ABUSE TRACKER

UNITED STATES
Renew America

By Matt C. Abbott

Catholic author, speaker and journalist Dawn Eden has a new book out titled My Peace I Give You: Healing Sexual Wounds with the Help of the Saints, published by Ave Maria Press. Below is the book’s foreword, written by Mother Agnes Mary Donovan, S.V., superior general of the Sisters of Life.

From the Ave Maria Press website:

‘One in four American women and one in six American men report having been sexually abused during childhood…. Eden uses her own story as a backdrop to introduce numerous holy people — like Laura Vicuña, Thomas Aquinas and Bernard of Clairvaux — who suffered sexual abuse or sexual inappropriateness, as well as saints such as Ignatius of Loyola who suffered other forms of mistreatment and abandonment. Readers seeking wholeness will discover saints with wounds like their own, whose stories bear witness to the transforming power of grace. Eden explores different dimensions of divine love — sheltering, compassionate, purifying, etc. — to help those sexually wounded in childhood understand their identity in the abiding love of Christ.’

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UNITED KINGDOM
BBC News

By Elaine Thelen BBC News

‘Sarah’ is still traumatised by the sexual abuse she suffered as a young girl. In a church-going, happy and loving family was a seven-year-old girl.

But then, through a weekly ordeal of sexual abuse at the hands of someone she thought would protect her, her life changed forever.

Now 23 years old, the torment of the years of her uncle’s abuse remains strong, along with the anger over how her family covered it up to protect their reputation and that of the Church.

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IRELAND
Irish Independent

Wednesday April 11 2012

– Interviews with sources were not documented, while note-taking was non-existent.

– RTE guidelines allow secret filming under certain circumstances, including when it is believed that a subject will not consent. It was assumed Fr Reynolds would not consent.

– There was a mentality that the offer of a paternity test from Fr Reynolds was an attempt to derail the programme.

– Reporter Aoife Kavanagh, although experienced, was working on her first ‘Prime Time Investigates’ programme and had not been provided with training on the guidelines surrounding investigative journalism.

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IRELAND
Irish Independent

Wednesday April 11 2012

May 7, 2011: Fr Kevin Reynolds is confronted by an RTE ‘Prime Time Investigates’ team at his church in Ahascragh, Co Galway. He refutes the allegation that he fathered a child.

May 23, 2011: RTE broadcasts the ‘Prime Time Investigates: Mission to Prey’ programme despite an offer from Fr Reynolds of a paternity test.

September 21, 2011: The High Court hears two paternity tests show Fr Reynolds did not father a child to a Kenyan woman.

October 7, 2011: RTE issues an apology to Fr Reynolds. The broadcaster accepted that the allegations against the Galway priest were baseless and without foundation.

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IRELAND
Irish Independent

By Colm Kelpie

Wednesday April 11 2012

RTE is likely to accept the findings of the Broadcasting Authority of Ireland’s investigation into the libelling of Fr Kevin Reynolds by ‘Prime Time Investigates’.

But the Irish Independent understands there are concerns within the state broadcaster that some of the BAI’s conclusions appear to apply to its entire current affairs output, even though the probe focused only on allegations made against Fr Reynolds in one programme.

The unpublished report was sent to RTE last Thursday and the broadcaster has until April 20 to issue a reply, or request an oral hearing or go to the High Court.

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IRELAND
Irish Independent

[click here for the story]

By Edel Kennedy

Wednesday April 11 2012

RTE has rejected a claim that the woman at the centre of the Fr Kevin Reynolds controversy did not understand the questions she was being asked during the making of the programme.

A family member of Veneranda Mudi — the woman who claimed she had been raped and had a child by the priest in Kenya — said she did not understand what she was being asked.

However, RTE sources have rejected this outright, saying that expert translators were used at all stages, and each translation was verified a number of times.

They also said that there was “no doubt” among the investigative team that she fully understood what she was being asked.

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IRELAND
Galway Independent

Posted on 11/04/2012

by Marie Madden
@galwayindo

A group representing over 800 Irish priests has spoken out in support of Galway native Fr Tony Flannery, after he was ‘silenced’ by the Vatican as a result of his liberal views.

Fr Flannery, who is based in the Redemptorist Church Esker, had his regular column in religious magazine ‘Reality’ withdrawn recently after intervention from the Vatican.

It is understood that the move was taken as a result of Fr Flannery’s previous discussions on the ending of celibacy, opening up the Church to lay people and women and other frustrations he had experienced within the Catholic Church. Further action was also taken against a second priest, Fr Gerard Moloney, banning him from writing on various topics.

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BELGIE
Trouw

De Belgische kardinaal Godfried Danneels is de voorbije tientallen jaren zeker veertig keer op de hoogte gebracht van seksueel misbruik in de rooms-katholieke kerk in België. Danneels is met die kennis nooit naar de politie gestapt en heeft altijd gezegd verrast te zijn door de omvang van het misbruik.

Dat meldt de krant Het Laatste Nieuws vandaag op basis van het gerechtelijk dossier van de zogeheten Operatie Kelk. Daarin staat onder meer dat de gevallen waarover Danneels werd ingelicht, niet alleen betrekking hadden op zijn eigen bisdom, maar op heel Vlaanderen. ‘In de meeste gevallen is er sprake van teruggevonden briefwisseling tussen Danneels en de slachtoffers, hun families of nabestaanden’, schrijft de krant.

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NEDERLAND
eo

Financiële genoegdoening is geen oplossing voor seksueel misbruik. ‘Het gaat om dialoog en vergeving van de dader’, zegt Frans Houben in het Radio 1-programma ‘Dit Is De Dag’.

Houben, zelf slachtoffer van seksueel misbruik, maakte een kunstwerk over het misbruik in de Rooms-Katholieke kerk. Hij stuit daarbij op veel onbegrip onder andere slachtoffers, die het gevoel hebben dat hij heult met de vijand. De kunstenaar krijgt haatmails en verkapte dreigementen ‘vanuit de slachtoffer-hoek’. ‘Veel slachtoffers zijn nog boos – vaak terecht – en niet aan vergeving toe,’ constateert Houben die zelf nog regelmatig naar de kerk gaat. ‘Boosheid mag maar dan genuanceerd.’

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NEDERLAND
bol.com

Boek ‘NR. 21’ van Frans Houben werpt nieuw licht op misbruik in RK internaten.
‘NR. 21’ is de titel van de indringende, somtijds rauwe, memoires van Frans Houben over zijn leven in een Rooms Katholiek jongensinternaat. Met broeders die hun handen niet thuis kunnen houden en elke vorm van verzet er meedogenloos uitranselen. Met paters die hun ogen sluiten voor wat er allemaal gebeurt en misstanden onder het tapijt vegen. Met echte vrienden en met jongens die je nooit kunt vertrouwen. Met een moed…

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SPAIN
The Daily Beast (United States)

Apr 11, 2012

Did doctors and the Catholic Church traffic in stolen newborns? Mike Elkin reports from Madrid on the shocking trial of one nun.

On his deathbed, five years ago in Barcelona, Juan Moreno told his son Juan Luis the family secret: We bought you from a priest in 1969. Moreno Sr. paid 150,000 pesetas, more than what he paid for their apartment seven years earlier. DNA tests have revealed that Juan Luis’s birth certificate, which names his adoptive parents as his birth parents, is false. And Antonio Barroso, Juan Luis’s best friend, was also bought from the same priest, according to Juan Luis. The two families would take summer vacations together to Zaragoza, around 300 kilometers west of Barcelona, but the men now believe the trips’ true purpose was to pay the installments on the two boys to the clergyman, Juan Luis says.

“My adoptive family gave me plenty of love, but it’s also true that my life has been a lie,” Juan Luis says over the telephone from Barcelona.

Moreno is one of thousands of Spaniards who suspect that doctors, nurses, priests and nuns stole and sold babies between the 1960s and the early 1980s. While the 1,500 open cases vary, a common story has a woman being told her newborn has died shortly after birth. The baby is sold to another couple, and official papers are doctored so this couple appeared as the biological parents. At one infamous Madrid clinic, now closed, called San Ramón, it was reported in the Spanish media that staff kept a dead newborn in the freezer to prove to mothers that their babies had died.

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ISRAEL
The Jerusalem Post

By YAAKOV LAPPIN

Prosecutors say 4 young men who studied under rabbi accused of sexual offenses have agreed to come forward.

Jerusalem District prosecutors are seeking to introduce new witnesses in the trial of Rabbi Moti Elon, who has been charged with two counts of sexual offenses against two underage students.

The trial is set to enter the testimony stage next week, and prosecutors have said that four young men who studied under Elon have agreed to come forward with new, allegedly incriminating information.

The offenses are said to have occurred between 2003 and 2005.

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NEDERLAND
Nu

MIDDELBURG – Het Openbaar Ministerie (OM) in Middelburg heeft een aangifte tegen kardinaal Ad Simonis wegens meineed geseponeerd.

Een woordvoerster van het OM zei woensdag dat er onvoldoende aanleiding is voor een verdenking.

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DEUTSCHLAND
Rhein-Zeitung

Kirn – Das Bistum Trier hat Priester Manfred V. von seinen Funktionen als Seelsorger des Diakonie-Krankenhauses Kirn und eines Altenheims in der Stadt entbunden. Das bestätigte am Dienstag Dr. Stephan Kronenburg, der Leiter der bischöflichen Pressestelle, auf Nachfrage.

Das Nachrichtenmagazin „Der Spiegel“ hatte am 19. März unter anderem über Pfarrer V. berichtet. Laut dem Artikel soll der Priester gegenüber dem „Spiegel“ eingeräumt haben, in der zweiten Hälfte der 1990er-Jahre Minderjährige in der Ukraine missbraucht zu haben. Dieser Darstellung sei das Bistum Trier unmittelbar nachgegangen, erklärte Dr. Kronenburg.

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DEUTSCHLAND
Rhein-Zeitung

Trier – Triers Bischof Stephan Ackermann hat zwei pädophile Priester in Bistum Trier “entpflichtet”. Ihnen sei damit die Ausübung priesterlicher Dienste untersagt, erklärte ein Sprecher des Bistums Trier am Dienstag.

Ackermann war in den vergangenen Wochen in die Kritik geraten, weil das Bistum mehrere als pädophil bekanntgewordene Priester beschäftigt. Der Bischof ist auch Missbrauchsbeauftragter der katholischen Kirche in Deutschland.

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BELGIE
HLN

Bewerkt door: Hanne Adriaen
11/04/12

Het artikel dat vandaag in Het Laatste Nieuws is verschenen over Operatie Kelk, bevat niets meer dan opgewarmde kost. Dat zegt meester Fernand Keuleneer, de advocaat van kardinaal Danneels. In het artikel staat dat Danneels zeker veertig maal op de hoogte werd gebracht van seksueel misbruik binnen de Kerk maar daar niets tegen ondernam.

“De kardinaal heeft op deze aantijgingen reeds geantwoord in het parlement en heeft aan zijn antwoorden van toen niets toe te voegen”, liet de advocaat weten. “Hij formuleerde zijn antwoorden toen hij door de parlementaire commissie gehoord werd over de behandeling van seksueel misbruik. Dat verslag kan door iedereen geraadpleegd worden op de website van de Kamer”, aldus meester Keuleneer voort.

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BELGIE
HLN

Kardinaal Godfried Danneels werd de voorbije tientallen jaren zeker veertig keer op de hoogte gebracht van seksueel misbruik binnen de Kerk. Dat schrijft de krant Het Laatste Nieuws op basis van de briefwisseling in het dossier Operatie Kelk. Danneels stapte nooit naar het gerecht, en heeft altijd beweerd verrast te zijn door de omvang van het misbruik.

De gevallen waarover Danneels werd ingelicht, hadden niet alleen betrekking op zijn eigen bisdom, maar op heel Vlaanderen. “In de meeste gevallen is er sprake van teruggevonden briefwisseling tussen Danneels en de slachtoffers, hun families of nabestaanden. Die kan de kardinaal nu de das omdoen”, schrijft de krant.

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BELGIE
De Morgen

Kardinaal Godfried Danneels werd de voorbije tientallen jaren zeker veertig keer op de hoogte gebracht van seksueel misbruik binnen de Kerk. Dat schrijft de krant Het Laatste Nieuws op basis van de briefwisseling in het dossier Operatie Kelk. Danneels stapte nooit naar het gerecht, en heeft altijd beweerd verrast te zijn door de omvang van het misbruik.

De gevallen waarover Danneels werd ingelicht, hadden niet alleen betrekking op zijn eigen bisdom, maar op heel Vlaanderen. “In de meeste gevallen is er sprake van teruggevonden briefwisseling tussen Danneels en de slachtoffers, hun families of nabestaanden. Die kan de kardinaal nu de das omdoen”, schrijft de krant.

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BELGIE
Het Nieuwsblad

Kardinaal Godfried Danneels werd de voorbije tientallen jaren zeker veertig keer op de hoogte gebracht van seksueel misbruik binnen de kerk. Dat werd bevestigd aan de VRT. Danneels heeft altijd beweerd verrast te zijn door de omvang van het misbruik.

In het gerechtelijk dossier van operatie Kelk zitten veertig brieven van mensen die aan kardinaal Danneels melden dat ze seksueel zijn misbruikt door een geestelijke. De brieven werden bij de kardinaal gevonden. Die zou daar echter niets mee hebben gedaan.

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BELGIE
de Volkskrant

De Belgische kardinaal Godfried Danneels is de voorbije tientallen jaren zeker veertig keer op de hoogte gebracht van seksueel misbruik in de rooms-katholieke kerk in België. Danneels is met die kennis nooit naar de politie gestapt en heeft altijd gezegd verrast te zijn door de omvang van het misbruik.

Dat meldt de krant Het Laatste Nieuws vandaag op basis van het gerechtelijk dossier van de zogeheten Operatie Kelk. Daarin staat onder meer dat de gevallen waarover Danneels werd ingelicht, niet alleen betrekking hadden op zijn eigen bisdom, maar op heel Vlaanderen. ‘In de meeste gevallen is er sprake van teruggevonden briefwisseling tussen Danneels en de slachtoffers, hun families of nabestaanden’, schrijft de krant.

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BELGIE
Gazet van Antwerpen

Kardinaal Godfried Danneels werd de voorbije tientallen jaren zeker veertig keer op de hoogte gebracht van seksueel misbruik binnen de Kerk. Dat schrijft een krant van De Persgroep op basis van de briefwisseling in het dossier Operatie Kelk. Danneels heeft altijd beweerd verrast te zijn door de omvang van het misbruik.

De gevallen waarover Danneels werd ingelicht, hadden niet alleen betrekking op zijn eigen bisdom, maar op heel Vlaanderen. “In de meeste gevallen is er sprake van teruggevonden briefwisseling tussen Danneels en de slachtoffers, hun families of nabestaanden. Die kan de kardinaal nu de das omdoen”, schrijft de krant.

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BELGIE
De Standaard

Kardinaal Godfried Danneels werd de voorbije tientallen jaren zeker veertig keer op de hoogte gebracht van seksueel misbruik binnen de kerk. Dat werd bevestigd aan de VRT. Danneels heeft altijd beweerd verrast te zijn door de omvang van het misbruik.

In het gerechtelijk dossier van operatie Kelk zitten veertig brieven van mensen die aan kardinaal Danneels melden dat ze seksueel zijn misbruikt door een geestelijke. De brieven werden bij de kardinaal gevonden. Die zou daar echter niets mee hebben gedaan.

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BELGIE
Knack

(Belga) Het artikel dat vandaag in de krant Het Laatste Nieuws staat over Operatie Kelk, bevat niets meer dan opgewarmde kost. Dat zegt meester Fernand Keuleneer, de advocaat van kardinaal Danneels. In het artikel staat dat Danneels zeker 40 maal op de hoogte werd gebracht van seksueel misbruik binnen de Kerk maar daar niets tegen ondernam. “De kardinaal heeft reeds op deze aantijgingen geantwoord in het parlement en heeft aan zijn antwoorden van toen niets toe te voegen”, zegt de advocaat.

“De kardinaal formuleerde zijn antwoorden toen hij gehoord werd door de parlementaire commissie betreffende de behandeling van seksueel misbruik en dat verslag kan door iedereen worden geraadpleegd op de website van de Kamer”, gaat meester Keuleneer voort. Volgens de advocaat is het niet toevallig dat het artikel in Het Laatste Nieuws net nu verschijnt, een week nadat het Hof van Cassatie de huiszoekingen en inbeslagnames bij de kardinaal en in het aartsbisschoppelijk paleis definitief onwettelijk verklaarde.

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UNITED STATES
Press TV (Iran)

A church-sponsored audit says the allegations of sexual abuse of minors committed by Roman Catholic Church clerics in the United States increased 15 percent in number in 2011.

According to a report by the US Conference of Catholic Bishops released on Tuesday, a total of 489 people reported credible cases of allegations of sexual abuse by priests or deacons in 2011.

The largest portion of the allegations was made by adults who were victimized when they were children by now-deceased clerics.

Twenty-one cases of the abuse allegations involved victims younger than 19 who made the allegations more recently, according to the report.

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UNITED STATES
Catholic News Agency

[the report]

Washington D.C., Apr 10, 2012 / 08:05 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- Law enforcement found only seven credible allegations of sexual abuse of minors against Catholic clergy in the U.S. in 2010 and 2011, though more abuse victims from past decades have come forward, according to the latest report on child protection in the Catholic Church.

In response to the findings, Cardinal Timothy M. Dolan of New York, president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, urged continued attention to abuse prevention.

“While the report supports the conclusion of both studies done by the John Jay College of Criminal Justice – that the majority of allegations are way in the past – the Church must continue to be vigilant,” he said in the report’s preface.

“The Church must do all she can never to let abuse happen again. And we must all continue to work with full resolve toward the healing and reconciliation of the victims/survivors.”

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CALIFORNIA
Monterey County Herald

By VIRGINIA HENNESSEY
Herald Staff Writermontereyherald.com
Posted: 04/10/2012

Three of four clergy-abuse lawsuits pending against the Diocese of Monterey will likely be dismissed or settled for small sums after a recent state Supreme Court ruling.

In a case that was being watched throughout the state, the high court ruled the statute of limitations had expired for six brothers seeking damages from the Oakland Diocese for abuse they allegedly suffered in the 1970s at the hands of a parish priest.

The ruling evaluated the evolving statute of limitations in lawsuits against third-party defendants, such as employers. Issued March 29, the 5-2 opinion created a select category of victims who turned 26 before 1998 but did not file lawsuits during a one-year window of opportunity created by the legislature in 2003.

Among them are two Sacramento men who sued the Roman Catholic Diocese of Monterey in 2011 alleging the Rev. William Allison abused them when they were children at San Carlos School in Monterey in the 1960s.

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STOCKTON (CA)
The Modesto Bee

By Ross Farrow
Lodi News-Sentinel

STOCKTON — As Father Michael Kelly leaves St. Joachim’s Catholic Church in Lockeford after a jury determined that he sexually assaulted a former altar boy in the 1980s, the Stockton Diocese is picking up the pieces.

Bishop Stephen Blaire said Monday that he placed Kelly on paid administrative leave pending a recommendation by a special committee at the Vatican.

Kelly has moved out of the rectory on the parish grounds in Lockeford. He must find his own living arrangements, and he can no longer wear priest’s clothing, Blaire said.

Kelly, 62, was found liable of sexually assaulting an altar boy at Stockton’s Cathedral of the Annunciation in the mid-1980s. The plaintiff, now a 37-year-old man from Marin County, is on medical leave from his position as a pilot for Southwest Airlines. Kelly doesn’t face criminal charges because the statute of limitations has expired.

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PHILADELPHIA (PA)
Philadelphia Priest Abuse Trial Blog

Ralph Cipriano

In the secret files of the archdiocese, a psychologist warned church officials that Father Edward M. DePaoli was a likely repeat offender.

Father DePaoli was the priest who got busted by U.S. Postal inspectors in 1985 for hoarding $15,000 worth of foreign kiddie porn under his bed in the rectory at the Holy Martyrs Church in Oreland, Pa. The feds raided the rectory and confiscated more than 100 magazines and 14 reels. In the archdiocese’s secret files, Dr. Eric Griffin-Shelley, Father DePaoli’s therapist, told church officials in 1986 that the priest was “likely to repeat his past behavior and become progressively worse.”

The psychologist suggested six months to one year of “intensive in-patient psychotherapy.” The major problem with letting Father DePaoli continue in ministry, the psychologist warned, was the danger that the priest might “go beyond fantasy in terms of his sexual urges toward children.” There was no indication that the priest was on the road to being rehabilitated, the psychologist reported. Despite being busted by the feds, Father DePaoli was still getting porn in the mail, Dr. Griffin-Shelley told church officials.

Besides his addiction to porn, Father DePaoli had other problems, the psychologist revealed in confidential documents displayed Monday at the ongoing archdiocese sex abuse trial, now in its third week. Father DePaoli had a “narcissistic personality,” the psychologist reported, plus a “compulsive personality disorder,” and a habit of forming “poor relationships with other people.”

Everything you’d want in a priest, right?

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PHILADELPHIA (PA)
Philadelphia Inquirer

BY JOSEPH A. SLOBODZIAN
Inquirer Staff Writer

THROUGH ALMOST 20 years of disputes with church superiors over his addiction to pornography, the Rev. Edward M. DePaoli inevitably returned to a last defense: It was fantasy; he had never sexually touched another person.

That defense crumbled in 2002, after a Bucks County woman came forward to tell church officials that DePaoli fondled her breast when she was a 12-year-old catechism student at Our Lady of Mount Carmel Church in Doylestown.

“I jabbed him and looked at him like, ‘What are you doing?’ ” the woman, now 56, told a Common Pleas Court jury. “I was 12 years old and no one had ever touched me like that before.”

The woman, whose name is being withheld, was the final witness Tuesday to testify about DePaoli’s clerical career before he was defrocked in 2005 at age 60.

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MASSACHUSETTS
WWLP

BOSTON (AP) – The Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Boston has reached settlements in sexual abuse cases involving two priests, including a former Boston police chaplain whose only previous connection with the scandal was as a whistleblower.

The chaplain, the Rev. James Lane, and the Rev. Rickard O’Donovan are among a dozen clerics named in separate sexual abuse claims against dioceses and religious orders that Boston attorney Mitchell Garabedian says he settled in the last 14 months. Both priests are dead.

Garabedian plans to reveal the 12 names today.

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MASSACHUSETTS
Boston Globe

By Lisa Wangsness
| Globe Staff
April 11, 2012

The Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Boston has reached settlements in sexual abuse cases involving two priests, including the Rev. James H. Lane, a beloved Dorchester pastor and veteran Boston police chaplain whose only previous connection with the abuse scandal was as a whistleblower.

The Boston priests – Lane, who died in 2007, and the Rev. Rickard O’Donovan, who died in 2000 – are among a dozen clerics named in separate sexual abuse claims against dioceses and religious orders that Boston attorney Mitchell Garabedian says he settled in the last 14 months. The settlements were five- to six-figure amounts, said Garabedian.

As is standard, none of the settlements involved an admission of guilt.

Terrence C. Donilon, an archdiocesan spokesman, confirmed the two settlements but said in a statement that archdiocesan investigations were inconclusive because both involved a single victim who professed to have been abused more than 40 years ago by a priest who died before he could answer the allegations.

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UNITED STATES
Chicago Tribune

By Andrew Stern

CHICAGO, April 10 (Reuters) – The number of credible allegations of sexual abuse of minors committed by Roman Catholic priests or deacons in the United States rose 15 percent last year, and the church spent $144 million to deal with the ongoing scandal, according to a church-sponsored audit released on Tuesday.

A total of 489 people reported credible allegations of abuse by priests or deacons in 2011, the bulk of them involving adults victimized when they were children decades ago by now-deceased clerics, the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops said in a report on its ninth annual audit of the issue.

Twenty-one of the victims were younger than 19 and victimized more recently. Attorneys for victims say there are likely tens of thousands more victims who have never come forward since the scandal erupted in Boston in 2002.

“We renew our promise to strive to the fullest to end the societal scourge of child sexual abuse,” Cardinal Timothy Dolan, president of the conference, said in an introductory letter to
the report.

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UNITED STATES
Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests

Posted by David Clohessy on April 10, 2012

In the church’s ongoing child sex abuse and cover up scandal, Cardinal Dolan continues to dish out pabulum instead of push for reform.

Rather than making even vaguer and largely soon forgotten promises (“to strive to the fullest to end the societal scourge of child sexual abuse,” he pledges today), he should:

— remove his blog post insensitively questioning (and implicitly blaming) a New York City teenager who reported, just last year, being repeatedly molested by her pastor http://blog.archny.org/?p=1556

And

— post on his archdiocesan website the names of proven, admitted and credibly accused child molesting clerics (like two dozen of his brother bishops have done).

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PHILADELPHIA (PA)
Philadelphia Priest Abuse Trial Blog

Ralph Cipriano

In the secret files of the archdiocese, a psychologist warned church officials that Father Edward M. DePaoli was a likely repeat offender.

Father DePaoli was the priest who got busted by U.S. Postal inspectors in 1986 for hoarding $15,000 worth of foreign kiddie porn under his bed in the rectory at the Holy Martyrs Church in Oreland, Pa. The feds raided the rectory and confiscated more than 100 magazines and 14 reels. In the archdiocese’s secret files, Dr. Eric Griffin-Shelley, Father DePaoli’s therapist, told church officials in 1986 that the priest was “likely to repeat his past behavior and become progressively worse.”

The psychologist suggested six months to one year of “intensive in-patient psychotherapy.” The major problem with letting Father DePaoli continue in ministry, the psychologist warned, was the danger that the priest might “go beyond fantasy in terms of his sexual urges toward children.” There was no indication that the priest was on the road to being rehabilitated, the psychologist reported. Despite being busted by the feds, Father DePaoli was still getting porn in the mail, Dr. Griffin-Shelley told church officials.

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UNITED STATES
U.S. Catholic

By Nancy Frazier O’Brien Catholic News Service

WASHINGTON (CNS) — Although allegations of child sex abuse by U.S. priests and deacons continue to surface, the vast majority involve actions taken decades ago by clergy who have since died or been removed from ministry, according to a new report.

The 2011 survey of abuse-related allegations and costs conducted by the Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate at Georgetown University in Washington was released April 10 by the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops.

It showed that there were 594 new credible allegations of sexual abuse of a minor by diocesan or religious-order priests or deacons during 2011, but only 23 of the new allegations (4 percent) involved children who were under the age of 18 in 2010 or 2011. The allegations were made by 588 people against 461 clergy members.

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PHILADELPHIA (PA)
National Catholic Reporter

by Brian Roewe on Apr. 10, 2012 NCR Today

In the Philadelphia sex abuse trial, the testimony this morning picked up where it ended Monday, exploring the career of former priest Fr. Edward M. DePaoli.

Msgr. William J. Lynn and the Rev. James J. Brennan both stand trial for their roles in an alleged conspiracy of covering up cases of priest sex abuse within the Philadelphia archdiocese. Lynn, the former secretary of clergy in the archdiocese from 1992-2004, is the first church official charged for his role in a cover-up of priest sex abuse.

According to a report from the Philadelphia Inquirer, the prosecution continued Tuesday to document the career of DePaoli. Defrocked in 2005, he pleaded guilty in 1985 to a child pornography charge and served a year’s probation while participating in mandatory mental health treatment.

DePaoli had been serving as a morals and ethics teacher at Bishop McDevitt High School in a Philadelphia suburb before his indictment.

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IRELAND
The Irish Times

MARIE O’HALLORAN

THE BROADCASTING Authority of Ireland and RTÉ have expressed their “disappointment” at the leaking of information to The Irish Times about the Prime Time Investigates programme that defamed Fr Kevin Reynolds.

The authority said it “will review the matter to seek to ascertain how such information was made available”.

The paper received briefing notes of the report by former BBC Northern Ireland controller Anna Carragher, which heavily criticised both the standards of journalism involved in the broadcast and the role of management.

The Mission to Prey documentary falsely accused Fr Reynolds of raping a minor and fathering her child while he was a missionary in Africa. He sued the broadcaster, accepting an apology and a substantial out-of-court settlement.

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IRELAND
The Irish Times

PATSY McGARRY and PADDY AGNEW

REDEMPTORIST PRIEST Fr Tony Flannery, who was silenced by the Vatican because of his views on contraception, celibacy and women’s ordination, has been advised by Rome to go to a monastery for a period where he would “pray and reflect” on his situation.

Then, it was hoped, he would return “to think with the church” (sentire com ecclesia), according to the Rome-based website Vatican Insider.

Senior Vaticanologist Gerry O’Connell reported that Fr Flannery was summoned to Rome in mid-March for a meeting with Fr Michael Brehl, the Canadian Superior General of the Redemptorists.

Fr Brehl himself had been summoned to the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF) by the prefect, US Cardinal William Levada, who expressed his concern about the “orthodoxy” of views expressed by Fr Flannery in articles in the Redemptorist magazine Reality.

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UNITED STATES
SNAP Wisconsin

For virtually every new priest ordained in the US, a current one is removed from ministry for child sex abuse

Number of Catholic clergy who sexually assaulted children now tops 6,000 mark

Statement by Peter Isely, SNAP Midwest Director
CONTACT: 414.429.7259

New internal data released by the US Catholic Bishops today reveals that the total number of Catholic clergy who have raped or sexually assaulted children or minors over the past several decades is now 6,115 (a careful breakdown of the numbers in the report can be found at BishopAccountabilty.org). The number of accused clerics is, of course, larger.

Last year, 270 never before identified priests were reported to have committed child sex crimes. 184 of these priests were officially but quietly removed from ministry because these reports of criminal behavior against children were found to be credible and actionable. Quietly, that is, unless parishioners and the public found out about it.

In fact, the total number of newly accused clerics in the US for child sex abuse last year was virtually identical to the total number of newly ordained diocesan priests. The 275 newly ordained diocesan priests in the US outnumbered the number of newly accused child sex offender priests by only five. And, for every one or two priests ordained last year in the US, another priest was taken out of ministry for having sexually assaulted a child.

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UNITED STATES
BishopAccountability.org

Number of Priests Accused of Sexually Abusing Children As Reported by the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishopswith Numbers of Persons Alleging Abuse

Compiled by BishopAccountability.org
From reports commissioned by the USCCB
Updated April 10, 2012

As of April 10, 2012, the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) has counted 6,115 clerics “not implausibly” and “credibly” accused in 1950-2011 of sexually abusing minors. The USCCB total omits allegations made in 2003.

As of April 10, 2012, the USCCB has counted 16,324 individuals who have alleged that they were abused as minors by priests. The USCCB total omits persons who made allegations in 2003.

In the table below, we provide year-by-year the USCCB’s data – on accused priests and persons making allegations – which add up to 6,115 accused priests and 16,324 survivors. The numbers in the table are color-coded for easier reference. We also provide links to all the USCCB source documents.

The USCCB hired the John Jay College of Criminal Justice to evaluate data submitted by member bishops regarding the sexual abuse of minors by Catholic priests, bishops, deacons, and seminarians. In its 2004 report, the John Jay College found that, according to survey forms completed by the bishops, they had received in 1950-2002 “not implausible” allegations of sexual abuse of minors committed by 4,392 priests, including 12 bishops.

In 2004, the USCCB commissioned the Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate (CARA) at Georgetown University to begin collecting annual data on allegations and settlements, and starting in Spring 2005, CARA has published a report each year. (See Bendyna’s 2/15/05 letter to Skylstad describing the commission, in the 2005 Report, PDF p. 12.) Among other data, that report counts the number of diocesan and religious order priests “credibly” accused of abuse during the previous calendar year, and states how many of those had been accused in prior years or are being accused for the first time. These data were obtained using a survey that was available to the bishops and superiors of religious orders online. See, for example, the 2009 diocesan and religious order surveys (with aggregate U.S. numbers filled in), and see below for the Manchester diocese’s summaries of its responses to the surveys.

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NEW YORK
The Post-Standard

By Emily Kulkus / The Post-Standard

Syracuse, NY — On Feb. 23, Robert Hoatson took the Syracuse University sex abuse scandal to a new level — which is how the former Catholic priest-turned-victims advocate does business.

At a panel discussion of news coverage at SU and Penn State, Hoatson made an announcement: He was counseling a new victim of sexual abuse by a head coach at SU.

Fingers stopped tweeting. Heads turned to neighbors. Feet fidgeted. It was as if the audience thought: “What did he just say?” …

And the sex scandals at Syracuse and Penn State, and in the Catholic Church, have vaulted him into the media and provided a growing audience for his bold statements.

Hoatson’s background as an alleged victim and a former Catholic priest make him an uncommon spokesman for the cause.

While a priest in New Jersey in 2002, Hoatson began making public statements about sex abuse in the Catholic church and its schools. He began to talk publicly about the abuse he said he suffered for a dozen years at the hands of at least four religious colleagues and superiors as a Christian Brother and while studying to become a priest. Hoatson, who was ordained in 1997 at age 45, blamed the abuse for his panic and anxiety attacks as well as severe depression that included suicidal thoughts.

Hoatson criticized Catholic bishops for covering up for pedophile priests while testifying at a legislative forum in Albany about a bill to help abuse victims in May 2003. Days later, the Newark diocese removed him from his post as headmaster of a school. Archdiocese officials said it was because Hoatson was having management problems and clashing with the finance committee.

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UNITED STATES
NewsMax

By Andrew Stern

CHICAGO, April 10 (Reuters) – The number of credible allegations of sexual abuse of minors committed by Roman Catholic priests or deacons in the United States rose 15 percent last year, and the church spent $144 million to deal with the ongoing scandal, according to a church-sponsored audit released on Tuesday.

A total of 489 people reported credible allegations of abuse by priests or deacons in 2011, the bulk of them involving adults victimized when they were children decades ago by now-deceased clerics, the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops said in a report on its ninth annual audit of the issue.

Twenty-one of the victims were younger than 19 and victimized more recently. Attorneys for victims say there are likely tens of thousands more victims who have never come forward since the scandal erupted in Boston in 2002.

“We renew our promise to strive to the fullest to end the societal scourge of child sexual abuse,” Cardinal Timothy Dolan, president of the conference, said in an introductory letter to the report.

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UNITED STATES
United States Conference of Catholic Bishops

[page 59]

Promulgation Letters

The auditors have noted that, to meet the Charter requirements, dioceses/eparchies are increasingly relying on the public school systems to train and educate the children who are enrolled in religious education programs. In accordance with Bishop Aymond’s 2006 memo, bishops/eparchs must sign letters promulgating each public school program within the diocese/eparchy and state that each program is in accordance with Catholic moral principles.
Parish Accountability To continue to drive parish accountability, parish audits should be performed by diocesan/eparchial personnel on a regular basis and become a required
component of the on-site Charter audit process.

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UNITED STATES
United States Conference of Catholic Bishops

[page 3]

April 2012

This is the ninth Annual Report of the results of the Charter for the Protection of Children and Young People (Charter) audits. This year the audits were conducted by StoneBridge Business Partners and compiled by the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) Secretariat of Child and Youth Protection (SCYP). Article 9 of the Charter states,
“The Secretariat is to produce an annual public report on the progress made in implementing and maintaining the standards in this Charter. The report is to be based on an annual audit process whose method, scope, and cost are to be approved by the Administrative Committee on the recommendation of the Committee on the Protection of Children and Young People. This public report is to include the names of those dioceses/eparchies which the audit shows are not in compliance with the provisions and expectations of the Charter.”

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UNITED STATES
United States Conference of Catholic Bishops

April 10, 2012

Dioceses of Lincoln, Nebraska, Baker, Oregon, six eparchies refused to participate
Almost three-quarters of allegations from 1960-1984
New auditors urge better recordkeeping

WASHINGTON—The 2011 Annual Report on the implementation of the Charter for Protection of Children and Young People reports that nearly all dioceses in the country are totally compliant with the 17-point Charter.

It also notes that, as in previous years, the Diocese of Baker, Oregon, and Lincoln, Nebraska, and six eparchies (Eastern rite dioceses) refused to participate in the audits and therefore are found non-compliant.

The full report can be found at: http://www.usccb.org/issues-and-action/child-and-youth-protection/upload/2011-annual-report.pdf

The report notes that most allegations reported today are of incidents from previous decades. For example, 68 percent of allegations made in 2011, were of incidents from 1960-1984, and the most common time period for allegations was 1975-1979. It also found most of the accused have died or been removed from ministry and many had been accused previously.

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UNITED STATES
NECN

Apr 10, 2012

NEW YORK (AP) — Roman Catholic dioceses and religious orders said they received 594 credible claims of clergy sex abuse last year, with all but a few of the allegations involving wrongdoing that occurred decades ago, according to a study released Tuesday by American bishops.

Church officials reported paying more than $144 million in settlements and related costs last year, as the scandal over priests who molested children continued to batter the church.

The findings are from annual reports commissioned by the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops to check compliance with the 2002 child safety plan they adopted soon after the crisis erupted in Boston and spread nationwide. The policy includes a pledge to remove all credibly accused priests from church work, create support programs for victims and conduct background checks on employees who work with children. Dioceses have spent tens of millions of dollars on abuse prevention programs over the last decade.

The number of credible claims increased last year from 505 in 2010, while settlement-related costs, including attorney fees and counseling for victims and offenders, dropped by about $5.6 million. (Settlements are often not paid in the same year that a claim is brought.)

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UNITED STATES
Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests

Posted by Barbara Dorris on April 10, 2012

Since it was adopted a decade ago, the bishops’ extremely vague abuse policy has been consistently weakened and sporadically followed. So these alleged “audits” are nearly meaningless.

It’s ironic that bishops pat themselves on the back now when for the first time ever, two top Catholic officials (in Philadelphia and Kansas City) face criminal charges for ignoring, concealing and enabling heinous child sex crimes. Those horrific cases prove that, when it comes to kids’ safety, little in church hierarchy has changed.

And it’s ironic that this news release

— is sent on the eve of a California trial involving a predator priest who was only removed from his post after a jury found him guilty of molesting a child (Fr. Michael Kelly of Stockton),

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PENNSYLVANIA
The Morning Call

Bill White

Around here, many of us have been following the trial of Philadelphia Monsignor William Lynn (left), accused of transferring pedophile priests to unwitting parishes to cover up their crimes, and Rev. William Brennan, accused of raping a 14-year-old boy in 1996.

It truly is a landmark case, since Lynn is the first U.S. church official ever charged with child endangerment for allegedly leaving predators in jobs around children despite prior complaints. The testimony has been horrifying.

Still, these allegations in many cases just further dramatize what already has been reported in two Philadelphia grand jury reports about the way the Philadelphia Diocese covered up child sex abuse. In the long run, you could argue that dragging all this out into the sunlight will be a positive thing for us as a society, including the church if it leads to genuine reform and changed attitudes.

So I think I’ve been even more disturbed by the news from the Midwest, where Catholic officials have gone on the offensive in what appears to be an attempt to stifle one of their most outspoken critics and to intimidate victims, whistle blowers and others.

As I’ve written about child sex abuse over the years, I’ve come to very much admire the organization Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests, its local representatives and its executive director, David Clohessy. I’ve seen firsthand the way they’ve provided a desperately needed voice for the victims of clergy abuse, many of whom just needed someone who would listen to them, and have applied pressure to change the disastrous church policies of the past.

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CALIFORNIA
Bilingual Weekly

Posted by Dennis Rocha ⋅ April 10, 2012

Stockton, CA — Father Michael Kelly, pastor of Saint Joachim’s Catholic Church in Lockeford, was found guilty of sexual assault on Friday, April 6th, by a civil jury following the charges of an altar boy in the 1980s.

“In light of this verdict, I have made the decision to remove Fr. Kelly from ministry, effective immediately,” said Dioceses of Stockton’s Bishop, Stephen Blaire, in a press release following the jury`s decision.

The plaintiff, a 37-year-old man, alleges that the priest sexually abused him back in the 80s when he was an altar boy at Cathedral of the Annunciation located in northern downtown Stockton.

In a call for solidarity towards their faith, “Kelly told the congregation not to blame Bishop Stephen Blaire for his removal because the church leader had no other choice.” The Lodi News Sentinel reported on Saturday, April 7th, that more than a hundred parishioners gathered at the Lockeford’s Catholic Church after the verdict.

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OKLAHOMA
Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests

Posted by Barbara Dorris on April 10, 2012

We are glad that a jury has convicted Dean Hopkins of his crimes. Children are always safer when predators are in jail, and this conviction will certainly protect children in the Osage County area. When sentencing takes place in June, we look forward to a long sentence that will continue to protect children in Oklahoma.

We hope that those who were victimized by Hopkins are able to begin healing now that this predator is behind bars.

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STOCKTON (CA)
Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests

Posted by David Clohessy on April 10, 2012

A support group for victims of clergy sex abuse is calling on Stockton’s Catholic bishop to “rein in his flock” after parishioners rallied around a priest who was found guilty of sexually molesting an altar boy.

Leaders of SNAP, the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests, are writing Bishop Stephen Blaire about some church-goers at St. Joachim Parish in Lockeford who are backing Fr. Michael Kelly. After a two month civil trial, jurors determined that Kelly sexually abused a child.

SNAP says that the public actions by parishioners – both during the trial and since – have been insensitive to victims and will likely deter others who may have seen, suspected, or suffered child sex crimes from coming forward.

During the trial, a minority of parishioners from St. Joachim and elsewhere packed the courthouse in support of Kelly. One parishioner approached a member of the jury, trying to persuade him to let Kelly go. Some of Kelly’s backers have also written letters to newspapers admonishing those who have accused Kelly of wrongdoing.

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UNITED KINGDOM
The Times Literary Supplement

John Plender

Jason Berry
RENDER UNTO ROME
The secret life of money in the Catholic Church
420pp. Crown Publishers. $25.
978 0 385 53132 7

Published: 4 April 2012

The finances of the Church of Rome are notoriously opaque, but at least one thing about them is clear. The ability to deploy the large contributions of the Catholic laity for charitable purposes has been seriously impaired as a result of huge payments made to the victims of sexual abuse by the clergy. The bill in the United States alone is close to $2 billion. So a scandal which has severely undermined the credibility of the Church in the US and Ireland, while causing considerable embarrassment elsewhere, has cast a spotlight on the lack of transparency and accountability in the Church’s handling of the regular donations of the world’s 1.2 billion Catholics.

The charge sheet outlined in Jason Berry’s exploration of the financial impact of this crisis, which looks primarily at the US, is not pretty. His starting point is Boston, where the former Archbishop, Cardinal Bernard Law, and a clutch of auxiliary bishops failed to act against child-molesters while reaching court settlements that muzzled the victims. The predatory priests were given psychiatric therapy and then recycled to other jobs where they had access to more potential victims. When details finally emerged in 2002 courtesy of the Boston Globe, Pope John Paul II felt obliged to apologize, but exonerated the bishops, declaring that “a generalized lack of knowledge, and also at times the advice of the clinical experts, led bishops to make [the wrong] decisions” – a notably slithery shifting of blame. The Pope also turned down a request by US bishops for permission to defrock severe sex offenders. When Cardinal Law finally resigned as Archbishop, he landed a plum church job in Rome.

The Boston vigilantes took their case to Rome, where it became lost in a canon law hall of mirrors There followed an ineptly conceived and even more ineptly executed plan to sell off assets and close parishes under Law’s successor, Sean O’Malley, and his Vicar-General, Richard Lennon. This prompted a vigil movement. Angry parishioners occupied churches, many of them financially viable, that were scheduled for closure. In Boston, O’Malley was reluctant to bring in the police to eject them. Not so elsewhere. And when Richard Lennon subsequently became Bishop of Cleveland, Ohio, a diocese plagued by financial scandal under his predecessor, he had to have a police escort when saying final Masses at closing churches. The Boston vigilantes, meanwhile, took their case to Rome, where it became lost in a canon law hall of mirrors.

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PHILADELPHIA (PA)
CBS News

PHILADELPHIA — Jurors in a landmark church sex-abuse trial in Philadelphia are hearing about a priest who was convicted of child pornography charges but wasn’t defrocked until years later.

Prosecutors presented a chronology of the Rev. Edward DePaoli on Tuesday as they continue building their case against a high-ranking official in the Archdiocese of Philadelphia. DePaoli was convicted in 1986 but served as a priest until 2002. He was defrocked in 2005.

DePaoli isn’t a defendant in the trial but prosecutors are using testimony about him and others in their case against Monsignor William Lynn. Lynn is the first Roman Catholic official in the U.S. charged with endangering children for allegedly transferring priests suspected of molestation.

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PHILADELPHIA (PA)
Philadelphia Inquirer

By Joseph A. Slobodzian
INQUIRER STAFF WRITER

Internal church memos documenting the storied career of the Rev. Edward M. DePaoli – and what to do about him – were the focus of this morning’s session as prosecutors resumed their case in the clergy sex-abuse trial involving the Archdiocese of Philadelphia.

On trial in the landmark case are Msgr. William Lynn, the first church official criminally charged with enabling or covering up sexual abuse of minors by priests, and the Rev. James J. Brennan, charged with attempting to rape a 14-year-old boy in 1996.

DePaoli – who was finally defrocked in 2005 after 20 years of allegations that he subscribed for magazines featuring child pornography – was federally indicted on a child pornography charge in 1985 while teaching morals and ethics at Bishop McDevitt High School in suburban Cheltenham.

DePaoli pleaded guilty and was sentenced to a year’s probation and mandatory mental health treatment, which he completed and was pronounced cured.

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NEDERLAND
Maastricht Dichtbij

MAASTRICHT – De van ontucht beschuldigde pastoor Jan Schafraad van de Koepelkerk in Maastricht zal er alles aan doen om de klachtencommissie seksueel misbruik RKK ervan te doordringen dat hij onschuldig is. Met het seksueel misbruik waar drie oud-leerlingen van jongensinternaat Blijerheide hem van beschuldigen. Dat zegt Schafraad (die nog eens benadrukt dat hij gewoon bij zijn naam genoemd wil worden) vandaag in een interview met Dagblad De Limburger.

,,Kijk nu naar mij, kunt u zich voorstellen dat ik aan een pieleke van een jongen van 14 jaar heb gezeten? Of dat ik een jongen van 17 jaar in zijn slaap bevredigd heb? Vreselijk. Bij seksueel misbruik komen ook verstoorde machtsverhoudingen kijken, gebaseerd op angst. Die jongens waren mij juist de baas”, aldus Schafraad, die tijdens de afgelopen paasdagen voor het eerst in tientallen jaren niet op het altaar stond.

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CALIFORNIA
Daily Mail (United Kingdom)

By Paul Thompson

A 13-year-old boy was forced to dig his own grave and partly buried alive after his mother went to a church pastor for guidance on how to discipline her son.

The terrified teen was driven into the desert by two men and handed a shovel and told to dig a grave.

He was also allegedly whipped with a belt and ordered to lie down in the grave where dirt was tossed on top of him.

The boy was later driven back to the home of church Pastor Lonnie Remmer’s where he was tortured with a pair of pliers and pepper spray.

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CALIFORNIA
Orange County Weekly

By R. Scott Moxley
Tue., Apr. 10 2012

John C. Manly–arguably California’s best dirty priest hunter–scored another courthouse victory last week in Stockton when a jury sided with the Newport Beach lawyer’s civil case against a priest who raped an alter boy 20 years ago.

A Modesto Bee article describes how some community members are upset with the verdict because they believe Michael Kelly, a longtime Catholic priest, is too sweet to rape and molest little boys.

Indeed, Kelly refuses to concede the illegal sexual conduct and, until the verdict, had the firm backing of church officials.

But Manly told the Bee that it’s not surprising that people would like and defending offending priests.

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PHILADELPHIA (PA)
NPR

by The Associated Press

PHILADELPHIA (AP) — Jurors in a landmark church sex-abuse trial were presented with documents Tuesday outlining the troubled clerical career of a priest who was convicted of child pornography charges yet remained in ministry for years despite similar and repeated complaints.

Prosecutors presented years of correspondence from mental health facilities, therapists and church officials regarding Edward DePaoli when he was a priest. The documents, kept in the archdiocese’s secret archives, outlined how DePaoli, after being convicted in federal court of child pornography charges in 1986, went through psychological treatment, rounds of therapy, and a half dozen church assignments for two decades before he was removed from the priesthood in 2005.

DePaoli is not a defendant in the trial but prosecutors are using the testimony about him and others to build a case against Monsignor William Lynn, who was the Archdiocese of Philadelphia’s secretary of clergy from 1992 to 2004 and entrusted with investigating complaints against priests. Lynn is the first Roman Catholic official in the U.S. charged with endangering children for allegedly transferring priests suspected of molestation.

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IRELAND
RTE News

In a statement this afternoon, the BAI said it will review how such information was made available.

According to a report in today’s Irish Times, the report by the BAI will find that the programme was unfair, and breached the privacy of Fr Kevin Reynolds.

The report on the investigation into the programme, carried out by former BBC Northern Ireland controller Anna Carragher, has not yet been published.

However, The Irish Times claims to have seen briefing notes used in the preparation of the document.

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IRELAND
Galway Bay FM

RTE says the steps already taken in the wake of the ‘Mission to Prey’ programme don’t cut across anything that may have to be done on foot of a BAI report into the case.

The state broadcaster has this afternoon made limited comments on the Broadcasting Authority of Ireland report in light of leaks to the Irish Times, saying it is disappointed over the leaked BAI documents

According to documents published in today’s newspaper a report commissioned by the Broadcasting Authority of Ireland will be heavily critical of the preparations for the programme.

The episode of the Prime Time Investigates series was broadcast last year and resulted in a defamation settlement with Ahascragh parish priest Fr Kevin Reynolds.

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IRELAND
Galway Bay FM

April 10, 2012

The Broadcasting Authority of Ireland has expressed its dismay and disappointment that information regarding an ongoing BAI investigation has entered the public domain.

The BAI is responding to a report published in today’s Irish Times, giving details of briefing notes, prepared for the board of the BAI as part of its investigation into the RTE ‘Mission to Prey’ programme.

The episode of the ‘Prime Time Investigates’ series was broadcast in May of last year and resulted in a defamation settlement with Ahascragh priest, Father Kevin Reynolds.

The BAI says it doesn’t know how the Irish Times got access to these documents – but it plans to find out.

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IRELAND
Herald

By Alan O’Keeffe

Tuesday April 10 2012

DEFAMED priest Fr Kevin Reynolds said today that he is “not out for anybody’s blood”. The cleric declared he was not seeking “blood” or revenge in the aftermath of official investigations into the behaviour of the Prime Time Investigates news team.

The former missionary said forgiveness was at the core of his Christian message and he would be a hypocrite if he was seeking vengeance.

He was wrongfully accused of raping a minor and fathering a child in Africa in RTE’s Mission To Prey programme.

When asked today to respond to the leaking of briefing documents about the investigation by the Broadcasting Authority of Ireland, Fr Reynolds told the Herald he would leave all such analysis to his solicitor.

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ROME/IRELAND
Vatican Insider

The Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith has concerns about the writings of the well-known Irish priest, Fr Tony Flannery, on a number of sensitive issues.

Gerard O’Connell
Rome

The Association of Irish Priests (ACP) – which represents about a third of all the priests in Ireland – says it is “disturbed” at the silencing of Father Tony Flannery, one of its founder members. The ACP issued a press statement on the afternoon of Easter Monday, April 9, expressing its “extreme unease and disquiet” at this development. Its statement came after various Irish media, including The Irish Catholic (April 5) and The Irish Times (April 9), had already reported that the Vatican had imposed the silencing. While the ACP statement gave few details of what had actually happened, Vatican Insider has learned from informed sources that in mid-March Fr. Flannery, 65, a member of the Congregation of the Most Holy Redeemer, popularly known as “The Redemptorists”, was summoned to Rome for a meeting with his Superior General, Father Michael Brehl.

This happened about a week before the Vatican released the Summary Report of the Findings of the Visitation to the Irish Church ordered by Pope Benedict XVI following the sexual abuse of minors by priests’ scandal.

In Rome, Fr. Flannery learned that Fr.Brehl, his Canadian Superior General, had earlier been summoned to the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF), where, according to sources, its prefect, Cardinal William Levada, had informed him that the CDF had concerns about the “orthodoxy” of certain views expressed by Fr.Flannery in articles that he had written for the magazine “Reality”. The monthly magazine is published by the Irish Redemptorists, and has a circulation of around 6,500.

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KANSAS CITY (MO)
JD Journal

While charges and stories of priests abusing children have been surfacing and being suppressed across the country for decades, a criminal prosecution of clergy engaged in cover-ups is rare. Bishop Robert Finn, head of the Catholic Diocese of Kansas City-St. Joseph is the highest-ranking U.S. Catholic leader facing criminal charges in connection with alleged child sexual abuse.

Bishop Finn is charged for failing to report a priest who kept pornographic pictures of girl children under the diocese on his computer. The defense of Bishop Finn argued that charges against him be dropped as he had no duty to report to the authorities of the alleged abuse by another priest. But, Jackson County Circuit Judge John Terence rejected the arguments and held that Bishop Finn had a duty to report after church officials found pictures of naked girl children on the computer of Father Shawn Ratigan.

The judge held, “The court finds that the evidence in this case is sufficient to allow a jury to conclude that Bishop Finn was a designated reporter as defined by Missouri law.”

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CANADA
Digital Journal

OTTAWA, Ontario, April 10, 2012 /CNW/ – September 19, 2012 is the Deadline for former Indian Residential Schools students to apply for an Independent Assessment Process (IAP) payment. The Independent Assessment Process (IAP) is an out-of-court process created to resolve claims of abuse at Indian Residential Schools. People who suffered sexual abuse, serious physical abuse, or certain other wrongful acts which caused serious psychological consequences while at a recognized residential school may receive money through the IAP. Awards are based on a point system for different abuses and resulting harms.

The IAP process is separate and different from the Common Experience Payment (CEP) application process. The CEP is a payment to those who lived at a recognized residential school. The IAP provides payments for specific abuse suffered while at a recognized residential school. Under the settlement, former students could apply for the CEP, or for the IAP, or for both the CEP and IAP. The CEP application deadline was September 19, 2011; however, where former students can establish that they were unable to submit their CEP application due to disability, undue hardship or exceptional circumstances they can still apply for CEP up until September 19, 2012.

Eligible former students can apply for an IAP payment if they experienced (1) sexual abuse, (2) serious physical abuse, or (3) certain other wrongful acts which caused serious psychological consequences, while they were either (a) living at residential school, (b) a student at a residential school, or (c) under the age of 21 and allowed to be at residential school to take part in authorized school activities. It is not a requirement to have lived at one of the recognized residential schools in order to make an IAP claim for abuse that may have occurred there. Decisions regarding a number of other schools are in progress. A complete and updated list of recognized residential schools is available at www.residentialschoolsettlement.ca.

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BELGIE
Het Nieuwsblad

BRUGGE – Bisschop Jozef De Kesel heeft in de Sint-Salvatorskathedraal een beeldje onthuld voor de slachtoffers van seksueel misbruik in de Kerk. Het beeldje werd gemaakt in opdracht van de vzw Mensenrechten in de Kerk.

Dissident priester en voorzitter Rik Devillé van de Werkgroep Mensenrechten in de Kerk leidde op Paaszaterdag de ceremonie. Hij zei blij te zijn met de toelating van bisschop Jozef De Kesel om het beeldje een permanente plaats te geven in de doopkapel van de Brugse kathedraal. ‘De symbolische waarde hiervan is groot omdat de bom barstte na de onthulling van het misbruik door de voormalige Brugse bisschop Vangheluwe’, zei Devillé.

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IRELAND
Breaking News

10/04/2012
RTÉ has declined to comment on fresh reports surrounding an official inquiry into its ‘Mission to Prey’ programme which libelled missionary priest Fr Kevin Reynolds.

A report carried out by former BBC Northern Ireland controller Anna Carragher for the Broadcasting Authority of Ireland has yet to be released (BAI).

However the Irish Times this morning published leaked details of briefing documents it says were prepared for the board of the BAI.

According to the Times, the report “has heavily criticised the standards of journalism involved in the broadcast”, concluding that the programme was “unfair and a breach of Fr Reynolds’ privacy”.

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IRELAND
Galway Bay FM

April 10, 2012

RTE has declined to comment on fresh reports surrounding an official inquiry into its ‘Mission to Prey’ programme.

The programme libelled Ahascragh priest Fr.Kevin Reynolds.

A report from the Broadcasting Authority of Ireland has yet to be released, however the Irish Times has published details of briefing documents it says were prepared for the board of the BAI.

It claims that the report has heavily criticised the standards of journalism involved in the broadcast, and that a fine in the region of 200 thousand euro could be imposed.

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CANADA
VOCM

The case involving a Roman Catholic priest on the west coast has been postponed until next month. George Ansel Smith is facing 62 sex-related charges, and the RCMP laid the first 38 charges in December following a 16-month investigation. The charges are in relation to incidents that happened between 1969 and 1989, and include gross indecency and sexual assault. Smith has been in custody since February 23rd when he was charged with another 24 offences. The 74-year old will appear in Supreme Court in Corner Brook on May 7th.

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PHILADELPHIA (PA)
The Morning Call

By JOANN LOVIGLIO
Associated Press

PHILADELPHIA (AP) — A nun testified Monday in a landmark church sex-abuse trial that she was fired from a southeastern Pennsylvania parish for reporting concerns to the Archdiocese of Philadelphia about explicit mail that a priest had received.

Sister Joan Scary said she lost her job as director of education at St. Gabriel’s in the rural Montgomery County town of Stowe, near Pottstown, after she complained to then-Cardinal Anthony Bevilacqua about the Rev. Edward DePaoli shortly after his arrival in 1995. She said she was concerned about mail DePaoli began to receive, including computer disks from Denmark and magazines containing “deplorable” content, none of which included DePaoli’s clerical title or indicated that his address was a rectory.

Montgomery County (Pennsylvania) DePaoli, who was defrocked in 2005, is not a defendant in the trial but prosecutors are using the testimony about him and others to build a case against Monsignor William Lynn, who was the Archdiocese of Philadelphia’s secretary of clergy from 1992 to 2004 and entrusted within investigating complaints against priests.

Lynn is the first Roman Catholic official in the U.S. charged with endangering children for allegedly moving priests suspected of molestation from parish to parish without warning anyone of previous sex-abuse complaints. He is on trial with the Rev. James Brennan, who is charged with the attempted rape of a 14-year-old boy in 1996. Both have pleaded not guilty.

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IRELAND
Irish Central

By
ANTOINETTE KELLY,
IrishCentral Staff Writer

Published Tuesday, April 10, 2012

In a remarkable development, the 800-strong Association of Irish Priests told the Vatican they were deeply disturbed over the recent decision by the Holy See to silence one its members for his liberal views.

The Irish group said in a statement: ‘At this critical juncture in our history, the ACP believes that this form of intervention – what Archbishop Diarmuid Martin recently called ‘heresy-hunting’ – is of no service to the Irish Catholic Church and may have the unintended effect of exacerbating a growing perception of a significant ‘disconnect’ between the Irish Church and Rome.’

Alongside his well known opposition to the Church’s ban on contraception and women priests, Father Flannery has also backed Irish Prime Minister Enda Kenny’s unprecedented criticism of the Catholic hierarchy in the aftermath of the Cloyne Report, an investigation into the mishandling by Church authorities of allegations of child sexual abuse, released last year.

Forcing Father Tony Flannery to stop writing for a Redemptorist magazine will only fuel the Irish public’s belief in a growing disconnect between Irish Catholics and Rome, the group told the Irish Examiner.

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IRELAND
The Irish Times

JANUARY 2011

A Prime Time team travels to Kenya to research allegations – later proven to be false – that Fr Kevin Reynolds raped a minor while working as a missionary in Africa and fathered a child by her.

MAY 7th, 2011

Fr Reynolds is approached by a team from Prime Time Investigates. He denies the allegations put to him by the reporter. He later instructs his solicitors to write to RTÉ seeking an immediate retraction of the allegations and an apology for the distress caused to him.

MAY 23rd, 2011

RTÉ broadcasts the Mission to Prey programme, despite an offer from Fr Reynolds prior to the broadcast to undertake a paternity test to provide a definitive answer to the allegations.

JULY 5th, 2011

After his lawyers wrote a series of letters over the course of June, Fr Reynolds announces plans to seek a High Court order aimed at prompting RTÉ to provide its defence to his claim of innocence.

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IRELAND
The Irish Times

CARL O’BRIEN, Chief Reporter

Anna Carragher found a failure in RTÉ to recognise the potential for a grave injustice

A REPORT commissioned by the Broadcasting Authority of Ireland into the Prime Time Investigates programme that libelled Fr Kevin Reynolds has heavily criticised the standards of journalism involved in the broadcast.

The report by former BBC Northern Ireland controller Anna Carragher was submitted to RTÉ last week.

According to briefing documents prepared for the board of the Broadcasting Authority, Ms Carragher’s report found that RTÉ failed to comply with its statutory obligations under the Broadcasting Act relating to fairness and breach of privacy.

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IRELAND
The Irish Times

PATSY McGARRY, Religious Affairs Correspondent

Report is unequivocal in finding significant editorial and managerial lapses and oversights

IT IS clear, from the findings of an independent investigation into the Prime Time Investigates: Mission to Prey programme, where direct responsibility for that debacle lay. The fault was with management or, rather, the lack of it. The programme was allowed to freewheel to disaster with little or no management “interference”.

Former BBC Northern Ireland executive Anna Carragher investigated the programme for the Broadcast Authority of Ireland’s compliance committee. Her findings, as outlined in a briefing document presented to the BAI board, were unequivocal. “There was a significant failure of editorial and managerial controls within the organisation,” the document states, paraphrasing from Ms Carragher’s report.

Repeatedly, she makes comments along such lines as “concern was raised that the editor did not interrogate this more closely” or that neither the reporter’s “producer nor her editor interrogated this aspect more closely”. There was also the assumption “that members of staff working on the programme were familiar with the guidelines but RTÉ had no way of verifying that this was the case”.

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IRELAND
The Irish Times

PATSY McGARRY and CARL O’BRIEN

A report commissioned by the Broadcasting Authority of Ireland into the Prime Time Investigates programme that libelled Fr Kevin Reynolds has heavily criticised the standards of journalism involved in the broadcast.

Former BBC Northern Ireland controller Anna Carragher – who was commissioned by the authority to investigate breaches of broadcasting law – has concluded that the programme was unfair and a breach of Fr Reynold’s privacy.

The report’s findings are also heavily critical of the production team behind the programme.

Among its findings are that:

* Interviews with significant sources were not documented and there was an almost complete absence of documentary evidence.

* At all stages of the production of the programme, note taking was either nonexistent or grossly inadequate.

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IRELAND
BBC News

The long-running saga over the Roman Catholic priest, Fr Kevin Reynolds, who was defamed by the RTE Prime Time television programme, took another turn on Tuesday.

The programme, Mission to Prey, falsely accused the priest of raping a minor and fathering her child while he was a missionary in Africa.

Fr Reynolds received an apology and accepted substantial undisclosed damages from the Irish state broadcaster.

Tuesday’s Irish Times newspaper said that a report by the Broadcasting Authority of Ireland (BAI) will find that the Prime Time Investigates programme was unfair, and breached the privacy of Fr Kevin Reynolds.

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PHILADELPHIA (PA)
TheMediaReport

Dave Pierre

Leading journalists are ignoring a critical component of the current high-profile Catholic abuse trial in Philadelphia.

Mark Bukowski has accused Rev. James Brennan of raping him as a 14-year-old back in 1996. However, around the very same time that he accused the priest of the crime – in 2005 – Bukowski filed a very detailed false police report about a violent home robbery that never occurred.

Details about Bukowski’s shocking crime have been completely nonexistent in media coverage of the trial.

In his false report, Bukowski relayed a number of astonishing details about his fabricated “crime,” including that $675 from an employer, a DVD, prescription medicines, and a wristwatch were stolen from him. Bukowski also displayed cuts on his body and a t-shirt to police in an attempt to show evidence of a violent struggle.

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IRELAND
The Irish Times

The Association of Catholic Priests, which claims to represent more than 800 clergy, has strongly defended Fr Tony Flannery, recently silenced by the Vatican. It described the move as “extremely ill-advised”.

Fr Flannery, a member of the association’s leadership team, has had his monthly column with Redemptorist magazine Reality discontinued at Vatican direction, while Fr Gerard Moloney, the magazine’s editor, can no longer write on certain issues.

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IRELAND
Irish Independent

By Colm Kelpie

Tuesday April 10 2012

A GROUP representing more than 800 priests has branded the silencing of a Redemptorist cleric over his liberal views as unfair.

The Association of Catholic Priests (ACP) said the intervention by the Vatican against Fr Tony Flannery was ill-advised and said it could exacerbate the perceived “disconnect” between the Irish church and Rome.

Fr Flannery, a founding member of the association established less than two years ago, has had his column with the religious magazine ‘Reality’ discontinued after the Vatican stepped in. In its statement, the ACP said it was “disturbed” Fr Flannery was “being silenced”.

“We affirm in the strongest possible terms our . . . solidarity with Fr Flannery and wish to make clear our view that this intervention is unfair, unwarranted and unwise.”

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IRELAND
Irish Examiner

By Stephen Rogers

Tuesday, April 10, 2012

The Association of Catholic Priests has accused the Vatican of trying to silence its founding member Fr Tony Flannery and warned the move will exacerbate the perceived “disconnect” between the Irish Church and Rome.

In a statement, three other leaders of the 800-strong association, Fr Brendan Hoban, Fr Sean McDonagh, and Fr PJ Madden, said they were disturbed by the fact that Fr Flannery was being silenced.

It emerged last weekthat the priest’s monthly column with Reality, the Redemptorists’ monthly magazine, had been discontinued on the orders of the Vatican.

The magazine’s editor, Fr Gerard Moloney, is also banned from writing on certain, controversial issues.

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IRELAND
BBC News

By Shane Harrison
BBC NI Dublin correspondent

The body that represents priests in Ireland has said it is disturbed over the Vatican’s silencing of one of its members for his liberal views.

The leaders of the 800-strong Association of Catholic Priests (ACP) have warned that forcing Father Tony Flannery, who is based in Athenry in County Galway, to stop writing for a Redemptorist Order magazine would fuel belief of a disconnect between Irish Catholics and Rome.

“We believe that such an approach, in its individual focus on Fr Flannery and inevitably by implication on the members of the association, is an extremely ill-advised intervention in the present pastoral context in Ireland,” the group said.

Fr Flannery, who has written on religious matters in the Redemptorist magazine for 14 years, is under investigation by the Vatican over his views, including an opposition to clerical celibacy.

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NEW YORK
The Daily Pleasantville

by Robert Michelin

THORNWOOD, N.Y. – After the Legion of Christ announced it will be selling its location in Thornwood, the town of Mount Pleasant is left to speculate about what could eventually take over the 262-acre location.

“I definitely wouldn’t want to see some sort of department store move in, or Costco or anything like that,” Thornwood resident Miriam Thompson said. “It would cause too much commotion here around town.”

The Legion of Christ announced early last week that it will be forced to close the Thornwood facility after experiencing a severe decrease in donations to the Roman Catholic congregation. Jim Fair, a spokesperson with the legion, attributed the lack of funding to the poor economy and a sexual-abuse scandal connected to the legion’s founder, Marcial Maciel. The facility, located off of Columbus Avenue, first opened in Thornwood in 1996.

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MINNESOTA
Minnesota SNAP

10:30 am to 12:30 pm – Saturday, April 14, 2012
Edina Public Library
5280 Grandview Square, Edina, MN

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NEDERLAND
Trouw

Katholieke gestichtsartsen, een gelijkgestemde minister, en een fanatieke protestantse arts zorgden ervoor dat castratie in Nederland mogelijk werd, en dertig jaar mogelijk bleef.

Castratie van een jongen van 21 jaar oud, die door paters was misbruikt: dat onderwerp stond deze week centraal in de hoorzitting waarin Wim Deetman, voorzitter van de commissie die het misbruik in de rooms-katholieke kerk onderzocht, zich verdedigde tegen het verwijt dat hij deze zaak niet verder had onderzocht. In Nederlandse klinieken was castratie toen een uitzonderlijke, maar geaccepteerde behandeling, voerde Deetman aan.

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PHILADELPHIA (PA)
Philadelphia Inquirer

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

Sister Joan Scary said she got one clear instruction when the Rev. Edward M. DePaoli arrived at St. Gabriel Catholic Church in September 1995: Don’t ask questions.

Though she had been director of religious education at the Pottstown-area church since 1989, Scary told a Philadelphia jury Monday that St. Gabriel’s pastor, the Rev. James Gormley, warned her that if she talked about DePaoli, “I could pack my bags and leave.”

But Scary testified that she remembered that DePaoli had been arrested for something 10 years earlier and kept trying to find out what. Eight months later, Gormley angrily confronted her and reminded her about “spreading rumors about Father DePaoli. . . . He told me to get the hell out of here.”

What Scary learned was that DePaoli, a moral and ethics teacher in a local Catholic high school, had been arrested on child pornography charges in 1985, convicted, and sentenced to probation.

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IRELAND
Irish Independent

By Katherine Donnelly

Tuesday April 10 2012

THE first official steps towards a historic handover of Catholic primary schools to other patron bodies will get under way shortly.

A softly, softly approach to the transfer is recommended with about 50 schools expected to be involved in initial efforts to switch patron.

Up to 47 towns and suburban areas of Dublin have been targeted for the first phase of the process.

These areas have 250 schools between them so, on average, one Catholic school in each area could be transferred to a new patron, such as the multi-denominational body, Educate Together.

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UNITED STATES
The New York Times

By CLYDE HABERMAN

In the sexual-misconduct nightmare that has forced the city’s school system to wake up to distasteful realities, there are several models to consider. Two that come to mind are “The Children’s Hour” and the Roman Catholic Church in America.

“The Children’s Hour” was a 1934 drama by Lillian Hellman, about two school teachers whose lives are destroyed when a vicious student falsely accuses them of having a lesbian affair. In that era, such a relationship was deemed so abhorrent that The New York Times’s theater critic, the esteemed Brooks Atkinson, could only bring himself to describe the women coyly as being charged with displaying “an unnatural affection for each other.”

The play could easily serve as a reference point for some city teachers who have been accused of indecent behavior in the classroom, and say that they themselves are the true victims.

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DEUTSCHLAND
NDR

von Christoph Heinzle, NDR Info

Ahrensburg – die Stadt vor den Toren Hamburgs steht auch für den größten Missbrauchs-Skandal in der evangelischen Kirche. Pastor Dieter K. hatte in seiner Gemeinde in den 70er- und 80er-Jahren Mädchen und Jungen missbraucht. Von 13 Fällen spricht die Nordelbische Kirche. Von mehr als hundert geht die Opferinitiative “Missbrauch in Ahrensburg” aus.

Nach Recherchen von NDR Info finden sich diese Fälle nicht nur – wie bisher angenommen – im Umfeld der Gemeinde, sondern auch in der Stormarnschule: dem renommierten Gymnasium in Ahrensburg. Dort war Dieter K. als Religionslehrer tätig. NDR Info Reporter Christoph Heinzle hat eine frühere Schülerin getroffen, die sich als ein Opfer des Pastors bezeichnet.

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DEUTSCHLAND
Rhein-Zeitung

Trier. In Mönchskutten hat am Ostersonntag das Opferbündnis „MissBiT“ vor dem Trierer Dom friedlich gegen den Trierer Bischof Stephan Ackermann protestiert.

Die Betroffenen von Missbrauch durch Angehörige des Bistums Trier hatten sich mit dem Dokumentartheater Berlin und der Duisburger Kanzlei Sehr & Baier zusammengetan. Während Ackermann die Heilige Messe hielt, demonstrierten die Betroffenen vor dem Dom stumm gegen seine Haltung als Missbrauchs-Beauftragter der Deutschen Bischofskonferenz.

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DEUTSCHLAND
Rhein-Zeitung

Der 68-jährige frühere Gymnasiallehrer aus Neuwied-Oberbieber amtiert als ehrenamtlicher Vorsitzender der „Frauenwürde Neuwied“ (Schwangerenberatungsstelle). Zugleich ist er Ansprechpartner von „Wir sind Kirche“ in der Diözese Trier und engagiert sich ehrenamtlich in der Pfarrei St.Bonifatius Neuwied als Pfarrgemeinderat, Kommunionhelfer und Lektor. Weiterhin ist er in der Asylarbeit und bei der Neuwieder Tafel aktiv. Schladt fährt begeistert Fahrrad.

Von Hanspeter Schladt

“Schon seit mindestens einem halben Jahr kommt das Bistum Tier nicht zur Ruhe, und man wird den Eindruck nicht los, dass Bischof und Generalvikariat überfordert sind. Altfälle tauchen auf wie im Saarland, über die die Gläubigen zu spät informiert wurden. Oder im Hunsrück, wo selbst Verantwortliche in der Gemeinde nicht im Bilde waren. Auf der anderen Seite steht der Meinungsaustausch zum Thema „Sexueller Missbrauch“, zu dem Bischof Stephan Ackermann Anfang Januar nach Trier einlud, sich den Vorwürfen seiner Kritiker stellte und Fehler bei der Aufarbeitung einräumte. Es ging um relevante Fragen wie die Aufarbeitung von Fällen sexueller Gewalt, einen angemessenen Umgang mit den Opfern und den betroffenen Gemeinden – sicherlich gut gedacht, aber nicht weit genug. Wie Jutta Lehnert, die geistliche Leiterin der Katholischen Studierenden Jugend (KSJ) im Bistum Trier, äußerte, geht man nicht auf die grundsätzliche Frage nach den begünstigenden Strukturen der Kirche ein. Laut dieser Zeitung bezeichnete sie die katholische Kirche Anfang Januar als offenes Scheunentor für Sexualstraftäter.

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OKLAHOMA
Oklahoman

BY SHEILA STOGSDILL | Published: April 10, 2012

PAWHUSKA— An Osage County preacher who confessed to police he sexually abused a teenage girl because he was trying to prepare her for her future husband was convicted of sexual abuse, court records show.

After deliberating more than four hours Thursday, the jury convicted Creth Dean Hopkins, 61, of Pawhuska, of lewd acts to a minor and three counts of child sexual abuse, according to court records. Hopkins was acquitted of seven counts of child sexual abuse.

The jury recommended Hopkins serve 20 years on each of the child sexual abuse counts and three years on the lewd acts conviction, records show.

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PHILADELPHIA (PA)
The New York Times

By JON HURDLE

Published: April 9, 2012

A Roman Catholic nun testified Monday that she was fired from her job as director of religious education at a Pennsylvania parish after reporting her suspicions about a priest who had been convicted of receiving child pornography. Sister Joan Scary said at the landmark sexual abuse trial of two priests from the Archdiocese of Philadelphia that she reported her suspicions about another priest, Edward M. DePaoli, to Cardinal Anthony J. Bevilacqua in 1996.

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PHILADELPHIA (PA)
Philadelphia Inquirer

BY JOSEPH A. SLOBODZIAN
Inquirer Staff Writer

A CATHOLIC sister testified Monday that she was fired from her religious-school job in a Pottstown-area parish after questioning why a priest had received porn in the mail.

The priest – the Rev. Edward M. DePaoli – had been arrested on child-pornography charges in 1985 and convicted and sentenced to probation.

But in 1995, Sister Joan Scary – then in her sixth year as director of religious education at St. Gabriel’s parish in Stowe, Montgomery County – was unaware of the details of DePaoli’s past.

What she did know, Scary told a Common Pleas jury, was that DePaoli’s recent assignment at St. Gabriel’s was ambiguous and that St. Gabriel’s pastor, the Rev. James Gormley, warned that if she talked about DePaoli, “I could pack my bags and leave.”

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PHILADELPHIA (PA)
Philadelphia Priest Abuse Trial Blog

Ralph Cipriano

Father Thomas F. Shea was “very emotional,” Msgr. William J. Lynn wrote in his secret archdiocese files. “Why now after 20 years?” the priest wanted to know.

Father Shea was upset because a former altar boy hired a lawyer in 1994 to press a legal claim against the archdiocese, saying he had had sex with the priest numerous times between 1972 and 1977.

Msgr. Lynn asked Father Shea if the young man’s accusations were true.

“Maybe it might be true,” Father Shea replied, according to the secret files. Then the priest changed his story. “Yes, it did happen,” Father Shea confessed. The lawyer for the former altar boy had also told Lynn about a second victim who claimed to have had sex with Father Shea.

Lynn asked if there had been genital contact between the priest and the two boys. Yes, Father Shea admitted. Where did it happen, Lynn wanted to know. In a motel and the rectory, the priest responded. How many times? The priest couldn’t remember.

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STOCKTON (CA)
The Record

By Jennie Rodriguez-Moore
Record Staff Writer

April 10, 2012

STOCKTON – There’s a wave of support for former Catholic priest Michael Kelly even after a civil jury found him liable for sexually molesting an altar boy more than 20 years ago.

Friday’s verdict disheartened a slew of parishioners from St. Joachim Church in Locke-ford and other supporters even while advocates of the plaintiff rejoiced.

They said civil justice would have to suffice, since criminal charges couldn’t be filed because of the statute of limitations.

The Diocese of Stockton removed Kelly from ministry Friday immediately after the verdict at San Joaquin County Superior Court.

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CALIFORNIA
California Catholic Daily

Stockton priest removed from ministry after jury finds he molested boy in mid-1980s, bishop says he still believes the priest is innocent

Stockton Bishop Stephen Blaire has removed a longtime diocesan priest from ministry even though the bishop says he believes the priest is innocent of any wrongdoing.

Bishop Blaire took the action on Friday, April 6, after a San Joaquin County Superior Court jury found Fr. Michael Kelly, 62, liable for damages in a civil suit filed against him alleging he sexually molested a former altar boy in the mid-1980s at the Cathedral of the Annunciation in Stockton.

Fr. Kelly, until Friday pastor at St. Joachim’s Catholic Church in Lockeford, vigorously denied the allegations and testified in his own defense at the trial. But the jury apparently believed his now 37-year-old accuser, identified in court records only as “John TZ Doe,” who maintained that, until recently, he had repressed memories of being sexually molested when he was around 10 years old.

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IRELAND
The Irish Times

KEVIN HEGARTY

RITE AND REASON: Liberal Catholics have arrived at their views of church teaching on contraception, married and women priests, and homosexuality as a result of honest and honourable reflection

THE PAINTER Tony O’Malley had a custom of creating an artwork every Good Friday. When news broke during Holy Week of the Vatican censure of Fr Tony Flannery and the Redemptorist magazine Reality, I wished I could paint a picture to express my sadness.

Pope Benedict’s address at a Holy Thursday Mass in Rome copperfastened my gloom. Responding to a call to disobedience by Austrian priests and laity on celibacy and women priests he asserted that they had challenged “definite decisions of the church’s magisterium”.

Church leaders often talk of the right of free speech, most recently the Pope himself on his visit to Cuba. The recent Vatican moves are designed to create a climate of fear among liberal clerics. To echo a comment some years ago of the English writer AN Wilson, the Congregation of the Doctrine of the Faith has “ways of making you not talk”.

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PHILADELPHIA (PA)
Newsworks

April 9, 2012
By Shannon McDonald

The South Philadelphia high school baseball coach accused of sexual and moral corruption is seeking a trial.

Louis Spadaccini was charged last Fall with with corrupting the morals of a minor, simple assault, furnishing alcohol to a minor and rape. He’s being accused of serving alcohol to and engaging in sex acts with boys he coached at Ss. John Neumann and Maria Goretti High School.

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PHILADELPHIA (PA)
Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests

Posted by David Clohessy on April 09, 2012

We are hopeful that this trial will bring healing to the victims of Louis Spadaccini. It is very rare that victims of childhood sexual abuse are given a chance to have their day in court , and while it may be difficult for them to go over the sexual violence inflicted on them by this alleged predator, we remain optimistic that hearing the truth become public will prove cathartic.

These brave victims deserve applause for coming forward and protecting other children from being abused by this coach. We hope others who may have seen, suspected, or suffered crimes by Spadaccini will come forward and add their voices to those of these young men.

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NEDERLAND
Tubantia

HENGELO – Met zijn drieën trekken ze de doeken over de Madonna met de twee spelende kinderen weg: kardinaal Wim Eijk, aartsbisschop van Utrecht, pastoor Koos Smits van de Hengelose Goede Herderparochie en glaskunstenaar Frans Houben uit Ootmarsum, zelf slachtoffer van seksueel misbruik in de RK Kerk.

In de gebedsdienst in de Onze Lieve Vrouwekerk in Hengelo toont kardinaal Eijk in zijn overweging veel compassie met slachtoffers: „Ze zijn door het seksueel misbruik als minderjarigen beroofd van hun innerlijke vrijheid en persoonlijke waardigheid. Een zwarte episode in de kerkgeschiedenis.” Eijk hoopt dat het monument bijdraagt aan ‘heling’ en ‘herstel van vertrouwen’ bij slachtoffers. „Dat gaat me zeer ter harte.”

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