ABUSE TRACKER

ST. LOUIS (MO)
Post Dispatch

December 23, 2018

An investigation by the Illinois attorney general into child sexual assault in the Catholic Church echoes what’s been found in other states: a widespread, decades-long pattern of abuse and coverup involving hundreds of priests.

Missouri’s own investigation continues, with victims’ advocates complaining that outgoing Attorney General Josh Hawley hasn’t been aggressive enough. With Hawley heading to the U.S. Senate, his replacement, Eric Schmitt, has an opportunity to start on the right foot by making the investigation a top priority.

America was stunned this year when an investigation in Pennsylvania determined that some 300 priests had abused roughly 1,000 children over a 70-year period, as the church actively covered the abusers’ tracks. Those findings spawned similar investigations in other states, including Missouri and Illinois.

Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan announced her office’s findings last week, and it was, again, stunning. As the Post-Dispatch’s Nassim Benchaabane reported, Madigan’s investigators uncovered allegations of sexual abuse against at least 500 clergy that the church knew about but never made public.

In many cases, they found, the church declined to even investigate allegations. Some abuse survivors weren’t told that others had been victimized by the same clergy members. There were also instances in which church officials used details of the victims’ personal lives to discredit them.

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NEW YORK (NY)
New York Times

December 22, 2018

Pope Francis had grim tidings for predatory priests, in this life and the next.

“Hand yourself over to human justice, and prepare for divine justice,” the pope said in a Christmas address at the Vatican, making clear that the church will no longer protect them, “hush up or not take seriously any case.”

The warning came after the release of the latest catalog of church horrors, a scathing report by the Illinois attorney general, Lisa Madigan, finding that nearly 700 priests had been accused of abusing children over the years, while the names of only 185 were made public. It’s terrible, and terribly familiar. Earlier this year, a grand jury report in Pennsylvania accused bishops of covering up seven decades of widespread clerical abuse of children, and at least 16 state attorneys general have opened similar investigations.

The words of the pope and the authorities — about justice, divine and human — should be of deep concern at two major gatherings that the Catholic Church hopes will initiate genuine change in an institution almost brought to ruin by cascading revelations of clerics’ sexual abuse of minors, and systematic cover-ups by their bishops.

Action at the meetings — first a gathering of all American bishops outside Chicago in early January, then a summit meeting of the heads of all the national bishops’ conferences in the Vatican in late February — will be crucial if the church is to overcome broad skepticism after years of denial, obstruction of justice and callousness toward victims of predatory priests.

The depth of the problem was revealed nearly 17 years ago when The Boston Globe published its pioneering report on abuse in the Boston diocese.

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ROME (ITALY)
Associated Press

December 22, 2018

The Anglican Church’s representative to the Holy See has resigned following an allegation of sexual misconduct.

A statement from the Anglican Centre in Rome, an ecumenical study center and headquarters for the Archbishop of Canterbury’s envoy to the Holy See, announced the resignation Friday.

Archbishop Bernard Ntahoturi, former Anglican primate of Burundi, was appointed in 2017. He didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

Details of the alleged misconduct weren’t released. A brief statement issued by the center said Ntahoturi was suspended last week and that the governors of the center had accepted his resignation.

Anglicans split from Catholicism in 1534, after England’s King Henry VIII was denied a marriage annulment. The two churches have forged closer ties in the last few decades.

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Vice
|
December 21 2018

By Alex Norcia

The latest horrific revelations of sexual abuse unpunished show, yet again, that the Church’s first tactic is to make excuses and hide.

On Thursday, the New York Times published yet another damning report about sexual abuse in the Catholic Church, the latest in an endless series of horror stories about a broken institution that has long provided predators with access to children. In this case, Reverend Donald G. Timone, a priest repeatedly accused of sexual abuse, was revealed to have administered mass in New York as recently as earlier this month. This despite the Archdiocese of New York, the second-largest in the United States, being under immense pressure to hold abusers to account, with the Church at large embroiled in a global scandal that shows no signs of relenting. To that end, in September, Cardinal Timothy Dolan announced a sex-abuse review board, headed by a former federal judge, to look into how crimes and other wrongdoing have been dealt with in the past, and how investigations might be improved on going forward.

According to the Times, Timone was already involved with another entity, the Independent Reconciliation and Compensation Program, a Church-sponsored panel created by Cardinal Dolan that sounds like something Winston Smith might stumble upon in 1984. That body paid settlements in cases involving at least two Timone accusers last year, one of whom committed suicide in 2015. The logical follow-up to would seem to be the priest’s defrocking, but no, actually: The archdiocese, which previously suspended Timone in 2002, never made a definitive ruling on his “fitness”—though it has since reopened his case—which left him free to operate in an official capacity around vulnerable members of the faith.

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FT. WORTH (TX)
Star Telegram

December 19, 2018

By Nichole Manna

A Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary graduate who resigned over the summer from the South Carolina Baptist Convention has been indicted on a charge of sexually assaulting a teenager in Arlington more than two decades ago.

Mark Edwin Aderholt, 47, was originally arrested on July 3 in South Carolina on a warrant issued in the Tarrant County case. Court records in Tarrant County show an indictment was handed up in the case on Tuesday for sexual assault of a child under the age of 17.

Aderholt has been out on bond since his arrest.

The indictments — four of them in total — brought relief to Aderholt’s accuser, Anne Marie Miller.

She was 16 when the alleged assault happened in 1997.

“I’m glad that truth is being heard and justice is being served and it is my hope that Mr. Aderholt will see this as another opportunity to confess and admit what he did,” she said Wednesday.

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KANSAS CITY (MO)
Kansas City Star

By Judy L. Thomas

December 20, 2018

A former California youth pastor now on leave from the International House of Prayer in Kansas City has been dropped as a defendant in a sexual abuse claim against his former church.

Jennifer Roach says Brad Tebbutt, who in recent years had been running a ministry at IHOP for people in their 50s, is cooperating in her lawsuit against CrossPoint Community Church, formerly First Baptist Church of Modesto, Calif. Tebbutt was youth pastor at First Baptist in the 1980s when the abuse occurred, the lawsuit alleges.

Roach, now 47, filed the lawsuit in May against CrossPoint, First Baptist and Tebbutt, alleging that Tebbutt sexually abused her for 2½ years in the 1980s, starting when she was 15.

Roach, an ordained Anglican minister and therapist in Washington state whose clients include sexual abuse victims, also alleged in the lawsuit that church officials at First Baptist Church of Modesto covered up the abuse.

“I always knew First Baptist/CrossPoint mishandled my situation,” Roach told The Star on Thursday. “What I didn’t know was how many other adult men were also preying on teenagers at that church. They knew about the situation, did nothing, and sent those men off to do the same thing at other churches.

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SPOKANE (WA)
Catholic News Agency

December 21, 2018

The Diocese of Spokane said Thursday it was unacceptable that Jesuit priests credibly accused of sexual abuse were unsupervised on the campus of Gonzaga University. While Spokane’s current bishop had no knowledge the priests had been living at the university, the diocese said its prior bishop was informed of their presence in 2011.

“The Diocese of Spokane shares the concern of those who are angry and saddened to learn that the Oregon Province of Jesuits — now part of the Jesuits West Province — placed Jesuits credibly accused of sexual abuse at the Cardinal Bea House on Gonzaga University’s campus without informing the Gonzaga community,” a Dec. 20 statement from the diocese read.

In June 2011, “the Jesuit provincial, Father Patrick Lee, informed then-Bishop Blase Cupich that seven priests with safety plans in place were living at Bea House,” the diocesan statement added.

“Bishop Thomas Daly — who was installed in 2015 — was not informed by the Jesuits or Gonzaga University that these men were living at Cardinal Bea House.”

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Chicago (IL)
CBS TV

December 22, 2018

A recent investigation by the Illinois attorney general finds the Catholic Church failed to publicly identify the names of more than 500 priests accused of sexual abuse.

However, the Archdiocese of Chicago says this report will not be talked about when bishops from around the United States gather in the north suburbs next month.

Cardinal Blase Cupich is hosting 300 bishops at a spiritual retreat at Mundelein Seminary Jan. 2-8.

An archdiocese spokeswoman says during this time, clergy sex abuse will not be discussed.

The gathering is strictly for prayer, fasting and spiritual lectures.

A spokeswoman for Attorney General Lisa Madigan calls it absurd not to discuss the findings.

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NOME (AK)
KNOM Radio

December 21, 2018

Several stories have entered the media recently concerning the offenses of KNOM founder Fr. James Poole, SJ.

First, former KNOM volunteer Helene Stapinski wrote a column for Commonweal magazine as part of its “Why We Came. Why We Left. Why We Stayed” series, documenting different reactions to the sex abuse crisis in the Catholic Church. Poole was no longer working at the radio station in the early 1990s when Stapinski was on staff, but insofar as his name was still affixed to KNOM correspondence at that time, and recordings of his voice occasionally sent over the airwaves, she indicates that she came to feel like an unwitting accomplice to Poole’s abuse and deception.

Then, a lengthy story by the Center for Investigative Reporting highlights Poole in a broader effort to show how clergy sex abuse in the former Oregon province of the Jesuit order was ignored or covered up by Jesuit superiors. This was packaged as a print story and picked up by the Associated Press, and also presented as an audio documentary, reported by former KNOM employee Emily Schwing. She served as KNOM News Director for three months in early 2016. Additional stories about Poole’s crimes have since appeared.

This is not the first time that Poole’s numerous acts of sexual abuse against minors have been documented publicly. The PBS investigative series Frontline told Poole’s story in 2011 as part of a program on clergy sex abuse in rural Alaska, and numerous TV, radio, and print stories covered the allegations against Poole as they became public in 2004 and 2005.

First and foremost, it is crucial to reiterate that Poole’s actions are indefensible and inexcusable. He brought pain and humiliation to his victims, and shame even to those of us who never knew him, but are forced to deal with his reprehensible legacy. The lawsuits against Poole and other priests and religious sent the Diocese of Fairbanks into bankruptcy in 2008, and nearly ended KNOM. But the station emerged in 2010 as a 501(c)(3) nonprofit corporation, remaining faithfully Catholic in its identity, and with a volunteer board of directors serving as owner in place of the diocese.

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KNOXVILLE (TN)
Knoxville News

December 22, 2018

By Terry Mattingly

It was in 1983 that parents told leaders of the Diocese of Lafayette, Louisiana, west of New Orleans, that Father Gilbert Gauthe had molested their sons.

Dominoes started falling. The bishop offered secret settlements to nine families — but one refused to remain silent.

The rest is a long, long story. Scandals about priests abusing children — the vast majority of cases involve teenage males — have been making news ever since, including the firestorm unleashed by The Boston Globe’s “Spotlight” series that won a Pulitzer Prize in 2003.

This old, tragic story flared up again in 2018, and Religion News Association members selected the release of a sweeping Pennsylvania grand jury report — with 301 Catholic priests, in six dioceses, accused of abusing at least 1,000 minors over seven decades — as the year’s top religion story.

“The allegations contained in this report are horrific, and there are important lessons to take away from it,” said Michael Plachy, a partner at Lewis, Roca, Rothgerber, Christie, a national law firm that emphasizes religious liberty cases. However, “to be candid, much of what’s in this report has been known for years. … It’s important, but it’s mostly old news.”

The Archdiocese of Philadelphia — a diocese not included in the grand jury report — requested an analysis of the 884-page document focusing on the impact of the church’s 2002 Charter for the Protection Children and Young People. Among the law firm’s findings: Of 680 victims whose claims mentioned specific years, 23 cited abuse after the charter — 3 percent of claims in the grand jury report. The average year of each alleged incident was 1979.

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WASHINGTON (DC)
Christian Post

December 21, 2018

By John Stonestreet and Roberto Rivera

Ideas have consequences, and bad ideas have victims. That’s certainly true “out there” in the world. But it’s just as true “in here” in the church.

Last week, the Fort Worth Star Telegram released a series of articles reminiscent of the Pennsylvania grand jury report from earlier this year. You remember—the report that outlined rampant sexual abuse in the Roman Catholic Church. I say “reminiscent” because of the similar details: clergy who used their position to harm the vulnerable, decades of intentional coverup of the crimes by those in authority, reassigning perpetrators to other churches and allowing them to harm more victims, and the emotional manipulation and even shaming of victims to protect the institution.

Even so, the Fort Worth report differed from the Pennsylvania report in one significant detail: The churches and clergy being exposed this time were on the opposite end of the ecclesiastical spectrum. One hundred sixty-eight leaders of independent fundamental Baptist churches, known as the IFBC, have been accused of a litany of crimes, including rape, kidnapping, and sexual assault. The victims included young children and teens, and stories included some of the most prominent IFBC leaders and churches in America.

This Fort Worth report hit me hard, maybe because I grew up on the outskirts of the IFBC movement. What I mean by “outskirts” is that my church followed Jerry Falwell out of the IFBC when he founded the Moral Majority and built a large university. Still, we had a bus ministry run by a group of really good men and women, who would get up extra early on Sunday mornings and pick up hundreds of mostly women and children who did not have a ride to church.

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PITTSBURGH (PA)
Tribune Review

December 22, 2018

By Deb Erdley

When it snowed, Betty Nemchik always knew the sidewalks outside St. James Roman Catholic Church would be shoveled in time for morning Mass.

The now-retired church secretary said her boss, Monsignor Lawrence Persico, personally cleared a path to the New Alexandria church, where he served from 1998 to 2012.

Those who remember him recall a self-effacing cleric whose serious, gaunt demeanor masked a dry sense of humor that came to the surface when he joined congregants for coffee after morning Mass.

Jeffrey Rouse, an internationally-known art conservator, attended morning services just down the road from his studio. He came to call Persico a friend.

“We just loved him. We had so much fun,” Rouse said.

But Persico, who would become bishop of the Erie Diocese, also played another role in the church — serving as vicar general of the Greensburg Diocese. Responsibilities of that position included investigating claims of horrific clergy sexual abuse.

A searing statewide grand jury report, released in August, detailed rampant claims of Catholic clergy sexual abuse across Pennsylvania. The 900-page document included several cases Persico was a assigned to investigate.

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Patheos blog

December 21, 2018

By Hemant Mehta

In a speech made this morning to Vatican administrators, Pope Francis urged priests to do what the Catholic Church has proved incompetent at doing: Weed out the abusers in their midst. He told predatory priests to “convert and hand yourself over to human justice, and prepare for divine justice.”

That might be great advice if anyone actually took the threat seriously. But if the priests didn’t follow the “Don’t rape kids” rule, it’s hard to imagine they’re going to fall in line with the whole “Turn yourselves in” approach.

It didn’t help that the pope also used his speech to go after critics of the Church who called out the abuse beyond merely reporting on it.

The pontiff also suggested that some critics of the Church are taking advantage of the scandals to inflict additional damage on it.

“Others, out of fear, personal interest or other aims, have sought to attack [the Church] and aggravate her wounds,” he said. “Others do not conceal their glee at seeing her hard hit.”

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ONTARIO (CANADA)
East Gwillimbury Express

December 21, 2018

By Lisa Queen

Once located in Aurora and now in Holland Landing, the Catholic Church’s Southdown Institute, which treats clergy with addictions and mental health struggles, has operated behind a shroud of secrecy since its 1966 founding.

But an explosive Pennsylvania grand jury report released in mid-August shone a light on how the church sent priests who sexually abused children to the facility before reassigning them to unsuspecting parishes.

Tim Lennon, president of the board of directors of the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests (SNAP), called church treatment centres like Southdown a “dumping ground” for abusive priests.

Seven predatory priests from Pennsylvania alone were sent to Southdown, the grand jury report said.

That included Father John S. Hoehl, who sodomized two teenaged boys who agreed to change places with a girl the priest intended to rape.

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NEW YORK (NY)
Catholic News Agency

December 21, 2018

By Ed Condon

The Archdiocese of New York is facing questions about the sequence of events which led to the recent removal from ministry of one of its retired priests, Fr. Donald Timone. Fr. Timone is accused of sexually abusing two teenage boys during the late 1960s and early 1970s.

In a story published by the New York Times on Dec. 20, it was reported that Timone was allowed to continue to publicly minister as a priest despite allegations first being made against him in 2003 and an independent commission paying compensation to two of Timone’s alleged victims last year.

The awards were made by the Independent Reconciliation and Compensation Program (IRCP), a body established by Cardinal Timothy Dolan in 2016 to compensate victims of clerical sexual abuse in the Archdiocese of New York.

Timone, 84, retired from full-time ministry in 2009 but has continued to say Mass in parishes and a Catholic university.

Initial media coverage of the case suggested that the handling of the allegations against Timone showed a failure in archdiocesan procedures. But a spokesman for the Archdiocese of New York told CNA that the Timone case was “an example of the effectiveness of the Church’s procedures” and that the archdiocese had removed Fr. Timone from ministry in 2003 when the first allegation against him was received, and again this month following new complaints and more information becoming available.

“Sixteen years ago, after conducting their own investigation, the Dutchess County District Attorney referred to the Archdiocese of New York an allegation of sexual abuse of a minor made against Fr. Timone,” Joseph Zwilling told CNA.

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BUFFALO (NY)
WKBW TV

December 21, 2018

By Charlie Specht

Kathy Wagner and Debbie Pirog have been parishioners at St. John the Baptist Church in Alden for decades.

But never have they seen a controversy like the one that’s been brewing for months in their country parish.

In February, Bishop Richard J. Malone appointed Deborah Brown as the first lay woman parish administrator. St. John’s has functioned this year without a priest and has been a test case for a new model to deal with a shortage of men in the clergy.

“I assure you, you will be very well shepherded,” Malone told parishioners at the time.

But Brown now faces multiple allegations of sexual harassment. The allegations — while not as serious as those leveled against abusive priests — have caused controversy in the parish and have called into question how the diocese deals with complaints.

‘It was a very sexual kiss’

“I went out of Mass at 4 o’clock, and she hugged me real tight, and kissed me on the mouth,” said Wagner, adding that Brown held her body uncomfortably tight during the kiss.

The 87-year-old grandmother said Brown did it again weeks later, and then a third time. Wagner wrote a letter to Bishop Malone in October saying Brown “hugged me closely and kissed me firmly on the mouth.”

“Another woman wouldn’t kiss me like that, even my own sisters,” Wagner said. “My children would never kiss me like that. It was a very sexual kiss.”

Pirog had a similar experience, except she said Brown came up to her in the parish rectory, approached her from behind and “put her body against mine and her head on my shoulder,” according to an August letter she wrote to Bishop Malone.

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SCRANTON (PA)
Citizens Voice

December 22, 2018

BY David Singleton

The Diocese of Scranton has added a nun from Exeter who taught school for many years in Dunmore and 10 other people to its still-evolving list of individuals accused of sexually abusing children.

The additions bring to 81 the number of names on the list of “credibly accused individuals” the diocese originally disclosed Aug. 14 to coincide with the release of a statewide investigating grand jury report exposing decades of child sexual abuse by Roman Catholic clergy and steps taken by the church to cover it up in six Pennsylvania dioceses, including Scranton.

Of the 11 new individuals on the list the diocese maintains on its website, six have already been named by The Citizens’ Voice — three Jesuit priests whose identities were disclosed Monday by the religious order’s Maryland Province and three diocesan lay employees the newspaper determined in August were omitted from the diocese’s original list.

The other five include two diocesan priests who were not on the list released in August and three previously unidentified members of religious orders not directly associated with the diocese.

According to the diocese, the priests, religious and lay people on its credibly accused list have either served or resided in the Diocese of Scranton.

“This list is updated as the diocese is made aware of substantiated allegations,” diocesan spokesman William Genello said in an emailed response to questions about the fluidity of the online list and the process for adding names.

On its website, the diocese says allegations against the individuals were corroborated “by secular legal proceedings, canon law proceedings, self-admission by the individual, and/or other evidence.”

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SPOKANE (WA)
Reveal

December 21, 2018

By Emily Schwing, Michael Corey and Aaron Sankin

Two priests in high-level positions at Gonzaga University resigned today. Both previously held leadership roles in the Jesuits’ Oregon Province while it sent Jesuits accused of sexual abuse to live in a home on campus.

President Thayne McCulloh announced the resignations of Father Frank Case, university vice president and men’s basketball chaplain, and Father Pat Lee, vice president for mission and ministry, in a brief statement emailed to the Gonzaga community. Both men served on the University President’s cabinet.

Case was named in an investigation by the Northwest News Network and Reveal from The Center for Investigative Reporting about sexually abusive Jesuits whose victims were predominantly Native girls, boys and women in Alaska and the Northwest. A Jesuit home on Gonzaga’s campus, Cardinal Bea House, became a retirement repository for at least 20 Jesuit priests accused of such sexual misconduct dating back as far as 1986.

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SPRINGFIELD (IL)
NPR Illinois

December 22, 2018

By Sam Dunklau

In the wake of Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan’s Catholic Church investigation, a victim’s advocacy group is accusing the Catholic Diocese of Springfield of intentionally leaving the names of two predator priests off its public list. They say those names are part of the group of 500 Madigan uncovered.

Members of SNAP, or the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests, stood across the street from Springfield’s Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception. They held up signs that had names like Father Henry Willenborg and Father Thomas Meyer on them. Both were priests in the Springfield diocese, both have well-documented abuse allegations against them.

John Freml was one of the demonstrators. He says he’s disappointed with how Bishop Thomas Paprocki has handled the scandal.

“I think the Bishop has just lost all moral credibility in this Diocese, given how he has postured himself in relation to this issue.”

SNAP representative David Clohessy demonstrated alongside Freml on Friday. He says the Church can’t be trusted to handle the matter.

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ALTON (IL)
Alton Telegraph

December 22, 2018

By Nathan Woodside

A deceased former Alton priest named in a continued wave of sex abuse allegations within the Catholic Church unfortunately shares very-nearly the same name as a current priest in Jacksonville. The two are in no way related.

During a press event held Friday in Springfield, David Clohessy, a spokesman and former national director of the St. Louis-based Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests (SNAP) invoked Fr. Thomas G. Meyer, who served as a pastor of Sts. Peter and Paul Paul Parish in Alton from 1990 to 1998.

Last year, Meyer was included in a list of “substantiated” accusations of sexual abuse toward minors issued by the Minneapolis-St. Paul archdiocese.

SNAP resurfaced Meyer’s name, along with several others, as it was revealed the former Catholic cleric had also served in the Springfield diocese and had “attracted no discernible public attention before.”

Earlier Friday, Pope Francis ordered priests who’d committed sexual misconduct toward children to confess, and asked victims to come forward.

Clohessy said Springfield Bishop Thomas Paprocki had done the “bare minimum” in the wake of Attorney General Lisa Madigan’s investigation of Illinois dioceses’ handling of abuse allegations.

Later Friday, SNAP issued the following statement importantly clarifying that the accused, now deceased, Fr. Thomas G. Meyer is not the current Fr. Thomas C. Meyer serving in Jacksonville:

“This is a clarification regarding the SNAP press event held in Springfield, IL on December 21. It is important to note that there have been two priests in the Springfield Diocese with the same name.

“Fr. Thomas G. Meyer is a now deceased publicly accused abusive cleric and was a religious order cleric who worked in Alton.

“Fr. Thomas C. Meyer is alive, is NOT accused of abuse, is a diocesan cleric who now works in Jacksonville IL.

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BOISE (ID)
Idaho Statesman

December 20, 2018

BY Katy Moeller and Ruth Brown

The Rev. W. Thomas Faucher, a longtime priest in the Roman Catholic Diocese of Boise who pleaded guilty to five felony crimes, has been sentenced to 25 years in prison without parole and will be required to register as a sex offender.

Faucher, 73, was accused of amassing thousands of child porn images and videos on his home computer — and pleaded guilty in September to sharing some of those images online. He apologized in the courtroom ahead of his sentencing at the Ada County Courthouse in Boise on Thursday.

“This is the crime that has the potential for both immediate and long-lasting consequences,” 4th District Court Judge Jason Scott said. “… I think there is a legitimate risk to the community.”

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ORANGE COUNTY (CA)
Orange County Register

December 20, 2018

By Scott Schwebkeand Deepa Bharath

Pope Francis’ decision to accept the resignation of an auxiliary Los Angeles bishop amid accusations of misconduct with a minor does little to erase decades of cover-up by the Vatican, some Southern California victims of sex abuse by Catholic priests said Wednesday.

One victim, Lee Bashforth, said Monsignor Alexander Salazar’s resignation, many years after his alleged offense, is “disappointing and upsetting” for survivors.

“This is a problem the Catholic Church had an opportunity to fix,” he said. “They shoveled it under the rug. And 16 years later, we’re still having the curtain pulled back to reveal they are doing the same stuff they’ve been doing for centuries — covering up for pedophile priests.”

Appallingly, sexual assaults by priests most often have not been treated as crimes, said Bashforth, who was abused as a boy by Michael Wempe, a priest with the Archdiocese of Los Angeles at the time.

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PROVIDENCE (RI)
WPRI TV

December 21, 2018

By Tim White

The leader of the Catholic church in Rhode Island announced Friday that they will publicly name all priests who have been “credibly accused” of sexual assault.

Bishop Thomas Tobin said the church has “started the process of putting the list together of those who have been credibly accused both living and deceased.”

“I think my expectation that after the first of the year, sometime after the new year, we will be publicizing that list as many other dioceses have done,” Tobin said during a taping of WPRI 12’s Newsmakers. “I think about half the dioceses in the country have released that list.”

Tobin said he didn’t think any of the names on the list would surprise the public because most of the names have been publicized already in news reports or when a priest is removed from service.

“In my 13 years here I have publicly removed from office five priests who were credibly accused,” he said.

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SPRINGFIELD (IL)
WJBC Radio

December 21, 2018

By Dave Dahl

John Freml of Springfield is still part of the Catholic church, even though he’s a supporter of SNAP – Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests.

“I still identify as a Catholic; it’s a very contentious relationship, obviously,” Freml said during a news conference and protest outside Springfield’s downtown Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception. “The church is not just the hierarchy; it’s the people of God, it’s the people in the pews, it’s the laity. The church can be and is so much better than this. I stay to help reform the church.”

He does say church leadership, including Springfield Bishop Thomas John Paprocki has lost all moral credibility in the priest sex abuse scandal, which exploded again this week with Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan’s contention that the Illinois Catholic leadership underreported the number of priests facing credible accusations by 500.

David Clohessy, one of the early organizers of SNAP, said Madigan should be out front on this, holding news conferences all over the state. And he wants the state to drop the statute of limitations in cases of priest sex abuse.

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SANTA FE (NM)
NMPolitics.net

December 21, 2018

By Heath Haussamen

I remember a Christian Brother who taught at my high school taking us outside to show off a mountain he identified as “Tetilla Peak.” He described, to a group of underage teens in the 1990s, how much he loved tetas — in English, breasts, or more crudely but accurately, tits.

He often told us how much he loved women’s bodies. If he wasn’t a Christian Brother he would have 10 wives and 10 children with each wife, he said.

I had many creepy experiences at St. Michael’s High School in Santa Fe. Another was the reverence with which basketball coaches spoke about the legendary coach Brother Abdon, with no mention of the rape allegations.

More than two decades later, I’m processing all we’ve learned in 2018 from a grand jury investigation in Pennsylvania, our attorney general’s probe in New Mexico, and investigative journalism about how the Roman Catholic Church has systematically enabled and intentionally covered up the sexual assault of countless children and adults worldwide by its clergy, then shielded its assets from victims to protect its land and money.

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HUNTSVILLE (AL)
WHNT TV

December 21, 2018

By Patrick Ary

A Catholic priest who had north Alabama ties is on the Diocese of Birmingham’s list of clergy that were accused of committing acts of child abuse while working in the diocese.

Charles V. Cross, who died in 2010, is one of six clergy members the diocese identified. He began his clergy career as an assistant at Holy Spirit Church in Huntsville in 1967, according to the Diocese of Birmingham. Cross was at Holy Spirit for a little over a year before becoming a chaplain at St. Margaret Hospital in Montgomery.

Cross’s other work during his time with the diocese included:

Sept. 15, 1970 – Director of Catholic Charities, resident at St. Peter the Apostle
April 2, 1973 – Temporary administrator of St. Mark Church
July 1, 1975 – Associate pastor, St. Paul’s Cathedral
Oct. 15, 1976 – Pastor, St. Elizabeth Ann Seton Church, Gardendale
Dec. 1976-1988 – Served in the Diocesan Tribunal office

Cross was removed from ministry in parishes in 1985 and was forced to retire without privileges in 2002. Other details about allegations made against him were not disclosed by the diocese.

Three of the five other priests listed by the diocese also are dead. The two that are still alive, Kevin Cooke and John J. “Jack” Ventura, are not in service in any diocese, officials said. Cooke was removed from ministry in 2002, and Ventura was removed after allegations were made in 1985.

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SPRINGFIELD (IL)
Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests

This is a clarification regarding the SNAP press event held in Springfield, MO on December 21. It is important to note that there have been two priests in the Springfield Diocese with the same name.

Fr. Thomas G. Meyer is a now deceased publicly accused abusive cleric and was a religious order cleric who worked in Alton.

Fr. Thomas C. Meyer is alive, is NOT accused of abuse, is a diocesan cleric who now works in Jacksonville IL.

We urge the public and the news media to make this distinction clear and apologize for any potential confusion.

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PITTSBURGH (PA)
KDKA-TV:

A priest who recently served as a pastor in Lawrence County has been placed on administrative leave after being accused of sexually abusing a minor.

Bishop David Zubik says the Catholic Diocese of Pittsburgh learned of allegations made against 74-year-old Father James Downs on Thursday.

Downs is accused of sexually abusing a minor in the early ’90s when he served as the chaplain to the former Youth Development Center in New Castle. The allegation has been reported to law enforcement and according to the Diocese, no prior victim has ever come forward against Downs.

The Diocese says Downs denies the allegation.

Downs served as pastor of Christ the King Parish in Bessemer/Hillsville and Saint James the Apostle Parish in Pulaski until he retired in July 2018.

Priests on administrative leave may not engage in public ministry, dress as priests or otherwise present themselves as priests in good standing.

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[Here is how the defense of accused priests is financed]

CHILE
La Tercera

December 21, 2018

By M.J. Navarrete and L. Zapata

La mayoría de los abogados que representan a los presbíteros vinculados a abusos sexuales en la Iglesia no cobra honorarios.

Según el último catastro del Ministerio Público, actualmente hay 124 investigaciones vigentes relacionadas con abusos sexuales en la Iglesia Católica. En estas causas se investiga a 178 personas, de las cuales 105 son sacerdotes y ocho obispos. Todos ellos se encuentran en calidad de imputados.

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WASHINGTON (DC)
The Washington Post

December 21, 2018

By Julie Zauzmer and Michelle Boorstein

Pope Francis used one of his major annual Christmas speeches to offer some of his strongest words about this year’s heightened sexual abuse crisis in the Catholic church, telling guilty priests the church will not protect them and they should turn themselves in.

“To those who abuse minors I would say this: convert and hand yourself over to human justice, and prepare for divine justice,” Francis said in a speech at the Vatican on Friday.

Speaking to the Roman Curia — the central governing leadership of the Vatican — Francis described at length the sinfulness of priests who prey on children. “Often behind their boundless amiability, impeccable activity and angelic faces, they shamelessly conceal a vicious wolf ready to devour innocent souls,” he said, in remarks that drew often on the example of the sinful biblical King David. “Let it be clear that before these abominations the Church will spare no effort to do all that is necessary to bring to justice whosoever has committed such crimes. The church will never seek to hush up or not take seriously any case.”

Survivor advocates slammed Francis for focusing on priest-abusers rather than the leaders and system that protect them, while other Vatican observers praised his comments as a dramatic acknowledgment of the scope of the problem.

Francis’s call for abusers to turn themselves in “is silly. To command psychologically sick people to do the right thing? It’s also deceptive,” said Anne Barrett Doyle, co-director of Bishop Accountability, which documents abuse. “This speech represents a regression to the defense we heard from John Paul II, that the problem was with the perpetrators. We now know the more fundamental problem is with the complicit and deceptive hierarchy.”

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CHICAGO (IL)
The Independent

December 20, 2018

By Michelle Boorstein

Top Illinois official argues investigators found hundreds more accusations to those deemed credible

Illinois’ attorney general’s office on Wednesday accused the Catholic Church of dramatically low-balling the scope of allegations of clergy sex abuse, saying her investigators found at least 500 additional accusations against priests and clergy – compared with the 185 cases the church has found credible.

Lisa Madigan’s office acknowledged on Wednesday that a charge that has been found credible is not the same thing as a simple accusation. However, she alleged in a statement that a probe her office opened into the Church in August is finding Catholic leaders are failing to dig deep into the guilt of their clerics. The probe “has revealed that allegations frequently have not been adequately investigated by the dioceses or not investigated at all,” the statement said.

Some state Catholic leaders, under siege during a year of global scandal over bishops’ handling of abuse cases, pushed back. The crux of Ms Madigan’s announcement was unfair and “false”, said William Kunkel, counsel for the Chicago archdiocese.

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ATLANTA (GA)
The Associated Press

December 20, 2018

By Kate Brumback

Catholic church officials suppressed reports of abuse by a priest in northwest Georgia and failed to inform the community of the danger he posed, according to a lawsuit filed Thursday.

The lawsuit, filed by a man identified under a pseudonym, Phillip Doe, says he was an altar boy at Saint Joseph’s Catholic Church in Dalton from age 12 to 15 and that he was sexually molested by priest John Douglas Edwards from 1976 to 1978.

The lawsuit filed in Cobb County Superior Court says the failure by the Archdiocese of Atlanta to report the alleged sexual abuse is a public nuisance because it endangered the public. It was filed against the archdiocese, Saint Joseph’s and Archbishop of Atlanta Wilton Gregory, who has presided over the archdiocese since 2005.

The archdiocese had not received the lawsuit Thursday and, therefore, could not comment, spokeswoman Paula Grant said in an email. She added that the archdiocese abhors every instance of abuse and offers support to survivors.

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NEW ORLEANS (LA)
The New Orleans Advocate

December 20, 2018

By Ramon Antonio Vargas

The allegations date back to the 1980s

Catholic Church officials in New Orleans have settled a lawsuit accusing a priest and a deacon of sexually abusing a boy at a Treme parish in the 1980s.

The priest, Kenneth Hamilton of the Society of the Divine Word religious order, and the now-retired deacon, Lloyd Glapion, both have denied wrongdoing, the Archdiocese of New Orleans said in a statement Thursday.

Nonetheless, the archdiocese said it reached a settlement with the plaintiff for undisclosed terms on Wednesday and announced it to the public “in a spirit of transparency.”

“Our prayers are with all those who have been harmed by church leaders,” the archdiocese said.

The case, filed in 2015, centered on allegations of abuse at St. Augustine Catholic Church, 1210 Gov. Nicholls Street. The church is a separate institution from the high school of the same name in the 7th Ward.

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ALBUQUERQUE (NM)
The Associated Press

December 20, 2018

By Susan Montoya Bryan

Another lawsuit has been filed against the Catholic Church, alleging sexual abuse of a child by a now-deceased priest who once served at Our Lady of Health Parish in Las Cruces.

It’s the latest in a string of legal actions stemming from allegations of clergy sex abuse that span decades and have rocked parishes across the United States.

New Mexico’s largest diocese – the Archdiocese of Santa Fe – has spent hundreds of thousands of dollars in recent months on lawyers to fight claims of abuse and to prepare for a potentially lengthy battle in U.S. Bankruptcy Court. In neighboring Texas, church officials are preparing next month to release the names of priests who have been credibly accused of sexual abuse of a child.

Attorneys for a victim identified only as Jane Doe N filed a lawsuit Monday, naming the parish and the Diocese of El Paso, Texas, which used to oversee parts of southern New Mexico before the Diocese of Las Cruces was created.

The lawsuit says the victim had been left in the care of the parish pastor, Father Joaquin Resma, and that she was raped on multiple occasions. The girl was about 10 at the time and the abuse was intermittent for about a year during the late 1970s, according to the lawsuit.

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NEW YORK (NY)
CNN

December 20, 2018

By Eric Levenson and Elizabeth Joseph

Harvey Weinstein, the disgraced movie mogul whose downfall helped launch the #MeToo movement, is due back in New York court on March 7 after a judge Thursday morning ordered a pretrial hearing in the rape case.

The proceedings lasted just 10 minutes, a remarkably quick resolution to a highly anticipated and pivotal appearance that the defense had hoped would end with the charges against Weinstein getting dropped.

“We are obviously disappointed that the court did not dismiss the indictment, but Judge (James) Burke has ruled, and we intend to continue to vigorously defend this case to the best of our ability,” Weinstein’s attorney, Ben Brafman, said outside the Manhattan courthouse.

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NEW YORK (NY)
Gothamist

December 19, 2018

By JB Nicholas

In the seven months since Harvey Weinstein was led into Manhattan Criminal Court in handcuffs, his defense attorney Benjamin Brafman has been chipping away at the charges against the disgraced Hollywood mogul.

But Brafman’s court filings convey more than dry legal arguments to a judge. He’s configured them to broadcast sex-charged allegations attacking the credibility or character of Weinstein’s accusers—fully exploiting the mass-media megaphone Weinstein’s celebrity arms him with.

In the latest attack, for example, Brafman alleged that an unnamed third-party thought Weinstein and one of his accusers had been “hooking up.” This was breathlessly reported by The Hollywood Reporter to be a fatal blow to the criminal case against Weinstein, while The New York Times called it part of a greater “unraveling.”

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STATEN ISLAND (NY)
silive.com

December 21, 2018

By Maura Grunlund

The Rev. Thomas Kreiser, who briefly served on Staten Island, is accused of groping a girl at a Roman Catholic elementary school in Westchester County, according to information provided by a district attorney and the Archdiocese of New York.

Westchester County District Attorney Anthony A. Scarpino announced that Father Kreiser, 53, of Riverdale in the Bronx, was arraigned Tuesday on a charge of felony sexual abuse in the alleged incident.

Father Kreiser has a prior conviction for gambling, according to Catholic New York.

Father Kreiser was a parochial vicar for just under a year in 2010-2011 at St. Ann’s R.C. Church, Dongan Hills, according to Joseph Zwilling, director of communications for the Archdiocese of New York.

The Rev. Joy Mampilly, pastor of St. Ann’s, referred the Advance to Zwilling for comment.

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CHICAGO (IL)
Chicago Tribune

December 21, 2018

By Elyssa Cherney

Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan made clear Wednesday that her decision to release a report identifying hundreds of allegations of sexual abuse by Catholic priests was supposed to send a message to a contingent of U.S. bishops gathering in the state next month.

But the Archdiocese of Chicago fired back Thursday, saying bishops will not discuss the report or its findings at a historic seven-day spiritual retreat at Mundelein Seminary in suburban Chicago in January.

The retreat “will strictly be time for prayer, fasting and spiritual lectures,” Anne Maselli, a spokeswoman for the Archdiocese of Chicago, said in an email. “No one other than bishops are included in the retreat. … It will not be open to the public.”

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CHICAGO (IL)
Chicago Tribune (TNS)

December 21, 2018

Sixteen years into the scandal of clergy sex abuse within the Roman Catholic Church, the horrors of these crimes still shock and disgust Americans. The exploitation of children, adolescents and adults by authority figures they had been taught to trust is reprehensible. We’ve written often of the lax, arguably criminal behavior of some local bishops and other church officials who shrouded grave misconduct in secrecy and didn’t share reports of abuses with civil authorities.

In August a report from Pennsylvania’s attorney general cataloged 70 years of such cases in that state. Attorney General Lisa Madigan responded with a comparable effort in Illinois, and on Wednesday her office issued nine pages of preliminary findings about cases in this state’s six dioceses.

The report is a step toward the transparency that’s been uneven in Illinois. The dioceses have had years to disclose credible allegations of abuse in some standardized way that’s easy to comprehend, and accept. For any church officials who haven’t done so, that’s the urgent Job One.

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VATICAN CITY
Huffington Post

December 21, 2018

By Carol Kuruvilla

Pope Francis has urged priests who have raped and molested children to turn themselves in and prepare for “divine justice,” in his strongest condemnations yet of the Roman Catholic Church’s sexual abuse crisis.

The pope pledged that the church would “never again” cover up or dismiss sexual abuse cases.

“To those who abuse minors I would say this: convert and hand yourself over to human justice, and prepare for divine justice,” Francis said during his Christmas address to the Curia, the Vatican’s central administration, Reuters reported.

The pope admitted that the church had failed to act on this issue in the past, acknowledging that leaders refused to believe victims.

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UNITED STATES
Fatherly

December 20, 2018

By Patrick A. Coleman

The Catholic community, in America and abroad, is grappling with the horrific details put forth in a new report from the Illinois Attorney General claiming that church officials covered up for over 500 priests accused of abuse, releasing a public document with 185 names on it after compiling a list of 690 priests. The Illinois report followed on the heals of a Pennsylvania grand jury report claiming over 1,000 victims of rape and sexual predation were ignored or actively silenced by church leaders, many of whom sheltered the perpetrators of awful crimes. Though both reports are devastating in their details, neither is shocking. Catholic clergy have a history of raping kids and the church has a history of covering it up.

The practical question the report forces Catholic parents of young children to answer is one parents in the church have faced before: Does my family’s participation in church life jeopardize the safety of my kids? Given that the reports out of Illinois and Pittsburgh follow revelations of a similar nature in Boston, Ireland, Kenya, the Philippines, and Croatia, we must entertain the notion that the answer is “yes.”

As such, many Catholic parents like myself are reconsidering how they engage with churches and religious institutions. Some will walk away. I will not. Instead, I will double down on my involvement in church matters because I’m aware that the presence of a father tremendously diminishes the likelihood of harm befalling a children. Pedophiles disproportionately targeted children with absent fathers. This seems to be particularly true of priests. As such, I see my consistent presence as a prerequisite for my children’s involvement in church life.

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NEW YORK (NY)
Esquire

December 20, 2018

By Charles P. Pierce

This story is not going to end.

Let us be plain. The institutional Roman Catholic Church as it currently exists is a prima facie international criminal conspiracy to obstruct justice. Absent the scent of incense, this would be the easiest RICO case any prosecutor ever brought. Consider what we’ve learned just in the last week.

1) Illinois attorney general Lisa Madigan announced that her investigation had discovered that the identities of more than 500 priests against whom charges of sexual abuse had been lodged were still being kept secret by the institutional church in that state. From the Chicago Tribune:

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CHICAGO (IL)
Chicago Tribune

December 20, 2018

By Morgan Greene

18 priests with ties to Chicago area included, with instances dating as far back as 1955

Eighteen Jesuit priests with ties to Chicago-area institutions were named on a list released Monday alleging instances of sexual abuse dating back more than six decades, including one defrocked priest who was convicted of sex crimes in federal court.

The Midwest Province Jesuits, part of a Catholic religious order known for its focus on education, released a list of dozens of priests with credible allegations of sexual abuse to their names since 1955.

In a Monday evening phone interview, the Rev. Brian Paulson, provincial of the Midwest Province, said the list was a response to the scandals that have rocked the Roman Catholic Church for the past two decades — from the 2002 abuse crisis exposed by The Boston Globe to the more than 300 Pennsylvania priests who were found to have sexually abused children, according to an August grand jury report.

“I think in the past, church leaders tried to avoid scandal,” Paulson said. “But I think now we realize the greater scandal is keeping this information in our drawer.”

Larry Antonsen, a Chicago leader of the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests, said putting the names out there is a start. “I think it’s good that they’re putting out these lists, I really do,” he said. “Whether it’s complete or not, I don’t know. And it’s really hard to trust anybody in the Catholic Church because they’ve been hiding and lying for such a long time.”

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BRONXVILLE (NY)
Rockland/Westchester Journal News

December 18, 2018

By Michael P. McKinney

A former Bronxville priest was arraigned Tuesday on a felony charge of first-degree sexual abuse charge that prosecutors said involved touching a 10-year-old girl.

The Rev. Thomas Kreiser of Riverdale surrendered to authorities Tuesday afternoon and was arraigned in Bronxville Village Court, the Westchester County District Attorney’s office said.

Bail was set at $10,000. Kreiser is scheduled to be back in court on Jan. 16.

On Sept. 20, the district attorney alleges, Kreiser engaged in touching a child on an intimate part of her body in Bronxville during the school day.

Kreiser was stationed at St. Joseph’s Parish, which includes a church and elementary school.

His duties included visiting the school at the time of the alleged abuse. The Roman Catholic Archdiocese of New York has removed Kreiser from the parish, the prosecutor’s office said.

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VATICAN CITY
The Telegraph/Reuters

December 21, 2018

Pope Francis has urged predator priests who have sexually abused minors to turn themselves in, making one of his strongest comments ever on the crisis sweeping the Roman Catholic Church.

While it was not immediately clear if Francis was referring to the Church judicial system, civil justice, or both, Vatican sources believed it was the first time the pope had made such a direct appeal.

“To those who abuse minors I would say this: convert and hand yourself over to human justice, and prepare for divine justice,” Francis said in his traditional Christmas address to the Curia, the Vatican’s central administration.

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BRONXVILLE (NY)
WABC

December 18, 2018

A Bronxville priest is under arrest and accused of inappropriately touching a 10-year-old child at school earlier this year.

Thomas Kreiser was arraigned on a charge of sexual abuse after surrendering to authorities on Tuesday.

Officials say Kreiser touched a child on an intimate part of her body while in a school building on Sept. 20.

At the time of the alleged incident, Kreiser was employed as a Roman Catholic priest of the Archdiocese of New York and was stationed at St. Joseph’s Parish. As part of his duties, he was visiting the school at the time of the incident.

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NEW YORK (NY)
Archdiocese of New York

December 18, 2018

By Joseph Zwilling

Statement of Joseph Zwilling, on behalf of the Archdiocese of New York

As is our practice and our promise, the Archdiocese of New York first reported the allegation from the parents concerning Father Thomas Kreiser to the Westchester District Attorney’s office in September when it came to our attention. Both the archdiocese and the Parish of Saint Joseph, where Father Kreiser was assigned at the time, have been fully cooperating with the DA, and will continue to do so. While we will wait for the justice system to complete its work, due to the serious nature of the allegation, Father Kreiser has not been permitted to exercise his priestly ministry or present himself as a priest since the allegation arose.

We once again encourage anyone who has experienced abuse, no matter the source, to report it to the District Attorney. If anyone has suffered abuse by a priest or deacon of the archdiocese, we ask again that you contact our Victim’s Assistance Coordinator, Sister Eileen Clifford, at 646-794-2949, so that we might offer our assistance as well.

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BUFFALO (NY)
WKBW

December 20, 2018

By Jeff Slawson and Charlie Specht

Boston lawyer says payments range from $10,000 to $340,000

Boston attorney Mitchell Garabedian said Wednesday that 13 of his clients — all victims of sexual abuse by Buffalo Diocese priests — have been offered settlements with the diocese.

The settlements deal with priest abuse from about 1959 to 1988 and the amounts range from $10,000 to $340,000, Garabedian said.

“Many victims, in hopes of trying to turn at least one page of the pain, are willing to accept the settlement offers while other victims feel re-victimized by the settlement offers and the impersonal nature of the program set up by Bishop Malone and lack of transparency and will reject the offers,” Garabedian said.

He added, “All clergy sexual victims realize that the Catholic Church, in implementing the compensation program, is trying to sweep the clergy sexual abuse matter under the rug, trying to deceptively send a positive message to the court of public opinion and dissuade decision makers from amending the statute of limitations.”

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CHICAGO (IL)
Jezebel

December 19, 2018

By Hannah Gold

A preliminary report by Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan found that the church failed to publicize more than 500 priests who’d been accused of sexually abusing minors.

The New York Times reported on Wednesday that Madigan wrote in her findings that the state’s Catholic diocese are not fit to investigate themselves and “will not resolve the clergy sexual abuse crisis on their own.” According to the report, only 185 of a total 690 priests accused of abuse were reported by the church as having credible claims lodged against them. The Chicago Tribute reports that some of these allegations go back decades.

The report also states that 75 percent of the total abuse claims were either not investigated by the diocese, or were investigated but not substantiated. One apparent method by which claims were not substantiated was allegations brought forth by one victim were not advanced. Furthermore, diocese delegitimized claims by “focusing on the survivors’ personal lives.” Again, these are minors we are talking about.

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CHICAGO (IL)
The Associated Press

December 20, 2018

By Don Babwin and John O’Connor

Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan on Wednesday issued a blistering report about clergy sexual abuse, saying that Catholic dioceses in Illinois has not released the names of at least 500 clergy accused of sexually abusing children.

The preliminary report found that the church’s six archdioceses have done a woefully inadequate job of investigating allegations and in some cases did not investigate them at all or notify the state’s child welfare agency. Madigan’s office said that while the dioceses have disclosed 45 more names of those credibly accused, the total number of names disclosed is only 185 and raises questions about the church’s response to the crisis.

“By choosing not to thoroughly investigate allegations, the Catholic Church has failed in its moral obligation to provide survivors, parishioners and the public a complete and accurate accounting of all sexually inappropriate behavior involving priests in Illinois,” Madigan said in a statement. “The failure to investigate also means that the Catholic Church has never made an effort to determine whether the conduct of the accused priests was ignored or covered up by superiors.”

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BUFFALO (NY)
WGRZ

December 10, 2018

Investigative reporter Steve Brown’s exclusive interview with Father Fabian Maryanski

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CHICAGO (IL)
AFP

December 19, 2018

Almost 700 clergymen in Illinois have been accused of child sexual assault, a far greater number than the Catholic Church had previously disclosed, the Midwestern US state’s top prosecutor revealed Wednesday.

Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan said the Church’s revelations that 185 clergy members were credibly accused of sexual abuse fell short of the number her office has uncovered.

The preliminary results of an investigation that began in August found more than 500 additional priests and clergy members with sexual abuse allegations in the Midwestern state’s six dioceses — a total of at least 685 accused.

In a scathing statement, the attorney general’s office criticized the Church’s handling of the abuse allegations, saying investigations were lacking, and in many cases law enforcement and child welfare authorities were not notified.

“The preliminary stages of this investigation have already demonstrated that the Catholic Church cannot police itself,” Madigan said.

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SPRINGFIELD (IL)
Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests

This is a clarification regarding the SNAP press event held in Springfield, MO on December 21. It is important to note that there have been two priests in the Springfield Diocese with the same name.

Fr. Thomas G. Meyer is a now deceased publicly accused abusive cleric and was a religious order cleric who worked in Alton.

Fr. Thomas C. Meyer is alive, is NOT accused of abuse, is a diocesan cleric who now works in Jacksonville IL.

We urge the public and the news media to make this distinction clear and apologize for any potential confusion.

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ILLINOIS
CNN

December 20, 2018

By Daniel Burke

In yet another blow to the Catholic Church in the United States, Illinois’ attorney general says the state’s six dioceses have failed to disclose accusations of sexual abuse against at least 500 priests and clergy members.

Illinois’ dioceses have released lists publicly identifying 185 clergy members who had been credibly accused of child sex abuse. But state Attorney General Lisa Madigan said preliminary findings in her investigation reveal that the church failed to disclose sexual abuse allegations against at least 500 additional priests and clergy members.

In many cases, the accusations have “not been adequately investigated by the dioceses or not investigated at all,” Madigan’s office said in a statement Wednesday. What’s more, the statement added, the church often failed to notify law enforcement authorities or the state’s Department of Children and Family Services about the allegations.

“By choosing not to thoroughly investigate allegations, the Catholic Church has failed in its moral obligation to provide survivors, parishioners and the public a complete and accurate accounting of all sexually inappropriate behavior involving priests in Illinois,” Madigan said in the statement.

“The failure to investigate also means that the Catholic Church has never made an effort to determine whether the conduct of the accused priests was ignored or covered up by superiors.”

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DALLAS (TX)
Park Cities People

December 18, 2018

By Timothy Glaze

The Jesuits’ Central and Southern Province has named several former Dallas Jesuits in a preliminary list of those credibly accused of inappropriate conduct with minors.

Abuse at the Dallas campus occurred beginning in 1966 and lasted through at least 1994. The JCSP alerted Michael A. Earsing, president of Jesuit College Preparatory School, to the list in December.

The findings name 11 past members with ties to the school who were the subject of “credible allegations of abuse of a minor.”

Four were accused of abuse while at the school, while seven others who served at the Dallas campus were accused of misconduct elsewhere.

Of the four accused of abuse at the Dallas campus, two – Don Dickerson and Thomas Naughton – are dead. Vincent Malatesta and Claude Ory, the other two with direct ties to abuse at the Dallas campus, were removed from the ministry in 2002 and 2007, respectively. Ory lives under supervision, according to officials.

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

PITTSBURGH (PA)
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

December 20, 2018

THE EDITORIAL BOARD

The funds will serve an important purpose for the church and the victims, but payouts aren’t the end of the story

In creating a new compensation fund for victims of clergy sexual abuse, the Pittsburgh Catholic Diocese is acknowledging a moral obligation to those who suffered at the hands of men they should have been able to trust.

It’s the latest in a series of administrative and spiritual steps that the diocese is taking to atone for child sexual abuse by priests and reduce the likelihood of future misconduct. Other Pennsylvania dioceses have adopted similar measures following a grand jury report that alleged abuse of more than 1,000 children by more than 300 clergy members over several decades.

Such funds are a welcome admission of the dioceses’ debt to victims. But given the public outrage at the sickening crimes and cover-ups outlined in the report, the dioceses really had no choice. True contrition would have meant coming clean and creating the funds long ago. Not until the grand jury report did the scope of the problem — dozens of victims and at least 90 alleged abusers in the Pittsburgh diocese alone— become clear.

The funds will serve an important purpose for the church and the victims, but payouts aren’t the end of the story.

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

ALASKA
Reveal/PRX

December 15, 2018

By Emily Schwing at the Northwest News Network, with Reveal’s Michael Corey and Katharine Mieszkowski.

Listeners should know that this episode looks at how the Catholic Church handled cases of children who were sexually abused by Jesuit priests.

The show includes descriptions of abuse and predatory behavior and is not a story for all listeners.

The host gives a listening advisory at the top of each segment.

In Alaska and the Pacific Northwest, the Catholic Church had a problem with Jesuit priests sexually abusing children. The church’s first solution was to send the priests to remote Native villages, but there, they continued to abuse. So the church tried something else: hiding them in plain sight.

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

PITTSBURGH (PA)
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

December 21, 2018

By Richard Serbin

How does more secrecy protect children, heal victims or reveal the truth?

A few weeks ago, without a very convincing explanation, eight elderly, risk-averse Pennsylvania men made a 180-degree turn. Let’s look deeper at what they did and why they may have done it.

For decades, our state’s Catholic bishops offered abuse victims crumbs. When scores of victims took to the courts, expensive and brutal church defense lawyers almost always helped their bosses keep the crimes hidden by exploiting the statute of limitations, which is based on archaic understandings of child abuse and the difficulties that victims (especially children) face in coming forward. Because of this, Pennsylvania has long been one of the most hostile states toward these deeply betrayed and tormented victims.

But last week, these bishops announced that they would start offering allegedly “substantial” sums of money to victims who come forward. And on Tuesday, the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Philadelphia announced that it would set aside $25 million for compensating victims, as long as they registered within a brief window of time: before July. Apparently, the Philadelphia Archdiocese has already sent out informational packets to victims whose claims they deemed credible, in an effort to sweep these potential lawsuits under the rug as quickly as possible.

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

SPRINGFIELD (IL)
Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests

December 21, 2018

Springfield Catholic bishop is challenged on abuse
He leaves at least two publicly accused molesters off his list
Victims want church to post ALL alleged offenders’ names online
SNAP: More details are also needed to better protect the vulnerable
“The real solution,” group insists, “is criminal prosecution & legislative reform”

WHAT
Holding signs and childhood photos at a sidewalk news conference, clergy sex abuse victims and their supporters will disclose that six publicly accused priests were left off the list posted by the Diocese of Springfield, including two who worked in the Springfield diocese but have attracted little or no media or public attention before in central Illinois.

They will also call on local Catholic officials to
post names of ALL accused priests on their diocesan website,
include details like their work histories, whereabouts and photos, and
join with victims in pushing for real legislative reform, like repealing Illinois’ “archaic, predator-friendly statute of limitations” so survivors can do what bishops will not do: expose child molesters in court.

WHEN
Friday, Dec. 21 at 1:30 p.m.

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

December 20, 2018

The report into clergy sex crimes that was released by AG Lisa Madigan yesterday has revealed a stunning level of secrecy in catholic dioceses throughout Illinois.

Illinois bishops have a key partner in their secrecy: state lawmakers who refuse to fix archaic, predator-friendly laws like the statute of limitations.

If this arbitrary, unfair time limit were temporarily suspended, as several states have done, bishops would be far less able to hide child molesters. Instead, children would be safer and survivors will be helped by being able to bring abusers to justice.

California, Delaware, Hawaii and Minnesota have taken this simple step toward children’s safety. It works. It enables our time-tested justice system to determine who is “credibly accused,” not church officials who are not trained to investigate or adjudicate crimes.

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

RAPID CITY (SD)
Rapid City Journal

December 20, 2018

By Arielle Zionts

The former Rapid City priest accused of sexually touching a 13-year-old girl was released from jail Thursday afternoon after someone paid for his recently reduced $10,000 cash-only bond.

John Praveen, 38, was released at 1:49 p.m. from the Pennington County Jail, said Helene Duhamel, spokeswoman for the Pennington County Sheriff’s Office.

“A woman who has asked to remain anonymous has paid his bond,” said Brad Blauvelt, who volunteered to house Praveen at his Nemo Road home.

Blauvelt said he’s unsure if the woman paid the entire bond herself, or gathered donations from members of the Catholic community.

He said while some of his neighbors along his rural stretch of road are fine with him housing Praveen, others are “over-the-top angry.”

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

UNITED KINGDOM/SPAIN
The Associated Press

December 21, 2018

Pope Francis has vowed that the Catholic Church will “never again” cover up clergy sex abuse and demanded that priests who have raped and molested children turn themselves in.

Francis dedicated his annual Christmas speech to the Vatican bureaucracy to abuse, evidence that a year of devastating revelations of sexual misconduct and cover-up has shaken his papacy and caused a crisis of confidence in the Catholic hierarchy.

The pope acknowledged that the church in the past had failed to treat the problem seriously, blaming leaders who out of inexperience or short-sightedness acted “irresponsibly” by refusing to believe victims.

But he vowed that going forward the church would never cover up or dismiss cases again.

“Let it be clear that before these abominations the church will spare no effort to do all that is necessary to bring to justice whosoever has committed such crimes,” he said.

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

RAPID CITY (SD)
The Associated Press

December 21, 2018

A man who has agreed to take in a former Rapid City priest accused of sexually touching a 13-year-old girl says some of his neighbors are “over-the-top” angry about the situation.

A man who has agreed to take in a former Rapid City priest accused of sexually touching a 13-year-old girl says some of his neighbors are “over-the-top” angry about the situation.

The Rapid City Journal reports that 38-year-old John Praveen was released from jail Thursday afternoon after someone paid for his recently reduced $10,000 cash-only bond. Brad Blauvelt, who volunteered to house Praveen, says the woman who paid the bond asked to remain anonymous.

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VATICAN CITY
Vatican News

December 2018

By Christina Höfferer

Seine traditionelle vorweihnachtliche Rede an die römische Kurie begann der Papst mit einer Analyse der Anlässe zur Betrübnis. An erster Stelle nannte er die Einwanderer, die gezwungen sind, ihre Heimat zu verlassen und ihr Leben zu riskieren, woraufhin sie entweder sterben, oder, wenn sie überleben, vor verschlossenen Türen stehen und vor Mitmenschen, denen es nur um politische Erfolge und Macht ginge.

„Wie viel Angst und wie viele Vorurteile! Wie viele Menschen und wie viele Kinder sterben täglich wegen Wasser- und Nahrungsmangel und aufgrund fehlender Medikamente! Wie viel Armut und Elend! Wie viel Gewalt gegen die Schwachen und gegen Frauen!“

Papst Franziskus drückte bei der Audienz an diesem Freitagvormittag im Vatikan sein tiefestes Bedauern aus, über Folter, Krieg, Unmenschlichkeit und Brutalität. Es sei eine neue Epoche der Märtyrer, die wir erlebten. Es fehle an Religions- und Gewissensfreiheit. Als ein heldenhaftes Beispiel nannte der Papst jenes der vielen guten Samariter, junger Menschen, Familien, karitativ und ehrenamtlich tätiger Vereinigungen sowie der vieler Gläubigen und Gottgeweihten. Doch sogleich erinnerte Franziskus auch an die Skandale, ausgelöst von Amtsträgern der Kirche, und prangerte dabei vor allem Missbrauch und Untreue an.

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GERMANY
CNN

December 20, 2018

By Matthew Robinson

A German police officer has been found guilty of sexual assault for removing a condom during sexual intercourse without the consent of his partner, an act known as “stealthing,” in what is believed to be the first case of its kind to be prosecuted in Germany.

The defendant, 36, was found guilty at a local court in Berlin on December 11, after carrying out the offense at his apartment in the German capital on November 18, 2017, said Berlin’s chief court spokeswoman, Lisa Jani.

He received an eight-month suspended jail sentence from the court and was fined €3,000 ($3,400) in damages, along with a €96 fine to pay for a sexual health test for the female victim.

The victim told the court that she “explicitly requested” the man to wear a condom and gave no consent to sexual intercourse without protection. She added that she realized that the man had not been wearing a condom only when he ejaculated, according to Jani.

The woman subsequently left his flat enraged — worried that she might have caught a sexually transmitted disease — and called the police to the defendant’s property, but he did not open the door.

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BUFFALO (NY)
WIVB

December 19, 2018

On Wednesday, an attorney representing over a dozen Buffalo Diocese clergy sex abuse victims released a list of settlement offers from the Diocese’s compensation program.

Mitchell Garabedian says he has received a total of 13 offers, ranging from $10,000 to $340,000.

The list goes into detail, stating which priest from which church was involved, the date of the abuse and the age of the victim.

The earliest dates back to 1959 and goes through 1988.

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

ST. LOUIS (MO)
KMOX Radio

December 21, 2018

By Brian Kelly

A former Metro East pastor is being called out today as survivors demand the Springfield, Illinois Diocese release the names of more allegedly abusive priests.

The Survivors Network for Those Abused by Priests says Fr. Thomas Meyer, who was pastor at Sts. Peter and Paul Parish in Alton for eight years, was on the list of alleged abusers made public by the Minneapolis-St. Paul archdiocese last month, but was left off the list released by Springfield Bishop Thomas Paprocki. He also worked at St. Henry’s Seminary, King’s House of Retreats and St. Henry’s Oblate Residence in the Belleville Diocese.

The group says Fr. Henry Willenborg, who is accused of sexually abusing a high school girl and impregnating an adult parishoner in Quincy, was also left off Paprocki’s list. He also allegedly abandoned his son, who died of cancer at age 22.

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

CHICAGO (IL)
Associated Press

December 20, 2018

By Jeff Karoub

The Catholic archbishop of Chicago, who was hand-picked by the pope to help organize an upcoming Vatican summit on clergy sex abuse, will have a leading role in the church’s effort to seek reforms, including the response to new allegations from the Illinois attorney general.

Cardinal Blase Cupich expressed regret for “our failures to address the scourge of clerical sexual abuse” in a statement responding to the attorney general’s report, which said the church failed to disclose the names of at least 500 clergy accused of sexually abusing children.

Still, he said, his archdiocese, the state’s largest and long considered a flagship of American Catholicism, has been a leader in dealing with the issue.

Cupich, Francis’ first major U.S. appointment , will walk a tightrope as he tries to represent the embattled church, the distressed laity and a public demanding justice. Boston College theology professor Lisa Sowle Cahill said it will “be interesting to see how he negotiates” all of that.

Among the U.S. church hierarchy, Cupich “has certainly been a good example of honesty,” Cahill said, citing his willingness to step forward, accept accountability and attempt to enact better policies.

The report released Wednesday by Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan concluded that the church’s six archdioceses did a woefully inadequate job of investigating allegations and in some cases did not investigate them at all or notify child-welfare officials. It did not say when the allegations were made.

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

BUFFALO (NY)
WIBV TV

December 20, 2018

By Jenn Schanz

Michael Whalen said he felt revictimized after the Buffalo Diocese offered him less than $50,000 through the Independent Reconciliation and Compensation Program (IRCP).

The south Buffalo man alleges he was abused as a boy by Father Norbert Orsolits; Whalen was one of the first local survivors to share his story of abuse publicly.

“I don’t understand how they go about it. I would like to know how they come to these figures,” Whalen said.

According to the IRCP summary, settlement offer amounts are determined by several factors, including the nature, extent, and frequency of the alleged abuse.

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BELLEVILLE (IL)
News Democrat

December 20, 2018

By Joseph Bustos

The Catholic Diocese of Belleville, which covers southern Illinois says it has been up front about sexual abuse by priests, and is disagreeing with an assessment released by the Illinois Attorney General’s Office.

In a preliminary report released Wednesday, Attorney General Lisa Madigan’s office said the Catholic dioceses in Illinois have not released the names of at least 500 clergy accused of sexually abusing children.

“The Attorney General’s preliminary report cites combined statistics for all six Illinois dioceses of the Province of Chicago without delineating between them,” the diocese said in a news release on Thursday. “This could give the false impression that a significant number of credibly accused Belleville clergy has not been disclosed. This is incorrect. The Diocese of Belleville has publicly identified all members of its clergy who were credibly accused and removed from ministry, and the Attorney General’s Office has not advised the Diocese of any perceived omissions or errors in its public listing.”

The Belleville diocese formed a review board in 1993 to investigate allegations childhood sexual abuse, and removed 17 members of the clergy from ministry. The removals were publicly announced when they occurred and the names were posted on the diocese’s website.

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VATICAN CITY
The Associated Press

December 19, 2018

Salazar’s resignation is the latest in a string of cases of alleged misconduct against bishops to come to light this year.

Pope Francis has accepted the resignation of Los Angeles auxiliary bishop Monsignor Alexander Salazar, following allegations of misconduct with a minor in the 1990s.

The Vatican announced the resignation in a statement Wednesday. It was the latest in a string of cases of alleged misconduct against bishops to come to light this year, following the scandal of ex-Cardinal Theodore McCarrick.

The current archbishop of Los Angeles, Most Rev. Jose Gomez, said the archdiocese was made aware of the claim in 2005, which law enforcement had declined to prosecute, but that the archdiocese forwarded the complaint to the Vatican office that handles sex abuse cases.

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LOS ANGELES (CA)
CNN

December 19, 2018

By Hada Messia

A Los Angeles bishop has resigned after allegations of past misconduct with a minor, the local archbishop said.

Pope Francis accepted Auxiliary Bishop Alexander Salazar’s resignation Wednesday, Los Angeles Archbishop José H. Gomez said in a statement.

Salazar most recently was vicar for the Office of Ethnic Ministries of the Archdiocese of Los Angeles, Gomez said.

“I regret to inform you that in 2005, a year after he had been ordained a bishop, the Archdiocese was made aware of an allegation against Bishop Salazar of misconduct with a minor,” Gomez said in the statement.

Gomez said the accusation against Salazar stemmed from alleged misconduct in the 1990s when he was a parish priest and not an ordained bishop.

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OHIO
Akron Beacon Journal, GateHouse Media Ohio

December 19, 2018

The Roman Catholic Jesuit province serving 12 Midwest states released the names of Jesuit priests who face “credible or established” accusations of sexual abuse of minors dating to 1955, including 16 with a connection to Ohio.

None of the priests named was listed as serving in central Ohio.

In a letter, the USA Midwest Province of the Society of Jesus Provincial Rev. Brian G. Paulson wrote that the group released the names “in the spirit of transparency and reconciliation.”

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NORWICH (CT)
U.S. News & World Report

December 19, 2018

The Diocese of Norwich says it has no information on whether or not it will release the names of priests accused of abuse.

The Diocese of Norwich says it has no information on whether or not it will release the names of priests accused of abuse.

The Day of New London reports Norwich Diocese spokesman Wayne Gignac said Tuesday parishioners will be informed directly if a decision is made.

The Hartford Archdiocese plans to publish the names of priests credibly accused of sexual abuse and report how much it has spent to settle lawsuits.

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ALBUQUERQUE (NM)
U.S. News & World Report

December 19, 2018

By Susan Montoya Bryan

Another lawsuit has been filed against the Catholic Church, alleging sexual abuse of a minor by a now-deceased priest who once served at Our Lady of Health Parish in Las Cruces.

Another lawsuit has been filed against the Catholic Church, alleging sexual abuse of a child by a now-deceased priest who once served at Our Lady of Health Parish in Las Cruces.

It’s the latest in a string of legal actions stemming from allegations of clergy sex abuse that span decades and have rocked parishes across the U.S.

New Mexico’s largest diocese — the Archdiocese of Santa Fe — has spent hundreds of thousands of dollars in recent months on lawyers to fight claims of abuse and to prepare for a potentially lengthy battle in U.S. Bankruptcy Court. In neighboring Texas, church officials are preparing next month to release the names of priests who have been credibly accused of sexual abuse of a child.

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UNITED STATES
Yahoo Lifestyle

December 18, 2018

By Mandalena Lewis

When I was a 25-year-old flight attendant, I was sexually assaulted by a male pilot. I was in Maui, on a layover, working for the Canadian airline WestJet, when, following a typical post-shift gathering for drinks in the pilot’s hotel room, he attacked me repeatedly and attempted to rape me.

Somehow, through sheer adrenaline-fueled strength, I was able to escape.

I reported the incident to my company, the police, and my family — an embarrassing process that helped me understand right away why so many women don’t report their own assaults. But the experience turned me into a pre-#MeToo movement advocate who has made it her mission to break the silence around sexual harassment in the airline industry, and to help those who have been assaulted bring their attackers to justice.

Just like in the entertainment industry, I have since learned, the cover-up of rape and sexual assault by powerful airline corporations has a long, dark history. It’s rooted in the fact that the industry has historically profited from the sexualization and dehumanization of female flight attendants, for whom, up until the ’70s, the courts deemed “female sex appeal” to be a “bona fide occupational qualification.”

Airlines are not oblivious to the harassment of flight attendants and have recently become focused on flight attendant harassment by passengers, often with the vocal support of politicians — a vital effort, as a recent FBI report found that sexual assaults on commercial airline flights are on the rise, from 38 in 2014 to 63 in 2017. (The actual figures could be higher, because sexual assaults are generally underreported.)

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VATICAN CITY
The Associated Press

December 17, 2018

The Latest on a U.S. archbishop’s request to address sexual misconduct allegations against former St. Paul and Minneapolis Archbishop John Nienstedt (all times local):

11:15 p.m.

Former St. Paul and Minneapolis Archbishop John Nienstedt says he would welcome an investigation into an allegation of sexual misconduct that he claims is untrue.

In a Monday email to The Associated Press, Nienstedt says it’s difficult to defend himself against the claims because it’s his word against the accusers’ and he doesn’t want to harm them.

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VATICAN CITY
Reuters

December 19, 2018

By Philip Pullella

Pope Francis accepted the resignation of a bishop in Los Angeles accused of sexually abusing a minor, the Vatican said on Wednesday, in the latest case of clergy misconduct to shake the U.S. Catholic Church.

A brief Vatican statement said Alexander Salazar, 69, an assistant bishop in Los Angeles, was stepping down. It also distributed a letter on the Salazar case written by the current Archbishop of Los Angeles, Jose Gomez.

The U.S. Catholic Church is still reeling from a U.S. grand jury report that found that 301 priests in the state of Pennsylvania had sexually abused minors over a 70-year period.

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BOSTON (MA)
Boston Magazine

December 17, 2018

By Lisa Weidenfeld

Pauley Perrette and Sasha Alexander decided to speak up in defense of the actor.

We’ve now reached one of the more tedious parts of the #MeToo news cycle: That Man Accused of Harassment Has Always Been Nice to ME. After the New York Times published a report indicating Watertown native Eliza Dushku won a $9.5 million settlement from CBS after Michael Weatherly harassed her on the set of the show Bull, some of his former NCIS co-stars took it upon themselves to speak up in the actor’s defense.

“This man…I love, respect, trust, and I KNOW,” tweeted Pauley Perrette alongside a picture of herself with Weatherly, a man who was filmed saying that “he would take Ms. Dushku to his ‘rape van,’” per the Times report.

But Perrette wasn’t the only actress to suddenly be inspired to speak up in defense of a man who called his coworker “Legs.” Rizzoli & Isles star Sasha Alexander was also struck by the need to defend Weatherly publicly. “I have been in trenches w/my friend @M_Weatherly. Always laughs, true friend and [heart emoji] as big as they come,” she tweeted above a picture of herself with Weatherly, who was politely confronted about making a threesome joke about his work colleague and then complained in a text message to the president of CBS Television Studios about her sense of humor, and then somehow for (allegedly) unrelated reasons she lost an opportunity for a series regular gig.

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AUSTRALIA
Australian Broadcasting Corporation

December 19, 2018

By Edith Bevin

A priest who worked at the Marist College in northern Tasmania in the 1960s has been sentenced to four years in prison after pleading guilty to historical sex crimes.

He will serve a minimum non-parole period of two years.

Thomas Fulcher pleaded guilty in the Burnie Supreme Court earlier this month to three counts of indecent assault.

The court heard there were two complainants, both students at the school during the time Fulcher was the Marist College priest between 1960 and 1967.

Fulcher’s victims, now aged in their 60s, came forward and reported the abuse during the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse.

Fulcher, now aged 84, admitted he had made one boy perform a sex act in front of him and had also touched him on the genitals.

The priest then put on his confessional robes and took the boy’s confession about what had just happened.

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BRIGHTON (NY)
WROC TV

December 20, 2018

By Howard Thompson

A priest accused of having inappropriate conduct with another man won’t face charges, Brighton police announced Thursday.

Chief Mark Henderson says investigators received a report in September from a man who said he was subjected to unwanted contact by Father Erick Viloria in 2013, when the victim was 23.

Police investigated and say they found the alleged conduct was criminal, but — after consultation with the district attorney — they determined the accusations were outside the Statute of Limitations. As a result, the case against Viloria has been closed.

The chief says the victim initially reported the conduct to the Diocese of Rochester who directed the victim to police.

Viloria, who most recently served at a church in Geneva, was removed from the public ministry earlier this month along with another priest: Father Thomas Valenti.

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

December 19, 2018

Today, Illinois’ attorney general has released a preliminary report into clergy sex abuse and cover-ups in Illinois. The details within the report will no doubt be shocking to the public, but sadly, sound all too familiar to us.

According to AG Lisa Madigan’s report, dioceses in Illinois have, for decades, kept hundreds of names of abusive priests secret . Despite telling the public that there have been, in total, 185 priests “credibly” accused of abuse, the AG’s office concluded that there are many as 690. Making matters worse, when informed of allegations of abuse, the Illinois Dioceses have at best done token investigations and at worst outright ignored the accusations.

Ignoring allegations would be awful even if it only happened once, but AG Madigan’s report shows that Illinois Dioceses have ignored or minimized nearly ¾ of all allegations reported. And, when they do investigate, the AG makes the damning claim that “they frequently found reasons not to deem an allegation ‘credible.’”

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NEW YORK (NY)
New York Times

December 20, 2018

By Sharon Otterman

The Rev. Donald G. Timone, cloaked in the purple and gold robes of Advent, led the procession down the central aisle of St. Joseph’s Church here on the first Sunday of December.

Celebrating the 11:30 a.m. Mass, he preached of the need to open one’s heart to Jesus in these days before Christmas. “He understands we are not perfect,” he said, “but he will not give up on us.”

But Father Timone, by the Catholic Church’s own apparent standards, should not be presiding at the altar. Two settlements were paid by the Archdiocese of New York for substantiated allegations that Father Timone had sexually abused teenage boys he was counseling, one of whom committed suicide after what his widow said was decades of struggling with what had happened to him.

As the clergy abuse scandal continues to roil the Catholic Church, Cardinal Timothy M. Dolan, the archbishop of New York, has been under tremendous pressure to prove he has brought accountability to how his diocese, the second-largest in the country, handles the issue of child sexual abuse.

But the archdiocese is essentially allowing Father Timone to continue serving as a priest because of a bureaucratic technicality — a position that seems to fly in the face of the cardinal’s pledge to aggressively handle sexual abuse accusations.

The archdiocese maintains that Father Timone has been allowed to remain because the church itself did not rule on his fitness; that judgment was made by a separate, church-sponsored panel, the Independent Reconciliation and Compensation Program. The settlements were paid in 2017 through that program, which Cardinal Dolan established the previous year to provide closure and a measure of justice to victims of sexual abuse by priests.

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BALTIMORE (MD)
Baltimore Sun

December 20, 2018

I am writing to defend the reputation of the late Jesuit priest, Robert B. Cullen. According to a story in The Sun, Father Cullen is alleged to have abused a child during his tenure at Loyola Blakefield from 1952 to 2002 (“Maryland Jesuits release list of about 30 men ‘credibly accused’ of sexual abuse of children,” Dec. 17).

I have no knowledge of the alleged offense or offenses in this situation. No details were included in the story. But I am dismayed to see Father Cullen placed in the disgraceful category of child abuser because Jesuit officials have concluded there was a “reasonable possibility” that he committed the alleged offense.

This strikes me as an absurdly flimsy basis for such a terribly damaging blow to the reputation of a man whom my classmates and I respect for his integrity and dedication to his responsibilities as our guidance counselor.

Whenever any of us needed help through the tumult and confusion of adolescence, or through the stresses of a competitive academic environment, Father Cullen was there. He prodded us, encouraged us, challenged us to persevere, to have faith in ourselves and in each other, to honor the Jesuit motto: “Men for Others.” We will never forget him. That is why it is so painful to see his memory tarnished because of what appears to be a reckless, ill-advised effort to show a commitment to accountability.

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CHICAGO (IL)
WLS TV

December 19, 2018

By Chuck Goudie, Eric Horng and Barb Markoff and Ross Weidner

A stunning new report on sexual abuse by priests in Illinois has determined that Catholic Church officials knowingly withheld from the public the names of at least 500 clergymen accused of misconduct.

Preliminary findings of an ongoing investigation by Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan released Wednesday are the most scathing assessment yet of how the state’s six Roman Catholic dioceses have handled sexual abuse allegations against priests and other clergy.

Madigan’s highly critical report states that the Church has “failed in its moral obligation to provide survivors, parishioners and the public a complete and accurate accounting of all sexually inappropriate behavior involving priests in Illinois.” The attorney general’s statement comes even as Catholic Church officials have touted their renewed transparency and freshly updated lists of priests credibly accused of sexual misconduct.

Madigan’s preliminary report found that Illinois’ six Roman Catholic dioceses “often disregarded allegations by not investigating the allegations, or finding reasons not to substantiate the allegations.” The Attorney General’s investigators wrote that the “dioceses also often found reasons to discredit survivors’ stories of abuse by focusing on the survivors’ personal lives” and that “based upon its review, the Office believes that additional allegations” of clergy sexual abuse “should be deemed ‘credible’ or ‘substantiated’ by the Illinois Dioceses.”

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PHILADELPHIA (PA)
Philadelphia Inquirer

December 20, 2018

By Julia Terruso and Angela Couloumbis

Last month, the Archdiocese of Philadelphia launched a compensation fund program that would, in the words of Archbishop Charles J. Chaput, begin to acknowledge the “evil done” to scores, if not hundreds, of victims who were abused as children by Catholic clergy.

The fund, and others like it statewide, were established in part as a preemptive measure in the wake of an unsuccessful but hotly contested legislative proposal to change the statute of limitations and let victims sue for decades-old abuse. Church officials and some advocates have hailed the new efforts to acknowledge and compensate victims.

Yet an entire class of victims is being shut out of Philadelphia’s program because their assailants belonged to independent Catholic religious orders, even in cases where the abuse occurred at diocesan parishes or schools. Nearly a fourth of the abuse claims submitted so far to the archdiocese have been rejected because they allege abuse by members of religious orders, such as the Franciscans, Augustinians, or Jesuits.

One woman who filed such a claim this fall said it was the first time she ever told anyone about the Spiritan order priest she said repeatedly pulled her from her first-grade class in the 1950s to grope her at Our Lady of the Most Blessed Sacrament school in the city’s Fairmount section.

When she was told she was ineligible for compensation, she said, “I felt like I was being violated all over again.”

The Philadelphia Archdiocese was the first diocese statewide to launch its compensation fund, formally known as the Independent Reconciliation and Reparations Program (IRRP), and already has fielded 42 applications. The other dioceses are expected to have their funds up and running early next year.

Philadelphia’s program is open to any person who was a child victim of sexual abuse by a priest or deacon within its jurisdiction, which beyond the city includes Bucks, Chester, Delaware and Montgomery Counties. Claims can be submitted through Sept. 30, 2019.

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CHICAGO (IL)
New York Times

By Laurie Goodstein and Monica Davey

December 19, 2018

The Catholic Church in Illinois withheld the names of at least 500 priests accused of sexual abuse of minors, the state’s attorney general said Wednesday in a scathing report that accused the church of failing victims by neglecting to investigate their allegations.

The preliminary report by Attorney General Lisa Madigan concludes that the Catholic dioceses in Illinois are incapable of investigating themselves and “will not resolve the clergy sexual abuse crisis on their own.”

The report said that 690 priests were accused of abuse, and only 185 names were made public by the dioceses as having been found credibly accused of abuse.

“The number of allegations above what was already public is shocking,” said Ms. Madigan in an interview.

The Illinois report is only the latest effort by state prosecutors to hold the Catholic Church accountable by scrutinizing the church’s own records. At least 16 state attorneys general have initiated investigations of varying scope since August, after a devastating grand jury report in Pennsylvania accused more than 300 priests of sexual abuse over 50 years, and accused bishops of covering up.

Unlike Pennsylvania’s voluminous grand jury report, the nine-page report in Illinois does not name accused priests or call out particular bishops for negligence.

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WASHINGTON COUNTY (PA)
Observer-Reporter

December 20, 2018

By Mike Jones

A former counselor who worked at Seton-LaSalle High School has been accused of sexually abusing a student at the South Hills school in the mid-1980s, the Roman Catholic Diocese of Pittsburgh said Wednesday.

The diocese said it recently received an allegation of abuse against Christian Brother David Trichtinger and sent letters to alumni who attended the Catholic school in Mt. Lebanon while Trichtinger was there from 1985 to 1987.

Similar letters were also sent alumni at Central Catholic High School in Pittsburgh, where Trichtinger was academic assistant principal from 1991 to 1995. Trichtinger has not served in the Diocese of Pittsburgh since 1995, officials said.

Diocesan officials said they contacted the Allegheny County district attorney’s office upon learning of the allegations. They also informed the Brothers of the Christian Schools in the District of Eastern North America, where Trichtinger serves.

The diocese did not release details on the abuse or when officials learned of the allegations. No charges had been filed against Trichtinger as of Wednesday afternoon.

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SPOKANE (WA)
The Inlander

December 20, 2018

By Wilson Criscione

Situated on Gonzaga’s campus, between the university’s business school and the St. Aloysius Rectory, Cardinal Bea House played host to at least 20 Jesuit priests accused of sexual abuse.
Over the weekend, Reveal published an investigative report explaining how serial sexual predator Father James Poole and at least 20 other Jesuit priests accused of sexual misconduct were sent to a building on Gonzaga University’s campus to live out their remaining years.

Poole’s sexual abuse of young girls in Alaska and his relocation to Gonzaga has been documented in the news before, including in a Spokesman-Review story on a victim of his abuse receiving a $1 million settlement in 2005. According to the Reveal story, the last priest accused of sexual misconduct lived at the Cardinal Bea House on Gonzaga’s campus in 2016.

But Thayne McCulloh, in a statement Monday responding to the story, says he did not know of Poole or his history in Alaska until the investigative report this week.

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ALBUQUERQUE (NM)
Associated Press

December 19, 2018

By Susan Montoya Bryan

Another lawsuit has been filed against the Catholic Church, alleging sexual abuse of a child by a now-deceased priest who once served at Our Lady of Health Parish in Las Cruces.

It’s the latest in a string of legal actions stemming from allegations of clergy sex abuse that span decades and have rocked parishes across the U.S.

New Mexico’s largest diocese — the Archdiocese of Santa Fe — has spent hundreds of thousands of dollars in recent months on lawyers to fight claims of abuse and to prepare for a potentially lengthy battle in U.S. Bankruptcy Court. In neighboring Texas, church officials are preparing next month to release the names of priests who have been credibly accused of sexual abuse of a child.

Attorneys for a victim identified only as Jane Doe N filed a lawsuit Monday, naming the parish and the Diocese of El Paso, which used to oversee parts of Southern New Mexico before the Diocese of Las Cruces was created.

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BERGEN (NJ)
North Jersey Record

December 20, 2018

By Deena Yellin

For nearly 20 years, state Sen. Joseph Vitale, D-Middlesex, has been pushing a bill that would offer victims of sexual abuse more time to bring civil claims against their abusers and the institution that may have enabled the abuse.

His proposed measure, S-477, would amend the statute of limitations on filing charges against child sex abusers and would raise the age threshold for filing civil suits to 55, or a seven-year discovery rule, whichever is longer.

Current laws demand that civil action be filed within two years after a victim turns 18.

“For a lot of victims, it takes many years to come to terms with the abuse,” Vitale said. “My legislation would allow victims to file a claim regardless of when they were abused.”

The bill would also allow lawsuits that were dismissed because the statute of limitations had expired to be revived.

The legislation has previously stalled because of a lack of support and, Vitale said, protests from church lobbyists.

Now, in the aftermath of the explosive Pennsylvania grand jury report, his bill has gained enough traction to win approval in the Senate and Assembly, Vitale said.

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BUFFALO (NY)
WGRZ TV

December 20, 2018

An attorney representing 13 clergy sex abuse victims is calling on Bishop Richard Malone to release documents related to pedophile priests and those who tried to cover up the scandal — and then he wants Malone to resign.

Mitchell Garabedian will hold a news conference at 11:30 a.m. Thursday to talk about proposed settlement offers for his clients.

He said some of the victims find the offers acceptable. He called some other offers insulting and says they re-victimize abuse victims/survivors.

Garabedian said the victim compensation program isn’t transparent or consistent and added that some settlement offers don’t have an acceptable explanation.

Garabedian will be joined by three clergy sex abuse victims, two of whom are former priests in New Jersey and Pennsylvania.

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LOS ANGELES (CA)
Associated Press

December 20, 2018

By John Antczak and NIicole Winfield

Pope Francis has accepted the resignation of a Los Angeles auxiliary bishop, Monsignor Alexander Salazar, following an allegation of sexual misconduct with a child in the 1990s, officials said Wednesday.

The Vatican announced the resignation in a one-line statement. It was the latest in a string of misconduct allegations against bishops to come to light this year, following the scandal of ex-Cardinal Theodore McCarrick of Washington that exposed how bishops have largely avoided punishment for improper behavior.

Pasadena police recommended in 2002 that Salazar be charged with committing a lewd act on a child, but prosecutors declined to bring charges over a lack of evidence, Lt. Jesse Carrillo said. He had no further information.

The current archbishop of Los Angeles, the Most Rev. Jose Gomez, said the archdiocese learned of the claim in 2005. Gomez said the archdiocese forwarded the complaint to the Vatican office handling sex abuse cases.

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[Vatican orders Jesuits to open a “criminal administrative process” into priest accused of child abuse]

SANTIAGO (CHILE)
Emol

December 19, 2018

La Compañía de Jesús aseguró que el padre Leonel Ibacache “se encuentra impedido del ejercicio del ministerio sacerdotal”.

La Congregación para la Doctrina de la Fe encomendó al superior general de la Compañía de Jesús, Arturo Sosa, abrir un proceso administrativo penal al sacerdote Leonel Ibacache por las denuncias recibidas por abuso de menores. Lo anterior, “sobre la base de la investigación previa realizada en Santiago por el abogado Waldo Bown”, designado en abril de este año instructor a cargo de investigar las acusaciones recibidas contra el cura.

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[Experts analyze the fall of Catholicism in the CEP: “The abuses alone do not explain this”]

CHILE
Emol

December 18, 2018

By Consuelo Ferrer

A juicio de los analistas, se trataría de un proceso que viven las sociedades cuando “alcanzan ciertos niveles de desarrollo” y un mayor grado de educación. “Lo que hacen los escándalos de abusos sexuales es acelerar el proceso”, aseguran.

Es un antiguo dicho que viene de la tradición campestre chilena: “comulgar con ruedas de carreta”. Se trata, en simple, de la obligación de creer en algo inverosímil, contrastando de manera exagerada la figura de la hostia con la pieza del vehículo rural, que no podría caber en la boca. Eso es lo que dice Cristóbal Bellolio —doctor en Filosofía Política, académico de la Escuela de Gobierno de la U. Adolfo Ibáñez y autor del libro “Ateos fuera del clóset”— que ha pasado con la sociedad chilena: “Las personas ya no comulgan con ruedas de carreta”, asegura.

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[Santiago priest Sergio Cobo on diminished trust in Church: “They lack gestures of reparation with those who suffered”]

CHILE
La Tercera

December 19, 2018

By María José Blanco

En encuesta CEP. el ítem de “confianza” que se percibe ante la institucionalidad religiosa general bajó de 51% a 13% en un plazo de 20 años.

Sergio Cobo es uno de los principales sacerdotes denunciantes del expárroco de El Bosque Fernando Karadima. En junio de este año se reunió, junto a un grupo de presbíteros, con el Papa Francisco en el Vaticano.

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[Eight out of 10 people believe in God and only one in churches]

CHILE
La Tercera

December 18, 2018

By M. J. Blanco and M. J. Navarrete

Según la encuesta del Centro de Estudios Públicos (CEP), las personas que se reconocen como católicas han caído de un 73% en 1998 a un 55% en 2018.

Un 80% de las personas afirma “creer en Dios y que siempre ha creído”, pero solo un 13% dice tener confianza en las Iglesias y las organizaciones religiosas. Esa es una de las conclusiones que se pueden extraer de la encuesta sobre religión en Chile, que este martes dio a conocer el Centro de Estudios Públicos (CEP).

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

BERGEN (NJ)
North Jersey Record

December 20, 2018

By Deena Yellin

For nearly 20 years, state Sen. Joseph Vitale, D-Middlesex, has been pushing a bill that would offer victims of sexual abuse more time to bring civil claims against their abusers and the institution that may have enabled the abuse.

His proposed measure, S-477, would amend the statute of limitations on filing charges against child sex abusersand would raise the age threshold for filing civil suits to 55, or a seven-year discovery rule, whichever is longer.

Current laws demand that civil action be filed within two years after a victim turns 18.

“For a lot of victims, it takes many years to come to terms with the abuse,” Vitale said. “My legislation would allow victims to file a claim regardless of when they were abused.”

The bill would also allow lawsuits that were dismissed because the statute of limitations had expired to be revived.

The legislation has previously stalled because of a lack of support and, Vitale said, protests from church lobbyists.

Now, in the aftermath of the explosive Pennsylvania grand jury report, his bill has gained enough traction to win approval in the Senate and Assembly, Vitale said.

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

SAND POINT (ID)
Bonnor County Daily Bee

December 18, 2018

Here’s an idea. Gonzaga University could invite professional conservative martyr Ben Shapiro to reprise the topic of one of his recent Daily Wire podcasts: Has Catholic Church Sex Abuse Been Exaggerated?

Shapiro could conduct an interview much like that one – which he had Sunday with Bishop Robert Barron of the Archdiocese of Los Angeles – in which the bishop said, essentially, yes. The abuse and the widespread cover-ups were bad, the bishop said, they were awful and horrible and inexcusable and the church should pay. But, the bishop said, there’s some truth that the media, as Shapiro phrased it, “are basically picking on the Catholic Church” for a problem that is universal to all organizations and societies.

So, Shapiro could come to Gonzaga, put on that show, and afterward someone could walk him across campus and tell him the story of Cardinal Bea House.

Because – as shown in a great piece of reporting by Emily Schwing of the Northwest News Network – the story of the Bea House and its use as a final stop for at least 20 priests accused of sexual assault and abuse is another example of the ways in which the church’s sex abuse scandal was not at all like the sex abuse scandals of other organizations, but which flourished in the particular culture of Catholic clergy and which was forgiven and ignored and covered up by church leaders in such a way that the tendrils of the thing are still woven into the institutions.

Schwing’s reporting shows the Bea House, right in the middle of the campus, was used specifically, though not solely, as a place where abuser priests – even priests believed to be certain to reoffend – could be kept and monitored in secrecy.

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DUNEDIN (NEW ZEALAND)
Otago Daily Times

December 19, 2018

By Chris Morris

A Dunedin survivor of sexual abuse within the Catholic Church is heading to the Vatican in the hope of meeting the Pope, helped by the Catholic Bishop of Dunedin.

Darryl Smith yesterday told ODT Insight he would fly to Rome in February to spend six days at the Vatican, coinciding with a gathering of the leaders of bishops’ conferences from around the world.

The gathering had been called by Pope Francis to discuss the international sexual abuse crisis engulfing the church, and would run from February 21-24 next year.

Cardinal John Dew, of Wellington, would be New Zealand’s official representative at the gathering, but Mr Smith would also be there, joining other survivors from around the world at the Vatican.

Mr Smith said his trip had been partly funded by Dunedin Bishop the Most Rev Michael Dooley, who had offered ”several thousand” dollars towards his costs.

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