabbis refuse to report abusers but the therapists and social agencies that they work with are instructed not to follow the law of mandated reporters and they usually comply.

The argument most often used for not reporting abusers is the religious law known as Mesirah – reporting a Jew to non-Jewish authorities. This argument has been shown by several religious Jewish courts to be invalid when there is a threat to another person’s well-being. There are other reasons given though for not reporting. They include lashon hora – spreading false rumors and the reliance on rabbinic direction known as Daat Torah. The lashon hora argument states that by reporting someone without clear and direct evidence you taint him or her even before knowing if they are guilty.

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UNITED STATES
Washington Post

By Marianne T. Duddy-Burke

I was a Girl Scout. My daughter is a Girl Scout. As Catholics, and we are stunned by the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops’ decision to investigate an organization that we both deeply love.

It is tempting to laugh off this news as further evidence of how profoundly out of touch many of our bishops are with the lives and concerns of the people who fill their pews. But the hierarchy’s attempt to exert pressure on an organization that has helped millions of girls grow into strong, self-reliant and public-spirited women is only the most recent episode in an increasingly troubling sequence of events.

In March of 2010, the U.S. bishops’ Committee on Doctrine authorized a statement critiquing “Quest for the Living God: Mapping Frontiers in the Theology of God,” by Sister Elizabeth Johnson, one of this country’s leading Catholic theologians. In compiling the report on a three-year-old book the bishops violated their own guidelines about communicating with a theologian whose work is under investigation, according to reports. Johnson said she was never invited to discuss the book with the bishops.

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COLORADO
CBS Denver

COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. (CBS4) – A Catholic priest in Colorado Springs is under arrest on charges of sexually assaulting a child.

Father Robert Charles Manning is now on administrative leave from his post as pastor of St. Gabriel the Archangel Catholic Church. He’s been arrested on charges of sexual assault on a minor by a person in a position of trust and contributing to the delinquency of a minor.

Manning was transferred in 2007 to Colorado from St. Louis. He’s served at St. Gabriel for nearly five years until news of the investigation led to a suspension in January.

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WISCONSIN
Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

By Annysa Johnson of the Journal Sentinel

May 22, 2012

The jury in a landmark sex abuse case against the Catholic Diocese of Green Bay is expected to take up the issue of punitive damages Wednesday.

An Outagamie County jury on Monday awarded $700,000 to brothers Todd and Troy Merryfield, who were molested as children by the now defrocked Father John Patrick Feeney in the 1970s. Jurors found that the diocese defrauded the Merryfields because it knew Feeney was a danger to children and assigned him to their parish without telling members of his history.

Feeney was convicted in 2004 of molesting the brothers. He was released from prison last year.

The lawsuit marks the first time a plaintiff has successfully sued the Catholic Church in Wisconsin over clergy sex abuse since the state Supreme Court barred such negligent supervision cases on First Amendment grounds in 1995. It reopened them in 2007, under the fraud statute.

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NEW YORK
Failed Messiah

D.A. refuses to meet with leading victims’ advocate

Shmarya Rosenberg • FailedMessiah.com

Since Brooklyn’s DA Charles Hynes agreed with former NYC Mayor Ed Koch’s suggestion to form a task force to deal with rampant haredi witness tampering and intimidation, rumors have swirled that Hynes had stacked the composition of the task force, filling it with employees loyal to him and blocking participation of outside experts and representative of the abuse victims themselves.

Dr. Asher Lipner, a psychologist and leading victims’ advocate, wrote Koch. According to a report by Hella Winston in The Jewish Week, Lipner told Koch that many victims’ advocates “find it troubling that the district attorney, who has never reached out to work with us, has not taken the opportunity [to do so] now that he is creating [this] task force.…[the] choices Mr. Hynes has made for his task force do not reflect a willingness to work with anybody that is truly independent of his office, and [who are] therefore are beyond the scope of community politics.”

Koch sent another email to Hynes, Winston reported, telling Hynes that he thought his “statement to the [New York] Times reporter and that of your press secretary [about the task force] were inadequate and far too limited in outlining the composition of the committee you plan to have address the problem.” Koch urged Hynes to “meet with Asher Lipner and to add to your committee law enforcement personnel who currently have worked with groups similar to the hasidic, such as the Amish.”

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UNITED STATES
Forward

By Paul Berger

Published May 23, 2012, issue of June 01, 2012.

An Orthodox parent whose child tells him he’s been sexually abused may not take that child’s claim to the police without first getting religious sanction from a specially trained rabbi, the head of America’s leading ultra-Orthodox umbrella group has told the Forward.

But one year after acknowledging that no such registry of trained rabbis exists, Rabbi David Zwiebel said that his group has now dropped the idea of developing one.

One of the main reasons, said Zwiebel, was a warning from Brooklyn District Attorney Charles Hynes — issued only a few days earlier — that rabbis who prevent families from going to police could be arrested.

“If they [rabbis] don’t give the right advice, they can be in trouble,” said Zwiebel. “Why would you want to create some sort of a list that would make them more vulnerable?”

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FLORIDA
Palm Beach Post

KISSIMMEE — A Kissimmee pastor was arrested on charges of unlawful sexual activity with a minor, police said on Tuesday.

The Kissimmee Police Department said it received a complaint that 45-year-old Angel Perez, a pastor at Templo Pentecostal Puerto De Salvation, had engaged in sexual acts with a 16-year-old boy from his church.

Detectives said they interviewed the victim, who stated that while he spent the night at the Perez’s home in September and October of 2011, the pastor touched him inappropriately while he slept.

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