ABUSE TRACKER

PHILADELPHIA (PA)
WSOC

By MARYCLAIRE DALE
The Associated Press

PHILADELPHIA —

A Philadelphia jury wants definitions for the terms “pedophile” and “ephebophile” as it deliberates in a major clergy-abuse case.

Jurors also want the definition of the word “agreement” under conspiracy law.

Dictionary definitions suggest pedophilia is a perverse sexual interest in children, while ephebophilia refers to an adult’s sexual interest in teens. But medical definitions can vary.

And it’s not clear the jury will get any definitions, because they aren’t part of the trial evidence.

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

NEW JERSEY
Voice from the Desert

June 6, 2012

Robert M. Hoatson, Ph.D.

One week ago, six courageous survivors of sexual abuse by Monsignor John J. Laferrera, disgraced pastor of St. Philomena’s Roman Catholic Church in Livingston, New Jersey, sat in a law firm’s conference room in Morristown to engage in mediation of their charges of hideous sexual abuse against them. Today, the Catholic Advocate, newspaper of the Newark Archdiocese, announced that Laferrera has been granted retirement by Archbishop John J. Myers. Myers brings new meaning to “you can’t make this stuff up.”

Myers’ actions continue a pattern of allowing pedophile priests to retire instead of recommending that they be defrocked by the Vatican. For example, Monsignor Peter Cheplic was credibly accused a few years ago of abusing several men, including Joe Capozzi, the author and producer of “For Pete’s Sake,” a riveting play about Cheplic’s abuse of Capozzi which began when Cheplic was a priest at St. Matthew’s Parish in Ridgefield. He was allowed to retire with full pension and benefits and no accountability.

At least twelve men have made it known that Laferrera sexually abused them at Immaculate Conception Parish in Newark, Laferrera’s first priestly assignment. In addition, a parishioner of St. Aloysius Parish in Caldwell has indicated that Laferrera, who was the pastor there, was seen as late as last year riding with young boys in a convertible car through the streets of Caldwell. Another St. Aloysius parishioner reported that as early as the 1990s, letters about Laferrera’s abuse of children were made known to authorities.

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

PHILADELPHIA (PA)
Daily Times

By Maryclaire Dale
Associated Press

PHILADELPHIA (AP) — Jurors are deliberating for a fourth day in the alleged conspiracy to cover-up child sex crimes at the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Philadelphia.

Monsignor William Lynn could spend 10 to 20 years in prison if convicted for what his lawyers call the sins of other men.

Lynn is the former secretary for clergy in Philadelphia. He’s charged with endangering two children by keeping their alleged molesters in ministry despite earlier complaints about the priests.

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

UNITED STATES
The Philly Post

Beth Capriotti

As if my faith hasn’t been tested enough lately, last week I awoke to the news shows discussing yet another scandal in the Catholic Church. The pedophilia scandal was successful in altering my perception of priests and the priesthood and the lack of divinity in both. Yes, I said divinity. I grew up as a practicing Roman Catholic. We were taught by the scary, mean old nuns that priests were somehow above human frailty, a higher calling gave them a status somewhere between us sinners and God. Yea, right, I know. Now I think they’re all just men. Some good ones and some bad ones, but just men in the end, either answering a calling or finding refuge in a system that not only allows them to indulge their own demons but protects them while they do it at the physical and emotional expense of children.

Even though it’s been years now and the continued exposure of pedophile priests and their protectors just doesn’t seem to end, I decided to try to understand that debacle and somehow separate it from my faith. Spirituality is important in this world, and Catholicism is the only club I belong to, so I soldiered on and hoped that the Church would clean house.

This latest scandal seems to indicate that the Pope’s house isn’t so clean either. There have been some shady shenanigans going on within the Vatican to further the wealth and power of the Holy See. Geez, and I thought they were there to protect the Holy Gospel and the Holy Church, not line the pockets of some very long red robes. Hmmm, more men behaving badly.

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

UNITED STATES
The Open Tabernacle: Here Comes Everybody

Posted on June 6, 2012 by Betty Clermont

Imagine the reaction of the thousands of men and women sexually abused by American nuns to the continuous media coverage lauding their tormenters and torturers as the ultimate practitioners of virtue. In response to the multitude of commentaries championing religious women against the Vatican, I agree with Kris Ward of the National Survivors Advocates Coalition (NSAC) who wrote:

[I]t is important and imperative that in this time and at this juncture we must say that while being bullied, being treated rudely, and being investigated is offensive and insulting, it is not on the same par as an innocent and vulnerable child’s body being raped, sodomized, forced into a crucifixion poses and made to mock the God that was systematically being taken from them in the vilest of ways.

For those survivors who have not succumbed to suicide – either quickly or slowly by alcohol, drugs and other self-destructive means – this must be an excruciating period in their lifelong battle to deal with the abuse inflicted on them by some of the “good sisters.”

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

DEUTSCHLAND
Rheinneckarblog

Mannheim, 17. Mai 2012. (red) Der Katholikentag in Mannheim bietet rund 1.200 Veranstaltungen an fünf Tagen. Zwei Veranstaltungen wurden “nach eigehender Prüfung” nicht ins Programm aufgenommen. Angeblich habe man “wohlwollend” versucht, “alle Vorschläge” zu berücksichtigen.

Uns liegt das entsprechende Schreiben der Absage vor, nach dem Vorschläge des Arbeitskreises des Alternativprogramms von den Organisatoren des Katholikentags abgelehnt worden sind. Nach unseren Informationen betrifft das vier Veranstaltungen, zwei werden im Schreiben explizit genannt.

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

OSTERREICH
Radio Vatikan

Ernsthaft prüfen wollen die österreichischen Bischöfe die Vorwürfe, die die„Plattform Betroffener kirchlicher Gewalt“ gegen sie erhoben haben. Das hat der Medienreferent der Bischofskonferenz, Paul Wuthe, am Montag erklärt. Die Plattform hatte laut eigenen Angaben den österreichischen Bischöfen Briefe mit Namen von Priestern und weiteren kirchlichen Mitarbeitern geschickt, die des Missbrauchs beschuldigt und überführt worden seien, die aber immer noch ihren Dienst ausübten. Über Details der Beschuldigungen beziehungsweise der Einzelfälle könne er derzeit nichts sagen, so Wuthe, die Briefe seien bei den Bischöfen noch nicht eingegangen. Sollte es sich aber tatsächlich um Täter handeln, sei der Umgang mit ihnen klar geregelt, so der Sprecher:

„Ich bin davon überzeugt, dass die Bischöfe die Vorwürfe sehr ernst nehmen werden. Und ich kann dazu auch sagen, dass die geltende Rahmenordnung der Bischöfe, die seit zwei Jahren gilt und die ja auch international viel Aufsehen erregt hat, dass die ganz konkrete Maßnahmen vorsieht, wenn es Beschuldigte bzw. Täter gibt. Echte Täter, die eine strafrechtliche Verurteilung haben – so sieht das die Rahmenordnung der Bischofskonferenz vor – dürfen nicht mehr in der Kinder- und Jugendpastoral eingesetzt werden.“

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

OSTERREICH
Salzburger Nachrichten

Sechs Priestern der Erzdiözese Salzburg wird Gewalt gegen Kinder und Jugendliche vorgeworfen. Die Namen der Priester übermittelte die Plattform “Betroffene kirchlicher Gewalt” an Erzbischof Kothgasser – dieser soll nun handeln.

Die Plattform “Betroffene kirchlicher Gewalt” hat dem Salzburger Erzbischof Alois Kothgasser in einer Aussendung sechs Namen von Priestern genannt, denen sexuelle Übergriffe vorgeworfen werden. Keiner der genannten Namen ist neu.

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

DEUTSCHLAND
MissBiT

Franziskanerbrüder vom Heiligen Kreuz feiern am 10.06.2012 ihr 150jähriges Jubiläum – mindestens 300 Opfer sexuellen Missbrauchs ordensgenossenschaftlicher Einrichtungen im Bistum Trier und ein Totschlag werden verschwiegen – ebenso mindestens 34 Täter aus den Reihen der Franziskanerbrüder.

06.06.2012 Bischof Ackermann scheint vergesslich. Man könnte es auch anders formulieren: Er hat Probleme mit der Wahrheit. Oder: Er verschweigt – weiterhin.

Wie sonst ist zu erklären, dass er in seinem Grusswort in der Jubiläumszeitschrift mit keiner Silbe die Opfer erwähnt, die in den Einrichtungen der “Franziskaner vom Heiligen Kreuz” missbraucht wurden? Hinzu kommt 1 Totschlag. Die Franziskanerbrüder vom Heiligen Kreuz feiern am Sonntag, dem 10.06.2012 ihr 150jähriges Bestehen. Mit dabei: Eure Exzellenz, Bischof Dr. Stephan Ackermann, Missbrauchsbeauftragter der Deutschen Bischofskonferenz. Prost, Herr Bischof!

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

DEUTSCHLAND
Bild

Mittwoch, 06. Juni 2012

Osnabrück (dpa/lni) – Als Reaktion auf die Skandale um sexuellen Missbrauch in der katholischen Kirche will das Bistum Osnabrück den Einfluss von Frauen und Ehrenamtlichen stärken. «Gerade in den schwierigen Fragen beim Missbrauch hat sich gezeigt, wie wichtig die Erfahrungen von Frauen sind», sagte der Bischof von Osnabrück Franz-Josef Bode am Mittwoch. Auch die Mitsprache von Ehrenamtlichen in den Ortspfarreien solle gestärkt werden. Bode erklärte, dass es nicht um eine Quotenregelung gehe, sondern um Selbstverpflichtung, auf die sich Bistumsleitung, Räte, Gremien und Berufsgruppen im Bistum verständigt hätten. 2015 soll Zwischenbilanz gezogen werden.

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

UNITED STATES
National Catholic Reporter

Jun. 06, 2012

By Fr. Charles E. Curran

COMMENTARY

The Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith’s condemnation of Mercy Sr. Margaret Farley’s award-winning book, Just Love: A Framework for Christian Sexual Ethics, is not a surprise. The congregation insists the book “cannot be used as a valid expression of Catholic teaching” because it disagrees with the hierarchical magisterium on masturbation, homosexual acts, homosexual unions, the indissolubility of marriage, and divorce and remarriage.

There is a long list of Catholic moral theologians whose works on sexual ethics in a similar vein have been condemned or censured by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith in the course of the last 40 years. Pope John Paul II wrote his 1993 encyclical, Vertiatis splendor, because of the discrepancy between the official teaching of the church on moral matters and the teaching of some moral theologians even in seminaries. According to the pope, the church is “facing what is certainly a genuine crisis, which is no longer a matter of limited and occasional dissent, but of an overall and systematic calling into question of traditional moral doctrine.”

All have to recognize there is such a real crisis in the church today. But the crisis is not just a crisis in moral theology; it involves a crisis in the church as a whole and in our very understanding of the Catholic church. According to the well-respected Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life, one in three people who were brought up as Roman Catholic in the United States are no longer Catholic. The second-largest “denomination” in the United States is former Catholics. One out of every 10 people in the United States is an ex-Catholic. We all have personal experience with those who have left the church because of the teaching on sexual issues. Related issues, including the role of women in the church, celibacy for the clergy, and the failure of church leadership to deal with the scandal of child abuse and its cover-up, have also been recognized as reasons why many people have left the Catholic church.

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

UNITED STATES
Bilgrimage

William D. Lindsey

In case you’ve missed these pieces, folks, I thought that this morning I’d point you to some statements about the Dolan affair that have come to my attention following my posting about that topic this past Monday:

1. The same day I posted, Mark Silk wrote a piece at his Spiritual Politics blog entitled “Dolan Doubles Down.” Mark notes, as my posting did, the attempt of some of the dotCommonweal crowd to defend His Eminence after Laurie Goodstein wrote her report about payoffs to pedophile priests in the Milwaukee archdiocese re: which Dolan clearly knew, though he has indicated the contrary.

2. Also on 4 June, Andrew Sullivan posted again about the Dolan affair with a statement entitled, “Dolan: Is He a Republican Pol or a Cardinal?” Sullivan’s conclusion:

You heard that right. A cardinal from a church revealed to have operated a global child rape cover-up for decades says the chief group for the victims “has no credibility whatsoever.” After this outburst, Dolan took a week off in Ireland.

3. At the SNAP website, David Clohessy has issued a “media events” statement noting that more evidence contradicts His Eminence’s claims re: payoffs to notorious Milwaukee pedophile priest Franklyn Becker. As David notes, new internal evidence from records of the archdiocese of Milwaukee have now surfaced and are available at the Bishop Accountability website showing that Becker was paid $10,000 in 2005, and that the payoff was not linked to “health insurance,” as His Eminence has claimed. The new finds also include a 27 May 2003 letter of Dolan as archbishop of Milwaukee to Cardinal Ratzinger, now Pope Benedict, promising Ratzinger that Dolan would set up a “special fund” to support Becker, who had admitted he had abused minors.

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

UNITED STATES
Boys Don’t Tell

The Catholics are in the news again about their handling of child sex abuse, via the actions of Archbishop Dolan. Evidently when he was Bishop of the Milwaukee Diocese, in 2003 he was a key player when a decision was made to pay sexually abusive priests $20,000 to leave the priesthood. Yet at the time when the Bishop was asked if they were paying priests off, he responded by saying that was “false, preposterous and unjust.”

Now that the minutes of that meeting have become public in the bankruptcy of the Milwaukee Diocese, we are being told that the church did this to “help these former priests transition to lay life without completely losing access to things like health care.” (Nobody seemed to care what all the victims had lost access to, like trust, faith, self-respect, and their soul among other things.) The church also admits the payments were intended to move “unassignable priests” out of the priesthood more quickly than going through due process. Some say this was a bonus to child molesters. I don’t see it that way. It was a payoff, and they obviously recognized there was a serious problem.

Here in Oregon, it came out a couple of years ago that the Portland Public Schools were doing the same thing with teachers that had complaints of sexual abuse against them. The district paid their insurance for a year and gave them letters of recommendation and in some cases monetary awards as long as they agreed to leave the area. I’m sure these administrators were saying the same thing the church was; leave my employ so that you are no longer a potential liability to me.

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

IRELAND
The Irish Times

PATSY McGARRY, Religious Affairs Correspondent

The Catholic Church’s National Board for Safeguarding Children (NBSC) was notified about 237 additional clerical child sex abuse cases up to April 1st this year.

These involved 196 priests or religious and originated predominantly from adults who complained of abuse which took place in their childhood.

Just six cases related to alleged abuse that occurred since the year 2000.

It represents a drop on the previous year when 272 new reports were made to the NBSC.

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

IRELAND
Irish Independent

By Sarah Stack

Tuesday June 05 2012

MORE than 230 allegations of clerical abuse have been made to the Catholic Church watchdog in the last year.

Figures showed 237 new abuse claims involving 196 priests and religious members were reported – the majority from adults who alleged they were childhood victims.

Six complaints relating to the year 2000 onwards were made to the National Board For Safeguarding Children in the Catholic Church (NBSCCC).

Ian Elliott, chief executive of the NBSCCC, warned the board needs more funding to cope with its workload.

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

IRELAND
The Irish Times

PATSY McGARRY, Religious Affairs Correspondent

THE CHIEF executive of the Catholic Church’s National Board for Safeguarding Children (NBSC) has warned that proposed legislation on mandatory reporting could weaken the church’s policy on child protection.

Ian Elliott has said the Government’s Criminal Justice (Withholding of Information on Offences against Children and Vulnerable Persons) Bill, 2012, “will not achieve what it intends unless it is amended”.

His concern centres on “the proposed and currently inadequately qualified defence of ‘reasonable excuse’ in failing to disclose information around defined offences against children” in the Bill.

He said the provision in the proposed legislation allows exceptions where mandatory reporting is concerned, and these are not contained in the church’s guidelines.

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

IRELAND
Irish Independent

Wednesday June 06 2012

THE Catholic Church’s child protection watchdog has expressed concern about the level of resources available to it as 237 new cases of abuse were reported in the last year.

Ian Elliott, the chief executive of the National Board for Safeguarding Children in the Catholic Church, said the body has struggled to keep abreast of all the work. He said 237 new abuse cases were reported in 2011 against 196 priests and religious. Six related to the period from 2000 onwards.

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

IRELAND
National Board for Safeguarding Children in the Catholic Church

Under the reporting procedures contained in ‘Safeguarding Children: Standards and Guidance’
each Church authority is expected to report any new safeguarding case that they become aware of to the relevant statutory child protection agencies, namely the Gardaí or the PSNI, the HSE or the HSC. We also ask that the National Office receive notification of the case and confirmation that it has been passed on in line with the Guidance. The expectation is that the reports will be made comprehensively and in a timely fashion. This aspect of the safeguarding practice of the Church authorities represents a key indicator within the Safeguarding Review process being progressed by the National Board.

Two hundred and thirty-seven notifications were received by the National Office over the course of
the last year. These involved 196 priests/religious and originate predominantly from adults who complained of abuse which occurred in their childhood. A number of notifications that had previously been reported to either of the statutory child protection agencies by the Church authority involved had not been communicated to the other in the belief that reports made to one agency would automatically be given to the other through the existence of a joint protocol between the statutory child protection agencies. However, through the review and audit processes within the Church, it became clear that this protocol had not always been operating, and as a result some reports were only known to one of the child protection agencies. The practice of the Church today is to report to both child protection agencies, both verbally and in writing, to ensure that all child safeguarding matters that come to our attention are shared with the appropriate statutory bodies. We can
confirm that each Church authority that notified us of a new case over the last year also reported that
they had communicated the details to the relevant statutory agencies.

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

IRELAND
National Board For Safeguarding Children in the Catholic Church

[the report]

(Tuesday June 5th)

The National Board For Safeguarding Children in the Catholic Church (NBSCCC) today launched its Annual Report for 2011. Covering the period from March 31st 2011 to April 1st 2012, the Report gives detail on the activities undertaken, the level of abuse reporting and of innovations deployed during that time. 237 new abuse allegations were reported to the NBSCCC involving 196 priests and religious and originate predominantly with adults complaining in relation to abuse that happened in childhood. Only 6 complaints related to the period from the year 2000 onwards. The equivalent period in 2010 into 2011 saw 272 new reports made.

“We noted in our last Annual Report that we had received a large number of requests for advice both from religious bodies and dioceses. Existing Advisory panels were also providing support but we took the view that an additional resource to support Ordinaries faced with challenging safeguarding concerns should be created. On a pilot basis, the National Case Management Reference Group (NCMRG), has been set up to address that need.” stated Ian Elliott, Chief Executive, NBSCCC. “Very quickly the NCMRG received even more requests for advice than was expected and, while we will fully evaluate the service after its first full year, but initial indications are that the advice is being well received.”

Demand for services from the NBSCCC continued to rise during the year. So, innovations designed to facilitate that workload, including the establishment of the NCMRG were prominent. The most significant on the training side was the creation of a standardised set of training materials and the recruitment of eight tutors, two in each metropolitan area to ensure its roll out.

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

IRELAND
IrishCentral

By
HILDA HIGGINS,
IrishCentral Staff Writer

Published Wednesday, June 6, 2012

Ireland’s National Board for Safeguarding Children in the Catholic Church (NBSCCC) has revealed that 237 new abuse claims involving 196 priests and members of religious orders have been made within the last 12 months.

Ian Elliott, chief executive of the group, says they need more funding to cope with the volume of complaints.

He told the Evening Herald, “We noted in our last annual report that we had received a large number of requests for advice both from religious bodies and dioceses.

“Existing advisory panels were also providing support, but we took the view that an additional resource to support ordinaries faced with challenging safeguarding concerns should be created.

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

NEW YORK
New York Daily News

By Arnold Kriss / NEW YORK DAILY NEWS

Wednesday, June 6, 2012
Brooklyn District Attorney Charles Hynes’ justification for not disclosing the names of sex abuse defendants in the Orthodox Jewish community as a way to protect victims and witnesses — a revelation of which much has been made lately in the press — is unpersuasive.

“I haven’t seen this kind of intimidation in organized crime cases or police corruption,” Hynes told the Daily News last week. “Nobody gives a damn about victims (in the Orthodox community). All they care about is protecting the abusers.”

Prosecuting sex abuse cases is always tough — and the closed-off world of Orthodox Judaism does pose its own challenges. But that is no excuse for the kind of lax (some might even say nonexistent) prosecution that Hynes oversaw for some two decades — at least until becoming more aggressive in recent years.

And then there is Hynes’ nondisclosure policy, which remains unchanged despite calls for openness. Hynes has been steadfast in his position that disclosing the names of arrested sexual predators from this insular community will discourage future victims from coming forward.

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

VIRGINIA
The Salem Times-Register

By Edwin McCoy

BOTETOURT COUNTY – A Botetourt County grand jury returned five indictments against Guy “Tex” Ritter of Salem Monday on child molestation charges that date to incidents in 1970 and 1971.

According to Botetourt Commonwealth’s Attorney Joel Branscom, the incidents allegedly occurred at a time when Ritter, now 92, was serving at least one Lutheran church in Botetourt County.

Two alleged victims, who Branscom was not ready to identify by gender, were 11 and 12 at the time.

Branscom said the victims came to his office with their story and he referred them to the Botetourt County Sheriff’s Department.

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

VIRGINIA
The Roanoke Times

By Duncan Adams
981-3324

Guy Adam Ritter Jr., 92, of Salem was indicted Monday by a Botetourt County grand jury on five counts of taking indecent liberties with a child for incidents that allegedly occurred during the 1970s.

Botetourt County Commonwealth’s Attorney Joel Branscom said Ritter was arrested Tuesday in Salem.

According to court records, the molestation charges against Ritter are related to offenses that allegedly occurred in 1970, 1972, 1974 and 1976. According to a Roanoke College biography of Ritter, he is a prominent alumnus of the college, a former professor there and an ordained Lutheran minister.

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

PHILADELPHIA (PA)
CBS Philly

By Mark Abrams

PHILADELPHIA (CBS) – Philadelphia’s archbishop acknowledges in a letter accompanying the publication of a sobering financial report on the Archdiocese of Philadelphia that the clergy abuse crisis has been costly.

Referring to that letter, Archbishop Charles Chaput acknowledged Tuesday during a media briefing on the planned visit of Pope Benedict to Philadelphia in 2015, that the archdiocese estimates it has spent roughly more than $11-million responding to the February 2011 grand jury probe of alleged clergy sex abuse, suspension of priests and subsequent investigations.

And, Chaput says, that doesn’t include all the expenses for the current trial of Monsignor William Lynn, and a priest co-defendant, on which the archbishop refused to comment.

The archbishop says nine separate civil suits filed against the archdiocese were placed on hold by the parties pending the outcome of the trial.

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

CANADA
CBC News

The Archdiocese of Moncton wants to offer financial compensation to victims of sexual abuse by the late priest Camille Léger but it may be forced to sell some of its its assets in order to raise the funds.

The diocese announced this week that it had retained Michel Bastarache, the former Supreme Court of Canada justice, to handle all the sexual abuse complaints against Léger, who was a priest in the small southeastern New Brunswick village of Cap-Pelé.

Donald Langis, the diocese spokesperson, said it is not yet known whether some of the 56 churches, rectories, parish centres or parcels of land will need to be sold to raise money to pay for the financial compensation.

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

UNITED STATES
CNN

Editor’s Note: Stephen Prothero, a Boston University religion scholar and author of “The American Bible: How Our Words Unite, Divide, and Define a Nation,” is a regular CNN Belief Blog contributor.

By Stephen Prothero, Special to CNN

A few years ago I sat on a book prize jury and weighed the merits of the book “Just Love: A Framework for Christian Sexual Ethics” by Margaret A. Farley, a nun in the Sisters of Mercy order. I thought it was well-researched and well-argued, and I was not surprised when it won the 2008 Grawemeyer Award in Religion (and with it a $200,000 prize).

On May 21, the Vatican’s Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith forwarded to Sister Patricia McDermott, president of Sisters of Mercy of the Americas, a Notification condemning Farley’s “Just Love.” On Monday, the Vatican published that Notification online.

Not surprisingly, the matter preoccupying the Vatican here is not poverty or hunger or oppression. It is sex.

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

NEW YORK
The Jewish Week

Joshua Hammerman
Special To The Jewish Week

There has been considerable consternation and media coverage of late about how child sex abuse cases are handled in the haredi, or ultra-Orthodox, community. The Brooklyn district attorney, no doubt feeling the pressure, is now pushing for legislation that would require rabbis to report such crimes to the authorities. This scandal has been discussed for years in The Jewish Week and other Jewish media, and recently in The New York Times, with reports of how informants are routinely shunned and victims banned from reporting abuse to the authorities. Anti-Semitic websites have had a field day, comparing this Jewish “code of silence” to the Mafia’s.

The coverage has pinpointed an obscure rabbinic prohibition as a major source of the problem: the ancient prohibition against mesirah, the handing over of a Jew to non-Jewish authorities. Ironically, the same Hebrew root forms the word “masoret,” or tradition, describing a priceless heritage handed over from one generation to another. But in this case, mesirah, the public disclosure of allegations against another Jew, is considered to be an act that desecrates God’s name.

It is important to emphasize that most rabbinic authorities concur that Judaism has no place for the protection of sexual predators. Even for those who might otherwise support mesirah, the prohibition does not apply when there is a perceived public menace. As Rabbi Moses Isserles states in his gloss to the Shulchan Aruch, “A person who attacks others should be punished. If the Jewish authorities do not have the power to punish him, he must be punished by the civil authorities.”

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

UNITED STATES
Lez Get Real

Posted by: Linda Carbonell on June 5, 2012.

There is a scene in The King and I where Anna mimics the way the Siamese people respond to the King, sing-songing “Yes, your Majesty. No, your Majesty. Tell us how low to go your Majesty. Give us a kick if you need, your Majesty. Give us a kick if you please, your Majesty. O-o-o-o-h, that’s good, your Majesty.” That’s pretty much how the Vatican expected the Leadership Conference of Women Religious to respond when the men in the skirts admonished the ladies that they were not being properly Catholic.

Pity the poor Vatican. They really do not understand Americans, and understand women even less.

The Vatican is upset with our American nuns for not beating the streets fighting abortion and same sex marriage, not being involved in the political battles of the right wing against the secular laws of our nation, and instead concentrating on such leftist issues and housing, education, abuse intervention, and a host of social injustices. Respectfully, but clearly, the Leadership told the Vatican that the indictment of their group is “unsubstantiated” and “flawed”

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

NEW JERSEY
News 12

[with video]

(06/05/12) MORRISTOWN – Additional claims of sex abuse and cover-up are being leveled at a prominent Catholic prep school in Morristown.

Two alleged victims have added their claims to a previous complaint by two other men filed against the Delbarton School and two of its priests in March.

One of the alleged victims, Steve Badt, came forward, saying he was abused during the seventh and eighth grade after class.

The attorney for Badt says that there are dozens of more victims who were abused at the school.

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

NEW JERSEY
Daily Record

Written by
Peggy Wright | @peggywrightdr

Two more men have stepped forward saying they were molested by monks at Delbarton School, joining a lawsuit that also accused two monks of sexually abusing two other students in the 1980s at the prestigious, Morris Township prep school.

“I hope my actions will bring justice, accountability … and so begin the healing,” former Parsippany resident and 1985 Delbarton graduate Steve Badt, said at a news conference called to announce the expanded lawsuit outside the Morris County Courthouse.

Surrounded by advocates for men abused by priests and three of four alleged victims, attorney Gregory G. Gianforcaro said a lawsuit he filed in March on behalf of two victims has been amended to include two more men and two additional monks of the Benedictine order.

The lawsuit generally accuses Delbarton, St. Mary’s Abbey, and the Order of St. Benedict as defendants who failed to protect the ex-students from exploitation and abuse, infliction of emotional distress and gross negligence, among other claims. Three victims are identified in the suit by their initials, and one man is referred to as John Doe, but the three men publicly named themselves and said they want the truth to be told.

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

UNITED STATES
The New York Times

By MAUREEN DOWD

WASHINGTON

It’s hard to say what is weirder:

A Sister of Mercy writing about the Kama Sutra, sexual desire and “our yearnings for pleasure.”

Or the Vatican getting so hot and bothered about the academic treatise on sexuality that the pope censures it, causing it to shoot from obscurity to the top tier of Amazon.com’s best-seller list six years after it was published.

Just the latest chapter in the Vatican’s thuggish crusade to push American nuns — and all Catholic women — back into moldy subservience.

Even for a church that moves glacially, this was classic. “Just Love: a Framework for Christian Sexual Ethics,” by Sister Margaret Farley — a 77-year-old professor emeritus at Yale’s Divinity School, a past president of the Catholic Theological Society of America and an award-winning scholar — came out in 2006.

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

PHILADELPHIA (PA)
Philadelphia Inquirer

June 05, 2012|By David O’Reilly and INQUIRER STAFF WRITER

With the current clergy sex abuse scandal likely to cost more than $11 million, and because years of deficit spending have depleted its financial reserves, Archbishop Charles J. Chaput said the Archdiocese of Philadelphia will seek donations to help pay for the World Day of Families event here in 2015.

Speaking at a Center City news conference a few blocks from where a jury is deliberating child endangerment charges against Monsignor William Lynn, Chaput said he did not know what the international, Vatican-sponsored event might cost, but that “God is giving us an opportunity to have some good news in a difficult time.”

He said he hoped the five-day gathering in Philadelphia, which Pope Benedict XVI announced Sunday, would attract between 60,000 and 80,000 families. That would be far smaller than the triennial World Day of Families that ended Sunday in Milan, which drew about 300,000 on each of its first four days. It ended with an estimated 850,000 people attending Sunday’s open-air Mass celebrated by the pope. .

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

NEW JERSEY
CBS New York

[with audio]

MORRISTOWN, N.J. (CBSNewYork/AP) – Two more former students at a prominent New Jersey Catholic school have come forward to claim that they were sexually abused by clerics in the 1970s and ’80s.

Washington, D.C. resident Steve Badt and an unidentified plaintiff have joined a lawsuit against the Delbarton School in Morristown and St. Mary’s Abbey filed in March by brothers Bill and Tom Crane.

The unidentified plaintiff said he was abused by Father Benedict Worry.

Now 44 years old, Badt said he was abused by his seventh grade English teacher, Father Timothy Brennan.

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

NEW JERSEY
New Jersey101.5

By: Stacy Proebstle

The two alleged victims, an unidentified man and 44 year-old Steve Badt, formerly of Parsippany say they were molested at the hands of two clerics for years.

“I was abused by a teacher I trusted…it started when I was around 12 years old and continued through high school” Badt said at a press conference on the steps of the Morris County Court House.

The two men joined a lawsuit filed in March by brothers Bill and Tom Crane, who also attended the press conference. “We’re not going away…however long this takes, years and years” said Tom Crane.

Badt identifies Father Timothy Brennan as his abuser. The unknown victim claims he was abused at the hands of another cleric, Father Benedict Worry.

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

NEW JERSEY
Washington Post

New abuse claims filed against NJ Catholic school; 2 men say clerics abused them in ‘70s, ‘80s

By Associated Press, Published: June 5

MORRISTOWN, N.J. — Two former students at a prominent New Jersey Catholic school added their names Tuesday to a lawsuit that claims they and two others suffered repeated sexual abuse at the hands of clerics in the 1970s and ‘80s.

Steve Badt, who runs a soup kitchen in Washington, D.C., said at a news conference that he carried memories of the abuse for decades but was spurred to action by news of a lawsuit brought by brothers Bill and Tom Crane in March. The lawsuit names Delbarton, a private college prep school for boys in grades seven through 12, and St. Mary’s Abbey, which runs the school.

Joining the Cranes and Badt in the amended complaint was an unidentified fourth plaintiff who said he suffered abuse at the school during the 1980s. The Associated Press normally doesn’t identify people who say they are sexual abuse victims, but Badt wanted his name public.

The 44-year-old Badt identified his abuser as the Rev. Timothy Brennan and said he clearly remembered four incidents in which Brennan molested him starting when he was in 7th grade.

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

NEW JERSEY
The Star-Ledger

By Kevin Manahan/The Star-Ledger

MORRISTOWN — The latest in a string of accusations of sexual abuse at the Delbarton School involve a monk, the Rev. Benedict Worry, who has been serving as the pastor of St. Elizabeth of Hungary in Linden and the chaplain for the Linden Police Department.

At a press conference on the Morris County courthouse lawn Tuesday, two miles from the private school, Delbarton alumnus Steve Badt and an unnamed former student joined two other alleged abuse victims in a civil lawsuit originally filed in March against the school and St. Mary’s Abbey, which runs the school.

The unnamed accuser, listed as “John Doe” on the amended Superior Court complaint, didn’t attend the press conference. His attorney Greg Gianforcaro read a one-page statement.

Gianforcaro said his client — in his 40’s and living out of state — was abused by Worry as a student in the mid-1980s, and he alleges high-ranking monks, including Abbot Giles Hayes, who presides over the school, knew about it.

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

RHODE ISLAND
Valley Breeze

Let’s see if I have this right. The Pope’s butler allegedly leaked documents which show systemic corruption in the Vatican. He is arrested. A study commission is appointed to root out other transgressors who leaked the information about the apparent illegalities so they, too, can be prosecuted. Nobody who actually perpetrated any offenses is fired, let alone charged with any offenses. Sounds just like secular governments, doesn’t it? Kill the messenger.

Of course, the Vatican response is more opprobrious given the sanctimoniousness of its pronouncements about “Vatileaks.” The Pope is quoted as condemning this “grave immoral act” since the people who wrote the memos thought that they were speaking freely in front of God. Would that this Pope got so lathered up both in his former position as chief investigator of the child sexual abuse claims and now as head of the church. Now, that scandal is what I call one of “grave immoral acts.”

What “crimes” did the butler commit? For the umpteenth time in church history, he revealed evidence of money laundering rules being violated. He exposed millions of dollars being blown on contracts, which many consider are kickbacks. The head of the Vatican Bank was another whistleblower who begged not to be transferred out of his position, but he was sent packing. It isn’t right to tell Granny in her pew about how her widow’s mite is spent. The sad irony is that this Vatican bank chief was trying to get the bank on the so-called “white list” of financially virtuous countries. The Vatican, a country unto itself, isn’t on the list because of its suspect practices. That’s quite an indictment for a religious institution.

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

HOLYOKE (MA)
WWLP

Anthony Fay

HOLYOKE, Mass. (WWLP) – A spokesperson for the Diocese of Springfield says that the Vatican has upheld a ruling that the Diocese was within its right to merge Holyoke’s Mater Dolorosa Parish . Further, the Vatican tribunal is telling those holding vigil inside the church that they must leave.

In a news release sent to 22News, diocesan spokesperson Mark Dupont said that the Superme Apostolic Signatura upheld the earlier ruling by the Vatican Congregation for the Clergy that the Diocese had the right to merge Mater Dolorosa. Citing concerns about debt and the structural integrity of the Maple Street church, the parish was merged in 2011 with Holy Cross Parish to form the new Our Lady of the Cross Parish. The Mater Dolorosa church building was closed, as Masses for that parish are held at the Holy Cross Church on Sycamore Street.

The merger angered some Mater Dolorosa parishioners, who appealed the decision to the Vatican, and have held protests at the church and outside diocesan headquarters in Springfield. Since the church closed, they have also been holding 24-hour vigil inside the building.

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

HOLYOKE (MA)
CBS 3

HOLYOKE, Mass. (AP) – Protesters who’ve occupied a closed Holyoke church for months are deciding whether to follow a Vatican order to abandon their vigil and leave the building.

The protesters at Mater Dolorosa consider the preliminary ruling by the Vatican’s high court a partial victory, because the court said it will also hear an appeal they hope will reopen the church as a worship site.

The Republican of Springfield reports (http://bit.ly/L8IxM9) the parishioners will meet Thursday to decide whether to end their vigil.

The vigil began last June, when parishioners refused to leave after the final Mass.

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

CANADA
Lethbridge Herald

Katie May
LETHBRIDGE HERALD
kmay@lethbridgeherald.com

A Calgary law firm accused of misconduct is now forbidden from representing any residential school survivors, according to a B.C. Supreme Court ruling handed down Tuesday.

Supreme Court Judge Brenda J. Brown issued her decision after a $3-million, court-ordered investigation began last fall into allegations the firm, Blott & Company, exploited more than 4,000 residential school survivor claimants, many of them from southern Alberta, who sought compensation under the Independent Assessment Process (IAP) for physical and sexual abuse endured at residential schools across Canada.

The investigation found the law firm had ties to money-lending companies and benefited financially by leading claimants to apply for high-interest loans, sometimes falsifying their signatures on the applications. The investigation also uncovered that Blott gave a form-filing company called Honour Walk full access to claimants’ confidential files and paid the company $200,000 a month – a total of $6 million – for working on the IAP cases even though Honour Walk is not a law firm and its employees are not trained in law.

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

VATICAN CITY
Zee News (India)

Vatican City: Vatican authorities have denied claims that Pope Benedict XVI’s butler, who is being interrogated on suspicion of stealing confidential documents, had been acting as a ‘double agent’ to help officials uncover others involved in the so called ‘Vatileaks’ scandal.

Paolo Gabriele was held in custody for two on suspicion of stealing and leaking papers, which lifted the lid on bitter feuds and power games at the highest levels of the Roman Catholic Church.

It was recently suggested by Corriere della Sera, one of Italy’s leading newspapers, that Vatican magistrates knew five months ago that he was behind the leaks, but came to a ‘secret pact’ under which he would lead them to other moles.

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

VATICAN CITY
Huffington Post

VATICAN CITY (RNS) Pope Benedict XVI’s former butler is facing up to eight years in jail for allegedly stealing confidential documents from the pope’s own desk. But according to a Vatican judge, Paolo Gabriele won’t be serving any time in the world’s smallest state.

Paolo Papanti Pelletier, a law professor at Rome’s Tor Vergata University who also serves as one of the Vatican court’s judges, told journalists on Tuesday (June 5) that people who are sentenced to a jail term in the Vatican City State are routinely sent to an Italian prison because the Vatican doesn’t have its own jail system.

Paolo Gabriele, who served as Benedict’s “assistente di camera” until his arrest two weeks ago, appeared on Tuesday for a hearing with the Vatican investigating judge, Piero Antonio Bonnet, in the presence of his two lawyers and Nicola Picardi, the Vatican prosecutor.

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

AUSTRALIA
The Age

Josh Gordon
June 6, 2012

A PARLIAMENTARY committee told to investigate allegations of sexual abuse by members of the clergy is still wrangling with the Baillieu government over funding almost two months after the inquiry was announced.

The government is insisting the committee, which now has just nine months remaining to undertake its task, will get the resources it needs.

State Parliament’s Family and Community Development Committee was asked in April to investigate ”the practices, policies and protocols” of religious and ”non-government organisations” when handling allegations of criminal abuse of children.

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

IRELAND
Maclean’s (Canada)

by Brian Bethune on Tuesday, June 5, 2012

An Irish deputy prime minister calling for the resignation of a Roman Catholic cardinal—the Primate of All Ireland, no less—would have been literally unthinkable not long ago. The Church was the Republic of Ireland, the most potent force in the nation, and the bulwark of Irish identity during centuries of British colonial control, just as the Catholic Church was the prime factor in the preservation of the French fact in Canada for 200 years following the Plains of Abraham. Yet the depth and endless resurgence of the scandals engulfing the national church—instance after instance of clerical sexual abuse of children and consistent cover-up by the highest ecclesiastical authorities—sparked Eamon Gilmore’s demand. The reason was that Cardinal Sean Brady knew, 37 years ago, of individual children at risk from serial predator Father Brendan Smyth, but passed their names on only to his bishop, not to police or parents.

The politician’s dramatic distancing from the hierarchy is not disinterested—the Irish state has its own share of responsibility for facilitating the Church’s cover-ups—but it is one sign of Irish Catholicism’s existential crisis. By past standards, mass attendance is falling off a cliff: a staggering 82 per cent of Irish Catholics attended mass weekly in 1981; by 2006 it was 46 per cent—still a number to dream about for, say, a French bishop. Now the nationwide figure hovers at 35 per cent, while it’s a miserable 14 per cent in Dublin. That’s a situation the city’s archbishop, Diarmuid Martin, calls the greatest issue his Church has faced since the struggle for Catholic emancipation in the early 19th century.

In a parallel development that will resonate far beyond Ireland, priestly vocations are also drying up. For the first time “in living memory,” according to Father Patrick Rushe, the national coordinator for vocations, 2009 saw more men training for the priesthood in England (150) than on the other side of the Irish Sea (99). In the ’80s, more than 150 new recruits would enter Irish seminaries annually, rather than the 16 who did so two years ago. Ireland was First World Catholicism’s renowned priest factory, producing desperately needed clergy for service around the world. Now that deaths in the Irish clergy far exceed replacement levels—160 priests died in 2008 while just nine were ordained—those few will be needed at home. (The numbers for nuns are even more stark: 228 died in 2009, while only two took final vows.)

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

UNITED STATES
Washington Post

By Susan Brooks Thistlethwaite

The Vatican has once again sharply criticized a nun, this time for writing on sexual ethics. The Vatican has accused Sister Margaret Farley, a member of the Sisters of Mercy religious order and professor emerita of Yale Divinity School, of publishing a book that posed “grave harm” to the faithful.

The book title? “Just Love: A Framework for Christian Sexual Ethics.”

“Just Love” is a work that sets out to find “ethical guidelines and moral wisdom for our sexual lives” taking on the task of discerning issues of “character and virtue” in relationship not just to behaviors but also to the “large questions” of what human embodiment and sexual desire mean in a moral sense. (p. 15) Our sexual relations, Margaret Farley ultimately concludes, after a cross-cultural and historical exploration, must be founded on both love and justice in an integral sense. “I propose, finally, a framework that is not justice and love, but justice in loving and in the actions that flow from that love.” She seeks to help us all define a sexual ethics that is not abstract, but “morally good and just” in reality, in actual relationships. (p. 207)

If ever there were a method of moral reasoning on sexual ethics that is desperately needed in the Catholic Church today, it is the one proposed by Margaret Farley.

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

ALABAMA
WAFF

By Stephen McLamb

MARSHALL COUNTY, AL (WAFF) –
A Marshall County pastor was arrested on child sex charges and is now terminated from his Albertville church.

Church leaders said very little except to that their now former pastor was there for less than two months and bad news followed him.

Mark Allen Green is now in the Ellis County Texas Jail.

Law enforcement officials there said he’s facing a sexual abuse of a child charge in Ellis County and an aggravated sexual abuse of a child charge in neighboring Navarro County, Texas after being jailed last week.

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

NEW YORK
NY1

[with video]

An advocacy group for survivors of sexual abuse by Catholic clergy once again called on Cardinal Timothy Dolan to explain reports that he authorized payments to priests accused of sexual abuse in exchange for them leaving the church.

Two members of the group Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests (SNAP) protested outside St. Patrick’s Cathedral on Tuesday. They say Dolan concealed the payments from the public while he was the Archbishop of Milwaukee.

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

NEW JERSEY
WHTC

By Barbara Goldberg

MORRISTOWN, New Jersey (Reuters) – Accusations of child sex abuse at New Jersey’s elite Delbarton School widened on Tuesday as two men joined a lawsuit claiming molestation by monks at the Roman Catholic boys academy in the late 1970s and early 1980s.

Just two days after New Jersey Governor Chris Christie spoke at his son’s graduation from Delbarton, Steve Badt, 44, and a second unidentified man joined the suit alleging sexual abuse by robe-clad monks at the picturesque Morristown school.

The lawsuit was first filed in March by Tom Crane and Bill Crane Jr., now in their 40s, the twin sons of a former teacher and administrator at Delbarton, run by the Roman Catholic Benedictine monks of St. Mary’s Abbey.

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

NEW JERSEY
NorthJersey.com

THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

MORRISTOWN — Two former students at a prominent New Jersey Catholic school added their names Tuesday to a lawsuit that claims they and two others suffered repeated sexual abuse at the hands of clerics in the 1970s and ’80s.

Steve Badt, who runs a soup kitchen in Washington, D.C., said at a news conference Tuesday that he carried memories of the abuse for decades but was spurred to action by news of a lawsuit brought by brothers Bill and Tom Crane in March. The lawsuit names Delbarton, a private college prep school for boys in grades seven through 12, and St. Mary’s Abbey, which runs the school.

Joining the Cranes and Badt in the amended complaint was an unidentified fourth plaintiff who said he suffered abuse at the school during the 1980s. The Associated Press normally doesn’t identify people who say they are sexual abuse victims, but Badt wanted his name public.

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

SAN DIEGO (CA)
NBC San Diego

By Diana Guevara and R. Stickney
Tuesday, Jun 5, 2012

A Catholic priest accused of sexually assaulting a woman earlier this year has been reinstated, at the same San Diego parish.

Father Jose Alexis Davila was quietly reinstated a few weeks ago after another priest left the parish.

Davila, 53, was arrested on suspicion of sexual assault six months ago. He had been preaching at St. Jude’s Church in Southcrest for just two months before his arrest.

He later pleaded guilty to misdemeanor battery for allegedly groping a woman at his home.

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

UNITED STATES
WWNO

By Edward Schumacher-Matos

A Web version of a recent report by Barbara Bradley Hagerty about the Philadelphia sex abuse trial of a Catholic monsignor and a priest prompted the Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights to accuse NPR of taking a “bigoted swipe” against priests.

The league took offense over a phrase in Hagerty’s online report—not included in her on-air version—in which she said of the priest, James Brennan, that he was “accused of trying to rape a minor, which is not that unusual.”

Hagerty contacted me even before the league’s statement and a number of other listener complaints came pouring in to me. She said that the offending phrase of “which is not that unusual” was “inartfully written” and wished she could take it back. It comes across as saying that attempted rape of minors by priests is not unusual, when what she meant was that it was the trials of priests for alleged sexual abuse that are not so unusual, she told me.

Hagerty said that she was trying to draw a distinction between the trial of the priest for attempted rape and the trial of the monsignor, William Lynn, for failing to protect children from predator priests while he was a senior official in the Philadelphia archdiocese. This is the first trial of a church official for re-assigning a priest to parish work even after the priest had been accused of child predations.

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

SAN DIEGO (CA)
10 News

SAN DIEGO — A national victims group wants a local Catholic priest removed from his parish.

Father Jose Alexis Davila has been a parish priest at St. Jude’s in Southcrest for two years. Earlier this year, a 19-year-old woman accused him of fondling her in his home across the street from the church.

“He has pleaded guilty to sexual assaulting a young woman,” said Joelle Casteix, a spokeswoman for group Survivors Network for those Abused by Priests, or SNAP. “I believe the charge was unlawfully touching her intimate parts.”

SNAP sent a letter to Diocese of San Diego Bishop Robert Brom after learning Davila is still saying masses at St. Jude’s.

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

PHILADELPHIA (PA)
Times Online

Associated Press

The Archdiocese of Philadelphia will likely launch a fundraising campaign to help pay for a major convocation of Roman Catholic families and possible papal visit.

Archbishop Charles Chaput (SHAP’-yoo) said Tuesday that tens of thousands of people are expected when the city hosts the World Meeting of Families in 2015. He didn’t estimate local costs.

His remarks came the same day the archdiocese reported spending more than $11 million on legal fees in the past two years, mostly on priest sexual-abuse cases.

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

AUSTRALIA
CathNews

The Catholic Archdiocese of Melbourne allowed a priest charged with child sex offences to be the ”spiritual director” to another priest accused of child molestation, reports The Age.

The revelation is contained in confidential Catholic Church documents obtained by the paper.

The documents show how senior church leaders continued to shield Father Victor Rubeo from scrutiny after child sex abuse allegations about him were first reported to the archdiocese in 1994.

Rubeo, who did not deny the allegations when questioned by a senior church official, was allowed to continue preaching in Melbourne’s Boronia parish without his parishioners or police being told of his child abuse.

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

PHILADELPHIA (PA)
Philadelphia Inquirer

By David O’Reilly
INQUIRER STAFF WRITER

With the current clergy sex abuse scandal likely to cost more than $11 million, and because years of deficit spending have depleted its financial reserves, Archbishop Charles J. Chaput said the Archdiocese of Philadelphia will seek donations to help pay for the World Day of Families event here in 2015.

Speaking at a Center City news conference a few blocks from where a jury is deliberating child endangerment charges against Monsignor William Lynn, Chaput said he did not know what the international, Vatican-sponsored event might cost, but that “God is giving us an opportunity to have some good news in a difficult time.”

He said he hoped the five-day gathering in Philadelphia, which Pope Benedict XVI announced Sunday, would attract between 60,000 and 80,000 families. That would be far smaller than the triennial World Day of Families that ended Sunday in Milan, which drew about 300,000 on each of its first four days. It ended with an estimated 850,000 people attending Sunday’s open-air Mass celebrated by the pope. .

On Sunday — the same day Benedict announced Philadelphia would be the 2015 host city — parishes across the archdiocese received copies of the archdiocese’s fiscal report. In an accompanying letter, Chaput noted the “extraordinary events of the past 15 months,” and paid particular attention to the devastating Philadelphia grand jury report of February, 2011, that asserted the archdiocese had three dozen priests in active minisitry who had been accused of inappropriate behavior with children.

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

UNITED STATES
pippinghold

By Matt Stoller, a fellow at the Roosevelt Institute.

Here’s CBS New York, back in February.

The Catholic Church is closely watching the attention Archbishop Timothy Dolan is receiving this week in Rome, praise and adulation one expert says is exactly what it needs right now….

“Dolan from a media and pop culture point of view is a rock star. He just exudes charisma, sort of charisma on steroids,” National Catholic Reporter’ John Allen said.

Allen calls Dolan the star of the consistory, and Pope Benedict XVI could use some star power on his team.

Here’s what came out today.

Timothy Cardinal Dolan yesterday blasted a report that he authorized payments to pedophile priests — and said no such payments are being made to New York clerics.

Dolan, while serving as Milwaukee archbishop in 2003, agreed to pay multiple accused pedophile priests $20,000 in exchange for their agreeing to leave the priesthood, according to documents cited by The New York Times.

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

UNITED STATES
NewsHounds

The folks at the right wing Media Research Center have their clean white (and very chaste, Christian, and heterosexual) panties in a bunch because the godless librul media had a “blackout” of news about supposedly rampant sex selection abortion and the “unprecedented” and totally awesome lawsuits filed by the Catholic Church against the Obama administration. But in keeping with promoting all the right wing news that’s fit to propagandize and making the MRC happy, Fox News has been obsessing about HHS mandate, the lawsuits, and “genderside.” Despite the claim of the network to be “fair & balanced,” the coverage is squarely on the side of the Catholic bishops whose anger towards Obama rivals the most rabid in the GOP. In the coverage, Cardinal Dolan has received pride of place. But interestingly, there’ve been some other news stories, related to the Catholic Church on which the voices, in the Catholic amen corner of Fox, are silent. Put it this way, if both issues concerned – say – teacher’s unions, the howls would be deafening. Curious, read on. …

In response to the release of source documents by “The Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests” (SNAP), who accessed the material, Cardinal Dolan, who is leading the fight against employer paid birth control, reacted in truly Christ like fashion: SNAP has no credibility whatsoever. To respond to charges like that that are groundless and scurrilous in my book is useless and counterproductive.” One assumes that Megyn Kelly pal, Catholic League head Bill Donohue will continue to defend Dolan against those nasty boys in SNAP whom he has described as a “phony victims group” and a “pitiful bunch of malcontents.” Dolan has made his appreciation, for Dolan’s support against SNAP, known in a letter of thanksgiving. Meanwhile Fox is focused on those awesome lawsuits, filed by the bishops, against the Obama administration. Go figure.

Guess not all Catholic News is created equal.

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

PHILADELPHIA (PA)
National Catholic Reporter

Jun. 05, 2012
By Brian Roewe

ANALYSIS

With the case now in its hands, the jury continues to deliberate the existence of a conspiracy to cover up priest sex abuse in the Philadelphia archdiocese.

On Tuesday, the seven women and five men of the jury began their third day (and second full day) of sifting through evidence and weighing the testimony they heard over the course of 11 weeks inside a Philadelphia Common Pleas courtroom.

Their task? To determine whether Msgr. William J. Lynn, secretary of clergy for the archdiocese from 1992 to 2004, participated in a conspiracy of covering up abuse and endangered the welfare of children by recommending priests with known histories of sexual abuse to assignments that would further place them in contact with children.

Fr. James J. Brennan, 48, is also accused of child endangerment and sexually assaulting a 14-year-old boy at his apartment in 1996. Brennan originally faced a conspiracy charge at the trial’s beginning, but Common Pleas Court Judge M. Teresa Sarmina dismissed the charge after ruling the prosecution failed to prove a conspiracy between him and Lynn.

A decision from the jury on both defendants could come as early as this week

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

NEW JERSEY
Under the Green Wave

Steve Badt said he recently had a conversation with his 8-year-old son about what had happened to him as a teenager.

On Tuesday, standing on the grounds of the Morris County Courthouse, Badt, 44, a former Parsippany resident and Delbarton School graduate, spoke of the sexual abuse that took place at the hands of a monk at the Morris Township Catholic school between 1979 when he was in the seventh grade, and 1985, when he was in the 12th grade.

Badt, and another former Delbarton student who remained unnamed, joined an existing lawsuit against St. Mary’s Abbey, which operates Delbarton. The original suit was filed in March by Phillipsburg attorney Gregory G. Gianforcaro on behalf of twin brothers William Crane Jr., and Thomas Crane, formerly of Randolph.

The lawsuit was amended to include the new allegations and includes complaints from six former Delbarton students, Gianforcaro said.

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

UNITED STATES
Voice from the Desert

Bob Hoatson

If Catholics wish to live by the axiom, “once a priest, always a priest,” than I guess I am still a priest despite the fact that I was voluntarily laicized in December, 2011. So, I write as a priest, ex-priest, inactive priest, renegade priest, or gadfly priest. I have been called all of these and more. The verbiage is irrelevant. What is relevant is that pedophile priests are not laicized as quickly as I was and most of them will always be priests despite their dastardly deeds which would have gotten them kicked out of most organizations by now.

The archbishop of my diocese wrote to me when I first requested laicization and told me he would highly recommend that my petition to the Vatican be approved. It was – in record time. His “glee” at my request was centered on the fact that I had been working with victims since 1981 when I reported sexual abuse of students by a priest at a large Catholic high school in Boston. I also have uncovered numerous cases of pedophilia in my home archdiocese and beyond. I asked to be freed to do this work full-time. The archbishop refused.

I told him I had to respond to the Holy Spirit and the law of the Church, which allows and encourages the faithful to establish charitable works and organizations. Canon law was written to protect bishops and whatever they determine to be the “law” for the rest of the faithful. Currently, God’s law is subservient to whatever law the bishops wish to utilize.

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

IRELAND
TheMediaReport

Dave Pierre

If one were to believe the mainstream media, the Catholic Church in Ireland is reeling from a burgeoning and active network of pedophile priests relentlessly preying on innocent children.

However, the recent release of the annual report from the Catholic Church’s National Board for Safeguarding Children (NBSC, Ireland) tells a radically different story.

While even a single abuse allegation is upsetting, from April 1, 2011, to March 31, 2012, there were only six accusations alleging abuse by Catholic priests within the past dozen years, since 2000. This represents one allegation every other year in all of Ireland.

In other words, as in the United States, the abuse of children by Catholic priests in Ireland is a tragic era from years past.

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

PHILADELPHIA (PA)
NBC 10

By Maryclaire Dale

Tuesday, Jun 5, 2012

Jurors have finished a third day of deliberations without reaching a verdict in a groundbreaking priest-abuse trial in Philadelphia.

Msgr. William Lynn is the first U.S. church official charged with child endangerment and conspiracy for allegedly keeping predator-priests in ministry.

Lynn is the former secretary for clergy at the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Philadelphia.

The Rev. James Brennan, a co-defendant, is charged with molesting a 14-year-old boy in 1996.

Meanwhile, the archdiocese says it has spent $11.6 million on legal fees stemming from priest-abuse cases since 2011.

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

PHILADELPHIA (PA)
Philadelphia Inquirer

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

Jurors in the landmark clergy sex abuse trial broke for the day Tuesday after asking more evidence and legal guidance Tuesday as they deliberated charges against two Archdiocese of Philadelphia priests.

Midway through their second full day of deliberations, the panel of seven men and five women sent questions on the scope of child endangerment charges against Msgr. William J. Lynn and Rev. James J. Brennan.

They also requested the evidence file on Brennan, who is accused of trying to rape a 14-year-old boy in 1996.

Specifically, the jurors asked Common Pleas Court Judge M. Teresa Sarmina if they needed to conclude that Brennan put other minors at risk besides his alleged victim to convict him of child endangerment. They did, the judge told them after consulting with the lawyers.

The question pointed to what has long been a contentious and tangled issue in cases involving crimes against children: the statute of limitations.

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

PARAGUAY
Daily Reporter

PEDRO SERVIN Associated Press
First Posted: June 05, 2012

ASUNCION, Paraguay — The president of Paraguay has recognized a second love-child. This time it’s a 10-year-old boy, born to a nurse in the northern state where Fernando Lugo served as a Catholic bishop before renouncing the priesthood and turning to politics.

Lugo’s lawyer, Marcos Farina, says the president has told him to file the paperwork needed to change the boy’s last name to Lugo. His mother is Narcisa de la Cruz de Zarate, the fourth woman to have filed a paternity suit against the 61-year-old former cleric.

For those keeping score, Lugo has now acknowledged fathering two of the four children named in paternity suits against him.

He also accepted Guillermo Armindo, the child of Viviana Carrillo, after the woman accused him in 2009 of “irresponsible paternity.”

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

STATEN ISLAND (NY)
Staten Island Advance

By Maura Grunlund

STATEN ISLAND, N.Y. — A taboo topic which is very much in the news these days will be the focus of a free child abuse prevention program on June 28 at Temple Emanu-El in Port Richmond.

While the event is open to all, the flier specifically invites clergy, community leaders, teachers, parents and concerned adults.

Rabbi Gerald Sussman said he is hosting the event because he sees it as an opportunity to provide an important service to the entire community of Staten Island. He noted that “no one is immune” from the such incidents which occur in every religious, ethnic and economic group.

“I think it’s important to have some training because it is something which is sadly a lot more prevalent than people would like to think,” Rabbi Sussman said.

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

PHILADELPHIA (PA)
San Antonio Express-News

MARYCLAIRE DALE, Associated Press

Updated 12:51 p.m., Tuesday, June 5, 2012

PHILADELPHIA (AP) — The Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Philadelphia reports that it spent $11.6 million on legal fees in the past two years, most of it on priest sexual-abuse cases.

The figure, released Tuesday, includes $10 million in the first nine months of the current fiscal year which ends June 30, but not most of the 11-week criminal trial for Monsignor William Lynn.

Lynn has four lawyers defending him on charges he helped cover up child sexual assaults as secretary for clergy from 1992 to 2004. The archdiocese is paying his legal fees.

The archdiocese says it spent another $1.6 million on legal fees in the prior fiscal year.

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

MILWAUKEE (WI)
BishopAccountability.org

Includes detailed assignment record, sources, summary of assignments, documents, and notes. …

Documents

The following links offer various ways to view the documents relating to Becker’s career and the allegations against him. Some of these documents have been published by the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel and posted by attorney Jeff Anderson on his website. BishopAccountability.org has obtained from Anderson the full Becker file as obtained in discovery.

Documents Relating to Becker’s Laicization and Archdiocesan Financial Assistance:

– Letter from Archbishop Dolan to Cardinal Ratzinger, promising assistance to Becker from a “special fund” (5/27/03)

– See also a group of letters between Dolan and the Vatican regarding Becker’s laicization.

– Status Report by Deacon Zimprich on Meeting with Becker, discussing laicization and Becker’s recent $10K “settlement” with the Milwaukee archdiocese (2/2/05)

– Status Report by Deacon Zimprich after Phone Call with Becker, discussing the $10K payment to Becker, Dolan’s refusal to pay for Becker’s health insurance from fear of liability, and Becker’s threat to tell “all he knows” (2/8/05)

Documents Detail Church Coverup: Newly Released Records from a California Lawsuit Settlement Show the Extent of the Milwaukee Catholic Archdiocese’s Efforts to Conceal Priest’s Sex Abuse, by Marie Rhode and Mary Zahn, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, January 31, 2008 [with images of documents and links to them]

– Becker Case: Franklyn Becker’s Service As a Priest, Highlighting Important Abuse and Coverup-Related Events, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, February 1, 2008 [with links to documents]

– Archdiocese of Milwaukee Records Regarding Father Franklyn Becker, JS Online, January 31, 2008 [with links to documents]

– Dolan-Cardinal Ratzinger Letters, posted by Jeff Anderson & Associates, March 1, 2011

– Archdiocese Vicar Log, posted by Jeff Anderson & Associates, March 1, 2011

– Background Becker Documents 1970-1997, posted by Jeff Anderson & Associates, March 1, 2011

– Background Becker Documents 2001-2005, posted by Jeff Anderson & Associates, March 1, 2011

– Complete Becker File: Part 1 of 8, posted by BishopAccountability.org, March 2, 2011

– Complete Becker File: Part 2 of 8, posted by BishopAccountability.org, March 2, 2011

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

NEW YORK
Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests

[documents – BishopAccountability.org]

Posted by Mary Caplan on June 05, 2012

We’re outside St. Patrick’s Cathedral. in New York City today for three reasons. First, to expose – again – deceit by Cardinal Timothy Dolan. Second, to urge Dolan – again – to stop attacking and deceiving and start answering and apologizing. And third, to urge other Catholic figures to prod Dolan to be forthcoming about every single payout and “special fund” he made to or set up for child molesting clerics.

This isn’t about admitted serial predator priests getting health care from Cardinal Dolan. It’s about Catholics and citizens getting openness and honesty from Cardinal Dolan. Dolan and other church officials admit they’ve followed through on their pledges to pedophile priests. They have broken, however, their often-repeated promises of “transparency” to the rest of us.

Two newly-disclosed internal church memos show that a secret $10,000 payment in 2005 from then-Milwaukee Archbishop Dolan to a pedophile priest was not for health insurance, as Dolan claimed. And in a little-noticed 2003 letter from Dolan to then-Cardinal Josef Ratzinger, Dolan promised that he would “set up” a “special fund” for the admitted predator.

The new memos – disclosed yesterday by BishopAccountability.org – deal with Franklyn Becker, a priest who reportedly molested children in both Wisconsin and California and who admitted at least some of his crimes.

The two single-spaced typed documents show that
— a $10,000 payment to Becker was never once linked to health insurance,
— another Milwaukee church official was working to get him health insurance through Catholic Charities, and
— to avoid legal liability, the archdiocese would NOT pay for Becker’s health insurance.

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

CALIFORNIA
The Worthy Adversary

Posted by Joelle Casteix on June 5, 2012

File this under: “What the hell are they thinking?”

Diocese of San Diego priest Fr. Jose Alexis Davila, who in April pled guilty to to battery and “engaging in an unlawful touching of an intimate part of the victim’s body,” is back at work at his old parish. You know, the one with the state-funded preschool.

If you don’t know the whole story, Davila went to a parishioner’s home on New Year’s Eve (she was a 20-year-old woman) and forced himself on her. We don’t know if more happened. But really, the guilty plea is enough, n’est-ce pas?

Yeah, say San Diego Bishop Robert Brom and his successor Cirillo Flores (who is a licensed civil lawyer), it’s enough to get you your job back! You WIN!

It gets worse: Davila has been put right smack in the same place where parishioners formed a “lynch mob” and went to the victim’s home in an attempt to get her to recant her story. They kicked her mom out of Bible study. They badgered her family.

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

NEW YORK
The New York Times

By MICHAEL POWELL

Published: June 4, 2012

Charles J. Hynes, having once embraced silence on the question of his vigor in prosecuting sex abuse in the ultra-Orthodox Jewish community, cannot stop talking now.

In columns, in interviews, and even in an exchange with former Mayor Edward I. Koch, Mr. Hynes, the veteran district attorney in Brooklyn, has insisted that he is one tough prosecutor. He will handcuff and arrest anyone who tries to intimidate an ultra-Orthodox family into silence.

“I will not put victims at risk,” he told The Forward.

If he allows ultra-Orthodox rabbis to act as gatekeepers, determining which child was and was not molested before turning to prosecutors, and if he agrees to keep secret the names of the molesters, who could argue with the results? Since 2009, he says, his office has prosecuted 99 sex abuse cases in the ultra-Orthodox community. (When my colleagues Sharon Otterman and Ray Rivera diced Mr. Hynes’s numbers in a series of articles, they found at least one quarter of his prosecutions had little to do with child sex abuse.)

But let’s forget the numbers.

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

NEW YORK
New York Magazine

By Joe Coscarelli

Kings County District Attorney Charles Hynes has taken a shellacking in the press lately for his handling of sex abuse in the ultra-Orthodox Jewish community, with critics arguing that he’s going easy on offenders for political reasons, proliferating a culture of cover-ups, and inflating prosecution figures. Hynes has responded by announcing his support for legislation that would require rabbis to report sexual abuse allegations, but that doesn’t erase past mistakes. Today, the New York Times digs one up with a galling story about Hynes attempting to go easy on a kidnapping rabbi.

And as icing on the bad-press cake, one of Hynes’s employees allegedly punched a cop.

The Times reports that in 1994, ultra-Orthodox rabbi Shlomo Helbrans took a 13-year-old boy from his family and tried to brainwash him, only to have Hynes’s office encourage police to drop the case. Michael Powell reports that the NYPD division commander and the boy’s mother “drove down to the district attorney’s office, seeking a meeting. They sat there for hours but never got past reception.”

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

UNITED STATES
National Catholic Reporter

Jun. 05, 2012
By Thomas C. Fox

COLUMN

You can bet that in the eyes of the Vatican, its Monday condemnation of the book Just Love by Mercy Sr. Margaret Farley has nothing to do with other recent and not-so-recent actions taken against U.S. Catholic sisters.

No, the move against Farley, one can hear the officials saying, stems solely from an independent investigation by the Congregation for the Doctrine of Faith that began about three years ago.

It needs to be seen simply as that, an investigation into one wayward book.

That it comes a mere six weeks after the very same congregation issued a highly critical doctrinal assessment of the Leadership Conference of Women Religious, the single most prominent voice for U.S. Catholic sisters, is coincidental.

That the Vatican critique of Farley’s book, which tarnishes her as a Catholic moral teacher, comes a month after the congregation placed LCWR in receivership with the intent to diminish its independent voice is not to be viewed as related in any way.

Or at least, that’s the way I think the Vatican would have it.

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

VATICAN CITY
National Catholic Reporter

Jun. 05, 2012
By Alessandro Speciale, Religion News Service

VATICAN CITY — Over the course of the last six months, Pope Benedict XVI delivered five major speeches to small groups of American bishops who were in Rome for their “ad limina” visits, which are required once every five years.

The “ad limina” visits are the way the pope and and Vatican departments keep tabs on bishops from around the world. They are also an occasion for the pope to address the major issues faced by a local church.

In his speeches, Benedict often echoed bishops’ concern about religious freedom and the challenges confronting the American church. In his last address, on May 22, he warned bishops of the “threat of a season in which our fidelity to the Gospel may cost us dearly.” …

Here’s a recap of what Benedict had to say on hot-button issues in these past months.
•Sexual abuse: “It is my hope that the church’s conscientious efforts to confront this reality will help the broader community to recognize the causes, true extent and devastating consequences of sexual abuse, and to respond effectively to this scourge which affects every level of society” (Nov. 26).

•”Dissent” within the Catholic church: “The seriousness of the challenges which the church in America … is called to confront in the near future cannot be underestimated. The obstacles to Christian faith and practice raised by a secularized culture also affect the lives of believers, leading at times to that ‘quiet attrition’ from the church which you raised with me during my pastoral visit” (Nov. 26).

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

VATICAN CITY
National Catholic Reporter

by John L Allen Jr on Jun. 05, 2012 NCR Today

On Monday night, the Vatican press office dispatched an e-mail alert to journalists with the text of an interview given by Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, the Vatican’s Secretary of State, in the wake of Benedict XVI’s weekend outing to Milan for the church-sponsored World Meeting of Families. The trip was considered a major success for Benedict, culminating in an open-air Mass that drew more than one million people to Milan’s Bresso Park.

The Bertone interview is noteworthy primarily because it’s the first time the Vatican’s “prime minister” has spoken at length about the leaks scandal which has engulfed the church’s central government since January, and which exploded anew in late May with the arrest of the pope’s butler. Bertone’s comments take on special significance given that many analysts believe he is the primary target of the leaks, reflecting dissatisfaction among some Vatican insiders with his leadership.

Aside from insistence that Benedict XVI will not “allow himself to be frightened by attacks, of any sort,” perhaps the most striking element of the interview is Bertone’s comment that the leaking of confidential documents seems “carefully aimed, and sometimes also ferocious, destructive and organized.”

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

iITALY
adnkronos

Naples, 5 June (AKI) – Police in the southern Italian city of Naples Tuesday searched the home of former Vatican bank chief Ettore Gotti Tedeschi on the orders of prosecutors investigating alleged corruption by executives from Italian aerospace and defence giant Finmeccanica.

Gotti Tedeschi is not himself under formal investigation, according to sources close to the probe.

It was not immediately clear what his connection may be with state-controlled Finmeccanica, which denies the graft accusations being probed by Naples prosecutors.

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

ITALY
San Francisco Chronicle

Tuesday, June 5, 2012

(06-05) 03:16 PDT ROME, Italy (AP) —

The home of the recently ousted president of the Vatican bank was searched Tuesday as part of a corruption investigation into Italy’s state-controlled aerospace and engineering giant Finmeccanica, prosecutors said.

Prosecutor Francesco Greco told The Associated Press that the search had nothing to do with Ettore Gotti Tedeschi’s role as head of the Vatican bank and that he is not under investigation in the Finmeccanica probe. He declined to provide details of why Gotti Tedeschi’s home was searched.

Prosecutors for months have been investigating allegations that Finmeccanica officials created a slush fund to funnel money to political parties. Finmeccanica’s ex-chairman Pier Francesco Guarguaglini is under investigation for making false invoices and tax fraud, while his wife Marina Grossi, the CEO of Finmeccanica subsidiary Selex, is under investigation for creating false invoices and corruption. Both have denied wrongdoing.

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

ITALY
CNBC

NAPLES (Reuters) – Homes belonging to Ettore Gotti Tedeschi, the former head of the Vatican’s bank, were searched by Italian police in connection with a corruption probe into defense technology group Finmeccanica, Naples prosecutors said on Tuesday.

Gotti Tedeschi was ousted from his position at the head of the bank last month after the board passed a motion of no-confidence, accusing him of neglecting his basic management responsibilities.

Acting Naples chief prosecutor Alessandro Pennasilico said on Tuesday the police search was not related to Gotti Tedeschi’s time at the bank and he has not been placed under investigation.

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

AUSTRALIA
The Age

June 6, 2012

1) Why didn’t the Melbourne archdiocese in 1994 inform parishioners at the Boronia parish that their priest Father Victor Rubeo had been accused (and not denied) of child sex abuse? Why was he still allowed to lead that parish?

A. Mr Hersbach first made a complaint to the late Monsignor Cudmore, the then Vicar General of the Melbourne Archdiocese, in 1994. At the time, Mr Hersbach was, according to Monsignor Cudmore, adamant that he did not want any steps taken in relation to Rubeo except that he receive counselling. This was arranged.

At a subsequent meeting between Monsignor Cudmore and Rubeo, Rubeo was informed of the allegation and did not deny it. The then Archbishop, Vicar General and Rubeo are now all deceased.

Viewed however by today’s standards, the response was inadequate. Since the introduction of the Melbourne Response in 1996, a priest in Rubeo’s situation would have his faculties to operate as a priest suspended pending investigation. If the allegations were substantiated, he would be permanently removed from ministry.

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

AUSTRALIA
The Age

Richard Baker and Nick McKenzie
June 6, 2012

MELBOURNE’S Catholic archdiocese permitted a priest charged with child sex offences to be the ”spiritual director” to another priest accused of child molestation.

The revelation is contained in confidential Catholic Church documents obtained by The Age that provide an insight into the archdiocese’s handling of child sex abuse cases.

Click here to read a response from a spokesman for the Melbourne Archdiocese.

The documents show how senior church leaders continued to shield Father Victor Rubeo from scrutiny after child sex abuse allegations about him were first reported to the archdiocese in 1994.

Rubeo, who did not deny the allegations when questioned by a senior church official, was allowed to continue preaching in Melbourne’s Boronia parish without his parishioners or police being told of his child abuse.

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

CHICOPEE (MA)
The Republican

By Jeanette DeForge, The Republican

CHICOPEE – The Rev. David Darcy jokes that sometimes he feels like Moses leading his flock from place to place.

The pastor of Holy Name of Jesus Church has been facing one of the most complex church closings in the Roman Catholic Diocese of Springfield. A combination of precedent-setting rulings from the Vatican and a deteriorated church that was declared unsafe has left the parish with four churches and the question of where it should settle permanently.

“We are struggling with how to wrap our heads around it,” Darcy said.

During the past decade the Springfield diocese has closed or merged nearly 70 churches in Western Massachusetts. The closings were followed by a few lawsuits and a flurry of appeals to the Vatican filed by parish members protesting the decision’s by the bishop, the Most Rev. Timothy A. McDonnell.

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

AUSTRALIA
The Age

Richard Baker, Nick McKenzie
June 6, 2012

As a child and young man, Tony Hersbach was regularly sexually abused by a Catholic priest. He told no one for more than 20 years, and when he finally revealed all to the church hierarchy, it did nothing. By Richard Baker and Nick McKenzie.

TONY Hersbach was 42 when he told his wife that the man who married them and played grandfather to their children had regularly molested him during his youth. Lu Hersbach’s reaction to this bombshell was disbelief. The priest whom her husband had accused of despicable acts had been a dominant influence in their lives ever since he married them as 19-year-old sweethearts.

Over the next 24 years Father Victor Gabriel Rubeo would dine with them on Sunday nights, accompany them on holidays and attend their children’s birthday parties. He opened their mail and entered their bedroom unannounced.

“The man was so entrenched in our family that when I was told … [it was like] someone really close to you has died. You have this sense of disbelief and I guess I hung on to this sense of disbelief for as long as I could,” Lu Hersbach says.

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

AUSTRALIA
WA Today

Tony Hersbach, abused for years by Father Victor Rubeo, tells how the Cathlic church harboured the priest for 15 years after his first conviction and provided Rubeo with a convicted paedophile as his counsellor.

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

CHICAGO (IL)
The Telegraph

By MANYA A. BRACHEAR — Chicago Tribune

CHICAGO — Reams of private Vatican correspondence published in a new Italian best-seller reportedly include a plea by Chicago’s Cardinal Francis George, urging the Vatican to halt an award to Illinois Gov. Pat Quinn for abolishing the death penalty.

George appears to play a minor role in the real-life Vatican whodunit that the Italian press has dubbed “Vatileaks.” Last week, the pope’s butler was arrested on suspicions that he leaked private letters, including some addressed to Pope Benedict XVI. Those letters reportedly appear in “Your Holiness: The Secret Papers of Benedict XVI,” a new book in which Italian writer Gianluigi Nuzzi airs a boatload of Vatican dirty laundry and hints of a real-life conspiracy akin to a Dan Brown novel.

According to Vatican expert John Allen, the book includes what Nuzzi claims is an encrypted 2011 cable from the Apostolic Nuncio in Washington relaying a plea from George to Benedict’s Secretary of State. George asks that the Vatican official step in and block the Rome-based Community of Sant’Egidio from giving an award to Roman Catholic governor Quinn, Allen said.

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

VATICAN CITY
Reuters

VATICAN CITY | Tue Jun 5, 2012

(Reuters) – A Vatican prosecutor on Tuesday began interrogating Paolo Gabriele, Pope Benedict’s butler who is being held on charges of stealing papal documents, the Vatican said.

Vatican officials said Gabriele was interrogated in the presence of his two lawyers and another Vatican judicial official known as the “promoter of justice”.

The prosecutor must now decide whether there is enough evidence to order Gabriele, who was arrested on May 23, to stand trial on charges of aggravated theft.

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

UNITED STATES
OpEd News

By
Rev. Dan Vojir

Not to be outdone by the Vatican when it comes to financial scandals, Cardinal Timothy Dolan of New York continues to battle accusations of corruption when he was Archbishop of Milwaukee. Back in 2008, Dolan was accused of shifting over $55 million from the archdiocese’ cemetary assets to reduce settlements involved in clergy sex abuse cases. This transfer of funds has left the archdiocese bankrupt. Now documents from that bankruptcy and its proceedings have surfaced showing that priests accused of abuse were given money if they agreed to go quietly into that good night, leaving the priesthood voluntarily, and leaving the number of defrocked priests at a minimum. It was clearly a “pay away the lay” situation brought to light, but Dolan is calling the stipends “charity.”

A Splendid Job – Of Doing What?

Since the New York Times Article, Dolan has had to delineate what “charity” was as opposed to “payoffs” but when asked if there were similar acts of “charity” given to former priests in the 400-parish area of Manhatten, the Bronx, Staten Island and seven counties, his response was only “No, thank God. Cardinal Egan did a splendid job — that’s all taken care of.” Unfortunately there are serious gaps in this statement and they are:

1. Didn’t the former priests of New York need the same amount of “charity”?
2. What exactly was the “splendid job”?
3. Exactly what was taken care of?

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

VATICAN CITY
Vatican Information Service

Vatican City, 5 June 2012 (VIS) – The Holy Father appointed Fr. Florian Worner of the clergy of Augsburg, Germany, diocesan director for the pastoral care of young people, as auxiliary of the same diocese (area 13,250, population 2,299,092, Catholics 1,360,575, priests 1020, permanent deacons 153, religious 2,125). The bishop-elect was born in Garmisch-Partenkirchen, Germany in 1970 and ordained a priest in 1997. He has served in pastoral care in various parishes and has worked in the “Jugend 2000” youth association. Since 2009 he has also been vicar of the cathedral of Augsburg.

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

DEUTSCHLAND
Frankfurter Rundschau

Im Bistum Trier stehen 16 Priester unter Missbrauchsverdacht. Kirchenrechtliche Voruntersuchungen sind teilweise abgeschlossen, Sanktionen stehen noch aus. Im schlimmsten Fall droht den Klerikern der Rauswurf.

Trier –

Wegen sexuellen Missbrauchs von Kindern und Jugendlichen sind im Bistum Trier seit Februar 2010 gegen 16 Priester kirchenrechtliche Voruntersuchungen eingeleitet worden. Dies teilte der Sprecher des Bistums Trier am Montag mit und bestätigte einen Bericht der Zeitung „Trierischer Volksfreund“. Neun dieser Vorverfahren seien vom Bistum bereits abgeschlossen, die anderen sieben liefen noch. Von den 16 Bistumspriestern seien 11 im Ruhestand.
Strafrechtlich seien die mutmaßlichen Taten aus den 1960er bis 1980er Jahren verjährt, sagte der Sprecher. Über eine mögliche kircheninterne Bestrafung sei noch nicht entschieden. „Alle Verfahren laufen noch“, sagte er.

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

OSTERREICH/SPANIEN
der Standard

Angesichts der Krise in Spanien drängen die Sozialisten auf eine Aufhebung der Ausnahmen für die Kirche im Steuerrecht

Wien/Madrid – Angesichts der dramatischen Lage an den Finanzmärkten wächst in Spanien der Druck auf die katholische Kirche, einen größeren Beitrag zur Sanierung des Staatshaushaltes zu leisten. Die Tageszeitung El País veröffentlichte eine Umfrage, wonach inzwischen acht von zehn Spaniern verlangen, dass für die Kirche geltende Ausnahmen im Steuerrecht abgeschafft werden. Dieses Ergebnis ist insoweit überraschend, als der Katholizismus und die katholische Kirche in Spanien nach wie vor eine besonders wichtige Rolle spielen.

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

OSTERREICH
Atheisten-Info

(Wien, 4.6.12, PUR) – Bei der Plattform Betroffener kirchlicher Gewalt sind seit März 2010 mehr als 400 Meldungen zu Gewalt gegen Kinder und Jugendliche eingegangen. In diesem Zusammenhang wurden vielfach auch die Namen der Gewaltausübenden genannt. Besonders beschämend ist es, dass sich 35 beschuldigte Priester nach wie vor im Dienst befinden. Einige von ihnen wurden zwar kurzfristig suspendiert, aber nach Abflauen des öffentlichen Interesses schon bald wieder in der Seelsorge eingesetzt. Die Hoffnung, dass seitens der römisch-katholischen Kirche nachhaltige Konsequenzen gezogen wurden, hat sich bis jetzt nicht erfüllt.

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

DEUTSCHLAND
PNN

von Benjamin Lassiwe
Berlin – Die Missbrauchsfälle am katholischen Canisius-Kolleg, die Anfang 2010 bekannt wurden, lagen bereits Jahrzehnte zurück. Doch sie erhöhten auch die Aufmerksamkeit auf neuere Fälle von sexuellen Übergriffen auf Schutzbefohlene in kirchlichen und anderen Einrichtungen. Am gestrigen Montag legte das katholische Erzbistum Berlin einen Zwischenbericht in Sachen Missbrauch vor: Demnach laufen derzeit keine staatsanwaltschaftlichen Ermittlungen mehr gegen Priester, Jugendmitarbeiter oder Ordensangehörige in Diensten der Diözese.

Von den 19 Verdachtsfällen sexuellen Missbrauchs, die seit 2002 im Erzbistum Berlin auftraten, seien heute neun Fälle nicht mehr zu klären, da die Beschuldigten etwa bereits verstorben seien. Fünf Fälle seien abgeschlossen worden, in sechs Fällen liefen noch kirchenrechtliche Verfahren. Im Kirchenrecht gelten andere Verjährungsfristen als im Strafrecht, dienstrechtliche Konsequenzen wie etwa Pensionskürzungen sind daher auch Jahrzehnte nach den Taten noch möglich. Über die Konsequenzen, die es in den fünf abgeschlossenen Fällen für die Täter gegeben hat, hält sich das Erzbistum bedeckt. „Das kann ich Ihnen nicht sagen“, erklärte Bistumssprecher Stefan Förner.

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

IRELAND
National Survivor Advocates Coalition

Kristine Ward

It’s an amazing statement that Cardinal Timothy Dolan fired up and lobbed out to reporters after Sunday Mass at St. Patrick’s Cathedral in New York on Sunday before hopping a plane to Ireland.

“SNAP,” declared the Cardinal,” has no credibility whatsoever.”

If Cardinal Dolan had considered what he was saying he’d know the next thing he should say is not another ounce of effort should be put into getting depositions from SNAP’s leaders or getting SNAP records.

No credibility, nothing worth getting. Plenty of Catholic money saved.

In the slap against SNAP, the organization that lifted the veil on Cardinal Dolan’s Milwaukee tactics, New York’s top prelate told reporters on Sunday that the reports of his Milwaukee voluntary laicization incentive payments were “groundless and scurrilous.”

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

CANADA
The Western Star

Published on June 5, 2012

CORNER BROOK — The investigation into more allegations of sexual abuse by Roman Catholic priest George Ansel Smith is still ongoing.

Smith, 74, has been charged with more than 60 sex-related offences in relation to incidents alleged to have occurred in six communities in western Newfoundland from 1969 to 1989.

The charges against him include gross indecency, indecent assault on a male, sexual assault, unlawfully committing a gross indecency and unlawfully assaulting with intent to commit an indictable offence. The charges are alleged to have happened in Port Saunders, Corner Brook, Stephenville, St. Fintan’s, Cape St. George and Deer Lake.

His past is also being investigated by authorities elsewhere in Atlantic Canada.

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

UNITED STATES
Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests

Posted by David Clohessy on June 04, 2012

Today, New York Cardinal Dolan attacked our group and again refused to address questions about the disturbing contradiction between what he said and what he did about secretly paying predator priests to quietly leave.

To reporters from WNYC, NY1 and the New York Post, Dolan reportedly said “The New York Times and SNAP have no credibility on this issue so it’s not productive to try to address groundless & scurrilous charges by them.”

It’s sad that America’s top Catholic official won’t answer a simple question: how much money did he secretly pay to how many predator priests so they would quietly go away and be around unsuspecting families and co-workers, perhaps to assault more kids.

Bishops often attack the messenger when they’re forced to defend the indefensible. It’s a despicable and desperate tactic.

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

UNITED KINGDOM
Catholic Herald

The Vatican is completely correct to clarify that Sister Farley’s book stands firmly outside the tradition of the Church

By Fr Alexander Lucie-Smith on Tuesday, 5 June 2012

You may have read that the Vatican has condemned a book by Sister Margaret Farley. The Catholic Herald’s account of the matter is to be found here.

Funnily enough, I read and reviewed the book in question when it first came out, which was back in 2006, and the review was published in the Heythrop Journal of May 2008; academic reviews often come out a year or two after the original book’s publication, though a two-year gap is nothing compared to the six years that it has taken the CDF and Rome to give its verdict.

My review is not online, but I have a hard copy in front of me and am happy to share some highlights.

“In a brief section (pp. 235-236), a mere one and a half pages, she deals with ‘self-pleasuring’, a topic that, usually under a different name, has, historically, led to the spilling of rivers of ink. Farley notes that the judgment of tradition has been overwhelmingly negative; even Kant disapproved very strongly; however now ‘most’ theologians and medical practitioners view the activity as ‘morally neutral’; in other words it all depends on reasons and circumstances.

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

HOLYOKE (MA)
The Republican

By Jeanette DeForge, The Republican

HOLYOKE – A preliminary ruling by the Vatican’s top court ordered protesters to leave the Mater Dolorosa Church where they have held a 24-hour vigil for nearly a year and banned the bishop of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Springfield from demolishing or selling the church.

The Apostolic Signatura also said it will hear an appeal of the decision by the Vatican’s lower court, the Congregation for the Clergy, which upheld Bishop Timothy A. McDonnell’s decision to close the church. It rejected a request to appeal the order to merge the parish with another.

Protesters called the decision a partial victory and are meeting to decide if they should follow the order to end the vigil. The protest began June 30, the day of the last mass before the church was closed and the parish merged into the new Our Lady of the Cross.

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

PHILADELPHIA (PA)
Bilgrimage

Jerry Slevin has sent another outstanding posting commenting on the Philadelphia trial, which is in the process of wrapping up, and what that trial means at a fundamental level for the Catholic church worldwide and for its future. What follows is Jerry’s statement:

PHILLY CRIMINAL TRIAL:

For almost a decade now in Philadelphia, the birthplace of American religious and civil liberties, government prosecutors have been examining closely and carefully the Philadelphia Archdiocese’s medieval-style secret archives. The archives cover almost a half century of “problem priest” personnel, at times including files for almost a quarter of all Philly priests, who served under three Philly Princes of the Catholic Church, Cardinals Rigali, Bevilacqua, and Krol. This long prosecutorial effort has culminated in the just completed landmark multi-month criminal trial of a former top hierarchical official, with more criminal trials and likely many related civil lawsuits to follow. The trial has been well reported by Philadelphia Inquirer journalists in a brief review here and over a three month period in detail here. The pope has just tried to soften the significant adverse publicity from the trial and to preserve his Philly Catholic donor base by announcing a papal visit to Philadelphia in 2015, which already has been poorly received by many outraged Philly Catholics, as reported here.

The Philly trial court heard dozens of witnesses, including sexual abuse survivors, under oath. Prosecutors introduced as evidence hundreds of previously undisclosed documents from the Cardinals’ secret priest personnel archives. The trial revelations ranged from graphic details of nauseating and disgraceful assaults on children by priest predators, who had been previously known to the Cardinals to present serious safety risks for defenseless children, to shameless collusive document-shredding and almost limitless lying by top officials, as the dark side of the Philly clerical child sexual abuse scandal and its hierarchical cover-up was fully and relentlessly exposed.

PHILLY CARDINALS:

Each of the three Philly Cardinals had similar life experiences as they ambitiously climbed the hierarchical ladder. Each had received a prestigious Roman Gregorian University graduate education. Each in varying degrees for many years had been close to the current pope, Benedict XVI, and to his immediate predecessor, John Paul II, as well as to other major Roman curial Cardinals.

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

VATICAN CITY
WGME

VATICAN CITY (AP) — Pope Benedict XVI’s deputy denounced the continued leaks of Vatican documents Monday, and said the pope isn’t intimidated by the “fierce” and “organized” attacks they represent.

Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, the Vatican secretary of state, made his first public comments about the scandal in an interview with state-run RAI television. Bertone’s leadership has attracted much criticism, and many commentators see the leaks of confidential Vatican documents as an attempt to discredit him and force his resignation.

The scandal represents one of the greatest security breaches at the Vatican, with dozens of letters, memos and other documents from the pope’s desk appearing in a new book “His Holiness,” by Italian investigative journalist Gianluigi Nuzzi.

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

PENNSYLVANIA
EON

Ads Target Judiciary Committee Chairman Ronald Marsico, Urging Him to ‘Unfreeze’ Two Bills He Has Stalled in Committee

Current Law Prevents Sex Abuse Victims from Seeking Justice and Shields Sex Abusers Who May Continue to Harm Pa. Children, Says FACSA

June 04, 2012

PHILADELPHIA–(EON: Enhanced Online News)–On the eve of the Jerry Sandusky trial and the imminent conclusion of the clergy sex abuse trial in Philadelphia, a child advocacy group is renewing calls for a change in Pennsylvania’s statute of limitations laws. In a series of newspaper and online ads, the Foundation to Abolish Child Sex Abuse (FACSA) is calling for State Representative Ronald S. Marsico (R-105th District), Chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, to act on two bills he is refusing to bring to his Committee.

“Many victims need years to come to terms with their abuse. With our current restrictive statute of limitations, victims are denied the opportunity to seek justice. The system also protects the sexual abuser, who may be abusing other children.”

Stating “Pennsylvania’s children can’t wait for task forces,” the ads implore Marsico to let the Judiciary Committee vote on two bills: one that would create a one-time window when sex abuse victims who are beyond the statute of limitations can come forward and file a suit against an abuser and another that would extend the age limit for filing civil cases against abusers to age 50.

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

PHILADELPHIA (PA)
Philadelphia Priest Abuse Trial Blog

Ralph Cipriano

The jury in the Archdiocese of Philadelphia sex abuse case Monday began their first full day of deliberations by asking plenty of questions.

The jury asked the judge to define the elements of an attempted rape, which is the main charge against one defendant, Father James J. Brennan. Judge M. Teresa Sarmina responded that the jury must find that the priest used force, or the threat of force.

The jury wanted to know if they reached a verdict in the case of one defendant, did the judge want them to announce that verdict, or sit on it until they had reached a verdict on the second defendant in the case.

After reflecting on that question, and soliciting opinions from lawyers in the case, the judge told the jury to announce both verdicts at the same time. When they reached one verdict, the judge told the jury, “Just keep deliberating on the other and notify the court at the appropriate time.”

The jury also asked to see the prosecution’s “smoking gun,” a gray folder of handwritten and typed documents found in a locked archdiocese safe in 2006 that included a list of 35 priests accused or convicted of sex abuse.

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

PHILADELPHIA (PA)
Pocono Record

Editorial

June 05, 2012

Jurors in Philadelphia are now deliberating the fate of two Catholic priests, one of them a monsignor who’s charged with endangering children and conspiring to cover up priest abuse.

It’s hard to imagine that jurors could conclude anything other than guilty as charged.

Monsignor William Lynn served as secretary for clergy at the Philadelphia archdiocese from 1992 to 2004. Evidence and his own testimony confirm that he knew, through his position, about hundreds of allegations made against more than 60 priests.

Yet he failed to prevent it, thus enabling wayward priests to continue endangering vulnerable children.

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