ABUSE TRACKER

AUSTRALIA
Coffs Coast Advocate

Leah White | 13th Jul 2016

THE trial of Catholic priest John Patrick Casey over allegations of historical child sexual abuse and rape has begun in the Lismore District Court.

Casey – who was involved with the Mary Help of Christians Primary School in Sawtell until the day prior to his arrest – has pleaded not guilty to all 27 charges relating to 18 individual alleged events.

The charges include sexual assault, act of indecency on a person under 16 years of age and homosexual intercourse with a male under 10.

In delivering his opening address, the Crown prosecutor said the cornerstone of the case would be the testaments of three victims, who were all aged under 16 when they said the sexual assaults and rapes occurred in the 1980s.

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UNITED STATES
Movie Pilot

by Karly Rayner, July 12th, 2016

As anyone who has watched the Oscar-winning movie will know, Spotlight is based on the chilling true story of the systematic cover-up of child sexual abuse within the Catholic church, but just how did the original events really unfold?

Below is a comprehensive account of just what was going on in the real Spotlight office back in 2001, the reporters who valiantly battled the church, and the victims who bravely fought for justice.

Below is a brief breakdown of the real-life events that inspired (and are often depicted in) the movie and the chain of occurrences that caused the Spotlight reporters to pursue the corrupt Catholic church with such dogged determination.

* Reporter Eileen McNamara wrote a column about lawsuits pertaining to a priest who was accused of sexually abusing children within the Boston Diocese. New editor Marty Baron noticed the story and insisted on digging deeper after it was discovered that the judge had sealed the court records to prevent the personnel records of the priest from going public.

* A suspicious Baron became determined to uncover exactly what was written in the hidden documents that the church was hell-bent on hiding.

* Lawyers at The Globe office give the Spotlight team a 50:50 chance of succeeding in their efforts to uncover pedophile priest John Geoghan’s records and they decide it is the right thing to do to proceed with the case.

* Victim Phil Saviano sends The Globe his account of the Catholic church sweeping sexual abuse by the clergy under the rug. He previously sent the information to them five years earlier, but at the time The Globe chose not to pursue the case.

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GUAM
Washington Times

By – Associated Press – Tuesday, July 12, 2016

HAGATNA, Guam (AP) – The Archdiocese of Agana is considering changing to its response policy for allegations of sexual abuse against church officials following recent accusations against Archbishop Anthony Apuron.

The Pacific Daily News reports (http://bit.ly/29xRFMS ) Archbishop Savio Hon Tai Fai, a temporary administrator appointed by the Vatican after the allegations surfaced, said a group met Friday to revise the policy. Archdiocese spokesman Monsignor Brigido “Bibi” Arroyo says the changes aren’t being made in response to allegations against Apuron.

Arroyo also said Monday that the archdiocese has appointed a new sexual abuse response coordinator. Deacon Leonard “Len” Stohr is filling the position previously held by Deacon Larry Claros.
Four people have accused Apuron of sexual abuse that allegedly occurred in the 1970s.

Apuron hasn’t been charged with any crime and has denied abuse allegations.

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ZIMBABWE
Bulawayo 24

by Bruce Ndlovu / Gibson Mhaka

A pastor with the Bulawayo City Centre Adventist Church is at the centre of a sexual abuse storm following revelations that he allegedly attempted to force himself on a married congregant who is also a senior lawyer in the city.

Pastor Brighton Ndebele allegedly cornered the lawyer, who is also married to a prominent legal practitioner, after a meeting in April in her office.

It is alleged that on the day in question, Pastor Ndebele tried to have his way with her, but abandoned his vigorous sexual advances after the lawyer, whose name is being withheld for legal reasons repelled his attack.

As if that was not enough, Pastor Ndebele, who is married, went on to send suggestive text messages to the lawyer last week, allegedly soliciting for sex despite the lawyer’s protestations.

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ESPANA
ABC

[The young man who led the “Romanones case” of alleged sexual abuse in the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Granada, Spain, requested 26 years in prison for Father Roman, the only defendant in the case.]

DIEGO MÁRQUEZGranada
12/07/2016

El joven que llevó al Vaticano el «caso Romanones» de supuestos abusos sexuales en la Archidiócesis de Granada pide 26 años de prisión para el padre Román, único inculpado en la causa.

La acusación particular pide la pena máxima, 10 años, por el supuesto delito de abuso sexual continuado con acceso carnal que ya delimitó el fiscal en su escrito provisional de acusación. Además, el representante de la supuesta víctima solicita 8 años más de prisión por la presunta comisión de cada uno de los dos delitos de abusos sexuales con penetración anal que habrían tenido lugar en 2006 y 2007 según lo referido durante la instrucción por el chaval que era menor de edad cuando sucedieron los hechos.

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UNITED STATES
National Catholic Reporter

Michael Sean Winters | Jul. 12, 201

A group of forty-five “scholars, prelates and clergy” have sent an appeal to the world’s cardinals, asking them to implore Pope Francis to correct what they deem to be “erroneous propositions” in Amoris Laetitia, according to this report from the National Catholic Register’s Edward Pentin.
Pentin reports:

“We are not accusing the Pope of heresy,” said Joseph Shaw, a signatory of the appeal who is also acting as spokesman for the authors, “but we consider that numerous propositions in Amoris laetitia can be construed as heretical upon a natural reading of the text. Additional statements would fall under other established theological censures, such as scandalous, erroneous in faith, and ambiguous, among others.”

Phew! I am so glad this group doesn’t think the pope is a heretic, at least not necessarily, and provided he agrees to withdraw the propositions in question. And, at least only parts of Pope Francis’ apostolic exhortation are “scandalous, erroneous in faith, and ambiguous” not the whole thing.

It would be nice to see the entire text, not merely what Mr. Pentin chooses to share with us. For instance, do these scholars and prelates and clergy acknowledge that Pope Francis’s apostolic exhortation followed quite closely the consensus document produced by the synod, a document in which each and every paragraph received a 2/3 majority vote?

According to Pentin, the appeal asks the cardinals “to approach the Holy Father with a request that he repudiate the errors listed in the document in a definitive and final manner, and to authoritatively state that Amoris laetitia does not require any of them to be believed or considered as possibly true.” I am guessing that, since the pope wrote the document just this year, he thinks the items at issue are “possibly true.” Why then would he retract them? Do the scholars and prelates and clergy who penned this appeal think he should lie? Isn’t lying an intrinsic evil? If they are inviting the pope to commit a sin, isn’t that itself the sin of scandal?

These people will not even publish their names. One of the organizers told Pentin they chose to remain anonymous because they “fear reprisals, or they are concerned about repercussions on their religious community, or if they have an academic career and a family, they fear they might lose their jobs.” This is rich.

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ISRAEL
Times of Israel

The rabbi tapped to become the new military chaplain, Col. Eyal Karim, says there is no place for sexual attacks on women, again renouncing previous comments that seemed to imply the rape of non-Jewish women in wartime was permissible.

“There is no exemption for sexual abuse of women, not in daily life nor in emergency situations,” Karim says, according to the Ynet news website. Karim also says he supports the recruitment of women into the IDF.

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UNITED STATES
America

James Martin, S.J. | Jul 11 2016

Journalists pay tribute to the outgoing Vatican spokesman

Father Federico Lombardi at his desk at the Holy See Press Office (photo by James Martin, S.J.)
One of the most delightful surprises of a brief trip to Rome earlier this year was visiting with a number of Vatican correspondents and hearing a group of diverse, hard-driving and ultra-professional journalists more or less melt when I mentioned one person’s name.

“Oh, I love Father Lombardi!” “You’re seeing Father Lombardi? Please tell him I said hello!” “You’re staying in the same community with Father Lombardi? Don’t you love him?”

It is not hard to see why Federico Lombardi, S.J., who today announced his resignation as papal spokesperson, was so beloved by the Vatican press corps. To begin with, Father Lombardi possesses a vast knowledge of the church. A former provincial superior of the Jesuits’ Italian province, he was named program director of Vatican Radio in 1991 and general director in 2005. In 2006, he was named director of Vatican Television Centre as well. That same year, he was appointed by Pope Benedict XVI as the papal spokesperson, replacing Joaquin Navarro-Valls, who had held the position for 22 years.

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UNITED STATES
Catholic Culture

By Phil Lawler | Jul 11, 2016

Here’s what you need to know about the latest reconfiguration of the Vatican’s financial agencies:

* The Secretariat for the Economy was established to carry out reforms in the wake of financial scandals, to establish transparency and accountability.

* The proposed reforms irked some veteran Vatican officials, and sparked internal disputes. As a result of which…

* The power of the Secretariat for the Economy—the engine driving the financial reform—has been reduced.

In short, the motu proprio released on Saturday is another blow to the cause of transparency and accountability at the Vatican. As veteran Vatican-watcher John Allen observed, it is a victory for the “old guard”—the entrenched bureaucracy that blocks any significant change in the way the Roman Curia do business.

Just to make things clear, Cardinal Pell’s office is not having its wings clipped because of financial scandals. (“Pope reins in Vatican’s finance minister after scandal,” read one widely circulated headline, getting the story completely upside-down.) The Secretariat for the Economy was created because of the scandals. The money-laundering charges, the massive cost overruns, the no-bid contracts, the undervalued assets, the leaked confidential information, the undocumented expenses—all these took place before Cardinal Pell set up his new shop in 2014. The Secretariat helped bring these problems to light, set up procedures to guard against them, and in some cases took over the responsibilities that other offices had proven unable to handle cleanly.

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AUSTRALIA
Sydney Morning Herald

July 12, 2016

Rachel Browne
Social Affairs Reporter

The principal of a private school where a number of children were allegedly sexually molested told a royal commission the organisation did not have the resources to adequately investigate serious abuse claims.

Tony Fitzgerald, the principal and chief executive of the Mater Dei School in Camden, told the public hearing serious allegations should be investigated by a publicly-funded independent agency.

Three students were allegedly sexually assaulted at the school for children with disability in the early 1990s, the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse heard on Tuesday morning.

Mr Fitzgerald told the inquiry he had received two other allegations of staff misconduct since he became principal in 2010, one involving the suspected grooming of a student in a residential program and the other involving mismanagement of a student’s medication.

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AUSTRALIA
The Guardian

Australian Associated Press
Monday 11 July 2016

The chief executive of Mater Dei school for disabled children held an internal investigation when a member of staff was accused of grooming a child for sex.

Anthony Fitzgerald, the chief executive and head of the school at Camden, New South Wales, said the NSW ombudsman approved the outcome by the school that the man be counselled, placed under increased supervision but continue in his employment.

He said on Tuesday the man had worked as a social skills educator at Mater Dei for eight years and his behaviour did not meet the threshold for reporting to police.

Fitzgerald is giving evidence at a royal commission inquiry into how the providers of services for disabled children handle sex abuse allegations.

He said he was absolutely sure the current training for staff at Mater Dei ensures they know their child protection policies, procedures and obligations.

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UNITED KINGDOM/NEW ZEALAND
New Zealand Listener

By Clare de Lore

From Millbank Tower on the bank of the Thames, the panoramic views take in some of London’s best-known institutions: Westminster Cathedral, the Palace of Westminster, Westminster Abbey, Scotland Yard, MI5 and, across the river, Lambeth Palace (the residence of the Archbishop of Canterbury) and MI6.

The landmarks – and the people who preside in them – are among the dozens of institutions and individuals in the professional sights of the woman who occupies offices on the 23rd floor: Dame Lowell Goddard, the New Zealander heading the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse in England and Wales.

Goddard, of Ngati Kahungunu ancestry, is a former High Court judge and chair of the Independent Police Conduct Authority. She is the third person to lead the inquiry: two previous appointees resigned because of perceived or actual conflicts of interest and the British Government went beyond the so-called establishment to find someone who could withstand the personal and professional scrutiny that comes with one of the biggest assignments in British legal history. Goddard and her husband, Chris Hodson QC, moved to London last year, and Goddard has spent the better part of 12 months establishing the inquiry and assembling her teams. She and four fellow panel members are determining which issues to investigate. They are supported by a secretariat, legal advisers and other professionals running a separate Truth Project. She expects to complete the work and report her findings and recommendations to the Government within five years.

What’s the scope of your work?

This inquiry is unprecedented in the breadth and scope of its terms of reference, which are the broadest you would ever have seen. The only inquiry with any parallels is the Australian Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse. The Australian inquiry has been very helpful to us, because they already have three-and-a-half years’ experience, including the conduct of a very successful Truth Project.

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MINNESOTA
Winona Daily News

Jerome Christenson
Daily News

Change will come a little more slowly to Catholics in the Winona Diocese.

Implementation of a proposed diocese-wide reorganization plan — Vision 2016 — originally set for July 1 has been temporarily put on hold. Diocesan spokesman Ben Frost said Monday that “the timeline for implementation has been extended slightly. We hope to communicate updates on Vision 2016 later this summer.”

“This year we have seen the passing of five of our priests, the retirement of one and impending retirements on the horizon. These are contributing factors to the delayed implementation of the Vision 2016 plan for many parishes,” Frost said.

The diocese has had to deal with a number of other challenges in recent months

That includes 115 claims of sexual abuse brought under the Minnesota Child Victims Act, and last month’s resignation of Chancellor and Vicar General Richard Colletti after the revelation of a 30-year-old improper relationship with an adult woman. Colletti played a key role in the development and implementation of Vision 2016.

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UNITED STATES
American Thinker

By Raymond Ibrahim
While recently discussing how President Obama’s relationship to Islam is undermining U.S. security, Fox News’ Bill O’Reilly offered up some strange analogies:

Barack Obama has deep emotional ties to Islam. Now to some extent I can identify with Barack Obama on the religious issue. As a Roman Catholic I was appalled when the priest pedophilia scandal broke. There’s absolutely no excuse for the Catholic Church covering up many horrendous crimes… However, like Barack Obama I do make the distinction between the faith and the people who abuse it. But here’s where I depart from the president. I went after the American Catholic leaders of the church with a vengeance… President Obama should do what I did. Aggressively call out those who abuse the Muslim faith, who commit atrocities under a religious banner.

O’Reilly’s claim that “I do make the distinction between the faith and the people who abuse it” presumably means that he distinguishes between Catholicism — which does not promote the molestation of children — and those who “abuse” it for such ends.

Yet how exactly did pedophilic priests “abuse” the teachings of Catholicism? Is there some biblical scripture or church mandate that is ambiguously worded enough for them to twist in a way that justifies the molestation of boys, the way intolerant and violent Muslims are supposedly always “twisting” the Koran?

No. Such priests were not “abusing” their religion. They were directly violating it in both spirit and letter. That’s why they did it in secret and hiding, in the dark, and not “under a religious banner.” That’s why, unlike the jihadis, they were unable to write and issue lengthy treatises littered with scriptural references justifying their behavior. And that’s why O’Reilly — and many other Catholics — were rightly “appalled” and vociferously condemned it.

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PENNSYLVANIA
PhillyVoice

BY BRIAN HICKEY
PhillyVoice Staff

As an outspoken victim of the Philadelphia clergy sex-abuse scandal, John-Michael Delaney said he’s had a long-standing invitation to meet with the archbishop of the Archdiocese of Philadelphia.

Over the years, Delaney hasn’t shielded his pain from the public eye. He’s quoted in many stories talking about the 2005 grand jury report which deemed his assailant, the Rev. James Brzyski, one of the “archdiocese’s most brutal abusers.” For years, he never agreed to meet with the archbishop, knowing he harbored too much anger to have a civil conversation.

Delaney told PhillyVoice this week that he’s taken religious leaders up on the chance to have a private meeting with Archbishop Charles Joseph Chaput at archdiocesan offices in Center City.

“They know how important this is,” said Delaney who, when asked what he expects to tell Chaput, added, “I plan on letting him know what little they do for the victims, and what I as a victim went through.”

Archdiocese spokesman Ken Gavin said he was “not able to confirm or deny whether or not the Archbishop is meeting with a particular victim or to share details arising from such meetings,” as they’re deemed private.

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SCOTLAND
Scotsman

CHRIS MARSHALL
Monday 11 July 2016

A leading lawyer who represented families during the Hillsborough inquests has said he will “seriously consider” an invitation to become the new chair of Scotland’s child abuse inquiry.

Survivors have named Michael Mansfield QC as one of the figures they would like to see take over from Susan O’Brien, who resigned last week.

Mr Mansfield said he was interested in the post, but had not received an approach from the Scottish Government.

Ms O’Brien dramatically quit last week after Deputy First Minister John Swinney began formal measures to have her removed from her position.

Mr Swinney said he acted following a complaint from Dr Claire Fyvieabout comments the chair made in February which were said to be “incompatible” with her role.

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IOWA
Daily Reporter

THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
First Posted: July 11, 2016

HAMBURG, Iowa — Roman Catholic officials say a priest charged with solicitation after a prostitution sting in southwest Iowa has been suspended from public ministry.

The Diocese of Des Moines says in a statement the Rev. Dominic Yamoah has discussed his arrest on Saturday in Hamburg with Bishop Richard Pates.

The statement released Monday says Yamoah “very sincerely regrets his actions” and he and the diocese will fully cooperate with authorities.

Yamoah, who is 40, was pastor of churches in Clarinda, Bedford and Villisca. He’s bonded out of jail. A phone listed for him rang unanswered Monday and he didn’t immediately reply to an email.

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UNITED KINGDOM
BBC News

Church leaders failed to give police incriminating evidence about disgraced former Bishop Peter Ball in 1993, according to Sussex police documents.

Ball, 84, was jailed last year for sex assaults on 18 teenagers and young men in the 1970s, 80s and 90s.

Files obtained by the BBC indicate Lambeth Palace received six letters detailing indecency allegations shortly after an arrest in 1992.

Ball was cautioned but worked in churches and schools for 15 more years.

Richard Scorer, a lawyer at Slater and Gordon, said: “It’s an absolute scandal. It is wrong and unacceptable that the Church of England sat on the information and didn’t pass it to the police.

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NORTH CAROLINA
Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests

For immediate release: Monday, July 11, 2016

Statement by David Clohessy of St. Louis, Director of SNAP, the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests (314 566 9790, 314 645 5915 home, davidgclohessy@gmail.com)

A South Carolina native who spent time in Charlotte and was a teacher and church elder is now accused of molesting a child. We urge his former Jehovah’s Witness colleagues and supervisors – in SC, NC and California (where he now faces criminal charges) to aggressively seek out any current or former church members who may have also been hurt by this predator.

[The Herald]

Jason Gorski reportedly “continuous(ly) sexually abused a child” from 2007 to 2009, according to a news release last week from the Buena Park Police Department in Orange County CA.

We hope anyone with information or suspicions about his crimes will step up and call law enforcement. This is more apt to happen if Jehovah’s Witness officials act like real shepherds, not cold-hearted CEOs, and use their vast resources to do thorough outreach.

No matter what lawmakers or church officials do or don’t do, we urge every single person who saw, suspected or suffered child sex crimes and cover ups in schools, churches or other institutions to protect kids by calling police, get help by calling therapists, expose wrongdoers by calling law enforcement, get justice by calling attorneys, and be comforted by calling support groups like ours. This is how kids will be safer, adults will recover, criminals will be prosecuted, cover ups will be deterred and the truth will surface.

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MINNESOTA
Star Tribune

By Kim Palmer Star Tribune JULY 10, 2016

“Fearless.” “A rare bird.” And a burr under the saddle of authority. The Rev. Mike Tegeder was all those things, according to those who knew him. Tegeder, 67, who died Saturday after battling lung cancer, was never afraid to speak up or get his hands dirty on behalf of others, whether that meant bucking the Catholic hierarchy or showing up with a trailer to help someone move.

“Mike was one of the most hands-on priests I ever worked with,” said former priest Ed Flahavan, who first met Tegeder in the 1980s when he was a seminarian and volunteer bus driver, transporting special-needs people to and from their group home to parish dances.

Tegeder embodied Pope Francis’ urging that priests must be “shepherds living with the smell of the sheep,” said Flahavan. “He wanted the priests to get close to people, to be with the people in their pain and suffering. Mike smelled like the sheep in a very special way.”

Tegeder made headlines in recent years as a vocal critic of former Archbishop John Nienstedt and the church’s attempts to block gay marriage, opposition that threatened Tegeder’s status as priest at his two Minneapolis churches, St. Frances Cabrini and Gichitwaa Kateri. He kept his bus driver’s license up to date in case he was dismissed from the priesthood.

“He used to get under the skin of power people,” said Flahavan. “He was an especially gutsy guy when it came to church reform issues.”

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FLORIDA
Gainesville Sun

By The News Service of Florida

A plaintiff who alleges he was sexually abused by three priests in the 1980s is asking the Florida Supreme Court to take up a case against the Archdiocese of Miami, according to an online docket.

The plaintiff, identified only by the initials W.D., filed a notice last week seeking Supreme Court review of a decision by the 4th District Court of Appeal.

The notice is an initial step in seeking Supreme Court consideration and does not provide detailed arguments. The plaintiff alleged that he was sexually abused at age 6 by another boy and that three priests subsequently abused him while pretending to provide counseling, according to the ruling by the 4th District Court of Appeal.

The plaintiff said the trauma caused him to repress the memories until 2013, when he had a flashback. He later filed a lawsuit in Broward County against defendants including the archdiocese and the St. Bernadette Home & School Association, Inc.

A circuit judge dismissed the complaint against the archdiocese and the St. Bernadette Home & School Association, at least in part finding that the lawsuit was barred by a statute of limitations.

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SOUTH CAROLINA
USA Today

Abe Hardesty, The Anderson (S.C) Independent-Mail July 11, 2016

ANDERSON, S.C. — NewSpring Church, one of the fastest growing churches in South Carolina and the nation, removed its senior pastor and founder over alcohol abuse and a series of “unfortunate choices and decisions” on Sunday.

Perry Noble, who founded NewSpring Church, is “no longer qualified to serve as pastor” at the state’s largest church, Executive Pastor Shane Duffey, said Sunday.

The church, which has a weekly attendance of 30,000, and raked in more than $64 million in 2015 alone, has been led by Noble since he unofficially began holding Wednesday Bible Study in his Anderson apartment in 1998. Within six weeks of its inception, the crowd had grown to 150.

Duffey said the termination came after Noble “had made unfortunate choices and decisions that have caused much concern” among board members, who had confronted Noble more than once in recent months about his alcohol use and his “posture toward marriage.”

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MASSACHUSETTS
WECT

PROVIDENCE, R.I. (AP) – A district attorney’s office in Massachusetts is conducting a preliminary investigation based on information it received from the Rhode Island State Police about sexual abuse allegations at a prestigious boarding school.

The state police investigation into dozens of allegations of abuse of students at St. George’s School in Middletown, Rhode Island, concluded in June with no criminal charges.

Police say they turned over some of their information to the Suffolk County District Attorney’s office in Massachusetts and the Waynesville Police Department in North Carolina.

The Suffolk County district attorney’s office says it has undertaken a preliminary investigation based on the referral, but can’t comment further.

Waynesville police didn’t immediately comment.

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VATICAN CITY
Crux

John L. Allen Jr. July 11, 2016
EDITOR

By naming Greg Burke as his new spokesman, Pope Francis hit a three: He’s debunked impressions of being anti-American, he’s shown that competence matters, and he’s signaled openness to groups seen as conservative. For a bonus, Francis tapped a lay woman as Burke’s number two.

Though he didn’t win an NBA championship this year, Steph Curry of the Golden State Warriors nevertheless put up a great individual season, the cornerstone of which was his ridiculous three-point shooting. Curry hit more threes in a year than most teams in NBA history, and more than many NBA legends in their entire careers.

On Monday, Pope Francis had a Steph Curry moment, scoring three points on a single shot by naming Greg Burke to replace Father Federico Lombardi as his chief spokesman and director of the Vatican’s Press Office.

Francis also tapped a lay woman, Paloma Garcia Ovejero, previously the Rome and Vatican correspondent for the Spanish broadcaster COPE, to the number two position in the Press Office, instantly making her one of the Vatican’s most visible female officials. A lay woman has never before held the post.

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GUAM
Pacific Daily News

Haidee V Eugenio, Pacific Daily News July 11, 2016

The Archdiocese of Agana is revising its response policy for allegations of sexual abuse against officials of the church, weeks after four persons accused Archbishop Anthony S. Apuron of sexually abusing altar boys in Agat in the 1970s.

At the same time, Monsignor Brigido “Bibi” Arroyo, the current spokesman for the archdiocese, said Monday that the archdiocese has a new sexual abuse response coordinator — Deacon Leonard “Len” Stohr.

The SAR coordinator post, previously held by Deacon Larry Claros, is a member of a group in the local Catholic Church charged with reviewing sexual abuse allegations.

Archbishop Savio Hon Tai Fai, sent by the Vatican to temporarily administer the Archdiocese of Agana while Apuron is stripped of his administrative duties temporarily, said in his latest weekly itinerary that an ad hoc group met on Friday “for the revision of the Archdiocesan Response Policy for allegations of sexual abuse against officials of the Church.”

Arroyo confirmed the revision of the sex abuse response policy, but said the revision was not directly a result of the recent public accusations against Apuron.

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VATICAN CITY
Reuters

ROME, July 11 (Reuters) – The Vatican named former Fox News reporter Greg Burke as its new spokesman on Monday, the first time a U.S. citizen has been entrusted with leading the pope’s communications team.

Burke, who is a member of the conservative Catholic group Opus Dei, was hired by the Vatican an adviser four years ago at a time when the Roman Catholic Church was mired in leaks scandals and stuck in a public relations quagmire.

On Monday, the Vatican announced that Burke would become the pope’s official spokesman, with Father Federico Lombardi stepping down from the role which he had held for 10 years.

Spanish radio reporter Paoloma Garcia Ovejero will become the deputy spokesperson — the first time a woman has had such a senior role in the Vatican communications department.

Burke, 56, a native of St Louis, Missouri, was Fox’s Rome-based roving correspondent for Europe and the Middle East before joining the Vatican. Prior to that he worked for Time magazine in the Italian capital for a decade.

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AUSTRALIA
Sydney Morning Herald

July 11, 2016

Rachel Browne
Social Affairs Reporter

A mother who alleged her 12-year-old daughter had been sexually abused by a staff member at a disability organisation was threatened with legal action for speaking out, a royal commission has heard.

Maree Welch raised suspicions that her daughter Bobbie had been abused by a casual worker at the Family Support Group (FSG) in 1995 but will tell the commission that her complaint was not appropriately handled.

In the opening address of a public inquiry into disability organisations, the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse heard Ms Welch told FSG co-ordinator Melissa Edwards she believed Bobbie may have been raped.

“I hate to tell you this, I think Bobbie has been interfered with, sexually molested or possibly raped – but I don’t know whether it has gone as far as rape,” the commission heard.

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AUSTRALIA
ABC News

By Michelle Brown

The mother of an intellectually disabled girl tells an inquiry she is angry the people who abused her daughter were not adequately investigated.

The Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse is examining several cases at two New South Wales institutions – the Mater Dei School in Camden and The Disability Trust and Interchange at Shoalhaven.

It will also hear allegations involving the Gold Coast Family Support Group in Queensland, also known as FSG Australia.

At a hearing in Sydney, the inquiry heard how children with intellectual disabilities were particularly vulnerable to sexual assault.

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AUSTRALIA
The Guardian

Australian Associated Press
Monday 11 July 2016

The distraught mother of a disabled girl has made an emotional plea for reform to make sure the most vulnerable of children cannot fall prey to paedophiles.

The woman, using the pseudonym CIC, told a royal commission how her 13-year-old daughter was anally raped while in the care of a Mater Dei residential school at Camden, New South Wales, in 1991.

Her daughter, now 38, has the mental capacity of a three to five-year-old and no one was ever charged with assaulting her, the mother said.

On Monday’s opening day of a hearing into disability service providers, CIC told how her daughter, referred to as CIB, was living in a residential cottage on the grounds of a Mater Dei property at Camden in 1991.

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AUSTRALIA
Sydney Morning Herald

July 11, 201

Rachel Browne
Social Affairs Reporter

Paedophiles who target children with disabilities escape punishment because authorities view the victims as incompetent or unreliable, a royal commission has heard.

A woman whose teenage daughter allegedly suffered a horrific assault at a school for children with intellectual disabilities in Sydney’s south west told a public inquiry the case was never investigated properly and the suspect remains a free man.

The woman, given the pseudonym CIC, told the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse her then 14-year-old daughter was allegedly raped by a staff member at the Mater Dei School in Camden in 1991 but her complaints went nowhere.

“It is so easy for people in positions of trust to abuse children under their care because they know a disabled child may not be able to communicate and report their abuse as easily as others can,” she said.

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AUSTRALIA
The Daily Telegraph

Clarissa Bye, The Daily Telegraph
July 11, 2016

A PAEDOPHILE who preyed on a teenage girl at a Sydney Catholic boarding school could “still be out there assaulting other children”, an anguished mother told the sex abuse royal commission yesterday.

The man, who worked as a “houseparent” at a residential cottage of the Mater Dei Catholic school at Camden, had fled to England “under a cloud” in July 1991 and never returned, the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse heard.

The commission is investigating cases of historic sex abuse against four disabled children involving the Mater Dei school, as well as other more recent incidents at Nowra and the Gold Coast.

The alleged paedophile house­parent, who can’t be named, made meals, washed, cleaned and took care of the children at Arnold Cottage, a residential house for disabled children connected to the school, run by the Sisters of the Good Samaritan of the Order of Saint Benedict.

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VATICAN CITY
Catholic Culture

July 11, 2016

Pope Francis has named an American layman, Greg Burke, as the director of the Holy See Press Office, effective August 1.

Burke succeeds Father Federico Lombardi, SJ, 73, who has served in the position 2006.

Burke, 56, worked for UPI, Reuters, the National Catholic Register, TIME Magazine, and Fox News before becoming senior communications adviser to the Vatican Secretariat of State in 2012. He is a numerary, or lay celibate member, of the Opus Dei prelature, and has worked as vice director of the Holy See Press Office since February 1.

Father Lombardi’s predecessor, Joaquín Navarro-Valls, served as director of the Holy See Press Office from 1984 to 2006 and was also a numerary of Opus Dei.

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AUSTRALIA
9 News

AAP

It took more than six years for an order of nuns to respond to a complaint a 13-year-old disabled girl had been abused in their care, an inquiry has been told.

Sonia Wagner, former superior of the Sisters of Good Samaritan of the Order of St Benedict, visited a family six years after the alleged abuse of their disabled daughter, CIB, at a Mater Dei school in Camden NSW in 1991.

Sister Wagner told a royal commission on Monday she was asked in 1997 to follow up a complaint which had been made by police to the Catholic Education Commission.

A mother, CIC, had rung the police hotline six years after her daughter was allegedly sexually abused by a house parent, referred to as CID, at a Camden Mater Dei residential cottage for disabled children.

The commission has heard CID resigned from Mater Dei and left Australia in July 1991.

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SOUTH CAROLINA
Christian Times

Suzette Gutierrez Cachila
11 JULY, 2016

NewSpring Church confirmed on Sunday, July 10 that its founder Perry Noble was fired over an alcohol issue that has “gotten out of hand.”

Executive Shane Duffey announced the news to the congregation during the 9:15 a.m. service. He said Noble was fired for making “unfortunate choices and decisions,” the most pressing of which is his increasing dependence on alcohol.

He also mentioned problems regarding Noble’s marriage and “other behaviors.”

Duffey said it was the “most difficult and painful decision” the church leadership has ever made.

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SOUTH CAROLINA
Christian Post

BY ANUGRAH KUMAR , CHRISTIAN POST CONTRIBUTOR
July 11, 2016

Clayton King, the leader of Crossroads Worldwide ministry, has been appointed the interim senior pastor of South Carolina’s NewSpring Church after the megachurch’s founding and senior pastor, Perry Noble, was fired for alcohol abuse and other “unfortunate choices and decisions.”

“Perry Noble is no longer the Senior Pastor at NewSpring Church… As for what is next for us, Clayton King is going to step in as Interim Senior Pastor,” the church, with a weekly attendance of 30,000, says on its website.

King “has been a friend to NewSpring since the very beginning of our church,” it adds.

“Clayton will do a good job,” Greenville Online quoted South Carolina Rep. Anne Thayer of Belton, a longtime NewSpring member, as saying. “The church officials gave me confidence today in the way they handled a very difficult situation. I thought it was good that they addressed it from the start. And I think it helped that Clayton will fill that interim role.”

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UNITED KINGDOM
The Times

Kaya Burgess, Religious Affairs Correspondent

Vicars who have been suspended over sexual abuse are making thousands of pounds by illegally conducting funerals, Church of England officials have warned.

Funeral directors are employing vicars who are no longer permitted to minister to speed up the process of arranging services.

Families will often not be aware that the vicar presiding over their loved one’s funeral has been suspended due to sexual or other misconduct. In one case, raised by the diocese of Winchester, a funeral director ignored warnings from police asking them not to employ a vicar who was being investigated for sexual abuse abroad.

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AUSTRALIA
Daily Mail

By RACHEL EDDIE FOR DAILY MAIL AUSTRALIA and AAP

An intellectually disabled girl, 13, who had the mental capacity of a three to five-year-old, was allegedly abused by her live-in cottage supervisor who then fled the country, an inquiry has heard.

After attending Camden’s Catholic Mater Dei School in south-west Sydney for about six-months, the girl’s mother noticed a change in her daughter when she picked her up from the weekday live-in college on Fridays.

The girl was rushed to hospital when she began haemorrhaging badly from her rectum while sitting on the toilet in May 1991. The initial medical assessment said the condition was caused by assault.

The mother, now 69, said she made complaints about a cottage supervisor to police, community services and the school, but the alleged abuser resigned and fled to England in July that year.

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GEORGIA
Savannah Morning News

Editorial

The Roman Catholic Diocese of Savannah last week closed a painful and shameful chapter from its past when it announced it would pay $4.5 million to resolve a suit alleging child sexual abuse by a since-defrocked priest, Wayland Y. Brown. This was the second time the diocese agreed to settle a case involving Brown. The earlier one, resolved in 2009, settled for $4.24 million.

In the newer settlement, the plaintiff said he was a minor when Brown, whom he met at Savannah’s St. James Catholic Church and school, repeatedly molested him some 30 years ago. The sum, among the largest of settlements in individual cases of priest sex abuse, was reached after mediation. Its size indicates a willingness to end the litigation. It could also reflect vulnerability by the diocese which, under previous leadership, was accused of ordaining Brown despite reports of possible sexual abuse, of placing him where he had access to children and of not acting sooner on allegations against him.

Then-Bishop Raymond Lessard, who died earlier this year at his home in Boynton Beach, Fla., ordained Brown in 1977 and assigned him to St. James Parish. Lessard left the Savannah diocese in 1988 and was replaced by two subsequent bishops who to their credit, began showing responsibility and taking action against Brown, first to remove him from the active priesthood, and then to initiate de-frocking, which occurred in 2004.

By then more damage had been done, as Brown had pleaded guilty in 2002 in Maryland to child abuse and battery for abusing a teenage boy and his younger brother between 1974 and 1977, when Brown was preparing for the priesthood. Sentenced in 2002 to ten years in prison, he was released five years later.

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UNITED KINGDOM
International Business Times

By Brendan Cole
July 11, 2016

Vicars who have been sanctioned for sexual abuse are allegedly hiring themselves out to minister at funerals as “freelance clergy”, making thousands of pounds in the process.

The Church of England’s General Synod in York heard how funeral directors are using the services of vicars who are no longer allowed to minister. Families of the deceased are often not aware that the priest may have been suspended due to sexual or other misconduct.

One case in Winchester involved a funeral director ignoring pleas from the police by employing a vicar who was being investigated for sexual abuse abroad.

Funeral directors are often pressured to organise a funeral quickly and finding a vicar can be time consuming.While ordained vicars cannot accept payment for an independently conducted funeral, those conducting two or three a day can earn up to £40,000 a year.

The Right Rev Paul Butler, who deals with safeguarding issues around children and vulnerable adults for the Church, said the issue would be raised with the parliamentary group for funerals and bereavements.

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AUSTRALIA
Newcastle Herald

Krystal Sellars
July 11, 2016

A Hunter Valley man who was abused by an Anglican priest in Cessnock in the 1960s is urging others who experienced the same trauma to share their stories with the Royal Commission into institutional responses to child sex abuse.

Paul Gray was sexually abused by Fr Peter Rushton from the ages of 11 to 15, when he was an altar boy and member of the Church of England boys’ brigade.

Fr Rushton – who died in 2007 – completed his training at Morpeth in 1963 and spent four years at Cessnock before he was transferred to Wyong.

He also served at Weston from 1968, moved to Wallsend in 1973, Maitland in 1983 and Hamilton in 1998, before retiring in 2001.

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SOUTH CAROLINA
WYFF

ANDERSON COUNTY, S.C. —Leaders of the NewSpring megachurch have removed founding pastor, Perry Noble.

Pastor Shane Duffey made the announcement from the main campus in Anderson during services Sunday morning.

The decision was based on Noble’s personal behavior, which included alcohol and marital issues, Duffey said.Perry Noble Headshot

The message was broadcasted throughout all 17 campuses that belong to the church, and was available to its more than 30,000 parishioners across South Carolina.

Duffey read a statement from church officials that said, “Perry has made some unfortunate decisions,” and that he “is no longer qualified” to continue as pastor.

Noble wrote in a letter, “In the past year or so, I have allowed myself to slide into, in my opinion, the overuse of alcohol. This was a spiritual and moral mistake on my part, as I began to depend on alcohol for my refuge instead of Jesus and others. I have no excuse, this was wrong and sinful, and I’m truly sorry.”

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GUAM
Pacific Daily News

Bill Pesch
July 10, 2016

Fasten your seat belts, boys and girls! We are about to experience a roller coaster of a legal battle. You can expect many twists and turns, and ups and downs as the slander/libel case against Archbishop Anthony Apuron wends its way through the Superior Court. On July 1, attorney David Lujan, on behalf of four clients, filed a lawsuit against Apuron, the Archdiocese of Agana, and 50 other unnamed defendants.

Many readers may be scratching their heads, saying, “Wait a minute! I thought you recently wrote that the statute of limitations for filing civil actions against Apuron for alleged sexual abuse acts committed years ago has expired. Also, you said that the Guam statute only allows a complainant to file a lawsuit against the alleged perpetrator and not against the archdiocese itself. What is happening here?”

This confusion is understandable. The answer can be found in the nature of the lawsuit itself. Attorney Lujan’s clients aren’t charging Apuron for past acts of sexual abuse. Rather, they are charging him, and others, with very recent incidents of libel and slander. Libel is defined as a false and unprivileged written publication that “exposes any person to hatred, contempt, ridicule … which causes him to be shunned or avoided, or which has a tendency to injure him or his occupation.” Slander is similar to libel, but instead of being written, the statement is made verbally. Under Guam’s statute of limitation, a person is required to file a complaint for either libel of slander within one year of when the statement was published or made.

Lujan’s clients are upset because as they came forward and accused Apuron of past incidents of sexual abuse, he, or others on his behalf, called them “liars” and accused them of “instilling hatred, ignorance and violence in the people.” We all know what is meant when you call someone a “liar.” You are saying that what they said or wrote is untrue and that they knew it was untrue. However, Lujan’s clients are alleging that what they said is true — that Apuron did sexually abuse them. Further, they assert that because Apuron is the head of the Catholic Church on Guam, and because he has denied any wrongdoing and instead accused them of fabricating their accusations, they have been exposed to hatred, contempt, and ridicule by others. Further, they allege that Apuron’s and his supporters’ accusations damage their reputations, subjects them to public scorn, and could possibly impact their ability to make a living.

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UNITED STATES
Canonical Consultation

Jennifer Haselberger
07/09/20160

Yesterday, SNAP issued a statement about Archbishop Nienstedt’s involvement with the Napa Institute, meeting this week at a luxury hotel in the Napa Valley.

The institute claims its mission is to ‘equip Catholic leaders to defend and advance the Catholic faith’, and other notable attendees at the conference include Carly Fiorina, Cardinal Dolan, Archbishop Alexander Sample, Archbishop Bernardito Auza, Bishop Michael Barber, and Bishop Robert Vasa.

Nienstedt’s involvement with the Napa Institute is just the latest instance of his continued involvement in Church leadership since his resignation. As has already been mentioned, Nienstedt remains the Vice Chairman of the Board of Governors of the Pontifical North American College, and also continues on the Board of Trustees for the Catholic University of America.

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NEW YORK
Road to Recovery

The “International Summit to End Sexual Violence” to meet on the Fordham University Rose Hill Campus, Bronx, NY on July 10th and 11th, 2016; EVEN THOUGH,

A childhood sexual abuse victim, Neal E. Gumpel, who was strangled, plied with alcohol, and sexually assaulted by a deceased Fordham University professor and Jesuit priest, Roy Alan Drake, SJ, cannot get justice from the Jesuit religious order or Fordham University; SO,

Neal E. Gumpel, his wife, and supporters will demonstrate outside the main gate of Fordham University, Bronx, NY, and ask the “International Summit to End Sexual Violence” to call on Fordham University and the Jesuit religious order do the right thing by settling Neal Gumpel’s claim which will allow him to gain validation and help him try to heal

What
A demonstration and leafleting informing participants in the “Internal Summit to End Sexual Abuse,” Fordham University students and staff, and the general public that Fordham University and the Jesuit religious order refuse to settle a credible claim of childhood sexual abuse against Fr. Roy Alan Drake, SJ, a deceased Fordham University professor and Jesuit, who violently sexually abused minor child Neal E. Gumpel at a residence near the campus of Maine Maritime Academy in Castine, Maine.

When
Sunday, July 10, 2016 from 11:00 am until 1:00 pm

Where
On the public sidewalk outside Fordham University, Rose Hill Campus, near 400 Southern Boulevard (across from the entrance to the New York Botanical Gardens), Bronx, NY

Who
Neal E. Gumpel, a childhood sexual abuse victim of Fr. Roy Alan Drake, SJ; his wife, Helen Gumpel; Robert M. Hoatson, Ph.D., Co-founder and President of Road to Recovery, Inc., a non-profit charity based in New Jersey that assists victims of sexual abuse and their families; supporters, and friends

Why
The “International Summit to End Sexual Violence” is scheduled to kick-off its two-day conference at Fordham University on Sunday, July 10, 2016, despite the fact that Neal E. Gumpel, who is a childhood victim of a deceased Fordham University professor and Jesuit priest, has yet to receive any justice from Fordham University and the Jesuit religious order and has been demonstrating near the campus for months. Neal E. Gumpel was violently sexually assaulted in the residence of Fr. Roy Alan Drake, SJ, near the campus of Maine Maritime Academy in Castine, Maine. He was plied with alcohol, violently strangled, and sexually assaulted when he was a minor child. Demonstrators will call on the “International Summit to End Sexual Violence” to support Neal E. Gumpel’s request to Fordham University and the Jesuit religious order that they settle his claim, allow him to gain validation, and help him try to heal.

Contact
Robert M. Hoatson, Ph.D., President, Road to Recovery, Inc. – 862-368-2800

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UNITED STATES
The Open Tabernacle: Here Comes Everybody

Posted on July 10, 2016 by Betty Clermont

At least a score of cardinals have openly disagreed with Pope Francis in the past nine months. This is unheard of in recent history, not because churchmen don’t disagree with the pontiff, but because Princes of Church aren’t supposed to do it publicly.

Wilfried Napier is the cardinal archbishop of Durban, South Africa. “He also holds various offices in the Roman Curia, the Vatican bureaucracy, and is one of the African continent’s most prominent ecclesial figures … ‘Thank God I live in Africa, where we base our faith on the Scriptures & Church Teaching, & not every papal interview!’” he tweeted on July 3rd.

Reinhard Marx is the cardinal archbishop of Munich and a member of Pope Francis’ advisory Council of Cardinals. On June 23rd he stated that “we as Church cannot be against” civil same-sex marriage. The pope has declared that he is opposed to marriage equality dozens of times in the past decades.

George Pell is cardinal archbishop emeritus of Sydney and prefect of the Vatican Secretariat for the Economy. On April 12th, Archbishop Angelo Becciu, the number two official at the Secretariat of State, issued a letter suspending an external audit of Vatican finances by the global accountants, Pricewaterhouse Coopers (PwC). “Here, one must point out the obvious: it is hard to imagine the Secretariat of State suspending a contract worth millions, signed by the Prefect for the Economy, without the pope’s approval and after having informed him,” wrote Vatican reporter, Andrea Tornielli.

In response to Becciu’s letter, a statement from Pell’s office “noted with interest that the so-called ‘concerns’ about the PwC audit and contract were only raised when auditors began asking for certain financial information and were finding it difficult to get answers.”

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SCOTLAND
Scotsman

DANI GARAVELLI

When Helen Holland talks about the abuse she suffered at the hands of nuns and priests at Nazareth House in Kilmarnock it is as if she has been transported back into her childhood.

She may be sitting serenely in her home in Dunbartonshire – her long hair twisted in a Rapunzel coil, her two Yorkshire Terriers dozing in her lap – but the pain of what happened to her and the way it made her feel – unwanted, unloved, unworthy – has not been blunted by the passage of time. Half a century later, she is still plagued by night terrors which send her screaming into the street. And everyday encounters trigger sudden panics. The sound of a nurse’s feet in a hospital corridor – like a nun’s steps across a dormitory – send her into meltdown; when a doctor carries out an examination, she can feel it on her skin for weeks afterwards.

These are some of the legacies of Holland’s years in care. She knows the past cannot be erased, but she wants her suffering documented and publicly acknowledged. Although financial redress is important, what she craves most of all is validation.

After so long being ignored, survivors across the country hoped the public inquiry into child abuse in care would provide that validation. Instead, the resignation of panel member Professor Michael Lamb and chair Susan O’Brien QC amidst allegations of Scottish Government “interference” has reinforced their feelings of worthlessness.

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SCOTLAND
BBC News

By Huw Williams
BBC Scotland reporter

Child abuse survivors in Scotland have said they hope resignations from a Scottish government inquiry could redefine the investigation.

The panel’s chair stepped down. It followed the departure of another panel member, claiming government interference.

Now campaigners have said they hope it will lead to a new remit for the inquiry.

Education Secretary John Swinney has promised to consider changes.

Victims and survivors have expressed concern about the appointment of replacement panel members.

And they would like the inquiry widened to include abuse committed outwith residential settings.
Helen Holland, from the In Care Abuse Survivors group (Incas), told the BBC’s Sunday Politics Scotland programme that they also want the inquiry to be able to consider the award of recompense to victims of abuse.

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SCOTLAND
Daily Record

10 JUL 2016
BY MARK AITKEN

SETBACKS in the probe into decades of abuse at children’s homes and residential schools has been traumatising for victims.

SURVIVORS of child abuse have urged Scottish ministers to stop a public inquiry dragging on for years.

The long-awaited probe into decades of abuse at children’s homes and residential schools has been plunged into chaos after two members quit over alleged Government interference.

Chairwoman Susan O’Brien resigned last Monday after moves by John Swinney to remove her over alleged offensive comments to victims, which she denies.

The inquiry panel now has only one member.

Lawyer Cameron Fyfe, who represents hundreds of victims, said: “The Scottish Government need to work hard now to prove there will be no interference from them or it will be extremely difficult to regain the trust of those whose lives have been devastated by abuse.

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VATICAN CITY
Crux

John L. Allen Jr. July 10, 2016
EDITOR

There are many ways of analyzing the fault lines in the Vatican, but perhaps the most time-honored (if also often exaggerated) is the tension between an Italian old guard and pretty much everybody else. By conventional political logic, anyway, Saturday saw the Italians notch a fairly big win.

It could turn out, however, to be a Pyrrhic victory – because by taking back control over a range of financial powers, the old guard has also reclaimed the blame the next time something goes wrong.

On Saturday, Pope Francis issued a motu proprio, meaning a legal edict, delineating the division of responsibility between the Vatican’s Administration of the Patrimony of the Apostolic See (APSA) and the Secretariat of the Economy (SPE). The former is headed by Italian Cardinal Domenico Calcagno, the latter by Australian Cardinal George Pell.

In effect, the motu proprio restores several important functions to APSA that had been given to Pell’s department in 2014. One local news agency bottom-lined the result this way in its headline: “The Italians win!”

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VATICAN CITY
Starts at 60

It hasn’t been a great year for Cardinal Pell – his alleged involvement in covering up sexual abuse in the Church was widely publicised as was his inability to attend the royal commission into the abuse.

Now it’s been reported that George Pell’s role at the Vatican has been reduced – the Pope has removed many of his administrative tasks.

Sky News reports yesterday Pope Francis reversed a 2014 law that had transferred the main operational section of the patrimony office to the Australian cardinal’s Secretariat for the Economy.

Francis said he is removing the tasks because there needs to be an unequivocal and full separation between those who manage Vatican assets and those who supervise them.

Pell has been a vocal critic of the Vatican’s overspending and some are viewing this as Pope Francis making sure that he won’t be able to control as much.

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PENNSYLVANIA
The Guardian (UK)

Joanna Walters in Ebensburg, Pennsylvania
@Joannawalters13
Sunday 10 July 2016

Brian Gergely’s body lay at his funeral mass just feet from where, in the same church, his revered priest had shattered his innocence and trust by molesting him when he was 10 years old.

“The root of all his problems was what happened to him as a kid,” said John Luther, a friend and former schoolmate of Gergely’s at a Catholic elementary school in the small Pennsylvania town of Ebensburg.

Luther recalled that Gergely, an altar boy, would get pulled out of class and told to go to the church “to help the monsignor”.

That was Father Francis McCaa, who was called a monster by a state grand jury in March. Its report concluded that he was among at least 50 priests in the local Altoona-Johnstown diocese who had systematically raped and molested hundreds of boys and girls for 40 years, while bishops covered it up and the criminal justice system looked the other way. McCaa died in 2007, at 82.

Gergely killed himself earlier this month at 46.

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UNITED KINGDOM
Mail on Sunday

By PAUL CAHALAN and JONATHAN PETRE FOR THE MAIL ON SUNDAY

Senior Church of England leaders covered up damning evidence that a bishop was a predatory sex offender 22 years before he was brought to justice, according to secret documents obtained by The Mail on Sunday.

Lambeth Palace was warned that Peter Ball, a close friend of Prince Charles and who attended his wedding to Camilla Parker Bowles in 2005, was a serial abuser of boys and young men shortly before he resigned as Bishop of Gloucester in 1993.

At the time he accepted a caution for gross indecency against a man aged 19, but was allowed to continue working as a cleric until he was eventually jailed last year.

Now it has emerged the Archbishop of Canterbury’s headquarters received at least six letters from other alleged victims detailing ‘potentially criminal’ and ‘totally inappropriate behaviour’ by the former bishop in the early 1990s, but did not pass them on to police until years later.

Details of the letters, all sent to the Church between December 1992 and February 1993, reveal Ball encouraged victims to pray naked, perform sex acts in front of him, and share his bed.

Anglican officials who reviewed the letters in 2009 suggested that had such evidence been given to detectives in 1993, Ball may have been convicted of serious sexual offences rather than merely cautioned. But instead of being made public, the letters were kept in confidential files at Lambeth Palace. It was not until 2012, after several internal inquiries, that the Church finally released documents to police.

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IRELAND
Irish Independent

Maeve Sheehan
PUBLISHED
10/07/2016

[Commission of Investigation Report into the Catholic Archdiocese of Dublin July 2009; released November 26, 2009 – BishopAccountability.org]

Last Monday, one of the worst offending priests named in the Murphy Report on clerical child abuse was found guilty of raping a boy with a crucifix.

Fr Tony Walsh, known as the singing priest, will be sentenced for his crimes later this month. During his trial, the court heard he already has 17 previous convictions for indecently assaulting a number of young boys and one girl.

Fr Walsh started out his priestly life in the west Dublin parish of Ballyfermot, then a growing suburb which was plagued by a succession of paedophiles from the 1970s to the 1990s.

Their time in the burgeoning suburb overlapped with that of another paedophile, Eamon Cooke, who lured the children of the area into the studios of his pirate radio station, Radio Dublin, down the road in Inchicore. Days after he died, he was named as the prime suspect for the killing of the missing schoolboy Philip Cairns, who disappeared on his way back to school in 1984.

In her report on clerical sex abuse in the Dublin archdiocese, which was published in 2009, Judge Yvonne Murphy found “worrying connections” between some paedophile priests, including Fr Walsh and another paedophile, Fr Bill Carney, both of whom spent their formative years in Ballyfermot. However, she found no evidence that they were part of a “paedophile ring”.

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VATICAN CITY
Daily Mail (UK)

By ANEETA BHOLE FOR DAILY MAIL AUSTRALIA and AAP

The Pope has removed many of Cardinal George Pell’s administrative functions from his role as the Vatican’s key financial office.

Pope Francis essentially reversed a 2014 law that had transferred the main operational section of the patrimony office to the Australian cardinal’s Secretariat for the Economy as of Saturday.

In a slight to Pell, Francis says he’s removing the tasks because there needs to be an unequivocal and full separation between those who manage Vatican assets and those who supervise them.

Cardinal Pell, a critic of the Vatican’s financial wastefulness, assumed control in a bid to assert authority over different areas of the Vatican’s spending.

But overtime Francis has managed to trim his reach.

The announcement comes just months after Cardinal Pell appeared in front of a Rome royal commission into sexual abuse.

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RWANDA
New Times

By: EMMANUEL NTIRENGANYA
PUBLISHED: July 10, 2016

Genocide scholars have likened the forthcoming Silver Jubilee celebration that the Catholic Church of Kabgayi Diocese is set to hold for its two priests convicted of genocide crimes during the genocide against the Tutsi in 1994, to genocide ideology and minimisation of genocide.

On July 16, the Kabgayi Diocese will hold a series of religious event at Mushishiro Parish including the 25-year jubilee celebration for its six priests, who include two genocide convicts Joseph Ndagijimana and Emmanuel Rukundo, according to the invitation by the Diocese.

Rukundo was convicted and handed a 25-year sentence by the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda in 2009, while Joseph Ndagijimana was convicted and handed life sentence by Gacaca in the same year.

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VATICAN CITY
GMA News

AFP

Published July 10, 2016

VATICAN CITY, Holy See – Pope Francis issued a decree Saturday aimed at boosting transparency over Vatican finances, which have been under scrutiny since leaks of secret documents revealed serious irregularities that may have masked corruption.

The move follows months of tension between the body charged with managing the Holy See’s assets and the Vatican’s powerful economy ministry.

The Argentine pontiff’s “motu proprio” reverses a 2014 bill which had transferred the competencies of the authority in charge of the Vatican’s real estate — known as ASPA — to the Secretariat for the Economy, headed by finance czar Cardinal George Pell.

It essentially left Pell’s department both in charge of managing the assets and keeping watch over asset management.

“It is of the utmost importance that bodies responsible for vigilance are separated from those that are being overseen,” Francis said in the new document published by the Vatican.

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VATICAN CITY
Catholic News Agency

By Ann Schneible

Vatican City, Jul 9, 2016 / 11:58 am (CNA/EWTN News).- A new set of reforms further clarifying the roles of Vatican financial offices was announced July 9, implementing changes set in motion by Pope Francis’ 2014 edict, “Fidelis dispensator et prudens.”

This new directive, entitled “Temporal goods,” affirms that the role of the Church’s assets center around “divine worship, the just support for the clergy, apostolate, and works of charity, especially for the needy.”

“The Church, therefore, feels the responsibility to pay maximum attention to the administration of their economic resources is always at the service of these purposes,” the document said.

The motu proprio, signed July 4, ensures “the clear and unequivocal distinction between control and vigilance, on the one hand, and administration of goods, on the other,” according to a July 9 statement by the Holy See press office.

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WISCONSIN
LaCrosse Tribune

Vince Hatt

For years I have postponed writing this commentary. I just have too many feelings to sort out. There are just too many ways to frame this. Limited to about 750 words, I must leave out important information.

But here goes: My thoughts and feelings about the sexual abuse of children by priests.

When I first heard about it, I was sad and embarrassed. Sad because some priests had hurt and taken advantage of the most vulnerable of those whom they were called to love and protect. Embarrassed because as a Catholic I would be challenged by those who like to tear down the church. As I learned more about the profound damage that sexual abuse does to children, I became horrified.

Later on, a priest I knew was listed among those abusing children. I was dumbfounded. This priest was known as a “good priest.” He preached well, was attentive to the needs of his parishioners and had young people excited about their faith. Here again I was confronted most starkly by the human reality that all of us are a mysterious mix of saint and sinner.

Then I learned that some bishops quietly moved many of these priests to other parishes. Maybe these bishops thought it was only a moral issue. These priests could confess, be forgiven and change. Maybe these bishops weren’t aware of the deep psychological damage done to children. On the other hand, maybe these bishops wanted to look good to other bishops and to the pope when they traveled to the Vatican every five years to give an account of their stewardship. I don’t know. Regardless, it was a tragic mistake that did horrible damage to many more children.

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IOWA
KMA Land

Tim Wayne

(Hamburg) — Deputies of the Fremont County Sheriff’s office arrested a Clarinda man early Saturday morning on solicitation charges.

Sheriff Kevin Aistrope reports that early on Saturday deputies conducted an investigation into the solicitation of prostitution in Hamburg. Following the investigation deputies arrested 40-year-old Dominic Yamoah of Clarinda after he tried to get an undercover source to perform sexual acts for money.

Yomoah was taken to the Fremont County Law Enforcement Center and charged with solicitation and is being held on $2,000 bond. Sheriff’s deputies were assisted by the Iowa State Patrol.

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IOWA
KCCI

By Alex Kirkpatrick

HAMBURG, Iowa —A Page County priest was arrested Saturday morning after he allegedly tried to persuade an undercover source to perform sexual acts in exchange for money.

KJAN reports that Fremont County Sheriff’s deputies arrested The Rev. Dominic Yamoah, 40, of Clarinda, who faces solicitation charges and is being held at the Fremont County Law Enforcement Center on $2,000 bond.

Deputies conducted the investigation into solicitation of prostitution in Hamburg, about 40 miles southwest of Clarinda.

Yamoah serves as a priest at the St. Clare Parish in Clarinda and St. Joseph Parish in Villisca.

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VATICAN CITY
Crux

Inés San Martín
July 9, 2016
VATICAN CORRESPONDENT

ROME- Continuing his attempts to clean up the Vatican’s finances, Pope Francis on Saturday released a document defining the relationship between two key offices: one to administer the Vatican’s resources, the other to provide oversight on how that administration is carried out.

In February 2014, Francis established three new bodies as part of the Vatican’s economic overhaul: a Council for the Economy to set policy, a Secretariat for the Economy to oversee implementation, and an Office of the Auditor General to provide independent verification.

Statutes for the three were approved “ad experimentum” in 2015, with the pontiff acknowledging that the new system was still being built and could take different shapes.

Long before these three were created, the main financial player in the Vatican was the Administration of the Patrimony of the Apostolic See (APSA), which managed the Church’s real estate assets and its investment portfolio. As part of the early reform in 2014, many of those functions were transferred to the new secretariat.

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VATICAN CITY
Herald and Review

VATICAN CITY (AP) — Pope Francis has again clipped the wings of his finance czar Cardinal George Pell by effectively removing many of the administrative functions of the Vatican’s key financial office from his department.

In a new law Saturday, Francis essentially reversed a 2014 law that had transferred the main operational section of the patrimony office to Pell’s Secretariat for the Economy.

Francis, who was elected on a reform mandate, says he was restoring these administrative functions to the APSA office because he realized there needed to be an “unequivocable and full separation” between those who manage Vatican assets (APSA) and those who supervise them (Pell).

Pell, a longtime critic of the Vatican’s financial inefficiencies, had assumed control in a bid to assert authority over different areas of the Vatican’s finances. Over time, Francis has trimmed his reach.

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VATICAN CITY
Vatican Information Service – Bollettino

Vatican City, 9 July 2016 – On 4 July 2016, the Holy Father approved a Motu Proprio to implement reform of the organisms engaged in control and vigilance as well as the administration of Holy See assets. The new legislative document is intended to continue on the path begun with the Motu Proprio “Fidelis dispensator et prudens” dated 24 February 2014, by which Pope Francis created three new bodies: the Council for the Economy, the Secretariat for the Economy and the Office of the Auditor General. As is well known, the respective competencies of these organisms were subsequently specified in the Statutes of 22 February 2015. The statutes in question were approved ad experimentum with the knowledge that the new system was to be built through subsequent verifications.

The document published today responds to the need to define further the relationship between the Administration of the Patrimony of the Apostolic See and the Secretariat for the Economy. The fundamental principle at the base of the reforms in this area, and in particular at the base of this Motu Proprio, is that of ensuring the clear and unequivocal distinction between control and vigilance, on the one hand, and administration of assets, on the other. Therefore, the Motu Proprio specifies the competencies pertaining to the Administration of the Patrimony of the Holy See and better delineates the Secretariat for the Economy’s fundamental role of control and vigilance.

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ITALIA
Ciociaria

[The community is in shock at the news that priest Gianni Bekians is accused of sexually abusing a minor. Parishioners hope the allegation is not true.]

Una città sotto shock che da ieri mattina si interroga sulla notizia del rinvio a giudizio di don Gianni Bekiaris, accusato di violenza sessuale su un minore, un’imputazione pesante che lascia molti parrocchiani dubbiosi forse proprio per la gravità o forse perché in cuore suo ognuno spera che non sia vero. O che magari si tratti di una ritorsione. Del resto si parla di un parroco ben inserito per nove anni nel tessuto sociale della città, dove ha guidato la parrocchia di San Rocco, arrivato a portare una ventata di novità sul territorio, amante del bello, del gusto, dell’arte, capace di far tornare a splendere una chiesa che per anni era rimasta sotto la polvere. Un personaggio molto noto e ben voluto, sul quale però ora cala un’ombra nera, l’orrore di una delle accuse più gravi: la pedofilia. Così si fa fatica a credere che una persona, per un giunta un prete, gentile, distinto, impegnato, pronto ad aiutare gli altri, possa aver commesso un reato così orrendo. Di qui gli interrogativi dei parrocchiani anche di fronte alla richiesta avanzata al giudice per le udienze preliminari che si sta occupando del caso dal procuratore della Repubblica di Frosinone Giuseppe De Falco e dal sostituto procuratore Maria Pia Ticino.

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DEUTSCHLAND
NDR

von Tino Nowitzki

Die Aufklärung der Vorwürfe des sexuellen Missbrauchs gegen den ehemaligen Bischof Heinrich Maria Janssen und Pfarrer Peter R. stockt. Anfang des Jahres hatte das Bistum Hildesheim angekündigt, in beiden Fällen unabhängige Gutachter einsetzen zu wollen. Damals hieß es, Experten wollen sich “in Kürze” mit den Fällen befassen. Doch die Suche nach Gutachtern gestalte sich schwieriger als gedacht, sagt Bistums-Sprecher Volker Bauerfeld. Konkrete Gründe wollte er nicht nennen: “Die Ursachen liegen aber außerhalb der Kirche”, so Bauerfeld. Gesucht würden Experten ohne Verbindung zur katholischen Kirche und mit Erfahrung in Fällen von sexuellem Missbrauch. Die Hoffnung sei weiter, möglichst schnell einen Gutachter beauftragen zu können. Bauerfeld: “Wir möchten das aufklären.”

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CANADA
Canadian Underwriter

Canadian Press

WINNIPEG – A former Winnipeg priest, the Archdiocese of Saint Boniface and Clercs de Saint-Viateur du Canada have been named in two separate sexual assault lawsuits.

The lawsuits are connected to Ronald Leger, a former pastor at Holy Family Parish in Winnipeg.

He pleaded guilty to sexually abusing three boys ranging in age from nine to 18 between 1980 and 2004.

“St. Mary’s Cathedral, Winnipeg”

Leger was given a two-year prison sentence in February.

The lawsuit alleged that the Archdiocese was “negligent and failed in its duty” to the victim “to recognize that a certain percentage of priests would become sexually deviant.”

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UNITED STATES
Frum Follies

The Age of Australia confirmed earlier reports that Malka Leifer moved to the small ultra-orthodox Israeli settlement town, Immanuel. She did this after her house arrest was lifted.

Leifer faces multiple felony charges of molesting teen girls in Australia but the Israel court has allowed her to evade extradition on the ground of mental illness. She dodged everyone of her hearings by conveniently checking herself into mental hospitals just before hearings and then checking out right after the hearing.

Kate Shuttlesworth writes:

A neighbour living in the same building as Ms Leifer noticed she had returned to Immanuel about three weeks ago. The woman said the community also had concerns for the former principal’s own children.

She said Ms Leifer’s children were often left at home alone.

“She’s been taking the bus most days this week with her teenage daughter, who is in ninth or 10th grade. They seem to have a very unhealthy, dependency [sic] relationship, which is not very surprising if you know the back story,” the neighbour said.

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CALIFORNIA/MINNESOTA
Fox 9

By: Tom Lyden

(KMSP) – So where does a Minnesota Archbishop go after bankruptcy and a criminal investigation? How about California wine country.

John Nienstedt resigned as Archbishop of the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis last June. He left the Archdiocese in bankruptcy and amid a criminal investigation, stemming from a cover-up of sexual abuse in the church.

In May, the Fox 9 Investigators had tracked John Nienstedt to Michigan. But according to the church abuse survivors group, SNAP, Nienstedt is on the move again.

This time, the group says he’s working with a Catholic conference known as the Napa Institute, which is holding its annual conference this weekend at the upscale Meritage Hotel in Napa Valley.

The Executive Director of the Napa Insititute confirms for Fox 9 that Nienstedt will be performing devotional services there this weekend, but wouldn’t comment if he will have a permanent affiliation with the group.

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CALIFORNIA
Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests

For immediate release: Friday, July 8, 2016

Statement by Tim Lennon of San Francisco, Bay Area Director of SNAP, the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests (415-312-5820, tlennon@snapnetwork.org)

We have just learned that a disgraced archbishop, who resigned amid numerous allegations that he committed and concealed clergy sexual misconduct, will be leading two services at a conference at the Meritage Hotel in the Napa Valley this weekend.

We urge conference organizers to disinvite the controversial prelate and attendees to withdraw from the event unless that happens immediately. It’s especially important that Santa Rosa Bishop Robert Vasa take action, since the conference is in his diocese. http://napa-institute.org/conference/conference-schedule-and-brochure/

Archbishop John Nienstedt, the former head of the St. Paul/Minneapolis archdiocese, is at the Napa Institute for the next few days. Several sources have told us he works there permanently now. He’s accused of sexually exploiting and/or propositioning between five and ten young seminarians. In civil litigation and repeated media exposes (especially by Minnesota Public Radio), he’s been shown to have ignored or concealed child sex crimes by priests. And the archdiocese he ran for years faces pending criminal charges for refusing to report suspected abuse by clerics.

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UNITED KINGDOM
Leicester Mercury

The Jehovah’s Witnesses face a million-pound legal bill after a young girl was sexually abused by one of its members.

The victim, now aged in her 20s, was molested by an elder, or “ministerial servant”, Peter Stewart, over a five-year period in Loughborough in the 1980s and ’90s, London’s High Court heard.

Last year, a judge ordered the organisation to pay £275,000 compensation to the victim or failing to protect her or to warn other parents about Stewart.

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NORTHERN IRELAND
BBC News

By Kevin Sharkey
BBC News NI

Public hearings at the Historical Institutional Abuse Inquiry have ended after two and a half years.

The chairman of the inquiry, Sir Anthony Hart, is due to hand over his report to Stormont by next January.
The hundreds of testimonies of the past two and a half years at the inquiry have changed a chapter in the history of Northern Ireland society.

Men and women, who were vulnerable children in care in Northern Ireland between 1922 and 1995, have come before the inquiry to give accounts of abuse in their childhood.

They suffered the abuse while in the care of churches, the state and the charity Barnardo’s. Some others were abused by notorious paedophile Fr Brendan Smyth.

The children were sent into care for very many, and very different reasons. These included poverty, broken homes, and violence or abuse in their own family home.

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SCOTLAND
Fife Today

Friday 08 July 2016

A verdict is expected early next week in the trial of two men accused of abusing boys at the former St Ninian’s School in Falkland.

John Farrell (73), of Motherwell, and Paul Kelly (63), of Plymouth, have denied sexually and physically abusing the boys, then aged between 11 and 16, between 1967 and 1983.

They went on trial in April at the High Court in Glasgow.

The Crown claims a total of 35 boys were allegedly abused at the school. Farrell has lodged a special defence of alibi.

The trial, before judge Lord Matthews, is expected to end on Monday or Tuesday. It is one of the longest abuse trials ever heard in Scotland and, over the last 12 weeks, dozens of the alleged victims have given evidence, some of whom are now in their 50s.

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MISSOURI
Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests

For immediate release: Friday, July 8, 2016

Statement by David Clohessy of St. Louis, Director of SNAP, the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests (314 566 9790,314 645 5915 home, davidgclohessy@gmail.com)

Officials at a Kansas City church are bullying two girls – ages 11 year old and a 13 year old and their mom. Now, the church’s lawyer is trying to deny the bullying.

A mother and her daughters are suing Westside Family Church in Lenexa. The mom wants to continue protecting the privacy and recovery of her daughters who were sexually violated by a serial predator who helped with Vacation Bible School.

But Westside wants a judge to “out” them and prevent them from moving forward as “Jane Does.” For decades, however, judges in the US have let crime victims seek justice while safeguarding their anonymity. This is especially true when kids are involved.

The church’s motion, filed in Johnson County Court, starts with this phrase: “Westside requests that this Court deny the plaintiffs’ motion (for) a pseudonym.”

It ends with this phrase: “Westside requests that this court deny the plaintiffs’ motion (for) a pseudonym.”

In between, the church’s motion says the alleged victims “should not be able to hide behind pseudonyms.”

Pretty clear, right?

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RHODE ISLAND
Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests

For immediate release: Friday, July 8, 2016

Statement by David Clohessy of St. Louis, Director of SNAP, the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests (314 566 9790,314 645 5915 home, davidgclohessy@gmail.com)

We applaud the brave and compassionate Rhode Island abuse victims and children’s advocates who have won reforms in the state’s mandatory reporting law. We hope state lawmakers will now take a crucial next step and relax or repeal Rhode Island’s archaic, predator-friendly statute of limitations, the single biggest obstacle that prevents child sex abuse victims from protecting kids and exposing cover ups.

[Rhode Island Public Radio]

Because they’re driven by overwhelming, deeply-rooted compulsions that are very hard to control, few child molesters are deterred by threat of penalty. Their colleagues and supervisors, however, can be deterred from acting timidly, selfishly and irresponsibly, but only if authorities clarify and use mandatory reporting laws and push for severe sentences for those who violate those laws. That’s why yesterday’s progress is so important – it will help stop predators after their second or third victim, not their 22nd or 33rd victim.

Sometimes, however, those who commit and conceal sexual violence against kids can’t be charged or convicted in court. Usually, the reason is excessively tight criminal and civil statutes of limitations. We hope Rhode Island legislators will now move to reform these arbitrary deadlines that give wrongdoers incentives to intimidate victims, threaten witnesses, discredit whistleblowers, destroy evidence and even flee the country.

No matter what lawmakers or church officials do or don’t do, we urge every single person who saw, suspected or suffered child sex crimes and cover ups in schools, churches or other institutions – especially private ones – to protect kids by calling police, get help by calling therapists, expose wrongdoers by calling law enforcement, get justice by calling attorneys, and be comforted by calling support groups like ours. This is how kids will be safer, adults will recover, criminals will be prosecuted, cover ups will be deterred and the truth will surface.

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MISSOURI
Berger’s Beat

July 7, 2016

For a while, two archbishops who once headed our town’s archdiocese – Cardinal Raymond Burke and Cardinal Justin Rigali – sat on the Vatican’s powerful Congregation for Bishops, the office that proposes bishop candidates across much of the globe. In a blow to the church here, both men were soon ousted when Pope Francis took office. Today, however, the pontiff has elevated another Midwestern prelate, Chicago’s Blase Cupich to be on that committee.

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NORTHERN IRELAND
Belfast Telegraph

A paedophile at the Kincora boys’ home in Northern Ireland tried to get a child to have sex with an animal, a witness has told a public inquiry.

Senior care worker William McGrath was convicted of abuse at the notorious east Belfast institution and imprisoned in 1981.

He wanted to blackmail the victims if they later moved into political life, r etired British Army officer Sergeant Q told the Historical Institutional Abuse (HIA) inquiry.

Sergeant Q said an alleged victim told him: “Look, to give you an idea of McGrath’s perversions, he tried to get me to do it with animals.”

Inquiry counsel Christine Smith QC said: “That was something that stuck with you over the years because … while it might seem outrageous today, certainly seemed even more outrageous back then.”

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NORTHERN IRELAND
BBC News

Public hearings at the Historical Institutional Abuse Inquiry (HIA) come to an end on Friday after two and a half years.

Hundreds of witnesses have given testimony to the inquiry that has been examining allegations of historical abuse and neglect.

A report is expected next year.

The HIA was set up in 2013 to investigate child abuse in residential institutions in Northern Ireland over a 73-year period, up to 1995.

Analysis – BBC News NI’s Kevin Sharkey

Men and women who were vulnerable children in care in Northern Ireland between 1922 and 1995 have appeared before the inquiry to give accounts of their childhood abuse.

Now middle-aged or elderly, they travelled to Northern Ireland from across the UK and Ireland.
Many others gave evidence from around the world, particularly from Australia.

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NORTHERN IRELAND
Belfast Telegraph

The intelligence services knew nothing about child abuse at Kincora until after the scandal broke some years later, a lawyer has said.

Counsel for the police invited the Historical Institutional Abuse (HIA) Inquiry to strike down allegations which it was claimed were fuelled by a small number of individuals who failed to give evidence.

Former Army officer Colin Wallace has been a key voice in claims of a cover-up by intelligence services of sex abuse at the former Kincora Boys’ Home. He declined to appear before the panel.

Neasa Murnaghan, who represents the Northern Ireland Office, MI5 and MI6 and the Ministry of Defence, said: “This inquiry should be able to conclude firstly that each of the four core participants knew nothing relevant about child abuse in Kincora until after the scandal broke in the middle of the 1980s, that all of the efforts to the contrary are without foundation and don’t withstand scrutiny.”

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ARGENTINA
La Izquierda Diario

[Nelson Monzon was a priest of a church in Reconquista, north of Santa Fe. In April he was charged with molesting minors. First house there was arrest, then he was released. He is now arrested on a new case.]

Nelsón Monzón es ex párroco de una iglesia en la localidad de Reconquista en el norte de la provincia de Santa Fe. Fue acusado de abuso de sexual contra dos menores en el abril de este año. En un polémico fallo el cura había sido beneficiado con prisión domiciliaria. Casualmente una iglesia de la localidad de Paraná, la Iglesia Calchaquí, recibiría al cura. La iglesia lo recibiría “como un gesto de misericordia, con gusto, con mucha paz en el alma”.

Luego de que fuera liberado con restricciones se dio a conocer en estos días un nuevo caso de abuso contra otro menor. A partir de este hecho se solicitó la detención preventiva por la fiscalía regional de Reconquista.

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MEXICO
El Debate

[A priest with HIV priest admits to sexual abuse of 30 girls.]

Clérigo y con VIH confesó el abuso sexual de cometido en contra de más de 30 niñas de entre 5 y 10 años, de acuerdo a la publicación de “Hablemos de México”.

La publicación da a conocer que existe una lista de obispos y sacerdotes pederastas. El religioso fue identificado con el nombre de José Ataulfo García, quien era sacerdote en una comunidad indígena de Oaxaca.

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ARGENTINA
La Capital

[A priest accused of child sexual abuse is rearrested.]

El cura de Reconquista acusado de abuso sexual Néstor Monzón quedó nuevamente detenido con prisión preventiva, a partir de una segunda denuncia en su contra por igual delito. El sacerdote, que está imputado por “abuso sexual gravemente ultrajante, agravado por la condición de ser un ministro de un culto religioso”, llegó a los tribunales de esa ciudad como un hombre en libertad y poco más de dos horas después salió detenido y esposado rumbo a una comisaría de la ciudad de Avellaneda.

El juez de Investigación Penal Preparatoria (IPP) Gonzalo Basualdo determinó que los próximos 60 días Monzón los pase privado de su libertad, mientras avanza la causa en la que está acusado por un ataque sexual a un nene de cuatro años. Este caso se está tramitando por separado de otra denuncia por abuso que pesa sobre el cura, en la cual la víctima es una nena de tres años, prima de este pequeño. Para agilizar el proceso, la Fiscalía va a pedir que ambas causas se tramiten juntas.

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GUAM
Pacific Daily News

Haidee V Eugenio, Pacific Daily News July 8, 2016

Archdiocese silent on bill that could allow Apuron accusers to sue

A bill that would make it easier for victims to sue alleged child molesters by lifting the statute of limitations is getting wide community support, but the Judiciary, Attorney General Elizabeth Barrett-Anderson and other members of the legal community have recommended changes to the bill to support its intent.

The Archdiocese of Agana has not submitted any comment on the bill, which, if enacted into law, could allow those who recently accused Archbishop Anthony S. Apuron of molesting them in the 1970s to sue him. The statute of limitations for criminal cases in connection with the allegations by the former altar boys expired decades ago. Apuron and the archdiocese have denied the allegations.

Sen. Frank Aguon Jr.’s Committee on Guam U.S. Military Relocation, Public Safety and Judiciary held a public hearing on Bill 326-33 on June 27 and provided an additional 10-day period to submit comments.

The attorney general and the Judiciary noted that the bill would change an existing law that applies to all types of personal injuries and death, and not specifically the sexual abuse of children.

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SCOTLAND
The Courier

by Gareth McPherson
July 8 2016

The Deputy First Minister has met child abuse survivors after the government inquiry was thrown into crisis by the resignation of its chairman.

Susan O’Brien QC became the second member of a three-strong panel to step down from the Scottish Abuse Inquiry.

Campaign groups for victims said they had lost faith in the inquiry, which was announced in 2014 to investigate historical abuse of children in care.

After meeting survivors in Edinburgh, John Swinney said: “I want to assure survivors that I have heard them today.

“I recognise how important it is for us to build trust and I am absolutely committed to that.

“I am utterly committed to an independent inquiry and I have tried to answer all the questions survivors had.

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SCOTLAND
Evening Times

Stephen Naysmith

Scotland’s biggest ever public inquiry, into the abuse of children in care is genuinely independent and a new chair will be appointed as soon as possible, John Swinney has told victim and survivor groups.

At a meeting with survivors of childhood abuse held in the wake of the resignation of two of the three key figures at the head of the investigation, the Deputy First Minister attempted to reassure them that the troubled investigation is still on track.

He was pressed to explain why he had taken steps to remove the former Chair Susan O’Brien QC – which eventually led to her resignation – and why another member of the three person panel leading the official probe had also resigned. Both quit citing government interference as the causes and warning that the independence of their work was being compromised.

However Mr Swinney told survivors that he had moved to remove Ms O’Brien because of comments she had made which he feared would upset them and cause great offence if they had been made public.

Mr Swinney agreed to consider appointing a judge or a candidate from outside Scotland to replace Ms O’Brien and said he would look again at whether the remit of the inquiry could be extended to encompass groups currently excluded.

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SCOTLAND
Scotsman

Survivors say education secretary John Swinney has agreed to look at widening the remit of Scotland’s child abuse inquiry during talks on its future.

The inquiry was thrown into crisis this week following the resignation of its chair, Susan O’Brien, who quit just days after fellow panel member Professor Michael Lamb.

Survivors’ groups met Mr Swinney in Edinburgh today to discuss the inquiry, and said their discussions had been “productive”.

Campaigners want the Scottish Government to extend the inquiry to include children abused by those who had a duty of care, not just those who were abused in institutional settings.

There are also growing calls for the new chair to be appointed from outside of Scotland, with leading barrister Michael Mansfield QC already approached by survivors’ groups.

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AUSTRALIA/ISRAEL
The Border Mail

Kate Shuttleworth
July 8, 2016

The former principal of an ultra-Orthodox Jewish girls’ school in Melbourne, who fled the country after allegedly sexually abusing her students, has returned to a conservative, religious settlement in Israel a free woman, much to the outrage of her new neighbours.

Malka Leifer, who is Israeli, was released from two years’ house arrest in the ultra-Orthodox Israeli city of Bnei Brak in early June this year and has since moved back to a 3700-strong Jewish community in the West Bank settlement of Immanuel, south-west of Nablus.

Ms Leifer, the former principal of the Adass Israel School in Elsternwick, is wanted by Victoria Police on 74 counts of sexual assault and rape involving 10 girls at the school from 2003.

She fled to Israel with her family in the middle of the night, allegedly with the help of senior members of Melbourne’s secretive Adass community, after accusations of sexual abuse were first raised against her in 2008.

In 2014, Ms Leifer was arrested by Israeli police at the request of Australian authorities. However, she has successfully managed to evade 10 extradition proceedings, with her lawyers consistently arguing she is unwell and unfit to face court.

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AUSTRALIA
9 News

AAP

The child sex abuse royal commission has launched a nationwide advertising campaign to announce the closing of registrations for private sessions.

The registration for sessions which allow survivors of child sexual abuse in an institution to meet privately with a commissioner will close on September 30.

The campaign announced on Friday will consist of radio, print and digital advertising and will begin on Sunday and run until mid-September.

The demand for private sessions has been strong since the first one was held in May 2013 at Parramatta, NSW.

In April the commission completed its 5000th private session and there are more than 1500 people currently waiting to meet with a commissioner.

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UNITED KINGDOM
Ekklesia

JULY 8, 2016

A year after the apology to survivors and victims of abuse, and the publication of Courage, Cost and Hope – the report on the Past Cases Review (PCR), the Methodist Church has given an update to the Methodist Conference, the supreme decision-making body of the Church, about its work over the past 12 months.

In May 2015, the Rev Dr Martyn Atkins, who was then serving as Secretary of the Methodist Conference and General Secretary, issued a full and unreserved apology to survivors and victims of abuse in response to the Past Cases Review report.

A huge amount of work has been undertaken so far by the Past Cases Review Implementation Group (PCRIG) on the report’s 23 recommendations.

Survivors’ Reference Group

The Implementation Group explored how best to engage with survivors and victims of abuse within the Church, and how to ensure their voices informed the work of the group and the implementation of the report’s 23 recommendations.

It was agreed to establish a survivors’ reference group to ensure that all policies and guidelines or training materials that were produced in line with the recommendations would be informed by a survivor/victim perspective.

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RHODE ISLAND
Vanity Fair

Yet another elite New England prep school is plagued by scandal—this time the picturesque seaside campus of St. George’s, which has only recently confronted a largely concealed, decades-long history of sexual abuse by predatory teachers, staff, and students. Benjamin Wallace interviews survivors, parents, and the headmaster to see how its search for healing brought fresh anguish.

BY BENJAMIN WALLACE
AUGUST 2016

High-school reunions are fraught occasions under the best of circumstances. Hairlines and waistlines are appraised, marriages and careers compared, insecurities awoken, changes in status noted, old wounds poked: normally solid citizens regress to their adolescent selves.

Then there are the worst of circumstances. Since December, when it broke into the open with a Boston Globe article and a televised press conference, St. George’s, an elite boarding school in Rhode Island, has been engulfed by a scandal over alleged sexual abuse spanning decades, with at least 40 alleged victims and a dozen alleged staff and student perpetrators. In this, St. George’s is only one among a snowballing list of prominent prep schools recently shaken by accusations of abuse, as one after another is forced to reckon with a shameful past. They include Groton, Horace Mann, Deerfield, St. Paul’s, Hotchkiss, Pomfret, Pingry, and Exeter. “Elite boarding schools turn out an outsize number of societal leaders,” says Whit Sheppard, a Deerfield graduate who has written about being a victim of abuse there and now advises schools on handling similar crises (including, for a short time, St. George’s). “This is the part of the story that no one wanted to talk about.”

Now they are being forced to talk about it. Across the archipelago of prep schools clustered mainly in the northeastern United States, a truth-and-reconciliation process is fitfully unfolding as school after school sends letters to alumni acknowledging past abuse and asking if they, too, were abused. At St. George’s, the process has been especially tumultuous, with a vocal, mobilized contingent of alumni calling for the headmaster to resign amid a polarized atmosphere of mistrust. As the school’s annual reunion weekend approached in May, all-out bedlam threatened to erupt.

In a private Facebook group, various St. George’s alumni put forward suggestions to hold “actions,” perhaps cordoning off locations where abuse had taken place with yellow police tape. One alumna proposed bringing a gun and burning the place down, upsetting fellow graduates; the alumna said she’d been joking. There was further talk of chaining themselves to the school’s front gates. After headmaster Eric Peterson sent a letter to alumni in April announcing that the school would hold a “Hope for Healing” event during reunion weekend to acknowledge the abuse that had taken place at the school, some survivors reacted angrily that Peterson hadn’t consulted with them beforehand. Two days later, the school backtracked and sent out another letter. This one, signed by board chairman Leslie Bathgate Heaney, said the event would no longer be held and that the school would consult with survivors about jointly organizing an alternative event.

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OREGON
Statesman Journal

Whitney M. Woodworth, Statesman Journal

A Marion County Circuit Court judge ruled Thursday that a Salem pastor accused of raping and sodomizing a girl he met at church be held on $2 million bail.

Mauricio Aguilera-Garcia, 55, was arrested Wednesday on 25 felony charges, including 10 counts of rape, 10 counts of sodomy and five counts of unlawful sexual penetration, after a weeklong investigation by the Marion County Sheriff’s Office.

Aguilera-Garcia met the girl at the Our Father’s House church, where he served as a pastor. The church rents space from the Solid Rock Community Church at 3535 Ward Drive NE. According to court records, he is accused of raping the girl, who was about 13 years old at the time, between 2010 and 2012.

Aguilera-Garcia was convicted of sex abuse in 1985, but he was not listed on the sex offenders registry. Oregon’s first registration laws were enacted in 1989.

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OREGON
KATU

[with video]

SALEM, Ore. — A $2 million bail was set Thursday for a Salem pastor accused of raping a child he met at church.

Mauricio Aguilera-Garcia, 55, was arrested this week for rape, sodomy and unlawful sexual penetration charges.

Marion County Sheriff’s deputies say he met his victim at his church, Our Father’s House. That church rents space from the Solid Rock Community Church on Ward Drive NE in Salem.

Investigators say the alleged victim was just 13 when the abuse started, and is now an adult.

Aguilera-Garcia was convicted of sex abuse in 1985 but was never listed as a registered sex offender.

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SOUTH DAKOTA
Capital Journal

This week in federal court in Pierre, Joseph Raleigh admitted that as a Baptist pastor last Oct. 16 he drove to Blunt with $300 cash in his pocket to pay a 15-year-old girl for a half-hour of sex in his pickup truck.

The guilty plea brings with it new details of what he did and planned to do, in his own words.

Before U.S. District Judge Roberto Lange, Raleigh, 34, pleaded guilty on Tuesday to attempted trafficking of a minor girl for commercial sex. The maximum sentence for the charge is 20 years in prison and a $250,000 fine and three years of supervised probation after any prison sentence.

As the Capital Journal earlier reported, Raleigh struck a plea deal with federal prosecutors this spring, who dropped more serious charges that carried a 10-year mandatory minimum sentence.

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MISSOURI
KTTN

(Joplin Globe) – A judge found probable cause at a hearing Wednesday to believe that former Sarcoxie minister Donald Peckham may fit the legal criteria for a sexually violent predator requiring a commitment to the Missouri Department of Mental Health past completion of his prison sentence.

Circuit Judge David Mouton sustained a petition filed in Jasper County Circuit Court by the state attorney general’s office seeking a court order to have Peckham held beyond his scheduled release from prison.

Peckham, 83, was convicted in 2004 of first-degree statutory sodomy and second-degree statutory sodomy and was sentenced to concurrent terms of 15 years and seven years. With credit for good behavior behind bars, the former pastor of the Jubilee Christian Fellowship Church in Sarcoxie is scheduled to be released from prison on Wednesday of next week.

State law provides for the commitment of inmates who fit the criteria for sexually violent predators past completion of their prison terms. But there first must be a determination by a judge in a civil court proceeding that probable cause exists to believe that the inmate fits the criteria. The inmate then must be evaluated and a trial conducted on the proposed commitment.

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CANADA
Kelowna Capital News

by Paul Hergott – Kelowna Capital News
posted Jul 7, 2016

Watch the Academy Award winning movie Spotlight for the gripping portrayal of investigative journalists working passionately and tenaciously to shine their spotlight on the widespread and systemic abuse of children by Roman Catholic priests in the Boston area.

The investigation started small, with one abusive priest. It soon became apparent that the abuse was widespread and systemic, the journalists eventually uncovering close to 90 abusive priests in the Boston area alone.

How could that scale of abuse have been kept under wraps? The movie exposes how the Roman Catholic Church used their considerable influence to discourage disclosure, moved abusive priests from diocese to diocese as their abuse became uncovered, and insisted that the many claims brought against them by victims be settled with confidentiality terms so that they would never see the light of day.

One particular lawyer, Eric MacLeish, had acted for a large number of abuse victims. Frustrated by Mr. MacLeish’s continual refusal to provide details about those settlements, one journalist threatened that the story might focus on his apparent “cottage industry” of profiting from confidential settlements with the church. The confidentiality terms of those settlements, of course, were a key part of the cover-up.

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PENNSYLVANIA
PennLive

By Ivey DeJesus | idejesus@pennlive.com

Shaun Dougherty’s story begins on page 66 of the grand jury report into widespread child sexual abuse in the Altoona-Johnstown Diocese.

That page – one of 147 pages in the report detailing accusations against more than 50 religious leaders, priests and teachers – begins the account into the investigation of George Koharchik, a longtime priest, who among other diocesan assignments, was pastor at St. Clement Church in Johnstown for a decade.

That’s where Dougherty, then an altar boy, attended school and Mass with his parents.

The second youngest of nine kids, Dougherty was 10 and a fifth grader at St. Clement School when he met Koharchik in 1980. Koharchik was his basketball coach and his religion teacher. The priest spent an inordinate amount of time with the boy.

By the time the priest had finished “grooming” him, Dougherty was allowed to “drive” the priest’s car. Koharchik would sit the boy close to him — or on his lap — and give him control of the steering wheel. Whether Dougherty, or one of his friends in the car, whoever had his hands on the wheel could count on Koharchik’s hands to grope their body and eventually their penis, Dougherty said.

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RHODE ISLAND
Rhode Island Public Radio

By ELISABETH HARRISON

Governor Gina Raimondo has signed a bill requiring schools to contact child welfare authorities when they suspect sexual abuse of their employees. The bill also requires the state’s child welfare office to investigate allegations of abuse in schools.

The bill was inspired by the investigation of St. George’s School, an elite boarding school on Aquidneck Island, where dozens of former students have alleged abuse by staff and fellow students.

The school has apologized and offered to pay for counseling, but an internal report found the school never reported the abuse to child welfare authorities.

State police closed their investigation of St. George’s in June without filing a single criminal charge. Authorities said laws in place in the 1970s and 80s, when much of the abuse allegedly took place, made charges impossible. And State Police cited statutes of limitation as the reason they could not pursue charges against the school, for failing to report the abuse.

While Rhode Island does have a mandatory reporting law for child abuse, including sexual abuse, an investigation by Rhode Island Public Radio revealed significant questions about whether it applies to abuse by school employees. As RIPR reported, the state Department of Children, Youth and Families interprets the law relatively narrowly.

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VATICAN CITY
Wall Street Journal

By FRANCIS X. ROCCA
Updated July 7, 2016

VATICAN CITY—A Vatican court ruled Thursday that it didn’t have jurisdiction over two journalists accused of improperly obtaining confidential documents on corruption and mismanagement in the Vatican. But the same court convicted two former Vatican officials of providing those documents to the journalists for publication.

The judgment on the journalists, Gianluigi Nuzzi and Emiliano Fittipaldi, addressed widespread complaints that the Vatican had been using their trial to muzzle press freedom. In reading the verdict, Giuseppe Dalla Torre, leader of the four-member panel of judges, said the court had taken into account the rights to freedom of thought and the press as recognized under Vatican law. The journalists’ alleged crimes didn’t take place on Vatican territory, and they weren’t Vatican officials, Mr. Dalla Torre said, explaining the lack of jurisdiction.

The verdicts concluded an eight-month trial that featured colorful testimony and the birth of a child to one of the defendants, while also highlighting the challenges that Pope Francis faces in reforming the Vatican’s bureaucracy and controlling its coverage by the press.

The judges found Msgr. Ángel Vallejo Balda, a Spanish priest, and Francesca Chaouqui, an Italian public relations consultant, guilty of leaking confidential documents they had obtained while serving on a temporary panel established by the pope to advise him on administrative and financial reforms.

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NEW JERSEY
MyCentralJersey

Mike Deak, @MikeDeakMyCJ July 7, 2016

PLAINFIELD – A former city pastor has lost the appeal of his conviction and prison sentence after he was found guilty on two counts of sexual assault and four counts of endangering the welfare of a child.

George Benbow, 64, the founding pastor of Plainfield’s Christian Fellowship Gospel Church, is serving an 11-year sentence at South Woods State Prison in Bridgeton.

Benbow was found guilty of molesting several girls at a summer camp run by his church between 2000 and 2008.

Benbow was arrested in 2008 and was found guilty and sentenced four years later.

In a ruling released Thursday, the state appellate court rejected all of Benbow’s arguments to overturn the conviction and sentence.

Benbow argued that his sentence was excessive and that Superior Court Judge Stuart Peim committed errors during the trial.

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UNITED STATES
America

Jul 7 2016

Mary Gail Frawley-O’Dea

Reflections on the death of Brian Gergely

Brian Gergely, a survivor of sexual abuse by a priest and a staunch advocate for other victims, took his own life last week, just days after the Pennsylvania State Senate eliminated from a bill reforming sexual abuse statutes the right of past victims to seek redress in court. Mr. Gergely’s suicide evoked deep compassion from many Catholics and fellow survivors and advocates.

Some survivors and advocates opined that Mr. Gergely’s suicide stemmed from hopelessness following the senate’s action. Judith Weiss Collins, a survivor of sexual abuse by a member of the clergy in the Diocese of Allentown, said: “Talk to anyone who has been abused and the suicidal idealization [sic] is always there…. It’s just wretched…but loss of hope that is it…knowing you can’t do anything. That we can’t do anything to gain back anything that was lost.” This statement encapsulates some of the complexities of suicide and its relationship with sexual abuse that are important to unpack.

Suicide Demographics. Suicide is a public health scourge that rests on myriad factors. Since 1999, the incidence of suicide in the United States has increased rapidly, picking up even more speed since 2010. Now 117 Americans take their lives every day. Suicide has increased among nearly every age group, but middle-aged white men appear to be a particularly vulnerable group. Experts have not reached consensus on the reasons for this uptick in suicides, variously citing as potential contributors: the economic downturn, the increase in intended overdoses of prescribed opiates for pain, the role of Iraq and Afghanistan in veteran suicides, and social isolation, especially of divorced middle-aged men who also may be jobless.

Suicide and Sexual Abuse. Survivors of sexual abuse in childhood or adolescence are two to four times more likely to take their own lives than non-abused individuals. The likelihood of suicide is more strongly correlated with early sexual trauma when the abuse is repetitive and the perpetrator is a family member. Sexual abuse by a priest is comparable to incest given the historic role of a priest as the spiritual “father” of all Catholics in his care. Additional risk factors for suicide, like alcohol and substance abuse, depression, impulsivity, relational losses, job instability or loss, previous suicide attempts, mood disorders, post-traumatic stress disorder, personality disorders and social isolation, are also common consequences of sexual abuse. …

A Note of Caution. Suicide is contagious at times, and another risk factor is exposure through personal experience, media or the internet to the suicide of another, especially one with whom a person has something in common. The National Suicide Prevention Lifeline (1-800-273-TALK) provides information about suicide risk factors and prevention. The staff also provides guidelines for media discussion of suicide. It is irresponsible for anyone to react to an individual’s suicide without noting that suicide can be prevented, offering hope and directing to the Lifeline people who are considering suicide and those who are concerned about someone else who is at risk.

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NORTHERN IRELAND
BBC News

The Historical Institutional Abuse Inquiry (HIA) has said it is entirely neutral and independent.

It was responding to claims by a high profile former army officer, Colin Wallace, who has criticised remarks made about him at the inquiry.

He has been a leading voice in claims about an alleged cover-up by intelligence services of sex abuse at the former Kincora Boys’ Home.

The inquiry is examining allegations about the former home in east Belfast.

Mr Wallace, who served in Northern Ireland between 1971 and 1974, has declined to assist the inquiry.

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