ABUSE TRACKER

UNITED STATES
Reuters

December 6, 2018

By Joseph Ax

USA Gymnastics, the sport’s governing body, filed for bankruptcy on Wednesday, saying that it is staggering under the weight of lawsuits filed by hundreds of women who were sexually abused by former national team doctor Larry Nassar.

The organization’s chairwoman, Kathryn Carson, cited the lawsuits in the decision to seek protection from creditors in federal bankruptcy court in Indianapolis.

“Our organization is a financially solid going concern but for the hundred lawsuits that we do have out there,” Carson said on a conference call with reporters. “That is the primary reason that we made this filing, to use the Chapter 11 process as a vehicle for resolving those claims.”

Nassar was sentenced to up to 300 years in prison in two different trials in Michigan last February after more than 350 women testified about abuse at his hands, including Olympic champions Aly Raisman and Jordyn Wieber.

The scandal prompted the entire board of directors at Indianapolis-based USA Gymnastics to resign, along with the president and athletic director at Michigan State University, where Nassar also worked. The school agreed to a $500 million settlement with his victims earlier this year.

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CINCINNATI (OH)
Cincinnati Enquirer

December 6, 2018

By Cameron Knight

A priest who started his career in Cincinnati more than 50 years ago has been detained in the Philippines on charges of molesting young boys.

Kenneth Bernard Hendricks was arrested by Philippine immigration authorities Wednesday. He has been indicted in Ohio. U.S. Attorney Ben Glassman will hold a press conference at 11 a.m. during which he is expected to reveal more details about the accusations.

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LOS ANGELES (CA)
Daily Beast

December 4, 2018

By Emily Shugerman and Rich McHugh

A California woman says her warnings about Det. Neil Kimball went unheeded before he was accused of a raping a 14-year-old.

A veteran Los Angeles Sheriff’s Department detective was charged last week with tying up and raping a 14-year-old girl whose case he was investigating. The arrest of Neil Kimball, a seasoned sex-crimes investigator, sent shockwaves through the law-enforcement community—especially when it was revealed that he had already been accused of sexual misconduct years earlier.

But the allegations didn’t surprise Sara Abusheikh, a Los Angeles-based fashion designer who told The Daily Beast she tried to warn authorities about “creepy” Kimball four years ago. The detective assigned to investigate her sexual assault case repeatedly crossed the line, she said—making flirtatious comments, accusing her of liking her alleged assailant, and even encouraging her to go back to see him.

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UNITED STATES
LinkedIn

November 14, 2018

By John Seng

Time to Reform The Catholic Church

People who attend Catholic Masses with any regularity will recognize the following ritual, as explained by the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops:

At the very beginning of the Mass, the faithful recall their sins and place their trust in God’s abiding mercy. The Penitential Act includes the Kyrie Eleison, a Greek phrase meaning, “Lord, have mercy.” This litany recalls God’s merciful actions throughout history.

At Sunday worship in recent months, it’s dawned on me that in this year’s new light of horrifying revelations of abuse by clergy over many years worldwide, maybe it’s time to turn the tables. Aren’t Catholics in the pews the ones who should expect their Catholic Church celebrants to, perhaps for the next 50 years, initiate each Mass by recalling the sins of priests, bishops and cardinals themselves, apologizing at every assembly and begging the Lord’s mercy?

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NEW YORK (NY)
America Magazine

December 4, 2018

By Louis J. Cameli

In February of next year, Pope Francis will meet with presidents of episcopal conferences throughout the world to talk about the Catholic Church’s response to clerical abuse. The U.S. bishops met in November of this year and discussed the same topic. In many dioceses, parishes have been or will be hosting listening sessions for concerned parishioners. All these meetings are meant in some way to address the sexual abuse crisis in the Catholic Church.

The current round of gatherings and news coverage strikes many people as sadly familiar—a replay of what happened in the early 2000s. But this is different. Today’s conversations have shifted. The focus now falls on bishops who were negligent, incompetent or downright devious in dealing with clergy who had perpetrated abuse against minors. This new scrutiny of abuse in the church, one earnestly hopes, will lead to necessary structural realignments. Reforms may include new paths for accountability and transparency, a more rigorous application of existing church law or its amendment if needed, and closer cooperation with civil authorities to deal with criminal activity and any related cover-up.

Structural reform and renewal are absolutely necessary to reclaim a measure of integrity for the church and—some would even say—for her very survival.

Structural reform and renewal are absolutely necessary to reclaim a measure of integrity for the church and—some would even say—for her very survival. These changes, however, are not enough to bring healing. The abuse crisis is about more than just logic and reason. The current crisis has revealed the unreliability of church leaders in protecting the flock entrusted to their care. And that matters very much to everyone with or without a direct experience of abuse. I would argue that any effective healing must take the experience of reliability versus unreliability as a central focus.

People familiar with the work of the British psychiatrist Donald Winnicott know the centrality of reliability for the most fundamental of human relationships. As Winnicott observed the interaction of infants and their mothers, it became apparent to him that the foundation of all healthy subsequent development for a child rested in the experience of that first and all-important mother-child relationship as reliable. When that early relationship turns out to be unreliable, as Winnicott saw in his psychotherapeutic practice with adults, people have significant problems relating to others and functioning well in their lives.

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ROME (ITALY)
Catholic News Service

December 6, 2018

By Cindy Wooden

Pope Francis marked the fifth anniversary of his election in March in the midst of a firestorm over his handling of clerical sexual abuse and bishops’ accountability in Chile.

He soon apologized for his slow response and invited Chilean abuse survivors to the Vatican and then all the country’s bishops to meet with him in May. By mid-October, the pope had dismissed two Chilean bishops from the priesthood and accepted the resignations of seven others.

The firestorm began when Pope Francis visited Chile and Peru in January, but the trip also included a meeting with the region’s indigenous peoples, marking an important stage in the preparation for the 2019 special Synod of Bishops on the Amazon, which will focus on safeguarding creation and on the pastoral care of the people who live in the region.

Also during 2018, Pope Francis traveled to the Geneva headquarters of the World Council of Churches to celebrate the ecumenical body’s 70th anniversary; he went to Ireland for the World Meeting of Families; and he visited the Baltic nations of Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia.

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HARRISBURG (PA)
Fox 43

December 6, 2018

A retired Captain who successfully ran the Megan’s Law Section of the Pennsylvania State Police will run the Roman Catholic Diocese of Harrisburg’s Safe Environment program. Retired Capt. Janet A. McNeal, through her firm Law and Grace Consulting, will review the Diocese’s current youth protection programs, develop programs and policies to make any needed improvements and will serve as our Safe Environment Coordinator.

“Captain McNeal brings a wealth of experience with her,” said Bishop Ronald W. Gainer. “As a contractor with the Diocese, she is a neutral party, with no conflicts of interest, who has dedicated her entire professional career to seeing that justice is served and survivors of a range of crimes, but specifically sexual crimes, are heard and supported.

“As part of her role, Capt. McNeal will review every clergy child abuse case reported to the Diocese, in order to evaluate what went wrong and help us continue improving our youth protection policies and trainings, as a means of reducing the risk for future abuse.”

McNeal brings 26 years of law enforcement investigative and policy development experience to this position. She has a three year contract with the Diocese and will operate independently, reporting her recommendations directly to Bishop Gainer. McNeal has been granted complete access to all the Diocese’s records. In addition to reviewing every case reported to the Diocese, McNeal will also meet with survivors to hear their stories and determine what stage they are at in the healing process.

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MOBILE (AL)
AL.com

December 6, 2018

By Christopher Harress

The Archdiocese of Mobile released Thursday 29 names of Catholic priests, deacons and brothers who have been credibly accused of sexually abusing a child since 1950.

The first 12 names are those that were formally part of the Archdiocese of Mobile, while the second list contains 17 names of men and priests who belong to religious orders but were not formally attached to the Archdiocese.

In an accompanying letter, Archbishop Thomas Rodi asked for forgiveness from those that had been hurt.

“The most vulnerable members of the Church, the children, have been grievously hurt by clergy and religious, the very people who should have been trusted to help and not to injure,” wrote Archbishop Rodi. “In addition, the Church has at times failed to act as it should have to immediately protect children and to promptly remove those who have preyed upon them. To all the people of the Church, and especially to the victims of child sexual abuse by clergy and religious, I ask for your forgiveness. From the depths of my heart, I ask your forgiveness.”

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NEW YORK (NY)
Vogue Magazine

December 6, 2018

By Mary Beth Keane

The joke about my younger son, Emmett, is that at age seven he’d still crawl back into my womb if he could. He’s more reserved than his gregarious older brother, and sticks to me in social situations that overwhelm him. He worries about things that wouldn’t even occur to another child. Recently I picked him up from a birthday party and also collected the sons of two close friends to spare them a trip. Walking across the parking lot in a foursome of first-grade boys, Emmett kept glancing at another classmate who was leaving with his mother. Later he told me he worried the boy had seen the group heading to our car and thought Emmett was having a “big fun playdate” and hadn’t invited him, and that his feelings might have been hurt.

Tall, with skinny limbs and hair the color of a penny, Emmett often chooses a collection of Bible stories my mother gave him years ago as a bedtime book. One evening he asked me about “the holy cracker” he’s going to get to try soon, when he makes his first Holy Communion in second grade.

“That’s the Eucharist,” I told him. “The priest performs a miracle on the altar, and that cracker becomes the body of Christ.” Like all things to do with Catholic doctrine, it feels insane when said aloud. When it comes to religion, the only concern my kids really have is whether everyone who’s good ends up in Heaven. I’ve decided to simply say yes. Will the dog go to Heaven? Yes. The same Heaven as us? Yes. I deliver these answers with total confidence, as if I know.

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SPRINGFIELD (IL)
Springfield Journal Register

December 5, 2018

By Crystal Thomas

A city of Springfield employee appears on the list the Catholic Diocese of Springfield released last week that named priests it said had been credibly accused of sexually abusing minors.

Joseph D. Cernich, 62, of Springfield, was laicized, or stripped of his priestly duties, in June 2003 and hired by the city in November of the same year. Cernich currently works as a technical support specialist in City Water, Light and Power’s information systems division and makes about $56,000 a year.

Requests for comment from Cernich went unanswered. He hung up when The State Journal-Register called his work phone number.

In response to a State Journal-Register inquiry into whether the new information affects Cernich’s employment, city attorney Jim Zerkle wrote the “the situation is presently under review.”

″… (C)onsistent with the City personnel policy, the City cannot comment on individual personnel matters,” Zerkle wrote.

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MANILA (PHILIPPINES)
Associated Press

December 6, 2018

By Jim Gomez

Philippine immigration authorities say they have arrested an American Roman Catholic priest accused of sexually assaulting altar boys in a remote central town in a case one official described as “shocking and appalling.”

Bureau of Immigration spokeswoman Dana Sandoval said Thursday the Rev. Kenneth Bernard Hendricks, who has been indicted in Ohio for alleged illicit sexual conduct in the Philippines, was arrested in a church in Naval town on the island province of Biliran.

An Ohio court had issued a warrant for the arrest of 77-year-old Hendricks, who has been living in the Philippines for 37 years, Sandoval said, adding that the U.S. criminal case stemmed from complaints from Filipino minors who were allegedly victimized in the Philippines.

Hendricks is listed on the Archdiocese of Cincinnati website as a missionary in Asia.

Federal officials will announce charges against Hendricks at 11 a.m. Thursday. WCPO will live stream the announcement.

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BUFFALO (NY)
The Spectrum

December 6, 2018

Monsignor Patrick Keleher of UB’s Newman Center does not want Catholic students to lose faith, despite the reemergence of a 17-year sexual abuse scandal that has again rocked the Catholic Church.

He’s been in the church for half a century and knows worshippers in the Buffalo Diocese, which has in the past year been consumed with a new string of abuse accusations and calls by prominent Catholics for Bishop Richard Malone to resign. He knows Catholics worldwide are undergoing a crisis of faith.

But Keleher believes the 2,000-year-old Catholic Church will find its strength again.

“We pray that the church can change,” said Keleher, the director of the Newman Center, which has served Catholic students since 1936. “We need change and we’ve had too much secrecy, too much clericalism, all of the things we hear about all the time.”

UB’s Catholic community wants to bring believers together to help them maintain their faith and discuss how the church can change moving forward so such acts won’t happen again, local religious leaders told The Spectrum. Community churches like the Newman Center and the St. Joseph University Parish near South Campus are coming to terms with the abuse scandal through forums and discussions, as priests are opening their doors and listening to students’ and community members’ concerns.

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SIOUX CITY (IA)
Sioux City Journal

December 6, 2018

By Nick Hytrek

Leaders of the Diocese of Sioux City and the diocese’s attorney will meet with Iowa Attorney General Tom Miller Thursday to discuss child sexual abuse allegations against clergy members.

Miller will meet with Bishop R. Walker Nickless, the Rev. Bradley Pelzel, vicar general of the diocese, and Sioux City attorney Mike Ellwanger. The four will discuss sex abuse issues in the diocese, how to move forward and the development of a list of priests who have been credibly accused, said Susan O’Brien, director of development and communications for the diocese.

Miller is meeting individually with each of the four Catholic bishops in Iowa. The meetings were requested by Archbishop Michael Jackels, archbishop of the Archdiocese of Dubuque, O’Brien said.

In a letter Tuesday to priests, deacons and other boards throughout the Sioux City Diocese, Nickless announced the meeting and other steps the dioceses is taking to address allegations of sexual abuse and the perception that church officials have kept information from the public.

“I know there is a lot of confusion, sadness and upset about clergy sexual abuse, past and present, as well as about information being shared in the news about clergy in our diocese,” Walker wrote. “I am sorry that we are all going through this, and I am praying for all of you. I hope you also pray for me, our clergy, as well as the dedicated staff throughout our diocese.”

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MANILA (PHILIPPINES)
New York Times

December 6, 2018

By Jason Gutierrez

An elderly American priest has been arrested by United States Homeland Security agents on charges that he sexually assaulted at least seven Filipino altar boys in the rural central Philippines, where he has ministered for decades.

The suspect, Rev. Kenneth Bernard Hendricks, 77, was arrested Wednesday in the town of Naval, an impoverished community in Biliran Province, said Dana Krizia Sandoval, a spokeswoman for the immigration bureau of the Philippines.

“We received information from U.S. authorities regarding the alleged sexual exploitation of multiple minor Filipino boys by Hendricks,” Ms. Sandoval said. “Several of his victims have come forward with their statements.”

Ms. Sandoval said “at least seven children have come forward, but our sources estimate at least 50 cases have been unreported.”

Operatives from the immigration bureau’s Fugitive Search Unit joined with the national police and Homeland Security agents in making the arrest, which shocked residents in the community of 50,000.

“Hendricks allegedly sexually assaulted a number of boys living in his residence,” Ms. Sandoval said, adding that the priest allegedly told the boys that he would be imprisoned if the authorities learned of his behavior.

“It is shocking and appalling,” she added. “I am horrified reading the charges against him. We will not allow sexual predators to prey on our children.”

The priest allegedly ordered the boys to take baths with him and molested them either one on one or with other boys, she said.

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NEWCASTLE (AUSTRALIA)
Associated Press

December 6, 2018

An Australian appeal court has overturned a conviction against the most senior Roman Catholic cleric ever found guilty of covering up child sex abuse.

New South Wales state District Court Judge Roy Ellis on Thursday upheld former Adelaide Archbishop Philip Wilson’s appeal against his May conviction for concealing the sexual abuse of two altar boys by a pedophile priest in the 1970s. Ellis found there is reasonable doubt that the 68-year-old cleric had committed the crime, which is punishable by up to two years in prison.

Wilson has served almost four months of a year-long home detention sentence at his sister’s house outside Newcastle. He was to become eligible for parole after serving six months.

The judge also dismissed a prosecution appeal against the leniency of the sentence.

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UTICA (NY)
Utica Observer Dispatch

December 6, 2018

By Greg Mason

The Roman Catholic Diocese of Syracuse has confirmed 41 former clergy members accused of child sex abuse had ties to parishes in Oneida County at one time or another.

The diocese earlier this week released a list of 57 clergy members in total who were accused of child sex abuse. Of the 57, 37 were tied to allegations the diocese found credible. Only 19 of the 57 are still alive; there is no priest in active ministry in the diocese with a credible complaint of child sexual abuse, according to the diocese.

The clergy members on the lists are either dead, removed from ministry, dismissed from the clerical state or laicized.

To be removed from ministry is to remain a priest in spirit, though the person cannot function, identify themself or act as a priest or wear clerical attire. Those dismissed were released from the clerical state and are no longer affiliated with the diocese. Those laicized voluntarilty were dispensed from clerical obligations and also have no ties to the diocese, according to the diocese.

A diocese spokeswoman said the diocese could not provide the parishes each clergy member has been affiliated with at this time. Using newspaper archives and online records, the Observer-Dispatch has identified parishes where a number of the priests once served in the Oneida County area.

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LONDON (ENGLAND)
The Tablet

December 6, 2018

By Michael Sean Winters

The unfolding clergy sex-abuse scandal in the US widened last week, with a joint raid by federal, state and local police on the office of Cardinal Daniel DiNardo, president of the US bishops’ conference and Archbishop of Galveston-Houston, writes Michael Sean Winters.

The Montgomery County prosecutor, Brett Ligon, said the raid was targeted specifically at recovering documents relating to allegations made against Fr Manuel La Rose-Lopez.

Arrested in September, the priest is accused of two counts of sexual indecency with a child between 1998 and 2000. Ligon emphasised the narrow scope of the search, saying: “This is not a search warrant of the Catholic Church, nor is it of its employees.” However, Ligon also indicated that Cardinal DiNardo and his staff had not been informed of the warrant in advance. “The State of Texas is not required to go through the Catholic Church” in its investigations, he said.

Television images of police removing crates of documents from the chancery building spread across the Internet.

The same day, the office of the Attorney General of New Mexico served a similar search warrant on the administrative offices of the Archdiocese of Santa Fe, seeking documents related to two priests, Marvin Archuleta and Sabine Griego, previously accused of sex abuse. The archdiocese had previously removed both men from ministry and in 2017 it published their names with those of 72 other clergy credibly accused of sexually abusing minors.

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IRONDALE (AL)
National Catholic Register

November 29, 2018

By Msgr. Charles Pope

Many today rightly speak of the need for courage in the midst of the current sexual abuse scandal and its coverup. It does indeed take courage to speak out and engage in the awkward task of insisting on accountability and reform from our bishops and the Pope, whom we have been taught to revere and respect. There are potential dangers, especially for clergy and lay leaders in the Church, who may risk sanctions of some sort for speaking up. (Thankfully, most bishops have been tolerant of the airing of grievances and calls for reform.) There are also consequences for speaking out that are more irksome than dangerous, such as being labeled divisive, negative, unjust or a scandal-monger.

While courage would be the more common way to describe what is needed, I would argue that the more traditional term “fortitude” may be a more accurate description of what will be required to ensure this crisis is addressed credibly and in a lasting manner. Courage is a part of fortitude, but as a cardinal virtue and especially as a gift of the Holy Spirit, fortitude has other important aspects.

The cardinal virtue of fortitude enables us to withstand even great difficulties that hinder us from attaining our goal; a chief feature is being able to see an act or decision through to the end, despite obstacles. So it is more than being brave or courageous in the face of danger or sallying forth into battle; it is also being steadfast in the face of difficulty and enduring without sadness or loss of faith. Fortitude’s loftiest expression is prudently facing down danger and even death, but it is operative at levels short of mortal danger as well. The most common act of fortitude is enduring in order to see a thing through despite obstacles, hardships, persecution and other difficulties.

St. Thomas lists four “parts” of fortitude in his Summa Theologiae (II, IIae, qq. 123-140), and all of them are important as we seek to remain steadfast in insisting on reform and accountability that is credible and substantial. I would like to list each of the four parts and relate them to the current sexual abuse crisis.

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PITTSBURGH (PA).
The Pitt News

December 6, 2018

Pennsylvania’s Catholic dioceses is no stranger to sexual assault allegations. A grand jury released a report in August detailing the sexual abuse of more than 1,000 minors committed by more than 300 Catholic clergymen, 11 of whom had their names redacted.

On Monday, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court voted 6-1 to keep those 11 priests anonymous.

“[The ruling] is a victory for all Pennsylvanians,” Justin Danilewitz, an attorney who represented many of the priests in August’s grand jury report, said. “Victims can take comfort … that their voices were heard, but not at the expense of innocent individuals.”

But the decision is only a victory for serial sexual abusers and self-interested church officials. It completely denies victims the justice they deserve and erases the network of accountability the Catholic Church desperately needs to bring assailants to justice.

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FORT WORTH (TX)
Star Telegram

December 6, 2018

By Nichole Manna and Bill Hanna

A petition requesting an investigation by the Catholic Church into the Diocese of Fort Worth and Bishop Michael Olson had more than 400 signatures as of Wednesday afternoon.

The petition comes after years of turmoil between some of the parishes and the bishop. It’s spearheaded by parishioners at St. Martin de Porres in Prosper.

“Since his ordination as our Bishop in January of 2014, Bishop Olson has operated against canon law on numerous occasions, has employed abusive language and vindictive actions against priests and the lay faithful in our diocese,” the petition on the Care2 Petitions website states.

A number of the problems between parishioners and Olson have played out in public, including the removal of Father Richard Kirkham from St. Martin de Porres over the summer, a change in leadership at Fort Worth’s Nolan Catholic High School during Olson’s first year as bishop, as well as the closure of the San Mateo Catholic Church and the Catholic Renewal Center.

The petition also mentioned the departure of numerous priests, including Rev. Jeff Poirot, who was known for his beer-making skills but was asked by Olson to stop the activity while he was at Holy Family Catholic Church in Fort Worth. Poirot has since taken a leave of absence from active ministry.

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Get Religion

December 5, 2018

By Clemente Lisi

Is there a difference between the Catholic “church and its “hierarchy”?

That’s a question that very few, if any, editors and reporters working in either the mainstream or religious press seem to have asked themselves. It’s just another of the many questions to come out of the clerical sex-abuse scandal and the downfall of now-former Cardinal Theodore McCarrick that highlighted news coverage since this summer.

It’s a question that was surfaced by Father Thomas Reese (for decades a major source in many mainstream news reports) in a recent opinion piece that ran on Religion News Service. Journalists need to think about what he’s saying, so here’s an excerpt:

I remember in the 1980s taking a tour of the House of Commons in London. The tour guide pointed to a plaque on the wall in honor of a minister “who was killed by the Irish Catholics.” Not the IRA, not the Provos, not the terrorists, but the Irish Catholics.

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WASHINGTON (DC)
Verdict

December 6, 2018

By Marci Hamilton

Last week, the Miami Herald published a searing investigative report by reporter Julie Brown on the fact that multi-millionaire Jeffrey Epstein sexually abused dozens of girls at his home in Palm Beach and was permitted to cut a ridiculously lenient deal with local, state, and federal prosecutors. He was allowed to plead to two counts of prostitution, leading to a measly 13-month sentence, where he was even treated to daily work release. He did have to register as a sex offender, but with dozens of girls there and across the United States (and the globe) as his victims, the deal was beyond the pale. This was yet another instance when men in power kept each other’s secrets and covered them up as though the victims were basically collateral to the “real” issues, like men’s reputations and power. We have seen this again and again, whether it was President Graham Spanier of Penn State failing to stop Sandusky or the bishops trading around pedophile priests as though they are chess pieces rather than dangerous weapons against children. There is not a lot of daylight between these examples. Indeed, the Catholic Church’s problems in this arena are a blueprint for understanding the whole map, as I discussed here.

Why did Epstein get this deal? One has to wonder whether it didn’t have something to do with the fact that his friends and cohorts were powerful, including former President Bill Clinton and President Donald Trump and his lawyers—a veritable who’s who list like Ken Starr (whose failures in this arena I discussed here) and Harvard law professor Alan Dershowitz, among others. Both Trump and Dershowitz have been implicated in the abuse side of Epstein’s lifestyle, but both deny it.

There is no question that the system for protecting children is broken when a federal prosecutor chooses a cozy plea deal like Epstein’s. A prosecutor is supposed to represent the public interest in safety and be a “crimestopper.” The Epstein case was a textbook on serial pedophiliac behavior with children not only abused but also paid to bring in other children. The federal prosecutor who let Epstein get away with this level of sexual assault of girls was Alexander Acosta, who at the time was the South Florida United States Attorney and is now the Secretary of Labor in the Trump administration. Not only did Acosta let him get away with it, this prosecutor also cut the victims out of the process. They didn’t even know there was going to be a plea until they read about it. Far from being permitted to testify at his sentencing as did over 100 victims of Dr. Larry Nassar, these victims were completely ignored. These girls, most of whom were poor and came from broken homes, were throwaway victims.

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OAKLAND (CA)
Law office of Joseph C. George

December 5, 2018

At a news conference, a survivor of childhood sexual abuse by long-time perpetrator Father Vincent Breen speaks out against the Diocese of Oakland and urges any survivors of clergy childhood sexual abuse to report to the Attorney General’s office.

The Diocese of Oakland knew of Father Vincent Breen’s sexual abuse of children
In 1967, Sharon McCann (then 13 years old) and her mother reported Breen’s sexual abuse of Sharon to Sister Jean Higgins, the principal of Holy Spirit
The Diocese of Oakland failed to report the sexual abuse to any law enforcement agency and child protective services agencies
Fremont Police Department concluded that Father Vincent Breen sexually abused at least eight (8) young girls in 1981.
Now, on November 23, 2018, the Diocese of Oakland announced that it would not release a list of priests credibly abused of childhood sexual abuse until 2019 supposedly because the Diocese had not been in touch with some victims “in years” and that “It’s a situation in which you don’t want to re-traumatize people, because even though their names aren’t going to be there, the name of their perpetrator could be released.”
The Diocese of Oakland knew of Sharon McCann’s report and knew of the identities of the young girls in the 1981 Fremont Police Report and never contacted any victim

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SAN FRANCISCO (CA)
Bay State Reporter

December 5, 2018

By Alex Madison

A gay San Francisco pastor, who has historically fought for gay rights in the Lutheran Church, was arrested on charges of possession of child pornography, according to the San Francisco Police Department.

The Reverend Steven Sabin, pastor at Christ Church Lutheran at Quintara Street and 20th Avenue, was arrested November 15 on three felony charges.

Sabin, 59, was arraigned November 21 and pleaded not guilty to one count of distribution of child pornography and two counts of possession or control of child pornography, according to a spokesman for the San Francisco District Attorney’s office. Private defense attorney Art Lipton is representing Sabin. Lipton did not respond to a request for comment from the Bay Area Reporter.

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BUFFALO (NY)
Buffalo News

December 5, 2018

The Buffalo Diocese has offered $400,000 to a woman who accused the Rev. Fabian J. Maryanski of sexually abusing her when she was a teenager in the 1980s.

It’s the largest known settlement offered under a new diocese program aimed at compensating victims of clergy sex abuse.

Stephanie McIntyre, who lives in South Carolina, said Wednesday that she probably will accept the offer but was still working out all of the emotions she’s experienced since first learning about it from her lawyer, Barry Covert, on Tuesday.

Offers began going out to victims last Friday, and two lawyers who represent many victims said this week that about 20 early award amounts ranged from $10,000 to $360,000.

McIntyre, 50, is the first survivor of abuse in the Buffalo Diocese who has spoken publicly about an award offer. She will have 60 days to accept the offer, in exchange for agreeing not to sue the diocese over the abuse.

She told The Buffalo News the money “will have zero impact in my life.”

“It was never about the money. It was about accountability, and that still has not occurred,” she said.

McIntyre criticized the diocese for not adding Maryanski to its list of priests who were credibly accused of abuse.

“I feel that without placing my abuser on ‘the list,’ the diocese is saying: ‘Just take the money and shut up. The justices may believe you, but we don’t,’ ” she said. “It begs the question, what does Maryanski have on them that is keeping him safely off that list?”

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

December 5, 2018

The Diocese of Las Cruces in New Mexico has released a list of names of priests who have been “credibly accused” of sexual abuse.

We are grateful to Attorney General Hector Balderas for compelling the diocese to take this action. Without his active investigation into clergy sex abuse, we doubt that this list would have been released nor would it have included as much detail as it currently does. We hope that any survivors who are encouraged to come forward by this disclosure will take advantage of the resources that the attorney general’s office has made available on their website and make their report to independent law enforcement authorities, not to the Church.

It is worth noting that this announcement refers only to “credible accusations.” This, in our opinion, means that many names are probably missing from this list. Church officials are not the best arbiters of what is credible and what is not, especially since there have been many examples – such as this case in California – where accusations deemed “not credible” actually turned out to be very real. We believe that Bishops should release all names and allow independent law enforcement officials to determine credibility.

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BALTIMORE (MD)
Baltimore Sun

December 5, 2018

By Vincent DeGeorge

Pope Francis in late August appointed Baltimore Archbishop William E. Lori to lead an investigation into the alleged “sexual harassment of adults” by former Catholic bishop Michael J. Bransfield of the Diocese of Wheeling-Charleston, which comprises all of West Virginia. However, Archbishop Lori’s own record and actions seem to demonstrate a church “protectionism” that comes at the expense of transparency and accountability.

In 2002, when he was Bishop of Bridgeport, Conn., Archbishop Lori participated in writing the Dallas Charter, the U.S. Catholic Church’s most substantial accountability policy document on clerical sexual abuse which purports “zero tolerance.” However, here Archbishop Lori contributed to removing bishops from accountability under this document saying that the drafting committee “would limit it to priests and deacons, as the disciplining of bishops is beyond the purview of this document.”

Archbishop Lori also fought a multi-year legal battle to keep hidden Bridgeport clerical sex abuse records, some dating back as far as the 1960s, instead of readily complying with a state order to make them public. Archbishop Lori’s containment efforts finally ended in 2009 when the U.S. Supreme Court refused to block the release of documents.

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SYRACUSE (NY)
Syracuse.com

December 5, 2018

By Julie McMahon

The Catholic Diocese of Syracuse has acknowledged its list of 57 priests accused of child sex abuse could be incomplete.

The diocese published the list for the first time on Monday, after years of advocates calling for more transparency in the handling of clergy sex abuse cases.

The Roman Catholic Diocese of Syracuse has released a list of priests who faced credible allegations of abuse.

A chorus of those same advocates — including victims and lawyers — now say the list is incomplete. Three survivors of clergy sex abuse and three lawyers who have represented victims told Syracuse.com they were aware of allegations against priests who were not on the list.

Diocese Chancellor Danielle Cummings said her office has heard from people who believe the list is incomplete.

As allegations surface, the diocese will investigate and update the list as needed, Cummings said. The list is published on the diocese’s website. Cummings said she expects to make a public announcement if any new names are added.

The diocese is still investigating allegations concerning conduct from decades ago, Cummings said. The allegations surfaced in the last year as the diocese started a compensation program for victims, she said.

Yet advocates say the list also excludes names of priests who were reported to the diocese years or even decades ago.

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SILVER CITY (NM)
Silver City Daily Press

By Christine Steele

December 5, 2018

Last month, the Diocese of Las Cruces published the names of 28 priests who have been credibly
accused of sexual misconduct with minors and have served within the geographical boundary of the diocese. Among these are several priests who served in churches in Grant County, mostly during the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s. The last priest served in 1990.

In addition to the names, the list also includes, if known, the dates of the alleged incidents, the date they were reported to the diocese, the status of the accused and the date and location of their assignments in the diocese.

The publication of the list of names comes after the diocese received a letter from New Mexico Attorney General Hector Balderas demanding “full disclosure and full transparency” following the release of a Pennsylvania grand jury report with ties to New Mexico that details a massive cover-up of sexual abuse by priests in that state, according to an Aug. 14 story in the Washington Post.

In the letter to Las Cruces Bishop Oscar Cantu, Balderas wrote that like the Pennsylvania cases, most of the New Mexico cases would never be criminally prosecuted due to the statute of limitations having passed. But, he wrote, “Any complacency or silence in answer to misconduct must not be tolerated.”

In some instances, the abuse is alleged to have occurred prior to the Diocese of Las Cruces being established in 1982 or in another diocese altogether, but the individuals have been included because they served in the Diocese of Las Cruces at some point, the release said. Some of those identified have died and the rest have been removed from the ministry or retired.

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SANDUSKY (OH)
Sandusky Register

December 5, 2018

By Matt Westerhold

Almost three months after launching an investigation into allegations that a local bishop molested two boys beginning in the late 1970s, leaders of the Pentecostal Assemblies of the World Inc. church have not announced any findings.

They also will not say whether any disciplinary action has been taken in response to the allegations. It appears, however, the church took no action after investigating, or church leaders failed to address the molestation allegations, entirely.

Church leaders said in September the Rev. Rufus Sanders would step down from his leadership post At Emmanuel Temple on Adams Street in Sandusky while church leaders investigated allegations made by brothers Roy and Victor Matthews. It has not been confirmed, however, whether Sanders ever stepped down or if he remains bishop.

The Matthews brothers contend Sanders repeatedly molested and raped them when they were children. Achie and Odell Matthews, their parents, were founding members of Emmanuel Temple, and Sanders was its founding minister.

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SYRACUSE (NY)
Syracuse.com

December 5, 2018

To the Editor:

I write as a 67-year-old survivor, former victim, advocate, author of “In The Shadow Of The Cross,” support person, lecturer, SNAP Leader of Syracuse and CNY, also greater Raleigh, North Carolina.

Monday was a day of very mixed emotions for survivors (“Syracuse diocese releases list of 57 sexually abusive priests,” Dec. 2, 2018). It was long coming. It should’ve been done years ago. I was happy to see that some of the priests are on the list, finally. I was also sad to see some that were reported to me and the diocese that were not on the list. For the survivors of those priests, it had to be an especially sad day. Survivors want justice and accountability.

I have been helping survivors for the past 16 years. I have listened to their pain and told them they are not alone. I continue to try so hard to make them feel that there is hope.

The bishop said Monday that some survivors did not want the pedophiles’ names released. I take exception to that. I have been answering a national hotline for those sexually abused three days a week for at least 10 years. I have spoken to thousands of victims, and I have never heard once, not once, that they want their predator not publicly named. Survivors say they do not want to have their names released but never say “don’t expose my predator.” The release of the names allows others to come forward and begin their healing. It is a very hard thing to do — to admit that this has happened to you. And I always respect the victim. I believe it’s the church’s idea not to identify the perpetrators in order to keep the public from knowing the truth.

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SYRACUSE (NY)
Syracuse.com

December 5, 2018

By Dave Pasinski

“No, it can’t be. He was such a good priest.”

“I’m glad to finally see this man’s name made public. He damaged the lives of so many people”

“What a tragedy! For his victims and for him and for society and for the Church.”

“This should’ve been stopped long ago. It was the bishops’ fault that things went as bad as they did.”

These statements represent the range of reactions to the release of the names of Syracuse diocesan priests that were credibly found to have been sexual abusers. While it may come from a variety of motivations, Bishop Robert Cunningham deserves credit for publishing these names, but there is no joy in recognizing the history of what this represents.

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[Archbishop will send Vatican information on the investigation into priest Diego Ossa, member of Karadima’s inner circle]

CHILE
La Tercera

December 4, 2018

By Claudia Soto

La Iglesia chilena busca que la Congregación para la Doctrina de la Fe determine si hay elementos suficientes para ordenar un proceso penal u otras medidas.

Esta tarde, el Arzobispado de Santiago informó a través de un comunicado que remitirá los antecedentes sobre la investigación previa que pesa contra el sacerdote Diego Ossa, a la Congregación para la Doctrina de la Fe.

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[“Shootball” is first documentary about clergy abuse among Marists in Catalonia]

MADRID (SPAIN)
El País

By Julio Núñez

El primer documental sobre el caso de los maristas en Cataluña relata el silencio y el encubrimiento de dicha orden respecto a los abusos sexuales en sus colegios

“Tenía una adicción, un comportamiento distorsionado. Pero no era un pederasta, sino que actuaba como uno”. Con esta frase el exprofesor Joaquín Benítez del colegio marista de Barcelona Sants-Les Corts intenta explicar las razones por las que abusó de una veintena de niños desde 1980 hasta 2016. Con mirada esquiva, Benítez aparece entrevistado el documental Shootball, el primero en tratar de manera extensa los casos de pederastia en varios colegios de la orden de los maristas en Cataluña. Su director, Fèlix Colomer, reconstruye el relato a través de entrevistas a víctimas, familiares, abogados, profesores, políticos y especialistas de cómo salió a la luz uno de los casos de pederastia en la Iglesia española más significativos de los últimos años. “No se estaba haciendo nada sobre este tema y decidimos entrevistar a Manuel Barbero [padre de una víctima] y filmar cómo llamaba a Benítez. Fue un material muy potente [el abusador reconoció los hechos y pidió perdón] y decidimos seguir investigado. Hemos estado año y medio grabado”, explica el cineasta.

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[Former seminarians of Astorga demand that bishop punish those who covered up abuse in the Church]

ASTORGA (SPAIN)
El País

By Julio Núñez

Una veintena de exalumnos se manifiestan para pedir la excomunión del abusador José Manuel Ramos, castigado a un año de ejercicios espirituales

Cargados con carteles contra los abusos sexuales en la Iglesia, una veintena de exalumnos del seminario menor de La Bañeza (León) y del colegio Juan XXIII de Puebla de Sanabria (Zamora) han acudido este sábado a las puertas del obispado de Astorga para protestar contra la pena canónica que el actual obispo y presidente de la comisión contra la pederastia de la Conferencia Episcopal Española (CEE), Juan Antonio Menéndez, ha impuesto al sacerdote José Manuel Ramos Gordón por abusar sexualmente de al menos un niño en el colegio Juan XIII a principios de los ochenta y de otros tres en La Bañeza entre 1988 y 1989. El castigo: un año de ejercicios espirituales por los delitos de La Bañeza —tras una denuncia silenciada en 2017— y la expulsión a un monasterio fuera de la diócesis durante 10 años por el del colegio zamorano, esta última sentencia anunciada en septiembre por la diócesis.

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[Column: Fools]

SPAIN
El País

December 5, 2018

By Leila Guerriero

Alguien tendría que explicar a estos sujetos que las personas abusadas no hablan cuando quieren sino cuando pueden

Los curas tienen su propia Liga de la Justicia, y así logran que sus colegas pedófilos obtengan, como condena, graciosos retiros espirituales. Hay motivos para creer que los fallos de la tal Liga, además, se basan en la ignorancia. Este diario publicó conversaciones que el obispo de Salamanca, Carlos López, sostuvo en 2013 con Javier Paz, que denunció al cura Isidro López por haber abusado de él entre sus 12 y sus 20 años. En ellas, el obispo le reprocha a Paz: “¿Por qué no lo han denunciado a su debido tiempo? Ahora la Iglesia es culpable de haberlo ocultado (…) ¿las víctimas por qué se han callado?”.

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[Cathedral of Santiago priest removed from public duties after accusations he touched young people]

SANTIAGO DE COMPOSTELLA (SPAIN)
El País

November 27, 2018

By Sonia Vizoso

Los supuestos abusos ocurrieron en Mondoñedo (Lugo) y el Obispado resta importancia al asunto: “No se sentían víctimas de nada”

Un sacerdote de Mondoñedo (Lugo) ha sido apartado por la Iglesia tras ser denunciado a finales de agosto por tocamientos ante el obispo de la diócesis de Mondoñedo-Ferrol, Luis Ángel de las Heras. Se trata, según han confirmado a este periódico fuentes eclesiásticas, del exdeán de la Catedral de Santiago José María Díaz Fernández, de 88 años, máxima autoridad en el templo compostelano cuando fue robado el Códice Calixtino en 2011 y hermano del actual deán de la Catedral de Mondoñedo, Pedro Díaz Fernández.

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MANILA (PHILIPPINES)
The Strait Times

December 5, 2018

By Raul Dancel

A 77-year-old American priest was arrested in the Philippines on Wednesday (Dec 5) for allegedly molesting dozens of boys while serving for over three decades at a church in Biliran province, south of Manila.

Agents from the US Department of Homeland Security and the Philippine Bureau of Immigration nabbed Kenneth Hendricks inside the Cathedral of Our Lady Rosary Parish in Naval town, in Biliran.

“He did not resist arrest,” said Senior Superintendent Julius Coyme, the provincial police director.

A report from the immigration bureau said Hendricks had an arrest warrant for a rape complaint filed in Ohio for “engaging in illicit sexual conduct in foreign places”.

The complaint was lodged by one of his alleged victims.

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ALLENTOWN (PA)
The Morning Call

December 5, 2018

By Christine Schiavo

On Monday, the state Supreme Court ruled that the names of the 11 priests who challenged their inclusion in a statewide grand jury report on sexual abuse by 301 priests in the Catholic Church may be kept secret. The report, which was released in August, named accused priests in the six dioceses that the grand jury investigation covered, including Allentown, though nearly all the cases exceeded the statute of limitations for prosecution. The 11 priests argued that disclosing their names would damage their reputations and violate their constitutional right to due process. And the court agreed.

Is the ruling a surprise?
Not really. The court ordered the 11 names temporarily redacted before the report came out in August. During a hearing in September, the judges’ questions provided a glimpse into how they might rule. For example, Justice David Wecht asked why the state didn’t just accept the redacted report as the final version; and Justice Christine Donohue asked why it was necessary to name

Why does the attorney general want to name names?
Attorney General Josh Shapiro said concealing the names would be like ignoring some victims’ accounts. He also has said that the church – sometimes with the help of law enforcement – protected priests and covered up the crimes. Redacting the names, he said, enables those priests to remain in the shadows.

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ST. PETERSBURG (FL)
Poynter

December 5, 2018

BY Bill MItchell ·

The new movie about Gary Hart’s demise at the hands of the Miami Herald, “The Front Runner,” challenges media scrutiny of the personal lives of politicians as a distraction from what really matters.

Fair enough. I happen to believe the Herald did the right thing with that story, but it’s certainly a topic worthy of the debate the film is provoking.

But here’s a challenge to Hollywood: Isn’t it time you cleaned up your sloppy approach to the fiction embedded in films based on true stories and featuring the names of real people?

I recognize you’re in the entertainment business, not the news business, and that audiences increasingly demand high drama and neatly tied loose ends. It’s the muddling of history that bothers me, and I believe you could do less of that without sacrificing audience engagement.

It’s difficult to imagine a better time than now to pay closer attention to the facts of the matter — focused on real as opposed to imagined history — as we stumble our way through the fog of alternative facts and White House mendacity.

“The Front Runner” has prompted lots of discussion about the relevance of a candidate’s sex life, comparisons with coverage of President Trump’s sexcapades, even the possibility of Hart being set up by a Republican dirty trickster. All good.

But it was the question of what’s real and what’s not that was on my mind as I took my seat in a downtown Boston theater one day last week to watch the new film based on the Herald’s 1987 surveillance of Hart and Donna Rice, the 29 year-old woman he invited to his Capitol Hill townhouse.

Some of the best and worst reflections of the “true story, real people” genre were illustrated with the “Spotlight” movie I viewed three years ago in the same theater. The Oscar-winning account of the Boston Globe’s investigation of clergy sexual abuse managed to capture several Globe staffers with uncanny accuracy. At the same time, it distorted the role of another, Stephen Kurkjian, and unfairly savaged the reputation of a PR guy named Jack Dunn.

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BUFFALO (NY)
Spectrum News

December 4, 2018

By Mark Goshgarian

More than nine months after the Catholic Diocese of Buffalo announced the creation of an Independent Reconciliation and Compensation Program, dozens of cash offers have been made to clergy abuse victims.

An attorney who represents several people who claim abuse at the hands of priests in the diocese stated that he is receiving settlement offers for his clients.

Mitchell Garabedian said eight offers have come in from the compensation program, with amounts ranging from $10,000 to $340,000.

“It’s an insult. It’s outrageous,” he said. “A re-victimization of my clients. They’re adding salt to the wound.”

The voluntary program was designed to help those who’ve filed claims they were sexually abused as a child at the hands of local clergy.

Program administrators, though selected and paid for by the diocese, are two independent former judges who solely decide the amount based on specific criteria.

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BOSTON (MA)
Boston Globe

December 5, 2018

By Danny McDonald

The Catholic religious order that runs the Paulist Center in Boston said Tuesday that credible allegations of sexual abuse involving minors have been made against three priests who once lived or ministered in the city in years past.

The allegations were made against the Rev. Thomas Dove, the Rev. Robert Michele and the late Rev. Frank M. Sweeney, and involve two females and one male, according to an e-mail sent Tuesday evening by the director of the Paulist Center.

“To the Paulists’ knowledge, these are the only Paulists ever stationed or living in Boston who have had credible allegations raised against them,” the Rev. Michael McGarry wrote in the e-mail sent to members of the Paulist Center community.

The allegation against Dove, now 84, involved a minor female at the Catholic Information Center in Los Angeles, and has only recently “been established and reported to the authorities,” according to the e-mail. He served in LA from 1965 to 1974, the e-mail said.

Dove served in Boston at the Park Street center for one year immediately after he was ordained, from 1961 to 1962, said McGarry. He currently lives at the Paulist House in San Francisco.

In September, a credible and substantiated allegation involving a minor female was made against Michele when he was an associate pastor at a church in Oregon more than 40 years ago, according to McGarry.

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HARRISBURG (PA)
Catholic News Service

December 5, 2018

In a 6-1 decision Dec. 3, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court said the identities of some clergy accused of abuse that were redacted from a grand jury report issued in mid-August must remain permanently blocked from release.

“We conclude … we must make permanent the redaction of petitioners’ identifying information … as this is the only viable due process remedy we may now afford to petitioners to protect their constitutional rights to reputation,” Justice Debra Todd said.

Lawyers for 24 priests named in the report said their clients fought the release of their identities because they said they “were denied an opportunity to appear before the grand jury to defend themselves, question witnesses, or provide contradictory evidence,” the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette reported.

“They later argued that the report received so much publicity that it poisoned public opinion against their clients. The only solution, they contended, was to permanently block the names,” it said.

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OSWEGO (NY)
Oswego County News

December 5, 2018

By B. Rae Perryman

After the names of 57 Diocesan clergy linked to child sex abuse were released Monday by Bishop Robert Cunningham, a Diocese of Syracuse spokesperson is denying that parishioner contributions are paying victim’s settlements directly and that the closing of churches in Oswego has “definitely no connection whatsoever” with the scandal.

There are now eleven alleged pedophile priests affiliated with Oswego County parishes.

Oswego priests implicated in credible allegations of child sexual abuse by the Diocese of Syracuse are: Paul A. Brigandi; Daniel W. Casey, Jr.; Francis J. Furfaro; John F. Harrold; James C. Hayes; William A. Lorenz; Chester Misercola; Thomas E. Neary, Jr.; Albert J. Proud; Edward G. Quaid and John M. Zeder.

Monsignors Quaid and Brigandi join the ranks of nine others mentioned identified Tuesday by The Palladium-Times as implicated in a clergy sex abuse lawsuit.

Brigandi succeeded Furfaro as the spiritual leader of St. Joseph’s Church in Oswego and Quaid was the pastor of St. Mary’s in Oswego from 1935 to 1964.

St. Mary’s parishioners reported Tuesday that Quaid’s picture had been removed from the rectory but Quaid remains a lauded figure in St. Mary’s history. The church’s public records note his “outstanding qualities of priestly devotion” were recognized by Pope Pius XII on April 20, 1952 and he was elevated to the rank of Domestic Prelate with the title of Right Reverend Monsignor,” the record says.

The release of the 57 names is another in a long line of faith-shaking events that have pained local Catholics.

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ALLENTOWN (PA)
The Morning Call

December 4, 2018

By Paul Muschick

A debate may be brewing about the fairness of Pennsylvania’s grand jury process following Monday’s state Supreme Court opinion blocking publication of the names of some priests accused of sexually abusing kids.

Go ahead, have the debate.

But don’t let it become a smokescreen. The focus must remain on the conclusions of the contested grand jury report — that clergy preyed on children for decades, and Catholic church leaders and others didn’t do enough to stop it.

There’s no debate about that.

Many of the allegations in the August grand jury report, which accused hundreds of priests of sexually abusing more than 1,000 children, came directly from the church’s own records — what the grand jury referred to as the “secret archive.” The archive held memos and letters from bishops, clergy and others. While not every priest who was accused of sexual abuse in those records acknowledged it, some did.

Also, more than a dozen priests testified before the grand jury during its two-year investigation. According to the report, “most of them admitted what they had done.”

Grand jury members should be lauded for enduring tough testimony about priest sex abuse
The grand jury investigation identified 301 predator priests. About 270 names were published in the report. Only 11 current and former clergy fought to keep their names out of the report. Don’t let them steal the headlines with their cries about how unfair the grand jury process was.

They raise valid questions about the inability to defend themselves during a one-sided legal process. With the majority of the Supreme Court justices siding with them and allowing their names to be concealed, that could lead to more challenges of the system during future grand jury probes. Defense lawyers have applauded Monday’s ruling, so expect them to run with it.

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YORK (PA)
York Daily Record

December 4, 2018

BY Candy Woodall

Decades after their crimes were reported and largely ignored, more than 78 priests accused of child sex abuse are still collecting paychecks and pensions from Pennsylvania dioceses.

Each of those priests has been removed from ministry by Pennsylvania bishops, but the pope himself needs to sign off on all clerics being removed from the priesthood and the payroll.

That process is formally known as laicization, and it can take years or decades, if it happens at all.

The Vatican received 3,400 credible reports of priest abuse from 2004 to 2014, according to church statistics. About 850 priests were defrocked in that period of time for raping or molesting children. The rest were told to repent and ask forgiveness.

Some diocese officials say the Vatican isn’t motivated to remove the abusers from the priesthood if they are old or infirm. In other cases, the bishops decide themselves to keep them from being defrocked and allow abusive priests to receive church-funded retirements.

Their final assignment is a life of prayer and penance, a program that cares for priests who raped children and allows them to die with a noble title – a reverend, a father, a retired priest.

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ALBUQUERQUE (NM)
Associated Press

December 5, 2018

New Mexico’s largest Catholic diocese has spent hundreds of thousands of dollars in recent months on lawyers to fight claims of clergy sex abuse and to prepare for a potentially lengthy battle in U.S. Bankruptcy Court.

The Archdiocese of Santa Fe’s petition for reorganization provides a rare look into the finances of a religious organization that for decades has been wrestling with the financial and social consequences of a scandal that rocked churches across the country.

Archbishop John Wester describes the filing as an equitable thing to do as church reserves dwindle. He says compensating the victims is a top priority.

National watchdog groups and attorneys for victims of clergy sex abuse said Tuesday the archdiocese’s actions suggest otherwise.

They point to the money spent by the archdiocese on lawyers over the last three months and the tens of millions of dollars in real estate that has been transferred to parishes in recent years, effectively reducing the amount of assets held by the archdiocese.

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NEW ORLEANS (LA)
The Advocate

December 4, 2018

By Ramon Antonio Vargas

Leaders of the Jesuit religious order plan to release a list of priests and other members Friday who have been credibly accused of sexual abuse, including those who worked in New Orleans and surrounding areas.

The list, provided by the Jesuits’ U.S. Central and Southern Province, will follow a similar release last month by New Orleans Archbishop Gregory Aymond, which named 57 priests and deacons who allegedly abused minors over the past several decades.

While some Jesuit priests who worked in New Orleans schools and parishes were named by the archdiocese, the order will also provide names of religious brothers and men studying to be Jesuits while teaching locally, which may expand the numbers of alleged abusers Jesuit officials had stationed in the area.

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TITUSVILLE (PA)
The Herald

December 5, 2018

By Sean P. Ray

Erie Bishop Lawrence Persico responded to a litany of questions and comments about the sexual abuse scandal that has rocked the Pennsylvania Catholic Church at a public interview at the Edinboro University, Tuesday.

The interview was conducted by Debra Erdley, a reporter from the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, and was part of a series at the university titled “Uncomfortable Conversations.” Erdley has covered the scandal since it was launched by the release of a grand jury report in August, and also previously covered the Jerry Sandusky trial in 2012. Following the one-on-one interview, Persico took questions from the gathered audience.

Erdley began the interview by asking Persico about what moved him to cooperate with the grand jury investigation, breaking ranks with his fellow bishops. Persico was praised by Pennsylvania Attorney General Josh Shapiro for working closely with the probe, which unveiled numerous accusations of sexual abuse across Pennsylvania. Three priests with ties to Titusville were included in the report, including Monsingor James F. Hopkins, who served at St. Titus church for many years.

Persico said that when he was initially issued the subpoena for church documents in 2016, he asked a law firm to perform an independent investigation into accounts of sexual abuse performed by diocese personnel.

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GUAM
Pacific Daily News

December 5, 2018

By Haidee V Eugenio

Another former Guam priest, Father Michael Lee Friel, was named for the first time in a lawsuit involving child sexual abuse that happened decades ago, while a second complaint was filed against former Guam priest George Maddock.

The latest lawsuits were filed in the Superior Court of Guam on Wednesday afternoon.

A plaintiff, identified in court documents only as J.Q.G. to protect his privacy, said in his lawsuit that Friel sexually abused him in the sacristy of the San Dionisio Catholic Church in Umatac for about six weeks, in or about 1977.

J.Q.G., represented by Attorney David Lujan, said in his $5 million lawsuit he was around 13 years old at the time the sexual abuses happened.

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SIOUX CITY (IA)
KTIV TV

December 4, 2018

The Diocese of Sioux City has released an updated statement about the sexual abuse crisis in the Catholic Church. In the statement, the Diocese acknowledges the pain and confusion of parishioners, and is trying to reach out to as many people as possible to answer questions.

The statement indicates the Diocese Review Board has held several meetings to work on what is referred to as a list of credibly-accused priests that will be released to the public.

The four bishops of Iowa are scheduled for a meeting with the State Attorney General and the church continues to respond to emails, calls, and messages from those with concerns.

Meetings with victims are being conducted. In addition, cases are going before the Diocese Review Board, who advises the Bishop on how to move forward with each case.

The Diocese emphasizes there is a zero tolerance policy for sexual abuse. If it is confirmed a priest has committed sexual abuse, that person no longer is allowed to function as a priest.

Anyone who suspects sexual abuse by a member of the clergy can call law enforcement, or the Victims Assistance Coordinator at Mercy Child Advocacy Center, at 1-866-435-4397.

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PITTSBURGH (PA)
KDKA-TV

December 4, 2018

A day after a state Supreme Court ruling that the names of 11 accused Roman Catholic clergy should not be made public, a group is calling on Cardinal Daniel DiNardo to be more transparent.

The state grand jury report, released earlier this year, names more than 300 priests statewide accused of abusing children. But 11 names have been redacted.

The state Supreme Court said in the ruling on Monday that revealing those names would violate the state constitutional right of the 11 clergy to have their reputation protected.

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ERIE (PA)
GoErie.com

December 4, 2018

By Lori Wescoat

Court sides with some priests in Pennsylvania abuse report, shields names

The Erie Catholic Diocese responded to reports of two priests’ names being redacted from the grand jury report.

Yesterday, we reported that the Pennsylvania Supreme Court ruled the 11 Roman Catholic clergy cited in the grand jury report on sexual abuse could not be made public, saying that releasing the information would have violated the clergymen’s state constitutional right to have their reputations protected.

Two of those 11 clergymen were from the Erie Catholic Diocese.

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YORK (PA)
York Daily Record

December 4, 2018

By Candy Woodall

One retirement complex houses more than a dozen priests who sexually assaulted children.

In some cases, requests for them to be defrocked have stalled out awaiting approval by the pope.

Decades after their crimes were reported and largely ignored, more than 78 priests accused of child sex abuse are still collecting paychecks and pensions from Pennsylvania dioceses.

Each of those priests has been removed from ministry by Pennsylvania bishops, but the pope himself needs to sign off on all clerics being removed from the priesthood and the payroll.

That process is formally known as laicization, and it can take years or decades, if it happens at all.

The Vatican received 3,400 credible reports of priest abuse from 2004 to 2014, according to church statistics. About 850 priests were defrocked in that period of time for raping or molesting children. The rest were told to repent and ask forgiveness.

Some diocese officials say the Vatican isn’t motivated to remove the abusers from the priesthood if they are old or infirm. In other cases, the bishops decide themselves to keep them from being defrocked and allow abusive priests to receive church-funded retirements.

Their final assignment is a life of prayer and penance, a program that cares for priests who raped children and allows them to die with a noble title – a reverend, a father, a retired priest.

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GUAM
Pacific Daily News

December 5, 2018

By Haidee V Eugenio

Another former Guam priest, Father Michael Lee Friel, was named for the first time in a lawsuit involving child sexual abuse that happened decades ago, while a second complaint was filed against former Guam priest George Maddock.

The latest lawsuits were filed in the Superior Court of Guam on Wednesday afternoon.

A plaintiff, identified in court documents only as J.Q.G. to protect his privacy, said in his lawsuit that Friel sexually abused him in the sacristy of the San Dionisio Catholic Church in Umatac for about six weeks, in or about 1977.

J.Q.G., represented by Attorney David Lujan, said in his $5 million lawsuit he was around 13 years old at the time the sexual abuses happened.

“After the sixth week of volunteering at the Umatac Parish, J.Q.G. could no longer handle the pain, humiliation, and embarrassment Lee inflicted on him, so he quit going to church and cease volunteering his services,” the lawsuit says.

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

December 3, 2018

Today, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court ruled the names of 11 clergy – who were included in the most recent Pennsylvania Grand Jury report but not specifically named – can remain hidden.

This ruling has only made clearer the desperate and immediate need for statute of limitations reform, in Pennsylvania and elsewhere. We know that people who were sexually abused, especially those who were abused as children, are unlikely to report their abuse for many years. As they currently exist, statutes of limitations only prevent justice for the victims that have finally come forward and – as today’s ruling demonstrates – prevents information that might prevent future cases of abuse from getting out.

If bishops in Pennsylvania are serious about their pledges for “full transparency,” they should disclose these names and allegations regardless of the court ruling. There should be a moral imperative to do the right thing, not a legal impetus.

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

December 4, 2018

Newly-released records show that a Catholic priest was imprisoned for abusing a Nebraska child, but he has never been “outed” before, as best we can tell. Fr. Paul J. Schwarten spent 18 months in jail for “inappropriate touching of a minor,” according to the Diocese of Wheeling, WV. The disclosure was made last week when Archbishop William Lori released a list of clergy who have been credibly accused of sexual abuse of minors as it pertains to the Charter for the Protection of Children and Young People.

Given that this disclosure shows abuse of at least one child in Nebraska ,we hope Nebraska’s bishops will now follow Archbishop Lori’s lead and post their own lists of clergy who have been credibly accused of sexual abuse of minors as it pertains to the Charter for the Protection of Children and Young People.

We also hope anyone who may have suffered or seen sexual abuse by a member of the Catholic Church, or suspected sexual abuse by a member of the Church, will end their silence and report what they know, saw or suspect to law enforcement officials. We also hope that Catholic officials in both Nebraska and West Virginia will aggressively seek out other victims, witnesses, whistle blowers – using pulpit announcements, church bulletins and diocesan websites – of Fr. Schwarten and other current or former church employees, no matter where they are from or whether they are alive or deceased.

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Get Religion

December 4, 2018

By Bobby Ross Jr.

It’s a massive story — the ongoing tremors from the Catholic clergy sex abuse scandals. It’s an impossible subject — for most mere mortal reporters — to tackle in a single shot.

Which is why I was impressed with a recent feature by a Washington Post writer who traveled to Rapid City, S.D. Terrence McCoy, who covers social issues in rural and urban America, produced an exceptional piece of journalism by going small.

Not small as in the length of the piece. No, this was a long feature. But small in terms of focus? Exactly.

McCoy shines a tight spotlight (not to be confused with that other “Spotlight”) on a priest dealing with the fallout from a fellow clergyman’s arrest on a child sex abuse charge. The result: an in-depth news-feature that is full of revealing and relevant details.

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ATLANTA (GA)
CNN

December 3, 2018

By Paul Snyder

The Catholic Church’s response to sexual abuse allegations:

Length: 2:45

Editor’s Note: Paul Snyder is a Catholic deacon in the Diocese of Buffalo, New York. He is also the Chairman of Snyder Corp., a privately held investment company founded in 1958 with interests in the hospitality, real estate, software and transportation industries, and a Henry Crown Fellow of the Aspen Institute. The opinions expressed in this commentary are solely those of the author. View more opinion on CNN.

We all regret some decisions in life; for me, it was my choice not to learn Spanish. So, in my search to find the one word that could capture the essence of Pope Francis, it is with much irony that the language of Spain would give me the most appropriate one: Dictablanda!

For those like me who “no hablo espanol,” Dictablanda is a Spanish pun for a benevolent dictator. It is also the description that best suits our Holy Father and the Roman Curia. In this instance, it is not a funny pun.

Like many Catholics, I have a sincere love for Pope Francis. Yet I was shocked to learn of the extraordinary restrictions he placed upon the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, on the opening day of their conference last month. It was convened to deal with the catastrophic sex abuse crisis affecting our church.

Specifically, the president of the conference, Cardinal Daniel DiNardo, told the bishops, “At the insistence of the Holy See we will not be voting on the two action items.” He was referring to a planned vote on a code of conduct, “the first such ethical guidelines for bishops on sex abuse issues, and to establish a lay commission capable of investigating bishops’ misconduct,” according to The Washington Post.

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BUFFALO (NY)
The Associated Press

December 3, 2018

An attorney for alleged victims of clergy sexual abuse says the Roman Catholic Diocese of Buffalo has offered settlements ranging from $10,000 to $340,000.

Boston lawyer Mitchell Garabedian says in a statement Monday that some of the eight victims offered settlements from the diocese’s compensation program want to accept them, while others feel “re-victimized.”

A diocesan spokeswoman didn’t immediately comment.

Also Monday, the Diocese of Syracuse listed 57 priests credibly accused of child sexual abuse. None are in active ministry.

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WASHINGTON (DC)
AFP

December 2, 2018

Well-known author and astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson on Sunday denied allegations by three women of sexual misconduct spanning several decades.

Tyson, 60, who has built a successful career on television and in his books explaining and popularizing science, had remained largely silent as three different women lodged complaints dating as far back as 1984.

But on Sunday, in a lengthy Facebook post, he responded.

“For a variety of reasons,” he wrote, “most justified, some unjustified, men accused of sexual impropriety in today’s ‘me-too’ climate are presumed to be guilty by the court of public opinion.”

While calling himself a “loving husband… a scientist and educator,” he wrote that “accusations can damage a reputation and a marriage. Sometimes irreversibly.”

In the first case, a woman alleged that Tyson drugged and raped her when both were graduate students at the University of Texas in 1984. She has said she remembered passing out after he gave her a drink and waking up later, naked, on his bed.

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GRAND RAPIDS (MI)
WXMI

December 3, 2018

The leader of the Church of Carson City, Michigan is responding after alarming allegations of sexual abuse within the church community for decades.

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NEW ORLEANS (LA)
NOLA.com | The Times-Picayune

November 2, 2018

By Jonathan Bullington

The Archdiocese of New Orleans’ decision Friday (Nov. 2) to release a list of 57 area clergy members “credibly accused” of sexually abusing minors was met with support from the leader of Jesuit High School, who said the release was done in the spirit of reconciliation and transparency.

Four people named on the list were at one time employed by the Mid-City high school, including a former president of the school.

“The horrible stories of abuse from the past have given us the task of reconciliation, which, though painful for members of our school community, is the only proper response for Christians,” said the school’s president, the Rev. Christopher S. Fronk, in a letter to the school community.

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ROME (ITALY)
Associated Press

December 4, 2018

By Nicole Winfield

The retired Vatican ambassador who convulsed the Holy See with accusations of sex abuse cover-up is offering his side of the story in a different scandal: a family fight over a multi-million dollar inheritance.

Archbishop Carlo Maria Vigano is trying to explain an Italian court ruling requiring him to pay his brother, who also is a priest, 1.8 million euros. The court’s decision generated headlines given Vigano’s unprecedented call for Pope Francis to resign over alleged failures in addressing clergy sex abuse.

In a statement Monday, Vigano said his brother had originally sought 40 million euros from their shared inheritance but said that a series of 10 civil, criminal and administrative cases had ruled against him. Vigano accused his brother of subjecting him to a “judicial siege and a veritable defamation campaign in the press.”

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{Thurgau Catholics raise their voices against sexual abuse}

GERMANY
Tagblatt

November 26, 2018

By Monika Wick

Eine Resolution der Thurgauer Synode verlangt eine umfassende Abklärung sexueller Übergriffe. Kirchenratspräsident Cyrill Bischof und Synodalpräsident Dominik Diezi trafen sich auf einem Podium mit Giorgio Prestele, Präsident des Fachgremiums zu sexuellen Übergriffen der Bischofskonferenz. Prestele erwartet weitere Fälle zu den 311 seit 2010 eingegangenen Meldungen.

«Wenn wir nichts erreichen, laufen uns die Leute davon», gibt ein Mitglied der Synode der Katholischen Landeskirche Thurgau zu bedenken. Auslöser für seine drastische Formulierung sind die sexuellen Übergriffe in der katholischen Kirche, die laut seiner Aussage immer mehr Gläubige als Begründung für ihren Austritt aus der Landeskirche nennen. Im Hinblick auf die Versammlung der Präsidenten der Bischofskonferenzen zum «Schutz von Minderjährigen», die vom 21. bis zum 24. Februar 2019 in Rom stattfindet, hat die Katholische Synode des Kantons Thurgau, das Kirchenparlament, eine Resolution erarbeitet, die sie Diözesanbischof Felix Gmür übergeben wird.

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SYRACUSE (NY)
syracuse.com

December 3, 2018

By Julie McMahon

The Roman Catholic Diocese of Syracuse today released a list of 57 priests with credible allegations of child sexual abuse against them.

The list includes 38 deceased priests. Nineteen priests are still alive. All of the living priests were previously removed from ministry, the diocese said.

No active priests have credible accusations of child sexual abuse against them, according to the diocese and Onondaga County district attorney.

Officials in September said 85 victims were known to the diocese. Claims against at least 16 of the priests named Monday were reported previously.

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CHICAGO (IL)
Medium

December 4, 2018

By Pat Navin

May 8, 1974 was an unseasonably cold, gusty and stormy day in Chicago. But inside the Chapel of the Immaculate Conception at St. Mary of the Lake Seminary in northwest suburban Mundelein, the assembled faithful beamed with warmth, pride and a sense of peace. Their sons, grandsons, brothers, nephews, cousins and friends were about to be ordained into the priesthood by John Patrick Cardinal Cody, prelate of the Archdiocese of Chicago, in a ceremony filled with all the pomp and circumstance the institution could muster.

The newly-ordained priests had already received notices of their first parish assignments and they were anxious to make their marks: baptizing babies, ministering to the sick and dying, celebrating the Eucharist, listening to confessions, presiding over weddings and funerals, and, apparently, for at least four of the new priests, sexually abusing boys (and, for one of them, girls as well).

Out of the nearly 100 Diocesan priests in the Chicago Archdiocese who have been credibly accused of abuse according to Bishop-Accountability.org (the Archdiocese puts the number at 65), the class of `74 carries the distinction of having the largest number of accused priests of any single ordination class. Three of the priests — Richard Barry “Doc Bartz, John Walter Calicott and Robert D. Craig — hit the ground running, with credible abuse allegations from their very first parish assignments. The fourth, James Craig Hagan, had not collected any substantiated reports from his first assignment, but made up for lost time at his second parish. Hagan was also the only one of the four who abused both boys and girls.

Their highly edited and redacted files, which became available when the Archdiocese was finally forced to make them public in 2014, include sordid details of abuse and a litany of excuses, cover-ups, reassignments from parish to parish to parish to positions as hospital chaplains or seminary officials. They contain notes from Joseph Cardinal Bernardin, Cody’s successor, and other Archdiocese religious administrators encouraging the abusers’ efforts at self-improvement and offering prayers of support. The files also contain mundane housekeeping notes on how the documented abusers would continue to receive their salaries, status reports on payments for their health insurance, auto insurance and other expenses, and options for future living arrangements.

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PITTSBURGH (PA)
South Hills Community News

December 4, 2018

By Karen Mansfield

Survivors and parishioners stood patiently in a single line at St. Thomas A’ Becket Roman Catholic Church in Jefferson Hills to tell their stories and share their anger following the release of the Pennsylvania grand jury report on clergy sexual abuse.

The listening session Dec. 3 was the second of four organized by the Catholic Diocese of Pittsburgh in an effort to provide a safe place for those in the church, including victims and members of the Catholic community, to begin the healing process.

Bishop David Zubik sat quietly near the altar and listened as survivors recounted details of sexual abuse at the hands of their parish priests.

Jim VanSickle, a survivor of clergy sexual abuse, said he is continuing to heal, 37 years after the abuse and that it negatively impacted his marriage and his relationship with his children.

“I stand here to tell you it’s OK. I’m healing. But it’s been 37 years,” he said.

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HARRISBURG (PA)
USA Today

December 4, 2018

By Monica Rhor

The Pennsylvania Supreme Court has ruled that the names of 11 priests accused of sexual abuse in a grand jury investigation will not be released.

In Monday’s 6-1 decision, the high court said that making the names public would obstruct the right to protect their reputation, which is guaranteed under the state constitution.

A group of former and current priests had argued that they were denied due process because they didn’t have enough time to defend themselves against a grand jury report that came out earlier this year.

The report, which concluded that hundreds of priests had abused children going back more than 70 years, was released with the names of those priests temporarily redacted..

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DENVER (CO)
Denver Catholic

November 27, 2018

By Moira Cullings

Growing up, Pat was a strong Catholic with a deep passion for her faith.

“I knew all of the responses before Vatican II,” she said. “I knew all of the altar boy responses in Latin. I even knew what they meant.”

That foundation of faith has carried Pat through a remarkable journey of strength and forgiveness. She’s remained in the Church her entire life — despite the abuse she suffered at the hands of a priest at just five years old.

Pat came forward about the abuse in 2002. It took several years, not because she was hesitant to talk about what happened, but because she didn’t remember it.

“I was gifted with repressed memories of the abuse,” said Pat. “I had no [recollection] of it at all until I was 48 years old.”

Psychologists say that repressed memories are unconsciously blocked by the mind because they are connected to a trauma. Although Pat couldn’t remember the experience for decades, its impact lingered. She has dealt with clinical depression her entire life, and, starting in 2001, that depression worsened for a reason she couldn’t place.

The next year, the abuse scandal broke in the Catholic Church and Pat began to realize what had happened to her. While sitting at Mass at Spirit of Christ Catholic Community in Arvada, Pat listened as Monsignor Robert Kinkel, the pastor at the time, read a letter from then-Archbishop of Denver Charles Chaput addressing the scandal.

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SPRINGFIELD (MO)
The Republican

December 3, 2018

By Shannon Young

David Baillargeon, a deacon at Holy Family Parish Roman Catholic church in Russell, claims he was reprimanded for saying a prayer during Mass on Sunday for a deacon in Buffalo, New York, who has called for the resignation of that diocese’s bishop.

Baillargeon spoke out Monday against the church’s handling of clergy sexual abuse, arguing that more needs to be done to investigate such cases, including in Western Massachusetts.

Baillargeon, who has worked with activist Olan Horne to advocate for survivors of clergy abuse, said local church officials have largely barred him from preaching after he was critical of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Springfield in a homily two years ago.

The deacon said he faced further pushback Sunday after offering prayers for Buffalo, New York, Deacon Paul Snyder, who has called for Catholic Bishop Richard Malone’s resignation.

“After the prayers of petition for the church, I said that I wanted to say a prayer for Deacon Paul Snyder — told the parishioners where he was and that he was the deacon at St. Mary’s Church there — and that I heard, from my smartphone really, that he had been suppressed from preaching because he spoke out against Bishop Malone and the clergy abuse that’s going on there in the Buffalo diocese,” Baillargeon said in an interview. “I said, ‘We need to pray for him,’ and then I raised my hand up and said, ‘He’s been suppressed for two months.’ And, I said, ‘Here, your own deacon has been suppressed for two years.'”

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PITTSBURGH (PA)
KDKA Radio

December 4, 2018

By Larry Richert and John Shumway

Length: 7:25

Attorney General of Pennsylvania, Josh Shapiro tells listeners that some of the predator priests name will not be released to the public. They also discuss how many investigations are taking place and how many calls have been reported to the abuse hotline. He explains what more is to come.

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BOOTHBAY (ME)
Boothbay Register

November 28, 2018

By Kevin Burnham

We, along with other news agencies in Maine, received word this past week of the investigation into the sexual abuse in the Catholic Church in the Diocese of Buffalo, New York. The State Attorney General ordered the investigation statewide in September and it is learned that the FBI has started its own investigation of the diocese.

Why should that concern us? Well, the Buffalo diocese is under the direction of one Bishop Richard J. Malone, the former Bishop of the Portland Diocese, who came under fire for “not telling the truth” about a case involving the Rev. Thomas M. Lee of Our Lady Queen of Peace in Boothbay Harbor. Lee was accused of sexual abuse dating back decades that spilled out in the early 2000s.

The Buffalo television station, WKBW, contacted this newspaper to see if we had a photograph of Lee to add to its investigative series about the abuse in the Buffalo diocese under Malone. You can find the station’s report online at https://bit.ly/2At7ELw

WKBW’s thorough investigative report includes an interview with Paul T. Kendrick, an advocate for victims of sexual abuse in the Diocese of Portland. Kendrick was accused of “harassment” by Malone after Kendrick continually asked the bishop to be more transparent about the sexual abuse cases in the Portland diocese.

“The Bishop Malone that I came to know here in Maine…is an actor on a stage,” said Kendrick, during the interview with WKBW. “Malone is a fake, a phony. He’s not telling the truth when he likes to say, ‘I never knew.’”

The report also includes information about the Lee case that the TV station obtained from John S. Brennan, former director of the Office of Professional Responsibility for the Diocese of Portland under Malone. In Brennan’s 60-page report on the Lee case, according to the TV station’s investigation, “the allegations went nowhere, even after the diocesan review board unanimously affirmed the complaint against Father Lee had been substantiated.”

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UNITED STATES
Legal Intelligencer

December 3, 2018

By Max Mitchell

A wave of lawsuits against Catholic dioceses has gained momentum in Pennsylvania courts and beyond in the wake of the explosive grand jury report on sexual abuse, and the state Senate’s failure to create a window for survivors in the statute of limitations has not held it back.

The legislative effort, which had been mounted in the wake of a groundbreaking grand jury report outlining more than 70 years of abuse at numerous Catholic dioceses across the state, had garnered bipartisan support, and many survivors said they were hopeful that, after several failed attempts to open a litigation window for survivors, they would finally have their day in court. But the measure was bottled up in the state Senate.

The tide of litigation was not stemmed, however.

In the past few weeks, a dozen suits have been filed against the Roman Catholic Diocese of Pittsburgh, 20 suits were filed against a Connecticut diocese, two class action suits were filed in federal court against the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, and many other individual actions have been filed against dioceses in Pennsylvania and across the country. The suburban Philadelphia law firm Hamburg, Rubin, Mullin, Maxwell & Lupin even set up a team of lawyers to focus on representing alleged victims.

Several attorneys who spoke with The Legal said they are seeing a renewed interest in sex abuse claims. The interest, they said, is fueled in large part by the grand jury report, as well as changing attitudes toward victims and newly uncovered evidence that might provide a broader basis for claims to circumvent the statute of limitations.

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BUFFALO (NY)
Spectrum News

December 4, 2018

An attorney who represents several people who claim abuse at the hands of priests in the Catholic Diocese of Buffalo stated that he is receiving settlement offers for his clients.

Mitchell Garabedian says eight offers have come in from the Independent Reconciliation and Compensation Program, with dollar amounts ranging from $10,000 to $340,000.

Garabedian says that while some of his clients want to accept the offers, others feel re-victimized by them:

“All eight clergy sexual abuse victims feel as though the Catholic Church still does not care and will never care about the pain caused by clergy sexual abuse.”

The diocese disputes the term “settlement,” instead calling it compensation to promote healing and bring closure.

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LOS ANGELES (CA)
Hollywood Reporter

November 30, 2018

By Maureen Ryan

During the past year, individuals have learned a lot, but institutions haven’t changed at all. So the guilds have to step up.
For the past year, those who work in the entertainment and media industries have been deluged with stories about harassment, toxicity, assault and rape on sets, in offices, in hotels rooms and just about everywhere else. These stories are hard to read. “Gut-churning” doesn’t quite cover it.

Unfortunately, that was the easy part. Changing Hollywood culture is going to be much, much harder.

I don’t say that lightly. I reported some of these stories over the past year, and hearing the fear in the voices of the men and women I talked to was harrowing. Listening to competent, hard-working professionals recount story after story of abuses of power that were covered up, denied or explained away altered my outlook on a fundamental level.

It convinced me that this work is just beginning. What the industry needs to do now is move beyond reading the latest exhaustive report about this or that individual and stop assuming that things will change if we take out a few bad apples.

Folks, the whole barrel of apples is rotten. It needs to be washed out and refilled from the bottom up.

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WASHINGTON (DC)
Raw Story

December 3, 2018

By Bob Brigham

Leading legal scholar and child advocate Marci Hamilton went off on Donald Trump’s Labor Secretary during a Monday evening appearance on The Rachel Maddow Show.

Maddow said that “The Miami Herald deserves congratulations for its fairly epic new reporting on Trump’s Labor Secretary, Alex Acosta, and specifically on the deal that he struck when he was a U.S. Attorney with a very rich, very well connected, very prolific serial sex offender.”

“Despite local police uncovering allegations of straight-up child rape and the FBI identifying dozens of victims, Alex Acosta struck a ‘no prosecution agreement’ in the Jeffrey Epstein case in Florida,” Maddow noted. “He struck a deal with Epstein that made Epstein immune from prosecution for federal crimes.”

Law professor Marci Hamilton, the CEO and Academic Director at CHILD USA, joined Maddow to discuss the scandal.

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MORRISTOWN (NJ)
NJ Advance Media

December 3, 2018

By Thomas Moriarty

A New Jersey lawyer is scheduled to stand trial this week in a lawsuit accusing him of telling others generally how much a Catholic order paid an alleged victim of sexual abuse.

The Order of St. Benedict claims Gregory Gianforcaro breached a confidentiality clause in a 1988 settlement with the order when he told reporters the Catholic order paid a seven-figure sum to resolve the sexual abuse allegations.

Gianforcarlo’s trial was scheduled to begin Monday before Superior Court Judge Rosemary E. Ramsay in Morristown, court records show.

The Order, which operates the Delbarton School in Morristown, has been a defendant in multiple lawsuits brought by former students who allege monks sexually abused them while they attended the school.

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SAN FRANCISCO (CA)
KGO TV

December 3, 2018

By Cheryl Jennings

ABC 7 News Anchor Cheryl Jennings recently had an exclusive interview with Congresswoman Jackie Speier of San Mateo County. They talked about the Congresswoman’s new book, “Undaunted”, in which she shares some very difficult things about her life.

Speier reveals a horrific childhood ordeal.

And, she goes into detail about what happened to her at the Jonestown Massacre 40 years ago, in Guyana. The leader of a cult ordered the deaths of 900 people. Speier was shot multiple times and left for dead. She was included in a recent documentary Jonestown on ABC. While she was describing the contents of the book, Speier began to slowly describe what happened when she was just a child.

Jackie Speier: “When I was a young girl, my grandfather molested me. And it took me years to tell my mother.
Cheryl Jennings: “It was her father?”
Jackie Speier: It was my father’s father. And I had just basically put it away.
Cheryl Jennings: “How old were you.
Jackie Speier: “You know, I think i was maybe five, six, seven.
Cheryl Jennings: “So this is a recovered memory.
Jackie Speier: “Yes.”

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ALBUQUERQUE (NM)
Albuquerque Journal

December 4, 2018

By Colleen Heild

The Archdiocese of Santa Fe, as expected, filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection Monday under the weight of civil litigation alleging decades of clergy sexual abuse of children and the failure of church officials to prevent such abuse.

The filing comes after the archdiocese has settled nearly 300 claims of child sexual abuse by Catholic clergy, according to the Santa Fe Archdiocese in a recent website posting. The number of pending sex abuse cases listed in the filing is 36.

The archdiocese’s petition for reorganization shows:

• An estimated $3.7 million in liabilities, although elsewhere in the petition the total estimated liability is from $10 million to $50 million.

• Creditors with the 20 largest unsecured claims are clergy sex abuse claimaints who are listed according to their initials, and their lawyers in Santa Fe and Albuquerque; the petition estimates each claim at $100,000.

• The total of all archdiocese assets was listed as $49 million, including real estate with an estimated value of $31.5 million.

• More than $57 million in property is being held in trust for the dozens of parishes in the archdiocese; more than $34 million in property transfers to parishes occurred in the past two years.

Archbishop of Santa Fe John C. Wester announced the decision to file for Chapter 11 bankruptcy last Thursday in Albuquerque. (Jim Thompson/Albuquerque Journal)

Archbishop John C. Wester said he decided to file for reorganization to ensure that all claims of child abuse survivors, including those who come forward in the future, can be settled “fairly and equitably.”

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WHEELING (WV)
World Religion News

December 3, 2018

By Gary Nguyen

The Roman Catholic Archdiocese of West Virginia released the names of clergy who are accused of multiple child sexual abuse crimes. Some cases date back to the 1950s.

According to the Diocese of Wheeling-Charleston, among the 18 clergy members mentioned in the list, 11 of them have died. No one in the list is actively ministering to constituents.

s per the West Virginia Roman Catholic archdiocese, the public release of names pertains to the 2002 U.S. bishops’ approved “Charter for the Protection of Children and Young People.” The move is in accordance with the policy adopted by the diocese on matters of sexual abuse since 1985.

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NEW BRUNSWICK (CANADA)
CBC

December 4, 2018

By Gabrielle Fahmy

Victims of abuse by Catholic priests in New Brunswick have been waiting almost three years for compensation after reaching out-of-court settlements, and there is no sign the money will arrive anytime soon.

CBC News has learned as many as 29 sexual abuse victims have reached tentative settlements in their civil lawsuits against the archdiocese of Moncton, N.B.

These are men who did not participate in the conciliation process led by the archdiocese between 2012 and 2014, but rather chose to sue the church on their own.

But the Moncton archdiocese said it handed over $10.6 million to compensate 109 sexual abuse victims who came forward during the conciliation process. It has been locked in a legal battle with its insurance company over who should compensate victims of sexual abuse for years.

Many of these tentative settlements at issue were reached after closed-door meetings in early 2016.

“They said they were going to try getting our money as soon as possible within a year,” said a 54-year-old Moncton man. Because he is a victim of sexual abuse, CBC News has agreed not to reveal his identity.

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SYRACUSE (NY)
CNYCentral

December 3, 2018

It’s a wound on the Catholic Diocese of Syracuse that will not heal anytime soon — many priests credibly accused of child sexual abuse.

On Monday, the diocese released the names of 57 priests in the local area with accusations that go back to 1950 in hopes of moving past the conversation of abuse in the Catholic Church that has been in the national spotlight since this summer’s investigation by the attorney general’s office of Pennsylvania, which claims more than 1,000 children where abused by more than 300 “predator priests” in Pennsylvania.

“It was smart to release the names,” said parishioner Bill Kinne. “We’ve go to pray and hope this will help heal and get over it.”

For years, many have pushed for the names to be made public. Bishop Robert Cunningham said he decided to release the names after much reflection and prayer.

And even though the list of names is shocking, some say it might not even be half of the clergy who offended.

“Every parish probably had a perpetrator and that every Catholic in their lifetime attending church in the Diocese of Syracuse probably ran into a perpetrator,” said victim advocate Patrick Wall.

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WAITE PARK (MN)
Saint Cloud Times

December 3, 2018

By Jordyn Brown and Nora G. Hertel

A former student at Holy Innocents Catholic School in Waite Park filed a lawsuit against the school Monday alleging sexual abuse by five members of the family that runs the school and a former priest who was assigned and lived there for years.

The woman is calling the school a “public nuisance” and is asking for it to be permanently shut down.

A copy of the lawsuit filed by Jeff Anderson and Associates, the law firm representing the woman, says she endured “ritual sexual abuse” while she was a student at Holy Innocents from 1978 to 1984, when she was 5 to 11 years old. Only the school is named as a defendant.

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COLUMBUS (OH)
WSYX/WTTE TV

December 3, 2018

By Seema Iyer

When the Steubenville Diocese released its list of priests accused of sex abuse it left many people having to relive what they would rather forget.

Beth Rocker was between 10 and 12 years old when she says former priest Gary Zalenski – whose name was on that list – began molesting her. Rocker says it started in the early 1990’s after she and her brother brother became altar servers at their church, Saint Peter and Paul in Lore City, Ohio.

“He would come up behind me and squeeze my chest or from the front squeeze my chest, I’d feel his penis be hard pushing up against me,” Rocker said.

Zalenski disputes the claim, saying there weren’t any female altar servers during the five years he was there and he provided five letters that essentially say as much.

Rocker said another incident with Zalenski happened on a day she thought she’d spending time hanging with a big group of friends from church, but ended up on Zalenski’s boat with just him and her younger brother.

She says Zalenski told her to get on his lap to drive the boat and then “he opened his legs and I sat down in between his legs and then his penis got hard and then my backside got wet and then I got up and we jumped off the boat.”

Rocker says she and her brother both jumped off the boat into the lake because she was scared and was trying to think of a way to get out of the situation.

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HARRISBURG (PA)
Philadelphia Inquirer

December 3, 2018

By Angela Couloumbis and Liz Navratil

As the Catholic Church undergoes a national reckoning for its handling of the clergy sex abuse scandal, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court on Monday ruled it would not release the identities of 11 clerics implicated in a high-profile grand jury investigation of such abuse in nearly every diocese in the state.

In its majority opinion, the high court sided with a group of former and current clergy who claimed that passages in a state grand jury report, released earlier this year, are either inaccurate or unfairly harm their reputations.

The report, the result of a two-year investigation by the state Attorney General’s office, chronicled seven decades worth of abuse in six out of the state’s eight dioceses. Its public release this past August sparked a wave of similar state and federal investigations across the country as well as the resignation of one of the nation’s top Catholic leaders.

“We acknowledge that this outcome may be unsatisfying to the public and to the victims of the abuse detailed in the report,” wrote Justice Debra Todd, who authored the majority opinion. “While we understand and empathize with these perspectives, constitutional rights are of the highest order, and even alleged sexual abusers, or those abetting them, are guaranteed by our Commonwealth’s Constitution the rights of due process.”

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NORFOLK (NE)
Norfolk Daily News

December 3, 2018

Some churches in the Catholic Archdiocese of Omaha used time before and during Mass on Sunday to react to the recent revelation of 38 past clergy members being accused of sexual misdeeds with minors.

The archdiocese announced Friday that “substantiated claims of sexual abuse of, or sexual misconduct with, a minor” had been made against 34 priests and four deacons on a list it provided to Nebraska Attorney General Doug Peterson, who had asked for the information.

The files go back to 1978, as requested by the attorney general. Only a few of the accused have faced criminal charges or civil lawsuits. None of the individuals named are currently active or serving in Omaha Archdiocese parishes, which include those in Northeast Nebraska.

At Sacred Heart Parish in Norfolk, no mention was made of the latest report during Masses on Saturday evening at St. Mary’s Catholic Church.

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DENVER (CO)
The Colorado Sun

December 2, 2018

By Diane Carman

I’m trying to imagine a Colorado bank approving a 30-year home mortgage for a 15-year-old. Or an agency authorizing an adoption of an infant by a 14-year-old. Or a 13-year-old hiring a divorce attorney.

OK, those images are absurd. After all, you have to be 16 to get a driver’s license, 18 to vote.

And yet, in Colorado and 17 other states, children can be legally married to a man or woman over 21. Since 2006, at least 2,240 marriage licenses were issued in Colorado to couples where at least one person was under 18, many 15 years old or younger.

In so many ways, that’s not just absurd, it’s unconscionable.

“In terms of the whole development of the brain, adolescence is such an important time,” said Joanne Belknap, professor of criminology and social justice at the University of Colorado Boulder. “It’s the time when we are determining who we are outside of our parents and what our beliefs are versus those of everyone around us.”

It’s when we begin to establish what is trendily referred to as “agency.”

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OMAHA (NE)
Omaha World-Herald

December 3, 2018

By Kevin Cole

Some churches in the Catholic Archdiocese of Omaha used time before and during Mass on Sunday to react to the revelation of 38 clergy members being accused of sexual misdeeds with minors.

The archdiocese announced Friday that “substantiated claims of sexual abuse of, or sexual misconduct with, a minor” had been made against 34 priests and four deacons on a list it provided to Nebraska Attorney General Doug Peterson, who had asked for the information. The files go back to 1978, as requested by the attorney general. Only a few of the accused have faced criminal charges or civil lawsuits.

At St. Columbkille in Papillion, the Rev. Dave Reeson told church members that the Steinhausen Center will be renamed because the Rev. Robert O. Steinhausen was named in the report. Steinhausen died in 1993 at age 70 after 21½ years at the helm of St. Columbkille.

The archdiocese received a substantiated allegation against Steinhausen in 2008, after his death, said Deacon Tim McNeil, chancellor of the archdiocese.

He said the archdiocese considers an allegation substantiated when it is supported by sufficient evidence or information, leading archdiocesan officials to believe that the claim is true.

A second allegation was made against Steinhausen, but the information was received third-hand and couldn’t be substantiated, McNeil said.

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BUFFALO (NY)
Buffalo News

December 3, 2018

By Jay Tokasz

Administrators of a program to compensate childhood victims of clergy sex abuse have made at least one settlement offer – to a man who accused a Buffalo Diocese priest of molesting him in a church rectory.

The man was offered $35,000 to settle his abuse claim and agree to not sue the Buffalo Diocese, said the man’s attorney, Kevin Stocker.

Stocker described the offer as insulting.

“It’s tough to put a value on wrecking peoples’ lives and wrecking their families’ lives, but I know it’s not $35,000,” Stocker said.

It appears to be one of the first offers made. The News spoke last week with more than a dozen victims and attorneys who represent victims – all of whom said they had not yet received offers. Some victims and attorneys said they had yet to meet with the administrators of the program, and they expressed frustration over how long the process is taking.

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NORWICH (CT)
Hartford Courant

November 28, 2018

By Dave Altimari

The Roman Catholic Diocese of Norwich is facing 20 lawsuits filed this week alleging abuse of teenage students at The Academy at Mount Saint John, a Deep River residential treatment center, in the 1990s.

The lawsuits were filed by Hartford attorney Patrick Tomasiewicz, alleging students were abuse at the hands of at least four staff members, although the majority of the allegations were against two now-deceased brothers.

The academy used to be a residential boarding school where the state Department of Children and Families and the juvenile courts referred minors. A number of similar lawsuits have previously been filed against the facility.

It is now called The Connecticut Transition Academy for students with special needs and is no longer a boarding school. Students are referred from any school district in the state. The diocese still oversees the academy.

“We represent a lot of people that were harmed and we are going to do our best for them,” Tomasiewicz said.

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HARTFORD (CT)
The Associated Press

November 28, 2018

The Roman Catholic Diocese of Norwich, Connecticut, is facing 20 lawsuits stemming from allegations of sexual abuse during the 1990s at a residential boarding school for minors.

Attorney Patrick Tomasiewicz filed the lawsuits this week, claiming teenage students at The Academy at Mount St. John in Deep River were sexually abused by two now-deceased brothers.

The lawsuits say that the victims were between 13 and 15 years old and that the abuse occurred between 1990 and 1996.

Minors used to be referred to the treatment facility by the state Department of Children and Families and juvenile courts. It has since become an academy for students with special needs. It’s still overseen by the diocese.

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NEW YORK (NY)
New York Daily News

November 28, 2018

By Rachel DeSantis

Owen Labrie, the former New Hampshire prep school student convicted on felony charges that stemmed from a rape allegation, is headed back to court Wednesday as he continues to fight for a new trial.

The 23-year-old Labrie will reportedly argue that his legal team was ineffective in defending him against “certain uses of computer services prohibited,” of which he was found guilty in August 2015.

It was Labrie’s only felony conviction (he was found guilty of four misdemeanors, including sexual assault), but it came with a lifetime on the sex offender registry.

Labrie was 18 and a student at the prestigious St. Paul’s School in Concord, N.H. in May 2014 when he sexually assaulted a 15-year-old freshman girl as part of an alleged school ritual in which seniors compete to sleep with the most underclassmen.

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SYRACUSE (NY)
Jeff Anderson & Associates

December 3, 2018

[Note: Correction to News Release Regarding Diocese of Syracuse’s Release of 57 Names of Credibly Accused Priests: (Syracuse, New York) – An earlier press release identified a Father Thomas Trane as working at St. Adam’s parish in Oswego, NY. Neither this individual nor this parish exist. These names are fictitious names used in court filings. The true identities of the parties and location of these allegations are unknown.]

Diocese of Syracuse Releases List of 57 Names of Priests Credibly Accused of Child Sexual Abuse

Attorneys, abuse survivors, call on Bp. Cunningham and the New York bishops to release all information and histories on every credibly accused priest

(Syracuse, New York) – Today, the Diocese of Syracuse released a list of names of 57 priests with credible allegations of sexual abuse of a minor. Until today, Bishop Robert J. Cunningham has refused to release the list of names of credibly accused priests. As former Bishop of the Diocese of Ogdensburg and after working as Chancellor and Vicar General in the Diocese of Buffalo for nearly two decades, Bp. Cunningham stated on Saturday that he had concluded that not releasing the names had become a “roadblock” to the local Church.

“We applaud any time a diocese comes clean with long-held, dangerous secrets, yet this release is still a half measure and not the full truth,” said Attorney Jeff Anderson who represents several sexual abuse survivors in the Diocese of Syracuse and across New York. “We know, in having scrutinized the practices of Bishop Cunningham and his predecessor, that there are more names. The histories and concealment of these offenders, by the officials in the diocese, also needs to be made public. It’s time for the full truth.”

On March 14, 2018 the law firm of Jeff Anderson & Associates released a report detailing the names and histories of 19 priests in the Diocese of Syracuse who were accused of sexually abusing minors. One of these priests, Fr. Thomas Trane, was not included in the Diocese’s release today even though Fr. Trane was sued for sexually abusing a child from approximately 1988 to 1989 at St. Adam’s parish in Oswego, NY.

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PITTSBURGH (PA)
Religion News Service/USA Today

November 29, 2018

The suspicious looks were one thing, but the whispers are what David Hickton remembers from the Sunday mornings two years ago when he would rise from his pew at SS. Simon & Jude to receive Holy Communion.

“I could hear the ‘tsk, tsk, tsk’ while I was going up the aisle,” he says. “Others were muttering, ‘Of all the nerve!’”

Hickton – then the chief federal prosecutor in western Pennsylvania known for his landmark indictment in 2014 of Chinese military hackers for stealing trade secrets from state institutions such as U.S. Steel – had just revealed his new target: the Catholic Church.

The former altar boy from working-class Castle Shannon put the full weight of the federal government behind an incendiary theory that the Altoona-Johnstown Diocese should be viewed as an interstate criminal enterprise – akin to the Mafia – based on allegations that for years, up to 50 priests had abused hundreds of children.

The inquiry, which cast him as a traitor to some in his own congregation, was resolved far short of a dramatic courtroom confrontation when the federal government and the diocese agreed last year to create an outside panel to guard child safety.

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MORRISTOWN (TN)
The Citizen Tribune

November 29, 2018

By Ken Little

A group of survivors of priest abuses is continuing calls for a third party to investigate the Catholic Church and allegations against priests.

Former Priest Willam Casey is among four former pastors at Notre Dame Catholic Church in Greeneville listed among 13 priests and former priests accused or convicted of sexually abusing a minor.

The list was released Nov. 2 by the Diocese of Nashville.

The Survivors Network of those Abused by Priestsgroup claims there are more names not yet made public, an allegation that the Diocese of Nashville has refuted.

East Tennessee SNAP advocate Susan Vance said this week that an independent, third-party investigation of the Catholic Church in Tennessee needs to he conducted in order to get all the facts.

Nine of the 13 priests and former priests on the list released by the diocese are dead. Two others, including Casey, are in prison. None are in active ministry, the Diocese of Nashville said in a news release.

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IOWA CITY (IA)
CRUX

November 28, 2018

By Ryan J. Foley

A Catholic diocese on Wednesday defended its decision to continue employing a priest who told police he was trying to rape a woman when he was arrested naked in an Iowa mall in 2013.

The Diocese of Sioux City issued a statement for the first time acknowledging the 5-year-old incident involving Father Jeremy Wind, calling it a “mental health episode” from which he recovered with the help of medication and treatment. The diocese gave no details about what occurred and told parishioners the scrutiny was unfortunate and unnecessary because “there is nothing newsworthy to report.”

The statement came in response to inquiries from The Associated Press, which used the state’s open records law to shed light on a criminal case that was recently erased from public court files. It marks the latest diocese personnel matter that has come under scrutiny since its acknowledgment in October to having kept quiet a priest’s 1986 admission to sexually abusing roughly 50 boys.

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WHEELING (WV)
WTRF

November 29, 2018

By Sam Coniglio

Catholic dioceses across the country are coming clean after yet another abuse scandal has rocked the Church.

The Diocese of Wheeling-Charleston has gone public as well, as they have released the names of 31 priests with credible accusations against them of abuse.

“We hope the release of this list,” said Archbishop William E. Lori, Apostolic Administrator for the Diocese of Wheeling-Charleston, “will be one of many steps taken to restore trust with parishioners and the broader community in West Virginia. We hope people see the release of this list as a sign of good faith that the diocese is committed to transparency, accountability and to providing a safe environment for children and adults.”

The list released by the Diocese dates back to the 1950s. In its review, the Diocese says that they reviewed more than 2,000 files of about 800 priests, which in total contained tens of thousands of documents.

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VATICAN CITY
Reuters

December 2, 2018

By Philip Pullella

Men with deep-rooted homosexual tendencies should not be admitted to the Catholic clergy, and it would be better for priests who are actively gay to leave rather than lead a double life, Pope Francis says in a new book.

While he has previously spoken of the need for better screening of candidates for the religious life, his comments suggesting that priests who cannot keep their vows of celibacy should leave are some of his clearest to date.

Francis made the comments in a book-length interview with Spanish priest Fernando Prado called “The Strength of Vocation”, in which he discusses the challenges of being a priest or nun today.

Francis said in the book that homosexuality in the Church “is something that worries me”. It is due to be published this week in several languages. An advance copy of the Italian version was made available to Reuters.

“The question of homosexuality is a very serious one,” he said, adding that those entrusted with training men to be priests must be certain that candidates are “humanly and emotionally mature” before they can be ordained.

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[abuse: Norbert Denef calls for one million euros]

GERMANY
Leipziger Volkszeitung

November 29, 2018

By Mathias Schönknecht

Norbert Denef wurde als Kind von einem Pfarrer in Delitzsch über Jahre missbraucht. Der 69-Jährige sagt: „Das Bistum Magdeburg trägt Schuld an meiner Krebserkrankung“ und fordert eine Million Euro.

Der in Delitzsch geborene Norbert Denef wurde als Kind jahrelang von einem katholischen Pfarrer missbraucht. Als erstes deutsches Opfer bekam er eine finanzielle Entschädigung – 25 000 Euro. Jetzt geht sein Kampf gegen die Kirche weiter.

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