ABUSE TRACKER

POLAND
Crux

May 17, 2020

By Paulina Guzik

A new Polish documentary film on sexual abuse by Catholic clergy was released Saturday through the internet. Hide and Seek, produced by brothers Marek and Tomasz Sekielski, documents not only the sexual abuse of children within the Church in Poland, but also the abuse of power by the Church hierarchy.

The film is a follow-up to the Sekielski brothers’ documentary Tell No One, which was quickly referred to in the media as the “Polish Spotlight” – referring to the 2015 Oscar-winning film documenting the Boston Globe’s 2002 investigation into clerical sexual abuse in the Archdiocese of Boston.

After the documentary aired, the Primate of Poland, Archbishop Wojciech Polak – who also serves as the Delegate of Child Protection of Polish Bishops Conference – immediately announced that he had reported the case in the documentary to the Vatican’s representative in the country.

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WARSAW (POLAND)
Reuters

May 16, 2020

By Joanna Plucinska and Alicja Ptak

The Polish Catholic Church’s most senior archbishop notified the Vatican on Saturday of a Polish bishop accused of shielding priests known to have sexually abused children.

The referral, unprecedented in the deeply religious country, will test procedures introduced by the Vatican last year to hold to account bishops accused of turning a blind eye to child sex abuse. The Vatican is now expected to assign an investigator to the case.

“I ask priests, nuns, parents and educators to not be led by the false logic of shielding the Church, effectively hiding sexual abusers,” Poland’s Primate Wojciech Polak said in a statement published on Saturday.

“There is no place among the clergy to sexually abuse minors. We do not allow for the hiding of these crimes.”

The case came to prominence after a film by brothers Tomasz and Marek Sekielski, released on Saturday, showed how bishop Edward Janiak, based in the city of Kalisz, failed to take action against priests who were known to have abused children.

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POLAND
Agence France-Presse via TRTworld.com

May 17, 2020

A Polish documentary on child abuse by Catholic clerics put a damper Saturday on centenary celebrations of the venerated late Pope John Paul II’s birth.

After the film “Hide and Seek” was seen by almost 80,000 people on YouTube, Polish archbishop Wojciech Polak called on the Vatican to “launch proceedings” into the cases in question.

It is the second documentary by Tomasz Sekielski on child abuse within the church, and focuses in detail on two brothers who are alleged victims of a priest who was protected by a bishop.

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UNITED KINGDOM
Far Out Magazine

May 16, 2020

We’re looking back at one of television’s most infamous moments. Sinéad O’Connor is a musician who has never been shy to make her opinion well known in the public eye. Nothing compares, though, to her now-legendary appearance performing on SNL back in 1992.

Saturday Night Live has had several acts break the rules and find themselves on the wrong end of Lorne Michaels’ wrath. But perhaps none were as scandalous as O’Connor’s moment of infamy.

SNL, the now-iconic late-night live television sketch comedy and variety show, has been running prolifically each week since launching in 1975.

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UNITED STATES
Irish Central

May 17, 2020

By Shane O’Brien

Robert Kolker’s ‘Hidden Valley Road: Inside the Mind of an American Family’ is an account of the Galvin family, where six out of ten sons were diagnosed as schizophrenic.

A new biography tells the tragic tale of an American family thought to be one of the most disturbed families in American history.

‘Hidden Valley Road: Inside the Mind of an American Family’ is an account of the Galvin family in Colorado Springs where six out of ten sons were diagnosed as schizophrenic.

Robert Kolker’s in-depth study examines how one son murdered his wife, one son raped his sister, and how one son tortured a cat to death for no reason.

The Galvin family started like many other American families in the 1940s.

An unplanned pregnancy forced Donald Galvin Sr. to marry Mimi Blayney in a shotgun wedding in Mexico in 1944.

Donald was about to shipped out to the South Pacific to fight in the US Navy during the Second World War and the couple’s story was not unlike many other wartime couples who had to rush marriages in order to avoid the stigma and dishonor that accompanied unmarried pregnancies.

Little did they know that their first-born son, Donald Jr., would be the first of 12 children.

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WEST VIRGINIA
West Virginia Record

May 15, 2020

By Chris Dickerson

A Virginia man says a priest with a history of such offenses sexually assaulted him when he was an altar boy growing up in the Northern Panhandle.

Michael Pirraglia of Fairfax, Va., filed his complaint May 15 in Hancock Circuit Court against the Diocese of Wheeling-Charleston.

Pirraglia says his family attended St. Paul Catholic Church in Weirton when he was growing up. One of the priests assigned to the church then was Rev. Victor Frobas.

Frobas worked for the Diocese from 1965 to 1983. Before that, Frobas worked for the Diocese of Philadelphia, where there were multiple claims alleging Frobas abused minors.

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NEW YORK
National Public Radio

May 16, 2020

[AUDIO: 4-minute listen]

NPR’s Scott Simon talks with Teresa Theophano about Georgianna Glose, the Brooklyn nun who blew the whistle on sexual abuse in the Catholic Church. She died from COVID-19 complications.

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RAPID CITY (SD)
SNAPNetwork.org

May 13, 2020

By SNAP (Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests)

A new bishop has been chosen to lead one of the smallest Catholic dioceses in the nation. We call on him to make the protection of children and the prevention of abuse his number one priority now that he is officially in charge.

Fr. Peter M. Muhich, a priest from the Diocese of Duluth, has been chosen by Pope Francis to lead the Diocese of Rapid City, SD. That diocese has a sordid history with clergy abuse, having once been headed by a bishop who was himself an abuser. Bishop-elect Muhich now has the chance to come in and make his mark by leading the diocese into a new era of openness, transparency, and protection for children and the vulnerable.

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YOUNGSTOWN (OH)
SNAPnetwork.org

May 12, 2020

By SNAP (Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests)

A priest who had previously been determined to have “credible” allegations of abuse against him has suddenly removed from the diocesan list following a new investigation. We call on Catholic officials to be clear and direct in sharing the information with the public that has resulted in this change.

Fr. William Smaltz was included on the initial list of priests accused of abuse released by the Diocese of Youngstown in 2018. Despite that listing, diocesan leaders now claim that they have determined those allegations are no longer “credible,” but have released precious little information to the public.

There are many unanswered questions about this situation, chief among them being who was in charge of this new investigation? Similarly, what facts have emerged that made previously “credible” claims suddenly unsubstantiated? Catholic officials in Youngstown are saying little about this case which does a disservice to parishioners, parents, and the public.

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Catholic Herald

May 15, 2020

By Natasha Marsh

There has been only one topic in Australia that has broken through the Covid-19 eclipse, and that is the exoneration of Cardinal George Pell by the High Court on Tuesday, April 7. By a unanimous decision, 7-0, the court acquitted the cardinal of all charges, saying there should have been “sufficient doubt” in the minds of the jury when they condemned him over a year ago.

This could have marked the end of a bitter episode, yet many Australians – in a mirrored unanimity – voted to ignore the High Court’s decision: in their own minds, the Cardinal remains a guilty man.

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UNITED STATES
Stand Up Speak Up (blog)

May 8, 2020

By Tim Lennon

At age 12, I was raped and sexually abused for months. I froze. Now I fight back. The radio interview covers my steps from victim to advocate.

Also, I detail my journey of recovering memories from previous decades. As a result of substantial investigation, I discovered that the sexual predator who raped me got caught three times previous to his assignment to my parish and elementary school.

[How to Research an Abuser]

Radio interview with National Association of Adult Survivors of Child Abuse, NAASCA.org.

See more of my story, narrative, photos, and documents on My Story.

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UNITED STATES
America

May 15, 2020

Tara Reade was interviewed by the journalist Megyn Kelly on May 8 regarding Ms. Reade’s allegations of sexual harassment and assault by Joseph R. Biden Jr., the presumptive Democratic nominee for president. Ms. Reade alleges that Mr. Biden assaulted her in 1993, when he was serving as a U.S. senator and Ms. Reade was a member of his staff.

As Doreen St. Felix wrote in The New Yorker, “the interview yielded little new information, offering viewers a chance to put a face to a name and to decide for themselves, based on not much more than a feeling in the gut, whether they would grant Reade their sympathy.”

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VATICAN CITY
Vatican News

May 13, 2020

By Andrea Torniello

The Vatican is not at risk of default, says the Prefect of the Holy See’s Secretariat for the Economy. “We are not a company. Everything can be measured in terms of deficit. We live thanks to the help of the faithful and we pay 17 million Euros a year in taxes to Italy. We work for a transparent system and for the centralization of investments.”

Father Juan Antonio Guerrero Alves was appointed just a few months ago as Prefect of the Secretariat for the Economy. Pope Francis himself called on him to carry out a reform that aims at the economic transparency of the Holy See and an ever more efficient use of the goods and resources at the service of its evangelizing mission. Fr Alves now finds himself having to deal with the crisis caused by Covid-19. Not wanting to grant this interview, he explained that he thinks “there are other more important things in the Church. I would also have liked to wait longer before speaking. However, this moment is challenging for everyone – for us as well. It also requires clarity.”

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ROME (ITALY)
National Catholic Register

May 13, 2020

By Edward Pentin

Jesuit Father Antonio Guerrero Alves told Vatican News that he anticipates a steep drop in annual revenues, due to the coronavirus pandemic.

The Vatican is not at risk of default but has “difficult years ahead” and could lose nearly a half of its annual revenue due to the coronavirus, the head of Vatican finances has said.

In a May 13 Vatican News interview with Andrea Tornielli, the editorial director of the Dicastery for Communications, Jesuit Father Antonio Guerrero Alves, who last year succeeded Cardinal George Pell as prefect of the Secretariat for the Economy, said the “most optimistic calculate a decrease in revenue of around 25%, the most pessimistic, around 45%.”

The Spanish Jesuit added that his optimistic and pessimistic forecasts depend on “external factors” and how much the Vatican can reduce costs.

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ROME (ITALY)
Catholic Herald

May 13, 2020

By Christopher Altieri

The Italian daily, Il Mesaggero, published a piece earlier this week by their Vaticanologist, Franca Giansoldati, detailing a financial outlook that is very grim, indeed.

Internal Vatican documents obtained by Il Messaggero – a paper Pope Francis reads regularly – show that curial heads are contemplating drops in revenue between 30% and 80% in 2020, and a resulting deficit between 28% and 175%, depending on how successful cost-controlling measures – some of which are already in place – prove to be.

The documents, which came from the Secretariat for the Economy, detail best-case, middle-case, and worst-case scenarios.

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ROME (ITALY)
Catholic News Service

May 15, 2020

By Carol Glatz

The postulator and the commission involved in investigating the life of Pope John Paul II for sainthood cause found no evidence that the pope knowingly neglected or covered up abuse scandals, the postulator said.

Msgr. Slawomir Oder, the promoter of the cause, told reporters in Rome during an online meeting May 15 that he and investigators saw nothing “that could possibly be claimed as (being) a shadow of guilt in regard to John Paul II.”

However, Msgr. Oder also explained that the investigators did not have direct access to the relevant Vatican archives but had to send the topics they wanted to explore and questions to the Secretariat of State.

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ROME (ITALY)
Crux

May 16, 2020

By Elise Ann Allen

Official in John Paul II’s sainthood cause says no cover-up on sex abuse

Facing suggestions that Saint John Paul II’s reputation has been stained by the Church’s child sexual abuse scandals, including perceptions that John Paul turned a blind eye to accusations against certain leading churchmen, the official responsible of the Polish Pope’s sainthood cause insisted Friday his record was thoroughly investigated and no evidence of wrongdoing was found.

“No, John Paul II didn’t cover [up] for any pedophile,” Monsignor Slawomir Oder told journalists May 15.

The judicial vicar of the ordinary tribunal of the Diocese of Rome and postulator of the cause of canonization of Saint John Paul II, Oder spoke during a May 15 virtual press roundtable marking the centenary of John Paul II’s birth May 18.

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ROME (ITALY)
Associated Press

May 15, 2020

By Nicole Winfield

Emeritus Pope Benedict XVI has honored St. John Paul II on the centenary of his birth and floated the idea that he should be called “the Great,” as only two other popes have been.

John Paul’s longtime secretary, Cardinal Stanislaw Dziwisz, held a press conference in Krakow, Poland, on Friday to present a letter by Benedict, which was released to the media in a half-dozen languages. The fanfare suggested that Dziwisz wanted to draw attention to the praise of his beloved John Paul, who was born 100 years ago this coming Monday.

The four-page letter covers territory long of concern to Benedict, but is also heavy on Polish history and John Paul’s personal background, suggesting that the 92-year-old Benedict didn’t write it alone. The letter traces John Paul’s quarter-century pontificate, his encyclicals, devotions and foreign trips, as well as the final moments of his life and the chants of “Santo Subito” or “Sainthood Now” that erupted soon thereafter.

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ROCKVILLE CENTRE (NY)
LI Herald

May 15, 2020

By Briana Bonfiglio

A state judge in Nassau County has dismissed the Diocese of Rockville Centre’s motion challenging the New York Child Victims Act (CVA).

Signed by Gov. Andrew Cuomo on Feb. 14, 2019, the CVA allows a one-year period for victims of childhood sexual abuse to bring claims against individual abusers or institutions responsible for those abusers, forgoing the statute of limitations for victims 23 and older.

The Diocese had filed a motion to dismiss the CVA on Nov. 12, 2019, citing that changing the statute of limitation infringed on its right to due process. In addition, by dismissing dozens of lawsuits brought to the institution through the CVA, the Diocese had hoped to maintain funding to compensate victims through its own Independent Reconciliation and Compensation Program.

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CHICAGO (IL)
Chicago Tribune

May 14, 2020

By Javonte Anderson and Katherine Rosenberg-Douglas

The Archdiocese of Chicago and other Catholic dioceses throughout the state announced phased plans to begin reopening Catholic churches, starting in Chicago with small gatherings for baptisms, weddings, funerals and confession as early as May 23.

Gov. J.B. Pritzker has been under increasing pressure in recent days as smaller churches have sued the state, trying to lift the almost two-month-old stay-at-home order’s application to religious gatherings. The governor added “free exercise of religion” as an essential activity to his revised stay-at-home order late April 30, after a rural church filed suit against the plan, and Catholic leaders soon after said they were working on a plan to reopen churches. The Catholic bishops reached an agreement with the state Wednesday, according to letters posted on their dioceses’ websites.

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ORANGE (CT)
Patch

May 15, 2020

By Alfred Branch

The lawsuit argues that a March 16 order by the Orange Health Department​ went beyond an order issued by Gov. Ned Lamont.

A Catholic church in Orange is suing the town’s health director for canceling religious services during the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic, writes the New Haven Register.

Our Lady of Sorrows Church on Spring Street claims in a federal lawsuit that Dr. Amir Mohammad discriminated against the church by ordering the cancellation of its services. Bridgeport attorney C. Christian Young filed the lawsuit in United States District Court on behalf of the Rev. Bernard Champagne, the church’s 87-year-old priest.

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YOUNGSTOWN (OH)
Diocese of Youngstown

May 11, 2020

By Matthew Pecchia

William Smaltz was included in a list of Clergy of the Diocese of Youngstown against whom credible, substantiated allegations of sexual abuse of a minor have been made. Upon further inquiry and consideration of additional and new information, the allegations are not deemed credible and substantiated. Accordingly, William Smaltz’s name has been removed from the foregoing list.

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YOUNGSTOWN (OH)
CantonRep.com

May 12, 2020

By Charita Goshay

A former priest included on a 2018 list of clergy under investigation for improper conduct has been cleared by the Catholic Diocese of Youngstown.

In a statement from the diocese, an investigation found no credible evidence to support accusations made against the former Rev. William Smaltz involving the sexual abuse of a minor.

A native of Youngstown, Smaltz, 89, was ordained in the 1950s. He served at St. Mary’s Parish in Massillon, St. Edward parish in Youngstown, Our Lady of Lourdes in East Palestine and St. Mary’s in Conneaut.

Smaltz left the priesthood in the 1970s and later married.

According to a report published by the Vindicator, Smaltz and his attorney presented the diocese with evidence disputing the accusation, which resulted in the investigation being dropped.

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IRELAND
Irish Times

May 15, 2020

By Jack Power

Scouting bodies protected each other and their reputations while facilitating sex abuse

Child sexual abuse was “tolerated” at the highest levels of former scouting organisations, with the crimes of those who preyed on children covered up to protect the reputation of the movement, a damning report has concluded.

There is evidence that groups of sex offenders operated at the top of Scouting Ireland’s legacy organisations to protect each other and “facilitate” child abuse, a report by child protection expert Ian Elliott found.

The Government is to consider the findings of the report and decide whether a statutory inquiry into the historic abuse may be required. However, there are concerns over whether such an inquiry would be able to uncover substantially more information, according to sources.

Scouting Ireland made a full organisational apology on foot of the report’s publication on Thursday. The historic abuse relates to the Catholic Boy Scouts of Ireland (CBSI) and the Scout Association of Ireland, which merged to form Scouting Ireland in 2004.

The report said one of the legacy bodies was a “seriously dysfunctional organisation”, with “sex offenders dominating the leadership for decades”.

The culture of the former organisations were defined by “cronyism” and poor governance, which led to a consistent failure to report child abuse to authorities, it said. There was an “almost complete absence of any concern for the young people who were abused”, the report found.

Scouting Ireland has now identified 356 alleged victims of historic abuse, and 275 alleged perpetrators, who primarily operated between the 1960s and 1990s

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CARTAGENA (SPAIN)
The Leader

May 15, 2020

The Diocese of Cartagena intends to investigate the sexual abuse of minors and vulnerable people that has been committed within the Catholic Church between 1950 and 2010.

To do this, a special episcopal delegation has been created, detail of which were announced on Thursday by the bishop of Cartagena, José Manuel Lorca Planes, and his episcopal delegate, Gil José Sáez Martínez.

“I have warned all priests of the importance of this investigation,” stressed the Bishop, “and that anyone standing in the way of possible victims will be committing a truly criminal act .”

Sáez Martínez said that the new delegation has already attended eight alleged victims adding that that they will receive comprehensive care. “The problem is that we are attending to the victims, but only on the legal level. This is a situation that also needs psychological and spiritual support.”

The new episcopal delegate explained that the investigation of possible cases registered in the Region, in those six decades “requires time and investigation.

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Other/Wise, the Online Journal of the International Forum for Psychoanalytic Education

May 2020

by Peter Gajdics

I was born in 1964 in Vancouver, Canada, the youngest of five children to Catholic immigrant parents. My mother, an ethnic German, was born in the former Yugoslavia, and escaped three years in a communist concentration camp post World War II; my father, born in Hungary, was raised an orphan, and at about the same time, he also fled the rising communist regime and made his way to Canada, where my parents met and married, in 1956.

Religion and family all meant a great deal to my parents when my siblings and I were children. By most people’s standards, we were a close family: dinners together every night; piano lessons; Christmases with all the decorations; homemade European baking; Catholic schools for all us kids; and, of course, church every Sunday.

It was in my Catholic elementary school, when I was six years old, that a stranger molested me in the boy’s bathroom during a church gathering. I never talked about that abuse with anyone—already at the age of six, I’d learned to hide my shame and to silence myself. But there were cracks in my silence; soon after, I began experiencing night terrors, deep depression, and high anxiety.

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VICTORIA (AUSTRALIA)
Australian Broadcasting Corporation

May 15, 2020

By Kellie Lazzaro

Key points:
— McNamara indecently assaulted more than 15 young boys between 1970 and 1975
— He will serve seven months in prison after pleading guilty to four charges of indecent assault and one count of common assault
— McNamara worked as headmaster and sports master at St Paul’s Catholic College in Traralgon, Victoria where students nicknamed him The Rat

Marist brother Gerard Joseph McNamara, 82, has begun his second stint in prison after pleading guilty to indecently assaulting Traralgon school boys in the 1970s.

McNamara was working at St Paul’s Catholic College in Traralgon when he indecently assaulted more than 15 students between 1970 and 1975.

He abused his victims while giving them massages in the monastery, his office and a sports equipment shed, and many were targeted multiple times.

Many of the abused boys were known as victims and ridiculed by their peers.

McNamara was sentenced in the Victorian County Court today to 35 months in prison, with 28 months suspended, after pleading guilty to four charges of indecent assault and one count of common assault.

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ROME (ITALY)
Catholic News Agency

May 4, 2020

Modern society is formulating an “anti-Christian creed” and punishing those who resist it with “social excommunication,” Benedict XVI has said in a new biography, published in Germany May 4.

In a wide-ranging interview at the end of the 1,184-page book, written by German author Peter Seewald, the pope emeritus said the greatest threat facing the Church was a “worldwide dictatorship of seemingly humanistic ideologies.”

Benedict XVI, who resigned as pope in 2013, made the comment in response to a question about what he had meant at his 2005 inauguration, when he urged Catholics to pray for him “that I may not flee for fear of the wolves.”

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BIRMINGHAM (AL)
Church Militant

May 14, 2020

By Martina Moyski

The newly named bishop-designate of Birmingham, Alabama, who will serve as spiritual advisor to EWTN, is coming to his new position with unresolved allegations of cover-up on his back.

Bishop Steven J. Raica has been accused of “maintaining the ministry of priests who abuse kids,” according to a press release issued May 12 by St. Mary MacKillop Coalition for the Protection of Children and Vulnerable Adults.

The Coalition issued the statement “to help spread the word” of Bp. Raica’s cover-ups before he steps into the sphere of the world’s largest Catholic network.

E-mails, letters and news reports that circulated throughout the diocese of Gaylord, Michigan — Bp. Raica’s previous location — show that the bishop promised the community that a priest credibly accused of sexual misconduct who was to have been permanently removed from ministry in 2002, may never have been removed from ministry at all, St. Mary MacKillop Coalition president Nadja Tirrell said.

Emails in the possession of the coalition show Fr. Jim Holtz was back in ministry in May of 2019, despite Bp. Raica’s reassurances to the contrary to the diocese.

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NEW ORLEANS (LA)
NOLA.com

May 14, 2020

By Ramon Antonio Vargas

In a remarkable letter filed in federal court Thursday, a priest suspected of molesting children while tending to the deaf reveals that he has continued receiving financial support from the Archdiocese of New Orleans since his 1980 removal from the ministry — and complains he’s on the brink of homelessness because the archdiocese’s recent bankruptcy filing put a stop to the payments.

The letter’s author is Gerard Howell, who served at several New Orleans-area churches, established a center for the deaf in Baton Rouge, and was removed from the ministry 16 years after his ordination over what the missive characterizes as “serious mistakes in the past.”

Howell, 80, was not named in the archdiocese’s most recent listing of retired priests who are entitled to benefits such as a monthly pension, insurance coverage and archdiocese-owned housing. Nonetheless, Howell’s emailed letter notes that in 1995, then-Archbishop Francis Schulte “promised to fully provide” for him, citing a directive from the Congregation for the Clergy, an entity in Rome that oversees diocesan priests.

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BUFFALO (NY)
Buffalo News

May 14, 2020

By Jay Tokasz

A Williamsville attorney is asking Pope Francis to intervene and reinstate the pay and benefits of a priest who was suspended from ministry due to substantiated allegations of child sex abuse.

The lawyer, Michael S. Taheri, said in a letter to the pontiff that there was no “legal or canonical basis” for Bishop Edward B. Scharfenberger to terminate pay and benefits for the Rev. Samuel Venne.

Scharfenberger on May 1 cut off monthly pay and benefits for Venne and 22 other priests accused of abuse or misconduct. The move was part of negotiations in federal bankruptcy court with a creditor’s committee representing more than 200 plaintiffs who alleged child sex abuse by priests and sued the diocese under the Child Victims Act.

But according to church law, Scharfenberger is obligated to provide financial support for all Buffalo Diocese priests, even those who have been removed from ministry due to substantiated allegations of child sex abuse.

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ROCKVILLE CENTRE (NY)
Catholic News Agency via Catholic World Report

May 14, 2020

A judge ruled Wednesday that New York’s Child Victims Act is constitutional, rejecting a suit filed by the Diocese of Rockville Centre that claimed the law is barred by the due process clause in the state constitution.

The act opened a one-year window for adults in the state who were sexually abused as children to file lawsuits against their abusers. It also adjusted the statute of limitations for both pursuing criminal charges and civil suits against sexual abusers or institutions where the abuse took place.

“The court finds the Child Victims Act is a reasonable response to remedy the injustice of past child sexual abuse,” Justice Steven Jaeger of the New York Supreme Court in Nassau County wrote in his May 13 decision. “Accordingly, it does not violate defendant diocese’s right to due process under the New York State Constitution.

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HARRISBURG (PA)
Associated Press

May 13, 2020

A federal judge is giving most claimants until Nov. 13 to seek compensation over child sexual abuse from the Harrisburg Roman Catholic Diocese, which sought bankruptcy protection earlier this year.

The order signed last week by Chief Bankruptcy Judge Henry Van Eck also gave governmental entities until Dec. 11 to file proofs of claims for debts.

The diocese issued a statement on Wednesday that encouraged anyone with a claim involving “any actual or alleged sexual offense” by its clergy, teachers, employees or volunteers to submit a claims form.

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ROCKVILLE CENTRE (NY)
New York Law Journal

May 13, 2020

By Ryan Tarinelli

The law opened up a legal “look-back” window for survivors of child sex abuse, giving them the opportunity to file lawsuits over older claims typically barred by statutes of limitation.

The Child Victims Act does not violate the Catholic Diocese of Rockville Centre’s due process right under New York’s constitution, a Nassau County Supreme Court justice has ruled.

“Based on this legislative history, the court finds the Child Victims Act is a reasonable response to remedy the injustice of past child sexual abuse,” wrote Justice Steven Jaeger in a ruling filed Wednesday.

The law opened up a legal “look-back” window for survivors of child sex abuse, giving them the opportunity to file lawsuits over older claims typically barred by statutes of limitation.

Sean Dolan, a spokesperson for the diocese, said they disagree with the court’s ruling in regard to the due process challenge to the act.

“We are analyzing our options with respect to appeal of this and other issues,” he said in the statement.

The ruling was lauded by advocates for the survivors of child sex abuse.

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

IRELAND
Irish Times

May 13, 2020

By Jack Power

Child protection expert Ian Elliott’s awaited report into past child sex abuse completed

Scouting Ireland is to publish a final report on Thursday into historic child sex abuse that took place in legacy scouting organisations, completed by child protection expert Ian Elliott.

The report is understood to be around 50 pages in length and makes 12 recommendations, as well as detailing several case studies. Scouting Ireland is to make an “organisational apology” to all survivors of past abuse in response to the report’s publication.

Mr Elliott, who also acted as Scouting Ireland’s interim safeguarding manager for several months, has been investigating the historic abuse for over a year.

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NEW ORLEANS (LA)
NOLA.com

May 14, 2020

By Ramon Antonio Vargas

One served as the Archdiocese of New Orleans’ in-house attorney. Another was on the board of the archdiocese’s seminary and earned an award for organizing monthly Masses for special-needs parishioners. A third is married to an attorney who is representing the archdiocese as it seeks bankruptcy protection. Yet another serves on an archdiocesan charity’s board.

Respectively, U.S. District Judges Wendy Vitter, Jay Zainey, Sarah Vance and Ivan Lemelle are four members of the federal bench in New Orleans who have recused themselves from clergy abuse lawsuits that were transferred to their courthouse after the church filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy on May 1.

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SAGINAW (MI)
MLive

May 12, 2020

By Cole Waterman

A man who says his job with the Catholic Diocese of Saginaw was impacted after he reported a sex-abuse complaint against a priest has filed a lawsuit against the diocese.

In the suit, Gabriel Villarreal alleges he was retaliated against by the diocese and its agents for reporting a relative had been assaulted by the Rev. Robert J. DeLand. A jury acquitted DeLand of charges related to the relative, but DeLand was convicted of sexual assaulting a different person in a separate case.

Villarreal is a maintenance worker for the diocese.

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ROCHESTER (NY)
Rochester Democrat and Chronicle

May 12, 2020

By Steve Orr

The one-year window for filing lawsuits over past acts of child sexual abuse has been extended by five months — except for claims against the Rochester diocese for misconduct by its priests.

New York’s Child Victims Act, approved by the state Legislature in early 2019, carved out a one-year period for reviving old child sexual abuse claims that had been barred the statute of limitations. That one-year window was to close Aug. 13.

But in an executive order prompted by the coronavirus pandemic, Gov. Andrew Cuomo on Friday extended the window for five months, to Jan. 13. The pandemic forced closure of the state’s courts in late March and ended filing of new lawsuits. It is not yet known when state courts will reopen.

The extension does not apply, however, to legal claims alleging past child sexual abuse by Catholic priests, brothers, deacons, nuns and other leaders in the Rochester diocese.

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PHILADELPHIA (PA)
Jewish Exponent

May 13, 2020

By Sophie Panzer

Lynne Abraham doesn’t quit.

In the midst of a global pandemic, the 79-year-old former Philadelphia District Attorney has commandeered her dining room table so that she can work from home. Social distancing has limited interviews to phone calls and email, but she paints a picture with her words.

“My dining room table is a dog’s breakfast — the same as any desk I’ve ever sat behind,” she noted.

Abraham is a partner at the law firm Archer & Greiner, P.C. This might come as a surprise to the firms who refused to hire women in 1965, the year she graduated from Temple Law School as one of two women in her class and had difficulty finding work. Even more surprising might be her four terms as the city’s DA and her 2015 mayoral campaign.

She knew the odds were against her in many of her professional endeavors. It never stopped her from trying.

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CLEVELAND (OH)
Catholic News Service

May 13, 2020

By Dennis Sadowski

Advocates fighting human traffickers are alerting children, parents and vulnerable adults that the coronavirus pandemic has pushed traffickers into new venues, potentially endangering more people to being exploited.

Seemingly innocent online venues are becoming popular places for sex traffickers to groom unwitting children and entice adults facing financial turmoil because of the pandemic. The danger is leading the advocates to call for funding of anti-trafficking programs in any new federal legislation in response to the public health crisis.

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NASSAU COUNTY (NY)
JAA

May 13, 2020

(Nassau County, NY) – A Nassau County Court has denied the Diocese of Rockville Centre’s callous attempt to throw out 44 lawsuits filed by sexual abuse survivors under New York’s Child Victims Act.

Yesterday, Nassau County Supreme Court Judge Steven M. Jaeger issued an order denying the dozens of motions to dismiss filed by the diocese. Judge Jaeger rejected the diocese’s argument that the Child Victims Act was unconstitutional and violated its right to due process. Referencing the intent and actions of the New York legislature, Judge Jaeger concluded that the “Child Victims Act was a reasonable response to remedy the injustice of past sexual abuse.”

“This decision is huge in assuring survivors’ voices can be heard and children can be better protected,” said Attorney Jeff Anderson. “It’s time for reckoning in New York.”

Contact:
Jeff Anderson: 646.499.3364 (c), 646.759.2551 (o)
Mike Finnegan: 612.205.5531 (c), 646.759.2551 (o)
Trusha Goffe: 646.995.0616 (c), 646.759.2551 (o)

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ST. LOUIS
St. Louis Post Dispatch

May 12, 2020

By Steven Spaner

Regarding “Chaminade clergy abuse case challenges First Amendment protection for church officials accused of negligence” (May 6): In the United States, you can believe anything you want, but you can’t do anything you want. Religious freedom protects all belief, not all actions.

That’s why a case before the Missouri Supreme Court involving Chaminade College Preparatory School is so important. If the alleged victim in that case prevails, our state would help prevent and punish child sex crimes and cover-ups without infringing on spiritual beliefs.

A man alleges that Brother John Woulfe molested him at the school and that administrators knew or suspected Woulfe had hurt other youngsters before. In any other private school setting, such a case would move forward. But Catholic officials say no court can touch these allegations without infringing on the church’s First Amendment rights. That’s baloney.

Church figures can believe that child molesters should be forgiven. They can believe that predators can reform. But they can’t negligently put kids in harm’s way by ignoring or concealing known or suspected molesters and stop every judge or jury from even questioning their actions.

For the safety of our children, I hope our state’s highest court soon makes the church’s limitations crystal clear.

Steven Spaner • Marthasville

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JEFFERSON CITY (MO)
St. Louis Post Dispatch

May 6, 2020

By Nassim Benchaabane

The Missouri Supreme Court on Wednesday heard arguments in a sex abuse case that asks the court to break with a previous ruling protecting church officials from negligent supervision claims because courts deciding such claims could violate separation of church and state.

The lawsuit before the state’s top court claims now-deceased Marianist Brother John Woulfe sexually abused a Chaminade College Preparatory School student in 1971 while working as a guidance counselor at the school. The suit, first filed in 2015 in St. Louis County Circuit Court, alleges Marianist and Chaminade officials knew of the abuse and failed to stop it and that Woulfe previously had sexually assaulted at least one other boy at Chaminade.

Information in Woulfe’s file, the suit says, contained coded language indicating the Marianist Province knew Woulfe had abused minors before transferring him to Chaminade and also while he worked there, and that other students in the early 1970s reported Woulfe had sexually abused them.

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BUFFALO (NY)
WKBW-TV

May 12, 2020

7 Eyewitness News has been honored with a 2020 Regional Edward R. Murrow Award for its investigative series that looked into decades of sexual abuse cover-ups within the Diocese of Buffalo.

The award winning entry, “The Malone Recordings: The Tapes That Brought Down a Bishop,” was the result of months of investigative reporting by I-Team Chief Investigator Charlie Specht. The multiple stories were shot and edited by photojournalists Jeff Wick, Rob Neves and Patrick Merritt.

A 22-month investigation of the diocese revealed ongoing cover-ups of sexual abuse that led to state and federal investigations, spurred changes in New York State law, gave voices to survivors of abuse, and ultimately resulted in the resignation of Bishop Richard Malone.

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AUSTRALIA
Church Times (independent lay Anglican newspaper)

May 11, 2020

By Muriel Porter

CARDINAL George Pell had known of clergy paedophile activity at least as early as 1982 and possibly earlier, the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse said in findings released this week. The findings concerning Cardinal Pell, who was last month acquitted of charges of child sexual abuse by the Australian High Court (News, 9 April), had been redacted until Pell’s court processes had run their course.

The findings relate to Cardinal Pell’s conduct as priest in the Victorian diocese of Ballarat, where numerous cases of paedophile activity by Roman Catholic clergy occurred in the 1970s and ’80s. The Commission rejected Cardinal Pell’s evidence that he had not been told that the paedophile priest Gerald Ridsdale was being moved from his parish because of child sexual-abuse complaints. The Commission said that it was “implausible” that the then Bishop of Ballarat did not tell Pell and others in a meeting the real reason for Ridsdale’s move. The failure of Pell and others to advise the Bishop in relation to Ridsdale was unacceptable, the Commission said.

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UNITED STATES
Catholic News Agency

May 6, 2020

By JD Flynn

Well into the pandemic’s grip on American public life, parishes and dioceses are preparing a return to some new kind of normal.

Masses are resuming, albeit for small numbers in limited circumstances. Catholic schools and universities are making plans to reopen in the fall. Regrettably, even the ordinary fault lines and debates among Catholics, somewhat muted in recent months, are beginning to be revived.

But while some acute effects of the pandemic will still shape the Church in the months to come, the collapsing global economy will have a far more enduring and dramatic impact on parishes, chanceries, and other Catholic ministries.

In other words, barring some kind of miraculous economic recovery, the Church, at least in the U.S., ain’t seen nothin’ yet.

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AUSTRALIA
The Australian via CathNews(news outlet of the Australian Catholic Bishops’ Conference)

May 13, 2020

By John Ferguson, The Australian

The operation of the Victorian justice system should face a full review in the wake of the botched proceedings against Cardinal George Pell, according to the state’s Opposition. Source: The Australian.

Coalition legal affairs spokesman Edward O’Donohue said he had been inundated with complaints from Cardinal Pell supporters, opponents, victim groups and people shocked at the “unedifying ordeal”.

He said while the unanimous High Court decision was “clearly an embarrassment” for the majority on the Victorian Court of Appeal, he was not reflecting on it or decisions by the other courts. But he was concerned about key aspects of Cardinal Pell’s case and whether the justice system in Victoria had done its job.

This included the decision by police to advertise for, and encourage, complainants to come forward.

Mr O’Donohue said the decision to proceed with the investigation and lay char

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AUSTRALIA
Newsweekly (blog)

May 13, 2020

by Peter Westmore

Listen here to Peter Westmore in conversation with Australian Family Association national president Terri M. Kelleher on the release of the previously redacted parts of Cardinal George Pell’s answers to the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse.

Findings by the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse that Cardinal George Pell covered up allegations of child abuse in the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s are totally unsupported by the evidence, and constitute an abuse of power by the Commission. They could more accurately be described as accusations.

Nevertheless, the ABC and other sections of the media that for years have been running a vendetta against Cardinal Pell and were clearly unhappy that his conviction for child sex abuse had been overturned in a unanimous judgement of the High Court of Australia, reported the sensational claims at great length.

In doing so, they further trashed the reputation of the first Australian church leader seriously to deal with the problem of child sexual abuse, and the first to set up a redress scheme for victims over 20 years before the Royal Commission recommended such a body.

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NEW YORK
Catholic News Agency

May 13, 2020

In addition to providing a legal window, The Child Victims Act also adjusted the statute of limitations for pursuing criminal charges and civil suits against sexual abusers or institutions.

New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo has issued an executive order to extend for five months the legal window for victims of childhood sex abuse to file civil claims, due to court delays caused by the coronavirus epidemic.

Victims of sex abuse may now file by Jan. 14, 2021 instead of August 13 of this year. Cuomo said May 8 the extension is needed “because people need access to the courts to make their claim, because justice too long delayed is justice denied,” the New York Daily News reports.

On March 22 non-essential court filings were frozen as part of New York’s efforts to limit the spread of the coronavirus. The court system is preparing to allow new filings under the state’s Child Victims Act.

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YORK (PA)
York Daily Record

May 13, 2020

By Candy Woodall

— Pediatricians and child protection advocates say lawmakers need to take immediate action to stop the abuse and save lives.

— Advocates say they are responding to more physical abuse cases than ever before, and they are severe

— A child who was being sexually abuse once or twice a week is being abused more now

— For the first time in its 25-year history, RAINN said half of the victims calling are minors

— Anyone who suspects a child is being abused or neglected should contact ChildLine at 1-800-932-0313

Pennsylvania hospitals are treating more children with severe child abuse injuries, indicating the state’s most vulnerable kids are not safe at home during the coronavirus outbreak.

Several advocates and pediatricians who specialize in child abuse say they are seeing an increase in the number of abused children who need to be hospitalized.

And in perhaps the most grim outlook, a Penn State pediatrician says “the worst is yet to come.”

“We’re worried we’re at the beginning of an onslaught of cases,” said Dr. Lori Frasier, chief of the child abuse pediatrics division at Penn State Children’s Hospital.

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SAGINAW (MI)
Catholic News Agency via Catholic World Report

May 12, 2020

An employee of the Diocese of Saginaw, Michigan is suing the diocese, alleging that his fellow employees retaliated against him after he reported that a Saginaw priest sexually abused his son.

Gabriel Villarreal, who had worked as a maintenance man for the diocese for over two decades, in March filed a lawsuit against the diocese alleging that Father Robert DeLand had molested his son during February 2018, which Villarreal reported.

The lawsuit alleges that after Villarreal reported the abuse, diocesan employees began to harass him, referring to him as “the mole [spy,]” cutting his hours and benefits, and taking away his master key.

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SAGINAW (MI)
Church Militant

May 12, 2020

by Christine Niles

An employee of the diocese of Saginaw, Michigan is suing after suffering retaliation for blowing the whistle on sex abuse.

Gabriel Villarreal has worked maintenance for the diocese for 26 years. In February 2018, his teenaged son informed him that Fr. Robert DeLand tried to sexually assault him at St. Agnes parish, where DeLand was pastor at the time.

DeLand is currently serving prison time for sexually abusing another young male victim. He was convicted in Sept. 2018 and is serving up to 15 years for his crimes.

Villarreal immediately reported DeLand’s attempted sexual assault to the diocese, but suffered retaliation from his superiors, according to a lawsuit filed March 16 this year.

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SAGINAW (MI)
MLive.com

May 12, 2020

By Cole Waterman

A man who says his job with the Catholic Diocese of Saginaw was impacted after he reported a sex-abuse complaint against a priest has filed a lawsuit against the diocese.

In the suit, Gabriel Villarreal alleges he was retaliated against by the diocese and its agents for reporting a relative had been assaulted by the Rev. Robert J. DeLand. A jury acquitted DeLand of charges related to the relative, but DeLand was convicted of sexual assaulting a different person in a separate case.

Villarreal is a maintenance worker for the diocese.

Detroit attorney Jonathan R. Marko in March filed the suit in Saginaw County Circuit Court on behalf of Villarreal. The suit is seeking at least $25,000, plus interest, attorney fees, and exemplary damages.

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NEW YORK (NY)
The New York Times

May 12, 2020

By Andrea Elliott

Sister Glose, who died from complications of the novel coronavirus, ran a nonprofit in Brooklyn and was a whistle-blower in a sex abuse scandal.

This obituary is part of a series about people who have died in the coronavirus pandemic. Read about others here.

If you passed Georgianna Glose on the streets of Fort Greene, Brooklyn, you might have known her as that renegade nun, the one who left her convent to live among the poor and then blew a whistle on sexual abuse in the Catholic Church.

She was a sister with movie-star looks who roller-skated to work, having shed the nun’s habit in 1972 for the curler-coiffed hairdo then in vogue (a look she stubbornly kept).

But if you were homeless, you probably knew her as Dr. Glose, the nun with a doctorate who, until last month, ran a nonprofit on Myrtle Avenue. It was there, for 24 years, that the downtrodden found an anchor in a gentrifying neighborhood.

Mothers on welfare, fathers on parole, grandparents struggling to raise their children’s children — they all had a haven with Sister Glose, taking her computer literacy classes, joining her support groups, feasting on her Thanksgiving turkey.

“She was able to live in both worlds: the world of making a difference for individual families and the world of making policy changes,” said Steven Banks, the city’s commissioner of social services.

Sister Glose died on April 28 at Brooklyn Hospital Center from complications of the new coronavirus, said her sister, Kathrine Dawson. She was 73.

Authority neither impressed nor deterred her. “If someone was misbehaving, especially a man in a position of power, she would say calmly and completely accurately, ‘That man is a horse’s ass,’” said Teresa Theophano, a social worker who interned with Sister Glose at her nonprofit, Fort Greene Strategic Neighborhood Action Partnership.

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NASHVILLE (TN)
Fox17

May 11, 2020

By Rachel Tiede

For the first time, minors are making up half of the victims receiving help from the National Sexual Assault Hotline.

According to RAINN (Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network), this is directly related to COVID-19.

The Sexual Assault Center in Nashville said it expects Middle Tennessee to see a similar trend. Right now, SAC said kids make up 35 percent of the population it serves.

Lorraine McGuire, the vice president of development and marketing at SAC, said there’s been fewer reports of sexual abuse. But she said that’s bad news.

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AUSTRALIA
Counterpunch

May 12, 2020

By Kenneth Good

In the long and still unfinished search for justice, two agencies have been outstanding. The Victorian Police performed dogged investigatory work, and the Royal Commission over five years compiled damning evidence. On 12 November 2012, Detective Chief Inspector Peter Fox called for the establishment of a Royal Commission. He was a 30-year veteran in Newcastle, and wrote an open letter to the NSW Premier: “I can testify from my own experience that the church covers-up, silencing victims, hinders police investigations, alerts offenders, destroys evidence and moves priests.” None of that stops at the Victorian border. “The whole system needs to be exposed; the clergy covering up these crimes must be brought to justice and the network protecting paedophile priests dismantled” (quoted in David Marr, The Prince). Backed by many Labour party backbenchers, and federal centrist politicians, PM Julia Gillard, the country’s first woman leader, moved to establish a Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse. Gillard faced constant misogynist attack from conservative figures, but did not flinch (Tony Abbott was ready to be photographed beside a huge poster, ‘Ditch the Bitch’). It was perhaps her ‘most lasting legacy’ (Louise Milligan, Cardinal). “It will change the nation”, Gillard claimed, as she left office.

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SILVER SPRING (MD)
Adventist Review

May 12, 2020

By Marcos Paseggi

Church region leaders work on developing protocols for supporting victims, dealing with perpetrators

Time and again, experts in sexual abuse remind us that one of the worst fears of victims is being ignored when seeking help. It is something, experts say, that can lead to extremely harmful and long-term health consequences.

In the context of church life and faith-based organizations, that breach of trust can be outright devastating.

Against this backdrop, leaders of the Seventh-day Adventist Church recently provided evidence that church regions (or divisions) are taking concrete steps to make sure church organizations and institutions will work unapologetically to prevent sexual abuse. At the same time, regional leaders pledged to keep working to craft detailed protocols to prevent or respond to any complaint of sexual abuse in the church.

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ROME (ITALY)
Catholic Herald

May 10, 2020

By Christopher Altieri

Conflicting claims have emerged over the way an investigation into a former auxiliary bishop in the US Archdiocese of Cincinnati was handled, casting further doubt over Church leaders’ commitment to the “responsibility, accountability, and transparency” supposed to be the watchwords of ecclesiastical efforts to combat abuse and coverup in the Francis era.

Pope Francis accepted Bishop Joseph Binzer’s resignation on Thursday, more than nine months after an investigation was opened into claims Binzer negligently handled allegations against a Cincinnati priest, of inappropriate behaviour with teenaged boys.

There are, in short, at least two different versions of how Church authorities handled the investigation. One version is from the Archbishop of Cincinnati, the other is from Rome. The two stories do not match.

The question the apparent discrepancy raises, is whether the Vatican used Pope Francis’s signature reform law, Vos estis lux mundi, designed to combat clerical abuse and especially abuse coverup, in order to investigate Bishop Binzer, on whose case the law seems tailor-made for use. For that reason, alone, question speaks directly to responsibility and accountability in hierarchical leadership culture.

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ABILENE (TX)
KTXS-TV

May 12, 2020

By Daniela Ibarra

Hours after former Abilene youth pastor Jeffrey Forrest was booked into the Taylor County Jail on Saturday, a mother who claims her son was assaulted by Forrest in the 90’s made the decision to come to Abilene.

“I don’t feel like the bars are big enough and the walls are tight enough for him,” said Patrice, who asked KTXS not to use her last name to protect her son.

Patrice said she felt compelled to make the four hour trip from Amarillo after learning the man she believes stole her son’s innocence was caught after a four year long manhunt.

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MARTINSVILE (VA)
WFXRtv.com

May 11, 2020

Father Mark White — a local priest who has been openly critical of the sex abuse scandal in the Catholic Church and was recently suspended — announced on his blog on Sunday that the locks were changed on two parishes and one residence to which he was assigned.

Back in February, Father White told reporters that he was ordered into silence by the Richmond Diocese Bishop Barry Knestout after he expressed criticism online of the church’s handling of sexual abuse cases.

However, by April, Father White announced the Richmond Diocese removed him as pastor from St. Francis of Assisi Parish in Rocky Mount and St. Joseph Parish in Martinsville. Father White’s parishioners stepped up to show their support for the priest amid his ongoing legal battle with the Richmond Diocese.

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UNITED KINGDOM
Newschain

May 11, 2020

Child sexual abuse is going widely unreported among the UK’s Heredi Jewish community because victims need the permission of a rabbi before they can go to the police, an inquiry has heard.

The Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse (IICSA) heard that the insular nature of strict orthodox Jews mean that children do not have “the language or the resources” to access help.

Yehudis Goldsobel, founder of charity Migdal Emunah – which provides sexual abuse advice and education to all Jews, told Haredi rabbis tend to learn about child safeguarding “on the job”.

Ms Goldsobel told the inquiry victims are shunned for speaking out, while perpetrators can usually return to the heart of their communities even after serving a prison sentence.

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YOUNGSTOWN (OH)
The Vindicator

May 12, 2020

By Bob Coupland and Guy Vogrin

A former Youngstown priest who had served at St. Edward Parish has been removed from a list of clergy members accused of sexual abuse.

The Catholic Diocese of Youngstown on Monday announced former Rev. William Smaltz was being removed from the list after further investigation and new information that allegations made earlier against him “are no longer deemed to be credible and substantiated.”

The former priest’s adult son, reached Monday night, said the alleged incident never happened, and the allegations have left his father distraught and under severe mental stress.

The diocese previously had compiled a list of names of clergy who were subject to credible allegations of sexual abuse against a minor. Smaltz’s name was first released as part of that list in October 2018.

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May 9, 2020

By Anne Barrett Doyle, Co-Director, BishopAccountability.org

A year ago, Pope Francis enacted new procedures for investigating bishops accused of abuse or of covering up clergy sex crimes.

Last Thursday, on May 7, one year to the day since Vos Estis Lux Mundi was promulgated, we learned of what appears to be its first removal of a complicit bishop.

A two-line announcement in the Vatican’s daily bulletin noted that the Pope had accepted the resignation of Bishop Joseph R. Binzer from the office of the auxiliary of the Cincinnati archdiocese. Lay Catholic media are reporting that Bishop Binzer was found guilty under Vos Estis, meaning that he was found guilty of intentionally interfering with or avoiding an investigation of an abusive cleric. We don’t know this for sure, however; neither the Pope nor his proxies have made any comment.

Some might point to Binzer’s resignation as a sign that Vos Estis is working. Seen differently, it reveals serious flaws in the Pope’s plan.

Despite repeatedly concealing allegations against a priest now slated to be tried for child rape, Binzer remains not only an archdiocesan priest, but a bishop, with the prestige and financial benefits that status entails.

Is this what passes for ‘accountability’ under the Pope’s new law? An opaque process, Vatican control, papal silence, and the softest of landings for an official who twice ignored allegations against a priest?

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NEW ORLEANS (LA)
NOLA.com

May 11, 2020

By Ramon Antonio Vargas

In a clear sign that he’s concerned about the potential of being criminally prosecuted, a retired New Orleans priest who is accused in a lawsuit of sexually molesting “countless” children invoked his constitutional rights against self-incrimination shortly before his deposition.

Lawrence Hecker, through his attorney, served notice March 13 — during the early days of New Orleans’ coronavirus pandemic — that he would essentially exercise his right to remain silent “from this point forward” in a lawsuit filed against him and the Archdiocese of New Orleans in April 2019, according to court records.

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NEW YORK (NY)
The New York Times

May 6, 2020

By Erica L. Green

Education Secretary Betsy DeVos released final regulations for schools dealing with sexual misconduct, giving them the force of law for the first time and bolstering due-process rights.

WASHINGTON — Education Secretary Betsy DeVos on Wednesday issued final regulations on sexual misconduct in education, delivering colleges and schools firm new rules on how they must deal with one of the biggest issues that have roiled their campuses for decades.

The rules fulfill one of the Trump administration’s major policy goals for Title IX, the 48-year-old federal law that prohibits sex discrimination in programs that receive federal funding, bolstering due-process protections for accused students while relieving schools of some legal liabilities. But Ms. DeVos extended the reach of the law in other ways, establishing dating violence as a sexual misconduct category that must be addressed and mandating supportive measures for alleged victims of assault.

Title IX had become a flash point in recent years after sexual assault cases rocked high-profile universities like Stanford and Duke, and serial sex abuse by staff at the University of Southern California, Michigan State and Ohio State demonstrated how schools had failed to properly investigate complaints.

But enforcement of the law has also grown contentious, especially since the Obama administration issued guidance documents in 2011 and 2014 that advised schools to ramp up investigations of misconduct and warned that their failure to do so could bring serious consequences. Critics said schools felt pressured to side with accusers without extending sufficient rights to the accused. And dozens of students have won court cases against their colleges for violating their rights under the Obama-era rules.

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

WASHINGTON (DC)
The Washington Post

May 10, 2020

By Michelle Boorstein

A months-long standoff between a Catholic bishop in Virginia and a priest who blogs frequent, strident criticism of the church’s handling of clergy sexual abuse has boiled over, with the diocese suspending the priest from ministry and changing parish and residence locks where he was assigned, the priest said Saturday.

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

NEW JERSEY
SNAP

May 7, 2020

A deacon from New Jersey who was convicted and jailed in 2017 for sexually abusing a minor was released on May 5th , perhaps because of COVID-19. Now that this dangerous man is back on the streets we call on the Catholic officials who educated, trained, and ordained him to take extra steps to warn the community about him.

Deacon Joseph Prioli abused at least one child from the time she was 10 to 17 years old. During that time, he was also working as teacher at the Christian Brothers Academy and was a deacon at his local church, positions that would give him easy access to vulnerable children. Clearly, the courts believed that Deacon Prioli would continue to be a risk to children even after getting out of jail because his 2017 sentence prohibits him from living in a household with minor children for the rest of his life.

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

YOUNGSTOWN (OH)
Mahoning Matters

May 11, 2020

The Catholic Diocese of Youngstown announced today that William Smaltz’s name has been removed from the list of clergy in the diocese against whom credible, substantiated allegations of sexual abuse of a minor have been made.

After further inquiry and consideration of additional and new information, the allegations are not deemed credible and substantiated, the diocese said in a news release.

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UNITED STATES
CNN

May 11, 2020

By Ariane de Vogue

The Supreme Court on Monday will tackle a dispute concerning two teachers who sought to file employment discrimination claims against the religious schools that fired them.

Seven years ago, the Supreme Court recognized a “ministerial exception” for the first time, holding that under the First Amendment the government could not interfere with a church’s hiring decisions. The justices held that the teacher in that case could be considered a “minister” under the law, triggering the exception.

Now the justices will address the scope of that decision and whether it bars teachers — who say they have limited religious duties — from bringing suit.

Like those last week, the oral arguments will be held remotely by telephone with audio broadcast live to the public.

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NEW YORK (NY)
Crux

May 11, 2020

By Christopher White

Governor Andrew Cuomo has extended the state’s lookback window for victims of abuse to file civil lawsuits until January 14, 2021 due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

The New York Child Victims Act (CVA) took effect last August and extends the statute of limitations for abuse victims which had originally allowed for a one-year window in which victims could bring suit. Further, the legislation extended the statute of limitations for civil claims, now allowing survivors to file a claim until they are 55 years old. In January, a similar window allowing for two years took effect in New Jersey.

Given that courts have been closed for nearly two months, the governor said on Friday that he would extend the special period into 2021.

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AUSTRALIA
Sydney Morning Herald

May 10, 2020

By Farrah Tomazin

After almost two years as Archbishop of Melbourne Peter Comensoli remains an elusive figure to many Catholics, and a study in contrasts to the wider public.

It’s August 2018, and Peter Comensoli is standing on a stage in a packed city restaurant, daring to do something none of his predecessors have ever done: subject himself to the scrutiny of the Melbourne Press Club.

After a wide-ranging speech, the newly installed Archbishop of Melbourne agrees to take questions.

That’s when he meets Eileen Piper, then 93, brandishing a large photograph of her dead daughter lying in her coffin.

Stephanie Piper was 32 when she killed herself in 1994, after informing authorities that she had been raped and assaulted as a child by Father Gerard Mulvale, a priest from the Catholic Pallottine order.

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PITTSBURGH (PA)
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

May 10, 2020

By Peter Smith

The criminal complaint against the Amish bishop is clear about how he learned of a church member’s alleged sexual assault on three young teenage girls:

“John G. Beiler confessed the sexual assault incidents to Bishop Levi S. Esh Sr.,” says the complaint, pending in Lancaster County and filed by Pequea police in April.

“Confessed.” Whether the case moves forward could hinge on that word.

In April, Pequea police charged Mr. Esh, 63, with felony and misdemeanor charges of failing to report suspected child abuse to authorities after Mr. Beiler allegedly confessed to the sexual assaults.

The case is believed to be the first in Lancaster County — hub of the nation’s largest population of Amish — in which one of their spiritual leaders is charged with violating a Pennsylvania law that includes clergy among those mandated to report suspected child abuse.

But Pennsylvania law allows a privilege, or exemption, for clergy who learn about suspected abuse in “confidential communications” while in the course of their “duties.”

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John M. Shuster: September 18, 1951 ~ February 7, 2020 [Obituary]

WASHINGTON
Haven of Rest Gig Harbor

[Note: John Shuster dedicated much of his life to clergy sex abuse survivors. Following a brief stint in the clerical priesthood, he went on to serve as a vice president of CITI Ministries and a longtime leader of the Seattle chapter of Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests (SNAP). In his work with SNAP, he developed a healing model for adults who needed spiritual guidance and counseling as a result of being abused as children. John passed away in February. He is greatly missed.]

John M. Shuster, Port Orchard, was born September 18, 1951 in Pittsburgh, PA to Andrew and Catherine (Miller) Shuster. He passed away from complications of a stroke on February 7, 2020 at St. Joseph Hospital in Tacoma.

John was ordained in 1979 by Bishop Joseph Francis to serve as a priest in the Roman Catholic missionary order, the Society of the Divine Word (SVD). He graduated from the Catholic Theological Union in Chicago in 1980 with a Masters of Divinity with specialization in cross-cultural ministry. During his four years as a celibate priest, he served in Mexico, and at parishes in East Los Angeles and South Central L.A. Due to his seeing the alarming disfunction that was present in the church, John left the clerical priesthood 1983, and began selling medical instrumentation. He had a successful career as a senior salesman of medical diagnostics at Abbott Laboratories, and retired in 2010.

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BROOKLYN (NY)
The Tablet (newspaper for the Brooklyn diocese)

May 8, 2020

By Monsignor Steven Aguggia

The crisis of sexual abuse of minors coming to light in the past two decades has taught us many things. In so many ways, the Church has learned how to understand and deal with this horrible scourge which harms so many, both victims and the whole Church, the Body of Christ. Those who are accused of sexual abuse of minors, especially the clergy, are subject to clear and stringent norms to investigate and adjudicate their crimes. The Charter for the Protection of Children and Young People is a set of procedures that the United States Bishops established in 2002 to address the allegations of sexual abuse of minors by some clergy. The Charter was revised in 2005, 2011 and in 2018. Topics addressed in the Charter include healing from abuse and the prevention of future acts of abuse. The Dallas Charter and the accompanying Norms govern the investigation of the crimes of sexual abuse of minors by priests and deacons. Over time, it became clear that it was necessary to create and implement Norms to direct the investigation of allegations against Bishops, as well. The Norms, issued by our Holy Father, Pope Francis, in May of 2019, are entitled Vos Estis Lux Mundi (“You are the Light of the World”).

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AUSTRALIA
Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC)

May 10, 2020

By Matt Neal

Key points:
– Clergy abuse survivor Paul Levey has started a petition calling for Cardinal George Pell to be defrocked
– The petition has attracted 32,000 signatures in 48 hours
– Mr Levey created the petition following the release of the Royal Commission’s previously redacted findings, which Cardinal Pell says weren’t supported by evidence

A petition started by a clergy abuse survivor has received more than 30,000 signatures supporting his call for Cardinal George Pell to be defrocked.

Paul Levey, who was abused by convicted paedophile priest Gerald Ridsdale, began the Change.org petition on Friday and said he was surprised by the response.

“The first night I went to bed and it was at 600 and I thought that was fantastic. Now, I think it’s around 32,000 signatures,” Mr Levey said.

Mr Levey was 13 when he was sent to live with Ridsdale in the presbytery in Mortlake, in south-west Victoria, where he was abused daily for six months.

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AUSTRALIA
Sydney Morning Herald

May 8, 2020

By Barney Zwartz

It may be possible – remotely – as Cardinal George Pell claims, that he did not know about the crimes of paedophile Gerald Ridsdale until much later than the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse thinks he did. But if so, it must have required the most herculean effort, the most Nelsonian blind eye, to avoid something so well known that priests in Ballarat and Melbourne were gossiping about it.

But Nelson turning his blind eye to the telescope at the Battle of Copenhagen in 1801 was a matter of national heroism. Pell’s blind eye served only himself, and at a huge cost to victims, their families, and the professionals who tried to intervene.

For the young and ambitious Pell, a priest in Ballarat clearly destined for high office, knew one thing: whistle-blowers don’t go on to glorious careers in the institutions they hold to account. Embarrass the church, and you can forget about a cardinal’s red hat and a vital Vatican role.

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AUSTRALIA
BBC

May 7, 2020

Cardinal George Pell knew of child sexual abuse by priests in Australia as early as the 1970s but failed to take action, a landmark inquiry found.

The findings on Cardinal Pell – an ex-Vatican treasurer – come from Australia’s royal commission into child sexual abuse, which ended in 2017.

Details were only revealed on Thursday. A court had previously redacted the report because the cleric was facing child abuse charges at the time.

The cardinal has denied the findings.

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AUSTRALIA
The Guardian

May 8, 2020

By Melissa Davey

The cardinal maintains he didn’t know about the Victorian town’s notorious paedophile priests, a claim the royal commission found ‘implausible’

“Why isn’t all of Australia talking about what happened here in Ballarat?”

That’s the question Clare Linane remembers asking her husband, Peter Blenkiron, 12 years ago as they were sitting in the kitchen talking about his abuse. Linane’s husband, brother and cousin had all been abused when they were children between 1973 and 1974 by Christian Brother and now convicted paedophile Edward “Ted” Dowlan. They knew they were among thousands of people living in and around Ballarat – Victoria’s largest inland city – who had been affected by child sexual abuse perpetrated by clergy.

On Thursday, Australia’s five-year inquiry into child sexual abuse in Australian institutions published its findings about Ballarat in full, more than two years after its inquiry was complete. Previously, a heavily redacted version of the report had been published, missing details about Cardinal George Pell and what he knew about abuse in the town located about 100km north-west of Melbourne. At the time Pell was working in the diocese, Ballarat was home to some of the Catholic church’s, and Australia’s, most notorious paedophile priests. Survivor groups say at least 50 suicides in the town over the past few decades are the result of clergy abuse.

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ST. LOUIS (MO)
StlToday.com

May 9, 2020

Darrin Patrick, who co-founded The Journey megachurch in St. Louis, died Thursday (May 7, 2020) while target shooting with a friend, according to a news release from South Carolina-based Seacoast Church, where Mr. Patrick was a teaching pastor. He was 49 and lived in Webster Groves.

In 2002, Mr. Patrick and his wife, Amie, started The Journey in the Southwest Garden neighborhood with 30 members. The church now has five locations in the St. Louis area. By 2016, it was drawing 4,000 worshipers to its weekend services, and Mr. Patrick also was serving as the chaplain for the St. Louis Cardinals.

In the spring of that year, Mr. Patrick was fired from the church for what its leaders viewed as pastoral misconduct.

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AUSTRALIA
Crikey.com

May 11, 2020

By David Hardaker

Where does it leave the justice system if the highest court in the land says a jury isn’t capable of working out what it should believe?

There was a time in the not-so-distant past when a priest was the first person you would believe. Now? Not so much.

The royal commission into, among others, the Catholic Church and Cardinal George Pell, has killed that off. Then-prime minister Julia Gillard’s decision to bring it on in 2012 triggered an eight-year unravelling which reached its endpoint with the judges of the High Court and the royal commission now delivering their final verdicts.

In the space of four weeks, we’ve learnt there was a “significant possibility” that Pell was innocent of charges that he committed child sex abuse, but that he was most guilty of allowing predator priests to keep abusing children under the church’s care.

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

AUSTRALIA
Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC)

May 10, 2020

By Jessica Longbottom

Key points:
— Attempts to prosecute other senior Catholics for knowing about clergy abuse have failed
— Mandatory reporting laws didn’t come into effect in Victoria until 2014
— Victoria Police says it will examine the royal commission’s findings
— It found Cardinal Pell was aware of general allegations that children were being abused in the Ballarat diocese from 1973.

After a two-year wait, the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses into Child Sexual Abuse has released its findings on what Cardinal George Pell knew about clergy abuse.

It also found that he was told that paedophile priest Gerard Ridsdale was being moved because of his alleged sexual abuse of children at a meeting in 1982.

The royal commission found that later on, as he rose through the ranks in the Archdiocese of Melbourne, Cardinal Pell should have advocated for the removal of paedophile priest Peter Searson when he received a list of allegations of bizarre behaviour by him in 1989.

The royal commission found that later on, as he rose through the ranks in the Archdiocese of Melbourne, Cardinal Pell should have advocated for the removal of paedophile priest Peter Searson when he received a list of allegations of bizarre behaviour by him in 1989.

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WASHINGTON (DC)
Washington Post

May 9, 2020

By Michelle Boorstein

A months-long standoff between a Catholic bishop in Virginia and a priest who blogs frequent, strident criticism of the church’s handling of clergy sexual abuse has boiled over, with the bishop this week suspending the priest from ministry and issuing a trespass order demanding he leave the parish residence by Saturday.

The Rev. Mark White, who has been assigned to two southwest Virginia parishes, is refusing to leave, saying Richmond Bishop Barry Knestout is the one violating canon law by not giving more details about what Knestout considers White’s wrongdoing and by not waiting for an appeal to the Vatican to play out.

White on Friday was consulting with his lawyer to figure out his options if the diocese changes locks at the parish residences at St. Joseph in Martinsville and St. Francis of Assisi in Rocky Mount, two half-English, half-Spanish parishes of about 400 families each. White was pastor to the two parishes from 2011 until April 13, when Knestout ordered him transferred to prison ministry in the midst of their conflict. White told The Post he is waiting for the appeal and is not leaving.

The dispute between the two men has been watched by the hundreds and sometimes thousands who read White’s blog, which is a mix of homilies and spiritual musings and frequent lambasting of church officials from Knestout to Pope Francis to disgraced ex-cardinal Theodore McCarrick, who ordained White in May 2003.

While a priest being removed by a bishop isn’t unusual, the White-Knestout standoff taps into remaining deep mistrust and anger over the McCarrick scandal and how few bishops and cardinals have been held accountable for his long rise — particularly those who have worked along the New York-New Jersey-Washington, D.C. corridor where rumors of McCarrick’s sexual misbehavior percolated for decades.

The case also reflects the challenge posed to the world’s largest church — one accustomed to tight, top-down control — by the power of social media. The Vatican is increasingly calling social media an essential part of ministry and evangelization, but metrics of what is effective vs. what is divisive are growing more subjective. White had paused his blog last fall at Knestout’s order but restarted it in March because of the coronavirus shutdown, saying online ministering is crucial while parishes and Mass are shut off.

“I can’t recall a case when a pastor was removed because he was blogging,” said Kurt Martens, a canon law expert at Catholic University. “Blogging is a new way of ministry, so how do you stop a priest?”

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MARTINSVILLE (VA)
Martinsville Bulletin

May 9, 2020

The relationships within the hierarchy of the Roman Catholic Church are strict and complicated. They are founded in a structure and formality that eludes those who didn’t grow up under the church and its papal sovereignty, and their complexities can be daunting in trying to understand decisions, practices and reactions.

But the one simple aspect of that structure that is without question is the church’s foundation in the principles of Jesus Christ, its purchase in the deep meaning and subtexts of Scripture.

If is for the latter and not the former that the dispute between Father Mark White and his boss the Rev. Barry Knestout, the bishop of the Catholic Diocese of Richmond, appears not only perplexing but just so ridiculously unnecessary.

You likely have read the many words published about the conflict that has led Bishop Knestout to remove Father White in all facets except title as the pastor of St. Joseph’s in Martinsville and St. Francis of Assisi in Rocky Mount.

This began because Father White, disturbed by the way the church handled the sexual abuse charges against Cardinal McCarrick, the priest who ordained him, deigned to write in his blog about those feelings. Father White didn’t measure the tone in his comments, frankly and reasonably questioning the transparency and appropriateness of decision-making of the church all the way to the Vatican in Rome. He is not alone among Catholics in questioning this festering blemish on the church’s image.

Bishop Knestout told Father White to discontinue his blog or else. Father White did. Then the pandemic hit, and Mass was canceled, and Father White resumed the blog as a means to communicate with his flock. He asked for permission to do so and said he received silence. But this dispute has not been carried out in silence.

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NEW ORLEANS (LA)
Times-Picayune / New Orleans Advocate

May 6, 2020

By Ramon Antonio Vargas

Accused of sexually molesting a boy he taught before he become a priest, Paul Calamari walked into New Orleans Archbishop Alfred Hughes’ office on Feb. 5, 2004, to discuss what might be ahead.

The Catholic church had only recently been rocked by the sexual-abuse scandal in Boston. Bishops across the U.S. were dealing with allegations in their dioceses, and New Orleans was no different. Calamari ultimately chose to retire, and he began receiving a monthly pension of $1,566 from the archdiocese — which later rose to more than $2,500 a month, according to court records.

The archdiocese slashed the amount by several hundred dollars during the spring of 2019, citing “significant” budget issues.

But after the archdiocese petitioned for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection last week, U.S. District Judge Meredith Grabill ordered the organization to stop paying priests who — like Calamari — are credibly accused child molesters.

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NEW ORLEANS (LA)
Times-Picayune / New Orleans Advocate

May 8, 2020

By Ramon Antonio Vargas

Board said plaintiff agreeably resigned to avoid appearance of conflict of interest, but plaintiff says he felt forced out

The leader of the board of directors for one of the Archdiocese of New Orleans’ various ministries resigned his post recently after claiming in a lawsuit against the church that he was molested by one of its priests decades ago.

The plaintiff — whom The Times-Picayune | New Orleans Advocate is not identifying because he’s a victim of sex abuse — spoke out about his case after an April 30 letter from the ministry to his fellow board members said he had agreed to resign to avoid “at least the appearance of a conflict of interest.”

But the plaintiff said he had hoped to remain on the board and resigned under duress. He didn’t believe there was a conflict because the board is incorporated separately from the archdiocese’s administrative offices, which filed for federal bankruptcy protections on May 1, citing the financial fallout from clerical abuse lawsuits and the coronavirus pandemic.

*

The plaintiff’s case dates back to when he entered the fifth grade at St. Ann School in Metairie in 1980, according to records filed in Orleans Parish Civil District Court. One day that academic year, the plaintiff was behind the church rectory when he encountered James Collery, a Spiritan order member who was originally from Ireland and had just been transferred there.

Collery was pretending to tuck in the boy’s T-shirt when he used his hand to fondle the plaintiff’s genitals and penetrate him, the lawsuit alleged. The plaintiff, who served as an altar boy, said Collery, who died in 1987, molested him in similar fashion after catching the boy alone in the sacristy a couple of other times.

Despite the abuse, the plaintiff clung to his Catholic faith as he grew up and began serving on numerous charitable boards and committees associated with the archdiocese. He said he had been in those roles for a number of years when, in 2013, he decided to privately report Collery’s assaults to the archdiocese — specifically, to Archbishop Gregory Aymond, for whom the plaintiff had once been an altar boy.

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BUFFALO (NY)
WKBW

May 6, 2020

By Charlie Specht

Memo reveals Fr. Paul Salemi case

Paul Salemi graduated from Christ the King Seminary and became a priest in the Diocese of Buffalo in 2000.

But after serving at churches in Hamburg and Lancaster, and at St. Gregory the Great in Amherst, former Bishop Richard Malone quietly put Salemi on administrative leave in 2012.

Salemi never returned from that leave of absence and moved to the South. But he stayed on the diocesan payroll until last week, when the diocese announced it was removing from its payroll 23 priests with substantiated sexual abuse allegations.

Many parishioners in the last year have reached out to the 7 Eyewitness News I-Team wondering what happened to Fr. Salemi. They say they were told he had an anger problem, but internal documents show Salemi was also accused of sexual misconduct against a young man he met through his duties as a priest.

The most comprehensive account was written by Lawrence Vilardo, who is now a federal judge in Buffalo. In 2012, he was law partners with Terry Connors, longtime lawyer for the diocese, and wrote a memo to Connors that was obtained by the I-Team.

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ALBANY (NY)
Times-Union

May 6, 2020

By Cayla Harris

Albany – Advocates for survivors of sexual abuse are denouncing the Buffalo Diocese this week after the institution, temporarily headed by Albany Bishop Edward B. Scharfenberger, moved forward with two legal filings that activists say diminish victims’ experiences and could allow the diocese to dodge consequences for decades of alleged abuse and cover-up.

The most recent filing on Tuesday was a lawsuit against the federal Small Business Administration for denying the diocese’s application for relief under the CARES Act because of its ongoing bankruptcy proceedings. It followed a separate legal action on Saturday in bankruptcy court, in which the diocese argued that all cases filed against the institution under the state’s Child Victims Act, including those that also name local parishes and schools, should be permanently suspended.

Last summer, the act opened a one-year “look-back” window allowing survivors of sexual abuse to pursue previously time-barred cases against their alleged offenders. The Buffalo Diocese, the most-named defendant in claims filed under the act, is facing more than 250 actions.

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NEW YORK (NY)
Daily News

May 8, 2020

By Denis Slattery

Albany – New Yorkers who were sexually assaulted as children will have a little more time to take legal action against their alleged abusers.

Gov. Cuomo on Friday extended a “look back window” created as part of the Child Victims Act last year that allows survivors abused as kids, to file civil suits beyond the normal statute of limitations.

The one-year window, which was slated to expire in August, will be extended until Jan. 14 in response to the coronavirus crisis’ impact on the state court system, the governor said during a briefing Friday at the Murray Student Center at Marist College in Poughkeepsie.

“Because of the reduction in court services we want to extend that window and we’ll extend it for an additional five months,” Cuomo said. “Because people need access to the courts to make their claim, because justice too long delayed is justice denied.”

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BUFFALO (NY)
Spectrum News

May 8, 2020

By Fadia Patterson

Governor Cuomo is giving survivors an additional five months to file a civil claim against abusers under the Child Victims Act.

Attorney Steve Boyd, who is representing many survivors of child sexual abuse, says that when the Child Victims Act passed, New York had the shortest look-back window of a year. Because the COVID-19 pandemic, Gov. Cuomo has ordered an extension of the deadline for survivors to pursue legal action from August 13 to January 14.

“When the crisis hit and the courts closed down the filing system, people were not allowed to file,” said Boyd. “People who could’ve filed lawsuits between then, they filed lawsuits. I think it’s in a sense of general fairness. It’s a good thing that the governor has extended the time.”

While waiting on the reopening of the court filing system, Boyd says he’s still gathering information from those who do want to file a lawsuit. For those looking to sue the Buffalo Roman Catholic Diocese, Boyd lays out how this extension and the diocese’s bankruptcy proceedings will affect cases against clergy.

“There are several different tracks,” adds Boyd. “The Diocese of Rochester filed bankruptcy late last summer. In those cases the proof of claims form, the deadline for those is still August 13, 2020. Buffalo Diocese has filed bankruptcy, they have not yet set a bar date or a deadline to put the claims in. And then there are cases that don’t involve the diocese of Rochester or Buffalo. For those cases, people will have until January 14 to file a claim.”

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MANASSAS (VA)
CatholicCulture.org – Trinity Publications

May 7, 2020

By Phil Lawler

An Australian royal commission has found that Cardinal George Pell was aware of sexual abuse in the 1970s “but failed to take action.” Cardinal Pell says that he is “surprised” by that finding, and observes quite accurately that the evidence against him is very thin.

But even if the commission’s finding is accurate—and keep in mind that it is in dispute—that finding does not justify making Cardinal Pell the scapegoat for the sex-abuse scandal in Australia. What he did (if he did it) is what most bishops did—but at the most relevant times, he wasn’t a bishop!

The abuse in question occurred in the 1970s. Cardinal Pell was not appointed as a bishop until 1987. Even then he was an auxiliary in Melbourne, acting as an assistant to Archbishop Thomas Little, rather than making policy decisions for his own diocese. He became Archbishop of Melbourne in 1996. The BBC report on the royal commission’s finding says that he “failed to take action” against abusers. But as a parish priest he did not have authority to take action. The worst that could be said is that he did not urge the archbishop to take action.

It is alleged that Pell was aware of abuse by the notorious ex-priest Gerald Ridsdale in the 1970s and early 1980s. But it is an established fact that the late Bishop Ronald Mulkearns of Ballarat moved Ridsdale from one parish to another to cover the abusive priest’s trail. Here the worst that can be said (and again, Pell disputes it) is that Pell, a parish priest, was aware that his superior, a bishop, had covered up abuse. Literally hundreds of Catholic priests could be indicted on the same charge.

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ALBANY (NY)
Times-Union

May 7, 2020

By Cayla Harris

New claims have been frozen during pandemic

The state court system will make an exception to allow new filings under the Child Victims Act “in the next few weeks,” even as other non-essential filings remain frozen during the pandemic, a spokesman for the state Office of Court Administration said Thursday.

“We will not deny those litigants the ability to file,” the spokesman, Lucian Chalfen, said in an email.

The exception, first reported by the New York Law Journal, comes amid growing calls from survivors and advocates to extend the act’s one-year “look-back” period that is set to expire in August. The window has resulted in more than 1,700 lawsuits filed by individuals who had previously been time-barred from lodging claims against their alleged sexual abusers. But court filings were paused in March as the coronavirus pandemic effectively shut down the state court system.

It is unclear whether alleged survivors will be able to make up for lost filing time during the pandemic; Chalfen said any extension of the window would require executive or legislative action. Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo issued an executive order in March suspending statutes of limitations during the state of emergency, but there is uncertainty among lawyers and legal experts as to whether that moratorium also applies to the Child Victims Act’s one-year window.

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CANTON (NY)
North Country Public Radio

May 9, 2020

By Karen DeWitt

Gov. Andrew Cuomo is extending a one-year look-back window for victims of childhood sexual abuse to file lawsuits for an additional five months, to mid-January.

The governor announced the change at his daily coronavirus briefing, where he also said his health officials are looking into a new related illness in children that killed a 5-year-old boy on Thursday.

The Child Victims Act opened a one-year window for New Yorkers who were sexually abused as children that lifts the statute of limitations to file civil suits against their alleged abusers. It was set to expire in mid-August, but because the courts have been virtually closed since March, many people have been unable to proceed with their legal actions.

Cuomo said victims will now have until Jan. 14 to sue.

“People need access to the courts to make their claim,” Cuomo said.

Sponsors of the original measure had sought to extend the look-back window for another full year.

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SAN ANTONIO (TX)
News 4 WOAI

May 8, 2020

Helotes, Texas – The Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests (SNAP) is asking why a priest at a local church has not come forward after being accused of sending sexually inappropriate texts.

According to a letter from San Antonio Archbishop Gustavo Garcia Siller, Monsignor Carlos Davalos was removed as pastor of Our Lady of Guadalupe Catholic Church in Helotes.

The letter went out April 30, but others wonder where he is now.

“The church did the right thing by removing him,” Patti Koo, SNAP San Antonio Volunteer Chapter Leader, said. “However, they could go a step further and let us know where he’s at. Is he somewhere in San Antonio near a school, near public places where children might be? So, that’s our concern.”

Archbishop Garcia Siller says there have been no other allegations of misconduct against Davalos.

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MELBOURNE (VICTORIA AUSTRALIA)
The Age

May 8, 2020

By Chip Le Grand and Farrah Tomazin

The Catholic Church is facing hundreds of civil claims by victims of clerical sex abuse, bolstered by the royal commission’s findings about Cardinal George Pell’s role in the “catastrophic failure of leadership” in the Ballarat diocese.

The royal commission’s finding that Cardinal Pell knew nearly 40 years ago of the church’s practice of shifting notorious paedophile Gerald Ridsdale to different parishes to avoid scandal is likely to bolster the cases of abuse survivors who must demonstrate a breach of duty of care to successfully sue the church.

A separate finding that Cardinal Pell in 1974 dismissed a plea by a St Patrick’s College student to stop Christian Brother Edward Dowlan abusing other boys at the school will strengthen the compensation claims of people subsequently molested by the convicted child sex offender, their lawyers say.

One victim expressed his disappointment that Cardinal Pell and other church leaders were not going to take responsibility for the harm that “could [and] should have been stopped”.

A deluge of civil claims against the church and its entities has prompted the Supreme Court to establish a specialised Institutional Liability List to administer lawsuits relating to child sex abuse.

The new list includes claims for damages arising from the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse as well as the Victorian Inquiry into the Handling of Child Abuse by Religious and Other Organisations. At the end of April, there were 347 cases on the list.

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CAMBRIDGE (MA)
Harvard Crimson

May 8, 2020

By Isabel L. Isselbacher

After more than a year of reviewing comments on a draft of the new guidelines, U.S. Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos released the highly-anticipated Title IX rule Wednesday. The new rule offers a narrow definition of sexual misconduct and imposes new guidelines for schools’ Title IX procedures.

Title IX, a law that prohibits discrimination on the basis of sex in educational institutions that receive federal funding, underpins universities’ sexual harassment prevention and adjudication policies across the country.

The new regulations — which were first released as a draft in November 2018 — shift the definition of sexual misconduct to “unwelcome conduct that is so severe, pervasive, and objectively offensive.” Previous Obama-era guidance defined sexual harassment as “unwelcome conduct of a sexual nature” that includes “requests for sexual favors, and other verbal, nonverbal, or physical conduct of a sexual nature.”

The new rule encompasses “all of a school’s education programs or activities,” both on and off campus. However, for a complaint to be addressed under the new policy, the alleged sexual misconduct must have taken place on-campus or, if off-campus, in the context of a school-sponsored activity, building, or event in which the institution has “substantial control.”

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ROCHESTER (NY)
WHAM 13 ABC

May 8, 2020

[In the video on this webpage of Cuomo’s daily COVID-19 presentation, the announcement of the window extension comes at 13:20.]

Gov. Andrew Cuomo says New York is extending the window to file claims under the Child Victims Act as a result of the coronavirus pandemic.

During his daily briefing Friday at Murray Student Center at Marist College in Poughkeepsie, Cuomo said the window to file claims has been extended to January 14.

The CVA gave survivors of child sexual abuse a one-year window to file civil claims through August. Because courts have been closed amid the pandemic, Cuomo said the state will extend that window.

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NEW YORK (NY)
New York Times

May 7, 2020

By Livia Albeck-Ripka

The cardinal, whose sexual abuse conviction was overturned last month, knew decades ago that priests had victimized children but failed to take action, a government inquiry concluded.

Melbourne, Australia – Cardinal George Pell, the Australian prelate whose sexual abuse conviction was overturned last month, knew decades ago that other Roman Catholic priests had sexually abused children but failed to take action, an Australian government inquiry found.

That conclusion was reached in 2017 by the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse, which issued a lengthy report on the victimization of children within the Catholic Church and other institutions in Australia. But its findings about Cardinal Pell were redacted from the original report to avoid prejudicing potential jurors in the cardinal’s pending trials on sexual abuse charges.

Cardinal Pell, who had been the Vatican’s chief financial officer and an adviser to Pope Francis, was found guilty in 2018 of sexually abusing two 13-year-old boys in 1996, making him the highest-ranking Catholic leader to be convicted of a crime in the church’s sexual abuse crisis. But Australia’s highest court overturned the conviction last month, saying that there was “a significant possibility” that he was not guilty.

That decision cleared the way for the release of the Royal Commission’s findings about Cardinal Pell from its 2017 report, which were made public on Thursday.

The commission found that the cardinal had been “conscious of child sexual abuse by clergy” as long ago as the 1970s, when he was a priest in the diocese of Ballarat, and that he had failed to report priests who were suspected of abuse.

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MARTINSVILLE (VA)
Associated Press

May 6, 2020

A Catholic priest in Virginia has been suspended of all priestly duties from the two parishes he leads in southwestern Virginia.

The suspension is the latest development in the ongoing dispute between Father Mark White and the Bishop of Richmond. White had maintained a well-known blog that was critical of the church’s handling of the sexual abuse scandal.

The Martinsville Bulletin reports that Bishop Barry Knestout announced the suspension on Wednesday. It means that White is prohibited from practicing ministry, including the public celebration of the sacraments.

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NEW ORLEANS (LA)
Times-Picayune / New Orleans Advocate

May 6, 2020

By Ramon Antonio Vargas

Accused of sexually molesting a boy he taught before he become a priest, Paul Calamari walked into New Orleans Archbishop Alfred Hughes’ office on Feb. 5, 2004, to discuss what might be ahead.

The Catholic church had only recently been rocked by the sexual-abuse scandal in Boston. Bishops across the U.S. were dealing with allegations in their dioceses, and New Orleans was no different. Calamari ultimately chose to retire, and he began receiving a monthly pension of $1,566 from the archdiocese — which later rose to more than $2,500 a month, according to court records.

The archdiocese slashed the amount by several hundred dollars during the spring of 2019, citing “significant” budget issues.

But after the archdiocese petitioned for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection last week, U.S. District Judge Meredith Grabill ordered the organization to stop paying priests who — like Calamari — are credibly accused child molesters.

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VATICAN CITY
Associated Press

May 7, 2020

A Roman Catholic bishop in Cincinnati has resigned after not going to his superiors with concerns about a priest who now is set to be tried on charges that he raped a boy.

Pope Francis recently accepted the resignation of Auxiliary Bishop Joseph R. Binzer, the Vatican announced Thursday. The announcement gave no details.

But the Archdiocese of Cincinnati noted that Binzer had already been removed as director of priest personnel “after he failed to bring past concerns about Father Geoffrey Drew’s conduct to the attention of Archbishop Dennis Schnurr” and the priests’ personnel board.

Drew is accused of raping the boy in the 1980s and 1990s, years before he was ordained as a priest and while he was music director at a suburban Cincinnati parish. Drew has pleaded not guilty to nine counts of rape. His trial was scheduled for October.

“I am deeply sorry for my role in addressing the concerns raised about Father Drew, which has had a negative impact on the trust and faith of the people of the Archdiocese of Cincinnati,” the archdiocese quoted Binzer as saying. “In April, having studied this matter since last summer, the Holy See informed me that it agreed with this assessment.”

Binzer, a Cincinnati native, was ordained as a priest on June 4, 1994, and later served as chancellor of the archdiocese for eight years before being ordained a bishop. He was installed as auxiliary bishop in 2011. Binzer remains a priest in the archdiocese.

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