ABUSE TRACKER

NASHVILLE (TN)
Baptist News Global

June 10, 2019

By Christa Brown

For about six years between 2006 and 2012 I posted on a website the Southern Baptist clergy sex abuse cases that were publicly reported. During that time, I put together a small database of 167 cases, many with multiple victims.

With every case, I wondered: “Will this be enough? Will this finally be enough that Southern Baptist Convention officials will see the scope and horror of the problem and realize they need to do something?”

It never was. It was never enough.

Other bloggers also began posting Southern Baptist clergy sex abuse stories. And I wondered again, “Would it ever be enough?”

But it never was.

Last February, the Houston Chronicle and San Antonio Express-News published the first part of their “Abuse of Faith” series, documenting 700 victims who reported having been sexually abused by Southern Baptist clergy and church leaders.

Recent proposals “appear oriented more toward saving face for SBC officials than toward genuinely protecting kids”.

Yet again I wondered, “Would these 700 be enough?”

They weren’t.

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)
USA Today

June 10, 2019

By Tim Busch

Rarely do Americans pay attention to the biannual assemblies of the nation’s Roman Catholic bishops, but the gathering that starts on Tuesday in Baltimore will be different.

Millions of people, Catholic and not, are asking the same question: What new steps will the bishops take to clean up — or clean out — the church after years of sex abuse scandals?

This is a question the bishops take seriously. At its meeting last November, the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) was ready to vote on measures that would increase accountability for church leaders. While the Vatican intervened at the 11th hour, it did so because it was preparing to release reforms of its own, which were unveiled in May.

The Vatican’s new policy is a big step in the right direction. Rome has also been working much closer with the U.S. church to penalize bad actors. But America’s bishops should see it as a starting point, not the final word. Building on Pope Francis’ good actions, the USCCB should pass long overdue reforms that give regular Catholics — known as “lay Catholics” — a greater role in keeping bishops and priests accountable.

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.

BIRMINGHAM (AL)
Baptist Press

June 8, 2019

By Tom Strode

The Southern Baptist Sexual Abuse Advisory Study issued a report Saturday after 10 months of work with the hope that God will use it to “spark a movement of healing and reform.”

The 52-page report — produced by a fluid study group formed last July by new Southern Baptist Convention President J.D. Greear — was released three days before the SBC’s annual meeting in Birmingham, Ala. Sexual abuse has been increasingly revealed to be a significant problem among Southern Baptists the last two years, and it will be a focus before and during the meeting. The Advisory Study will make a presentation at the SBC meeting Wednesday afternoon.

The Advisory Study, which worked in collaboration with the Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission (ERLC), conducted interviews with hundreds of sexual abuse survivors, as well as church leaders and national experts in the field, according to the report. The report — which includes testimonies from several survivors — seeks “to begin to educate our churches on the abuse crisis, equip our churches to care well for survivors, and prepare our churches to prevent abuse.”

While acknowledging the report is not intended to be either exhaustive or “fully prescriptive,” the Advisory Study says one of its aims “is to begin to illuminate the evil that has occurred within our midst by sharing the stories of survivors of sexual abuse.” The report expresses gratitude to the “brave men and women” who told their stories of abuse so the SBC could understand the scope of the “sexual abuse crisis” it faces.

“We must not rest until Southern Baptist churches are places where [the dignity of being an image bearer of God] has been restored to survivors of sexual abuse and where leadership at all levels fights against the scourge of sexual abuse in all its forms and never covers over or protects abusers,” the report says. “We are committed to becoming churches that are safe for survivors and safe from abuse.”

Greear said the report “is a good first step at capturing where we have come from and where we must go to serve the vulnerable.”

“At its core, the Gospel is about God’s commitment to protect the vulnerable,” Greear said in written comments for Baptist Press. “The cross shows us that He is a safe refuge for all who run to Him. What greater lie could we tell about the Gospel than for us not to be doing whatever it takes to make our churches a safe place for the vulnerable?”

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.

Daily Beast

June 8, 2019

By Emily Shugerman

A top priest in the Texas Catholic Church is under investigation for allegedly carrying on a sexual relationship with a woman from whom he received confession, according to the Associated Press. Houston resident Laura Pontikes accused Monsignor Frank Rossi of coercing her into a sexual relationship while continuing to absolve her sins—one of the most serious crimes in Catholic law. She also accused Galveston-Houston Archbishop Daniel DiNardo—who is leading the church’s response to the sexual abuse crisis in the U.S.—of mishandling the case by allowing Rossi to stay in the ministry. Rossi was removed from the Houston parish following Pontikes’ complaint, but allowed him to return to another diocese after completing treatment. The Galveston-Houston archdiocese has criticized news reports of the issue as biased and one-sided, and maintains that the relationship was consensual. The archdiocese added this week that the confession aspect was a “new development” that would be “thoroughly reviewed in accordance with canon law.” Houston police are also investigating.

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.

NASHVILLE (TN)
Baptist Press

June 9, 2019

By Tom Strode

The Southern Baptist effort to address sexual abuse in churches has taken another step with the launch of the “Caring Well Challenge,” a joint call for congregations to become equipped to prevent predatory behavior and to care for survivors.

The Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission (ERLC) and the Sexual Abuse Advisory Study announced the cost-free initiative Thursday. They issued an invitation to all Southern Baptist churches to participate. All the convention’s entities, more than 35 Southern Baptist state conventions, and many Baptist associations and colleges have endorsed the “Caring Well Challenge,” according to an ERLC release.

The ERLC and the Sexual Abuse Advisory Study — which was named by Southern Baptist Convention President J.D. Greear — also have collaborated with LifeWay Christian Resources to produce “Becoming a Church That Cares Well for the Abused.” The new, free multimedia resource is a comprehensive training curriculum that consists of a handbook with 12 video lessons from experts in a variety of areas.

Regarding the “Caring Well Challenge,” Greear makes an appeal to churches to participate in a video on the initiative’s website, caringwell.com

“The ‘Caring Well Challenge’ provides your church with a pathway to start engaging the problem of abuse,” Greear says. “This is an opportunity for you to say, ‘Yes, yes, our church is ready to do whatever it takes to confront the abuse crisis and to care for the abused.'”

ERLC President Russell Moore acknowledged in a news release announcing the challenge, “There is no quick fix for an issue as complex as church sexual abuse. But this initiative is an outstanding step designed to join our churches together in a common cause.

“Over the last year, I’ve spoken with hundreds of pastors and leaders who are determined to make this issue a priority in their churches, but are looking for tools and training,” Moore said. “That’s exactly what this challenge is designed to provide.

It has been a joy to partner with so many survivors and experts across many fields to design training that will give churches tools to act immediately.”

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.

HUEYTOWN (AL)
Capstone Report

June 9, 2019

The Southern Baptist Convention’s Annual Meeting takes place this week in Birmingham, Alabama. The meeting sessions begin Tuesday, June 11, and conclude Wednesday, June 12. Sex abuse scandals will no doubt be an important topic as the SBC wrestles the abuse problem in the church and the way Baptists should respond. Reports on this have already been prepared for messengers. Expect this to be where the mainstream press focuses their attention. Key question: Will it be PR or something substantive that arises out of Birmingham?

Activities around the Convention begin Sunday evening with the start of the Pastor’s Conference. During the Monday session of the Pastor’s Conference, McLean Bible Church pastor David Platt will speak. Platt warmly and respectfully prayed for President Donald Trump June 2, but then flubbed the aftermath giving credence to complaints from angry partisans. Jerry Falwell, Jr. told Platt to Act like a man during the furor that followed. Platt’s time in Birmingham will be calm in contrast to the political furor his error created. Of course, church staff are only making the troubles worse, as an Associate Pastor at McLean Bible Church insulted conservative Christians in a Facebook post.

Also, on Monday, there are two big events at the Westin Hotel Ballroom involving Founders’ Ministries—a seminar on Mature Manhood in an Immature Age followed by Founder’s Executive Director Dr. Tom Ascol debating Dr. Dwight McKissic on the topic of complementarianism and if women should preach. Monday evening, the G3 Conference is hosting a symposium on Social Justice and its dangers to evangelicalism.

These are important meetings on Monday at the Westin: Social Justice is a threat to evangelicalism and attention to it is important. The discussion of egalitarianism is now reaching a critical juncture in the Southern Baptist Convention. It should not surprise, that many of the Woke Social Justice Warriors are the same ones promoting women preachers. That’s how Intersectional allies operate. These meetings are part of an effort holding back the tide of Leftism sweeping into the Convention from the cultural sea. Worth watching what happens here.

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.

PITTSBURGH (PA)
Post Gazette

June 8, 2019

Diocese of Providence Bishop Thomas Tobin said in a recent tweet “that Catholics should not support or attend LGBTQ ‘Pride Month’ events held in June. They promote a culture and encourage activities that are contrary to Catholic faith and morals. They are especially harmful for children” (June 4 online, “R.I. Bishop Tobin’s Stance Against Pride Month Spurs Criticism”).

He added that his “obligation before God is to lead the faithful entrusted to my care and to teach the faith, clearly and compassionately.”

Did Bishop Tobin speak out “clearly” when his own all-male brother bishops and cardinals were preserving their clerical power structure by moving around pedophile priests? His silence and that of others in his feckless fraternity was and is especially harmful to children. In fact, they violently tormented thousands of children. But he still enjoys the trappings of false institutional power in misleading the faithful. Their own sense about sexuality diverges significantly from the tone-deaf rantings of leaders like Bishop Tobin.

Comparing the love I have witnessed in the LGBTQ community with the abuses of power among the bishops, I have no doubt who better exhibits the “Catholic faith and morals.”

Jesus rebuked the hierarchy of his time as shown in Matthew 23: “Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You give a tenth of your spices — mint, dill and cumin. But you have neglected the more important matters of the law — justice, mercy and faithfulness.” Before feeling a need to lead the faithful, Bishop Tobin should lead himself and his brother bishops in repenting for the church’s sins of complicity and silence. The spirit of God can lead the faithful just fine, thank you. And they wonder why the pews are emptying.

Scott Fabean
Mt. Lebanon

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GUAM
Pacific Daily News

June 10, 2019

By Haidee V. Eugenio

A priest who was serving as a chaplain for the Department of Youth Affairs allegedly sexually abused one of the boys incarcerated at the Mangilao facility for young juveniles years ago, according to a lawsuit filed in federal court on Monday.

The lawsuit, filed by a plaintiff identified in court documents only as BBB to protect his privacy, says former Guam priest Andrew Mannetta abused the boy when he was 14 years old.

Mannetta invited BBB to accompany him to his room at the friary in Sinajana to change his clothes, the lawsuit says.

That’s where the priest abused the boy by touching his private part and doing a sexual act on him, the lawsuit says.

“Plaintiff resisted Mannetta’s act but was too small to stop the abuse,” the lawsuit says. The boy became resentful towards the DYA chaplain after the incident, the complaint says.

BBB, represented by attorney David Lujan, demands $5 million in minimum damages.

The plaintiff named Mannetta and the Capuchin Franciscans as among defendants, along with up to 47 other unnamed defendants.

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The Intercept

June 9, 2019

By Lee Fang

KAMALA HARRIS, SURROUNDED by thousands of cheering supporters, kicked off her presidential campaign in Oakland earlier this year, declaring that she has always fought “on behalf of survivors of sexual assault, a fight not just against predators but a fight against silence and stigma.”

Fighting on behalf of victims of sexual abuse, particularly children, has been central to Harris’s political identity for the better part of three decades. Harris specialized in prosecuting sex crimes and child exploitation as a young prosecutor just out of law school. She later touted her record on child sexual abuse cases and prosecuting pedophiles in television advertisements, splashy profiles, and on the trail as she campaigned for public office.

But when it came to taking on the Catholic Church, survivors of clergy sexual abuse say that Harris turned a blind eye, refusing to take action against clergy members accused of sexually abusing children when it meant confronting one of the city’s most powerful political institutions.

When Harris became San Francisco district attorney in 2004, she took over an office that had been working closely with survivors of sexual abuse to pursue cases against the Catholic Church. The office and the survivors were in the middle of a legal battle to hold predatory priests accountable, and Harris inherited a collection of personnel files involving allegations of sexual abuse by priests and employees of the San Francisco Archdiocese, which oversees church operations in San Francisco, and Marin and San Mateo counties.

“It went from Terence Hallinan going hundred miles an hour, full speed ahead, after the Catholic Church to Kamala Harris doing absolutely nothing.”

The files had been compiled by investigators working under the direction of Terence Hallinan, the radical district attorney who Harris ousted in a contentious election campaign. Hallinan’s team had prosecuted cases of abuse that had occurred decades earlier and had gathered evidence as part of a probe into widespread clergy sexual misconduct.

Just six months before Harris took office, a U.S. Supreme Court decision overturned a California law that had retroactively eliminated the statute of limitations for criminal prosecution of child molestation cases. That shifted the focus to holding predators among the clergy accountable through civil cases and through a broader effort to bring attention to predators who had been shielded by the church.

Hallinan believed that the clergy abuse files were a matter of public record; Harris refused to release them to the public.

In her seven years as district attorney, Harris’s office did not proactively assist in civil cases against clergy sex abuse and ignored requests by activists and survivors to access the cache of investigative files that could have helped them secure justice, according to several victims of clergy sex abuse living in California who spoke to The Intercept.

“It went from Terence Hallinan going hundred miles an hour, full speed ahead, after the Catholic Church to Kamala Harris doing absolutely nothing and taking it backwards hundred miles an hour,” said Joey Piscitelli, a sexual assault survivor, who a jury found had been molested as a student while attending Salesian College Preparatory, a Catholic high school in Richmond, California.

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

NEW YORK (NY)
Associated Press

June 9, 2019

By David Crary

As the Roman Catholic Church’s sex abuse scandal grows ever wider in scope in the U.S., bishops convene for a national meeting in Baltimore on Tuesday under heavy pressure to acknowledge their oversight failures and give a larger role to lay Catholics and secular authorities in confronting the crisis.

The pressure comes not only from longtime critics of the church’s response to clergy sex abuse, but also from insiders who now voice doubts that the bishops are capable of handling the crisis on their own.

“My biggest concern is that it’s going to end up being bishops overseeing bishops,” Francesco Cesareo, chairman of a national sex-abuse review board set up by the bishops, told Catholic News Service. “If that’s the case, it’s going to be very difficult for the laity to feel any sense of confidence that anything has truly changed.”

Events of the past year have created unprecedented challenges for the U.S. bishops. Many dioceses have become targets of state investigations since a Pennsylvania grand jury report in August detailed hundreds of cases of alleged abuse.

In Baltimore, the bishops will be guided by a groundbreaking new law issued by Pope Francis on May 9. It requires priests and nuns worldwide to report clergy sexual abuse and cover-ups by their superiors to church authorities. It also calls for any claim of sexual misconduct or cover-up against a bishop to be reported to the Vatican and a supervisory bishop in the U.S.

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BUFFALO (NY)
Buffalo News

June 8, 2019

By Lou Michel

The woman who leaked documents on clergy sex abuse in the Buffalo Catholic Diocese attended Bishop Richard J. Malone’s first listening session with the laity Saturday.

One of about 200 Catholics in attendance at the two-hour session at St. Gregory the Great Catholic Church in Amherst, Siobhan O’Connor said the gathering left her with a sense of concern that Catholics are divided — including whether the bishop should remain as head of the diocese.

Several prominent local Catholics and public officials have called for Malone to step down for his handling of sex abuse by clergy, but he has said he has no intention of resigning.

“I was just really taken that there is such polarization. If we are divided, we’ll be less effective as members of the church,” O’Connor said after the session.

O’Connor, who had served as the bishop’s executive assistant until she released reams of confidential documents to WKBW-TV last year, said she felt an obligation as a Catholic to attend the session and learn more about where fellow Catholics stood on church issues.

She said a tightly scripted format for the listening session did not allow that to happen.

Since she released the documents and left her job at the chancery, O’Connor said she has not spoken with the bishop.

“This is the closest I’ve been to him. I was a little more than a table away from him. I believe he saw me. I’m trying to be respectful. My presence might not have been welcome,” she said.

She noted a divide among the attendees over whether the bishop should resign or stay.

“There were people calling for the bishop to resign at my table and a handful of others,” she said.

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Patheos blog

June 9, 2019

By Msgr. Eric Barr

Great bluegrass song out called “In Hell I’ll Be In Good Company.” By the time summer ends, we Catholics will be humming it as we grapple with the crisis in the Church once again. Looks like last year’s Cardinal scandal will have a sequel this year after the Washington Post’s expose of Bishop Bransfield of West Virginia. But before we get on the bandwagon of bashing priests, bishops, etc. again, perhaps we Catholics could all agree to share the guilt. Just a thought. It’s controversial. I should know. For fifteen years I was either the Vicar for Clergy or the Vicar General delegated with the responsibility for ministering to the priests, educating the junior clergy and clergy of the diocese, and helping out or disciplining priests who found themselves with serious problems. I mention all that to establish some street cred. Why? Because this column might cause us all to rethink our presuppositions.

Sharing The Blame
The crisis in the Church centering on the misuse of episcopal authority and the sexual abuse by priests is a horrible and terrible scandal. It has led to the worst crisis in the Church since the Reformation. Granted. But it does no good for the laity simply to savage guilty priests or bishops (though they richly deserve it), call for the abolition of the priesthood, or even seek a reform of the priesthood. The Church has a lot of problems but the crisis is not specifically the problem of the ordained. All Catholics have to take some responsibility. In fact, it’s bigger than all the members of the Church. Here’s why.

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.

BIRMINGHAM (AL)
Birmingham News

June 9, 2019

By Greg Garrison

Southern Baptists from across the country have arrived in Birmingham and more are on the way.

The Southern Baptist Convention, the annual meeting of the 14.8-million-member denomination, gathers Tuesday and Wednesday at the BJCC Legacy Arena. It’s the first time the Southern Baptist Convention has met in Birmingham since 1941.

It will be an opportunity for many Southern Baptists in Alabama to attend for the first time.

“So many wanted to go as messengers who have never been,” said the Rev. Joe Godfrey, former president of the Alabama Baptist Convention.

The number of messengers, or voting delegates, allowed from each Southern Baptist church depends on its size.

“It’s based on church membership or giving record,” Godfrey said. “The maximum number is ten from each church.”

The Rev. J.D. Greear, 46, senior pastor of The Summit Church in Durham, N.C., will preside at the meeting after being elected president last year. He has made addressing sexual abuse by clergy a priority issue.

“We need to have a posture of lament,” Greear said this past week on a Facebook live video. “Whether or not it’s happened to me, to somebody I know or somebody in my church, it’s happened to churches that bear the name Southern Baptist, and we need to lament that, lament the pain of victims and grieve with them. Lament that it happened on our watch.”

Greear announced a Sexual Abuse Advisory Study in July. More than half of study group is women.

Initial recommendations of the study group include calling for repentance “for decades of inaction.”

A group of sexual abuse survivors and victims’ advocates plans to protest outside the Legacy Arena on Tuesday about 6 p.m. They requested display space in a meeting hall, and permission to rally on the plaza, but were denied by the convention, said the Rev. Ashley Easter, a spokesperson for the rally who grew up in an independent Baptist church and is now an ordained minister in the Progressive Christian Alliance.

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SYRACUSE (NY)
Post Standard

June 9, 2019

Last week, Central New York met the priest with the potential to lead the Roman Catholic Diocese of Syracuse for the next 20 years: Bishop-elect Douglas Lucia, 56, a parish pastor and canon lawyer in the Ogdensburg Diocese. His elevation represents a pivot to a younger generation of leadership by an institution seeking to renew itself, regain the trust of its members and remain relevant in an increasingly secular world.

Lucia will take over from Bishop Robert J. Cunningham, whose decade as the spiritual leader of the Catholic Church in Syracuse was dominated by the clergy sexual abuse crisis and its fallout.

In his first public comments on the crisis, the bishop-elect expressed compassion for victims of clergy sexual abuse. “I just want to be a healing presence,” he said Tuesday at an introductory news conference.

He also signaled a willingness to be transparent about the perpetrators of sexual abuse. In a wide-ranging Q&A with staff writer Julie McMahon, Lucia said he favors releasing the names of priests with allegations against them.

It’s a point of view his predecessor came around to only as his time in office neared an end due to mandatory retirement. In December, Cunningham broke years of silence and released the names of 57 priests with credible accusations of sexual abuse against them. The bishop also created an independent process to compensate victims of clergy sexual abuse. The diocese has paid nearly $11 million to 79 victims, so far.

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WASHINGTON (DC)
Catholic News Service

June 8, 2019

By Rhina Guidos

After a major newspaper published a story about alleged financial and sexual misconduct by a West Virginia bishop, a prelate overseeing the investigation for the Vatican expressed regret that he redacted his name out of documents detailing financial aspects of the scandal.

In an 8-minute video released June 7, Archbishop William E. Lori of Baltimore, who was tasked with overseeing the investigation in West Virginia, said mistakes were made and one of them was redacting his name, along with the names of other bishops and high-ranking church officials who received personal financial “gifts” from the Diocese of Wheeling-Charleston’s former bishop, Bishop Michael J. Bransfield.

Lori, who was appointed apostolic administrator of the West Virginia diocese after Bransfield resigned last fall amid allegations of sexual and financial misconduct, said in the video that transparency requires admitting mistakes.

“If I had to do it over again, especially at a time when we’re trying to create greater transparency and accountability, the report would have included the names of those bishops who received gifts, including my own, with some notation that there was no evidence to suggest that those who received gifts reciprocated in any way that was inappropriate.”

The preliminary investigation, he said, found that allegations of sexual misconduct by Bransfield toward adults were found to be “credible,” and it also determined that “during his tenure, he engaged in patterns of excessive and inappropriate spending, misused church funds for personal benefit,” that included travel, liquor, dining, financial gifts and luxury goods.

“There is no excuse nor adequate explanation that will satisfy the troubling question of how Bishop Bransfield’s behavior was allowed to continue for as long as it did without the accountability that we must require from those who have been entrusted with so much, both spiritual and material, as pastors,” Lori said.

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NEW YORK (NY)
Associated Press

June 8, 2019

The Southern Baptist Convention gathers for its annual national meeting Tuesday with one sobering topic — sex abuse by clergy and staff — overshadowing all others.

Inside the meeting hall in Birmingham, Ala., delegates representing the nation’s largest Protestant denomination will probably vote on establishing criteria for expelling churches that mishandle or cover up abuse allegations. They also may vote to establish a new committee, which would review how member churches handle claims of abuse.

Outside the convention center, abuse survivors and other activists plan a protest rally Tuesday evening, demanding that the church move faster to require sex-abuse training for all pastors, staff and volunteers, and to create a database of credibly accused abusers that could be shared among its more than 47,000 churches. They will also be urging the church, which espouses all-male leadership, to be more respectful of women’s roles — a volatile topic that’s sparked online debate over whether women should preach to men.

Sex abuse already was a high-profile issue at the 2018 national meeting in Dallas, following revelations about several sexual misconduct cases. Soon after his election as Southern Baptist Convention president at that meeting, the Rev. J.D. Greear formed an advisory group to draft recommendations on how to confront the problem.

Ivonne Gordon-Vailakis isn’t just a 25-year-long Spanish and Latin American lit professor. She’s also a rockstar mentor.

However, pressure on the church has intensified in recent months, due in part to articles by the Houston Chronicle and San Antonio Express-News asserting that hundreds of Southern Baptist clergy and staff have been accused of sexual misconduct over the last 20 years, including dozens who returned to church duties, while leaving more than 700 victims with little in the way of justice or apologies.

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.

HOUSTON (TX)
Houston Chronicle

June 8, 2019

By Christa Brown

The “Abuse of Faith” series documented at least 700 people who reported having being sexually abused by Southern Baptist clergy and church leaders. Nearly all of them were children at the time they were abused.

Since the Chronicle and San Antonio Express-News first published the series in February, more than 350 others have contacted the investigative reporters with additional stories of abuse and cover-ups among Southern Baptists.

These stories stand as a collective testament to a chilling reality. For decades, Southern Baptist pastors have been sexually abusing kids, and all the while, other Southern Baptist leaders have known and turned a blind eye. This has been the status quo in the Southern Baptist Convention.

But now, the dam is broken, and there is hope in that.

As the pent-up waters of long-silenced voices continue to rise, the Southern Baptist Convention must choose a higher ground.

The old way was always unholy – shaming and blaming victims while denying and minimizing the problem. Now the old way is also institutionally untenable.

With decades of entrenched patterns to confront, the SBC will not meet this challenge with any feeble half measures. Nor will it meet this challenge with resolutions, platitudes, image-polishing press statements, or pious preaching.

Rather, this massive institutional enabling of horror must be addressed on an equally massive institutional scale.

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ROME (ITALY)
Daily Beast

June 8, 2019

By Barbie Latza Nadeau

A Vatican cardinal is among a handful of Catholic clerics who pledged to return cash gifts bestowed upon them by disgraced W. Virginia Bishop Michael Bransfield, according to the Washington Post. Bransfield, who has been removed from active ministry after credible allegations of sexual misconduct, is alleged to have written personal checks for a total of $350,000 to 137 clerics over a dozen years.

Among them is Cardinal Kevin Farrell, who Bransfield gave $29,000 to renovate his Rome apartment, and who said Friday he would return the money to the W. Virginia diocese.

The Washington Post has learned that Bransfield was reimbursed by the church for the money he gave to the prelates, including two young priests he is credibly accused of molesting.

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Wartburg Watch blog

June 7, 2019

Do you know who Christa Brown is? If not, you should. She has been the shining light behind Stop Baptist Predators for years. She was blogging while I was merrily skipping along in the evangelical world, not realizing the extent of sexual abuse in my tribe.

Although the site is no longer adding stories, it is being maintained so researchers can find the wealth of information contained therein. This was the first blog I visited to get a picture of the ongoing abuse in the SBC. She posted the news release of the predator in my former church who was arrested and convicted.

Christa endured serious pushback for her website. She didn’t have a network of likeminded writers when she started blogging Also, since that time, many people have become aware of the abuse problem due to #metoo #churchtoo #sbctoo. So there is more broad support for those exposing abuse. She powered on with little support and a lot of downright abuse.

Next week, Christa is going to be honored for her pioneering work by those attending the *For Such a Time is This Rally* outside of the SBC convention. It is rather fitting that the SBC refused to allow this rally inside of their hallowed halls. It is the same response that Christa received when she started writing. *Not allowed.*

The following is her story of abuse. I am deeply grateful for her dedication in spite of the trauma she endured. She is a hero.

I want to challenge those of you who attend any of the churches mentioned in this story to approach your church leadership and give them a copy of Christa’s story. I plan to email copies of it to the mentioned churches, challenging them to reach out to Christa.

Also, does anyone know the required ethics of licensed realtors? I’m thinking about checking into this. Can you imagine this guy is selling real estate?

Finally, how many of you know about the secret Baptist file of known predators? I didn’t. Click on the link in the story.

Open letter to Tommy Gilmore, the Southern Baptist pastor who sexually abused me as a kid:

Have you ever felt any remorse for what you did to me? That’s the question I always wonder about.

It’s been on my mind a lot lately because I’ll be speaking on June 11 at the For Such a Time as This Rally outside the SBC’s annual meeting in Birmingham, urging that the denomination institute better safeguards against predatory pastors like you. The horror of what I experienced from your abuse and from the keep-it-quiet cover-up responses of church and denominational leaders ultimately launched a long period of advocacy efforts on my part, because no child should ever experience the horror of what you did to me, and no adult should ever have to go through such a nightmare to try to expose a child-molesting minister.

The most difficult part of this kind of advocacy work is that it sometimes resurrects horrific memories. I did an interview with a reporter just the other day and, when she asked if I could talk a little about what happened to me as a kid, my mind was suddenly a jumble of disjointed flashbacks, and there it was again, that urge to vomit and run.

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.

SPRINGFIELD (MA)
The Republican

June 7, 2019

By Anne-Gerard Flynn

The Roman Catholic Diocese of Springfield has renamed its department that oversees clergy sexual abuse allegations — as well as matters related to child protection and victim outreach —and made two new appointments.

Effective June 10, Jeffrey J. Trant will serve as director of the newly designated Office of Safe Environment and Victim Assistance, and Li-Ling Lam-Waller is its compliance officer.

The appointments are designed to improve outreach to victims following feedback from parish sessions Bishop Mitchell T. Rozanski held earlier this year. The sessions followed concerns about how this diocese handles clergy sex abuse allegations in the wake of a number of national and international investigations into clergy abuse.

The announcement also comes in advance of Rozanski’s attendance next week at the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops Spring General Assembly in Baltimore. It will focus on bishop accountability measures to address the abuse crisis.

“The re-naming of the former office of Child & Youth Protections is to better define the mission of the office,” diocesan spokesperson Mark Dupont said.

He added, “It doesn’t immediately change any of the reporting procedures, but with the addition of a compliance coordinator it will allow more time for the director to work directly with victims as well as evaluate what other changes might be necessary for the office to be more effective. This new structure was brought about by an internal evaluation which began back in January and from what we heard at the listening sessions from victims and their advocates.”

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NEW YORK (NY)
Slate

June 7, 2019

By Ruth Graham

The capital of California was named for a river that was in turn named for the Catholic sacrament of the Eucharist. So it’s notable that last month state senators in Sacramento passed a bill that some say will force Catholic priests to violate a different Catholic sacrament: confession, also known as the sacrament of reconciliation.

Confession, as shown in a zillion pop cultural depictions, is a private conversation between a priest and an individual, meant to encourage Catholics to examine their consciences and request forgiveness from God. The format varies—for example, the two parties may sit face to face, or with an opaque screen between them—but the penitent is encouraged to offer a full inventory of her sins since her last visit. In return, the priest is bound by an ironclad oath of secrecy called the “seal of confession.”

Historically, American law has protected that seal, carving out a “clergy-penitent privilege” for the confessional that is similar to attorney-client privilege. But a bill making its way through the California state Legislature would ever-so-slightly crack the seal open. SB 360, which passed the state Senate in May, would require priests to report suspicions of child abuse obtained through confession in some circumstances. The bill is expected to be voted on by the lower house of the state Legislature in September, according to Catholic News Service. And many Catholics are not happy about it.

Clergy are already among the many professionals deemed mandated reporters for child abuse in California. But state law makes an exception for “penitential communications” obtained in settings where the cleric has a sacramental duty to maintain secrecy. As reporter Jack Jenkins recently pointed out, California’s pathbreaking 1990 law designating clergy as mandated reporters included a confessional carve-out that many other states added when they later adopted similar laws.

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ROME (ITALY)
Associated Press

Jun 8, 2019

By Nicole Winfield

The Catholic Church in Texas says it is reviewing allegations that a top monsignor continued to hear a married woman’s confessions after luring her into a sexual relationship, a potentially serious crime under church law.

The announcement was issued by the Galveston-Houston Archdiocese led by Cardinal Daniel DiNardo, president of the U.S. bishops’ conference, after the woman broke years of silence to denounce his handling of her case in an Associated Press investigation this week. The archdiocese has defended DiNardo’s handling of the case as swift and just. But it said Friday that the issue of confession was a “new development” presented by Laura Pontikes in the AP report and would be “thoroughly reviewed in accordance with canon law.”

Pontikes has accused Monsignor Frank Rossi, DiNardo’s former deputy, of exploiting her emotional dependency on him to manipulate her into a sexual relationship, even as he heard her confessions, counseled her husband on their strained marriage and solicited hundreds of thousands of dollars from them in donations for the church. The archdiocese removed Rossi from the Houston parish, but allowed him to return to ministry in another diocese after he completed a treatment program.

Pontikes protested to the archdiocese and went to police in August. After AP inquiries last week, Rossi’s new bishop placed him on leave pending the outcome of the investigation.

Rossi’s lawyer has said he is cooperating with the police investigation but declined to comment further. The archdiocese has defended him, saying the relationship was consensual and did not involve intercourse. Pontikes claims it did.

The case is significant because DiNardo heads the U.S. Catholic Church’s response to the clergy sex-abuse scandal, which exploded anew last year worldwide. As president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, DiNardo will lead a meeting next week of U.S. bishops to approve new measures for accountability over abuse.

The “absolution of an accomplice” crime in confession, one of the most serious in canon law, occurs when a priest absolves someone with whom he has engaged in a sexual sin. It must be reported to the Vatican and can carry the penalty of excommunication.

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DENVER (CO)
Crux

June 8, 2019

By Alex Meyer

Opinions are mixed about what should happen to the Roman Catholic Diocese of Wheeling-Charleston after new revelations about Michael J. Bransfield’s conduct while bishop here were made public this week.

Some called for the diocese to reform from within while others asked the West Virginia Attorney General’s Office to take further action, but all agreed: something needs to change.

On Wednesday, Archbishop William E. Lori admitted in a letter that the diocese found “credible” accounts of sexual harassment from Bransfield and that he further engaged in a pattern of “excessive and inappropriate” spending during his tenure.

Judy Jones, midwest regional leader of the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests, or SNAP, said she wasn’t surprised by the latest developments regarding Bransfield.

“What is so sickening is how this went on for so long and people knew about it. Bransfield kept getting away with it,” Jones said. “We at SNAP applaud the brave victims for coming forward and getting (his) wrongdoings exposed and stopped.”

Jones said the problems with the diocese and the church illuminated by Bransfield’s misconduct need to be “fixed from the outside” by law enforcement.

“The church officials can’t police themselves,” she said. “They can’t fix the problems themselves. It’s not going to change.”

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ROME (ITALY)
National Catholic Reporter

June 7, 2019

By Massimo Faggioli

Editor’s note: Following is the transcript of a June 7 talk given by Massimo Faggioli at the annual conference of the Catholic Theological Society of America held in Pittsburgh.

Institutional Church and Academic Theology in a Time of Catholic Disruption

1. The church in a time of disruption

Once, Catholicism was a synonym for status quo; now, it could be disruption. The institutional church is not exempt from the crisis that is affecting all institutions today: a social and political crisis, in part a response to growing inequality, which in many countries has brought to power parties and political leaders harboring xenophobic if not racist sentiments; a crisis of globalization in terms of a redefinition of international political alliances and alignments; a cultural and intellectual disruption where the emergence of a social-media-driven public discourse shapes a redefinition of the role of knowledge and scholarship, together with the crisis of authority of cultural institutions and education.

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CHARLESTON (WV)
West Virginia Record

June 7, 2019

By Kyla Asbury

West Virginia Attorney General Patrick Morrisey urged the Diocese of Wheeling-Charleston to release its investigative report on former Bishop Michael Bransfield’s alleged misconduct.

Morrisey said it was important to disclose the report immediately.

“While we appreciate the fact that our investigation and lawsuit is causing the Wheeling-Charleston Diocese to disclose new improprieties about Bishop Bransfield, we believe it is imperative that the Diocese immediately disclose its investigative report about the Bishop,” Morrisey said. “It’s time to come clean and release the Bransfield report—and no longer hide pertinent information from our office and the public.”

Morrisey said much of the information being released by the Diocese would never have been released if his office hadn’t issued subpoenas, investigated and, ultimately, filed a lawsuit.

“The Diocese did not issue its list of initially 31, now 40, credibly accused priests until after issuance of our first subpoena in the fall of 2018, and today’s disclosure comes approximately two weeks after the filing of our amended complaint,” Morrisey said. “Now is the time for full disclosure. I repeat my call for the Diocese to stop fighting our efforts to get to the bottom of the sexual abuse scandal, come clean and end the secrecy – including release of the full Bransfield report.”

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DALLAS (TX)
D Magazine

June 7, 2019

By Tim Rogers

Hopefully you either subscribe to the Washington Post or you haven’t yet this month used up your free visits. Because the paper broke a big story about an out-of-control Catholic bishop in West Virginia. Dude spent a lot of money getting drunk and buying jewelry. Oh, and Michael Bransfield sexually harassed other men. And handed them cash. It was all fueled by revenue from mineral rights generated by land in West Texas. Some highlights from the story:

Another said Bransfield let him drink alcohol before he was legally of age, exposed himself, pulled the young man against him and ran his hands over the seminarian’s genitals. … Throughout his tenure, Bransfield abused alcohol, oxycodone and other prescription drugs, which “likely contributed to his harassing and abusive behavior,” the report says. … During his 13 years as bishop in West Virginia, one of the poorest states in the nation, Bransfield spent $2.4 million in church money on travel, much of it personal, which included flying in chartered jets and staying in luxury hotels, according to the report.

And what does this have to do with Dallas? Kevin Farrell was the previous bishop of the Dallas Diocese (he left in 2016). By all accounts, he is a good man who cleaned up the mess that his predecessor, Charles Grahmann, left behind. However, the Post story notes this about Farrell, who now works at the Vatican:

Cardinal Kevin Farrell, a high-ranking Vatican official who served for years in the District, received two checks totaling $29,000 for expenses related to an apartment in Rome, documents show. … A Vatican spokesman confirmed that Farrell received “voluntary donations” from Bransfield and others for the renovation of his apartment in the Vatican and said that Bransfield “received nothing in exchange.”

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LONDON (ENGLAND)
BBC News

June 7, 2019

A child abuse inquiry witness has told how he was raped by priests during “satanic” drink-fuelled sex parties.

Dave Sharp also described a catalogue of sexual, physical and emotional violence at St Ninian’s in Falkland, Fife, between 1971 and 1975.

Mr Sharp from Glasgow, said the abuse had left him with “lifelong trauma”.

The independent Scottish Child Abuse inquiry is looking in detail at historical abuse of children in residential care.

Mr Sharp urged inquiry chairwoman Lady Smith, to piece together the “jigsaw” of victims’ accounts and called for a “national discussion” on the subject.

The 60-year-old, who has waived his right to anonymity, was put into care after his mother died when he was aged one.

He stayed in several institutions before going to the Catholic-run care home in Fife.

He told how he was groomed by one of the religious brothers, who would tell him he loved him, which “no-one had ever done” before.

The inquiry heard the then-12-year-old was later raped.

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FARGO (ND)
KFGO TV

June 7, 2019

By Jim Monk

The Diocese of Fargo has been investigating allegations of clergy sex abuse of minors that date back “several decades.” The information was revealed to KFGO News in response to a question regarding when the diocese plans to release a list of credibly accused priests.

The statement, from Bishop John Folda, says the diocese is “conducting a review of possible allegations of abuse of minors going back several decades.” Folda says a report will be released after the review is complete.

Diocese Spokesman Paul Braun says a timeline for releasing the list has not been determined. “Not at this time. We want to make sure we have everything in order and completed first.”“All the Catholic bishops, including the bishop in the Diocese of Fargo are feeling intense public pressure” according to Jeff Anderson, a St. Paul based attorney who advocates for clergy sex abuse victims across the nation.“I’m glad to hear they’re working on it. I’m despaired that they haven’t done more sooner” Anderson said. “There’s a fierce urgency for Catholic bishops to come cleaner than they have.”

Folda also says the Diocese of Fargo will review its policies to make sure they are in conformity with the new norms issued by Pope Francis as well as the guidelines approved by the U.S. conference OF catholic bishops.

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WASHINGTON (DC)
Catholic News Service

June 7, 2019

By Greg Erlandson

When the bishops gather in Baltimore June 11-14, their meeting will be anything but pro forma.

Instead, they will have some major decisions to make that may determine how quickly they are able to rebuild trust with their fellow Catholics following a series of recent exposes, allegations and scandals regarding bishops themselves.

“This is going to be a working meeting,” said one observer, implying the likelihood of vigorous discussion and debate as the bishops seek to approve a series of proposals dealing with the investigation of abuse or cover up of abuse by bishops.

The attention of the bishops and the dozens of news media who will be following the proceedings will be focused on four action items.

The most important of these, and perhaps the one most likely to be debated, concerns the directives for the implementation of the recent “motu proprio,” or church law, issued by Pope Francis and governing complaints directed against clergy or church leaders regarding the sexual abuse of minors or vulnerable persons.

The “motu proprio,” known by its Latin title “Vos estis lux mundi” (“You are the light of the world”), grew out of the extraordinary gathering of the presidents of the world’s bishops’ conferences Feb. 21-24 in Rome. The “motu proprio” modified existing church law to bolster laws regarding clergy sexual abuse, including protection for whistleblowers and condemnation of any sort of cover-ups of such abuse.

While many of the directives of the “motu proprio” regarding clergy have already been implemented in the United States with its 2002 “Charter for the Protection of Children and Young People,” the action items before the bishops concern allegations of abuse or negligence on the part of bishops. Bishops were not explicitly included in the charter because authority over the bishops and their discipline rests with the pope himself.

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NEW YORK (NY)
Wall Street Journal

June 7, 2019

By Christopher Weaver

When employees at a U.S. Indian Health Service facility here saw a video of their maintenance man disappearing with a 16-year-old patient into a private bathroom, they strongly suspected he was sexually involved with her.

After two staff members questioned the girl, she dragged a chair to the bathroom shower and tried to hang herself from the curtain rod, according to internal documents and people familiar with the September 2016 incident.

Although suspected sexual abuse of minors on Indian reservations is supposed to be reported to law-enforcement officials and social workers, several employees said an IHS manager told them not to say anything.

Months later, the maintenance man, then 47 years old, was told he was fired over the incident—then unfired. He returned to work at the Unity Healing Center, a teens-only residential substance-abuse treatment facility, although by then there was a federal investigation into his conduct. His duties included reviewing safety incident reports, including those about sex abuse.

The IHS, which provides health care for 2.6 million Native Americans has allowed employees accused of sexual misconduct to continue working and has struggled to meet U.S. requirements for reporting such allegations, a Wall Street Journal investigation found. At Cherokee, no one contacted law enforcement about the maintenance man until about seven months after the incident, and senior agency officials didn’t intervene.

In February, the Journal and the PBS series Frontline reported that IHS pediatrician Stanley Patrick Weber had sexually assaulted young male patients, and that the agency ignored warnings and tried to silence whistleblowers over two decades. The day the Journal/Frontline report was published, the IHS announced a written policy to improve its handling of sexual-abuse allegations.

Yet in interviews in early April, more than two months after the new policy was enacted, employees of the North Carolina facility said they hadn’t yet gotten any details about the new policy or received any training. The Cherokee case suggests that some of the problems that enabled Mr. Weber’s misconduct persist.

Beverly Cotton, the IHS leader of the region that includes North Carolina, said in an interview she thought the subsequent federal investigation of the Cherokee incident had failed to substantiate the misconduct allegations, and that Unity’s policies complied with federal law. “If there was a report of sexual misconduct and a supervisor advised another licensed provider not to report that, both of them hold responsibility,” she said. Law-enforcement officials said the federal investigation is continuing.

A White House task force is investigating the Weber case and the agency’s policies for handling sexual abuse. At a meeting in Albuquerque, N.M., in May, task force members discussed weaknesses they had discovered in the agency’s sex-abuse reporting practices, including confusion among staff members, and a lack of standard policies.

“There is a lack of clarity when it comes to the immediate steps that need to be taken to report suspected child abuse,” said Trent Shores, the U.S. attorney for the Northern District of Oklahoma and a task force leader. He said the task force is examining whether IHS employees understood their legal obligation to report child abuse, and whether any supervisors might have discouraged such reports.

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PARIS (FRANCE)
LaCroix International

June 7, 2019

By Robert Mickens

“If you want to be priest, lie!”

That was supposed to be a punch line in “Mass Appeal,” a comedy-drama written by American Catholic playwright Bill C. Davis.

First staged in 1980, it was made into a film four years later.In the screen version Jack Lemmon stars as Father Tim Farley, a popular pastor of an affluent parish in Connecticut. He’s a friendly, feel-good type of priest whose homilies are carefully designed to avoid challenging or upsetting his generous parishioners.

Fr. Farley drives a late-model Mercedes-Benz, loves his wine and Scotch, and spends his day-off at the racetrack. He is “considered to be one of the best priests” in the diocese.

One day he’s asked to mentor Mark Dolson (Željko Ivanek), a highly idealistic young deacon who risks being blocked from priestly ordination because he hasn’t toed the line in the seminary.

Mark’s main offence is that he strongly defended two seminarians that were expelled for a suspected homosexual relationship.

The seminary rector (Charles Durning) thus suspects Mark is also gay.

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LAFAYETTE (LOUISIANA)
KATC News

June 7, 2019

Convicted St. Landry Parish priest Michael Guidry has asked a judge to reconsider the 10-year sentence he received for molesting the son of his deacon.

Back in April, Guidry was sentenced to 10 years in prison for child molestation, with three years suspended – meaning he will serve as much as seven years in prison.

His attorneys filed a motion for reconsideration of sentence in May. A hearing has been set for July, court records indicate.

Guidry, 76, who most recently served at Saint Peter’s Church in Morrow, pleaded guilty in March to molesting a deacon’s son after giving him alcohol.

Guidry faced 5 to 10 years in prison. As part of his plea deal, Guidry was placed on the sex offender registry.

The former pastor of St. Peter’s Church in Morrow was arrested in June 2018 after a deacon’s son, Oliver Peyton, came forward to allege the priest had given him alcohol and molested him. In December 2018, Guidry was formally charged with molestation of a juvenile by the St. Landry Parish District Attorney.

Before handing down Guidry’s sentence, Judge Alonzo Harris heard witness testimony from the victim’s parents and brother who gave emotional statements calling for the maximum sentence for a man that they described as a “wolf in shepherd’s clothing.”

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LONDON (ENGLAND)
Catholic Herald

June 6, 2019

By Christopher Altieri

Cardinal Daniel DiNardo, the president of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops and Archbishop of Galveston-Houston, is facing renewed public scrutiny after the Associated Press published a report on Tuesday, detailing accusations that DiNardo mishandled an allegation of sexual misconduct against a high-ranking priest in his archdiocese.

The Archdiocese of Galveston-Houston released a statement on Tuesday saying it “categorically rejects” the AP story, which the statement describes as “unprofessional, one-sided reporting”. “At each step in this matter,” the statement continues, “Cardinal DiNardo has reacted swiftly and justly — and has always kept the welfare of the Pontikeses in mind.” The Tuesday statement from the archdiocese also says, “A number of the quotes attributed to the Cardinal are an absolute fabrication.”

The story comes just a week before the US bishops’ spring meeting, at which they are slated to debate and vote on accountability measures for bishops. The news also has possible repercussions for Rome and Pope Francis, as it raises questions about how the new universal procedural norms for reporting and investigating allegations of abuse and cover-up will work.

Texas authorities, meanwhile, are investigating the accused priest, Galveston-Houston’s former vicar general, Mgr Frank Rossi, in connection with the complaint detailed in the AP story. Alessandro Gisotti, director of the Holy See Press Office, confirmed for the Catholic Herald that a complaint was received by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, is currently under review.

Laura Pontikes, 55, claims Mgr Rossi “seduced” her during the course of protracted spiritual counselling. She alleges that he induced her to perform sex acts during their counselling sessions, and that they had sexual intercourse on numerous occasions. AP reports that the archdiocese stated that it believed the relationship was consensual, and that it did not involve sexual intercourse.

The archdiocese sent Mgr Rossi for evaluation and treatment, and eventually released him to the diocese of Beaumont, Texas, where Mgr Rossi received an assignment from Bishop Curtis Guillory as pastor of a parish in the town of Woodville, Our Lady of the Pines.

Mgr Rossi was also a family confidant to whom Laura Pontikes’ husband, George, also allegedly turned for counsel in moments of distress — during the time Rossi was allegedly carrying on his inappropriate relationship with Mrs Pontikes. Mgr Rossi also allegedly convinced the couple to give more than $2 million to the Church over a period of nine years.

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WASHINGTON (DC)
Religion News Service

June 7, 2019

Pope Francis has repeatedly called out the clerical culture’s danger to the Catholic Church and its faithful, for example, calling clericalism “our ugliest perversion.” Now a nationwide Catholic priests’ organization and two international lay reform groups have developed the BridgeDialogues: Laity & Clergy re-Imagining Church Together to show Catholics what they can do to recognize and prevent this perversion which blocks the laity from achieving their full potential in the Church.

Clericalism has been defined in various ways. In a 2011 report criticizing the Church’s “Study of the Causes and Context of the Sexual Abuse Crisis,” VOTF defined clericalism as “an overriding set of beliefs and behaviors in which the clergy view themselves as different, separate, and exempt from the norms, rules and consequences that apply to everyone else in society.” As the Pope has said, “Clerics feel they are superior, they are far from the people,” and clericalism “can be fostered by priests or by lay people” where the laity show clergy excessive deference because they assume the clergy are morally superior.

The BridgeDialogues is a collaborative effort of the Association of U.S. Catholic Priests, FutureChurch, and Voice of the Faithful. They offer:

Prompts for opening up discussions addressing clericalism, including topics such as the subtle ways that language and pastoral relationships can feed clericalism;
Examples of how you experience clericalism barriers and what you can do about them;
Tips for how you can guard against clericalism in your own behaviors, while removing the barriers others may use to hold you on “your side” of the lay/clergy divide.

The BridgeDialogues’ many resources are available online at here.

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Get Religion blog

June 7, 2019

By Julia Duin

A story just broke in Los Angeles the other day that has barely raised a ripple in U.S. media. However, Mexican newspapers and TV are transfixed by it.

Most Americans have never heard of this enormous 12,000-seat La Luz del Mundo church complex in Guadalajara. (A translated promo video is here). Built like a multi-tiered wedding cake, its concentric white scalloped walls turn various rainbow colors during festivals. It towers over the city and is Mexico’s largest evangelical Protestant church.

Its pastor, Naasón Joaquín García, was just arrested Monday at LAX and slapped with a bail set at $50 million, the highest ever imposed by a Los Angeles County judge. Imagine if Mexico had thrown Houston megachurch pastor Joel Osteen into jail. That’s the level we’re talking about.

The New York Times and Los Angeles Times are two of the American print outlets really covering this and even they are scraping for details about this church. From the New York Times:

The leader of La Luz del Mundo, a church with its headquarters in Mexico that claims to have more than one million followers worldwide, was charged Tuesday in Los Angeles with more than a dozen sex crimes, including allegations that he forced children to have sex and made them pose naked for photos, the authorities in California said.

The leader, Naasón Joaquín García, 50, was arrested Monday at Los Angeles International Airport, according to the California attorney general’s office. Mr. García is considered by La Luz del Mundo, which has locations in the Los Angeles area, to be an apostle of Jesus Christ.

I would have loved to have been a fly on the wall at the airport that morning. Here’s this man walking onto U.S. soil expecting to visit his four daughter congregations in southern California when –- WHAM -– the police show up.

In a 19-page complaint filed in Los Angeles County Superior Court on Tuesday, prosecutors said there were four victims, three of whom were children. One child and a woman were raped, prosecutors said in the complaint. Mr. García is also accused of human trafficking and forcing children to perform oral sex.

The crimes occurred from 2015 until 2018 in Los Angeles County, the authorities said.

One of the people told a group of girls that if they went against the desires of Mr. García, “they were going against god,” according to the complaint. Children were told to perform “flirty” dances for Mr. García wearing “as little clothing as possible,” according to the complaint.

The complaint said Mr. García gave a group of children “a speech about a king having mistresses and stated that an apostle of god can never be judged for his actions.”

The rest of the piece doesn’t contain a whole lot more than what you can find in a Google search, so we’ll turn to the Los Angeles Times:

Prosecutors said they secured an unprecedented $50-million bail for the leader of La Luz del Mundo church because they feared his followers could raise money to free him from custody and that he would flee the country…

California Atty. Gen. Xavier Becerra on Thursday said that to his knowledge Naason Joaquin Garcia’s bail was the highest ever imposed on someone in Los Angeles County.

“We have a great apprehension that Mr. Garcia will raise the money to get a bond to bail himself out,” Becerra said. “We have provided the court information to back up the credible fear we have.”

The paper then quoted a local defense attorney saying bail rarely goes over $1 million or in very unusual cases, $2 million. The bail was originally set at $25 million and Becerra doubled that. If you doubt this church has money, get a load of some of the photos of this place here.

For reporters wanting to follow up on this place, do a look-see for local branches of Luz del Mundo near you. Here in the Pacific Northwest, I was surprised to find daughter churches in Canby, Ore., and in south Seattle. Here is a video of the pastor’s followers sobbing over his arrest.

Their doctrine is similar to Oneness Pentecostals: They believe in being baptized in Jesus’ name, not in the name of the Trinity. The church has been led by a family dynasty with the imprisoned Garcia being the grandson of the founder.

TheMexicanLabyrinth.com has a good story about the less-than-savory reputation of Samuel Joaquin Flores, the father of the imprisoned pastor, and the church’s cult-like aspects. A Sacramento TV station has another read on the arrest and this video shows followers marching by the pastor (who is standing on a balcony overlooking the crowd) giving him Nazi-like salutes.

The Associated Press did the best story I could find on the question everyone must wonder: Why was this man arrested in Los Angeles and not in Mexico?

The fundamentalist Christian church, whose name translates to The Light of the World, was founded in 1926 by Joaquin García’s grandfather. His father also led the church and was the subject of child sex abuse allegations in 1997, but authorities in Mexico never filed criminal charges.

The accusations were particularly painful for a church that has tried to cultivate an image for its law-abiding, hard-working, conservatively-dressing people in Mexico — a country where it claims about 1.8 million followers. Its male members favor suits and short hair, and female members wear veils that cover their hair and modest dresses. There are about 1 million U.S. members…

Here we go again. Actually, “Pentecostal” would be a better descriptor than “fundamentalist.”

The church also believes there was no salvation on Earth from the death of the Apostle John around A.D. 96 to 1926 when the church was founded. Which definitely consigns a lot of folks to hell. For more videos on their beliefs, click here and here.

The arrest is sure to prove an embarrassment for Mexico, in part because similar allegations have never resulted in charges there and in part because the church has long had political influence.

“It shows the enormous difference between the quality of law enforcement in Mexico and the United States,” said sociologist Bernardo Barranco of the Center for the Study of Religions in Mexico. “In Mexico, unfortunately, there is an innate protection for clergy, not just for the Luz del Mundo.”

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SAN DIEGO (CA)
NBC 7 News

June 7, 2019
By Stefanie Dazio and John Antczak

California’s Attorney General, Xavier Becerra, said Thursday at a press conference that he believes there are more victims of child sex abuse than those listed in charges against the leader of Mexico-based megachurch La Luz del Mundo and several followers.

California’s top prosecutor said Thursday that he believes there are more victims of child sex abuse than those listed in charges against the leader of Mexico-based megachurch La Luz del Mundo and several followers.

“It would be hard to believe that, based on the information that we’re collecting, that it’s only these four individuals,” Attorney General Xavier Becerra said at a press conference, urging any victims to come forward.

La Luz del Mundo leader Naasón Joaquín García and two co-defendants were arrested in California this week and a fourth remains at large. They face a 26-count felony complaint that alleges crimes including child rape, statutory rape, molestation, human trafficking, child pornography and extortion.

Church officials have denounced the charges as slander and defamation and said Joaquín García remains the spiritual leader of La Luz del Mundo, which claims more than 5 million members worldwide.

García’s legal team is expected to speak Friday at a 10 a.m. news conference in Los Angeles.

“He is the epitome of love and care and respect,” Jack Freeman, a minister in San Bernadino and the church’s United States spokesman, said Thursday outside a temple in East Los Angeles. “Everything that he does and teaches and he stands for goes against these allegations.”

Freeman also decried Becerra’s remarks as “immature and unnecessary for a man of that position.

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.

RADNOR (PA)
CBS 3 TV News

June 5, 2019

An employee at Archbishop Carroll High School has been charged for allegedly sexually assaulting a former student, the Delaware County District Attorney’s Office announced. Thirty-three-year-old Christopher Serpentine was arrested Wednesday.

Police say Serpentine had an inappropriate relationship with a student between April and June 2017 while he was the school’s director of communications. According to authorities, the victim came forward last month.

Serpentine, the school’s theater director, is charged with four counts of institutional sexual assault, officials say.

He is the second Archbishop Carroll High School employee arrested on sexual assault charges in the past three months.

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.

ST. LOUIS (MO)
Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests

June 6, 2019

With the latest news that another employee from Philadelphia’s Archbishop Carroll High School has been arrested for sexual abuse, we are concerned about the culture at the school that has allowed at least two sexually violent men to slip through their screening process. We hope that administrators will take a serious look at their background check and safety verification policies to see what has gone so drastically wrong.

Two arrests in the past three months is a sign of a significant problem and we hope that secular professionals in law enforcement will be looking deeper into the situation at this school. Children need – and deserve – a safe and welcoming environment to learn and grow in and it is clear that more needs to be done at Archbishop Carroll High School to create this kind of environment.

We hope that parents of students, both past and present, will check with their children and ensure they or their friends weren’t hurt by someone at this school or elsewhere. And we hope those parents will also demand answers from their school administrators in order to ensure that no other children are put at risk.

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.

American Conservative blog

June 5, 2019

By Rod Dreher

The Washington Post has the goods on Catholic Bishop Michael Bransfield of Wheeling, W. Va., whose resignation last fall when he reached the age of 75 was swiftly accepted by Rome, which then ordered an investigation into Bransfield’s tenure. Excerpts:

In the years before he was ousted for alleged sexual harassment and financial abuses, the leader of the Catholic Church in West Virginia gave cash gifts totaling $350,000 to fellow clergymen, including young priests he is accused of mistreating and more than a dozen cardinals in the United States and at the Vatican, according to church records obtained by The Washington Post.

Bishop Michael J. Bransfield wrote the checks from his personal account over more than a decade, and the West Virginia diocese reimbursed him by boosting his compensation to cover the value of the gifts, the records show. As a tax-exempt nonprofit, the diocese must use its money only for charitable purposes.

The gifts — one as large as $15,000 — were detailed in a draft of a confidential report to the Vatican about the alleged misconduct that led to Bransfield’s resignation in September. The names of 11 powerful clerics who received checks were edited out of the final report at the request of the archbishop overseeing the investigation, William Lori of Baltimore.

Lori’s name was among those cut. He received a total of $10,500, records show.

The Post obtained both versions of the report, along with numerous emails and financial records.

Ha! Archbishop Lori covered for himself and the other powerful clerics in the report sent to Rome. These guys don’t know what honesty is. Lori told the Post that he didn’t see why those men’s names should be in the report, because there is no evidence that they did wrong by accepting the money. That is true, but basic accountability matters more than covering the rears of the episcopal class.

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.

Get Religion blog

June 7, 2019

By Bobby Ross Jr.

“Bishop spent millions on self.”

That’s the crisp, concise way that the front page of today’s Washington Post boils down the newspaper’s bombshell report on the former Catholic bishop of West Virginia.

As The American Conservative’s Rod Dreher put it in a blog post titled “Bishop Bransfield’s Lush Live,” the Post “has the goods” on the bishop, who resigned last fall.

Yes, indeed.

Here’s a big chunk of the top of the story by religion writer Michelle Boorstein and two investigative reporting colleagues, Shawn Boburg and Robert O’Harrow Jr.:

In the years before he was ousted for alleged sexual harassment and financial abuses, the leader of the Catholic Church in West Virginia gave cash gifts totaling $350,000 to fellow clergymen, including young priests he is accused of mistreating and more than a dozen cardinals in the United States and at the Vatican, according to church records obtained by The Washington Post.

Bishop Michael J. Bransfield wrote the checks from his personal account over more than a decade, and the West Virginia diocese reimbursed him by boosting his compensation to cover the value of the gifts, the records show. As a tax-exempt nonprofit, the diocese must use its money only for charitable purposes.

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.

DENVER (CO)
Crux

June 7, 2019

By Charles Collins

As the U.S. bishops prepare to meet next week for their general assembly in Baltimore, they must be hoping it won’t be a repeat of this one.

The bishops were hoping to finalize a tough new policy on child sex abuse and – even more importantly – abuse cover-up, after the Vatican put a halt on the issue during the USCCB’s fall assembly last year. Since then, there has been a Vatican abuse summit and new legislation from the Vatican to battle abuse and cover-up, meaning the possibility of a “good news” ending to the meeting was in the cards.

But now new scandals are likely to overshadow the meeting.

At the beginning of this week, the Associated Press published a story about a woman accusing a top official in the Archdiocese of Galveston-Houston of sexual misconduct. This story was followed by a Washington Post report on a confidential investigation into impropriety under Bishop Michael Bransfield in the Diocese of Wheeling-Charleston. On Thursday, Crux came out with a story about how various Church institutions passed the buck when a seminarian complained about sexual abuse at the national seminary in Washington, DC.

These stories did not involve the abuse of minors, but did involve sexual impropriety with adults. This means the bishops will be trying to find a solution to one systematic crisis, just as another one is exploding in the papers.

Sexual misconduct with adults is a broad area of offense, especially for a celibate clergy. It can include anything from a brief fling with a willing partner to a sexual assault. Current Vatican legislation generally only covers “vulnerable adults” – that is, those without the full use of reason, although Pope Francis’s most recent law – released in May and called Vos estis lux mundi – defines a vulnerable person as “any person in a state of infirmity, physical or mental deficiency, or deprivation of personal liberty which, in fact, even occasionally, limits their ability to understand or to want or otherwise resist the offence.”

The new legislation also covers those who are forced into sexual acts by “violence or threat or through abuse of authority.”

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.

sST. LOUIS (MO)
Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests

June 7, 2019

The head of a large, independent Mexico-based church has just been arrested in California on charges of human trafficking and child rape but remains the spiritual leader of the group. We applaud Attorney General Xavier Becerra for bringing these charges and hope other AGs across the nation will emulate his actions in this case. For the safety of children and vulnerable adults, we also call on church officials to suspend the accused while the legal process plays out.

Naasón Joaquín García of the La Luz del Mundo church will be arraigned on Monday in Los Angeles Superior Court. But the initial evidence against him is substantial so it is crucial that vulnerable adults and innocent kids are protected from him immediately. That can best happen if his church staff and colleagues oust him from his role, even if it is just temporarily. We hope they will act promptly but prudently.

AG Becerra is also holding a news conference to urge other victims to come forward, a smart and compassionate move. The investigation against Joaquín García was initially prompted by a call into AG Becerra’s abuse hotline, so we hope this example will encourage other AGs around the country to set up a hotline of their own and be sure to include all religious groups (not just Catholics) as they reach out to victims of religious and institutional sexual violence.

We are grateful to the church members who are cooperating with law enforcement. That takes real courage. We hope every single person who saw, suspected or suffered crimes in the La Luz del Mundo church will call the AG, get outside help, start to recover and help protect the vulnerable.

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.

ST. LOUIS (MO)
Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests

June 7, 2019

The brother of a notorious imprisoned cult leader who heads his own secretive sect is now re-establishing himself and his followers in northern Minnesota. We hope that neighbors and law enforcement stay vigilant and warn children and vulnerable adults about his history and new compound.

Seth Jeffs fled from Texas and resettled in Minnesota following the arrest of his brother, Warren Jeffs, the longtime leader of the Fundamentalist Church of the Latter Day Saints. The cult has been described as “a polygamist sex cult” and attracted the attention of law enforcement due to their practice of marrying underage girls to adult men.

We applaud local residents who are using an environmental law to challenge Jeffs’ construction. Rather than be passive about the potentially dangerous man in their midst, these citizens have chosen to organize in order to protect the vulnerable within their communities. We hope other adults around the country will follow this example and find ways in their own communities to safeguard the vulnerable.

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.

SACRAMENTO (CA)
CBS 13 News

June 6, 2019

By Marissa Perlman

Attorney General Xavier Becerra is calling for potential abuse victims to come forward.

He’s investigating top leaders at La Luz Del Mundo, a religious organization based out of Mexico. Nasson Joaquin Garcia, the self-proclaimed apostle and church leader, is accused of child rape, sex trafficking, and child pornography.

“There is a real fear because he has his church more than 1-million followers that he will raise the money and he will bail himself out,” said Becerra.

Garcia’s is the highest bail ever set in Los Angeles County history, $50 million dollars.

Garcia and three other religious leaders, one still at large, are all accused of luring young people from the megachurch into sex trafficking.

“Any families of the young girls, they are probably very frightened, very confused,” Becerra said.

The megachurch, with a home in South Sacramento, is close-knit. Parishioners view Garcia as Godly, a self-proclaimed apostle.

“People would call this a case of brainwashing as these families are influenced,” Becerra.

He says some of these families depended on the church, even donating their livelihood to the cause. Now Becerra is calling for other victims to come forward to help him prosecute this case.

“No law of God would permit to occur what Nasson Joaquin Garcia is alleged to have committed. He committed crimes and we’re going to prove that you don’t do that to children,” Becerra said.

Garcia, now behind bars in LA, claims he is an innocent man.

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.

SYRACUSE (NY)
Post Standard

June 7, 2019

By Julie McMahon

Syracuse’s next Roman Catholic bishop will take over leadership of an institution during perhaps its most difficult period.

Father Douglas Lucia, 56, will step into the highest post in the Syracuse diocese later this year, amid church closings and heightened international attention on the Catholic church’s handling of the clergy sex abuse scandal. Lucia takes the reins from Bishop Robert Cunningham, who has served for 10 years as Syracuse’s religious leader.

Lucia brings to his role a background in canon law and experience working with new priests and managing his own parishes as a pastor in the Ogdensburg diocese.

Though he was called to serve unexpectedly — bishops are selected by the Pope in a secretive process — Lucia said he believes he can help the church and its followers through this difficult time.

A twin brother and avid Red Sox fan, Lucia shared personal stories and answered questions about his role in the church during a wide-ranging interview with syracuse.com. Lucia took questions over the phone from his current post in Ogdensburg, as he prepares for the transition to his new role in August.

The interview is lightly edited for length and clarity.

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NEW SOUTH WALES (AUSTRALIA)
The Australian

June 7, 2019

By Tessa Akerman

Cardinal George Pell could be on trial again next year, this time on civil claims that he knew former Christian Brother Ted Bales was sexually abusing children and did nothing to protect potential victims.

A man who was abused by Bales, formerly known as Edward Dowlan, has brought the suit against Pell, the Catholic Education Commission, Ballarat Bishop Paul Bird and Melbourne Archbishop Peter Comensoli.

The man was abused by Bales at Cathedral College in East Melbourne in the early 1980s.

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.

BALTIMORE (MD)
Baltimore Sun

June 7, 2019

By Jonathan M. Pitts

The president of a national group that monitors the conduct of Roman Catholic priests criticized Baltimore Archbishop William E. Lori on Thursday for his role in a report to the Vatican that omitted information about large gifts Lori and other bishops received.

Terry McKiernan of Bishop-Accountability.org said Lori’s decision to delete mention that he and other high-ranking clerics had been given cash gifts over the years by West Virginia bishop Michael J. Bransfield — whom Lori was investigating — was “head-shaking.”

Lori had been charged by the Vatican with investigating Bransfield over allegations that included lavish spending of church funds.

McKiernan said Lori’s editing of a draft report was “especially embarrassing” because it created the appearance of Lori “participating in the very malfeasance he had been brought in to put a stop to.”

“There’s nothing good you can say about it,” McKiernan said.

In September, Pope Francis asked for the resignation of Bransfield, the longtime bishop of the Diocese of Wheeling-Charleston in West Virginia, in the wake of allegations he had engaged in a pattern of sexual and financial misconduct throughout his 13 years in the position.

The pope appointed Lori to oversee the diocese on an interim basis and gave him the authority to direct an investigation into the allegations against Bransfield.

The five-person lay panel Lori assembled to run the inquiry completed a detailed report in February.

The report found that Bransfield had indeed behaved inappropriately toward multiple priests and seminarians, including “a consistent pattern of sexual innuendo and overt suggestive comments and actions toward those … over whom [he] had authority,” and spent millions in diocesan funds on travel, liquor, luxury items and more.

It also reported that Bransfield gave more than $350,000 in gifts to fellow clergymen. Recipients included Cardinal Donald Wuerl, who recently retired as the Archbishop of Washington, Cardinal Timothy Dolan of New York, and Lori, who was listed as a recipient of at least $7,500.

But Lori asked that the names of all gift recipients, including himself and other top clerics, be left out.

The Washington Post discovered the discrepancy between the drafts as part of an investigation into the Bransfield case and published a story describing the edits Wednesday.

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.

PARIS (FRANCE)
La Croix International

June 7, 2019

A faction of Catholic priests in Kenya who set up their own church years ago to circumvent the Vatican’s strict celibacy rule see themselves as a solution the clerical sex abuse crisis.

Peter Njogu, a self-proclaimed bishop, said that after falling in love with a nurse in Rome, he was distressed at hearing tales of priests having “secret families.”

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.

BAKERSFIELD (CA)
23 ABC News

June 7, 2019

A new report from Los Angeles law firm Jeff Anderson & Associates details the names and some of the allegations of sexual misconduct against 43 clergymen from the Roman Catholic Diocese of Fresno. Among those 43 clergymen, at least 15 were found to have connections to Kern County.

The Anderson Report on Sexual Abuse in the Diocese of Fresno states that the allegations made in the report have either been “settled or have not been fully evaluated in a civil or criminal court.” The report states that, “the allegations should be considered just allegations and should not be considered proved or substantiated in a court of law.”

The report claims to detail a timeline and analysis of sexual abuse within the Diocese of Fresno, “including a discussion of how the highest Church officials enabled the abusers and covered up crimes of sexual misconduct and abuse,” according to the report.

The report states that from the 43 clergymen listed for alleged abuse, these 15 have connections to Kern County:

1.Bp. Tod D. Brown

1964-1967 Our Lady of Perpetual Help, Bakersfield, Calif.(MF)

After Bp. Tod D. Brown was ordained, he spent the next two and half decades rising through the ranks of the Catholic Church. By 1988, he was named Bishop of Boise. After a decade in Boise, Bp. Brown returned to California as Bishop of Orange. Following his new appointment, news broke alleging that Bp. Brown had sexually abused a minor boy in 1965. Subsequently, it was uncovered that, despite his charade of increased sex-abuse transparency, he had a storied history of repudiating victims, covering up sexual abuse, and continually employing perpetrators. Bp. Brown’s status as a priest, current whereabouts, and whether he has access to children are unknown.

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

NEW YORK (NY)
Crux

June 7, 2019

By Christopher White

When the U.S. Catholic bishops gather in Baltimore next week, the theme of their three-day meeting could largely be summed up as “unfinished business.”

For starters, there’s the unfinished business from seven months ago of enacting new guidelines for bishop accountability. Just ahead of last November’s meeting, the Vatican halted plans to vote for new guidelines for bishops, citing canonical concerns and faulting the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops’ (USCCB) leadership for not providing Rome adequate time to review the proposals.

More broadly, however, there’s the unfinished business from seventeen years ago of closing the gap in the Dallas Charter – the landmark 2002 document establishing new norms for child protection, which created a “zero tolerance” policy for a priests guilty of abuse, but omitted bishops from the same oversight.

In many respects, the Vatican has done the heavy lifting for this meeting, with last month’s new universal Church law, Vos estis lux mundi (“You are the light of the world”) issued by Pope Francis, which makes it mandatory for all clerics and members of religious orders to report cases of clerical sexual abuse to Church authorities, including when committed by bishops or cardinals.

Known as a motu proprio, meaning a change to Church law under the pope’s authority, the law went into effect on June 1 and now it is up to bishops’ conferences from around the world to implement it on a local level, with a deadline of June 20, 2020 to have a system in place.

For cases in which a bishop is being accused of abuse or its cover-up, Vos estis relies on the metropolitan archbishop to conduct an investigation and allows for the involvement of lay experts in the process to ensure proper oversight and accountability.

When the U.S. bishops convene next Tuesday to Thursday, the “Directives for the Implementation of the Provisions of Vos estis lux mundi Concerning Bishops and their Equivalents,” will be put to a vote, which builds on the motu proprio’s framework and situates it in the U.S. context.

According to a draft of the proposed directives obtained by Crux, the 4-page document would establish a national third-party reporting system to receive complaints of abuse or cover-up and then report it to the appropriate ecclesial authorities.

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

KANSAS CITY (MO)
National Catholic Reporter

June 6, 2019

by Peter Feuerherd

A thousand dollars a month in liquor. Daily fresh flowers delivered to the diocesan office, costing up to $182,000 over 13 years, and $350,000 in gifts to priests, bishops and cardinals spread around the country and at the Vatican.

While Bishop Michael Bransfield led the Diocese of Wheeling-Charleston, West Virginia, with its reputation as a poor, isolated church, it’s the details of high living that spring out from an investigative report, details of which were published by The Washington Post June 5.

The report, directed by Archbishop William Lori of Baltimore, describes Bransfield ordering $4.6 million of renovations on his house in Wheeling and conducting a regular pattern of sexual harassment of seminarians and priests under his authority.

In a letter June 5 to the people of the diocese, Lori said that the report found that the accusations of sexual harassment were credible but did not involve minors. The investigators discovered that Bransfield tapped diocesan funds to pay for an opulent lifestyle that included paying for drug and alcohol abuse and extensive leisure travel.

“There is no excuse, nor adequate explanation, that will satisfy the troubling question of how his behavior was allowed to continue for as long as it did,” Lori wrote. In the letter, Lori acknowledged being a recipient of $7,500 in gifts from Bransfield, money which he said would be donated to Catholic Charities. He also said that Bransfield’s Wheeling house will be sold with the proceeds used to support sex abuse survivors.

As the U.S. bishops meet in Baltimore June 11-14, they are expected to vote on a “metropolitan” plan to discipline transgressing bishops. A vote on that plan, which calls upon archbishops to discipline wayward bishops with the assistance of lay review boards, is a crucial part of the agenda. Lori’s investigation is seen as a model of how that could work in practice.

Bishops who also received money that came from Diocese of Wheeling-Charleston funds included Cardinal Donald Wuerl ($10,000), Cardinal Timothy Dolan, Cardinal Raymond Burke, former papal nuncio Cardinal Carlo Maria Vigano and Cardinal Kevin Farrell, who received $29,000 to help renovate his Vatican residence. The late Cardinal Bernard Law also received $4,800.

The Diocese of Wheeling-Charleston benefitted from the proceeds of oil extracted from Texas property it was bequeathed in the early 20th century. The diocesan endowment, according to the Post, is valued at $230 million. Bransfield, according to the report, would be reimbursed with increases to his salary to pay for the gifts.

Until the Post story was released, details about Lori’s report were held in confidence. In comments on the Post story, Lori said that it was unfair to release the names of the recipients of Bransfield’s gifts, since they were unaware of his questionable financial activities.

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.

WAUSAU (WI)
Wausau Daily Herald

June 6, 2019

By Natalie Brophy

A former Northwoods Catholic priest convicted of sexually abusing children will be released into Lincoln County later this month.

Upon his release June 19, David J. Malsch, 80, will live at N4883A Lilac Lane in Gleason, a little over 20 miles east of Merrill, according to the Lincoln County Sheriff’s Office.

Malsch was ordained as a Catholic priest in 1967. He was first accused of sexual abuse while he was working at St. Patrick’s in Superior, according to bishopaccountability.org, a website that tracks abuse by Catholic priests. In 1979, Malsch gave two brothers, 12 and 13 years old, alcohol and showed them pornography. He tried to take off the 13-year-old’s pants, the Wausau Daily Herald reported. In the early 1980s, he sexually assaulted the younger brother in the rectory of St. Patrick’s and paid the boy for nude photos, according to the Daily Herald.

After that, according to Bishop Accountability, he was sent to a church-sponsored treatment center in Minnesota. Later that same year, he was reassigned to St. Joseph’s in Rhinelander and two years later, moved to St. Mary’s church in Tomahawk.

At St. Mary’s, Malsch was allowed to work with children who had emotional and learning problems, according to Bishop Accountability. In 1991, he was accused of sexually abusing a 14-year-old boy with learning disabilities. According to a Wausau Daily Herald report from 1999, Malsch took the boy to a hotel in Rib Mountain, gave him alcohol and took nude photos of him. Malsch also showed the boy pornography in the St. Mary’s rectory.

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.

FRESNO (CA)
Central Velley Wire

June 6, 2019

The Diocese of Fresno said Wednesday that retired FBI agent and high-ranking bureau executive Kathleen McChesney is leading a team reviewing all clergy files going back nearly 100 years.

Their goal is to compile a list of Catholic priests who have been credibly accused of improper conduct with minors, according to the diocese.

McChesney was selected by the United States Catholic Bishops’ Conference to establish and lead their Office of Child Protection where she developed and administered a national compliance mechanism to ensure that all Catholic dioceses complied with civil laws and internal policies relative to the prevention, reporting, and response to the sexual abuse of minors.

She also coordinated a major research study into the nature and scope of the problem of sexual abuse in the Catholic Church. McChesney also co-edited “Sexual Abuse in the Catholic Church: A Decade of Crisis” which describes the actions of Catholic Church leaders, abuse survivors, and lay Catholics following the January 2002 Boston Globe “Spotlight” report.

In addition, a compensation program administered by mediators Kenneth Feinberg and Camile Biros is being set up. They run similar abuse compensation programs for Catholic dioceses in New York, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and Colorado.

Feinberg, perhaps, is best known as the Special Master of the U.S. government’s September 11th Victim Compensation Fund for the victims of the 9-11 terror attacks.

If they haven’t already done so, past victims of sexual abuse by Catholic clergy should report what happened to law enforcement officials in the city or county where the abuse occurred before applying to the compensation program, the diocese said.

Under the program, victims, including undocumented immigrants, will be able to apply for compensation for past abuse, regardless of when the abuse occurred. The program is operated independently of church control.

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.

ROME (ITALY)
Crux

June 6, 2019

By Inés San Martín and Christopher White

Seventeen years ago, a young foreign-born seminarian was packing his bags for the opportunity of a lifetime.

During a chance meeting at a Labor Day BBQ, the highly influential and now disgraced Cardinal Theodore McCarrick encouraged him to transfer to Washington, D.C., where he enrolled in the Theological College (TC), the national seminary located at Catholic University of America (CUA).

Little did he know that choice would influence the rest of his life.

The experience turned sour when “Martin,” a pseudonym, (it is the policy of Crux not to identify the victims of sexual abuse who do not want to be named) says he was sexually assaulted by a transitional deacon who was studying at TC and who would be ordained a priest the following year. (That man eventually left the priesthood.)

After the alleged incident took place in the early 2000s, Martin reported it to his spiritual director, his confessor, another seminarian and even to McCarrick. Two decades later it’s never been investigated, and it’s not even clear who would be responsible for looking into it and seeing justice done.

Martin’s case, and others like it, appear to illustrate two serious gaps in the Catholic Church’s overall response to the clerical abuse crisis: A problem of overlapping jurisdictions, and what happens when the victims aren’t minors.

In terms of responding to Martin’s claim, there are at least five entities involved: The seminary, the university, the Archdiocese of Washington, the diocese where the offender was incardinated at the time, and the Vatican. Under Church law, this represents a “conflict of competence,” which can be positive, should multiple parties want to take responsibility, or negative, if none want to assume jurisdiction.

To date, Martin’s efforts to press his case have been a tale of passing the buck, with each institution, to some extent, deferring to one or more of the others.

In the words of a high-ranking Church official aware of Martin’s case: “It proves that at times, when it comes to addressing abuse, we’re still making it up as we go.”

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.

LONDON (ENGLAND)
Daily Mail

June 2019

An investigation into former Roman Catholic Bishop Michael Bransfield in West Virginia found he misused church funds, spending $2.4million on personal travel – including charter jets and luxury hotels – $4.6million on renovations for his church properties, and $1,000 per month on liquor for himself and subordinates.

A report obtained by the Washington Post Wednesday claimed abuse of booze, oxycodone, and other prescription drugs ‘likely contributed to his harassing and abusive behavior’ during his 13 years as Wheeling-Charleston Diocese bishop.

It’s also claimed Bransfield, 75, used $182,000 to have fresh flowers delivered to his chancery office daily.

It’s not clear what all of the $350,000 in gifting was for but Bransfield was paid more money to cover gifting which he was later reimbursed for, plus additional funds to cover the tax burden that would come with it.

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

ST. LOUIS (MO)
Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests

June 6, 2019

Next week in Baltimore, bishops from across the United States will gather and discuss the future of their Church. We hope they will also be discussing concrete ways to protect children and vulnerable adults from the lifelong harm caused by clergy sexual abuse.

On the first of this month, Pope Francis’ recently-announced edict requiring all church staff to report cases of clergy abuse went into effect. While this move was a step in the right direction, by only requiring them to report internally and not to secular professionals in law enforcement, the Pope’s directive fell short. Now, with this gathering in Baltimore, Cardinal Daniel DiNardo and the rest of America’s bishops have a chance to strengthen these requirements and push forward real changes that will help prevent future abuse.

First, the bishops can and should require that all church staff to report their suspicions to police and prosecutors in addition to reporting internally. By involving outside investigations, Catholic officials can show that they want to prevent more cover-ups in the church.

Second, the bishops can and should require that, by the end of the year, every single diocese release a list of publicly accused priests, nuns, brothers, deacons, and any other church staff that have been alleged to have committed sex crimes against children or vulnerable adults. This process first started 17 years ago when the Diocese of Tucson released a list on June 21, 2002, and in the past year approximately half of the dioceses in the United States have released or updated lists of their own. It should not take more than the rest of the year for the remaining dioceses in the country to follow suit.

Third, the bishops can and should agree to cease any and all efforts – whether by dioceses directly or by Catholic Church-affiliated groups – to lobby against statute of limitations reform. The Church has successfully undercut this needed reform in places like Pennsylvania and South Dakota to the detriment of survivors, parents, and children. Church officials can show that they care more about the safety of their parishioners than protecting their pocketbooks by formally agreeing to cease these lobbying activities.

Finally, the bishops can and should turn over personnel records, sex abuse files, “secret archives” and “bishop’s archives” over to their state attorney general for investigation. So far, 20 states have begun investigations of clergy abuse and with support from the bishops themselves, that number could climb to 50 by the end of the year.

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ST. LOUIS (MO)
Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests

June 6, 2019

The fox is guarding the henhouse. Or rather, the bank accounts of the hens.

With the news that Archbishop William Lori scrubbed any mention of gifts or monetary exchanges between Bishop Michael Bransfield and some of his brother bishops from his report to the Vatican, we cannot help but feel that this is another example of bishops covering for bishops. Those feelings are compounded by the fact that Archbishop Lori himself was among the recipients of Bishop Bransfield’s lavish gifts.

Investigators have concluded that Bishop Bransfield gave large gifts to many of the young priests he sexually abused in order to keep them quiet. It is not hard to imagine that he similarly gave gifts to other bishops in hopes they would keep quiet as well.

Archbishop Lori claims he simply thought Bishop Bransfield was being generous and kind. But combined with the fact that there have been rumblings about Bishop Bransfield’s misconduct for years, it is difficult to take this claim at face value. Archbishop Lori similarly claims that he removed from the report any mention of the gifts because “it seemed arbitrary to mention one group who got gifts and not a lot of others.” Nonsense. Every group that received these gifts should have been mentioned and investigations should be underway to determine if any of those gifts were quid pro quo.

The fact is that cases of sexual abuse have been covered-up and mishandled by Church officials for far too long for us to have any faith that this change to the Vatican report was done innocently. Given that Pope Francis’ recently announced rules regarding “mandated reporting” for church staff requires internal reporting to bishops, this case shows, to us, why that internal reporting is not the bulwark that Pope Francis believes it will be.

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NEW YORK (NY)
ABC News

June 6, 2019

By Meghan Keneally and Pete Madden

West Virginia’s attorney general says church leaders in his state are withholding information that could prove useful in his fight to expose what he called “a history of secrecy and concealment” within the Catholic Church on alleged sexual abuse by members of the clergy.

In a recent interview with ABC News, Attorney General Patrick Morrisey, a Republican who has served as the state’s top law enforcement official since 2013, expressed concern that even after two subpoenas and a lawsuit, the state’s diocese of Wheeling-Charleston has yet to make a number of relevant documents available to his office.

“That’s not the kind of transparent process that West Virginians deserve, and the church can and should do better than that,” Morrisey told ABC News. “Those are actions that disappointed me. It disappointed me as the state’s attorney general, and it disappointed me as a Catholic.”

The push by the attorney general comes amid a turbulent time for the church, which is battling numerous sexual abuse scandals.

West Virginia is one of several states to probe abuse allegations in their local dioceses in wake of the Pennsylvania grand jury report detailing a massive cover-up of clergy abuse allegations by the Catholic Church. Investigations are currently underway in Arkansas, Colorado, Delaware, Florida, Illinois, Maryland, Michigan, Missouri, Nebraska, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, Pennsylvania, Vermont, Virginia, the District of Columbia and the Archdiocese of Anchorage in Alaska.

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KANSAS CITY (MO)
National Catholic Reporter

June 6, 2019

By Peter Feuerherd

As the U.S. bishops prepare to meet June 11-14 in Baltimore, with sex abuse concerns at the top of their agenda, they don’t lack for advice.

Across the Catholic spectrum, groups and individuals have issued statements and offered declarations about how to fix the church.

John Carr, a retired staff member for the U.S. bishops and now director of the Initiative on Catholic Social Thought and Public Life at Georgetown University, urged the bishops to keep their focus.

“Empathy, urgency and action,” should be their mantra, he told NCR.

He sees Pope Francis’ latest letter issued motu proprio (on his own initiative), a document that called for worldwide accountability to address the issue of sex abuse, as a recognition by the Vatican that sex abuse “is a global problem that requires local action.”

The pope’s directive cites bishops as accountable for their personal actions as well as failure to address sex abuse in their dioceses, a concern that grew after the revelations about former Washington, D.C., cardinal Theodore McCarrick last year.

Carr, a survivor of sex abuse inflicted while he was a young seminarian, said that whatever the bishops come up with, it should involve the participation of laypeople in diocesan boards and in judgements of offending priests and bishops.

That view is not unique to Carr. Across the Catholic ideological spectrum, the call for lay involvement is a unifying message. Beneath that, differences about what change is needed come less from a liberal/conservative split than they do from divisions between those who still retain some trust in the bishops and those who don’t. The issue has been debated and argued about for more than three decades since NCR first published accounts of sex abuse in the Diocese of Lafayette, Louisiana, in June 1985.

Those who think that bishops can still get the church on track include the leadership of the Napa Institute, an organization for active Catholics with wealth and traditional leanings.

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WASHINGTON (DC)
Catholic News Service

June 6, 2019

By Rhina Guidos

Texas Cardinal Daniel N. DiNardo, of Galveston-Houston, president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, denies a characterization of how he handled an accusation by a woman who said she was manipulated into a sexual relationship with his former deputy, a priest.

An account of the situation was published days before he is set to lead a meeting that will focus on how the U.S. Catholic Church can better handle abuse claims, including holding bishops accountable.

“The Archdiocese of Galveston-Houston categorically rejects the unprofessional, biased and one-sided reporting contained in today’s Associated Press story headlined ‘The Reckoning.’ At each step in this matter, Cardinal DiNardo has reacted swiftly and justly,” said a June 4 statement.

It was released hours after the news agency published a story about Laura Pontikes, who told the AP that she reported to the archdiocese what had happened between her and Msgr. Frank Rossi, a former vicar general in Galveston-Houston, whom she said she met in a confessional at a time when she was having problems in her marriage.

The incidents in question date from 2007, according to Pontikes’ account to the AP. She reported the incidents to the archdiocese in 2016.

“After Mrs. Pontikes reported an inappropriate relationship with Monsignor Rossi to the archdiocese on April 6th, 2016, Cardinal DiNardo removed him from the parish less than a week later and then sent Monsignor Rossi on April 21 to a treatment center for an assessment,” the statement said. “Upon his return to Houston, Monsignor Rossi formally resigned from the parish on May 6th. He then went to a rehabilitation program until early December.”

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LITTLE ROCK (AR)
Bilgrimage blog

June 5, 2019

By William Lindsey

I’m very pleased to be able to share once again an outstanding essay by Ruth Krall. In this essay about re-thinking how we’ve come to view the phenomenon of sexual abuse of minors and vulnerable people in religious contexts, Ruth urges us to consider applying terms and concepts from the realm of public health to this phenomenon. Is this abuse an epidemic in religious contexts today? Is it endemic in religious structures? Is it pandemic? Because Ruth’s essay is dense and long, I’ve broken the essay into two parts. The second part will follow in a day or so, and will link to this first half. Here’s Ruth’s essay:

Prolegomena: An Act of Re-Thinking
Ruth Elizabeth Krall, MSN, PhD

In 2015, I spoke at SNAP’s national conference and I raised the issue of the clergy and religious leader sexual abuse phenomenon not as a mental health pathology problem (which it is), nor as a spiritual perversion (which it is), nor as an institutional corruption problem (which it is), but as a long-standing and poorly addressed public health issue. It was in that context that I raised the issue of the sexual violence advocacy movement’s need to involve the Surgeon General of the United States, the nation’s academic Public Health Community, the National Institute of Mental Health, and the United States Center for Disease Control and Prevention. (ii)

This public health agency help is urgently needed because these governmental agencies have the personnel and financial resources to do population-specific demographic studies. These kinds of studies are essential to our understanding of the specific issues contained within the clergy and religious leader sexual abuse narrative and to our finding a collective way forward that both can and will protect vulnerable individuals inside a wide variety of religious and spiritual traditions.

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LANSING (MI)
Lansing State Journal

June 6, 2019

By Kara Berg

One of the youth pastors at the Bread House South church in Lansing is charged with sexually assaulting a teenage girl who is a member at the church.

Victor A. Trevino Jr., 22, is accused of inappropriately touching the girl and seeking sex acts from her for two years, according to court records.

The girl, who is between the ages of 13 and 15, according to records, told investigators Trevino touched her breast under her clothes and touched her buttocks above her clothes more than once at the church, according to court records. Trevino also touched her buttocks at Potter Park Zoo once while at a holiday party.

Lansing police received a report from the girl’s mother in March, who said her daughter had been molested on multiple occasions by Trevino, records show.

The alleged abuse occurred at Trevino’s home, the girl’s home, the Bread House South church and Potter Park Zoo.

The Bread House South church did not respond for comment Wednesday. Trevino did not have an attorney listed in court records.

Trevino asked the girl to send him naked photos over Snapchat, a social media application that erases photos and texts after they are sent. He also sent her photos and videos of his penis, records show.

He faces nine charges, including four counts of fourth-degree criminal sexual conduct, one count of child sexually abusive activity, one count of accosting a child for immoral purposes and two counts of using a computer to commit a crime.

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

UNITED STATES
CBS News

June 5, 2019

By Christina Capatides

A new report released Tuesday reveals that, over the past eight years, the Catholic Church has spent $10.6 million in the northeastern United States to fight legislation that would help victims of clergy sexual abuse seek justice.

“At the most basic level, we were inspired by frustration,” says attorney Gerald Williams, a partner at Williams Cedar, one of four law firms that jointly commissioned the report. “We represent hundreds of people, who have truly been victimized by clergymen in the Catholic Church. We’ve heard a lot about the church’s desire to be accountable and turn over a new leaf. But when we turn to the form where we can most help people and where we can get the most justice — the courts of justice — the church has been there blocking their efforts.”

In New York, for example, the Catholic Church spent $2,912,772 lobbying against the Child Victims Act, which Governor Andrew Cuomo ultimately signed into law on February 14, 2019. The act gives survivors more time to seek justice against their abusers, increasing the age at which victims are able to sue from 23 to 55.

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WEST VIRGINIA
CNN

June 5, 2019

By Daniel Burke

The former Catholic bishop of West Virginia spent church money on “luxury items” — including liquor, travel and home renovations — and faces “credible” accusations that he sexually harassed adults under his authority, according to a report issued under a new Catholic policy to address misconduct by bishops.

The investigation into Bishop Michael Bransfield, formerly the head of the Diocese of Wheeling-Charleston, was led by Archbishop William Lori of Baltimore. It is the first in the United States to use the so-called “metropolitan model” since the church’s sexual abuse crisis escalated last summer.

Under that model, when an accusation arises against a bishop the complaint is handled by the local archbishop, or metropolitan. Those are usually the leaders of the region’s biggest cities, hence the name. The US Conference of Catholic Bishops is expected to formally adopt the new model at a meeting next week in Baltimore.

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WASHINGTON (DC)
National Public Radio

June 4, 2019

By Terry Gross

In November 2000, Jim DeRogatis, then music critic at the Chicago Sun-Times, received an anonymous fax in response to a review of he’d written of R&B star R. Kelly’s album TP-2.com. The fax, DeRogatis says, read:

I’ve known Robert [R. Kelly] for many years and I’ve tried to get him to get help, but he just won’t do it. So I’m telling you about it hoping that you or someone at your newspaper will write an article and then Robert will have no choice but to get help. … Robert’s problem — and this is the thing that goes back many years — is young girls.

DeRogatis began investigating the allegations in the fax and, in December 2000, he and his writing partner, Abdon Pallasch, published a story in the Sun-Times alleging that Kelly had engaged in sex with teenage girls. Kelly has denied all allegations.

DeRogatis expected the response to the story to be explosive, but instead it was muted. It was the beginning of his coverage of a story that he would chase for the next 19 years.

In February 2002, DeRogatis received another anonymous tip, this time in the form a videotape purportedly showed Kelly having sex with and urinating on an underage girl. “It was horrifying,” DeRogatis says of the tape. “The worst thing I’ve ever had to witness in my life.”

DeRogatis handed the tape over to the police, and in May 2002 Kelly was indicted on 21 counts of child pornography, seven of which were dropped before the case went to trial. In 2008, a Chicago jury acquitted Kelly of the remaining 14 charges.

This has happened in full view of the world for 30 years while he sold 100 million albums, opened the winter Olympics. … It all happened as everybody watched and nobody did anything.”

Still, allegations of abuse continued to swirl. In January 2019, Lifetime aired Surviving R. Kelly, a six-part docuseries focusing on Kelly’s alleged victims and their family members. In February of this year, he was charged in Cook County, Ill., on 10 counts of sexual abuse; last month, those prosecutors indicted him for a second time on new charges of sexual assault and abuse.

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BALTIMORE (MD)
Baltimore Sun

June 6, 2019

By Jonathan M. Pitts

Baltimore Archbishop William E. Lori has acknowledged that he edited a report to the Vatican to delete mention that a bishop whose conduct he investigated gave financial gifts to nearly a dozen high-ranking Catholic clerics over the years.

The list of recipients included Lori, who says West Virginia Bishop Michael J. Bransfield gave him a total of $7,500 in gifts “for various occasions” since 2012.

See also: Baltimore archbishop takes steps to increase reporting of abuse, seeks to move archdiocese ahead on reform »

The occasions included Lori’s installation as archbishop of Baltimore in 2012 and several Christmases, Lori said Wednesday in an interview with The Sun. The gifts and Lori’s editing of the report were first reported by The Washington Post.

Bransfield resigned in September as bishop of the Diocese of Wheeling-Charleston, W. Va., under orders from Pope Francis after clerics in the diocese raised concerns about his behavior.

Allegations had surfaced that Bransfield engaged in both sexual and financial misconduct over a course of years.

The pope appointed Lori to oversee an investigation into the charges. He and a team of five lay people completed a 60-page report on their findings in February.

The lay investigators concluded that cash gifts Bransfield gave to dozens of fellow clergymen were part of a pattern of abuse of power that included sexual abuse of young priests and out-of-control spending.

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WASHINGTON (DC)
The Washington Post

June 5, 2019

By Michelle Boorstein, Shawn Boburg and Robert O’Harrow Jr.

In the years before he was ousted for alleged sexual harassment and financial abuses, the leader of the Catholic Church in West Virginia gave cash gifts totaling $350,000 to fellow clergymen, including young priests he is accused of mistreating and more than a dozen cardinals in the United States and at the Vatican, according to church records obtained by The Washington Post.

Bishop Michael J. Bransfield wrote the checks from his personal account over more than a decade, and the West Virginia diocese reimbursed him by boosting his compensation to cover the value of the gifts, the records show. As a tax-exempt nonprofit, the diocese must use its money only for charitable purposes.

The gifts — one as large as $15,000 — were detailed in a draft of a confidential report to the Vatican about the alleged misconduct that led to Bransfield’s resignation in September. The names of 11 powerful clerics who received checks were edited out of the final report at the request of the archbishop overseeing the investigation, William Lori of Baltimore.

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SYDNEY (AUSTRALIA)
News Corp Australia

June 6, 2019

By Rohan Smith

The lawyer on centre stage at one of the biggest appeal hearings in the world has today slipped up, saying the one thing he is not allowed to say.

Lawyer for the Crown, Christopher Boyce QC, told a packed courtroom the name of one of George Pell’s victims.

Victims of sexual abuse cannot be publicly identified.

The slip-up had the potential to be catastrophic because the two-day appeal is being broadcast around the world via the Victoria Supreme Court’s weblink.

The prosecutor’s mistake was thankfully edited out of the live-feed, which has a 15-second delay.

Chief Judge Anne Ferguson said the feed was muted. “There are measures in place,” she said.

Mr Boyce spent the morning outlining all the reasons a jury was right to convict Cardinal George Pell of sexually abusing two choirboys inside the sacristy at Melbourne’s St Patrick’s Cathedral in 1996.

He spent day two of Pell’s appeal rejecting a notion put at trial that the sole witness to testify against Pell was “a liar” and revisiting testimony he said was overwhelmingly credible.

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SANTA BARBARA (CA)
Santa Barbara Independent

June 5, 2019

By Tyler Hayden

For the first time publicly, the Franciscan Friars of the Province of St. Barbara have identified 50 priests accused of sexually abusing children in its ministries since 1950. More than half — 26 — were assigned to St. Anthony’s Seminary or Old Mission Santa Barbara at some point in their careers, often after they’d been accused of molestation in another ministry, then reassigned to the Santa Barbara area.

While many of those 26 priests were previously known to attorneys, law enforcement, and victim advocates, nine names had never before been reported, according to attorney Tim Hale, who won a landmark case against the Franciscans in 2006 and has closely followed subsequent cases, as well as recent disclosures by the Catholic Church. All nine priests have died. Their names and the locations and dates of their Santa Barbara postings are as follows:

Note: These dates don’t necessarily reflect when the alleged abuse occurred, only when the accused priests were assigned here.

Camillus Cavagnaro — Old Mission Santa Barbara, 2005-2006

Philip Colloty — Old Mission Santa Barbara, 1973-1975

Adrian Furman — Old Mission Santa Barbara, 1989-2001

Martin Gates — St. Anthony’s Seminary, 1965-1966

Gus Hootka — Old Mission Santa Barbara, 1993-2006

Mark Liening — Old Mission Santa Barbara, 1941-1942, 1985

Finbar Kenneally — Old Mission Santa Barbara, 1939-1940; St. Anthony’s Seminary, 1977-1991

Felix “Raymond” Calonge — St. Anthony’s Seminary, 1965

Felipe Baldonado — Multiple CA missions (Oakland, Stockton, Santa Barbara, Los Angeles, and San Francisco), 1953-1964

Father David Gaa, the Province of St. Barbara’s leader, issued a statement alongside the full list, which was quietly posted on the order’s website late last Friday. “The list is being published as part of our continuous commitment to transparency and accountability,” he wrote. “We are determined to demonstrate, through this action, that we are committed to helping survivors and their families heal.”

Hale, among others, contends the release is actually a self-serving strategy by the Franciscans to preemptively shield the order from potential criminal liability after a Pennsylvania Grand Jury published a searing report against the Catholic Church last August. It was the most expansive investigation yet by a U.S. government agency of abuse within the organization. “Every Roman Catholic diocese around the country fears that Grand Jury report and what it might mean for them,” said Hale.

Last December, in a similar fashion to the Franciscans, the Archdiocese of Los Angeles and the Catholic Church’s western Jesuit province self-published a list of 200 clergymen accused of child molestation, 12 of whom held lengthy postings in Santa Barbara dating back to the 1950s.

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GARDEN CITY (NY)
Long Island Herald

June 6, 2019

By Ben Strack

A report released by a Minnesota-based law firm last week lists the names of 65 priests who at one point worked in the Diocese of Rockville Centre and were accused of sexual abuse, as pressure from abuse survivors and their advocates on the diocese to release all names of those credibly accused continues.

The diocese is one of eight in the state, and comprises 133 parishes, 57 schools and 109 other facilities, according to the report compiled by Jeff Anderson and Associates. There are currently 304 priests, 289 permanent deacons, 60 religious brothers and 875 religious sisters in the Diocese of Rockville Centre, it adds, according to church records.

The 40-page report was created from publicly available sources, claims made by survivors to the dioceses responsible for the offenders and legal settlements, it states. The histories of where the listed priests were assigned were gathered from the Official Catholic Directory, BishopAccountability.org, statements from church officials, diocesan records and media reports.

At a news conference in Uniondale on Monday, Anderson joined Steven Werner, of North Carolina, who alleged he was abused in the 1970s by the late Rev. Peter Charland in St. James. The two called for the diocese to release the names of credibly accused priests. The New York Archdiocese, the Diocese of Brooklyn, among others, have published such lists in the past few months.

Sean Dolan, spokesman for the Diocese of Rockville Centre, wrote in a statement last month that the diocese “believes that while the investigations of claims and allegations are ongoing, it is premature to release a list of accused clergy.” He added that not one priest or deacon of the diocese who has been the subject of a credible and substantiated claim of abuse against a child is in the ministry, and that all allegations, credible are not, are reported to authorities.

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ANN ARBOR (MI)
Michigan Daily

June 5, 2019

By Claire Hao

Timothy M. Crowley, a former priest at St. Thomas the Apostle Catholic Church in Ann Arbor, was arrested on May 23 in Tempe, AZ, according to Maricopa County jail records. The next day, Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel announced Crowley was one of five Michigan Catholic priests her office charged with criminal sexual misconduct.

Crowley, 69, was charged in Washtenaw County with four felony counts of first-degree criminal sexual conduct, with a maximum sentence of life in prison, and four counts of second-degree criminal sexual conduct, with a maximum sentence of 15 years in prison. He is accused of assaulting a minor boy for about eight years, including for three years while at St. Thomas from 1987 to 1990.

The charges come after months of investigation into sexual abuse by Michigan clergy inside the Catholic Church. The investigation was started in August 2018 by Nessel’s predecessor, former Attorney General Bill Schuette, following a report exposing widespread sexual abuse in the Pennsylvania Catholic Church.

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HOUSTON (TX)
Associated Press

June 5, 2019

Representatives of a top leader of the U.S. Catholic Church say he acted “swiftly and justly” to the allegations made by a woman who claims his former deputy lured her into a sexual relationship.

The Archdiocese of Galveston-Houston issued a statement Tuesday in response to an Associated Press investigation of Cardinal Daniel DiNardo, who is leading the U.S. church’s response to its sex abuse scandal.

The Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests is calling on a top U.S. cardinal to resign or step aside from his role leading the U.S. Catholic Church’s response to its sex abuse crisis.

Laura Pontikes accuses DiNardo of not fulfilling the archdiocese’s promises to prevent Monsignor Frank Rossi from being a pastor or counseling women after engaging in a sexual relationship with her. Instead, DiNardo allowed Rossi to go to a parish in rural east Texas under another diocese.

The statement from church officials says DiNardo agreed not to reassign Rossi in his archdiocese.

It accuses the AP of publishing “unprofessional, biased and one-sided reporting,” and says some comments attributed to DiNardo by Pontikes and her husband, George, are “an absolute fabrication.”

It also says Pontikes demanded $10 million from the archdiocese.

Pontikes acknowledges she made a demand for an unspecified amount of money in an off-the-cuff fit of anger, but says she was clear from the start that she wasn’t interested in a financial payoff.

The Pontikeses and her lawyer told AP that details of mediation, including any financial negotiations, were confidential.

SNAP lauded Pontikes for “speaking out against wrongdoing and in standing up for other survivors.” The group accuses DiNardo of having “compounded” the difficulties faced by adults who allege abuse in the church.

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PARKERSBURG (WV)
News & Sentinel

June 6, 2019

By Jess Mancini

An investigation of the former bishop of the Diocese of Wheeling-Charleston has found the allegations of sexual harassment against him are credible, the apostolic administrator of the diocese said in a letter released on Wednesday.

Bishop William E. Lori, apostolic administrator, also said he has given $7,500 to the diocese, the value of gifts he received over the years from former Bishop Michael Bransfield, whose handling of finances for the diocese was also under investigation.

West Virginia Attorney General Patrick Morrisey on Wednesday said the letter from Lori underscores why the diocese must release the investigative report into alleged misconduct by Bransfield.

Bransfield retired last year, and Lori was appointed apostolic administrator with the instructions from Pope Francis that he commence an investigation into Bransfield.

“Regarding allegations of sexual harassment of adults by Bishop Bransfield, the investigative team determined that the accounts of those who accused Bishop Bransfield of sexual harassment are credible,” Lori said in the letter. “The team uncovered a consistent pattern of sexual innuendo and overt suggestive comments and actions toward those over whom the former bishop exercised authority.

“The investigation found no conclusive evidence of sexual misconduct with minors by the former bishop during its investigation,” he said. “It should be noted that due to privacy concerns and at the request of those who alleged harassment by Bishop Bransfield, the alleged victims and their personal accounts, which for them are a source of deeply felt pain and humiliation, will not be disclosed by the diocese.”

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NEW YORK (NY)
Slate

June 6, 2019

By Elliot Hannon

The Catholic Church always provides good fodder for Hollywood-like thrillers, that is the inner workings of the church often include the fundamental elements of a good cinematic tale, namely: sex, drugs, money, and, inevitably, a coverup. A new Washington Post investigation in to the church has everything Hollywood could hope for, implicating a former Catholic bishop in West Virginia who spent millions on a lavish lifestyle in one of the poorest states in the country and gave away as much as $350,000 in gifts to clergy before being ousted from the church in September amidst claims of sexual abuse and financial impropriety. Nine men in the Wheeling-Charleston diocese accused Bishop Michael Bransfield of groping, kissing or exposing himself to them or commenting on their bodies. The hundreds of thousands of dollars in cash gifts from Bransfield were given to young priests he is accused of mistreating, as well as to powerful cardinals in the U.S. and the Vatican itself.

The details of Bransfield’s misconduct were outlined in a confidential internal Vatican investigation following Bransfield’s resignation last fall. The instances of abuse, reported by the Post, are staggering:

There were “troubling hugs” from Bransfield, the seminarians and young priests told investigators. On some of these occasions, they alleged, Bransfield appeared to be intoxicated. Others said he warned them not to “get fat.” One said Bransfield slapped him on the buttocks at Castel Gandolfo in Italy, the summer residence of the pope… One seminarian recalled sitting on Bransfield’s lap, being kissed by the bishop and thinking: “I either do this, or I have to completely reinvent my life.” Bransfield asked him to take his pants off, but he refused, the seminarian told investigators. The seminarian later suffered an emotional breakdown and became deeply depressed, the report says.

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WASHINGTON (DC)
Washington Post

June 5, 2019

By Michelle Boorstein, Shawn Boburg, and Robert O’Harrow Jr.

In the years before he was ousted for alleged sexual harassment and financial abuses, the leader of the Catholic Church in West Virginia gave cash gifts totaling $350,000 to fellow clergymen, including young priests he is accused of mistreating, and more than a dozen cardinals in the United States and at the Vatican, according to church records obtained by The Washington Post.

Bishop Michael Bransfield wrote the checks from his personal account over more than a decade, and the West Virginia diocese reimbursed him by boosting his compensation to cover the value of the gifts, the records show. As a tax-exempt nonprofit, the diocese must use its money only for charitable purposes.

The gifts – one as large as $15,000 – were detailed in a draft of a confidential report to the Vatican about Bransfield’s alleged misconduct. The names of 11 powerful clerics who received checks were edited out of the final report at the request of the archbishop overseeing the investigation, William Lori of Baltimore.

Lori’s name was among those cut. He received a total of $10,500, records show.

Lori wanted the names removed because he feared they would be “a distraction” from the report’s other findings, according to a person familiar with the investigation who was not authorized to discuss the findings. The Post obtained both versions of the report, along with numerous emails and financial records.

The investigation was launched by the Vatican last fall after clerics in West Virginia raised concerns about Bransfield’s behavior. Five lay investigators concluded that the cash gifts were part of a broader pattern of abuse of power by the bishop, including harassing young priests and spending church money on personal indulgences.

“Bishop Bransfield adopted an extravagant and lavish lifestyle that was in stark contrast to the faithful he served and was for his own personal benefit,” they wrote in the final report.

During his 13 years as bishop in West Virginia, one of the poorest states in the nation, Bransfield spent $2.4 million in church money on travel, much of it personal, which included flying in chartered jets and staying in luxury hotels, according to the report. Bransfield and several subordinates spent an average of nearly $1,000 a month on alcohol, it says. The West Virginia diocese paid $4.6 million to renovate Bransfield’s church residence after a fire damaged a single bathroom. When Bransfield was in the chancery, an administrative building, fresh flowers were delivered daily, at a cost of about $100 a day – almost $182,000 in all.

Bransfield, 75, drew on a source of revenue that many parishioners knew little about, oil-rich land in Texas donated to the diocese more than a century ago. He spoke of church money as if it were his to spend without restriction, according to the report.

“I own this,” he is quoted as saying on many occasions.

In statements after receiving questions from The Post, Lori said that “in light of what I have come to learn of Bishop Bransfield’s handling of diocesan finances,” he is returning $7,500 to the diocese and asking that it be donated to Catholic Charities.

He also told members of the diocese in a statement that he received permission “as of today” to sell the bishop’s residence in Wheeling and use the proceeds to support victims and survivors of sexual abuse.

He acknowledged that the names of senior clerics were cut from the final report.

“Including them could inadvertently and/or unfairly suggest that in receiving gifts for anniversaries or holidays there were expectations for reciprocity,” he wrote. “No evidence was found to suggest this.”

In an interview with The Post, Bransfield disputed the allegations, saying “none of it is true,” but he declined to go into detail because attorneys had advised him not to comment. One of his attorneys said Lori has not responded to Bransfield’s request for a copy of the report.

“Everybody’s trying to destroy my reputation,” Bransfield said by phone without elaborating. “These people are terrible to me.”

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PITTSBURGH (PA)
Tribune Review

June 5, 2019

By Deb Erdley

Kathy Coll still has trouble processing how the Catholic Church responded two years ago when she reported she had been raped in 2016 by a Nigerian priest who was studying at Duquesne University and assisting in her North Hills parish.

Coll, a retired high school English teacher and Eucharistic minister who sang in the choir, taught CCD classes and volunteered countless hours for her church, said that day changed her life.

The widowed mother of two adult sons remains active in her church.

But Wednesday, Coll, 68, filed a 13-count lawsuit against the priest, Cyprian Duru , the Catholic Diocese of Pittsburgh, Bishop David Zubik, and St. Teresa of Avila Roman Catholic Parish, her Ross Township church.

Her complaint charges that the diocese failed to properly vet Duru before assigning him to a parish where she and others were asked to give support and assist to a predator priest from a region where clergy were known to prey on older women. She alleges that the assault occurred in December 2016.

“I spent 2 ½ years trying to get someone to listen to me,” Coll said. “No one was listening to me, so I decided it was time to say I want to make something happen here.”

She alleges that the church heard complaints from others about Duru’s inappropriate behavior toward older women, failed to act quickly, and later neglected to explain why Duru was removed from ministry after she reported her assault.

Her complaint bears echoes of hundreds of allegations in last summer’s Pennsylvania grand jury report that detailed decades of church inaction against priests accused of child sexual abuse in Catholic dioceses across the state.

Coll’s suit details her account of how Duru — whom she agreed to tutor in English and occasionally transported to Pittsburgh — began taking frequent walks through her neighborhood that fall. On Dec. 11, 2016, Coll said Duru stopped by her home on the pretense of giving her a Christmas card. She said when she offered him a cold drink, he followed her to her family room, overpowered her and assaulted her as she screamed for him to stop.

Duru, who remains at Duquesne on a student visa, could not be reached for comment.

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ROME (ITALY)
Associated Press

June 5, 2019

By Nicole Winfield

The Texas couple that accused top U.S. Cardinal Daniel DiNardo of mishandling a sexual misconduct case against his former deputy is denying his office’s claims that they fabricated quotes and demanded $10 million, saying they are being dismissed the way the church dismisses other victims.

George Pontikes, president and CEO of the Houston-based construction firm Satterfield & Pontikes, said Wednesday he stood by his comments reported to The Associated Press recounting meetings with DiNardo in 2016 and 2017. The diocese had said it “categorically rejects” the story as biased and one-sided – a response Pontikes called disappointing but not surprising.

“It is another example of a smoke screen designed to cover up wrongdoings,” he said.

His wife, Laura Pontikes, had approached DiNardo’s Galveston-Houston archdiocese in April 2016 to report that the then-vicar general had taken advantage of problems in her marriage and business to manipulate her into a sexual relationship. Emails turned over to the archdiocese and AP show that while the sexual relationship grew, Rossi heard her confessions, counseled her husband on their marriage and solicited hundreds of thousands of dollars in donations for the church.

Houston police are now investigating. Following inquiries by AP, Rossi’s new bishop placed him on leave Tuesday pending the outcome of the police investigation.

The case is significant because DiNardo is heading up the U.S. Catholic Church’s response to the clergy sex abuse scandal, which exploded anew last year worldwide. As president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, DiNardo will lead a meeting next week to approve new measures for accountability over abuse.

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CHARLESTON (WV)
Metro News

June 5, 2019

By Jeff Jenkins

Former Wheeling-Charleston Bishop Michael Bransfield regularly sexually harassed young priests he oversaw and committed financial improprieties during his 13 years of leading the Catholic Church in West Virginia.

The findings come from an investigation commissioned by the apostolic administrator of the Diocese and released in a letter to Catholic Church priests and church members Wednesday afternoon.

The letter written by Rev. William E. Lori, the Archbishop of Baltimore, who has served as Wheeling-Charleston Diocese apostolic administrator since Bransfield’s resignation last September, details the results of a five-month investigation by a five-member lay investigative team made up of both Catholics and non-Catholics.

Lori said after dozens of interviews with those who worked closely with Bransfield it was determined the allegations of sexual harassment of adults were credible.

“The team uncovered a consistent pattern of sexual innuendo, and overt suggestive comments and actions toward those over whom the former bishop exercised authority,” Lori said in Wednesday’s letter.

Lori said there was no conclusive evidence that Bransfield, 75, participated in sexual misconduct with minors.

According to Lori, the investigation also found Bransfield engaged in excessive and inappropriate spending including expensive renovations to residences in Wheeling and Charleston.

“The investigation further found that Bishop Bransfield misused Church funds for personal benefit on such things as personal travel, dining, liquor, gifts and luxury items,” Lori said.

A report published Wednesday afternoon in the Washington Post, 18 minutes after Lori released the letter to the church community, provides additional details about the investigation saying Bransfield gave cash gifts totaling more than $350,000 to fellow clergymen including those he was allegedly mistreating.

According to The Post, which was able to obtain the full investigative report, the cash gifts followed sexual harassment complaints from “younger male clerical assistants.”

File

Archbishop William Lori
Archbishop Lori was one of higher ranking members of the church to receive money from Bransfield. He disclosed that in Wednesday’s letter.

“In the spirit of full disclosure, I feel it necessary to acknowledge that I was periodically a recipient of financial gifts in varying amounts by Bishop Bransfield for various occasions over the years, including my installation as Archbishop of Baltimore in 2012 and annually at Christmas. These gifts totaled $7,500. In light of what I have come to learn of Bishop Bransfield’s handling of diocesan finances, I have returned the full amount to the Diocese and have asked that it be donated to Catholic Charities,” Lori wrote.

The Post, citing the investigative report, says Bransfield spent $2.4 million of the church’s money on travel and many of the trips were personal.

“Bransfield and several subordinates spent an average of nearly $1,000 a month on alcohol, it says. The West Virginia diocese paid $4.6 million to renovate Bransfield’s church residence after a fire damaged a single bathroom. When Bransfield was in the chancery, an administrative building, fresh flowers were delivered daily, at a cost of about $100 a day — almost $182,000 in all,” The Post reported.

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FRESNO (CA)
YourCentralValley.com

June 5, 2019

By Pedro Quintana

Assembly Bill 218 is making its way through the state capitol that would extend the statute of limitations for victims of childhood sexual abuse.

The current law, states that victims have until they’re 26 years old to file a lawsuit against the accuser, the assembly bill would extend that until those victims are 40 years old.

Clergy Abuse attorney Jeff Anderson is asking the Catholic Diocese of Fresno to come clean.

“The real reason is so many catholic bishops and top officials have been so complicit in these crimes and apart of covering them up they don’t want to have this information revealed and made public,” Anderson said.

The diocese of Fresno has opened an investigation against Monsignor Craig Harrison from Bakersfield, who was a priest in Firebaugh and Merced.

Father Raul Diaz of Dinuba was put on paid administrative leave after allegations of sexual abuse of a minor.

Last month, six California Diocese including Fresno announced a new program, to compensate alleged victims who were abused by a catholic priest. An attorney who represents victims said the compensation program is not transparent.

“This program does not reach out to all survivors,” Clergy Abuse Attorney Mike Reck said.

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WASHINGTON (DC)
Archdiocese of Baltimore

June 5, 2019

When it comes to holding himself and other bishops accountable, Baltimore Archbishop William E. Lori is the earliest of early adopters.

Before Pope Francis issued his “motu proprio” instructing the world’s dioceses on handling allegations against bishops, before the U.S. bishops themselves vote on such procedures, Archbishop Lori had implemented a comprehensive series of reforms regarding bishop accountability in his archdiocese.

And ahead of a likely vote on a process by which the nation’s archbishops would be charged with investigating allegations made against any bishops in their province, Archbishop Lori has already done it.

When the U.S. bishops meet June 11-14 to discuss a series of proposals outlining a process for holding themselves accountable, Archbishop Lori will have a unique perspective: He’s already put into practice much of what they will be voting on.

It started after last November’s meeting, when the U.S. bishops discussed, but at the request of the Vatican did not vote on, a series of proposals that would legislate how to hold themselves accountable.

Having held listening sessions around his archdiocese in the wake of revelations of abuse by then-Cardinal Theodore E. McCarrick as well as the release of a Pennsylvania grand jury report, Archbishop Lori was aware that people wanted a transparent way to report wrongdoing not just about priests and church workers, but about bishops.

“I asked myself, ‘What can we do? Can’t we do something right now to respond to what I heard in those many evenings I spent with laity around the archdiocese?’” Archbishop Lori recalled in a June 3 interview with Catholic News Service. “And the answer was yes.”

The Baltimore Archdiocese took an independent reporting tool called “EthicsPoint” that it was already using, and promoted it as a way to collect any allegations of inappropriate behavior by Baltimore bishops. To address concerns that a report might be “submerged” by an archdiocesan office, Archbishop Lori said, complaints are reviewed by “two retired judges who were on the independent review board.”

Once they had assessed any complaint for “a minimal threshold for credibility,” they would then report it to law enforcement and the nuncio.

Archbishop Lori said the process has been “pretty well received,” judging from feedback he has gotten from his visits around the archdiocese. The Archdiocese of Boston and the Diocese of Wheeling-Charleston, West Virginia, have subsequently implemented similar reporting programs.

Archbishop Lori also has become an early example of what is being called “the metropolitan option.” In the wake of the McCarrick scandal, the bishops and the Vatican have been grappling with how to address allegations about abuse or the cover-up of abuse when made against bishops.

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WASHINGTON (DC)
Religion News Service

June 5, 2019

By Jack Jenkins

New questions about how Catholic leaders deal with sexual misconduct arose Tuesday (June 4) after a Texas woman claimed in a news report that church officials in Houston allowed a priest with whom she had a sexual relationship to continue in ministry at a parish two hours away.

Yesterday’s story following an Associated Press investigation detailed an unsettling account of Laura Pontikes, who said Cardinal Daniel DiNardo, head of the Archdiocese of Galveston-Houston the current president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, failed to respond adequately to her 2016 claim that Monsignor Frank Rossi, a deputy to DiNardo, had begun a relationship in August 2012 after the cleric spent years as her priest and confessor.

Pontikes claimed that Rossi induced her to perform sexual acts in his office during spiritual direction sessions, absolving her of her sins and eventually consummating their relationship with intercourse — all while the priest argued that such “holy touches” were encouraged by Paul the Apostle. Rossi also allegedly pushed her and her husband to donate millions of dollars to his church, St. Michael the Archangel.

In the era of #MeToo and #ChurchToo, the fact that the accuser is an adult has not spared the church new scrutiny about the church hierarchy’s slowness to respond to sexual misconduct claims or about what experts have been quick to call confusion regarding what constitutes consent.

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WHEELING (WV)
Diocese of Wheeling-Charleston

June 5, 2019

By Archbishop William Lori

As you know, last September, upon the Holy Father’s acceptance of the resignation of
former Wheeling-Charleston Bishop Michael J. Bransfield, I was appointed by the Holy See to
serve as Apostolic Administrator of the Diocese and assigned to commission a preliminary
investigation into allegations of sexual harassment of adults and financial improprieties
committed by the former bishop. In March, at the time of the investigation’s conclusion, I
reported to you that I appointed five lay investigators – both Catholic and non-Catholic alike – of
with professional competency in civil law, finance, human resources, and canon law, to conduct
the investigation. Their work occurred over a five-month period and included interviews with
dozens of individuals who had worked closely with the former bishop and interacted with him
in a variety of ways, and whose knowledge and perspective would inform the findings. As I
shared with you two months ago, I submitted the preliminary investigation to the Holy See for
final judgment and suspended Bishop Bransfield’s priestly and episcopal faculties within the
Diocese of Wheeling-Charleston and the Archdiocese of Baltimore, as was my prerogative to do
so as the Metropolitan Archbishop and as the Apostolic Administrator of the Diocese of
Wheeling-Charleston.

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ST. LOUIS (MO)
Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests

June 5, 2019

We at SNAP applaud the brave victims for coming forward and getting Bishop Bransfield’s wrongdoings exposed and stopped.

After reading the letter from Bishop Lori regarding the church’s investigation into Bishop Bransfield’s alleged sexual harassment, we feel that law enforcement should get involved and do an investigation into Bransfield and the Wheeling-Charleston diocese.

We also are still wondering what is the punishment for Bransfield and what will happen to him? We feel he should never work in any diocese again or be near children or vulnerable adults. Let’s not forget his allegations of sexual abuse of minors in Philadelphia.

The church officials of the Wheeling-Charleston diocese should reach out to any others to come forward and report any kind of abuse to law enforcement.

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CHARLESTON (WV)
Associated Press

June 5, 2019

By John Raby

The head of West Virginia’s Roman Catholic diocese says an investigation into a former bishop found a “consistent pattern” of sexual innuendo and suggestive comments and actions toward subordinates.

Archbishop William Lori of the Wheeling-Charleston Diocese on Wednesday released the results of an investigation into claims against ex-Bishop Michael Bransfield, who resigned last year.

Lori says an investigation team determined that the accusations against Bishop Bransfield are credible. It found no conclusive evidence of sexual misconduct by Bransfield involving minors.

Lori says the investigation determined Bransfield also misused church funds for his own benefit, including to pay for expensive renovations to his private residences in Wheeling and Charleston, and his intended retirement residence.

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NEWARK (NEW JERSEY)
Star Ledger

June 5, 2019

By Kelly Heyboer

Then-Rev. John Capparelli allegedly spent decades in New Jersey organizing wrestling matches for young boys and teenagers in church basements and youth clubs where he sometimes donned a Speedo and wrestled the young men in “submission” matches that often turned brutal and sadistic.

Capparelli was suspended in 1992 and eventually defrocked by the Catholic Church after some of the boys alleged he violently groped them during the wrestling matches and sexually assaulted them when they were alone with him in churches, at camps and on vacations.

The ex-priest, who denied the charges and was never prosecuted, eventually left New Jersey and started a new life in a quiet neighborhood in Henderson, Nevada.

But, it appears Capparelli kept looking for young men to wrestle.

The former priest — who was shot in the head in his Nevada house in March — allegedly met his killer through an online Craigslist ad Capparelli placed seeking men to wrestle in his house in “submission matches,” according to a report in the Las Vegas Sun.

Investigators found “hundreds of homemade DVDs that featured nearly-nude men wrestling inside (his) home, presumably while the victim filmed them,” according to an arrest warrant affidavit.

Nevada police issued the warrant earlier this week for Derrick Decoste, 25, on charges of murder and robbery with a deadly weapon in connection with Capparelli’s death. Investigators said Decoste met Capparelli through the Craigslist ad and visited him several times, intending to rob him, the report said.

Capparelli, 70, was found dead in his kitchen March 9 after someone asked police to make a welfare check at his house. Investigators said the former priest’s wallet, car keys and cell phone were missing after his death.

Decoste told police he knew Capparelli, but he denied killing him, the report said.

John Capparelli’s home in Henderson, Nevada, pictured on Wednesday, March 13, 2019. Police responded to a welfare check last Saturday at the residence, 1465 Bonner Springs Drive, and found Capparelli shot dead in an apparent homicide. (Chris Kudialis)
John Capparelli’s home in Henderson, Nevada, pictured on Wednesday, March 13, 2019. Police responded to a welfare check last Saturday at the residence, 1465 Bonner Springs Drive, and found Capparelli shot dead in an apparent homicide. (Chris Kudialis)

Decoste’s girlfriend allegedly assisted police by giving them a bag of her boyfriend’s belongings. Those possessions included a gun and a watch that belonged to Capparrelli, the report said. The watch was inscribed with the words “Newark Teachers Union Local 481,” the union where Capparelli had once been president when he worked as a school teacher after leaving the priesthood.

Nearly two decades after he was removed from ministry for alleged sexual abuse, a 2011 investigation by The Star-Ledger revealed Capparelli was working as a public school math teacher in Newark. After the report detailing past allegations of abuse, the former priest voluntarily surrendered his New Jersey teaching licenses.

The Star-Ledger also reported corporate records showed Capparelli formed a production company in 1999 that produced fetish videos. A website linked to the company, nhb-battle.com, sold erotic videos of adult men in tight bathing suits wrestling.

The goal of “submission” wrestling is not to pin an opponent, but to force him into defeat by causing pain or extreme discomfort.

The videos sold for $6.95 to $14.95. Capparelli later shut down the website after he was sued by one of the boys he allegedly abused while he was a priest.

In Nevada, neighbors on his quiet street in Henderson said Capparelli was quiet and appeared retired. But he would routinely have a couple of visitors a week. There were always high school and college aged men, neighbors said.

Weeks before his death, Capparelli was one of 188 priests and deacons in the state who had been “credibly accused” of child sexual abuse named on a list released by New Jersey’s five Catholic dioceses.

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OAKLAND (CA)
San Francisco Chronicle

June 3, 2019

By Gwendolyn Wu

The Diocese of Oakland has added 18 friars it claimed sexually abused children to a list of accused priests from East Bay parishes, officials said Monday.

The new names come from a list released Friday by the Franciscan Friars of Santa Barbara, whose territory includes California, Arizona, Oregon and Washington. Friars on the list may have served in or lived at the diocese in the past, said Helen Osman, a diocese spokeswoman.

Church officials said they did not know of the accusations until the friars released the new list.

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AUBURN (WA)
USA TODAY High School Sports

June 4, 2019

By Logan Newman

The three gold medals and one silver medal Rosalie Fish won at the Class 1B state meet weren’t just for her.

As she crossed the finish line with a red handprint over her mouth and the letters MMIW – standing for Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women – in red paint on her leg, Fish wanted to represent the Native American women who couldn’t represent themselves.

The Seattle Times called violence against the group an “epidemic” that’s not being properly reported by police agencies, including when the women are murdered or go missing.

The Muckleshoot Tribal School (Auburn, Washington) runner is part of the Cowlitz Tribe, according to the Seattle Times.

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NANTUCKET (MA)
Good Morning America

June 3, 2019

By Chris Francescani

In a surprise appearance, Kevin Spacey returns to court on Nantucket for pre-trial hearing in sex assault case originally appeared on abcnews.go.com

Actor Kevin Spacey made a surprise appearance on Monday in a Nantucket courtroom for another pretrial hearing in his sexual assault case, at which his defense attorney blasted the accuser and his mother for allegedly deleting exculpatory text exchanges from the son’s phone before turning it over to investigators.

Citing a forensic extraction report concerning the alleged victim’s phone recently turned over to the defense, Spacey’s attorney Alan Jackson made the case during an hourlong hearing that the accuser and his mother, former Boston ABC affiliate WCVB anchor Heather Unruh “cleansed” the phone of any information that could help exonerate Spacey before turning it over to police.

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AUSTRALIA
The Courier

May 28, 2019

By Jolyon Attwooll

Trauma and abuse counselling services are preparing for more calls ahead of Cardinal George Pell’s appeal hearing next week.

Organisations such as the Centre Against Sexual Assault (CASA) reported a surge in work when Pell’s conviction for molesting two teenagers in the 1990s became public knowledge.

They believe the same may happen when the appeal is heard on Wednesday and Thursday next week.

Carolyn Worth, a spokesperson for CASA forum, said: “If it’s really causing you tension, just dig deep and walk away from it.

“You get really distressed if it triggers you. Just limit what you’re doing – or don’t do it.

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PHOENIX (AZ)
Diocese of Phoenix

May 31, 2019

Diocese of Phoenix Statement on Arrest of Former Salvatorian Priest Joseph Henn

The Diocese of Phoenix is pleased to learn that authorities have located and apprehended former Salvatorian priest Joseph Henn in Italy. We support the efforts of the Maricopa County Attorney’s Office to extradite Henn and return him to the United States in order to face the criminal charges against him.

Henn was assigned by the Salvatorian order to serve at St. Mark Parish in Phoenix from 1978 to 1982. He was indicted on sexual abuse charges in 2003 and arrested in Italy in 2005, butdisappeared before he could be extradited to the United States to stand trial. Henn is identified on our website as a priest who has been removed from ministry due to sexual misconduct with a minor: https://dphx.org/youth-protection/community-notification-statements

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NANTUCKET (MA)
Deadline

June 3, 2019

By Dominic Patten

Kevin Spacey wants the indecent assault and battery case against him tossed out of court for “misconduct” on the part of the prosecution and accuser’s family, while a fall trial date is likely.

With the former House of Cards star making a surprise appearance in a Nantucket courtroom Monday, the actor’s attorney hit the state hard with accusations of “misrepresentation.” Alan Jackson declared that the underage accuser’s old phone had his “frat boy activities” and other potential evidence erased by his mother, former Boston TV anchor Heather Unruh, before being handed over to the police.

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LOS ANGELES (CA)
Anderson Advocates

June 4, 2019

Prominent Catholic Whistleblower, Survivors and Law Firm to Expose California Diocesan Compensation Programs Tuesday in Los Angeles

Survivors and Catholic Whistleblower to Highlight Issues With Prior New York Diocesan Compensation Programs

Tuesday in Los Angeles, two clergy abuse survivors, a prominent Catholic whistleblower and the law firm of Jeff Anderson & Associates will:

• Siobahn O’Connor, former personal assistant to Diocese of Buffalo (New York) Bishop Richard Malone, will expose the truth and discuss the cover-up of clergy sexual abuse by Malone that caused her to reluctantly release secret Diocese documents to the public to disclose the truth. O’Connor will discuss how the Diocese of Buffalo and Bishop Malone handled its compensation program;
• Release a summary of the diocesan compensation programs for clergy sexual abuse survivors announced by the Archdiocese of Los Angeles and the Dioceses of Sacramento, San Bernardino, San Diego, Orange and Fresno. Similar survivor compensation programs in New York will be compared and contrasted;
• Survivor Christopher Szuflita will discuss his abuse by a Diocese of Buffalo priest, the Diocese’s handling of his reports and his decision to reject a settlement offer under the Diocese’s compensation program;
• Survivor Thomas Davis will discuss his abuse by a Diocese of Brooklyn priest and determination by the compensation program that his claim was unsubstantiated;
• Compare the California diocesan compensation programs’ features with those that may be offered to survivors in statute of limitations legislation being considered by California lawmakers and discuss how the California bishops are doing the same thing that the New York bishops are doing.

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AUSTRALIA
The Tablet

June 3, 2019

By Mark Bowling

The appeal will be broadcast live from the Victoria Supreme Court in Melbourne, and will be accessible on the court’s website around the world

Jailed Cardinal George Pell, Australia’s highest-ranking Catholic, will return to court on 5 and 6 June for an appeal against his conviction for sexually abusing two Melbourne choirboys in the 1990s.

In recognition of the high public interest in the case, the appeal will be broadcast live from the Victoria Supreme Court in Melbourne, and will be accessible on the court’s website around the world.

Lawyers for Cardinal Pell, 77, who is three months into his six-year gaol term, will argue his guilty verdict was “unreasonable”.

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AUSTRALIA
Australian Broadcasting Corporation

June 5, 2019

By Emma Younger and staff

George Pell’s lawyer has told an appeals court the child sex abuse offences the Cardinal is now in jail for are “impossible” and a jury should have found him not guilty even if they believed his victim.

Speaking at Wednesday’s appeal hearing at Victoria’s Supreme Court, Bret Walker SC told the court that evidence given at trial supplied Pell with an alibi.

In written submissions, Pell’s lawyers listed 12 other reasons why the offending could not have occurred, including issues with Pell’s location in the church at the time of the offending and with the dates of the offences in the 1990s.

Mr Walker argued Pell’s clerical robe could not have been pulled aside to commit the “atrocious acts” he has been convicted of.

Pell, 77, is serving a six-year jail term for sexually abusing two choirboys when he was archbishop of Melbourne.

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CHARLESTON (WV)
Associated Press

June 5, 2019

By John Raby

The head of West Virginia’s Roman Catholic diocese says an investigation into a former bishop found a “consistent pattern” of sexual innuendo and suggestive comments and actions toward subordinates.

Archbishop William Lori of the Wheeling-Charleston Diocese on Wednesday released the results of an investigation into claims against ex-Bishop Michael Bransfield , who resigned last year.

Lori says an investigation team determined that the accusations against Bishop Bransfield are credible. It found no conclusive evidence of sexual misconduct by Bransfield involving minors.

Lori says the investigation determined Bransfield also misused church funds for his own benefit, including to pay for expensive renovations to his private residences in Wheeling and Charleston, and his intended retirement residence.

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NEW YORK (NY)
ABC News

June 5, 2019

By Pete Madden

A pair of bills that would have opened an avenue to investigate alleged clergy abuse in Kentucky languished in this year’s legislative session, and some supporters of the proposals say partisan politics is to blame.

Amid a national reckoning over allegations of sexual abuse in the Catholic Church, Kentucky lawmakers failed to advance or even consider legislation to expand the Attorney General’s powers to investigate crimes, like clergy abuse, that often occur across multiple jurisdictions. Now, the attorney general and his allies are crying foul.

Attorney General Andy Beshear, the highest-ranking Democrat in a state government otherwise controlled by Republicans, is running for governor in what is expected to be a hotly contested campaign. According to Gretchen Hunt, who leads the Attorney General’s Office of Victims Advocacy, Republican lawmakers were reluctant to empower a political rival to conduct a headline-making probe with an election approaching.

“Putting politics above victims and survivors is a bad way to do public policy,” Hunt told ABC News. “The injustice of that is very profound.”

Because Kentucky seats only a part-time legislature, the bills will not return to the floor until 2020, frustrating those eager for Kentucky to join more than a dozen other states where statewide investigations of alleged clergy abuse are already underway.

“It’s a problem,” Rep. Jeff Donohue, a Democrat, who worked with the Attorney General’s Office to introduce one of the stymied pieces of legislation, told ABC News. “I got to have partners to work with towards this, but I’m having trouble finding them. The only explanation is political.”

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ALLENTOWN (PA)
The Morning Call

June 5, 2019

By Paul Muschick

You may not be surprised to learn that another review has found shortcomings with the Catholic church’s efforts to prevent clergy sexual abuse of children.

What’s interesting is this review came from within the church.

The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops recently released its annual audit about whether dioceses are complying with conference rules enacted in 2002 to stop abuse, and to deal with the aftermath of it.

The study found a “heightened sense of urgency and focus” in many dioceses in 2018. It also uncovered recurring problems, including failure to train or check the backgrounds of clergy, employees and volunteers who have contact with children.

Incredibly, three eparchies — they’re similar to a diocese but don’t have geographic boundaries — refused to participate in the review.

That’s like slamming the door in Jesus’ face when he comes knocking with a question.

Auditors visited 72 of the nation’s 197 dioceses and eparchies, including Philadelphia and Greensburg. The others, including Allentown, were audited through a 12-page questionnaire.

Allentown passed. It told auditors that students, clergy, teachers, employees and volunteers had received safe environment training and the adults underwent background checks, according to a diocese news release.

Allentown is scheduled for an on-site review in the 2020 audit, diocese spokesman Matt Kerr said.

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WOODVILLE (TX)
News West 9

June 5, 2019

By Raegan Gibson & Tyler Seggerman

A Woodville priest has been removed from his duties at Our Lady of the Pines Catholic Church after allegations of sexual misconduct at his former diocese surfaced.

Monsignor Frank Rossi, who retired from the Archdiocese of Galveston-Houston, was accepted into the Beaumont Diocese in May 2017 to work at the parish according to a letter sent to parishioners Saturday by the Bishop of the Beaumont Diocese the Most Rev. Curtis J. Guillory.

The Diocese of Beaumont has placed Rossi, who was acting as pastor of the Woodville parish, on temporary administrative leave while a criminal investigation takes place according to the letter.

At the time of the alleged misconduct Rossi was working in the Archdiocese of Galveston-Houston the letter said.

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SHELBY TOWNSHIP (MI)
Shelby – Utica News

June 3, 2019

By Kara Szymanski

A priest is charged with engaging in criminal sexual conduct in the 1980s in the rectory of a Shelby Township church with a boy who was between the ages of 12 and 14 at the time.

Neil Kalina, 63, a California resident, faces four felony counts of second-degree criminal sexual conduct, which carries a maximum sentence of 15 years in prison and a lifetime of electronic monitoring, in Macomb County at the 41-A District Court.

“In the last 30 hours, more than a dozen members of our investigative team have been in courtrooms in Washtenaw, Wayne, Genesee, Macomb and Berrien counties while other members of our team have been working with local law enforcement in Arizona, California, Florida and Michigan — all in a carefully executed plan to take these charged defendants off the streets,” Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel said in a press release.

Kalina, who the Attorney General’s Office said had been a priest at St. Kieran Catholic Church in Shelby Township, was arrested May 23 in Littlerock, California.

According to a press release from the Archdiocese of Detroit, Kalina was ordained in 1981 for the Pontifical Institute for Foreign Missions, which is a religious order that operates separately from the Archdiocese of Detroit, and granted faculties in 1984. He was a resident at St. Kieran Parish in Utica from 1984 to 1986 and a weekend assistant at St. Ephrem Parish in Sterling Heights from 1984 to 1986, according to the press release. He left active ministry in 1993, according to the Archdiocese of Detroit.

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INTERNATIONAL FALLS (MN)
International Falls Journal

June 5, 2019

By Father Ben Hadrich

The past few decades have been an extraordinarily difficult time for the Catholic Church – for its leadership, for its members, for the clergy, and particularly for the victims of clergy sexual abuse. As a Catholic priest, I can tell you that the subject of sexual abuse, especially at the hands of clergy, is truly gut-wrenching.

It is heart-breaking to think that I am a brother of deacons, priests, bishops and cardinals who have used their power and leadership to abuse adults and children, boys and girls. As tough as it is, it cannot be swept under the rug or hidden in the crevices. In addition, I feel that I must apologize for this abuse, as weak and insignificant as that apology (mea culpa) may sound, to these victims whose lives have been so much changed by these brutal acts.

I hope that we, the clergy, may open our doors to listen, to support, and to pray for our brothers and sisters who have experienced inhumane abuse. Our deacons, priests, bishops and cardinals must continue to seek justice and penance for all who have acted against God’s children.

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