ABUSE TRACKER

PHILADELPHIA (PA)
The Sentinel

PHILADELPHIA (AP) — The Archdiocese of Philadelphia says two priests have been found unsuitable for ministry following allegations of sexual abuse of minors.

A statement from the archdiocese Sunday says the priests, who are both in their 70s, “have agreed to accept a supervised life of prayer and penance.”

Officials say a May 2010 abuse allegation against one priest had been substantiated, while in December a retired priest had self-reported such conduct.

The statement said announcements regarding the archdiocese’s actions were made Sunday at Philadelphia and suburban parishes where the priests most recently served.

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PHILADELPHIA (PA)
NBC 10

Sunday, May 20, 2012

The Philadelphia Archdiocese has found two new priests to be unsuitable for ministry due to sexual abuse.

In statements released Sunday afternoon, Archbishop Charles J. Chaput acknowledged that Monsignor George J. Mazzotta and retired Monsignor Hugh P. Campbell had “been found unsuitable for ministry.”

Mazzotta, 73, had not been permitted to wear clerical garb, perform his ministry, or present himself as a priest since May 2010, when the Archdiocese first received an allegation of sexual abuse of a minor. According to the Archdiocesan statement, the allegation has since been “substantiated,” and cited as the reason for the Church’s action.

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PHILADELPHIA (PA)
Newsworks

May 20, 2012
By Marilyn S. D’Angelo

An announcement updating the situation regarding Monsignor Mazzotta was made this weekend at Stella Maris Parish in Philadelphia and Saint Madeline Parish in Ridley Park, his two most recent assignments.

The announcement regarding Monsignor Mazzotta is not connected to the cases of the eight priests put on administrative leave announced on May 4.

According to the diocese, Monsignor George J. Mazzotta has been found unsuitable for ministry following a substantiated allegation of sexual abuse of a minor.

Since May 2010 when the Archdiocese received the allegation and reported it to law enforcement, Monsignor Mazzotta has not been permitted to exercise his public ministry, wear clerical garb, or present himself publicly as a priest.

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PHILADELPHIA (PA)
Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Philadelphia

Monsignor Hugh P. Cambell, a retired priest of the Archdiocese of Philadelphia, has been found not suitable for ministry following self-reported sexual abuse of a minor. Monsignor Campbell made this report in December 2011 at which time he was placed on administrative leave. Since then he has not been permitted to exercise his public ministry, wear clerical garb, or present himself publicly as a priest. This was reported to law enforcement.

Following Archbishop Chaput’s determination of unsuitability for ministry, Monsignor Campbell has agreed to accept a supervised life of prayer and penance. An announcement regarding this situation was made this weekend at Saint Maximilian Kolbe Parish in West Chester, his most recent assignment prior to retirement. Counselors were present.

On May 4th, Archbishop Chaput announced resolutions to eight of the 26 cases of priests on administrative leave as a result of the February 2011 Grand Jury report. The announcement regarding Monsignor Campbell is not connected to those 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.

PHILADELPHIA (PA)
Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Philadelphia

Monsignor George J. Mazzotta has been found unsuitable for ministry following a substantiated allegation of sexual abuse of a minor. Since May 2010 when the Archdiocese received the allegation and reported it to law enforcement, Monsignor Mazzotta has not been permitted to exercise his public ministry, wear clerical garb, or present himself publicly as a priest. Following Archbishop Chaput’s determination of unsuitability for ministry, Monsignor Mazzotta has agreed to accept a supervised life of prayer and penance.

An announcement updating the situation regarding Monsignor Mazzotta was made this weekend at Stella Maris Parish in Philadelphia and Saint Madeline Parish in Ridley Park, his two most recent assignments. Counselors were present at Stella Maris Parish.

On May 4th, Archbishop Chaput announced resolutions to eight of the 26 cases of priests on administrative leave as a result of the February 2011 Grand Jury report. The announcement regarding Monsignor Mazzotta is not connected to those 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.

PHILADELPHIA (PA)
New Jersey Herald

Posted: May 20, 2012 3:52 PM

PHILADELPHIA (AP) – The Archdiocese of Philadelphia says two priests have been found unsuitable for ministry following allegations of sexual abuse of minors.

A statement from the archdiocese Sunday says the priests, who are both in their 70s, “have agreed to accept a supervised life of prayer and penance.”

Officials alleged that a May 2010 abuse allegation against one priest had been substantiated, while in December a retired priest had self-reported such conduct.

The statement said announcements regarding the archdiocese’s actions were made Sunday at Philadelphia and suburban parishes.

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
Patriot-News

By Patriot-News Op-Ed

BY JAMES F. DRANE

Every major industry, firm or organization has a particular culture at the leadership level, and most are male cultures. The same is true of political parties, churches and social groups.

So, an all-male Vatican culture is not unique.

Women, however, have begun to rise to the top of secular institutions. This is especially true of institutions in economically advanced nations. In most cases, the ground-breaking women themselves have been formed by female societies, groups and clubs with their own strong feminine cultures.

Across the broad biological spectrum, females form friendships and bond with one another. These female bonds and friendships strengthen a female way of being that is different from how men interact and how they are formed by the cultures in their clubs and associations.

Strong sister bonds and friendships create strengths that males and their groups cannot match.

There is a lesson here that seems to be missed in the Catholic Church’s male culture and by the bishops formed in it. Some of the least insightful bishops reprimanded Sister Carol Keehan for standing with and protecting pregnant women whose lives were threatened by a developing fetus.

These bishops were theologically unsophisticated, but even worse was their naivete in thinking that they could push around Catholic sisters and child-bearing women with their reprimands and threats to withdraw Catholic status from hospitals if abortion is permitted when a fetus puts the mother’s life in danger.

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UNITED STATES
National Review

By Michael Potemra

May 20, 2012

Maureen Dowd’s column today expresses the by now well-known disappointment of Catholic liberals at the conservatizing trend within official Catholicism. It contains all of today’s Top 40 hits of how the libs think the right-wingers are wrong: Sebelius is getting protested at Georgetown; Father Williams has fathered a child; there’s a “bizarre inquisition of self-sacrificing American nuns pushed by the disgraced Cardinal Bernard Law.” But what I find striking about her column is that it offers a classic example of how the Catholic liberals can be as guilty of Catholic triumphalism as the conservatives they so intensely dislike. Here’s how she starts the column:

I always liked that the name of my religion was also an adjective meaning all-embracing.

I was a Catholic and I wanted to be catholic, someone engaged in a wide variety of things. As James Joyce wrote in “Finnegans Wake:” “Catholic means ‘Here comes everybody.’ ”

So it makes me sad to see the Catholic Church grow so uncatholic, intent on loyalty testing, mind control and heresy hunting. Rather than all-embracing, the church hierarchy has become all-constricting.
It is true that the word Catholic has at least two different meanings, one referring to a particular group of religious believers, the other to an attitude of universal openness. But Dowd doesn’t explain why, specifically, the church group in question has to embrace, in its entirety, the other meaning of the word. I share her notion that pluralism in religious belief is a good thing, a human right, and worthy of defense. But it’s not clear why any particular organization has to harbor all possible pluralism within itself. Surely, if we prize diversity, we should not insist that Catholics be Protestants as well, or that Hindus be Buddhists, or that Sunnis be Shia? The only reason I can think of for insisting that one’s own religion embrace all other views is a sense that one’s religion is a unique public good, serving a higher religio-political purpose than other religions, and therefore subsuming them — which is rather hard to distinguish, as an attitude, from the one that liberals mean when they refer, pejoratively, to conservatives as “triumphalistic.”

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UNITED STATES
Minnesota SNAP

By Vinnie Nauheimer

Mary, having heard the cries of the suffering children and the prayers of a laity in the throws of turmoil, intercedes on their behalf with Jesus. He too is exceedingly dismayed by what his church has become, the hierarchy’s adamant refusal to change, the poor disenfranchised faithful, and decides to take action. He summons the Furies, whose job it is to punish those who break sacred trusts by sending them to, Judecca, which is a section of Dante’s Ninth Circle of hell reserved for those who, by betraying their God, their vows, and humanity, have committed crimes with great historical and societal consequences. The Furies are relentless in their pursuit of these defilers of faith and never stop pursuing either them or those who support them.

When the Furies are in his midst, Jesus charges them to seek out the laity and spell out the crimes of the hierarchy to them. Knowing full well the capacity of Catholics to rebuff the verbalization of hierarchal crimes as “Church Bashing,” and remembering, Doubting Thomas, Jesus admonishes the Furies to only mention crimes that have made headline news over the past ten years concentrating on the ones that have most recently been publicized, are Internet searchable and have been confirmed by the press thereby leaving little doubt in the laity’s mind as to the true nature of their hierarchy. In keeping with their task, the Furies have gathered the laity and are reciting the litany of hierarchal crimes against children, law, society and God. The laity responds with its own litany.

The Furies: A couple of weeks ago in Cardinal Dolan’s old diocese, Milwaukee, according to Judge Susan V. Kelley, the depositions of bishops Weakland and Sklba contained material so “scandalous”, that she would not release them to the public, apparently afraid of the impact they will have on the church’s reputation and ability to function as a business.

Parishioners: But, that’s not my church!

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PHILADELPHIA (PA)
Philadelphia Inquirer

By John P. Martin
Inquirer Staff Writer

The charges against Msgr. William J. Lynn are narrow: that the former Archdiocese of Philadelphia official endangered children by letting two priests live or work in parishes despite signs they might abuse minors.

But the case prosecutors finished presenting Thursday stretched beyond those confines. Day after day in Courtroom 304 of the city’s Criminal Justice Center, the church itself seemed to be on trial.

Over eight weeks, jurors saw a parade of witnesses and close to 2,000 documents, some decades old, that detailed what bishops, pastors priests, and church officials knew and did about Philadelphia-area priests suspected of abusing children.

Together, the evidence pointed to a long-standing culture in the hierarchy – and at times the ranks below – that chose secrecy over transparency and the welfare of the institution over victims.

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NEW YORK
Failed Messiah

Brooklyn District Attorney Charles Hynes has finally released an expanded list of the nearly 100 haredi pedophiles, rapists and sex criminals he says he has prosecuted.

The problem is, the Post – who got the list – only released a tiny part of it.

Plus, about half of the cases Hynes claims as Kol Tzedek cases aren’t. Like Kolko’s case, they preceed Kol Tzedek’s founding, or they were reported directly to police not to Kol Tzedek, or anti-child-sex-abuse activists like Survivors for Justice or Voice of Justice brought the cases in themselves outside the framework of Kol Tzedek.

The Jewish Week, the Guardian and the New York Times together have clearly proved this.

On top of that, CBS 2 News reported that it called the Kol Tzedek hotline, which Hynes claimed was open 24/7, 25 times over a two week period. The calls were made at various times on different days. Kol Tzedek only answered the phone two times.

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DEUTSCHLAND
News@ORF

Der widerständige österreichische Priester Helmut Schüller hat der Führung der katholischen Kirche Reformunfähigkeit vorgeworfen. „Wir haben keine Glaubenskrise und wir haben auch keine Kirchenkrise. Wir habe eine Krise der Kirchenleitung“, sagte er am Samstag beim Alternativprogramm des Katholikentages in Mannheim.

Schüller ist Kopf einer Pfarrer-Initiative, die sich für Reformen einsetzt, unter anderem die Priesterzulassung für Verheiratete und Frauen. Die Forderung steht vor dem Hintergrund zunehmenden Priestermangels.

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VATICAN CITY
RT

Published: 20 May, 2012

The Vatican is threatening to take legal action against those responsible for publishing a new book of leaked internal documents. The book sheds light on power struggles and corruption inside the Holy See and the thinking of its embattled top banker.

Pope Benedict XVI has already appointed a commission of cardinals to investigate the “Vatileaks” scandal. It erupted earlier this year with the publication of leaked memos alleging corruption and mismanagement in Holy See affairs and internal squabbles over its efforts to comply with international anti-money-laundering norms.

The publication Saturday of “His Holiness” by Italian journalist Gianluigi Nuzzi, added fuel to the fire, reproducing confidential letters and memos to and from Pope Benedict and his personal secretary which, according to the Vatican, violated the pope’s right to privacy.

Vatican spokesman Rev. Federico Lombardi said in a statement Saturday the book was an “objectively defamatory” work that “clearly assumes characters of a criminal act.” He warned the Holy See would get to the bottom of who “stole” the documents, who received them and who published them. He warned the Holy See would seek international cooperation in its quest for justice, presumably with Italian magistrates.

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NEW YORK
New York Post

By SUSAN EDELMAN and BRAD HAMILTON

Last Updated: 7:22 AM, May 20, 2012

EXCLUSIVE

After months of prodding, Brooklyn District Attorney Charles Hynes finally released an expanded accounting of the nearly 100 perverts he says he has prosecuted in the borough’s ultra-Orthodox Jewish community.

He showed The Post summaries of 96 cases, that reveal a shocking pattern of rape, sodomy, incest, kidnapping and sex attacks on children.

Hynes says that he has pursued scores of predators through a program called Kol Tzedek, Hebrew for “voice of justice,” launched in 2009, and has put some despicable offenders in prison for years.

But many avoided stiff jail sentences with wrist-slap plea deals, several got no punishment, and others had charges dropped or reduced after victims backed out under community pressure.

Hynes still refused to name the defendants, insisting his unusual policy protects victims and their families from intimidation by supporters of the creeps who “don’t give a damn about victims.”

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UNITED STATES
jconline

Written by
MICHAEL DAVIS

Clergy misconduct expert Diana Garland is dean of the School of Social Work at Baylor University and an expert in congregational life. The Journal & Courier asked her to overlay what she has learned, during 30 years of research, on the challenge facing Sunrise Christian Reformed Church in south Lafayette.

Question: What do you make of voyeurism in a church?

A: We’ve done the first national study of the prevalence of clergy sexual misconduct. And this is not within the realm of what we typically would call clergy sexual misconduct, which is sexual harassment or a sexual relationship between a religious leader and a congregant. It does fall in the realm of clergy sexual misconduct in that this presumed voyeurism is sexual in nature and is an offense. All clergy sexual misconduct is devastating. It’s devastating to those who have been offended, the primary victims and to the whole congregation.

It is clearly abuse of the community’s trust. It is not a private matter between a religious leader and one or more victims.

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NEW YORK
New York Post

Posted: May 20, 2012

Brooklyn DA Charles “Joe” Hynes is under fire for his handling of child sexual-abuse cases in the borough’s ultra-Orthodox community — with critics suggesting a double standard in how such crimes are prosecuted.

Former Mayor Ed Koch has even suggested that Gov. Cuomo supersede Hynes and appoint a special prosecutor to handle such cases.

It’s an idea worth considering.

The Post and other news outlets — notably the Jewish Week, the Forward, several online blogs and, lately, The New York Times — have been reporting on this subject for years.

Perhaps most egregiously, Hynes refuses to make public the names of those formally charged with sexually abusing youngsters in the ultra-Orthodox community — even after they’ve been convicted.

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LOUISIANA
The Town Talk

Written by
Billy Gunn

Angelo “Doogie” Deboray Golatt fooled a lot of people for a long time.

Parents, his bosses, leaders of a Baptist church in Pineville, his wife. All were duped by his outward piety, his constant quoting of biblical scripture, his massive build, his charisma.

The boys whom Golatt counseled as their spiritual adviser at Donahue Family Baptist Church were fooled too, until he started raping them. Even after they discovered what he was, Golatt still held sway. By one victim’s account, Golatt sexually molested him at least 50 times over four years, yet he remained silent.

The victim, now a man, told a Rapides Parish sheriff’s detective that the sexual encounters started when he was 12.

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UNITED KINGDOM
The Post

A LAY pastor and school counsellor has admitted abusing a 14-year-old boy.

James Hennah, aged 39, was also a magistrate before being suspended when the allegations came to light in October.

He admitted two offences of sexually touching a child and one of voyeurism when he appeared before Exeter Crown Court yesterday.

Hennah, of Rossiter’s Lane, St George, was a pastor with the Bristol Community Church, where he ran their Energy programme targeted at young people. The law graduate was a counsellor at two secondary schools and at Bristol University, where he also taught counselling.

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DALLAS (TX)
Press TV (Iran)

A former Roman Catholic priest was found guilty of hiring a hit man to kill a boy who had accused him of sexual abuse.

John Fiala, 53, showed no emotion as a Dallas jury found him guilty of plotting to kill the boy, according to The Dallas Morning News. He faces a possible sentence of life in prison. Raw Story

HIGHLIGHTS

Fiala testified that he told a purported hit man to kill his accuser because he thought his own life was in danger. dallasnews.com

He said his friend and neighbor Scottie Fisher told him the hit man was his brother. The brother would likely turn on Fiala if he wasn’t convinced the hit was on, Fiala said Fisher told him. dallasnews.com

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PENNSYLVANIA
Patriot-News

By Patriot-News Editorial Board

Among the difficult realities of child sexual abuse is that victims might need years, even decades, to come to terms with their abuse.

It isn’t until they deal with the emotional trauma of what happened to them that they then are ready to confront their abuser.

Unfortunately, our justice system is not set up to deal with this all-too-common occurrence.

Instead, there is a statute of limitations in place that only gives victims a certain amount of time to file a complaint, either civil or criminal.

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DALLAS (TX)
Digital Journal

By Arthur Weinreb
May 20, 2012

Dallas – The former Roman Catholic priest was sentenced Friday afternoon in a Dallas courtroom after a jury found he had attempted to arrange the murder of a boy who had accused the ex priest of sexual assaulting him on numerous occasions.

Under Texas law, it is the jury, not the judge, who decides the sentence. As reported by Fox News, the jury deliberated for four and one-half hours before deciding that John Fiala, 53, should be sentenced to 60 years in prison. The jury had found the ex priest guilty of the murder-for-hire plot the day before.

Prosecutors had asked for a life sentence but were reported to be satisfied with the sentence the jury came back with. Fiala’s attorney had previously told the jury that anything more than 15 years would be a “travesty.”

The prosecutor, Brendan Birmingham, had also asked the jurors to impose a fine in the amount of $5,016. The sole purpose of the fine was that it would be symbolic. Fiala had offered to pay $5,000 to have the boy killed, who was “16” at the time he first began sexually assaulting him.

Fiala will be eligible for parole after serving 15 years.

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UNITED STATES
The New York Times

By MAUREEN DOWD

Published: May 19, 2012

WASHINGTON

I ALWAYS liked that the name of my religion was also an adjective meaning all-embracing.

I was a Catholic and I wanted to be catholic, someone engaged in a wide variety of things. As James Joyce wrote in “Finnegans Wake:” “Catholic means ‘Here comes everybody.’ ”

So it makes me sad to see the Catholic Church grow so uncatholic, intent on loyalty testing, mind control and heresy hunting. Rather than all-embracing, the church hierarchy has become all-constricting.

It was tough to top the bizarre inquisition of self-sacrificing American nuns pushed by the disgraced Cardinal Bernard Law. Law, the former head of the Boston archdiocese, fled to a plush refuge in Rome in 2002 after it came out that he protected priests who molested thousands of children.

But the craziness continued when an American priest, renowned for his TV commentary from Rome on popes and personal morality, admitted last week that he had fathered a child with a mistress.

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NEW YORK
The New York Times

By RAY RIVERA and SHARON OTTERMAN

The Brooklyn district attorney, Charles J. Hynes, is setting up a panel of prosecutors and investigators to crack down on witness intimidation in child sexual abuse cases in the borough’s ultra-Orthodox Jewish community.

Speaking on NY1 on Thursday night, Mr. Hynes said he was asking the panel to “come up with some alternatives to break down this wall of intimidation.”

He criticized elements in the ultra-Orthodox Jewish community over their treatment of sexual abuse victims.

“The level of intimidation is not found nearly as much in organized crime,” he said. “It’s extraordinary just how relentless these people can be.”

“There is no concern for the victim in parts of these communities,” he added. “Everything is for the abuser, and that’s the horrible thing that we have to deal with.”

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VATICAN CITY
dotCommonweal

May 19, 2012, 6:18 pm

Posted by Paul Moses

The Vatican issued a statement Saturday calling a new leak of its internal documents “a criminal act” that must be prosecuted. The statement called for prosecution not only of the leaker but also “those who received stolen property” – that is, evidently, Gianluigi Nuzzi, an Italian journalist who came up with a trove of papal records for his new book, Sua Santita, or His Holiness.

The Vatican said it will seek “international cooperation,” which I assume means that it will press Italian authorities to prosecute even the journalist. The publication of the leaked documents is not a “journalistic initiative,” the Vatican insists, but a crime.

I don’t know what protections Italian journalists have; Nuzzi seems to be reveling in the attention, as any author might.

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VATICAN CITY
Washington Post

Vatican denounces leaks of papal correspondence, documents as ‘criminal,’ promises justice

By Associated Press, Updated: Saturday, May 19

VATICAN CITY — The Vatican has denounced as “criminal” a new book of leaked internal documents that shed light on power struggles inside the Holy See and the inner workings of its embattled bank, and warned that it would take legal action against those responsible.

Pope Benedict XVI has already appointed a commission of cardinals to investigate the “Vatileaks” scandal, which erupted earlier this year with the publication of leaked memos alleging corruption and mismanagement in Holy See affairs and internal squabbles over its efforts to comply with international anti-money laundering norms.

The publication Saturday of “His Holiness,” by Italian journalist Gianluigi Nuzzi, added fuel to the fire, reproducing letters and memos to and from Benedict and his personal secretary which the Vatican said violated the pope’s right to privacy.

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VATICAN CITY
Vatican Radio

On Saturday, the Holy See press office director, Fr. Federico Lombardi released the following statement regarding the latest publication of confidential documents:

The latest publication of documents of the Holy See and private documents of the Holy Father can no longer be considered a questionable – and objectively defamatory – journalistic initiative, but clearly assumes the character of a criminal act.

The Holy Father, but also several of his collaborators and the senders of messages directed to him, have seen their rights to personal privacy and freedom of correspondence violated.

The Holy See will continue to explore the different implications of these acts of violation of the privacy and dignity of the Holy Father – as a person and as the supreme authority of the Church and Vatican City State – and will take appropriate steps so that the authors of the theft, those who received stolen property and those who disclosed confidential information, using illegally obtained private documents for commercial use, answer for their acts before the law. To this end, if necessary, the Holy See will seek international collaboration

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CANADA
The Globe and Mail

ISHANI NATH
Globe and Mail Update

Published Saturday, May. 19, 2012

More than two years after his sudden resignation and disappearance amid a growing sex-abuse scandal in his diocese, the former leader of Niagara-area Roman Catholics has been found in Montreal, located by a private investigator, according to reports.

Bishop James Wingle, 65, was photographed on April 27 after a church function outside the Marine-Reine-du-Monde Cathedral in downtown Montreal, wearing a clerical collar, the St. Catharines Standard newspaper reported. The former head of the St. Catharines Roman Catholic Diocese was served with notice of a civil lawsuit related to the sexual abuse.

Donald Grecco, a former priest in Welland, Ont., and Cayuga, Ont., plead guilty in March 2010 to sexually abusing three altar boys between 1978 and 1986. Victim Mike Blum came forward in 2005, during Bishop Wingle’s leadership, and told the church about the abuse. He later went to police.

Lawyers trying to find Bishop Wingle hired a private investigator, according to the Standard, to bring the bishop out of hiding to face lawsuits claiming that as the head of the diocese, he didn’t do enough to help victims such as Mr. Blum.

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UNITED STATES
OpEd News

By
Joey Piscitelli

Forty-two years ago this month, the legendary guitarist Jimi Hendrix mesmerized a crowd of devoted and hypnotized fans, at the Berkeley Community Theater in California, on May 30 th , 1970. I was one of those fortunate spectators in attendance that evening, and his performance changed my perspective of not only music and culture; but it corrected my confused spirituality as well.

His lyrics to his last title performed that evening are fittingly dauntless:

” If I don’t see you no more in this world, I’ll meet you in the next one, and don’t be late”.

He was born in Seattle, Washington in 1942, and named Johnny Allen Hendrix, a name I was not familiar with at the time. I also did not know I was attending his last performance in California; he died unexpectedly in London three and a half months later.

The astonishing truth about Hendrix was that he was left-handed, and at an early age he acquired a right handed guitar; and taught himself to play the guitar upside down- and backwards. This astounding capability led way to the capturing of a distortion of sound effects that were manipulated by the unequaled artist; light years ahead of his peers, and able to seduce the observer into a spellbinding trance. Jimi ultimately perfected this exceptional gift into an ostentatious result that was unprecedented in the music industry.

I was 15 years old when I witnessed the art and passion of the greatest guitarist of all time; and I have never been able to replace that experience with a comparable appreciation of surrealistic musical talent — and I don’t think I ever will.

Perhaps it was a fusion of my adolescent craving for a purpose as a survivor of clergy abuse – and my intrinsic hope for an escape to a spiritual world of grandeur. Whatever the reason, or the psychological diagnoses; I was transcended magically into a world of euphoria, intoxicated by the genius who used his guitar to propel me into the atmosphere.

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PHILADELPHIA (PA)
Philadelphia Priest Abuse Trial Blog

This post by Max Kennerly is cross-posted on his Litigation and Trial blog.

On Thursday, after the prosecution closed their case, Judge Sarmina swiftly dismissed the conspiracy charges against Monsignor Lynn and Father Brennan. Although the move caught some observers by surprise, it was likely not a surprise to the prosecutors. To prove a criminal conspiracy, the Commonwealth has to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that the defendants had a “shared criminal intent,” defined by Pennsylvania law as “the common understanding that a particular criminal objective is to be accomplished.” Commonwealth v. Lambert, 795 A.2d 1010 (Pa. Super. Ct. 2002). Whatever Monsignor Lynn’s crime was, the evidence did not show, beyond a reasonable doubt, that he intended for children to be molested. Thus, the conspiracy charge was plainly difficult to prove from the onset, and the dismissal is not surprising given the actual evidence presented.

Which brings us to the core question of this case: What was Monsignor Lynn’s intent?
For centuries, the English common law, and subsequently the American common law, has required that criminal convictions include proof of two separate elements: the mens rea (the guilty mind) and the actus reus (the guilty act). In Lynn’s case, he is charged with endangering the welfare of children, and I don’t think anyone can genuinely dispute that Monsignor Lynn’s actions in fact endangered the welfare of children within the Archdiocese of Philadelphia’s parishes and schools. There is no denying that, as of at least February 18, 1994, when Lynn drew up the list of 35 sexually abusive priests, Lynn’s acts — such as his involvement in transferring priests around once allegations were made — and his inactions — such as his failure to ever report any of them to the police — allowed abusive clergy to keep preying on children in the community. But it is a fundamental premise of our criminal law that the magnitude of the damage caused is not by itself enough to prove that a crime occurred, the prosecution must also prove he had the mens rea for the crime.

Proving mens rea is inherently difficult; “for who among men knows the thoughts of a man except the man’s spirit within him?” 1 Corinthians 2:11. It is only on television that defendants suddenly concede at trial their own guilt and malicious intent. In real courtrooms, defendants never confess on the stand, and they also typically have not left behind “smoking gun” emails or letters outlining their wicked plans. Mens rea is thus typically proven through circumstantial evidence, and that’s why the prosecution put on the case they did, which at many times looked more like an indictment of the Catholic Church itself than of Lynn personally.

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PHILADELPHIA (PA)
The Associated Press

By MARYCLAIRE DALE, Associated Press

PHILADELPHIA (AP) — Cardinal Anthony Bevilacqua died just weeks before his longtime aide went on trial in the alleged cover-up of sexual assaults by priests within the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Philadelphia.

Yet Bevilacqua is very much the ghost inside Courtroom 304 at the Philadelphia Criminal Justice Center. Rarely an hour goes by that his name is not invoked.

Witnesses portray him as a regal, sometimes feared authoritarian figure: “the man at the top,” in the words of city detective Joseph Walsh.

After eight weeks of evidence, prosecutors trying to convict Monsignor William Lynn of child endangerment rested Thursday without showing the videotaped deposition Bevilacqua gave two months before his Jan. 31 death. He was 88, and battling cancer and dementia. And he claimed to remember few details of the scores of abuse complaints that came in under his watch, according to a defense motion.

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CALIFORNIA
Orange County Weekly

By Gustavo ArellanoSat., May 19 2012 at 8:51 AM

Just got word that Tom Fuentes–a titan of local politics for forging the Orange County Republican Party into the freaks that they are today, and a gnat of a man for his role in the Catholic Diocese of Orange sex-abuse scandals–passed away last night after a long battle with cancer. He was 63.

The best that can be said about Fuentes is that he was colorful–if, by colorful, you mean you enjoyed a man who helped put poll guards outside Latino-heavy precincts during a 1988 election that cost Fuentes, Curt Pringle and others $400,000 in a civil judgement, or someone who once opined, “I can tell you the registration of the people in the house by observing the neatness of the lawn, what cars are in the driveway…and whether there is a leaky oil can in the driveway.”

Funny!

The worst that can be said about him is the truth: that he helped to protect pedophile priests.

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DEUTSCHLAND
Muenchner Kirchenradio

Der Berliner Kardinal Rainer Maria Woelki hat sich dankbar über die Aufdeckung des Skandals sexuellen Missbrauchs in der katholischen Kirche gezeigt. Wo Unrecht geschehe, müsse es öffentlich benannt werden; Missbrauch sei „zutiefst böse“, sagte Woelki am Donnerstag beim Katholikentag in Mannheim. Zugleich wies Woelki die Einschätzung zurück, dass zölibatär lebende Männer besonders anfällig seien, pädophile Straftaten zu verüben. Missbrauch geschehe auch durch verheiratete Männer, in Familien, Sportvereinen und in der Nachbarschaft. Auch die ehemalige Bundesministerin Andrea Fischer (Grüne), die aus der Kirche zunächst aus- und später wieder eintrat, wandte sich dagegen, dass es eine zwingende Verbindung zwischen Zölibat und Missbrauch gebe. Dies habe aber nichts damit zu tun, dass nicht prinzipiell über den Zölibat gesprochen werden solle. (kna/rv)

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DEUTSCHLAND
Fur Uns

Glück : “Die Kirche hat in ihrer langen Geschichte viele ernstere Krisen erlebt als gegenwärtig”

Passau (dapd). Der Präsident des Zentralkomitees der deutschen Katholiken, Alois Glück, sieht seine Kirche nicht in akuter Not. “Die Kirche ist in ihrer Wirklichkeit mehr als die Summe von Defiziten”, sagte Glück der “Passauer Neuen Presse” (Samstagsausgabe) laut Vorabbericht. In der Kirche und im Namen der Kirche werde unendlich viel Gutes geleistet.

“Die Kirche hat in ihrer langen Geschichte viele ernstere Krisen erlebt als gegenwärtig”, sagte Glück. Die katholische Kirche habe weit mehr als jede andere gesellschaftliche Gruppe das Problem des sexuellen Missbrauchs konsequent aufgearbeitet.

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DEUTSCHLAND
Rheinneckarblog

Mannheim/Regensburg, 18. Mai 2012. (red) Der Regensburger Journalist Stefan Aigner kommentiert in seinem Gastbeitrag das Thema Missbrauch von Schutzbefohlenen und sexuelle Gewalt in der katholischen Kirche. Aigner hat auf seinem Blog Regensburg-digital.de ausführlich über Missbrauchsfälle berichtet. Das Ergebnis: Er wurde wie der Spiegel auch von der katholischen Kirche verklagt, weil er Zahlungen an ein Missbrauchsopfer als “Schweigegeld” bezeichnet hatte.

Anm. d. Red.: Stefan Aigner ist verantwortlich für Regensburg-digital.de und zusammen mit dem für das Rheinneckarblog.de verantwortlichen Redakteur Hardy Prothmann Mitbegründer des bundesweiten lokaljournalistischen Netzwerkes istlokal.de. Der Regensburger Journalist Aigner betreibt eine sehr kritische Berichterstattung und wurde deshalb in der Vergangenheit schon mehrfach abgemahnt und verklagt. Von Rüstungskonzernen und eben auch von der katholischen Kirche, die ihn mundtot machen wollte. Zunächst wurde ihm durch das Hamburger Landgericht (bekannt für pressefeindliche Entscheidungen) in erster Instanz verboten, Zahlungen an ein Missbrauchsopfer als Schweigegeld zu benennen. Durch einen Spendenaufruf konnte er sich die Fortführung des Prozesses leisten. Das Hamburger Oberlandesgericht hob die Entscheidung in zweiter Instanz auf.

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DEUTSCHLAND
Stern

Mannheim (dpa) – Die Organisatoren des Katholikentages sind zufrieden: Die Kirche habe sich als lebendig präsentiert. Aber auch sie spüren Unruhe und Spannung. Kein Wunder: Prominente Katholiken üben massive Kritik.

Zum Abschluss des 98. Katholikentags in Mannheim zogen die Veranstalter eine überwiegend positive Bilanz und hoffen auf Impulse bei der Suche nach Auswegen aus der Kirchenkrise. «Wir haben eine lebendige, glaubensstarke und vitale Kirche erlebt», sagte der Präsident des Zentralkomitees der deutschen Katholiken, Alois Glück, am Samstag. Allerdings sei bei vielen der 80 000 Besucher auch Unruhe und Spannung deutlich geworden, wie es mit ihrer Kirche weitergeht.

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UNITED STATES
National Catholic Reporter

May. 18, 2012
By Robert Blair Kaiser

Commentary

Back in the 13th century, St. Thomas Aquinas warned his fellow scholars about taking positions that brought ridicule upon the church. “Ne fides rideatur,” he said. Literally, “Don’t let the faith be laughed at.”

Last week, we learned the U.S. bishops were launching an investigation into the supposedly subversive activities of our Catholic Girl Scouts. According to The Associated Press, Bishop Kevin Rhoades of Ft. Wayne-South Bend, Ind., and his fellows on the bishops’ Committee on Laity, Marriage, Family Life and Youth will be looking into the Scouts’ “possible problematic relationships” with groups like Doctors Without Borders, the Sierra Club, and Oxfam International “because they support family planning.”

Only a few weeks ago, we were laughing over the news that our bishops are investigating the doctrinal purity of our religious sisters, the most admired Catholics in the land. Who of us is not hooting this week over something even sillier, this latest attempt by our bishops to swoop down, Taliban-like, on our Girl Scouts?

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NORTHERN IRELAND
Belfast Telegraph

By Lesley Houston
Saturday, 19 May 2012

Deputy First Minister Martin McGuinness has denied that he asked Justice Minister David Ford to consult police about the possibility of prosecuting Cardinal Sean Brady.

Sinn Fein has said the MLA and MP instead called on Mr Ford to ensure police co-operated with a cross-border probe into paedophile priest Brendan Smyth’s reign of abuse on children.

Cardinal Brady’s position at the helm of the Catholic Church in Ireland has been in question in recent weeks over his handling of allegations against Smyth in 1975.

Cardinal Brady is accused of failing to act when alerted to abuse allegations when he was a young priest.

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ROMA
AGI

(AGI) – Roma, 19 mag. – Monsignor Pietro Vergari, fino al ’91 rettore della basilica di Santa Apolinare, dove si trova la tomba del boss della banda della Magliana, Enrico De Pedis, e’ indagato dalla Procura di Roma nell’ambito dell’inchiesta sulla scomparsa di Emanuela Orlandi, la ragazza di 15 anni sparita in circostanze misteriose il 22 giugno del 1983. Concorso nel sequestro aggravato dalla morte e dalla minore eta’ dell’ostaggio e’ il reato contestato dalla procura all’ex rettore Vergari, indagato (in tempi recenti) assieme a Sergio Virtu’, autista di De Pedis, Angelo Cassani, detto ‘Ciletto’, e a Gianfranco Cerboni, detto ‘Gigetto’, stretti collaboratori del boss il cui sepolcro e’ stato ispezionato lunedi’ scorso.

Quinta indagata e’ Sabrina Minardi, gia’ amante di ‘Renatino’, unica supertestimone (spesso caduta in contraddizione) di questa vicenda. La procura, nell’inverno del 2009, volendo capire le ragioni della sepoltura di De Pedis nella cripta della Basilica, raccolse le dichiarazioni, come persone informate sui fatti, della vedova Carla Di Giovanni, di monsignor Vergari e dell’attuale rettore don Petro Huidobro. Gli inquirenti intendevano accertare, in particolare, se qualcuno avesse pagato per facilitare le pratiche per la sepoltura del boss. Di ‘Renatino’ e dei suoi familiari era stato lo stesso Vergari, sul suo sito che risale a qualche anno fa, a rivelare la natura dei rapporti: “Enrico De Pedis veniva come tutti gli altri, e fuori dal carcere ci siamo visti piu’ volte: normalmente nella chiesa e altre volte fuori, per caso.

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ROMA
IGN

Roma – (Adnkronos) – L’ipotesi di accusa nei confronti dell’ex rettore della basilica di Sant’Apollinare è concorso in sequestro di persona. Pietro Orlandi all’Adnkronos: ”Mia sorella potrebbe essere stata portata lì il giorno stesso del rapimento”

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ROME
The Irish Times

PADDY AGNEW

Conspiracy theories prevail since a teenager disappeared close to the Vatican in 1983

IN A country sadly notorious for never-ending, unsolved “mysteries”, the disappearance of 15-year-old Emanuela Orlandi in June 1983 often seems the most far-fetched “cold case” of them all.

The Vatican, Opus Dei, Ali Agca, the Banco Ambrosiano and organised crime all feature in a grim tale that was rekindled last Monday when investigators opened the tomb of Enrico “Renatino” De Pedis, a mobster with Roman gang La Banda Della Magliana in search of leads in this 29-year-old mystery.

The Orlandi case has generated a tsunami of conspiracy theories and the known hard facts are very few. Emanuela Orlandi, the daughter of a lay employee in the prefecture of the papal household, disappeared after her flute lesson close to the Vatican on Wednesday, June 22nd, 1983.

Various reports suggested she was seen getting into a large, dark-coloured BMW car after the lesson. In the days and weeks after her disappearance, the Orlandi family received a number of anonymous calls that appeared to link her kidnapping to the fate of Turkish gunman Ali Agca, the man who tried to assassinate Pope John Paul II in 1981 and who was at that time in detention in Italy.

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ROME
The Telegraph (United Kingdom)

What is the Vatican’s sinister secret behind teenager Emanuela Orlandi’s 1983 disappearance?

Senior Catholic churchmen appear to have closed ranks against a police investigation.

By Peter Stanford
7:30AM BST 19 May 2012

It is more, says Pietro Orlandi, than any family should have to endure. For almost three decades, the Orlandis have carried on hoping that Pietro’s missing sister, Emanuela, who disappeared without trace aged 15 on a summer’s day in Rome in 1983, will come back to them. Or, at least, that they will find out what happened to her. “All these years without any explanation is absurd,” he says. “We have been waiting and waiting for an answer, but still it hasn’t come.”

This week has seen the latest twist in the heart-wrenching saga. On Monday, Italian police opened up the diamond-studded tomb of a murdered Italian gangster, Enrico de Pedis, in the crypt of the Basilica of Sant’Apollinaire, in the centre of Rome. They were acting on a tip-off made to Italian television’s equivalent of Crimewatch, in which an anonymous caller suggested that the key to solving the mystery of Emanuela’s fate lay in opening de Pedis’s tomb. Unidentified bones have now been taken away for analysis. All the police will say, for sure, is that they are not from de Pedis’s body.

Lurid allegations have always surrounded the Orlandis’ ordeal. Emanuela’s father, Ercole, was a lay official in the Vatican, working in the department that organises papal functions. Shortly after his daughter vanished on June 22, 1983, having attended her regular flute lesson, a series of telephone messages was received, linking her fate to that of Mehmet Ali Agca, the Turkish gunman who had attempted to assassinate Pope John Paul II in May 1981.

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DALLAS (TX)
CBS News

(CBS/AP) DALLAS, Texas – A Dallas County jury found a former Roman Catholic priest guilty of hiring a hit man to kill the man who accused him of sexual abuse.

The jury of three men and nine women returned its verdict on John M. Fiala after a few hours’ deliberation Thursday afternoon, The Dallas Morning News reported. Testimony began in the penalty phase and Fiala could be sentenced to up to life in prison for solicitation of capital murder.

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NEW YORK
The Guardian (United Kingdom)

Zoë Blackler in New York
guardian.co.uk, Friday 18 May 2012

The Brooklyn district attorney has set up a taskforce to combat the intimidation of child sexual abuse victims in the ultra-Orthodox Jewish community amid growing criticism of his handling of the issue.

In an interview on local New York television channel NY1, Charles Hynes said a cross-departmental team would meet next week to discuss how to “break down this wall of intimidation.”

Campaigners have accused Hynes of failing to protect victims and their families after they report abuse to the secular authorities, and of being unwilling to challenge rabbinical leaders who want to cover up abuse allegations.

This week the Guardian detailed how the friends and family of an alleged victim had been repeatedly threatened and harassed by supporters of the accused.

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GERMANY
The Local

Some sex abusers should continue to work for the Catholic church, a bishop said on Thursday, while a cardinal argued for some homosexual relationships to be treated like heterosexual ones.

There should not be a blanket ban from employing priests who have committed sexual crimes, argued Bishop of Trier Stephen Ackermann, the church official responsible for dealing with the sex abuse scandal in the church.

There are “a number of motives,” Ackermann told a crowd listening to a debate on the subject. It made sense to differentiate among the different types of offenders, he said. “Otherwise we could slide into a dynamic that calls for all of them to be imprisoned,” he said.

His comments were met with disgust from a sexual abuse victim in the audience, who said it was incomprehensible that offenders continued to work for the church.

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FLORIDA
13 News

TAVARES —
A Lake County jury has found the Florida Baptist Convention liable for a former pastor who pleaded guilty to sexually abusing a 13-year-old boy in Eustis.

Jurors concluded Thursday that the convention did not do enough to investigate the background of Douglas Myers, who helped start two churches in Lake County, after receiving funds and training from the convention.

Myers, 63, admitted to molesting the boy repeatedly over a six-month period ending in 2005. He is currently serving a seven-year sentence prison sentence in Polk County.

The convention argued it is more of a support organization for Baptist churches, and it did not have any control over Myers.

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CANADA
Injury Board Blog Network

Posted by John McKiggan
May 18, 2012

This week Albert LeBlanc, a former priest from the catholic Diocese of Yarmouth pleaded guilty to sexually abusing 6 young boys (now grown men) in the 1970’s and 1980’s. LeBlanc is facing 44 more charges which have been adjourned until August.

The Arch-Bishop of Halifax, who administers the Yarmouth Diocese issued a statement condemning LeBlanc’s acts.

The general consensus is that it was appropriate that LeBlanc pleaded guilty because he is taking responsibility for his actions and it saves the victims from having to testify about some very painful and traumatic memories.

However I was contacted by one of LeBlanc’s victims who viewed it a different way. He was disappointed that he would not be able to face LeBlanc in court. He feels cheated.

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CANADA
Welland Tribune

By Joe Barkovich, The Tribune

The view from the pew is not a pleasant one. As a practising Roman Catholic, I do not like what I have been seeing.

I live with, and try to cope with, the sordid and sad stories at hand. On one hand, there are the civil suits against our diocese (and former priest Donald Grecco) stemming from the latter’s sexual abuse of three altar boys (see Thursday’s edition, page 1, Justice sought and Release surprises victim).

On the other hand, there is the disappearance of our former bishop, James Matthew Wingle.

I cannot speak for others: parishioners who sit in front of me, behind me, across from me.

I only know, with certainty, what I feel. Words that come to mind most readily include: disappointment, disgust, revulsion, anger, confusion, sorrow.

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DALLAS (TX)
My Fox DFW

[with video]

By: Melissa Cutler

DALLAS –
A former Catholic priest convicted in a murder-for-hire plot was sentenced to 60 years in prison late Friday afternoon.

John Fiala was convicted for trying to hire someone to kill a 16-year-old who accused him of sexual assault. The 53-year-old Garland resident was once a priest in the San Antonio area.

Prosecutors said he discussed the plot with a neighbor who turned him in. Then police set up an undercover sting operation where Fiala offered to pay a hit man $5,000.

Fiala’s attorneys tried to argue that a neighbor was the one who hatched the scheme. But Fiala testified his neighbor had no motive.

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NAPLES (FL)
Naples Daily News

Voice of the Faithful (VOF) was formed nationally in 2002, in the wake of the wave of publicity surrounding “pedophile priests,” Catholic clergymen who molested children, and the long cover-up by the church hierarchy. The local group was established the same year.

“We have three goals — to protect and support survivors of sexual abuse by Catholic priests, to support priests of integrity in any way we can, and to reshape the institutional Catholic Church — the bureaucracy.”

On Wednesday, Feb. 29, the local group, about 75 of approximately 400 total members locally, met for an anniversary Mass in the cafeteria at St. Matthew’s House, the homeless shelter on Davis Boulevard in East Naples. Surrounded by the prep work of an institutional kitchen, a retired Catholic priest, the Rev. Thomas Glackin, set up his candle and chalice of wine on a folding table, and offered comfort and Holy Communion to the VOF members. He spoke of Bishop Oscar Romero of San Salvador, “who lost his voice for speaking truth to power. None of the bishops stood with him, and he was assassinated,” recounted Glackin.

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IRELAND
The Irish Times

DERMOT BOLGER

The Norbertines cast out Bruno Mulvihill as resolutely as they shielded Brendan Smyth

IN LAST week’s Anglo-Celt report on past teachers of St Patrick’s College in Cavan, the former priest, Seán Brady, received little attention. Some former students, however, recalled a contentious, dedicated teacher before he was laicised (and ostracised) in 1977, for challenging his bishop’s authority over an affair now as forgotten as he is.

Little is known about his life today. Some claimed he survived by selling encyclopaedias, but all agreed his suicidal breach of discipline ended a career that once promised high office. One interviewee said he reminded him of the MUTV pundit Bertie Ahern, who likewise seemed destined for high office before destroying his career in 1986 – expelled from Fianna Fáil for questioning his taoiseach about blank cheques.

The above paragraphs are what historians call counterfactuals: exploring alternative outcomes of past events. Today Seán Brady is a cardinal, and I hope he enjoys a long retirement when his superiors deem it expedient to remove him from his untenable position.

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CANADA
The Standard

By Erica Bajer, The Standard

Friday, May 18, 2012

ST. CATHARINES – With the help of a private investigator, a London, Ont., law firm has located and served Bishop James Wingle in connection with a civil suit against him and former priest Donald Grecco.

Wingle, the former leader of Niagara’s Catholic community, resigned and disappeared from the area in early 2010, giving very little explanation as to why.

Lawyers for three men who sued Grecco, Wingle, Wingle’s predecessor Bishop John O’Mara and the Roman Catholic Diocese of St. Catharines have been searching for him since he left Niagara.

He was named as a defendant in three different lawsuits, which allege Wingle was negligent in failing to act appropriately once he became aware of the allegations against Grecco.

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DALLAS (TX)
NewsWest 9

Staff Report
NewsWest 9

DALLAS – A former Catholic priest has been sentenced for hiring a hit man to kill a teen he’s accused of raping.

That teen was found in Big Spring where police say John Fiala had set the boy up in an apartment and enrolled him in school.

A Dallas jury sentenced John Fiala to 60 years in prison for the murder for hire plot. He’ll be eligible for parole in 15 years.

John Fiala was convicted on Thursday.

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DALLAS (TX)
San Antonio Express-News

DALLAS (AP) — A Dallas jury has sentenced a former Roman Catholic priest to 60 years in prison for plotting the death of a man who accused him of sexual abuse.

Prosecutors had asked for a life sentence for 53-year-old John M. Fiala during Friday’s closing arguments.

Defense attorney Rex Gunter said anything more than 15 years would be a “travesty.”

The Dallas Morning News (http://bit.ly/Kucuq3 ) reports the ex-priest will be eligible for parole after 15 years.

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DALLAS (TX)
The Dallas Morning News

By Scott Goldstein / Reporter
sgoldstein@dallasnews.com
4:35 pm on May 18, 2012

John Fiala also faces sex assault charges in Edwards County.

UPDATE AT 4:35: The jury sentenced Fiala to 60 years in prison. He will be eligible for parole after 15 years.

UPDATE AT 11:45: In closing arguments, prosecutors asked for a life sentence for ex-priest John Fiala. Defense attorney Rex Gunter said anything more than 15 years would be a “travesty.”

Prosecutor Brandon Birmingham also asked jurors to assess a fine of $5,000.16. Fiala had agreed to pay $5,000 to have his sex abuse accuser killed. The abuse allegedly began when the boy was 16 years old.

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

BY ROBERT PATRICK • rpatrick@post-dispatch.com > 314-621-5154

ST. LOUIS • A man recently released from a seven-year prison term is fighting an attempt by Australia to extradite him to face allegations he abused students he taught there at least 20 years ago.

David Kramer, now 51, is due in U.S. District Court in St. Louis today for a hearing prompted by allegations involving his tenure at a school in St. Kilda, a Melbourne suburb.

Australia’s extradition documents claim Kramer fondled or otherwise indecently assaulted four boys, 10 and 11, from 1989-92, both in and out of school. One former student accused him of hundreds of incidents. In December, he was charged with multiple counts of indecent assault and indecent acts.

“Mr. Kramer vehemently denies everything coming out of Australia,” responded one of his lawyers here, Matthew Chase.

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ST. LOUIS (MO)
Failed Messiah

Shmarya Rosenberg • FailedMessiah.com

David Kramer is due in federal court in St. Louis today for an extradition hearing prompted by child sexual abuse allegations made by former students at Chabad’s flagship school in school in St. Kilda, Australia, a Melbourne suburb.

Kramer allegedly sexually abused children in Chabad’s Yeshiva College. When Rabbi Yitzchok Dovid Groner, the head of Chabad in Australia, was confronted with allegations that Kramer was molesting children, he helped Kramer flee Australia and avoid arrest by Australian police.

Kramer spent a decade in Israel and then went to St. Louis, Missouri, where he molested more children. Kramer was arrested there in 2007 and charged with sexual misconduct and statutory sodomy when a non-Chabad Orthodox rabbi, Zev Smason, reported him to police after Kramer fondled a 12-year-old boy and masturbated in front of him. Kramer pleaded guilty and was sentenced to seven years in prison. He was recently released.

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APPLETON (WI)
Press-Gazette

Written by
Jim Collar
Gannett Wisconsin Media

APPLETON — A jury will begin deliberations Monday to determine if the Catholic Diocese of Green Bay covered up whether a priest who later was convicted of molesting two boys was a danger to children.

The diocese closed its case Friday in an Outagamie County civil lawsuit filed by brothers Todd and Troy Merryfield.

The Merryfields, who were 12 and 14 when they were molested, claim the Roman Catholic diocese was aware former priest John Feeney sexually assaulted others before 1978, when it assigned him to Freedom’s St. Nicholas Church.

Jurors will return to the courtroom at 8:45 a.m. Monday to receive their instructions before attorneys make their closing arguments.

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VATICAN CITY
Chicago Tribune

Philip Pullella
Reuters

VATICAN CITY (Reuters) – Pope Benedict on Friday held out an olive branch to American Roman Catholic nuns, who are reeling from a stinging Vatican report that criticized them as being feminist and politicized.

“I wish to reaffirm my deep gratitude for the example of fidelity and self-sacrifice given by many consecrated women (nuns) in your country,” he said in an address to visiting U.S. bishops.

In a reference to the malaise felt by many American nuns after the report issued last month, he said he hoped that “this moment of discernment will bear abundant spiritual fruit for the revitalization and strengthening of their communities in fidelity to Christ and the Church …”

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UNITED STATES
The Daily Beast

The New York Times’ reports on child molestation are just the tip of iceberg, reports Steven I. Weiss.

If a community can’t protect its children, what value is that community to anyone in it?

That’s the question New York’s ultra-Orthodox community has yet to answer after decades of stories about how its insular practices and suspicion of outside authorities have placed its members, and especially its children, at risk.

Take circumcision. At least two babies have died in the past decade, and several more have faced severe health consequences, because they were infected with herpes simplex during a rare and controversial part of the ritual used by a very few ultra-Orthodox mohels in which the mohel places his mouth directly on the wound and sucks it, according to New York City health authorities. My 2006 investigation showed that the New York State Health Department stepped in to give the practice a green light despite conducting almost no research or discussion into the matter, but after receiving guidance from Hasidic leaders.

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UNITED STATES
New Jersey Jewish Standard

Larry Yudelson
Published: 18 May 2012

For several years, at least, Agudath Israel of America, the organizational arm of ultra-Orthodox Judaism, has demanded that allegations of child abuse be vetted by rabbis rather than directly reported to police. Increasingly, that position is coming in for harsh criticism. Much of that criticism is coming from within the ultra-Orthodox community itself, where advocates of victims of child molestation accuse their own rabbinic leadership of covering up the crimes of molesters, many of whom continued to prey on children for decades.

Agudah’s position is at odds with laws in New York and New Jersey that mandate reporting of child abuse in many circumstances.

It also is a position that is rejected by the Modern Orthodox-leaning Rabbinic Council of America, which ruled unequivocally that “those with reasonable suspicion or first-hand knowledge of abuse or endangerment have a religious obligation to report that abuse to the secular legal authorities without delay.” Virtually all Orthodox synagogues in northern New Jersey are aligned with the RCA rather than Agudath Israel, whose New Jersey strongholds are in Passaic and Lakewood.

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CANADA
Brantford Expositor

By Michael-Allan Marion, Brantford Expositor

Friday, May 18, 2012

A Brantford priest has been charged after city police received a complaint of an assault against a young girl.

Police say in a release that the girl reported she was assaulted sometime between September 2011 and October 2011 at St. Basil’s Church on Palace Street. She alleged that the accused grabbed hold of her arm, pinned her down in a chair and prevented her from leaving.

The victim was not injured, police say.

After an investigation, Rev. Mark L. Sullivan, 49, of Palace Street has been charged with assault.

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IRELAND
Irish Independent

By Mark Hilliard

Friday May 18 2012

FATHER Kevin Reynolds told his barrister he would “rather be shot” than endure the serious allegations made against him by ‘Prime Time Investigates’.

The Galway priest also told senior counsel Jack Fitzgerald of his fear of what would be said about him during a court hearing of the civil proceedings.

Brief details of his consultation with Mr Fitzgerald featured in a discussion between the barrister and the High Court’s taxing master, Declan O’Neill.

Mr O’Neill was the court official who reviewed the level of legal fees payable to Fr Reynolds’s solicitor Robert Dore and his legal team.

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UNITED STATES
National Catholic Reporter

by Joshua J. McElwee on May. 18, 2012 NCR Today

In light of historic criminal trials of church officials this year in Philadelphia and Kansas City, that’s the question many Catholics are asking.

Both trials find church administrators on the defensive for not utilizing their lay review boards, which were set up by the U.S. bishops’ in 2002, when they passed the Charter for the Protection of Children and Young People, and were designed to help bishops evaluate allegations of clergy sexual misconduct.

Yet, as a report in U.S. Catholic today makes clear, the Kansas City and Philadelphia cases show a key flaw: The value of the boards hinges entirely on how bishops choose to use them.

A reminder:

In Philadelphia, a grand jury report released last year (the third such governmental investigation into the archdiocese’s handling of abuse cases) found the archdiocese had left 41 priests who had been credibly accused of abuse in ministry.

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DALLAS (TX)
Daily Mail (United Kingdom)

‘Evil’ ex-priest who plotted the murder of teen who accused him of rape at gunpoint sentenced to life in prison

A former Roman Catholic priest accused of sexually-assaulting a boy at gun point and then hiring a hit man to kill him has been charged with life imprisonment.

John Fiala met with the alleged hit man in November 2010 and offered to pay him $5,000 to murder the youth, instructing him to ‘chop his head off’.

The allegations of abuse were made by a 16-year-old boy in April 2010.

The teen alleges that the abuse took place during private catechism classes at the Sacred Heart church, Rocksprings, where Fiala was an administrator, and in a hotel room in 2007 and 2008.

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CALIFORNIA
National Catholic Reporter

May. 18, 2012
By Joshua J. McElwee

SANTA CLARA, Calif. — Though a daylong summit on the clergy sexual abuse crisis in mid-May brought together a wide-range of leading experts on the topic — from those who firmly defend the U.S. bishops’ moves to address the issue to those who sometimes vehemently point to their weaknesses — each seemed to find a key point of resonance.

From lawyers, sociologists, victims’ advocates and a former employee of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, there was a refrain: While there’s no doubt that abuse reporting and education programs have vastly improved in the 10 years since widespread coverage of sexual abuse by priests rocked the U.S. Catholic church, the system set up by the country’s bishops to address the problem is fundamentally flawed.

Ultimately, said nearly all of the experts at the May 11 event at Jesuit-run Santa Clara University here, the key flaw is in the fact that there is no internal accountability for bishops who do not report abuse or who do not follow the recommendations of the Charter for the Protection of Children and Young People, passed by the bishops’ conference in 2002.

In a keynote address, Jesuit Fr. Tom Reese, a senior fellow at Georgetown University’s Woodstock Theological Center in Washington, put it starkly.

“We still do not have a system for bringing bishops to account,” he said. “It is a disgrace that only one bishop (Cardinal [Bernard] Law of Boston) resigned because of his failure to deal with the sexual abuse crisis. The church would be in a much better place today if 30 or more bishops had stood up, acknowledged their mistakes, taken full responsibility, apologized and resigned.

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DEUTSCHLAND
Die Rhein-Neckar Zeitung

Von Alexander Albrecht

Mannheim. Ist das Thema durch? 2010 erschütterte der Missbrauchsskandal die Katholische Kirche in Deutschland. Kaum ein Tag verging, an dem nicht ein weiterer Fall an die Öffentlichkeit drang. Und heute? Nur knapp ein Drittel der Stühle im Mahler-Saal des Rosengartens sind besetzt. “Zuhören statt verleugnen – verändern statt beschönigen”, ist die Gesprächsrunde überschrieben. Untertitel: Kirche stellt sich den Fragen von Opfern sexuellen Missbrauchs. “Vor zwei Jahren hätten wir hier noch anbauen müssen”, sagt Moderator Joachim Frank.

Wer Matthias Katsch gestern Nachmittag zuhört, der ist sich sicher: das Thema sexueller Missbrauch ist nicht durch. Keinesfalls. Katsch ist in den 70er-Jahren am Berliner Canisius-Kolleg von Priestern vergewaltigt worden. Lange hat er geschwiegen, dann gründet er die Initiative “Eckiger Tisch”. Als Opfer sieht sich Katsch nicht. Nicht mehr. “Ich bin ein Betroffener.” Das erste Verbrechen begehe immer der Täter, sagt Katsch. Das zweite die Institution. Er meint die Kirche. Ihre Führung und Leitung hätten bei den Missbrauchsfällen “völlig versagt”. Unter die Haut geht, wenn Katsch sagt: “Du lebst ein Leben mit einem Giftpfeil im Herzen”.

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DEUTSCHLAND
netzwerkB

Der britische Kronanwalt Geoffrey Robertson ist Gründer und Leiter der größten britischen Kanzlei für Menschenrechte. Er war in zahlreichen Ländern als Anwalt in bedeutenden verfassungs-, straf- und völkerrechtlichen Fällen tätig. Er leitete Missionen für Amnesty International und vertrat die Menschenrechtsorganisation Human Rights Watch. Robertson ist Mitglied der angesehenen Anwaltsvereinigung Middle Temple. 2008 wurde er als herausragender Jurist zum Mitglied des Internal Justice Council der UNO ernannt.

In seinem Buch „Angeklagt: Der Papst“ (2011) nennt Robertson die deutschen Verjährungsfristen bei sexuellem Kindesmissbrauch „einen schwerwiegenden Makel des deutschen Rechts“.

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DEUTSCHLAND
MissBiT

Diese und andere Aussagen von Bischof Ackermann auf der gestrigen Podiumsdiskussion auf dem Katholikentag.

Bischof Ackermann räumt ein, dass er am Anfang noch darüber nachgedacht habe, ob die Betroffenen “nicht ein bisschen dankbarer” ihm gegenüber sein könnten.

“Das Thema ist nicht durch” und dürfe nicht wieder in eine “Tabuzone” verdrängt werden, mahnte Ackermann am Donnerstag auf dem Katholikentag in Mannheim.

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DALLAS (TX)
The Dallas Morning News

By Scott Goldstein / Reporter
sgoldstein@dallasnews.com
8:25 am on May 18, 2012

Ex-priest John Fiala will soon learn whether he’ll be sentenced to life in prison or something less for trying to hire a hit man to kill a teenage boy who accused him of sexual assault.

The Dallas County jury that convicted Fiala yesterday is hearing testimony this morning in the punishment phase of the trial. Among those expected to testify is the abuse accuser, who is now 20.

The man is not being named because The Dallas Morning News generally does not identify possible victims of sex crimes. He also testified on Wednesday.

The 53-year-old former Roman Catholic priest faces separate charges he sexually assaulted the boy in West Texas several years ago, including at gunpoint. The purported hit man he tried to hire to kill the boy in a 2010 meeting in Dallas was actually an undercover Texas Department of Public Safety agent.

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IRELAND
Vatican Radio

In his 2010 Letter to the Catholics of Ireland, Pope Benedict XVI spoke of his hope that the 50th International Eucharistic Congress would be part of the process of healing and renewal for the community in the wake of the abuse scandal.

When the week long Congress opens in Dublin’s RDS arena Sunday, June 10th, a large granite rock hewn from the Wicklow mountains will be unveiled, engraved with a prayer composed by a survivor of clerical abuse. Listen:

It has been called ‘The Healing Stone’ and it will remain as a permanent reminder of the human toll of the abuse of children, a lasting memorial to the bravery and heroism of victims, a constant prayer for reconciliation within the Church in Ireland, carved in stone.

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AUSTRIA
Austrian Independent

Viennese Archbishop Christoph Cardinal Schönborn is upping the pressure on Helmut Schüller’s Preachers’ Initiative.

Schönborn, the highest representative of the Austrian Catholic Church, told Italian newspaper La Stampa yesterday (Thurs): “Now is the time to clarify the various issues. We might take disciplinary measures, but I hope that this is not necessary.”

The conservative Conference of Austrian Bishops has engaged in what is developing into an intensifying war of words with the movement established by Schüller last summer. The Austrian Preachers’ Initiative – which consists of around 400 priests – is calling on the Austrian Church and Catholic priests who have not yet joined them to be disobedient towards the Vatican.

Schüller, who heads the parish of Probstdorf in Lower Austria, calls on the Vatican to allow married men to become priests. He said such reforms were needed to avoid a further increase of membership cancellations. Schüller is also in favour to abolish the celibate. Such reforms could make becoming priest a considerable option to young men, he claimed.

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IRELAND
BBC News

Just 20 out of a total of 150 priests in the Armagh archdiocese turned up to a recent gathering organised in support of Cardinal Sean Brady.

The figure was revealed by The Irish Catholic newspaper.

Several priests in the diocese told the paper the lack of support was indicative of low morale among the clergy there.

A spokesman for Dr Brady told The Irish Catholic the poor turnout may have been because of short notice.

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IRELAND
Irish Independent

By Garry O’Sullivan

Friday May 18 2012

CARDINAL Sean Brady has suffered a new blow after the majority of priests in his diocese snubbed a meeting organised as a show of support for the embattled leader of the Catholic Church in Ireland.

Just 20 of 150 priests in the Armagh Archdiocese invited to attend a prayer gathering in support of Dr Brady actually showed up — with many privately voicing concerns about his leadership.

The poor turn-out at the meeting is the most overt response by rank-and-file priests to new allegations surrounding Cardinal Brady’s handling of abuse allegations made against notorious paedophile Fr Brendan Smyth.

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NEDERLAND
WODC

Publicatiegegevens
Inhoudsopgave: Samenvatting 1.Inleiding
2.Algemene resultaten
3.Gerapporteerde problemen van slachtoffers van seksueel kindermisbruik
4.Moderatoren van de relatie tussen SKM en gerapporteerde problemen
5.Samenvatting en conclusies
Summary
Literatuur
Bijlagen

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NEDERLAND
Trouw

Slachtoffers kindermisbruik vaker slaapstoornis, epilepsie en tienerzwangerschappen

Slachtoffers van seksueel kindermisbruik hebben meer problemen dan mensen die niet seksueel zijn misbruikt. Veelvoorkomend zijn angst- en slaapstoornissen, epileptische aanvallen zonder dat daar een lichamelijke oorzaak voor is en extreme afhankelijkheid van anderen. Ook komen tienerzwangerschappen onder misbruikslachtoffers vaker voor.

Dat staat in een rapport van het Wetenschappelijk Onderzoek- en Documentatiecentrum (WODC) van het ministerie van Justitie, dat woensdag is gepubliceerd. Het WODC heeft alle rapportages over problemen na seksueel kindermisbruik sinds 2000 tegen het licht gehouden op verzoek van het Openbaar Ministerie. Aanleiding voor het verzoek is de poging van het OM om pedofielenvereniging Martijn te laten ontbinden.

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NEDERLAND
NRC Handelsblad

door Peter Zantingh

In een opvanghuis in Nieuwleusen zijn kinderen mogelijk jarenlang zowel lichamelijk als geestelijk mishandeld. Er is aangifte gedaan, bevestigt de politie tegenover persbureau Novum na berichtgeving hierover in de Wegener-kranten vanochtend.

De mishandelingen zouden voornamelijk zijn gepleegd door een vrouw die jarenlang als pleegmoeder optrad.

Kinderen zouden tussen 1980 en 2010 in opvanghuis De Loot onder meer met stokken en mattenkloppers zijn geslagen. Ook moesten ze voor straf in de kou op de gang slapen, werden ze buiten in de kou gezet of onder een koude douche geplaatst. Daarnaast werden ze vastgebonden aan stoelen en soms publiekelijk vernederd en getreiterd. Bovendien zijn er serieuze signalen van seksueel misbruik.

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KANADA
kath.net

Kanada: Der ehemalige Bischof Lahey sitzt derzeit 15 Monate Haft ab. Psychiater bescheinigte Lahey eine sexuelle Neigung zu männlichen Heranwachsenden und jungen Männern sowie sadomasochistische Fantasien.

Antigonish (kath.net/KNA) Der wegen des Besitzes von Kinderpornografie verurteilte kanadische Bischof Raymond Lahey (Foto) ist vom Vatikan in den Laienstand zurückversetzt worden. Damit sei der frühere Diözesanleiter von Antigonish mit einer der schwersten Strafen der katholischen Kirche belegt worden, erklärte das Bistum laut der kanadischen Zeitung «Winnipeg Free Press» am Mittwoch. «Die Entscheidung erinnert uns alle an den schweren Schaden, der durch jede Form von Pornografie entsteht», zitierte die Zeitung den amtierenden Bischof Brian Joseph Dunn. Die Sanktion sei zugleich das Ergebnis des staatlichen wie des kircheninternen Strafprozesses.

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DEUTSCHLAND
Welt

Mannheim (dapd). Der Umgang mit Missbrauchsopfern und den Tätern ist nach wie vor ein großes Thema in der katholischen Kirche. Auf dem Katholikentag in Mannheim hat sich der Missbrauchsbeauftragte der Deutschen Bischofskonferenz, Stephan Ackermann, am Donnerstag den Fragen früherer Missbrauchsopfer gestellt. Der Bischof von Trier verteidigte dabei die Praxis, wonach in Deutschland kein generelles Beschäftigungsverbot für Priester besteht, die wegen Sexualdelikten straffällig geworden sind.

Das hatte ein Opfer unter dem Applaus der Zuhörer zuvor kritisiert. Es sei nicht nachvollziehbar, dass ein solcher Täter weiterhin für die Kirche arbeite – “und das, obwohl der Täter das Vertrauen der Menschen massiv missbraucht hat.” Ackermann selbst war zuletzt in die Kritik geraten, da nach Angaben einer Opferorganisation Pädophile als Seelsorger in seinem Bistum eingesetzt waren.

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DEUTSCHLAND
MissBiT

[mit Karte]

Tatorte sexuellen Missbrauchs durch Angehörige der katholischen Kirche im Bistum Trier sowie Einsatzorte der Priester, die von Betroffenen eidesstattlich des Missbrauchs beschuldigt werden.

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NEW YORK
Huffington Post

Rabbi Asher Lipner, Ph.D

The special treatment given by prosecutors to Orthodox Jewish sex offenders, reported on extensively over the past six years in The Jewish Week and on the blog Failed Messiah, was first documented in a Newsday series in 2003 regarding the failed police investigation in Brooklyn of infamous alleged serial child molester Avraham Mondrowitz, revealing how he was allowed to flee to Israel and avoid extradition due to political pressure from his community. A retired Police Detective expressed the frustration of the “handcuffed” police department who had repeatedly discovered that there were “two justice systems in Brooklyn; one for Orthodox Jews and the other for everyone else.”

While Brooklyn District Attorney Charles Hynes boasts that he stemmed the tide of child molestation in Brooklyn’s Catholic community by insisting that the Bishops sign a “memo of agreement” to turn over all allegations directly to his office, this is a far cry from his agreement with the Agudah rabbis allowing them to decide which alleged molesters are reported to the police, as was exposed by Failed Messiah and repeated last week in a New York Times article. Regardless of Mr. Hynes’ claims that he “expects” that these allegations will “also be reported to his office,” he has never criticized the rabbis for not reporting them despite the fact that there exists not a single documented case in which a leading rabbi in Brooklyn has reported a molester to the police.

An account detailed in “Tempest and the Temple: Jewish Communities and Child Sex Scandals” (Brandeis University Press, 2009), citing research published in 2008 in the Journal of Child Sexual Abuse, documents that in at least one case Mr. Hynes allowed a Beit Din (rabbinical court) lead by Rabbi Dovid Feinstein to decide the outcome of a grand jury investigation. Following the Beit Din ruling in March of 2000, the D.A. dropped charges against Rabbi Shlomo Hafner of molesting a 10-year-old hearing-impaired boy, with one of the rabbis bragging that “We educated the D.A. on how to properly conduct a sex abuse trial.”

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NEW YORK
WNYC

Friday, May 18, 2012

By Fred Mogul

The recent focus on the problem of childhood sexual abuse in the ultra-Orthodox Jewish community may help spur a Queens legislator’s attempt to make it easier to prosecute or sue alleged sex offenders. But her bill is getting push back from religious leaders who worry it could open a floodgate of lawsuits that would bankrupt yeshivas and other institutions.

Assemblywoman Margaret Markey wants to extend the statute of limitations on sexual abuse cases, which currently only allows victims to pursue perpetrators in criminal or civil court for five years after they turn 18 – in other words, until age 23.Markey has proposed doubling that to ten years – extending the statute of limitations to age 28.

“This legislation is to identify pedophiles and hold them accountable, and to identify those who have protected them,” Markey said, “And only by doing that can we protect children.”

Markey’s bill also allows a limited-time-only complete suspension of the statute of limitations, so that people of all ages would have one year to bring suit against alleged abusers, once the law goes into effect. After those initial 12 months, people would be limited to one decade from their 18th birthday to make criminal or civil complaints.

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NEW JERSEY
The Star-Ledger

By Julia Terruso/The Star-Ledger

PLAINFIELD — It was a Tuesday evening nearly a decade ago, the woman said, when she was just a girl babysitting youngsters in her church’s basement. She said her pastor walked down the stairs, and then he called her over to sit on his lap.

She was 11 and new to the job, but even then, she said, she knew what followed was inappropriate.

“I felt him bouncing … against me,” said the woman, now 19 and identified only as R.L. “I told him, ‘My mom said I was too big to be sitting on anybody’s lap.’ ”

R.L. spoke steadily today in Superior Court in Elizabeth as she testified about the first time her pastor allegedly sexually abused her. She said the same situation played out several times a month for three years.

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SEATTLE (WA)
Q13 Fox

Dana Rebik
Q13 FOX News Reporter

SEATTLE—
Seattle police say they believe that for at least the past 10 years well-known church musician and singer Timothy Dampier has been sexually abusing young boys — and they are asking that anyone who might have been victimized to call them.

Dampier was arrested in May 2011 after a young man told a pastor about the abuse he says he endured when he was 9 years old.

“To think about it was sickening and degrading and I mean honestly there was no lower point in my life,” said Kenny M.

In November 2010, Kenny told his pastor, Robert Lee Manaway, about the abuse, but court documents show Manaway never reported it. Then Kenny told the reverend of the New Hope Baptist Church, where Dampier had recently been hired as an organist.

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CHICAGO (IL)
nwi

By Gregory Tejeda Times Correspondent

CHICAGO | A man who volunteered to run youth programs with ties to a United Methodist Church in the East Side neighborhood pleaded not guilty Thursday to criminal charges alleging he had sexual contact with a 17-year-old girl.

Salvador Alvarez, 42, appeared before Associate Judge Arthur F. Hill Jr., at the Criminal Courts building, where he entered his plea to three counts of criminal sexual assault and 11 counts of aggravated criminal sexual abuse.

Tandra Simonton, a spokeswoman for the Cook County state’s attorney’s office, said Alvarez is scheduled to appear in court again on June 14. He remains free on a $250,000 bail.

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ANTIOCH (CA)
KGO

[with video]

Carolyn Tyler

ANTIOCH, Calif. (KGO) — Six sisters from Antioch are suing the city, the county and their church. They’re accusing public and church officials of failing to respond to years of sexual abuse by their own parents.

The Dutro girls were four biological siblings and two cousins, all raised as sisters.

“Their story is unimaginable, but the scariest part is that it’s true,” the Dutro’s attorney Jason Runckel said.

The sisters are now adults looking back on what they say were 20 years, from the time they were toddlers, of sexual abuse by their parents.

The oldest daughter, Amber, who is now 32, told ABC7 News by phone, that those they turned to for help ignored them.

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MENDHAM (NJ)
Daily Record

Written by
Peggy Wright
@peggywrightdr

A 38-year-old Mendham man was indicted Thursday on charges he used a sledgehammer to demolish a monument to victims of child sexual abuse outside St. Joseph’s Roman Catholic Church in Mendham.

The monument has been rebuilt and was dedicated last month.

A Morris County grand jury issued an indictment that charges Gordon D. Ellis with criminal mischief by causing $2,000 or more in damage to property, unlawful possession of a weapon, desecrating religious or sectarian premises, and possession of a weapon for an unlawful purpose.

Ellis, who is receiving mental health treatment at an inpatient facility, is accused of using a sledgehammer Nov. 18 to destroy the monument, a black basalt millstone. Authorities said they believe that Ellis, an unemployed chef, was intoxicated at the time.

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DALLAS (TX)
The Wichita Eagle

By The Associated Press

DALLAS — A former Roman Catholic priest with ties to the Kansas City area was found guilty Thursday of plotting the death of a man who accused him of sexual abuse.

The Dallas County jury returned its verdict on John M. Fiala after a few hours’ deliberation.

After the verdict, testimony began in the penalty phase. Fiala could be sentenced to up to life in prison for solicitation of capital murder.

Prosecutors alleged that Fiala tried to hire a neighbor’s brother to kill the man who accused the priest of abusing him in 2008. That’s when the man was 16 and Fiala was the priest at a rural West Texas parish.

Defense attorney Rex Gunter told the jury that Fiala had no true intentions of having his accuser killed.

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APPLETON (WI)
Fox 11

APPLETON – A witness for the Catholic Diocese of Green Bay admitted today in court that he heard rumors about a now former priest’s alleged improper behavior, but did nothing about it.

Troy and Todd Merryfield are suing the diocese. The brothers claim the diocese knew now former priest John Feeney had inappropriate contact with children before he sexual abused them in 1978.

Thursday was day four of the trial.

As a Vicar with the Green Bay Diocese in the 1970’s Monsignor Paul Koszarek was a leader among the other priests. He knew John Feeney.

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PHILADELPHIA (PA)
The New York Times

By JON HURDLE and ERIK ECKHOLM

Published: May 17, 2012

PHILADELPHIA — After seven weeks of testimony, prosecutors on Thursday rested their case against Msgr. William J. Lynn, the first senior Roman Catholic official in the United States to face criminal charges of covering up sexual abuse by priests and reassigning those suspected of child molesting to unwary new parishes.

Monsignor Lynn, 61, served from 1992 to 2004 as secretary for clergy for the 1.5 million-member Archdiocese of Philadelphia, in charge of job assignments for priests and investigating complaints about their behavior. He is not accused of committing sexual abuses himself, but rather of endangering minors and conspiring with other officials to protect accused priests.

In rulings on Thursday, Judge M. Teresa Sarmina of Common Pleas Court dismissed one of two conspiracy counts against Monsignor Lynn, involving allegations of efforts to protect the Rev. James J. Brennan, a priest who remains a co-defendant in the current trial and is accused of the attempted rape of a child.

But Judge Sarmina left intact the charges that Monsignor Lynn endangered two minors by failing to remove errant priests and also a second conspiracy charge, that he cooperated with other officials to protect a former priest, Edward V. Avery, who recently pleaded guilty to sex abuse.

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DALLAS (TX)
Reporter-News

By The Associated Press
Posted May 17, 2012

DALLAS — A former Roman Catholic priest was found guilty Thursday of plotting the death of a man who accused him of sexual abuse.

The Dallas Morning News reported the Dallas County jury returned its verdict on John M. Fiala after a few hours’ deliberation.

After the verdict, testimony began in the penalty phase. Fiala could be sentenced to up to life in prison for solicitation of capital murder.

Prosecutors say Fiala tried to hire a neighbor’s brother to kill the man who accused him of abusing him in 2008. That’s when the man was 16 and Fiala was the priest at a rural West Texas parish.

During closing arguments Thursday, prosecutors urged jurors not to believe Fiala’s claims that he told a purported hit man to kill his accuser only because he thought his own life was in danger.

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PHILADELPHIA (PA)
Philadelphia Priest Abuse Trial Blog

Ralph Cipriano

Imagine a train uncoupling as it rumbles down the tracks.

That’s what happened Thursday when Judge M. Teresa Sarmina tossed two conspiracy charges to endanger the welfare of children that linked the two defendants, Father James J. Brennan and Msgr. William J. Lynn.

The judge made her surprise decision on the day the prosecution rested, after presenting eight weeks of testimony from some 48 witnesses and thousands of pages of exhibits. There’s a gag order in the case that prevents lawyers on both sides from talking to the media. However, it wasn’t hard to read the contrasting reactions.

Defense lawyers, the two defendants and their relatives were beaming, laughing and shaking hands as they filed out of the courtroom. Meanwhile, prosecutors said little and moved swiftly toward the elevators.

As detailed previously on this blog, the cases against Father Brennan and Monsignor Lynn have been moving in opposite directions. The case against Father Brennan has unraveled since the 2011 grand jury report, when an original charge of rape was downgraded to attempted rape; meanwhile the evidence against Msgr. Lynn has continued to pile up.

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UNITED STATES
U.S. Catholic

Friday, May 18, 2012

Bob Smietana

Panels reviewing sex abuse allegations help dioceses get their houses in order, but they are only as effective as the information the bishops give them.

Jim Caccamo has a simple explanation for why he joined the lay review board for the Diocese of Kansas City-St. Joseph, Missouri back in 2005: Former Bishop Raymond Boland asked him to.

“When the bishop asks you, you say yes,” says Caccamo, a lifelong Catholic and member of St. Peter’s Parish in Kansas City.

Caccamo had other reasons as well. He’s a grandfather and wanted to be sure that his grandchildren and children like them were safe. He’d also spent his career as an educator trying to make life better for children. The former public school administrator is now director of early education for the Mid-America Regional Council in Kansas City.

So helping the church take care of children seemed the right thing for Caccamo to do. Like many Catholics he was outraged by the clergy sexual abuse scandal that first rocked the church in 2002. He says the church failed in its responsibility to keep kids safe.

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DETROIT (MI)
Detroit Free Press

By Niraj Warikoo
Detroit Free Press Staff Writer

With his Hollywood-star looks and a doctorate in moral theology, the Rev. Thomas Williams became a nationally known Catholic priest who spoke often on NBC and CBS as an advocate for the Vatican.

But this week, the Bloomfield Hills native announced he fathered a child, becoming the latest prominent leader with the conservative Catholic order Legion of Christ to face scandal.

Williams, 50, stepped down from his prominent position in Rome — where he taught at the Legion’s university — and will take a year off.

Williams is back in Michigan with his parents while recovering from cancer surgery, said the Legion’s director, the Rev. Luis Garza. In recent years, Williams became the public face of the Legion. Katie Couric once jokingly referred to Williams as “Father-What-a-Waste,” noting his handsome appearance, recalled Deacon Greg Kandra of New York. Catholic priests are required to be celibate.

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APPLETON (WI)
Post-Crescent

Written by
Jim Collar
Post-Crescent staff writer

APPLETON — A psychologist hired by the Catholic Diocese of Green Bay said two brothers who were sexually assaulted by a priest in 1978 suffered only minor trauma as a result.

Attorneys for the church began calling their witnesses Thursday in the Outagamie County civil lawsuit alleging fraud against the diocese. Brothers Todd and Troy Merryfield say the diocese knew former priest John Feeney sexually assaulted others before 1978 and fraudulently misrepresented his safety when assigning him to Freedom’s St. Nicholas Church.

In their 2008 civil lawsuit, the Merryfields cite “profound psychological damage” as a result of the assaults.

Dr. Timothy Lynch, a Milwaukee psychologist, disagreed the abuse caused the brothers significant harm and spent more than two hours on the witness stand detailing his evaluations and findings.

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APPLETON (WI)
WTAQ

APPLETON, WI (WTAQ) – Attorneys for the Catholic Diocese of Green Bay presented their defense Thursday in Day 4 of their civil fraud trial.

Brothers Troy and Todd Merryfield accuse the diocese of hiding their knowledge that former priest John Feeney had a history of sexual abuse prior to his abusing the Merryfields while working at a Freedom church. Feeney was convicted in 2004 of molesting Troy and Todd Merryfield in May 1978.

In court Thursday, Monsignor Paul Koszarek testified he had heard rumors about John Feeney swimming nude with and showering with young boys in the early 1970’s.
Monsignor Koszarek was an episcopal vicar with the diocese in the 70’s. That means he was a representative to the bishop of the diocese at the time, in charge of parishes in Green Bay and De Pere.

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DALLAS (TX)
NewsWest 9

Audrey Castoreno
NewsWest 9

DALLAS – It took a jury only a few hours to come to their decision of guilty in the murder for hire trial against 52-year-old John Fiala.

According to police, this all began back in 2008 when Fiala met the then 16-year-old in Rock Springs, Texas.

We’re told the boy often traveled to Big Spring to visit a girlfriend.

Investigators say Fiala eventually set the boy up in an apartment in Big Spring and even enrolled him in the school district as a homeless person.

The teen’s parents became suspicious and called authorities.

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NEW YORK
TheMediaReport

Dave Pierre

In the last week, the New York Times has published no less than three items (1, 2, 3) related to large-scale child abuse and cover-ups in New York City’s Ultra-Orthodox Jewish communities.

Is the Times finally moving beyond its single-minded obsession with decades-old cases involving the Catholic Church? Kudos to the paper’s Ray Rivera and Sharon Otterman for breaking the mold in their bold coverage, which may prevent many innocent children from being harmed in the future.

How far will the Times go?

The Times’ coverage is encouraging, because the more light that is shined on the paramount issue of child abuse, then the more likely that children will be protected.

However, will the Times expand its investigative forces into looking into the massive abuses and cover-ups happening today in one of its most beloved secular institutions, the public school system? Just in February of this year, six teachers were arrested on sickening child abuse charges – just in New York City alone! In 2011, there were 561 complaints of “sexually questionable conduct” by New York City teachers. Surely this is an important story worth exploring.

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PHILADELPHIA (PA)
Reuters

By Dave Warner

PHILADELPHIA | Thu May 17, 2012 6:17pm EDT

(Reuters) – The prosecution rested its case on Thursday against Philadelphia Archdiocese Monsignor William Lynn, the most senior U.S. clergyman to go to trial in the Roman Catholic Church’s pedophilia scandal.

During nearly eight weeks of startling testimony about the lurid lives of predatory priests, Lynn, a former secretary of the clergy, has sat stoically in his clerical garb as the case unfolded in an often-packed courtroom.

Lynn, 61, is charged with child endangerment and conspiracy over accusations he covered up child sex abuse allegations against priests, many of whom were simply transferred to unsuspecting parishes.

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

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CALIFORNIA
Sonoma Valley Sun

Posted on May 17, 2012 by Joan Huguenard

One must wonder if those fellows in Rome have noticed yet; things are different in the twenty-first century and the “pray, pay and obey” mentality is no longer the dominant theme among Catholics around the world.

This month in Ireland, for example, the Association of Catholic Priests sponsored a gathering of concerned folks to discuss the future of the church, expecting perhaps as many as 200 attendees. However, more than 1,000 priests, religious and laypeople showed up.

The National Catholic Reporter (NCR) of May 8, 2012 tells us “Dublin’s Regency Hotel was packed to capacity, with many at the event forced to stand. Speaker after speaker pleaded for a more open church centered around a spirit of dialogue. Redemptorist Fr. Tony Flannery, who was recently forbidden to write by the Vatican’s Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, maintained a discreet presence and was greeted by many well-wishers.”

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APPLETON (WI)
NBC 26

By Brian Miller

Appleton– Testimony continued Thursday in a trial involving the Catholic Diocese of Green Bay and two former Outagamie County brothers who were sexually abused by former priest John Patrick Feeney in the 1970’s. Feeney was convicted of sexual assault for two incidents involving the Merryfields, once in the boys’ bedrooms. The other incident involved Feeney touching the Troy Merryfield’s penis through his pants during confessional at the church.

The first witness for the defense was a psychologist hired by the Diocese to evaluate the Merryfield brothers last January. Dr. Timothy Lynch testified he did not believe the abuse would be considered “sexual” abuse and says the incident did not cause the Merryfields any great trauma. “There was no treatment required, decades went by with no mention of any symptoms or consequences with respect to personal, life, academic life, family life,” Lynch testified.

Dr. Lynch told the jury the boys experienced mild trauma from the Feeney incident.

Lawyers for the Merryfields pointed out Lynch is not an expert on sexual abuse and he met with diocese attorneys before submitting his report.

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