ABUSE TRACKER

EL PASO (TX)
KVIA-TV

June 11, 2018

El Paso Police arrested a former Catholic priest and charged him with sexual abuse of a minor allegedly committed while he was a priest.

Miguel Luna, 68, is charged with Aggravated Sexual Assault of a Child.

Detectives with the Department’s Crimes Against Children unit conducted an investigation after the victim came forward and said the forme priest abused her as a child.

Police said the alleged assaults occurred over the span of several years in the early through late 90’s and ended when the victim moved away.

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IRELAND
Irish Times

June 12, 2018

By Patsy McGarry

Gay families welcome at World Meeting of Families events in Dublin, says Primate

Pope Francis “will be briefed” before he arrives in Dublin about the abuse of women and children in Catholic-run institutions in Ireland, Archbishop of Dublin Diarmuid Martin has said.

“It’s a challenge for all of us in the Irish church to recognise the way people have been damaged, the way the church has been damaged,” Dr Martin said in Maynooth on Monday as he announced details of the pope’s visit to Ireland for the World Meeting of Families (WMoF).

“Certainly he will know when he comes to the Pro Cathedral in Dublin. Many people don’t know that but there’s a candle that has been burning there for years reminding people of the suffering that took place,” he said.

Pope Francis will visit Dublin’s Pro Cathedral at 3.30pm on Saturday, August 25th.

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ROME
The New York Times

June 11, 2018

By Jason Horowitz

[Leer en español]

In January, Pope Francis deeply offended survivors of clerical abuse and threatened the reputation of his pontificate when he defended a Chilean bishop from the “calumny” of victims and said that he had refused the bishop’s offers of resignation.

On Monday, Pope Francis accepted the resignation of that bishop, Juan Barros of Osorno.

The resignation of Bishop Barros and of two other bishops in Chile is a remarkable reversal for Francis. Only months ago, the Chilean scandal represented an enormous threat to the pope’s credibility. Now, abuse victims and their advocates express hope that a new era is beginning in which bishops and the church hierarchy will be held accountable for covering up and ignoring abuse.

“Today begins a new day for the Catholic Church in Chile and hopefully the world,” Juan Carlos Cruz, a victim of the Rev. Fernando Karadima, one of Chile’s most notorious abusive priests, wrote on Twitter on Monday. The priest was a mentor of Bishop Barros, who Mr. Cruz says witnessed his abuse and did nothing.

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IRELAND
Irish Mirror

June 11, 2018

By Cate McCurry

Archbishop of Dublin Diarmuid Martin said victims and survivors of clerical abuse meeting the Pope are high on the list of priorities

Pope Francis will meet victims abused by the Church in hellhole institutions during his summer visit to Ireland, top clergymen have predicted.

Details of the Pontiff’s €20million, two-day trip were unveiled today – but he will not be venturing across the border into Northern Ireland.

Instead, hundreds of thousands of faithful will turn out to greet him at Knock in Co Mayo and in Dublin’s Phoenix Park.

Archbishop Eamon Martin said he is disappointed the Pope is not visiting Northern Ireland as the Catholic Church leader’s itinerary – along with plans for the World Meeting of Families – were announced.

He said: “We were really hoping this might be an opportunity and I think he really would love to come to Northern Ireland but I suppose the pressures of this particular event and all he wants to do for the World Meeting of the Families has overtaken that.

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The Netherlands
nrc.nl

May 22, 2018

By Joep Dohmen

‘We were no more than slaves’

Slachtoffer dwangarbeid

Jo Keepers (76) is een van de 15.000 vrouwen die onbetaalde dwangarbeid heeft gedaan in katholieke “liefdesgestichten” in Nederland. Van het strijken in de wasserij hield ze artrose over.

Op 17 september 1948 haalde de politie mijn drie broers en mij thuis in Roosendaal op. Elk lustrum vier ik. Dan ga ik met een broer eten in een Grieks restaurant hier in de buurt. Het was thuis onhoudbaar met een vader die dronk en sloeg.”

Jo Keepers (76) en haar broers werden in veiligheid gebracht, en toch ook weer niet. Ze belandden in katholieke gestichten. In 1955 kwam Jo terecht bij de Zusters van de Goede Herder in Tilburg. „Ik was 14 jaar en had eigenlijk nog naar school moeten gaan. Maar daar was geen tijd voor. Ze hadden een industriële wasserij waar de meisjes en vrouwen verplicht moesten werken. Van ’s morgens tot ’s avonds.”

Ze werkte op de afdeling waar het gewassen goed werd gestreken. De ouderwetse strijkboutjes stonden de hele dag op een groot fornuis. „Aan dat strijken heb ik artrose over gehouden. We moesten ook aan de mangel. Daar hebben we heel wat productie gemaakt. Kerkkleding, gesteven overhemden. Zoveel spul.”

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The Netherlands
nrc.nl

May 22, 2018

By Joep Dohmen

‘Around the garden hung barbed wire’

Slachtoffer dwangarbeid Zeker 15.000 vrouwen hebben onbetaalde dwangarbeid gedaan in katholieke “liefdesgestichten” in Nederland. Zo ook Margôt Verhagen (85), die verkracht werd door de rector van het gesticht.

Als kind had Margôt Verhagen (85) uit Den Haag pech. Veel pech. Haar vader overleed in de oorlog. In hun boerderij in Someren stierf in 1950 ook haar moeder. Ze liet zeven kinderen achter. Margôt was 17.

Een tante in Nijmegen ontfermde zich over haar. Maar al snel kwamen er twee politiemannen en een mevrouw van de kinderbescherming. Ze zouden haar ergens naartoe brengen waar ze het beter kreeg. Dat was Huize Larenstein, het gesticht van de Zusters van de Goede Herder in Velp. Zusters in een wit habijt met zwarte kap onthaalden haar. „Daarna was de liefde snel afgelopen.”

Margôt verbleef er van 1950 tot 1954. „Een verschrikkelijk tijd.” Het was elke dag hard werken. ’s Morgens 6 uur opstaan, naar de kerk en de eetzaal. Daarna werden de meisjes en vrouwen naar hun werk geloodst. Na het middageten riep het werk weer. Rond half zeven zaten ze opnieuw in de kerk. Na het avondeten en de recreatie was het om half negen bedtijd.

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THE NETHERLANDS
nrc.nl

May 22, 2018

By Joep Dohmen

‘The laundries were part of the culture of that time’
Forced labour
After France, Belgium and Ireland, the Sisters of the Good Shepherd are now also under threat in the Netherlands.

Dwangarbeid

Na Frankrijk, België en Ierland zijn de Zusters van de Goede Herder nu ook in Nederland in opspraak.

Het heropvoeden van ontspoorde meisjes (‘gevallen vrouwen’) was het heilige doel van Mary Euphrasia. In de Franse stad Angers begon ze in 1829 de congregatie van de Zusters van Onze Lieve Vrouw van Liefde van de Goede Herder. Mary Euphrasia werd in 1940 zelf heilig verklaard.

Maar heropvoeden bleek al snel een ander woord voor uitbuiting. Al vanaf 1844 waren er in Frankrijk schandalen rond de nonnen, die duizenden kinderen en vrouwen opsloten. Ze moesten zonder enige betaling op industriële schaal naaiwerk doen en in wasserijen werken. De congregatie werd in 1888 veroordeeld voor het schenden van de arbeidswetten.

In 1903 moesten de nonnen in Frankrijk een schadevergoeding betalen. Zij hadden meisjes in hun gesticht in Nancy jarenlang zonder betaling en onder erbarmelijke omstandigheden te werk gesteld. Zelfs de bisschop van Nancy nam het voor de meisjes op, meldde de Zwolsche Courant: „De bisschop verklaarde voor de rechtbank, dat in het heele land geen werkgever zoo goddeloos is, zijn arbeiders en arbeidsters zoo uitzuigt, als de nonnen de meisjes behandelen, aan wie zij, daar het heet, een werk van liefdadigheid verrichten.”

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CHILE
AFP

June 11, 2018

Pope Francis accepted Monday the resignation of three Chilean bishops including the controversial Juan Barros following a child sex abuse scandal in Chile which has come to haunt his papacy.

The entire Chilean delegation of bishops tendered its resignation to the pope last month after a series of meetings at the Vatican.

Several members of the Chilean church hierarchy are accused by victims of ignoring and covering up child abuse by Chilean paedophile priest Fernando Karadima during the 1980s and 1990s.

Argentine-born Francis, whose decision was announced in a Vatican statement Monday, has said it must not happen again on his watch.

But the pontiff himself became mired in the scandal when, during a trip to Chile in January, he defended Barros who was accused of covering up Karadima’s wrongdoing.

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CLEVELAND (OH)
cleveland.com

June 10, 2018

Guest Columnist Melissa Martin, Ph.D, is an author, columnist, educator, and therapist. She resides in Southern Ohio. www.melissamartinchildrensauthor.com.

The tragic story of the rape of Tamar, a young royal princess who was sexually violated by her half-brother and then betrayed by her powerful father, King David, can be found in the Old Testament.

The Bible neither covers up nor ignores sexual assault.

Around 25 years ago, when I practiced as a licensed and ordained minister, I listened as a speaker and former pastor related a gut-wrenching story that had happened in his church in Florida. Two teenage brothers volunteered to help in Sunday school and children’s church. Allegedly, they sexually molested several children when they took them to the church bathroom. Members of the church were so devastated that they closed the church doors and put it up for sale.

Around this same time, a youth leader in the same denomination where I was a former member went to prison for having sexual relations with a minor, a girl in his youth group.

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ROME
Crux

June 11, 2018

By Inés San Martín

Pope Francis has accepted the resignation of a controversial Chilean bishop accused of covering up clerical sexual abuse, making it the first such accepted resignation since all the country’s bishops offered to step down in May.

The pontiff had appointed Bishop Juan Barros to the southern diocese of Osorno in 2015, causing uproar both among the locals and the victims of the country’s most infamous pedophile priest.

The Vatican announced Francis’s decision on Monday, and said Bishop Jorge Enrique Concha Cayuqueo, an auxiliary bishop from the capital Santiago, would serve as apostolic administrator of the diocese.

Two other bishops also had their resignations accepted: Archbishop Cristián Caro Cordero of Puerto Montt and Bishop Gonzalo Duarte García de Cortázar of Valparaíso.

Barros was only 61; the other two bishops were 75, the mandatory retirement age for bishops in the Church.

The removals come ahead of a pastoral visit by two papal investigators to Osorno to “advance the process of reparation and healing.”

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CHILE
Malta Independent

June 11, 2018

Pope Francis accepted the resignation Monday of the bishop at the center of Chile’s clerical sex abuse scandal and two others, launching a purge of a Catholic Church that has lost its credibility under an avalanche of accusations of abuse and cover-up.

A Vatican statement said Francis had accepted the resignations of Bishop Juan Barros of Osorno, Bishop Gonzalo Duarte of Valparaiso and Bishop Cristian Caro of Puerto Montt. Of the three, only the 61-year-old Barros is below the retirement age of 75.

Francis named temporary leaders for each of the dioceses.

Barros has been at the center of Chile’s growing scandal ever since Francis appointed him bishop of Osorno in 2015 over the objections of the local faithful, his own sex abuse prevention advisers and some of Chile’s other bishops. They questioned Barros’ suitability to lead given he had been a top lieutenant of Chile’s most notorious predator priest and had been accused by victims of witnessing and ignoring their abuse.

Barros denied the charge, but he joined 30 of Chile’s other active bishops in offering their resignations to Francis at an extraordinary Vatican summit last month. Francis had summoned Chile’s church leaders to Rome after realizing he had made “grave errors in judgment” about Barros, whom he had defended strongly during his troubled visit to Chile in January.

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GENEVA
La Croix International

June 5, 2018

By Céline Hoyeau

It is necessary for bishops to undergo regular training on the rights of children, the dynamics of abusers, says co-founder of Ending Clergy Abuse network

Ending Clergy Abuse (ECA), the newly formed international network of groups fighting pedophilia in the church, is meeting for the first time in Geneva this week.

In a few days, one of the network’s founders, José Andrès Murillo, who was himself a victim of a former priest in Chile, will hand a letter to Pope Francis outlining a series of proposals for fighting abuse in the Church.

Céline Hoyeau for La Croix interviewed José Andrès Murillo.

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AUSTRALIA
The Canberra Times

June 12, 2018

By Michelle James

It is hard to know where to begin with Archbishop Christopher Prowse’s plea on behalf of the Catholic Church for the ACT government to preserve the seal of religious confession, even in instances where a child is being sexually abused (“Reporting scheme shouldn’t ignore Catholic community’s wish to be part of the solution”, The Canberra Times, June 7, 2018).

Thankfully, the ACT Assembly wasn’t swayed as it voted last week to introduce Australia’s toughest new mandatory reporting laws, making it a leader in child safety. But there is no doubt the Catholic Church will never give up trying to stop the other states and territories from following the ACT’s lead and that is why the arguments of Archbishop Prowse, which seek to undermine the efficacy of these reforms, must be called out.

The Catholic Church has a shameful track record when it comes to acting on child sex abuse. Archbishop Prowse acknowledges that past and seeks to purport that the Church wants to be a part of the solution, but as an advocate for abuse survivors, all I see today is more of the same: a failure from the Church to act as the community expects in putting child safety first.

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ROCHESTER (NY)
The Daily News

June 11, 2018

Two of the eight priests from the Diocese of Rochester who were accused last week of sexually abusing children had assignments at churches in Dansville and Geneseo.

The priests were among eight who were ordained or assigned in the Diocese of Rochester during the past eight decades who were named at a Rochester news conference by Mitchell Garabedian, an attorney who represents several survivors of abuse in Rochester, and Robert Hoatson, president of Road to Recovery, a non-profit organization that helps victims of sexual abuse and their families.

Eugene Emo and David P. Simon had previously been acknowledged as alleged abusers by the Diocese of Rochester after the allegations of misconduct were reported by area media. Those reports did not note any specific allegations occurring in Dansville.

Emo, who was ordained in 1961, had been transferred repeatedly and was twice placed on administrative leave. He served at St. Mary’s in Dansville from 1968 to 1973. He was assigned to St. Mary’s Church, Geneseo, in June 1982, but by October 1982 had been moved to St. Francis DeSales, Geneva, according to a Feb. 16, 1996, story in the Democrat and Chronicle.

Emo was arrested in 1996 due to behavior with young boys and sent to a different parish, according to WHAM-TV, channel 13 in Rochester.

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OWEGO (NY)
Spectrum Local News

June 10, 2018

By Nicholas Phillips

Members of St. Patrick’s Parish in Owego are reacting to the sexual abuse allegations against a local priest.

Thomas Valenti is one of eight priests accused of sexually abusing children in the Rochester Catholic Diocese. He now serves as a parochial administrator at Blessed Trinity, which includes St. Patrick’s.

Valenti is accused of abusing a 15-year-old from 1975 to 1977. During that time, he was a deacon at St. Mary’s in Ontario, New York.

Some people who spoke with Spectrum News say the lawyer representing the victims in this case, Mitchell Garabedian, is digging up the past.

“I really believe he is just causing this issue. Most of the allegations that they dredged up are priests who have either long left the priesthood or are deceased,” said Susan Peterson, church member.

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NEW SOUTH WALES (AUSTRALIA)
Australian Broadcasting Corporation

June 10, 2018

By Angelique Lu and Rachael Jones

The 11-year battle to close a legal loophole in New South Wales that prevented abuse survivors from suing churches and other institutions is coming to an end.

Barriers preventing victims from seeking justice will be removed based on recommendations from the Royal Commission into Institutional Child Sex Abuse.

John Ellis, a former altar boy, had waited years before deciding to sue the Catholic Church for abuse he had suffered at the hands of a priest.

By the time he decided to take legal action in 2002, by this stage a lawyer himself, he had no-one to sue.

The priest responsible for the crimes had died, and the Archbishop of Sydney was not considered responsible for the actions of his predecessor.

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WASHINGTON (DC)
Think Progress

June 11, 2018

By Lindsay Gibbs

They’re in it for the long haul, but at least they’re in it together.

Last Tuesday afternoon, seven of the more than 330 women who were sexually assaulted by former Michigan State and USA Gymnastics (USAG) doctor Larry Nassar — now known as Inmate Nassar — sat in the front row of a cavernous hearing room in the Dirksen Senate Office Building in Washington, D.C., waiting to hear what former USA Gymnastics President and CEO Steve Penny had to say for himself.

Penny, who was appearing in front of the Senate Commerce Subcomittee under subpoena, led USAG during the largest sex abuse scandal in U.S. sports history. During his tenure, he filed complaints of sexual abuse away in his desk; waited five weeks to report credible allegations of sexual abuse against Nassar to the FBI; and allowed Nassar to publicly portray his departure from USA Gymnastics as a voluntary retirement, rather than a firing due to sexual abuse. Under outside pressure, Penny resigned from his position over a year ago — $1 million severance package in tow — and hadn’t been heard from since.

As you might imagine, the survivors had plenty of questions, as did the senators. But, instead of being forthcoming, Penny plead the fifth. Over and over again, until the senators dismissed him.

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BUFFALO (NY)
The Buffalo News

June 11, 2018

By Dan Herbeck and Jay Tokasz

Nearly three years ago, the Buffalo Diocese abruptly removed the Rev. Dennis A. Fronczak as pastor of Our Lady of Pompeii Church in Lancaster.

Nobody at the parish was told why.

A diocese representative announced Fronczak’s departure at Masses at the church in October 2015, recalled Dick Wagner, 80, a long-time parishioner.

“He told us Father Dennis was going on administrative leave for an undetermined time. He didn’t say why,” Wagner said. “There’s been this dark cloud hanging over Father Dennis’s head ever since that day…I don’t think it’s fair. Either tell us that he is guilty of something, or not guilty, but don’t just leave the man hanging.”

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NORTHERN IRELAND
The Irish Times

June 11, 2018

By Paul Higgins

A former priest has appeared in court in Co Down charged with sexually abusing a boy 30 years ago.

Standing in the dock of Downpatrick Magistrates Court, Daniel John Curran (68) confirmed his name and that he was aware of the charge against him.

Mr Curran, from Bryansford Avenue in Newcastle, is accused of indecently assaulting a male on a date unknown between August 16th, 1989 and August 18th, 1991.

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ENGLAND
The Telegraph

June 10, 2018

By Abigail Frymann Rouch and Olivia Rudgard

Growing secularisation is leading to an increase in violence and verbal abuse against Christian clergy, experts fear.

Priests told of experiences including discovering a witchcraft symbol sprayed on a church door and being followed home as academics launched a mass survey of priests to find out the scale of the problem.

There are also concerns that sex abuse scandals and a growing number of female clergy is contributing to a growth in threats and violence against priests.

Academics at Royal Holloway, University of London, are to survey around 7,000 Church of England clergy using £5,000 in funding from the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government.

The survey, which is to be circulated online this month, will ask clergy whether they have experienced verbal abuse, threats or physical violence in the last two years, and how often church property is damaged.

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NORTHERN IRELAND
ITV News

June 11, 2018

By Paul Higgins

A paedophile former priest has appeared in court accused of historical sex abuse.

Standing in the dock of Downpatrick Magistrates’ Court on Monday, 68-year-old Daniel John Curran confirmed his name and that he was aware of the charge against him.

Curran, from Bryansford Avenue in Newcastle, is accused of indecently assaulting a male on a date unknown between 16 August 1989 and 18 August 1991.

None of the evidence surrounding the 30-year-old charges was opened in court in the short Preliminary Enquiry, the legal step necessary to move a case to the higher Crown Court, but a prosecuting lawyer submitted that the crown papers and witness statements formed the basis of a Prima Facie case against the former Catholic priest.

The court clerk told Curran that although not obliged to, he had the right to comment on the charge, five evidence to the PE or call witnesses on his behalf but that anyone giving evidence was liable to cross examination.

Curran declined the opportunity however, telling the court clerk simply “no” to each of the questions.

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PHILADELPHIA (PA)
CBS

June 11, 2018

The results of a lengthy investigation into priest abuse in the state of Pennsylvania could be released in just a few weeks.

A grand jury looked into six of the eight dioceses across the state.

The report is expected to reveal widespread sexual abuse and efforts to conceal and protect abusive priests.

Pennsylvania Attorney General Josh Shapiro says he will address the findings by the end of this month.

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IRELAND
Belfast Telegraph

June 11, 2018

A former Northern Ireland priest has appeared in court accused of historical sex abuse.

Standing in the dock of Downpatrick Magistrates Court on Monday, June 11, 68-year-old Daniel John Curran confirmed his name and that he was aware of the charge against him.

Curran, from Bryansford Avenue in Newcastle, is accused of indecently assaulting a male on a date unknown between August 16, 1989 and August 18, 1991.

None of the evidence surrounding the 30-year-old charges was opened in court in the short Preliminary Enquiry, the legal step necessary to move a case to the higher Crown Court, but a prosecuting lawyer submitted that the crown papers and witness statements formed the basis of a Prima Facie case against him.

The court clerk told Curran that although not obliged to, he had the right to comment on the charge or call witnesses on his behalf but that anyone giving evidence was liable to cross examination.

Curran declined the opportunity however, telling the court clerk simply “no,” to each of the questions.

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ROME
National Catholic Reporter

June 11, 2018

By Joshua J. McElwee

Pope Francis has accepted the resignation of the Catholic bishop at the center of Chile’s clergy sexual abuse crisis, in the first of what is expected to be a wave of firings to root out what the pontiff has termed a “culture of abuse and cover-up” in the country’s church.

In a short note June 11, the Vatican said simply that Francis had accepted the resignation of Osorno Bishop Juan Barros Madrid, a controversial prelate who had been accused of covering up abuse by another priest in the 1980s and ’90s.

At the same time, the pope accepted the resignations of two other Chilean prelates who had already reached the traditional retirement age of 75. Francis has named separate apostolic administrators to lead each of the three dioceses on a temporary basis.

Barros’ resignation appears to wrap up one part of what has been an unusually tumultuous period in Francis’ five-year papacy, which touched off during a January visit to Chile when the pontiff enraged abuse survivors and their advocates by calling the accusations against Barros “calumny.”

The pope however made a sharp turnabout after the visit abroad, sending one of the church’s most respected abuse investigators to Chile to look into the accusations against Osorno’s bishop. In a letter to the country’s bishops in April after receiving a 2,300-page report on the situation, Francis admitted making “serious mistakes” in his handling of sexual abuse cases in Chile.

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VATICAN CITY
The Associated Press

June 11, 2018

By Nicole Winfield

Pope Francis accepted the resignation Monday of the bishop at the center of Chile’s clerical sex abuse scandal and two others, launching a purge of a Catholic Church that has lost its credibility under an avalanche of accusations of abuse and cover-up.

A Vatican statement said Francis had accepted the resignations of Bishop Juan Barros of Osorno, Bishop Gonzalo Duarte of Valparaiso and Bishop Cristian Caro of Puerto Montt. Of the three, only the 61-year-old Barros is below the retirement age of 75.

Francis named temporary leaders for each of the dioceses.

Barros has been at the center of Chile’s growing scandal ever since Francis appointed him bishop of Osorno in 2015 over the objections of the local faithful, his own sex abuse prevention advisers and some of Chile’s other bishops. They questioned Barros’ suitability to lead given he had been a top lieutenant of Chile’s most notorious predator priest and had been accused by victims of witnessing and ignoring their abuse.

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UNITED STATES
The Tennessean

June 10, 2018

By Holly Meyer

The recent downfall of a Southern Baptist legend is pushing many in pulpits and pews to confront the mistreatment of women within the evangelical denomination.

They say members of the Southern Baptist Convention need to address the mistreatment when they gather early this week in Dallas for their big denominational meeting. This year’s two-day event could prove to be a pivotal moment in Southern Baptist life given the recent ousting of Paige Patterson from a Texas seminary over his treatment of women.

The convention must take a clear stance against abuse and in support of women, said Randy Davis, the executive director of Tennessee Baptist Mission Board, which represents more than 3,200 Baptist churches in Tennessee and nearby states.

“There is no room for confusion in the matter of respecting and honoring women from all walks of life,” Davis said. “It is biblical that we honor women.”

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DUBLIN (IRELAND)
Reuters

June 11, 2018

Reporting by Graham Fahy; Editing by Gareth Jones

Pope Francis will not visit British-ruled Northern Ireland this summer when he makes the first papal visit to Ireland in almost 40 years, the Vatican said on Monday.
Francis arrives in Dublin on August 25 for a two-day visit when the Irish capital hosts the 9th World Meeting of Families, a Roman Catholic event held every three years.

The visit comes after voters in Ireland overwhelmingly overturned one of the world’s strictest bans on abortions in a referendum, despite opposition from the Catholic Church.

Senior clerics, including the Archbishop of Armagh and all-Ireland primate Eamon Martin, had been pressing for the inclusion of Northern Ireland on his itinerary as a contribution to the peace process.

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UNITED STATES
The Washington Post

June 10, 2018

By Michelle Boorstein and Sarah Pulliam Bailey

Southern Baptists pride themselves on being independent, democratic, Average Joes who pick their own pastors, no pope telling them what to do. Their credo is “the priesthood of the believer,” which means every Christian has access to God – no pecking order.

And then there is The Red Bishop.

Or “TRB,” as the red-haired Paige Patterson was known (and sometimes as he himself signed documents) during his decades-long reign as one of the most powerful leaders in the history of the Southern Baptist Convention, a giant force in American evangelicalism.

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PETALUMA (CA)
TIME

June 10, 2018

By Alix Langone

The valedictorian of a California high school said she had her microphone cut off by the school’s administration during her graduation speech as she started to speak about sexual assault.

Lulabel Seitz, 17, was giving her speech at Petaluma High School when she was abruptly cut off around four minutes into it.

At first, she talked about how her fellow classmates should feel proud for overcoming obstacles to graduate and pursue their dreams, and she said she never thought she would be the valedictorian as the daughter of parents who left high school early. She spoke about classmates persevering through the devastating wildfires in Northern California that destroyed some of their homes, and what it was like being in school during teacher strikes.

But when Seitz’ started to address the issue of sexual assault, specifically as she was about to say that some at the high school had silenced victims, her microphone was cut off.

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UNITED STATES
Dallas News

June 10, 2018

By Charles Scudder

Growing up in the 1960s, Ted Elmore considered the turmoil that roiled a generation to be a spiritual cry for help.

Now a prayer strategist for the Southern Baptists of Texas Convention, he sees growing pains of another sort.

As the national organization prepares to gather in Dallas for its annual meeting this week, the #MeToo movement has made its presence felt firsthand among Baptists.

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ALBANY (NY)
New York Post

June 10, 2018

By Anna Sanders

Bronx state Sen. Jeff Klein’s Democratic challenger wants Albany to make public the status of a probe into allegations the lawmaker forcibly kissed a staffer.

Alessandra Biaggi called on Republican and Democratic legislators to amend state law to allow the Joint Commission on Public Ethics (JCOPE) to be transparent about the status of its investigations.

Former policy analyst Erica Vladimir told the Huffington Post five months ago that she stopped working for Klein after he “shoved his tongue” down her throat at an Albany bar on March 31, 2015.

Klein denied the allegations. His lawyer said in mid-January the case was being investigated by JCOPE.

But JCOPE is barred from commenting on anything that may or may not be under investigation, or if it has completed a probe or decided not to investigate at all. Only a substantiated allegation would be made public eventually.

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PHILADELPHIA (PA)
The Associated Press

June 10, 2018

By Claudia Lauer,

The results of a lengthy probe into the handling of sexual abuse claims by Roman Catholic dioceses throughout Pennsylvania, which victim advocates say will be the biggest and most exhaustive ever by a U.S. state, could be made public within weeks.

A statewide grand jury spent nearly two years looking into the abuse scandal, and Pennsylvania Attorney General Josh Shapiro has said he plans to address the panel’s findings by the end of June.

The grand jury investigated six of the state’s eight dioceses, which collectively minister to more than 1.7 million Catholics. The report is expected to reveal details of widespread abuse and efforts to conceal and protect abusive priests.

A judge’s ruling last week gave the first real details of an investigation that started in July 2016. Judge Norman Krumenacker rejected an effort to delay the report’s release or allow people named in the report to challenge parts of it before its release.

Krumenacker, a Cambria County judge who has been overseeing the grand jury, wrote in his opinion that the investigative body had heard from dozens of witnesses and reviewed over a half million pages of internal documents from diocesan archives. The investigation involved allegations of child sexual abuse, failure of church structures to report it to law enforcement and obstruction of justice by people “associated with the Roman Catholic Church, local public officials and community leaders,” he said.

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UNITED STATES
The Associated Press

June 9, 2018

By David Crary

The Southern Baptists are facing their own #MeToo crisis as the biggest Protestant denomination in the U.S. heads into its annual meeting next week.

A series of sexual misconduct cases has prompted the Southern Baptist Convention’s socially conservative, all-male leadership to seek forgiveness for the ill treatment of women and vow to combat it. Hoping for more than rhetoric, women and some male allies plan a protest rally in Dallas when the two-day meeting opens on Tuesday.

“The past two months have been tough for our convention,” SBC President Steve Gaines wrote this week. “I believe God has allowed all of this to happen to drive us to our knees.”

Illustrating the SBC’s predicament, the central figure in the most prominent of the #MeToo cases, Paige Patterson, had been scheduled to deliver the featured sermon at the gathering. However, Patterson withdrew from that role Friday, heeding a request from Gaines and other leaders.

Patterson was recently dismissed as president of Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary in Texas because of his response to two rape allegations made years apart by students.

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AUSTRALIAN CAPITAL TERRITORY (AUSTRALIA)
Australian Associated Press via news.com.au

June 11, 2018

By Karen Sweeney

The ACT says a new law aimed at forcing priests to report child sexual abuse admissions hearing in confession is about putting children first.

Priests in the ACT [Australian Capital Territory] will be legally required to report any admissions of child sexual abuse they hear during the Catholic sacrament of confession.

The ACT Legislative Assembly on Friday passed legislation requiring priests to break the seal of confession and report abusers.

But there will be a nine-month wait before the law is enforced as the government works through “legal complexities” of the bill, which clashes with Canon Law governing the Catholic Church.

Under Canon Law, priests are forbidden from revealing what they hear in confession.

Territory Attorney-General Gordon Ramsay, a former Uniting Church minister, says the government knows there are significant complexities.

“We believe that the primary response must be for the protection of children,” he told ABC radio.

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PENNSYLVANIA
The Guardian

June 11, 2018

By Stephanie Kirchgaessner in Rome

State attorney general to release 884-page report detailing decades of sexual abuse and cover-ups by the church

Mark Rozzi can remember the feeling of the tall grass brushing against his bare legs on the day he and a close friend desperately ran out of the rectory in Hyde Park, Pennsylvania.

Rozzi, who was 13 at the time, had just been raped by his priest, the Rev Edward Graff, and remembers thinking in that moment, as he ran through a field, that he would take his terrible new secret to his grave.

When he got home and was peppered with questions by his mother – a Sicilian from Messina who sensed something was wrong – he lied and said Graff had dropped his towel in front of the boys. He did not tell her about the things he came to understand as an adult – that Graff had groomed him for months, by secretly talking to him about sex, plying him with alcohol and showing him pornography. It had all culminated in his vicious rape by Graff in a shower, where Rozzi can still recall staring at the tiles and wondering if he should stay or run.

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ST. PAUL (MN)
Minnesota Public Radio

June 11, 2018

By Tom Scheck

The Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis is crafting a plan that leans on budget cuts, property sales and the generosity of Catholics to help the church emerge from bankruptcy and move beyond a clergy sex abuse scandal that has plagued it for years.

The archdiocese has committed to pay $40 million of the historic $210 million settlement with clergy abuse survivors that isn’t covered by insurance.

Officials on Friday shared the basics of their proposed payment plan with MPR News. Other details were gleaned from interviews and a review of court documents. The archdiocese hopes to present its final proposal to the bankruptcy judge within the next month.

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VATICAN CITY
Associated Press

June 11, 2018

By Nicole Winfield

Pope Francis accepted the resignation Monday of the bishop at the center of Chile’s clerical sex abuse scandal and two others, launching a purge of a Catholic Church that has lost its credibility under an avalanche of accusations of abuse and cover-up.

A Vatican statement said Francis had accepted the resignations of Bishop Juan Barros of Osorno, Bishop Gonzalo Duarte of Valparaiso and Bishop Cristian Caro of Puerto Montt. Of the three, only the 61-year-old Barros is below the retirement age of 75.

Francis named temporary leaders for each of the dioceses.

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VATICAN CITY
Holy See Press Office

June 11, 2018

Resignation of archbishop of Puerto Montt, Chile, and appointment of apostolic administrator sede vacante et ad nutum Sanctae Sedis of the same archdiocese

Resignation of bishop of Valparaíso, Chile, and appointment of apostolic administrator sede vacante et ad nutum Sanctae Sedis of the same diocese

Resignation of bishop of Osorno, Chile, and appointment of apostolic administrator sede vacante et ad nutum Sanctae Sedis of the same diocese

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VATICAN CITY
Reuters via The Guardian

June 11, 2018

Pontiff vows that victims of Father Fernando Karadimo would ‘never again’ be ignored

In an unprecedented move, all Chile’s 34 bishops offered to resign last month after attending a crisis meeting with Francis over allegations that sexual abuse in the country’s Catholic church had been covered up.

It was not immediately clear if Monday’s development meant the pope would reject the resignations of the other 31 bishops.

Besides Barros, the pope also agreed to the departures of Cristián Caro Cordero, bishop of Puerto Montt, and Gonzalo Duarte García de Cortázar, bishop of Valparaiso.

Church administrators were appointed to run all three diocese.

Francis has promised Chilean Catholics affected by sexual abuse that “never again” would the church ignore them or the cover-up of abuse in their country.

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AUSTRALIA
Crux

June 10, 2018

By Crux Staff

Survivors of clerical abuse in the Australian state of New South Wales will be able to directly sue churches under proposed legal changes announced on Sunday.

Mark Speakman, the attorney general, said the new legislation was in response to Australia’s royal commission into institutional abuse.

New South Wales is Australia’s most populous state, and the home of the country’s largest city, Sydney.

“These reforms will provide access to new avenues to allow survivors to pursue compensation, so they can focus on recovering and moving forward with their lives,” Speakman said during a press conference, according to the AAP.

Under current law, priests and lay volunteers are not considered employees of churches. Moreover, churches’ assets are held in trust, and Australia’s courts have held that the trustees of a trust cannot be held responsible for the actions of the conduct of those working for the trust.

This makes it difficult for victims to sue for damages.

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GENEVA (NY)
Finger Lakes (NY) Times

June 10, 2018

By David L. Shaw

Eight Catholic priests in the Diocese of Rochester, several of whom served in Finger Lakes parishes, are being accused of sexually abusing children by a group called Road to Recovery.

Attorney Mitchell Garabedian of Boston made the allegations in Rochester Wednesday.

The Law Offices of Mitchell Garabedian did the groundbreaking work in the Boston clergy sexual abuse cases that were the subject of the acclaimed movie “Spotlight.” It involved bringing to justice a number of priests and other sexual abusers, as well as their employers, including the Archdiocese of Boston.

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CUENCA (ECUADOR)
Unidad Digital de EcuadorTV

May 30, 2018

[Church suspends priest accused of pedophilia in Cuenca]

[See an overview of this case in our summary about Archbishop Luis Gerardo Cabrera Herrera, O.F.M. of Guayaquil, Ecuador in our webpage Current Bishops Accused of Mishandling Abuse Cases]

El sacerdote acusado de pedofilia en Cuenca no podrá ejercer sus labores religiosas mientras duren las investigaciones en su contra. Así lo informó la noche de este miércoles 30 de mayo la Arquidiócesis de la ciudad.

El cura César C.M., de 91 años, sólo podrá realizar la eucaristía con máximo la presencia de una persona. El religioso ha sido denunciado por al menos cinco víctimas, a las que habría agredido sexualmente hace 45 años, cuando fue rector de una institución educativa.

La Arquidiócesis le pide que también se “abstenga de hacer declaraciones en público”. Además, la Iglesia solicita que acate las disposiciones emitidas, dentro de este caso que causa repercusión en el Ecuador.

[Google Translation: Church suspends priest accused of pedophilia in Cuenca

The priest accused of pedophilia in Cuenca will not be able to exercise his religious duties while the investigations against him last. This was announced on the night of this Wednesday, May 30, the Archdiocese of the city.

César CM, 91 years old, can only perform the Eucharist with the maximum presence of one person. The religious has been denounced by at least five victims , whom he had sexually assaulted 45 years ago, when he was rector of an educational institution.

The archdiocese asks him to also “refrain from making statements in public.” In addition, the Church requests that it comply with the provisions issued, within this case that causes repercussions in Ecuador.]

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LINARES (CHILE)
Agence France-Presse

June 6, 2018

[Another priest accused of pedophilia is suspended by the Vatican]

El caso es un nuevo escándalo sexual para la Iglesia chilena, cuyos obispos renunciaron en forma masiva ante el Papa Francisco en Roma.

El sacerdote chileno Ramón Iturra, de Constitución, fue suspendido este miércoles por el Vaticano luego de haber sido denunciado el año pasado por abusos sexuales a un menor cometidos entre 1987 y 1988, informó un comunicado de la Iglesia.

La Santa Sede declaró verosímil la denuncia realizada en contra del presbítero Iturra y ordenó “la medida cautelar que es la prohibición de ejercer públicamente el Ministerio Sacerdotal, hasta la sentencia definitiva”, indicó un comunicado de la Diócesis de Linares.

Iturra fue acusado por Cristián Alcaíno, exacólito de la parroquia de Constitución, de haberlo abusado sexualmente cuando tenía 11 años. Alcaíno comunicó el hecho a la Diócesis de Linares que, según el obispo Tomislav Koljatic, fue dada a conocer al Vaticano en junio del año pasado.

[Google Translation: Another priest accused of pedophilia is suspended by the Vatican

The case is a new sexual scandal for the Chilean Church, whose bishops resigned en masse before Pope Francis in Rome.

Chilean priest Ramón Iturra, of Constitución, was suspended on Wednesday by the Vatican after being denounced last year for sexual abuse of a minor committed between 1987 and 1988, a statement from the Church said.

The Holy See declared credible the denunciation made against the priest Iturra and ordered “the precautionary measure that is the prohibition to publicly exercise the Priestly Ministry, until the final sentence,” said a statement from the Diocese of Linares.

Iturra was accused by Cristián Alcaíno, an ex-patron of the Constitución parish, of having sexually abused him when he was 11 years old. Alcaino communicated the fact to the Diocese of Linares that, according to Bishop Tomislav Koljatic, was made known to the Vatican in June of last year.]

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PERU
La Republica

May 28, 2018

[Former seminarian confesses that he concealed a priest accused of rape [VIDEO]]

By Melissa Goytizolo

Verdad amarga. Gilberto Huamán Yuca admitió que el cura ayacuchano Félix Pariona Huacre, protegido por el arzobispo Salvador Piñeiro, lo obligó a declarar a su favor ante el Ministerio Público a cambio de trabajo bien remunerado y vivienda estable en el Seminario San Cristóbal de Huamanga. Huamán también revela que el cura lo acosó sexualmente.

Hay una persona a la que el ex seminarista Gilberto Huamán Yuca teme como a nadie en el mundo: el sacerdote ayacuchano Félix Pariona Huacre. Huamán había sido presentado por Pariona ante la fiscalía como testigo de su honorabilidad e inocencia, con el propósito de desmentir a la menor A.L.L, que lo acusaba de abuso sexual dentro de las instalaciones del Seminario San Cristóbal de Huamanga. Casi temblando, el ex seminarista Gilberto Huamán decidió confesar que el sacerdote Pariona lo usó para que mintiera ante las autoridades.

Entrevistado por La República, Gilberto Huamán, de 26 años, declaró que aceptó el pedido del cura Félix Pariona por miedo. No hay otro motivo. Miedo. Solo miedo.

[Google Translation: Former seminarian confesses that he concealed a priest accused of rape [VIDEO]

Bitter truth: Gilberto Huamán Yuca admitted that the Ayacucho priest Félix Pariona Huacre, protected by Archbishop Salvador Piñeiro, forced him to testify in his favor before the Public Ministry in exchange for well-paid work and stable housing at the San Cristóbal Seminary in Huamanga. Huamán also reveals that the priest sexually harassed him.

There is a person whom the former seminarian Gilberto Huamán Yuca fears like no one else in the world: the Ayacucho priest Félix Pariona Huacre. Huamán had been presented by Pariona before the prosecution as a witness to his honor and innocence, with the purpose of denying the minor ALL, who accused him of sexual abuse within the premises of the San Cristóbal Seminary in Huamanga. Almost shaking, the former seminarian Gilberto Huamán decided to confess that Pariona priest used him to lie to the authorities.

Interviewed by the Republic, Gilberto Huamán , of 26 years, declared that he accepted the order of the priest Félix Pariona for fear. There is no other reason. Fear. Only fear.]

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CHICAGO (IL)
Chicago Sun-Times

June 10, 2018

By Fran Spielman and Lauren FitzPatrick

Days before the boom dropped on a sexual abuse scandal in Chicago Public Schools, Mayor Rahm Emanuel was unveiling a $175 million plan to provide universal preschool for the city’s 4-year-olds.

His homegrown schools CEO Janice Jackson was touting CPS’ progress in commercials bankrolled by a nonprofit with close ties to the mayor.

But now, Emanuel’s plan to seek a third term using education as a major cornerstone has been blown out of the water by a scandal that hits home like none before it.

This time, children have been directly victimized. And the adults in charge — including the mayor of Chicago — should have protected them. They didn’t.

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PENNSYLVANIA
Associated Press via WRAL.com

June 10, 2018

By Claudia Lauer

The results of a lengthy probe into the handling of sexual abuse claims by Roman Catholic dioceses throughout Pennsylvania, which victim advocates say will be the biggest and most exhaustive ever by a U.S. state, could be made public within weeks.

A statewide grand jury spent nearly two years looking into the abuse scandal, and Pennsylvania Attorney General Josh Shapiro has said he plans to address the panel’s findings by the end of June.

WHAT TO EXPECT

The grand jury investigated six of the state’s eight dioceses, which collectively minister to more than 1.7 million Catholics. The report is expected to reveal details of widespread abuse and efforts to conceal and protect abusive priests.

A judge’s ruling last week gave the first real details of an investigation that started in July 2016. Judge Norman Krumenacker rejected an effort to delay the report’s release or allow people named in the report to challenge parts of it before its release.

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NEW SOUTH WALES (AUSTRALIA)
Australian Associated Press via The Guardian

June 10, 2018

Berejiklian government says laws will allow thousands to seek compensation

Survivors of child sexual abuse will be able to sue churches and other institutions under changes to New South Wales’s civil litigation laws.

The state’s attorney general, Mark Speakman, on Sunday said the state government would remove legal barriers that have stopped victims from seeking justice, based on recommendations from the royal commission into institutional child sexual abuse.

“These reforms will provide access to new avenues to allow survivors to pursue compensation so they can focus on recovering and moving forward with their lives,” he said.

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SALT LAKE CITY (UT)
The Associated Press

June 9, 2018

By Brady McCombs

A third man has been charged with child sexual abuse in connection with a Utah doomsday group that believed in polygamy and took child brides.

Robert Shane Roe, 34, of Castro, California, met the two founders of the group in a Facebook discussion group last year and traveled out to Utah where he was given a “bride” — a 5-year-old girl related to one of the men, prosecutor Kevin Daniels said.

Investigators knew previously that Roe was involved in the group, but the girl only recently revealed what happened when she was alone with him, said Daniels, the Sanpete County Attorney in central Utah.

Roe was charged Thursday with sodomy of a child for the alleged activity in August 2017. No attorney is listed in court documents for Roe.

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VATICAN CITY
Deutsche Welle

June 9, 2018

A Catholic diplomat was recalled from the Washington embassy despite US requests to charge him in the country. He allegedly possessed and exchanged “a large quantity” of child pornography.

A high-ranking Vatican diplomat will face trial in the Holy See on charges of possessing child pornography in the US and Canada.

Catholic priest Carlo Alberto Capella was indicted on Saturday after a Vatican investigation found he had allegedly possessed and exchanged “a large quantity” of child pornography during his diplomatic posting.

His trial will start on June 22 in front of a Vatican magistrate.

If convicted, he could be sentenced to between one and five years in prison and fined between €2,500 and €50,000 ($2,100 to $42,000). He is being held in the city’s police barracks.

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LINARES (CHILE)
The Catholic World Report

June 8, 2018

The Diocese of Linares confirmed Wednesday the receipt of a complaint of alleged sexual abuse by Fr. Germán Cáceres Fuentes.

The diocese explained in a June 6 statement that a preliminary investigation has begun and Fr. Cáceres has been removed from ministry until the decision of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith is obtained.

It was also determined that the priest has the obligation to remain in the diocese and be available when required “within the next 48 hours for any proceedings” of the investigation.

They also requested the “cooperation of everyone who could contribute pertinent or relevant information in this investigation.”

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AUSTRALIA
Catholic Herald

June 8, 2018

Archbishop Prowse criticised new mandatory reporting laws which include the sacrament of Confession

An Australian archbishop has warned that a new local law could penalise priests who refuse to break the seal of Confession in cases relating to child abuse.

The legislative assembly of the Australian Capital Territory has expanded regulations on abuse reporting to include information divulged in the confessional.

In an article for the Canberra Times, Archbishop Christopher Prowse of Canberra and Goulburn, supported the effort to protect children but said that “breaking the sacred seal of Confession won’t prevent abuse”.

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VATICAN CITY
Washington Post

June 9, 2018

By Cleve R. Wootson Jr. and Julie Zauzmer

A Catholic priest who once was one of the church’s top diplomats in Washington was indicted by the Vatican on accusations of possessing and sharing “a large quantity” of child pornography.

In a statement obtained by Reuters, the Vatican said Monsignor Carlo Capella would face a trial starting June 22. He is being held in a cell in the Vatican’s police barracks.

Authorities in the United States and Canada had been investigating Capella for nearly two years. Canadian police said the priest allegedly uploaded child porn from a social networking site over the 2016 Christmas holiday.

In August, the U.S. State Department notified the Vatican of a “possible violation of laws relating to child pornography images,” by a diplomat. Soon after, the Vatican recalled Capella, who as a diplomat was one of four staff members who had immunity from prosecution in the United States. The Vatican denied U.S. efforts to have Capella prosecuted in an American court.

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NEW YORK
Times Herald-Record

June 10, 2018

With only days left in this legislative session, the Republican majority in the state Senate seems determined to acknowledge the plight of young victims of sexual abuse only if it can protect those who are responsible.

That’s quite a trick, but it is at the heart of the GOP alternative to the Child Victims Act which has repeatedly passed the Assembly, which has Democratic support but lacks the vote of even one Republican including those retiring at the end of this term who could go out with this humane accomplishment as part of their legacy.

The background is complex but clear. New York is one of a few states that makes it very hard for those subject to sexual abuse as youngsters to bring their assailants to justice. A package of laws awaiting a vote in the Senate would give those victims more time to lodge complaints, would allow more time for those abused in the future and, most important and contentious of all, would establish a one-year period in which anybody who was abused could bring the case to court.

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AUSTRALIA
Sydney Morning Heralnd

June 10, 2018

By David Wroe

Federal Attorney-General Christian Porter has expressed support for changes to the law that would force priests to report suspicions of child sex abuse arising from the confessional.

The changes, which would fall to state and territory governments, are among the most contentious of the recommendations from the royal commission into child sexual abuse.

Speaking on the ABC’s Insiders program on Sunday, Mr Porter said the Council of Attorneys-General – which includes himself and state and territory counterparts – was working on harmonised laws.

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NEW SOUTH WALES (AUSTRALIA)
Ten Daily News

June 10, 2018

By Victoria Quested

New South Wales has become the second state to finally give child sex abuse survivors the power to sue institutions such as churches for compensation.

Under sweeping changes to NSW’s civil litigation laws, survivors of child sexual abuse will now be able to sue organisations, including churches.

The state’s attorney general, Mark Speakman, announced on Sunday the changes would remove legal barriers that have stopped victims from seeking justice, following the recommendations from the Royal Commission into institutional child sexual abuse.

“The Royal Commission found many survivors felt let down by the current civil litigation system which made it difficult for them to seek damages and hold institutions to account,” Speakman said.

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NEW SOUTH WALES (AUSTRALIA)
Agence France-Presse via Daily Mail

June 10, 2018

Victims of child sex abuse will be able to sue institutions such as churches under proposed new laws in Australia’s most populous state, authorities said Sunday.

The proposed legislation came after a five-year royal commission — which released its final report late last year — detailed thousands of harrowing abuse cases involving churches, orphanages, sporting clubs, youth groups and schools and going back decades.

The overhaul of civil litigation laws in New South Wales state will allow claims of child abuse to be brought against organisations including churches which could not previously be sued, said NSW Attorney-General Mark Speakman.

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NEW SOUTH WALES (AUSTRALIA)
The New Daily

June 10, 2018

Thousands of child sex abuse survivors will be able to sue churches and other institutions under reforms to New South Wales civil litigation laws.

The legal loophole known as the ‘Ellis defence’ will be closed under the reforms, Attorney General Mark Speakman announced on Sunday.

Former altar boy and abuse survivor John Ellis tried to sue the Catholic Church in 2006, but the church successfully argued it didn’t legally exist as its assets were held in a trust protected from legal action.

Under the reforms, courts will have the power to appoint trustees to be sued if institutions fail to nominate an entity with assets as a proper defendant.

The overhaul follows recommendations from the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sex Abuse.

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MANITOBA (CANADA)
APTN News

June 8, 2018

By Lucy Scholey

A former St. Anne’s Indian Residential School student says she has lost faith in Crown-Indigenous Relations Minister Carolyn Bennett after learning the federal government is seeking thousands of dollars in legal fees from a lawyer representing the survivors.

Angela Shisheesh, who attended the Fort Albany, Ont. school infamous for using a homemade electric chair as punishment and entertainment, said she thinks the federal government is warning other lawyers to back down from defending Indigenous people in court.

“I don’t trust anybody anymore,” Shisheesh says.

In a rare legal move, the federal government is seeking $25,000 in legal costs from lawyer Fay Brunning, who has been representing St. Anne’s students for years.

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VATICAN CITY
BBC News

June 9, 2018

A senior Vatican official who served as a diplomat to the US will face charges of possessing images that show child sex abuse, the Holy See said.

Monsignor Carlo Alberto Capella’s trial will begin on 22 June in the Vatican.

He was recalled in September 2017 after US authorities alerted the Vatican that one of its diplomats may have violated child pornography laws.

Monsignor Capella’s career took him to India and Hong Kong before his time in the US, which lasted less than a year.

He was arrested in April.

A state department official told the Washington Post that the US government had asked for Monsignor Capella’s diplomatic immunity be waived so he could be prosecuted in the US, but the Vatican refused.

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JOHNSTOWN (PA)
The Tribune-Democrat

June 9, 2018

By Shaun Dougherty (Guest Columnist)

By now, most everyone has heard the story of abuse that I suffered as a child while growing up in Johnstown.

I will spare you the gory details as I’m sure that most everyone is growing quite tired of hearing them, as I am of telling them.

Today I’d like to give credit where credit is due, and to hopefully stimulate a larger political conversation about the statutes of limitations in the commonwealth.

First and foremost, I would like to sincerely thank my wife, D’Arcy. I told you before we were engaged that I had this thing in my past that you needed to consider before we discussed marriage, and you married me anyway.

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ROCHESTER (NY)
Rochester Democrat and Chronicle

June 9, 2018

By David Andreatta

At least 20 children, and probably more, have been sexually abused by 24 priests in the Roman Catholic Diocese of Rochester since 1950.

Over the years, the diocese has paid $1,616,000 in compensation to those victims. The number of victims is likely higher because not all victims accept financial compensation.

Some of the payouts date back decades, although most were settled since the Catholic clergy sex abuse scandal erupted in 2002.

Those figures are according to the diocese, which released them Friday in response to a request from the Democrat and Chronicle following new accusations that it’s protecting and enabling pedophile priests.

The accusations were leveled by a lawyer from Boston, who stood outside Sacred Heart Cathedral in Rochester on Wednesday claiming to represent 17 people who allege they were abused by eight diocesan priests over a period of 28 years, ending in 1978.

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VATICAN CITY
Holy See Press Office

June 9, 2018

The Investigating Judge of Vatican City State Tribunal today notified the defendant Msgr. Carlo Alberto Capella, his lawyer and the Promoter of Justice of the summons to trial of the defendant at the conclusion of the preliminary phase of the investigation against him.

In the indictment of 30 May 2018, the Promoter of Justice, considering the evidence acquired to be sufficient, had asked the investigating Judge to declare the formal investigation closed and to proceed to summon the defendant to trial.

The investigating judge, considering the matter to fall within the jurisdiction of the Vatican judicial authority – since it regards offences allegedly committed by a public official, albeit abroad – declared the formal investigation closed and summoned Msgr. Capella to trial, by the provision of 7 June 2018.

The offence of which Msgr. Capella stands accused is that of child pornography in the particular cases specified and punished by Articles 10 and 11 of Law No. VIII of 2013 (possession and exchange of child pornographic material, with the aggravating circumstance of the large quantity involved).

The first hearing will take place on Friday 22 June, at 15.00.

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UNITED STATES
The Hill

June 9, 2018

By Huma Yasin

Sexual abuse within religious communities is not a new phenomenon, but appears to be more prevalent recently as headline-making cases spark attention.

The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary recently fired former president Paige Patterson after reportedly telling a seminary student and victim of rape to forgive her attacker and not report the incident to the police. He is also accused of covering up the sexual abuse perpetrated by another Southern Baptist leader on a member of his youth group, though he allegedly knew of the abuse and failed to report it.

In the Mormon faith, sexual abuse survivor McKenna Denson recently sued Bishop Joseph L. Bishop, who was president of Provo’s Missionary Training Center, and The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, for repeated abuse that allegedly occurred when decades ago she was a young “sister” missionary.

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VATICAN CITY
Reuters

June 9, 2018

By Philip Pullella

A Catholic priest who worked as a diplomat at the Vatican’s embassy in Washington was indicted on Saturday on charges of possessing child pornography in the United States and Canada.

A Vatican statement said an investigation found that Msgr. Carlo Alberto Capella, who was arrested in the Vatican in April after he had been recalled, had allegedly possessed and exchanged “a large quantity” of child pornography.

A Vatican magistrate ordered him to stand trial. It will start in the Vatican’s tiny courtroom on June 22, the statement said.

It was not possible to reach Capella, who is being held in a cell in the Vatican’s police barracks. The Vatican did not identify his lawyer.

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ALBANY (NY)
CNA/EWTN News via Catholic World Report

June 6, 2018

Backers of a New York bill to open a lawsuit window for civil action from victims of past sexual abuse are wrong to say it would apply to public institutions, a former judge has said.

In a May 21 legal analysis of the proposed Child Victims Act, Judge Susan Phillips Read, former associate judge of the New York State Court of Appeals, said that if it becomes law, “a 34-year old man whose high school wrestling coach sexually abused him 20 years ago would not be time-barred from recovering damages from his high school if the man attended a private school and sued within the one-year window, but he would be precluded from recovering damages if he attended a public school instead of a private school.”

Read wrote the analysis at the request of Richard Barnes, executive director of the New York State Catholic Conference, which opposes the bill in its current form.

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DUBLIN (IRELAND)
Agence France-Presse via Jakarta Post

June 7, 2018

By Julien Lagache

Scores of women forced to work in “Magdalene Laundries” — Irish penitentiary work-houses run by the Catholic Church — gathered for the first time in Dublin this week for an emotional reunion.

The “Magdalene Sisters” — the title of an award-winning film about this dark chapter in Irish history — shared stories about their internment and voiced anger at belated official apologies.

Teresa O’Connor, one of 200 survivors of the work-houses for “fallen women” which only closed in 1996, told AFP she was overwhelmed at meeting so many others who shared her suffering.

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DANSVILLE (NY)
Livingston County News (NY)

June 8, 2018

By the LCN Staff

Two of the eight priests from the Diocese of Rochester who were accused this week of sexually abusing children were assigned for a time to a church in Dansville.

The priests were among eight who were ordained or assigned in the Diocese of Rochester during the past eight decades who were named at a Rochester news conference by Mitchell Garabedian, an attorney who represents several survivors of abuse in Rochester, and Robert Hoatson, president of Road to Recovery, a non-profit organization that helps victims of sexual abuse and their families.

Eugene Emo and David P. Simon had previously been acknowledged as alleged abusers by the Diocese of Rochester after the allegations of misconduct were reported by area media. Those reports did not note any specific allegations occurring in Dansville.

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GENEVA
AFP/The Local

June 8, 2018

Child abuse victims and human rights activists from 15 countries, including Switzerland, have launched a new pressure group to campaign against abuse by Catholic clerics.

“The church has got away with crime for too long,” said Peter Saunders, a British survivor of abuse, announcing the creation of the Ending Clerical Abuse (ECA) group at a media conference in Geneva on Thursday.

“ECA stands to compel the Roman Catholic church to end clerical abuse, especially child abuse, in order to protect children and to seek justice for victims,” added Saunders, a former member of the Pontifical Commission for the Protection of Minors.

Jose Andres Murillo, a Chilean victim of clerical paedophilia who recently met with Pope Francis, said: “There is progress regarding clerical abuse in some countries, primarily due to brave victims who have fought to raise their voices.”

However, “there are many more places in the world where victims voices are silenced”, he added, notably Africa, Latin America and Asia. “ECA seeks to be that voice.”

Last month, all 34 Chilean bishops announced their resignation over a child sex abuse scandal that has come to haunt the reign of Pope Francis.

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GENEVA
20 Ans Club suise de la presse

June 7, 2018

New International Organization against the Epidemic of child sexual abuse in the Catholic Church

Ending Clergy Abuse (ECA) is a new international organization, formed by survivors and activists from more than 15 countries. All of them are engaged with the end of abuse in all forms, especially the child sexual abuse in clergy contexts. ECA is challenging The Church to punish bishops implicated on child sexual abuse and cover up around the globe.

ECA members will hold a press conference to: – Urge Pope Francis, as the head of Catholic Church, to investigate bishops across the world who have mishandled sex abuse cases; – Challenge the Pope to use his June 21 visit to Geneva to commit to creating a central mechanism for holding bishops accountable; – Announce the formation of Ending Clergy Abuse (ECA) a new global justice effort to end the epidemic of child sex abuse in the Catholic Church.

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UNITED STATES
Bishop-Accountability.org

June 7, 2018

On May 18, 2018, at the end of their week-long summit with Pope Francis, all 31 active bishops in Chile submitted their resignations, a collective acknowledgement of the Chilean church’s “deplorable” handling of child sex abuse by clergy.

In a ten-page document the Pope gave to each bishop, he said their treatment of the “open wound” of abuse had caused it to “deepen more in its thickness and pain.” In the document’s footnotes, he detailed some of the “grave defects” that his investigators had found in the bishops’ management of abuse: minimizing serious crimes as mere moral faults; “recklessly” entrusting abusers with renewed access to minors; ignoring red flags and “superficially” classifying complaints as “improbable”; delaying investigating or doing no investigation at all; and destroying documents. Such practices are “reprehensible,” the pope wrote.

Two weeks later, Pope Francis issued another extraordinary pronouncement, this one a letter to the Catholic people of Chile in which he declared “‘never again’ to the culture of abuse and the system of cover-up that allows it to perpetuate …”

It was the first recognition by any pope of the systemic cover-up of child sex abuse in the church.

Now a pressing question emerges: will the pope extend this scrutiny to countries beyond Chile? As dangerous as its practices have been, the Chilean church is not atypical. We see the same cover-up of abusive priests today, the same disregard for victims, in the Catholic churches of Argentina, the Philippines, Poland, and the United States, as seen most recently in the Diocese of Buffalo NY. Change is occurring in Chile only because that situation caused a public relations debacle for the Pope himself.

The most meaningful measure of the Pope’s commitment to “never again” will be whether he systematically investigates mishandling of abuse cases by bishops and religious superiors throughout the universal Church.

To deepen understanding of the challenge facing Pope Francis, BishopAccountability.org presents this sample list of current bishops whose responses to allegations and to victims raise questions about their fitness for office. None has yet been disciplined by the pope.

Our list includes five cardinals, two of whom belong to the Pope’s inner circle of advisors. Their inclusion in this list of alleged child-protection violators underscores both the difficulty and urgent necessity of the task facing the Pope. Disciplining such influential friends will be difficult, but for Pope Francis to make good on his promise, accountability must begin at the top. Diocesan bishops cannot be expected to comply with standards that cardinals close to the pope are ignoring with impunity.

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SYDNEY (AUSTRALIA)
Catholic News Service

June 7, 2018

Laws requiring Catholic priests to break the seal of Confession in some cases passed the Australian Capital Territory’s Legislative Assembly in Canberra June 7.

The purpose of the Ombudsman Amendment Bill 2018 was to expand the Reportable Conduct Scheme governing allegations of child abuse and misconduct to include religious organizations.

The legislation passed without amendment. The Archdiocese of Canberra and Goulburn has nine months to negotiate with the government on how it will work before the start of reportable conduct requirements.

The law’s passage comes weeks after the May 22 conviction of Archbishop Philip Wilson of Adelaide, who faces a maximum penalty of two years in jail for failing to inform police about child sexual abuse allegations. The local court in Newcastle found that, in 1976, then-Fr. Wilson had been told by a 15-year-old boy that he had been indecently assaulted by a priest who later died in prison, but that Fr. Wilson, then a parochial vicar, chose not to go to the authorities despite believing the allegations were true.

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PHILADELPHIA (PA)
Penn Live

June 7, 2018

By Matt Miller

The Catholic Archdiocese of Philadelphia can’t escape a judge’s order to hand over notes its investigator made while interviewing witnesses to prepare its defense against a lawsuit in a priest child-sex case, a state appeals court ruled Thursday.

That call was made in a Superior Court opinion by Judge Jack A. Panella which denied an appeal by the diocese challenging an order requiring it to provide those notes to lawyers for the family of Sean Patrick McIlmail.

McIlmail died of a drug overdose at age 26. His family is blaming his death on sexual abuse they claim the Rev. Robert L. Brennan inflicted on him starting when he was 11 years old. They contend diocese officials, including Monsignor William Lynn, knew of the abuse and did nothing to stop it.

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UNITED KINGDOM
Mondaq

June 7, 2018

By Judith Martin

The Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse recently published their first interim report, providing an overview of the Inquiry’s work and highlighting emerging key themes.

The Inquiry has so far held five public hearings, a series of seminars and published two investigation reports.

The Inquiry Chair, Professor Alexis Jay, anticipates the Inquiry will have made substantial progress by 2020, with a further eight public hearings to be heard within the next 12 months.

The Interim Report lists 18 recommendations to be implemented by the Government, police and other institutions to better protect children from sexual abuse. Of these recommendations, two are of primary importance to insurers:

1. Public Liability Register

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UNITED KINGDOM
Motherwell Times

June 7, 2018

A priest who served in Craigneuk has been jailed for six months for abusing a young girl 50 years ago.

Hamilton Sheriff Court heard his victim says Michael Maher ruined her childhood and she has never got over what he did. Maher (74), now of Stobo near Peebles, admitted using lewd, indecent and libidinous practices and behaviour towards the girl between February 1968 and February 1972. She was aged between 12 and 15 at the time and he was between 24 and 27. The court heard the abuse happened at the girl’s home in Holytown and at St Mary’s Church in Whifflet, where Maher was first posted after his ordination in 1968. Maher was a frequent visitor to the girl’s home and would take her into her parents’ bedroom where he lay on top of her on a bed and simulated sexual intercourse.

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ENGLAND
Sussex Espress

June 7, 2018

By Michael Drummond

The Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse (IICSA) has invited a witness statement from Prince Charles.

The inquiry is investigating how far institutions failed to protect children from sexual abuse within the Anglican Church.

Next month it will examine the sexual abuse of 18 men by former Bishop of Lewes Peter Ball and the environment around him. Peter Ball was the local bishop to the Prince of Wales. larence House said Prince Charles ‘has made it clear that he was unaware of the extent of Mr Ball’s behaviour’ but was more than willing to provide context about Ball. The inquiry has been focussing on the Diocese of Chichester as a case study and heard evidence from survivors and clergy alike over the course of three weeks in March.

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SEATTLE (WA)
The Spectator

June 7, 2018

The Spectator Editorial Board

Skeletons In The Closet
There are few things I find more ironic than the university’s decision to rename the Connolly Center. It was a good thing, don’t get me wrong. Monuments honoring rapists, and those who protected them, should be erased from the face of the Earth. But here’s my question: What about the rest? What about all the other buildings that pay homage to those horrible men? What about the lectures, programs and spaces on this campus that bare their names? And what if, god forbid, one of those men still worked here? What would happen then? What do you think should happen?

The topic at hand deserves plain language and I’m not known to mince words. This week’s feature story is about Seattle University President Father Stephen Sundborg and his connection to the child sex abuse scandal in the Catholic Church.

This isn’t “gotcha” journalism or clickbait or fake news. This isn’t about politics, either. Any impression you have of the Spectator, good or bad, doesn’t matter right now. This is about the systematic concealment of the molestation, abuse and rape of women and children.

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MINNEAPOLIS (MN)
Pioneer Press

June 8, 2018

By Marshall H. Tanick [The writer is a Twin Cities constitutional and employment law attorney.]

LAST OF THE BIG SETTLEMENTS?

The historic $210 million settlement last week by the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis was a testament to the persistence and resilience of the 443 victims of clergy sex abuse, the skills of their St. Paul attorney Jeff Anderson and his estimable legal team and the elongation of the statute of limitations by the Legislature five years ago.

But one key feature in forging the deal was the ability of the victims to pursue their claims in civil lawsuits. The varied litigation they brought propelled the archdiocese into bankruptcy, which provided a vehicle, albeit a slow-moving one, to reach the record-breaking resolution.

But arrangements of this size, or of any magnitude at all, for victims of massive wrongdoing may be an endangered species as a result of a ruling the previous week by the U.S. Supreme Court. The justices, by a narrow 5-4 vote, ruled that members of labor unions may be barred from pursuing lawsuits in a collective manner, or class actions, and required to arbitrate their disputes with management.

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AUSTRALIA
The Catholic Leader

June 8, 2018

By Mark Bowling

ROYAL Commissioner Bob Atkinson has offered encouragement to Australian churches taking up the recommendations of the Royal Commission into child sexual abuse, including the payment of compensation to survivors.

“I can say it is very heartening to see the support of various faiths in recent times for the national redress scheme,” Mr Atkinson, a former Queensland police commissioner, said while addressing an annual Lord Mayor’s prayer breakfast in Brisbane.

Four out of five child sexual abuse survivors will be covered by the national redress scheme, after the Anglican Church, Salvation Army, YMCA and Scouts Australia joined the Catholic Church in endorsing it.

The Catholic Church has estimated it will be liable for about $1 billion in compensation.

The national scheme will cover about 60,000 institutional child sexual abuse survivors nationally, with compensation payments capped at $150,000.

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AUSTRALIA
The Guardian

June 7, 2018

By Melissa Davey

Western Australia was the last state not to have signed up for the scheme, but will now take it to cabinet

Western Australia, the only remaining state not to sign up to the national redress scheme for child sexual abuse survivors, has resolved its concerns with the federal government, and its attorney general will now put the scheme to cabinet.

As the council of attorney generals prepared to meet in Perth on Friday the federal social services minister, Dan Tehan, told Guardian Australia that sticking points with WA, including who was responsible for redress for 3,000 Commonwealth child migrants settled in WA after the second world war, had been resolved.

“We have agreed on all remaining issues and the WA attorney general is now seeking approval to join the scheme through their cabinet processes,” Tehan said.

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IRELAND
The Irish News

June 7, 2018

A FORMER Newry Catholic school principal is to appear in court on multiple child sex abuse charges.

Brother Paul Dunleavy (82), whose address is given as the Christian Brothers Province Centre in Dublin, is due in court on June 11 when he will face a total of 41 charges.

He was head of the now-closed St Colman’s Abbey Primary School in Newry during the 1980s. He previously served as a teacher in the school before being appointed principal. It is understood he also taught at St Aidan’s PS in Belfast.

The charges include 30 counts of indecent assault on a male and eight counts of gross indecency with or towards a child. They relate to when Br Dunleavy taught at the Newry school in the 1960s and 1970s.

He is also charged with inciting gross indecency with a child on dates between October 1973 and July 1974.

St Colman’s Abbey PS and St Clare’s Convent PS amalgamated to form St Clare’s Abbey PS in 2014.

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AUSTRALIA
Australian Broadcasting Corporation

June 8, 2018

By Joanna Menagh

A man who ran a hostel in Perth for wards of the state has been sentenced to 20 years’ jail for what a judge described as the sadistic, perverse and persistent sexual abuse of eight children for whom he was supposed to be caring.

Martin James Cooper, 66, was found guilty last month of 30 child sex offences dating back to between 1978 and 1983 when he and his wife ran the Warminda hostel in East Victoria Park.

Cooper was found to have repeatedly physically and sexually abused the eight children, including raping three girls who were aged between 11 and 16.

Warminda was owned by the government but operated by the Uniting Church, and housed children who had been taken from their families because they could not, or would not, look after them properly.

Each of the children had government-appointed welfare officers and some of them testified at Cooper’s trial that they had tried to tell these authorities, and others including the police, what was happening.

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UNITED STATES
NBC News

June 8, 2018

By Alex Johnson

“Many women have experienced horrific abuses within the power structures of our Christian world,” Beth Moore, an evangelical teacher, wrote in a letter.

The Southern Baptist Convention, the country’s largest evangelical denomination, is headed for a showdown over its treatment of women that could not only have far-reaching ramifications for the church but also influence the broader secular #MeToo movement.

At its annual meeting next week in Dallas, delegates called “messengers” will decide whether to approve a resolution acknowledging that, throughout the church’s history, male leaders and members of the church “wronged women, abused women, silenced women, objectified women.”

“The #MeToo moment has come to American evangelicals,” Albert Mohler, president of the flagship Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, wrote last month. “And I am called to deal with it as a Christian, as a minister of the Gospel, as a seminary and college president, and as a public leader.”

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DUBLIN (IRELAND)
The New York Times

June 6, 2018

By Ed O’Loughlin

They are a haunting sight in the aftermath of wars and natural disasters: the notice boards that spring up outside Red Cross tents and hospitals, covered in notes from desperate people searching for loved ones lost in the chaos.

As 220 survivors of Ireland’s notorious Magdalene Laundries convened for a state-sponsored meeting in Dublin on Tuesday, strikingly similar pleas for the lost went up at their hotel.

Orders of Roman Catholic nuns ran the laundries for profit, and women and girls were put to work there, supposedly as a form of penance. The laundries were filled not only with “fallen women” — prostitutes, women who became pregnant out of marriage or as a result of sexual abuse and those who simply failed to conform — but also orphans and deserted or abused children.

“Their names were changed in the laundries, and it was often hard to talk, and they didn’t get the chance to really know each other there,” said Maeve O’Rourke, legal adviser for the Justice for Magdalenes Research project. “So they’ve put up a notice board in the hotel, for people to put messages on, to try and trace people they knew in the laundries.”

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ROCHESTER (NY)
WBNG/WROC

June 8, 2018

By Michael Schwartz

A non-profit organization which aims to help victims of sexual abuse is accusing eight Diocese of Rochester priests of sexually abusing children. One of those priests serves in Owego.

According to Attorney Mitchell Garabedian, Father Thomas Valenti allegedly sexually abused his client, who is now in his late fifties, when he was a teen. Garabedian said his client was 15 years old when the abuse started in 1975, while Valenti worked at St. Mary’s of the Lake Church in Ontario, New York.

“He abused my client as a deacon, but in one of those years he became a priest so he was a deacon and a priest when he sexually abused my client,” claimed Garabedian

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UNITED STATES
The Presbyterian Outlook

June 8, 2018

By Leslie Scanlon

The 2018 General Assembly is being asked to consider the implications of #MeToo in the church — including a recommendation from the Advocacy Committee for Women’s Concerns that the denomination’s stated clerk issue a confession on behalf of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) for its failure to listen to the victims of pastoral sexual misconduct.

That recommendation also asks for some effort to be made to quantify the number of sexual misconduct charges presented at all levels of the church, including in congregations.

And it calls for the creation of a task force composed of victims of sexual assault and advocates of victims, which would conduct a comprehensive examination of PC(USA) policy, judicial process and rules of discipline regarding sexual misconduct.

Also (perhaps surprisingly) coming to the assembly is this question: whether a violation of a council’s sexual misconduct policy should be seen as contrary to Scripture and the denomination’s constitution, and thus subject to the Rules of Discipline.

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WESTERVILLE (OH)
10tv

June 7, 2018

By Glenn Mcentyre

The mental health worker accused of sexually assaulting a young boy has a long, troubled history with children.

Monday morning 33-year-old Matthew Gatton turned himself into Westerville Police.

Gatton is charged with two counts of gross sexual imposition against an 11-year-old boy in his care.

Gatton was an employed by OhioGuidestone as a mental health worker.

“It seemed like Matthew was a godsend, to be honest,” said the mother of that boy.

We’re not identifying them, to protect his anonymity.

“He helped him a lot with anger management, how to deal with regular day to day stuff.”

But this week Westerville Police said Gatton admitted to touching their son’s penis between 20 to 50 times.

“It’s just such a shock and betrayal,” said the boy’s father. “It’s a sucker punch and we’re still reeling from it.”

Public records reveal a long, disturbing trail of red flags in Gatton’s history with children.

Vineyard Columbus church says approximately five years ago, Gatton was a volunteer with their kids’ ministry.

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DETROIT (MI)
Detroit Free Press

June 8, 2018

By Gina Kaufman and Joe Guillen

Michigan State University interim President John Engler was directly involved in the crafting of a detailed public rebuke of a rape accuser’s allegations, a statement that potentially violated a federal privacy law and endangered grant funding for sexual assault counseling services, the Free Press has learned.

Emails obtained by the Free Press show Engler and his closest advisers sharing “essential facts” and edits to be included in the university’s official response to a lawsuit, which accuses MSU counseling staff of discouraging a student from reporting she was raped by three basketball players. Among the emails was one where a spokeswoman acknowledged they had moved quickly “to get materials the President wanted out the door.”

The statement was posted on MSU’s website and sent to reporters April 11. It said allegations in the lawsuit were untrue and refuted the claims with information about the woman’s counseling center history.

MSU’s decision to release details about the woman may have violated a federal student privacy law, experts previously told the Free Press, because the information could be used to piece together her identity. Details in the statement included when the woman sought counseling, services provided to her and that she never filed a police report or Title IX complaint.

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ROCHESTER (NY)
WENY

June 7, 2018

By Caitlin Murphy

On Tuesday, June 5, attorney Mitchell Garabedian spoke on behalf of sexual abuse victims who say that eight priests who were ordained or assigned in the Diocese of Rochester abused them.

Garabedian has represented more than 1,000 survivors of child sex abuse at the hands of priests in the Catholic Church.

According to Garabedian, the priests affiliated with the Diocese of Rochester were ordained or assigned over the last eight decades.

The priests named were Eugene Emo, David Simon, Francis Vogt, Stuart Hogan, Charles McCarthy, Gary Shaw, Richard Orlando and Thomas Valenti.

Road to Recovery, a non-profit organization that helps victims of sexual abuse, listed the timelines and locations for each accused priest and where they were assigned.

The text printed in bold indicates the time period during which they are accused of sexual abuse.

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ROCHESTER (NY)
Catholic Courier

June 7, 2018

EDITOR’S NOTE: The Diocese of Rochester released the statement below in response to a June 6 press conference at which attorney Mitchell Garabedian alleged that eight men currently or formerly associated with the Rochester Diocese – including four who are deceased and one who resigned from ministry and was dispensed from the clerical state in the late 1970s – committed sexual abuse during their years of ministry. A story will follow; please check back periodically.

* * *

June 6, 2018

The Diocese of Rochester has been in correspondence for several months with the Garabedian law firm regarding the individuals named publicly at the news conference today. The Diocese has invited participation in a process of investigation and resolution. We have had little or no response.

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DES MOINES (IA)
We Are Iowa

June 7, 2018

By Sarah Beckman

An Iowa priest who was previously convicted for invasion of privacy has had his suspension from priestly ministry fully lifted.

According to a release from the Catholic Diocese of Des Moines, Father Paul Monahan was previously convicted of five counts of invasion of privacy. But that conviction was reversed earlier this year. He was accused of invading the privacy of young boys inside a locker room at Treynor High School in 2016. Father Monahan was the former principal at St. Albert High School.

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GENEVA
Le Temps

June 7, 2018

By Simon Petite

Victims of sexual abuse keep the pressure on the pope

Avant la visite du pape François, un réseau international pour mettre fin à l’impunité des prêtres pédophiles voit le jour à Genève

La date de l’offensive de communication est préméditée. Deux semaines avant la visite du pape François à Genève, un réseau international pour lutter contre les violences sexuelles commises par les prêtres a annoncé jeudi sa constitution. Formée d’associations de victimes d’une quinzaine de pays, cette nouvelle organisation – nommée Ending Clerical Abuse (Mettre fin aux abus du clergé – ECA) – tient son assemblée constitutive ces jours-ci à Genève.

Devant la presse, ses représentants, dont de nombreuses victimes, ont chacun posé avec un portrait d’un religieux, accusé de violences sexuelles ou qui aurait couvert de tels crimes. «Nous lançons un appel au pape François pour qu’il tienne ses promesses de tolérance zéro à l’égard des actes de pédophilie au sein de l’Eglise», plaide le Français François Devaux, lui-même victime d’un prêtre dans les années 1970. Il préside une association, Parole libérée, qui met aussi en cause le cardinal de Lyon Philippe Barbarin accusé d’avoir maintenu ce prêtre qui a ensuite abusé d’autres enfants.

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AUSTRALIA
The Tablet

June 8, 2018

By Rose Gamble

‘Without that vow [seal of Confession], who would be willing to unburden themselves of their sins?’

Catholic priests will be required to break the seal of confession in some cases after new laws passed the Australian Capital Territory’s (ACT) Legislative Assembly in Canberra without amendment.

All three parties in the ACT Legislative Assembly supported the bill on 7 June to extend the mandatory reporting scheme to cover churches, including the Confessional.

The new laws will require religious organisations to report allegations, offences or convictions related to children to the ACT Ombudsman within 30 days and launch an investigation.

Writing in the Canberra Times, Archbishop Christopher Prowse of Canberra and Goulburn said that the church “shares the government’s concern to protect the safety of children and wishes to be a part of the solution”.

He added: “The draft laws are a consequence of the profound failure of the leadership of the church and the duty of care we owe to children.”

But, he said he could not support a requirement to break the seal of confession.

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SPINDALE (NC)
The Associated Press

June 7, 2018

By Mitch Weiss and Holbrook Mohr

Two members of a secretive evangelical church in North Carolina were charged Thursday with conspiracy to commit wire fraud in an alleged unemployment benefits scheme that former congregants have said was meant to keep money coming into the sect.

Marion Kent Covington, 63, and Diane Mary McKinny, 65, both of Rutherfordton, North Carolina, were indicted in U.S. District Court in Asheville.

Prosecutors say Covington and McKinny decided to lay off employees at Covington’s business so they could collect unemployment benefits in 2008 when the company was struggling financially. But the employees continued to work at the company, Diverse Corporate Technologies. They later put the scheme into place at Covington’s other business, Integrity Marble & Granite. Covington then put in place a variation of the scheme at Sky Catcher Communications, Inc., a company he managed, prosecutors say.

The scheme resulted in more than $250,000 in fraudulent claims between November 2008 and March 2013, according to court records. The charges carry a maximum penalty of 30 years in prison and a $1 million fine. Prosecutors are seeking the forfeiture of at least $309,660. Both defendants will be arraigned on June 18.

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GENEVA
RTS

June 7, 2018

Victims of Sexual Abuse in the Church Want Ads from the Pope

Des victimes d’abus sexuels du clergé et leurs défenseurs, regroupés dans une nouvelle faîtière mondiale, veulent que le pape annonce un tribunal lors de sa visite du 21 juin à Genève.

Il y a quelques semaines, l’ensemble de la hiérarchie de l’Eglise catholique chilienne avait démissionné pour ne pas avoir pris les décisions adaptées face à des dénonciations d’abus. Une décision qui n’a pas été validée par le pape, ont notamment déploré les victimes et leurs défenseurs.

Les scandales de prêtres couverts par des évêques sont “un problème mondial”, a dit jeudi devant la presse Peter Saunders, l’un des membres de l’association Ending Clergy Abuse (“Mettre un terme aux abus du clergé”, ECA) formalisée cette semaine à Genève. Il est impossible d’établir un nombre de victimes, ni dans le monde ni en Suisse.

Rien qu’aux Etats-Unis, il dépasserait les 100’000, selon une estimation de 2012.

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SANTIAGO (CHILE)
Catholic News Service

June 8, 2018

By Jane Chambers

Teresa Correa, a mother of four and a member of the Catholic parish in the Chilean capital’s upscale Las Condes neighborhood, has lost some of her confidence in the Catholic Church.

Correa admitted to Catholic News Service in early June that the clergy sexual abuse crisis has left her and her friends wondering where the Church is headed. She said it’s “time for the laity to take the lead and help out.”

She also said it is important to be strong and brave during what is a difficult time for Catholics in Chile.

Her friend Pilar Concha, a mother of six, agreed.

“My children are between 15 to 6 years old,” she told Catholic News Service. “They see what is going on in the press. When we eat together in the evening, they talk to me about it, especially the older ones. They say, ‘Mummy, did you see what happened in such and such place with that bishop? Did you hear what the pope said?’”

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ROCHESTER (NY)
Mount Pleasant Daily Voice

June 7, 2018

By Zak Failla and Joe Lombardi

A former priest in Westchester was among eight named by a prominent Boston attorney on Wednesday who allegedly sexually abused children decades ago.

On the steps of Sacred Heart Cathedral in Rochester on Wednesday, attorney Mitchell Garabedian announced the names of eight pastors – including Thomas J. Valenti, who served at St. John the Baptist Church in Yonkers for a decade before departing in 2014 – who are alleged to have sexually abused more than a dozen children while serving at the Roman Catholic Diocese of Rochester.

Valenti currently serves as the parochial administrator at Blessed Trinity St. Patrick’s parish in Owego. Allegations against him in Rochester stem from his time as a deacon around 1976 and continued at his next stop in Ontario in Wayne County. Garabedian also called on him to resign his current position.

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GENEVA
National Catholic Reporter

June 6, 2018

By Joshua J. McElwee

Advocates discuss UN reports criticizing Vatican actions

A new global coalition of clergy sexual abuse survivors and advocates aiming to push the Catholic Church to better protect minors is set to formally launch June 7 with a press conference in Geneva.

Ending Clergy Abuse, an organization made up of some of the most prominent voices on the issue from 15 countries, will specifically call on Pope Francis to more thoroughly investigate bishops who have mishandled abuse cases and to create a centralized Vatican process to hold them accountable.

José Andrés Murillo, the head of an organization in Chile that combats child abuse and who is taking part in the new endeavor, said the coalition is different from previous survivors’ groups because its advocacy is focused on changing the church.

“We are not an organization of victims,” said Murillo, one of three Chilean abuse victims who met the pope at the Vatican between April 30 and May 2. “We are a group of survivors, but also advocates and activists. We search for change. We’re not searching for only justice, but we are searching for change.”

Ending Clergy Abuse began last fall with the help of the late Barbara Blaine, founder of the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests (SNAP). Murillo and three other advocates will officially announce the group June 7 at the Swiss Press Club, a short walk away from the United Nations Office in Geneva.

The advocates say that in the days before the press conference they have also been meeting with U.N. officials, partially to discuss two 2014 reports by separate U.N. panels that criticized the Vatican’s handling of abuse.

In February 2014, the Committee on the Rights of the Child said the Vatican had adopted policies that led to “the continuation of the abuse and the impunity of the perpetrators.” Later in May 2014, the Committee Against Torture urged the church to place “meaningful sanctions” on bishops who mishandle abuse accusations.

Francis will be visiting Geneva June 21 for the 70th anniversary of the World Council of Churches, which is headquartered in the city. He is not scheduled to meet U.N. officials during the one-day visit.

Murillo called the June 7 launch a symbolic action to bring the issue of abuse back into the spotlight at the international level.

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GENEVA
The Associated Press

June 7, 2018

Some of the most prominent figures in the fight against sexual abuse in the Catholic Church are joining forces in a new international effort to end abuse and the impunity of bishops and religious superiors who enable it.

The multinational initiative, End Clergy Abuse, was announced Thursday in Geneva. One after another, more than a dozen members of the new organization held up their national flags and denounced a bishop who they said had botched an abuse case.

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LANSING (MI)
The Associated Press

June 6, 2018

Three former Michigan State football players accused in the sexual assault of a woman have avoided jail time after pleading guilty.

Former Hinsdale South star Josh King, Donnie Corley Jr. and Demetric Vance were sentenced Wednesday to three years’ probation, sex offender treatment and therapy. They pleaded guilty in April to seducing an unmarried woman, a reduced charge.

They could have been imprisoned for up to five years. Prosecutors recommended no jail time.

A woman says she was assaulted in an apartment bathroom last year. King, Corley and Vance were kicked off the team when charges were filed in June 2017 and later dismissed from school. All three were freshmen in 2016-17.

Karen Truszowski, the victim’s attorney, told WILX-TV it was best for her client to agree to the plea agreement to avoid a trial.

King, a defensive end, was the top-ranked football recruit in Illinois in 2016 and a two-time state champion in wrestling. He started two games for Michigan State as a freshman in 2016.

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BRIGHTON (ENGLAND)
Brighton Journal

June 6, 2018

By Jack Mitchell-Charman

Canon Dermod Fogarty’s legacy has been dramatically rewritten since his death

Dermod Fogarty, a fixture in the Brighton and Arundel diocese for 67 years, has been a figure of major controversy.

A dramatic video has revealed the destruction of the ex-senior churchman’s gravestone.

Following his death in 2012, a series of startling revelations surfaced.

An Oxford academic, Stephen Bernard, claims that Fogarty sexually abused him.

The abuse allegedly began when Bernard was aged just 11.

The claims were made in the acclaimed Paper Cuts, a book released by Bernard in 2018.

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