ABUSE TRACKER

A priest who was arrested in Florida last month after he was accused of sexually abusing boys appeared in an Iowa court on Monday.

Father Leo Riley‘s arrest in Florida is tied to alleged abuse in Iowa in the 1980s. He’s charged with five counts of sexual abuse.

Riley appeared in court in Dubuque, Iowa, and was given a $500,000 bond, according to NBC affiliate KWWL. Riley’s attorney, Guy Cook, said that bond amount is too high, and planned to challenge it.

“Father Leo Riley is, to those people who know him well, a person of upstanding moral character, an honest man, and a person who would not commit these kinds of acts,” Cook said.

If Riley posts bond, he would remain in Department of Corrections custody and would have to stay at a halfway house, according to KWWL.

Riley served…

View Cache

A $500,000 bond has been set for Charlotte County priest Leo Riley, following his initial appearance at the Dubuque County Courthouse on Monday. Father Leo Riley spent the night in jail while his attorney filed paperwork to have his bond significantly reduced.

Riley is facing five counts of sexual abuse allegedly committed during his time as a priest in Iowa. Last month, a local victim came forward saying he was abused by Riley in Charlotte County.

Father Leo Riley has not been charged in Charlotte County, but is back in Dubuque to answer to five counts of capital sexual battery related to reports in the 1980s.

Riley was a past priest at the Resurrection Church in Dubuque, Iowa. In Charlotte County, he was a Priest at Saint Charles Borromeo in Port Charlotte in the early 2000′s, and is currently assigned to San Antonio Catholic Church, also in Port Charlotte.

Following…

View Cache

A former teacher at Pope John XXIII Regional High School pleaded guilty last week to illegally recording students while employed in the district before his 2022 arrest, authorities said.

Michael Wagner, 41, entered his plea Friday before Judge Michael Gaus, the Sussex County Prosecutor’s Office stated. He was charged with first-degree child endangerment and second-degree manufacturing of child sexual abuse.

The prosecutor’s office and Sparta police began an investigation on Oct. 12, 2022, after another teacher at Pope John overheard several eighth grade girls talking about Wagner recording them during class.

Police found hundreds of photos and videos of students taken by Wagner, who “would position the electronic device in such a way as to capture and record the underclothing of female students,” the release stated. His other personal devices were confiscated and also found to contain images of child exploitation or abuse.

Wagner taught eighth grade physics and science…

View Cache

A $500,000 bond has been set for Charlotte County priest Leo Riley, following his initial appearance at the Dubuque County Courthouse on Monday. As of Monday night, he is still behind bars.

He is facing five counts of sexual abuse allegedly committed during his time as a priest in Iowa. Last month, a local victim came forward saying he was abused by Riley in Charlotte County.

“I buried these memories very deep but I couldn’t keep them buried forever,” said an alleged victim going by John Doe.

Father Leo Riley has not been charged in Charlotte County, but is back in Dubuque to answer to five counts of capital sexual battery related to reports in the 1980s.

Riley was a past priest at the Resurrection Church in Dubuque, Iowa. In Charlotte County, he was a Priest at Saint Charles Borromeo in Port Charlotte in the early 2000′s, and is currently…

View Cache

A $500,000 bond has been set for a former Dubuque priest accused of sexually abusing multiple boys in the 1980s.

The Rev. Leo P. Riley, 68, of Port Charlotte, Fla., is charged in Iowa District Court of Dubuque County with five counts of second-degree sexual abuse. He made his initial appearance in court Monday morning after being arrested in Florida last month.

In addition to setting the cash-only bond, Iowa District Associate Judge Robert Richter determined Riley will not be allowed to leave Iowa while court proceedings continue.

Richter ordered Riley to wear an ankle monitor and be subject to pretrial supervision by the Iowa Department of Corrections. Richter also imposed a no-contact order for each of the alleged victims and witnesses and barred Riley from having any contact with minors.

Court documents state that four people have said they were sexually abused by Riley from 1985 to 1986, while…

View Cache

The priest accused of sexually abusing boys at a Dubuque school in the 1980s appeared in an Iowa courtroom for the first time, KCRG reports.

Father Leo Riley made his initial appearance in a Dubuque County Courtroom Monday morning. Riley said little, only to acknowledge the charges against him and to confirm he had legal representation. Riley is charged with five counts of sexual abuse, as prosecutors say he molested multiple altar boys while he served at Resurrection School in Dubuque from 1984-86.

The judge ordered Riley to be held on $500,000 cash-only bond. If he is able to post that bond, the judge ordered he must remain in Iowa and wear an ankle monitor. He is also not to have any contact with the alleged victims.

Riley was arrested last month in Florida where he is serving at a Catholic Church. Riley is facing…

View Cache

Louisiana lawmakers are swiftly advancing legislation that would extend the timeframe adults who are survivors of child abuse have to file lawsuits against institutions such as Catholic Church.

The bill took on more relevance Friday after the Louisiana Supreme Court announced it would reconsider its decision to scrap the state law creating a “look back window” to allow child abuse survivors to file lawsuits over misconduct that took place decades ago.

It also followed news that Louisiana State Police troopers had raided the Archdiocese of New Orleans in April, seeking records and communication about how child sex abuse cases were handled.

In 2021, the Louisiana Legislature unanimously approved a new law removing the time limit for damage suits over child abuse, but the measure wasn’t retroactive. Adults who recalled their abuse years after it happened had…

View Cache

Regarding the editorial “Courts must not let Gateway Pundit use bankruptcy to escape accountability” (April 26): The Editorial Board is right to blast a disinformation site that is a “monstrous purveyor of slander and lies” and is using bankruptcy as “a pre-emptive move” to “escape justice.”

But as much harm as this right-wing website has caused, I think we can all agree that even more monstrous than slandering adults is committing and concealing heinous, devastating sex crimes against kids.

That is exactly what thousands of Catholic clerics have done. Now, facing embarrassing litigation about widespread clergy child sexual abuses and cover ups and desperately clinging to their reputations and careers, dozens of top church officials are filing for bankruptcy.

More than 40 dioceses and religious orders — 12 in the last five years — have sought Chapter 11 protection. No, they’re not broke or going broke. Like The Gateway…

View Cache

The former Dubuque priest charged with the sexual abuse of three victims from his time at a local parish will appear in court in Iowa on Monday, May 13th.

Leo Riley was arrested back in April in Florida after charges were filed in Iowa.

He faces five charges, all connected to allegations dating back to the 1980s when he was at Resurrection Church in Dubuque.

A criminal complaint alleges that Riley forced altar boys to perform sex acts on him and to each other.

He bonded out of jail in Florida on the condition that he’d return to Iowa to face his charges.

View Cache

A former Port Charlotte priest, accused of five counts of sexual abuse to the second degree, is expected to appear in court on Monday.

Father Leo Riley, 68, is expected to make his initial court appearance in Dubuque, Iowa, on Monday at 10:30 a.m.

Riley was arrested on multiple counts of capital sexual battery in connection to his previous role at a church in Dubuque on April 24.

Before his arrest, several individuals came forward with allegations against him, which he denies.

According to the documents, Riley was ordained in 1982 and was assigned to approximately 17 different parishes in the Archdiocese of Dubuque until 2002. He served as Associate Pastor at Ressurection Parish from 1984 to 1986.

In 2002, he requested to transfer to the Diocese of Venice and was appointed at St Charles Borromeo Parish in Port Charlotte.

While the Diocese of…

View Cache

[See the Attorney General’s Petition to Enforce Subpoena.]

Washington state Attorney General Bob Ferguson announced Thursday he’s seeking a court order to force the Seattle Archdiocese to turn over files on priests accused of sexual abuse and make its archbishop answer questions under oath as part of a sweeping probe into how the state’s three Catholic dioceses handled claims of child sex abuse.

Ferguson’s office is looking into “allegations that the Catholic Church has facilitated and attempted to cover up decades of pervasive sexual abuse of children by Church leaders in Washington State,” his office’s petition for a court order states.

Because the Seattle Archdiocese “refuses to cooperate” with civil subpoenas issued by his office last summer and last month, Ferguson went public with his probe Thursday by filing a legal petition in King County Superior Court that seeks an…

View Cache

The therapist waved a stick-like object back and forth before state Rep. Mark Rozzi’s eyes, making him look left and right, as the therapist got his patient to recite painful memories of sexual abuse that happened 40 years earlier.

The therapy Mr. Rozzi has undergone recently, he said, has let him mentally grasp horrible recollections from his youth and “file them away like any other childhood memory.” It is called EMDR — for “eye movement densensitization and reprocessing therapy” — and it has been a milestone in his handling of memories of being raped by a Catholic priest.

“It’s been a godsend,” he said of its effect on his personal life.

Squaring away things in his public life is another matter.

Mr. Rozzi, 53, for years has championed in Harrisburg the need to allow child sex abuse survivors a two-year window in which to file otherwise…

View Cache

The head of Poland’s Catholic episcopate, Tadusz Wojda, has been accused of negligence in dealing with reports of sexual abuse carried out by one of his subordinates. In one case, he allegedly argued that no abuse had taken place because “it was just groping”.

In response to the claims, the spokesman for Wojda’s archdiocese has issued a statement denying the accusations against the archbishop and accusing the journalist who made them of presenting only a “fragmentary” and “distorted” version of the story.

The claims were made last week in a lengthy article by Zbigniew Nosowski, the editor-in-chief of Więź, a leading Catholic news magazine.

He noted that details of Wojda’s alleged negligence had in fact first been published in February 2022 in Tygodnik Powszechny, another Catholic news magazine, but had gone largely unnoticed because they were published at the time of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

Nosowski now revealed that, in March this year, the Vatican received…

View Cache

A man who says he was abused by a former Chicago priest known as “Father Happy Hands” told his story following a settlement last month.

Larry Kubbins, 60, held a press conference opening up about the alleged abuse by the Rev. Daniel Mark Holihan, who died in 2016, and had a message for survivors across the world.

“It’s been a weight I’ve had for almost 50 years,” Kubbins said. “They need to not be afraid to report it. I was not smart enough to listen to my mother and walked away from it.”

Kubbins alleges Holihan sexually abused him twice — once at Our Lady of the Snows and once at a lake house belonging to Holihan in Wonder Lake. During the alleged abuse, Kubbins and the attorney general’s office said children would call Holihan “Father Happy Hands.”

“He couldn’t keep his hands off boys, he took me to the…

View Cache

The Spanish Bishops’ Conference said the government’s five-point plan to respond to abuse largely matched the Church’s own strategy.

The Archbishop of Oviedo has accused the Spanish government of presenting “only the Catholic Church” as guilty of harbouring sexual abuse.

Estimates extrapolated from the survey claimed there were a potential 440,000 victims across the Spanish population. That figure was dismissed by the head of the polling firm as a “statistical delusion”.  

The Spanish Bishops’ Conference said the five-point plan produced in response to the report largely matched the Church’s own strategy to recognise, care for and compensate victims as well as to raise awareness of abuse through training, and to prevent future abuse through reporting and investigating allegations.

The conference said the government’s focus on compensating only victims of clerical abuse excluded “nine out of every 10 victims” of sexual abuse in Spanish society. A spokesman said: “The Church cannot accept measures…

View Cache

Watchdog groups respond to new revelations of two accused sexual predators in Cleveland parishesThey ask: How many other sex offenders are active in the diocese? In a letter to Bishop Malesic, they express concern about his “carelessness” and urge him to take immediate action 

In the wake of revelations yesterday that two accused sexual predators are helping to lead Mass in Cleveland parishes, two watchdog groups are calling on Bishop Edward Malesic to act immediately to identify and remove all other diocesan personnel who might pose a risk to children and young people. Calling the news “alarming,” a co-director of BishopAccountability.org and a longtime Ohio leader of SNAP (Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests) are urging Malesic to take “personal responsibility” for ensuring that only adults with clean records work at his parishes, schools, hospitals, and summer camps. In the last 24 hours, the public has learned of two accused sexual…

View Cache

One year after the diary of a Jesuit describing more than 80 cases of child abuse came to light in Bolivia, the Society of Jesus repudiated the accusation that it’s a “criminal organization” and that it shouldn’t be blamed for the crimes.

The Bolivian Community of Survivors of Ecclesial Sex Abuse, however, reaffirmed that the Jesuits have institutional responsibility for “systematically covering up” over 400 cases, arguing that superiors and provincials were aware of the crimes.

The diary of late Spanish-born Father Alfonso Pedrajas (1943-2009), known as Padre Pica, was first mentioned in a story published by Spanish newspaper El Pais in April of 2023. The article detailed how his writings were discovered by a nephew and then handed to the newspaper.

According to Pica’s diary, the first abuse happened in Lima, Peru, in 1964. Most of his crimes, however, took place when he worked at the John…

View Cache

Amid a campaign for the governorship, Washington Attorney General Bob Ferguson announced on 9 May that he has taken legal action against the Archdiocese of Seattle, alleging that it has “refused to comply” with his investigation into whether the three Washington dioceses used charitable funds to cover up allegations of child sex abuse by clergy.

Later on 9 May, the archdiocese responded that it was blindsided with Ferguson’s decision, maintaining that it welcomes the investigation because “we have shared the common goal of abuse prevention, healing for victims and transparency”.

“We have been collaborating with the Attorney General’s legal team on the shared legal analysis, which is common for investigations like this,” the archdiocese said in a statement. “Today’s press conference was a surprise to us since we welcome the investigation and have been working closely with the Attorney General’s team for months now.”

Ferguson’s office first sent subpoenas to…

View Cache

The Catholic church is refusing to cooperate with a Washington state investigation into whether it unlawfully used charitable trust funds to cover up sexual abuse by priests, Attorney General Bob Ferguson said Thursday, asking a court to force the Seattle Archdiocese to turn over decades of records.

“We have a good understanding of the content of our files and we have no concern about sharing them with the Attorney General lawfully and fairly,” the statement said.

Ferguson, a Catholic himself, told a news conference that the archdiocese has refused to provide even a single document that had not already been made public, claiming an exemption as a religious institution. The archdiocese disputed that as well, saying it offered this week to provide private deposition documents, but that the attorney general’s office said it wasn’t interested.

Ferguson said the archdiocese ignored a second subpoena issued this spring seeking records on how…

View Cache

Washington Attorney General Bob Ferguson has filed a subpoena to try to force the Seattle Catholic Archdiocese to turn over records on suspected sexual abuse, he announced Thursday.

In July 2023, the Attorney General’s Office requested massive amounts of information from the archdioceses of Seattle, Yakima and Spokane, so it could map the extent and details of sexual-abuse incidents, the number of priests involved and the transfers of suspected priests from assignment to assignment. So far the three archdioceses have not provided the requested information, Ferguson said.

“We need a public accounting of childhood abuse,” Ferguson said.

Consequently, the Attorney General’s Office filed the subpoena in King County Superior Court, requesting a May 22 hearing. The three archdioceses share a common trust fund that is used to compensate victims of sexual abuse, and Ferguson wants access to those records as well.

In a written statement, the Archdiocese of Seattle said…

View Cache

Attorney General Bob Ferguson filed a petition Thursday to compel the Catholic Church to hand over files and answer questions under oath. 

Washington state Attorney General Bob Ferguson announced Thursday he’s seeking a court order to force the Seattle Archdiocese to turn over files on priests accused of sexual abuse and make its archbishop answer questions under oath as part of a sweeping probe into how the state’s three Catholic dioceses handled claims of child sex abuse.

Ferguson’s office is looking into “allegations that the Catholic Church has facilitated and attempted to cover up decades of pervasive sexual abuse of children by Church leaders in Washington State,” his office’s petition for a court order states.

Because the Seattle Archdiocese “refuses to cooperate” with civil subpoenas issued by his office last summer and last month, Ferguson went public with his probe Thursday by filing  View Cache

Bob Ferguson is taking the Seattle Archdiocese to court over documents he says it has refused to release.

Washington Attorney General Bob Ferguson is taking the Archdiocese of Seattle to court over records he said the church is refusing to give up in an investigation of its handling of child sex abuse allegations. 

Ferguson announced Thursday his office is investigating whether the Catholic Church used charitable funds to cover up allegations of sex abuse by clergy in three dioceses in Washington: the Seattle Archdiocese, the Diocese of Spokane and the Diocese of Yakima. 

Fergusons’s office sent its first round of subpoenas to the dioceses last summer, but none have yet to provide any information not already publicly available. 

On Thursday, his office filed a petition asking the King County Superior Court to enforce the Seattle Archdiocese subpoenas and requested a hearing for May 22.

The state has not yet taken…

View Cache

The Archdiocese of Seattle is refusing to turn over documents showing how it handled child sexual abuse allegations by church leaders, Washington Attorney General Bob Ferguson said in a news conference Thursday.

The archdiocese is citing a legal exemption for religious organizations that shields the records from public disclosure, said Ferguson, who has asked a King County Superior Court judge to force the church to comply with the office’s subpoenas and turn over the documents. Ferguson has requested a May 22 hearing.

Ferguson’s motion comes months after his office issued subpoenas to the state’s three dioceses — Seattle, Spokane and Yakima — as part of an investigation into allegations that they misused charitable funds to cover up decades of sexual abuse by church leaders. The investigation also seeks to identify accused priests and determine the church’s role in how it had kept those in positions of power, Ferguson said.

Ferguson…

View Cache

Priest Sex-Abuse Investigation Expands

Louisiana State Police are investigating the Archdiocese of New Orleans for suspected past child trafficking by certain priests there, according to court documents made public last week.

While many Catholic dioceses have been sued by victims and investigated by police in recent decades, using a search warrant on a chancery is less common, and tying the investigation to child trafficking even less so.

Investigators executed the search April 25, looking for documents, letters, email messages and personnel records, including records pertaining to assignments and transfers, according to an affidavit filed in Orleans Parish Criminal District Court in New Orleans.

“The Archdiocese is actively cooperating with investigators and the terms of the search warrant,” a state police spokesman, Trooper Jacob Pucheu, said by email. “This investigation remains ongoing, and there is no additional information available at this time.”

The Archdiocese of New Orleans says officials there are cooperating…

View Cache

At one point in the deposition even Hecker became overwhelmed at the number of times with which he has been confronted with sex abuse allegations.

WWL Louisiana and the Guardian have obtained a long suppressed, eight-and-a-half-hour deposition of a 92-year-old Catholic priest charged with physically overpowering and raping a boy in a New Orleans church in 1975. 

Taken in 2020 as part of a civil lawsuit demanding damages from him and the church, in the deposition, clergyman Lawrence Hecker provides the most complete account yet of how the US’s second-oldest archdiocese spent much of its recent history taking extreme measures to keep the public from finding out about his abusive past. The questioning – which the church has fought in court for years to keep hidden – also reveals steps the city’s last four archbishops took to help him avoid accountability for decades. 

Eventually, law enforcement officials were able to…

View Cache

Leaked testimony from a 2020 deposition gives insight into how Lawrence Hecker remained in the priesthood for so long after allegations came to light.

As he walked into New Orleans’ historic St. Louis Cathedral in early January 2000 to receive the honorary, Vatican-bestowed title of monsignor, veteran Catholic priest Lawrence Hecker had already confessed to molesting several children he met through his ministry. 

Hecker had been flown out of town and driven by limousine to a psychiatric facility which diagnosed him as an inveterate pedophile. He had been forced to take a monthslong sabbatical, to begin the week after his promotional ceremony at a cost to the archdiocese of $6,000. And he had already spoken personally to the archbishop of New Orleans at the time and his predecessor about the child sexual abuse allegations against him.

And yet, sworn testimony Hecker gave at a deposition in 2020 shows key higher-ups…

View Cache

In unearthed deposition, Lawrence Hecker pleaded the fifth 117 times, but still provided damning details of decades-long predatory behavior

The Guardian and CBS affiliate WWL Louisiana have obtained a long suppressed, eight-and-a-half-hour deposition of a 92-year-old Catholic priest charged with physically overpowering and raping a boy in a New Orleans church in 1975.

Taken in 2020 as part of a civil lawsuit demanding damages from him and the church, clergyman Lawrence Hecker provides in the deposition the most complete account yet of how the US’s second-oldest archdiocese spent much of its recent history taking extreme measures to keep the public from finding out about his abusive past. The questioning – which the church has fought in court for years to keep hidden – also reveals steps the city’s last four archbishops took to help him avoid accountability for decades.

Eventually, law enforcement officials were able to obtain an indictment charging Hecker…

View Cache

Five justices voted in favor of reconsidering earlier decision to deny permission, which devastated adult survivors of clergy abuse

Weeks after the Roman Catholic archdiocese of New Orleans was identified as the subject of a child sex-trafficking investigation, the Louisiana state supreme court has agreed to reconsider its decision to strike down a law that had allowed victims to file civil lawsuits over long-ago abuse.

Five of the court’s justices voted in favor of rehearing a case that produced a 4-3 ruling in March, dismaying survivors of the state’s decades-old clergy abuse scandal. The judges voting for a rare rehearing were chief justice John Weimer – who suggested a hearing before the end of May – and associate justices Scott Crichton, William Crain, Jay McCallum and Piper Griffin.

Griffin and Crichton in March had formed part of the majority that struck down the so-called lookback law. But they then signaled their…

View Cache

A prominent Anglican church in Virginia waited 16 years to investigate or inform its congregation about a former youth pastor’s alleged sexual abuse, a third-party investigation has found.

According to the report by law firm Isler Dare, Jeffrey T. Taylor sexually abused three boys—two of whom were 13—while Taylor was a youth director from 1990-1999 at the historic The Falls Church Anglican (TFCA) in Falls Church, Virginia. Despite this, Eddie Isler, the investigator, told The Roys Report (TRR) he was unaware of any pending criminal charges against Taylor.

One of Taylor’s victims approached the church with allegations in 2007, and the parents of another victim came forward in 2021. However, it wasn’t until September 2023, after some parents complained to a bishop about TFCA’s lack of response, that the months-long investigation began. In October 2023, TFCA informed its congregation of the alleged abuse.

TFCA, which President George Washington and former  View Cache

A Long Island pastor has been arrested for allegedly sexually abusing a teen girl in the basement of a church.

Clinton Bucknor, 71, of Huntington Station, is accused of sending inappropriate photos and texts to a 15-year-old girl and molesting the teen in the church basement in March, Suffolk County police said.

Bucknor works at the Huntington Seventh-Day Adventist Church. He was arrested Thursday morning after the girl’s sister notified police on Wednesday, authorities said. He’s been charged with sexual abuse, endangering the welfare of a child and criminal solicitation.

Bucknor is scheduled to be arraigned Friday at First District Court in Central Islip.

Detectives said they hope news of the arrest will inspire anyone with more information or who may also be a victim to come forward.

View Cache

The archbishop of Brussels has apologized to abuse survivors and expressed deep regret over the inclusion of reportedly three perpetrators of sexual abuse on an electoral list for the council of priests. 

“This is a grave mistake on our part, and I extend my deepest apologies to the victims. I acknowledge the mistake and offer my sincerest regret,” Archbishop Luc Terlinden of Mechelen-Brussels said in a press release published May 8.

“I have initiated a thorough investigation and will take appropriate action. In the event that priests known to the archdiocese for abuse are elected to the current Flemish Brabant and Mechelen priests’ council, they will be unable to serve on the council,” Terlinden added.

The council of priests is an advisory body that provides a bishop with guidance and support on ecclesiastical matters and church governance. 

Father Rik Devillé, a vocal advocate for victims of clerical sexual…

View Cache

A criminal complaint provided disturbing new information about a priest accused of sexually abusing multiple children.

Father Leo Riley served in the Diocese of Venice and was recently assigned to a parish in Port Charlotte. Authorities said his arrest stems from his time in Iowa in the 1980s.

A newly released criminal complaint details the alleged abuse, and also reveals why some of Riley’s alleged victims, who served as altar boys at the church, may never see justice.

The explicit details are disturbing. The complaint outlines when and where at least four underage altar boys were molested, sexually assaulted, and abused at Riley’s hands.

According to the complaint, a parent reported the alleged abuse to the principal and “a couple weeks later, Riley was transferred to another parish.”

Riley was ordained a priest in 1982. He was assigned to 17 different parishes within the Archdiocese of Dubuque until 2002.

At…

View Cache

The Spanish Bishops’ Conference said the government’s five-point plan to respond to abuse largely matched the Church’s own strategy.

The Archbishop of Oviedo has accused the Spanish government of presenting “only the Catholic Church” as guilty of harbouring sexual abuse.

Archbishop Jesús Sanz Montes said the focus on sexual abuse in the Church was “a kind of obsessive mantra” deployed “every time they need a smoke screen to distract from the real problems we have”.

He was reacting to a government plan for victims of abuse in the Spanish Catholic Church.

The plan follows the publication in October 2023 of a parliamentary report investigating abuse in the Spanish Catholic Church, conducted by Ángel Gabilondo, the national ombudsman.

The inquiry included a sample survey of 8,013 people, of whom 1.13 per cent were affected by abuse in the Church, just over half of it perpetrated by clergy and religious. The report also…

View Cache

Washington state’s attorney general is increasing pressure on the Catholic Church in a child sex abuse investigation he is conducting.

Bob Ferguson said he has asked the King County Superior Court to enforce a subpoena he issued against the Seattle Catholic Archdiocese to obtain church records for the probe.

Mr. Ferguson said the Seattle Archdiocese did not comply with the records request and that Catholic dioceses in Spokane and Yakima are also non-compliant. The legal action in Seattle could be followed by court filings against the other Catholic dioceses, he told a news conference Thursday.

“Through the course of our investigation, the Archdiocese has unfortunately refused to cooperate with our investigation, has refused to provide any of the information to us that we’re requesting that’s not already been made public,” Mr. Ferguson, himself a Catholic, told reporters. “As a result, we’re going to court today to ask the judge to compel the Archdiocese…

View Cache

Five of the court’s justices voted in favor of rehearing a case that devastated survivors of the state’s decades-old clergy molestation scandal.

Weeks after the Roman Catholic archdiocese of New Orleans was identified as the subject of a child sex-trafficking investigation, the Louisiana state supreme court has agreed to reconsider its decision to strike down a law that had allowed victims to file civil lawsuits over long-ago molestation. 

Five of the court’s justices voted in favor of rehearing a case that produced a 4-3 ruling in March, devastating survivors of the state’s decades-old clergy molestation scandal. The judges voting for a rare rehearing: Chief Justice John Weimer and Justices Scott Crichton, William Crain, Jay McCallum and Piper Griffin. 

Griffin and Crichton in March had formed part of the majority that struck down the so-called lookback law. But they then signaled their wish to reconsider their vote by helping grant only…

View Cache

The Louisiana Supreme Court announced it is reconsidering its ruling of overturning the state law that allowed childhood sexual abuse victims more time to file civil lawsuits.

Richard Trahant, Soren Gisleson, John Denenea, Kevin Duck, and Cle Simon – attorneys for Douglas Bienvenu, et al – released a statement on the announcement.

“This is a great day for child sexual abuse survivors and the children of Louisiana. It is a bad day for pedophiles and those who protect them. We commend the two Justices (Chrichton and Griffin) who decided to give this issue another look. Good judges sometimes change their minds.”

Associate Justice Jefferson Hughes dissented.

View Cache

In a potentially significant development for hundreds of survivors of childhood sex abuse by Roman Catholic clergy and others, the Louisiana Supreme Court on Friday agreed to rehear its recent decision striking down a law that gave abuse survivors more time to file lawsuits.

The state’s high court said it would reconsider its 4-3 decision, which ruled as unconstitutional the state’s three-year “lookback window” for filing legal claims in childhood sexual abuse cases.

The vote to rehear the case was 5-2. Justices Jefferson Hughes and James Genovese dissented. Chief Justice John Weimer said he would order oral arguments “promptly during the month of May.” 

The court did not explain why it agreed to reconsider its March decision. Justices Scott Crichton and Piper Griffin were in the majority that rejected the lookback window in March but joined those in the minority — Weimer and Justices William Crain and Jay McCallum — in…

View Cache

A man who says he was abused by a former Chicago priest known as “Father Happy Hands” told his story following a settlement last month.

Larry Kubbins, 60, held a press conference opening up about the alleged abuse by the Rev. Daniel Mark Holihan, who died in 2016, and had a message for survivors across the world.

“It’s been a weight I’ve had for almost 50 years,” Kubbins said. “They need to not be afraid to report it. I was not smart enough to listen to my mother and walked away from it.”

Kubbins alleges Holihan sexually abused him twice — once at Our Lady of the Snows and once at a lake house belonging to Holihan in Wonder Lake. During the alleged abuse, Kubbins and the attorney general’s office said children would call Holihan “Father Happy Hands.”

“He couldn’t keep his hands off boys, he took me to the…

View Cache

SHREVEPORT, La. (KTAL/KMSS) – The Louisiana Supreme Court has granted a request to reopen and revisit a controversial opinion ruling that civil judgments against priests could not be awarded retroactively to adult survivors of child sexual abuse.

On May 10, the high court requested a rehearing in Bienvenu v The Society of the Roman Catholic Church, Diocese of Lafayette, and St. Martin De Tours Catholic Church, which was reversed and vacated in March.

Attorney Kristi S. Schubert, of the Lamothe Law Firm, LLC, recalls that “when the
Bienvenu ruling came out in March; there was an enormous public backlash. Abuse survivors
felt that the Court had robbed them of their last chance for justice. And Louisiana citizens were
outraged that the Court had granted child molesters an untouchable constitutional right to get
away with child rape.

Soon after the justices voted to…

View Cache

They ask: How many other sex offenders are active in the diocese? In a letter to Bishop Malesic, they express concern about his “carelessness” and urge him to take immediate action

For Immediate Release, May 10, 2024 

In the wake of revelations yesterday that two accused sexual predators are helping to lead Mass in Cleveland parishes, two watchdog groups are calling on Bishop Edward Malesic to act immediately to identify and remove all other diocesan personnel who might pose a risk to children and young people. 

Calling the news “alarming,” a co-director of BishopAccountability.org and a longtime Ohio leader of SNAP (Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests) are urging Malesic to take “personal responsibility” for ensuring that only adults with clean records work at his parishes, schools, hospitals, and summer camps. 

In the last 24 hours, the public has learned of two accused sexual abusers serving in leadership posts…

View Cache

Washington state Attorney General Bob Ferguson this week announced legal action against the Archdiocese of Seattle over what the prosecutor said was a refusal to cooperate with the state’s ongoing investigation into an alleged cover-up of clergy abuse there. 

Ferguson’s office said in a Thursday press release and at an accompanying press conference that it was “initiating legal action against the Seattle Archdiocese” over the archdiocese’s alleged refusal “to comply with Ferguson’s investigation into whether the three Washington dioceses of the Catholic Church used charitable funds to cover up allegations of child sex abuse by clergy.”

The attorney general’s office said that pursuant to that investigation it had sent subpoenas to Washington’s three Catholic bishoprics — the Seattle Archdiocese as well as the Dioceses of Spokane and Yakima — but that the Seattle Archdiocese “refused to cooperate.”

Ferguson subsequently filed a petition in King County Superior Court demanding that the attorney general’s…

View Cache

The Catholic Accountability Project lined up pictures outside the Attorney General’s Office Tuesday of 151 clergy members in Washington who so far have been convicted of sexual abuse. The organization said they believe the AGO opened an investigation in August of three more bishops in the state. 

An investigation into three Washington dioceses of the Catholic Church became public Thursday for the first time after the state Attorney General announced legal action against the Seattle Archdiocese for failure to comply with a subpoena.

The Diocese of Spokane, Diocese of Yakima and Seattle Archdiocese were all first subpoenaed in summer of 2023 for an investigation looking into whether allegations of sex abuse by clergy was covered up using charitable funds, according to a news release from the AGO.

The investigation is now public as the state has moved to seek a court order to enforce the second subpoena against the Seattle…

View Cache

Washington state is suing the Archdiocese of Seattle in an effort to compel the institution to turn over documents related to sexual abuse allegations against its clergy, Attorney General Bob Ferguson announced Thursday morning.

Ferguson said his office has been investigating child sexual abuse allegations made against Catholic Church clergy across Washington state dating back multiple decades, including in Spokane and Yakima.

“We have sent subpoenas to all three Washington diocese…so far all three refuse to cooperate,” Ferguson said during a press conference.

He added that it’s unusual for his office to have to ask a judge to force an entity under its investigation to turn over documents.

“The church has more information than is shared with the public,” Ferguson said. “It has released names, but has not released its files on these abusive priests. No one has read files. The purpose of our investigation is to uncover whether the…

View Cache

Yakima – The Diocese of Yakima, along with the Seattle and Spokane dioceses, has come under the investigative lens of Washington State Attorney General Bob Ferguson. The investigation focuses on whether these dioceses have used charitable funds to obscure allegations of child sex abuse by clergy members. While the Seattle Archdiocese has already faced legal action for non-compliance, the Yakima Diocese remains under close observation as the investigation progresses.

Attorney General Ferguson, expressing disappointment in the lack of cooperation from the Catholic Church, emphasized the need for transparency. “Washingtonians deserve a public accounting of how the Catholic Church handles allegations of child sex abuse, and whether charitable dollars were used to cover it up,” Ferguson stated. He stressed that the goal is to uncover the truth and provide a voice to the survivors.

The investigation was triggered by concerns that the Seattle Archdiocese had historical knowledge of abusive behavior by…

View Cache

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: May 9 2024

Seattle Archdiocese refusing to cooperate with subpoenas

SEATTLE — Attorney General Bob Ferguson today announced his office is initiating legal action against the Seattle Archdiocese. The Archdiocese has refused to comply with Ferguson’s investigation into whether the three Washington dioceses of the Catholic Church used charitable funds to cover up allegations of child sex abuse by clergy.

The Attorney General’s Office sent subpoenas to the Seattle Archdiocese, the Diocese of Spokane and the Diocese of Yakima. The Seattle Archdiocese refused to cooperate. Consequently, Ferguson filed a petition to enforce the subpoena in King County Superior Court. The office is asking the court to hear the petition on May 22.

The Attorney General’s Office has a longstanding policy that it does not comment on investigations, including confirming whether they exist. Because the Seattle Archdiocese refused to comply with the office’s subpoena, the office now must seek…

View Cache

Offender was part of service lead by Bishop Malesic Groups that assist sexual abuse victims are outraged that the Catholic Diocese of Cleveland allows a convicted sex offender to help lead masses for months.

[See video.]

Groups that assist sexual abuse victims are outraged that the Catholic Diocese of Cleveland allows a convicted sex offender to help lead masses for months. The advocacy groups question how this can happen in light of the church’s documented history with pedophile priests.

“I will praise you Lord,” could be heard in song on video of a mass from April 28 of this year. It was the voice of Keith Kozak, 44, from Brooklyn. News 5 Investigators found he has been on the alter at St. Thomas More Church, leading the congregation in prayer and song. “I shall not die but live…,” he sang during a mass there on April 21.

ADVOCACY GROUPS:…

View Cache

The Catholic church is refusing to cooperate with a Washington state investigation into whether it unlawfully used charitable trust funds to cover up sexual abuse by priests, Attorney General Bob Ferguson said Thursday, asking a court to force the Seattle Archdiocese to turn over decades of records.

The archdiocese called the allegations a surprise, saying in a statement that it welcomed the investigation and has been collaborating since receiving a subpoena last July. The archdiocese shares the state’s goals — “preventing abuse and helping victim survivors on their path to healing and peace,” it said.

“We have a good understanding of the content of our files and we have no concern about sharing them with the Attorney General lawfully and fairly,” the statement said.

Ferguson, a Catholic himself, told a news conference that the archdiocese has refused to provide even a single document that had not already been made public,…

View Cache

Lawrence Hecker pleaded the fifth 117 times as he detailed how the Catholic church protected him for more than two decades after he admitted to molesting children

Longtime New Orleans Catholic priest Lawrence Hecker received a special honor from the Vatican nearly 25 years ago despite having confessed to molesting children. Then, for another two decades, church leaders in the city strategically shielded him from law enforcement and media exposure – while also providing him with financial support ranging from paid limousine rides and therapeutic massages to full retirement benefits, according to his own, previously unreported testimony.

A sworn deposition Hecker gave in private in 2020 shows exactly how high-placed Catholic church officials in New Orleans let him keep his elevated position for years, even after they had been advised to oust him from the clergy and – much later – publicly acknowledged that he was a child predator.

“It wasn’t a…

View Cache

Legal analysts in Florida and around the country are closely following the developments in a case that hinges on whether or not a law that extends the statute of limitations in child sexual abuse cases should be applied retroactively. The lawsuit was brought by a Michigan man who claims that he was molested by a Catholic priest when he was a minor. The Michigan Supreme Court heard oral arguments from attorneys representing the plaintiff and defendant on April 16.

The timeline of events

The man alleges that he was molested by the priest at a juvenile detention facility in 1999. He was 16 years old at the time. The man says that he realized that he had been the victim of sexual abuse by a Catholic priest during a therapy session in 2020. He filed a lawsuit against the priest, the Archdiocese of Baltimore and the Roman Catholic…

View Cache

[See video.]

A Chicago man, who a serial pedophile priest sexually abused, has settled his claim with the Chicago Archdiocese more than 40 years after the abuse took place.

A Chicago man, who a serial pedophile priest sexually abused, has settled his claim with the Chicago Archdiocese more than 40 years after the abuse took place.

The priest is Father Daniel Mark Holihan, who worked at Our Lady of Snows Parish in Chicago until 1990 and is accused of molesting dozens of parish children.

One report reveals there were at least 40 reported survivors.

Lawrence Kubbins, who is now 60 years old, says the abuse occurred from 1979-1980.

He is represented by attorney Michael Garabedian, who helped him get a settlement in the low six figures.

Father Holihan was removed from the Catholic Church years after accusations continued to be made against him. He was…

View Cache

Explorer posts, overseen by the Boy Scouts, are supposed to foster an interest in policing. They have faced nearly 200 allegations of misconduct.

[The Marshall Project is investigating abuse in police Explorer programs. Fill out this form to help us.]

STOUGHTON, Mass. — The last known person to see Sandra Birchmore alive was a police officer.

He stopped by her apartment days before the elementary school teacher’s aide, 23 years old and newly pregnant, was found dead in February 2021. The medical examiner later ruled her death a suicide.

The officer worked for the Stoughton Police Department, near Boston, where he first met Birchmore about a decade earlier through the agency’s Explorer post — part of a youth mentorship program run by local departments across the country.

He acknowledged having sex with her when she was 15, according to a court ruling citing the officer’s text messages. That document indicates that his…

View Cache

A Kansas City prayer room with ties to disgraced International House of Prayer Kansas City (IHOPKC) Founder Mike Bickle, gathered Tuesday to celebrate the 25th anniversary of IHOPKC, despite the ministry’s ongoing sex abuse scandal.

Hope City, a prayer room, community center, and church, is led by Bickle’s sister, Lisa Stribling, and her husband, Ray. According to a leaked recording of the ceremony, Lisa Stribling and her son, Richy Bickle, spoke at the event. Stribling praised Bickle and upheld the so-called “prophetic history” of IHOPKC as a reason to keep the 24/7 prayer ministry going.

“It doesn’t matter if the lights are out and we have a candle, we’re going to be praying for revival until we see the things we’ve bled for come to pass,” said Stribling.

The event, which gathered more than 100 people also featured videos of disgraced “prophet” Bob Jones and…

View Cache

DUBUQUE, Iowa (KWWL) — A former Dubuque priest charged with 5 counts of second-degree sexual abuse is expected to make his initial appearance in court in Dubuque next week.

[Play Video]

Leo Riley was arrested in Florida and was charged with 5 counts of sex abuse.

Father Leo Riley is accused of sexually abusing young boys in the mid-1980s during his time with the Archdiocese of Dubuque. Riley moved to Florida in 2002.

Last month, Riley was taken into custody in Florida. He bonded out of the Charlotte County Jail on the condition that he face the charges in Iowa.

He’s expected to make his first court appearance in Dubuque on Monday, May 13.

A new criminal complaint details the alleged abuse from Riley from multiple victims who have come forward. The complaint is embedded below. Some of the accounts may be disturbing to some readers.

[See the View Cache

A California pastor has been arrested following allegations he sexually abused two foster children under his care, according to a press release published by the Hesperia Police Department last week.

Jose Manuel Lozano, 54, served as a bilingual pastor at Zion Assembly Church of God in Hesperia, California, an affiliate church of Zion Assembly Church of God International, according to the LA Times. Hesperia is located about 80 miles northeast of Los Angeles.

Lozano was removed from his office at the church March 15, when the allegations became public, a church representative told the LA Times. The representative said the church doesn’t condone Lozano’s “ungodliness.”

The pastor was arrested on April 25 and faces felony charges of continuous sexual abuse of a minor, police said.

According to police, Lozano abused two girls, ages 10 and 16, while fostering them. Detectives believe there may be additional…

View Cache

Investigative Summary: Allegations of sexual misconduct against a former Lutheran pastor have split a North Austin congregation and sparked an extensive church investigation. KXAN spoke with people alleging abuse, dug into the pastor’s long history of ministry and followed the church’s effort to move forward with accountability and transparency.

AUSTIN (KXAN) – For decades, Dr. Helen Maidment carried mixed memories of Gethsemane Lutheran Church in North Austin.

On one side, there was the joy of a fulfilling spiritual and social life centered around the church. Her husband started a church camp, and they hosted parties with church friends.

“But in the shadows, there were things that weren’t so good,” Maidment told KXAN.

That was the other side: pain from the disturbing memory of a sexual assault, she alleges, by Gethsemane’s former pastor in 1998. Maidment said she pushed that memory to the back of her mind, but it weighed on…

View Cache

The diocesan priest at the center of the controversial destruction of a historic Vatican II altar at a parish in Cleveland’s Buckeye neighborhood was on leave from the priesthood for a decade following allegations that he “groomed” and attempted to sexually abuse a teenager, before being reinstated to ministry in 2012.

Fr. Jeffery Weaver initially asked for the leave in 2002, as reporting on the sexual abuse crisis peaked and he had admitted to an inappropriate sexual advance toward a young man.

Cleveland Bishop Richard Lennon reinstated Weaver to active ministry in 2012. No explanation was given at the time of reinstatement. Lennon died in 2019.

The Cleveland Diocese’s website shows that since May 2012 Weaver has been “awaiting assignment.”

Nancy Fishburn, diocesan executive director of communications, confirmed in an April 9 email to National Catholic Reporter that Weaver “does not currently have a parish assignment,…

View Cache

Rev. Luis Camacho has returned to Guam after being off island for about nine years while a canonical investigation was underway related to his arrest in 2015, according to a release from the Archdiocese of Agana. 

“Father Luis’ priestly faculties remain in restriction. He has been notified that he is restricted from serving in any parish, school or archdiocesan office at this time. Apostolic Administrator Father Romeo Convocar is reviewing his case assisted by others in the archdiocese before any return to public ministry is considered,” the release stated.

Camacho was arrested in March 2015 after police officers found him in a vehicle with a 17-year-old girl at a beach in Hågat. He was charged with custodial interference, according to Post files.

The Archdiocese stated that Camacho resigned as pastor of the San Dimas & Our Lady of the Rosary Catholic Church in Malesso’ and the San Dionisio Catholic Church in Humåtak, and was prohibited…

View Cache

The Maryland Supreme Court has agreed to decide the constitutionality of a new state law that eliminated the statute of limitations for survivors of child sexual abuse to file lawsuits and allowed more people to sue the institutions that enabled their victimization.

The Child Victims Act of 2023 took effect on Oct. 1, 2023.

In a letter on Tuesday, Gregory Hilton, clerk of the Maryland Supreme Court, wrote that the case has been scheduled for oral argument in the September 2024 session. He also outlined a briefing schedule.

U.S. District Judge James K. Bredar previously sent a question about the constitutionality of the law to the Maryland Supreme Court arising from a lawsuit that a woman filed against the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, which alleges it was negligent and reckless and failed to protect her from sexual abuse in…

View Cache

Ricardo Reyes Mata, 34, served as parochial vicar of the Cathedral Shrine of the Virgin of Guadalupe.

A Dallas priest is accused of inappropriately touching two children, police said Tuesday.

Ricardo Reyes Mata, 34, a priest with the Catholic Diocese of Dallas, was arrested Monday on two counts of indecency with a child, Garland police said in a statement. Two children reported the inappropriate contact after the priest visited a home in Garland, police said. Detectives are working with the Dallas diocese.

En español:Cura católico de Dallas es arrestado por cargos de indecencia con dos menores en Garland

In a statement, the diocese said it immediately filed a report with Child Protective Services and law enforcement after becoming aware of allegations by a juvenile girl of inappropriate touching. The priest was also removed from public ministry, the diocese said, adding that no inappropriate activity was reported on diocesan property.

…

View Cache

Police in Garland, Texas, said today in a news release that they had arrested a priest from the Catholic Diocese of Dallas on two felony counts of indecency with a child. We are grateful that law enforcement has charged the clergyman. However, we are concerned that there may be other victims and we urge the Diocese to do outreach. 

The Diocese of Dallas said that it was made aware last week of accusations that Fr. Ricardo Reyes Mata inappropriately touched a juvenile girl at a residence in Garland. According to the Diocese’s statement, Church officials immediately filed a report with Child Protective Services and law enforcement. Fr. Mata was also removed from public ministry.

We commend the Diocese for this appropriate response. However, we also believe that this arrest shows us once again that the persistent claims from Church officials that the abuse scandal is a thing…

View Cache

Pope Francis has appointed Reverend James Mark Beckman as Bishop of Knoxville, Tennessee, almost a year after the previous bishop resigned under pressure following claims he mishandled sex abuse allegations.

The Vatican announced the appointment in its Tuesday noon bulletin. As is usual, the announcement made no mention of his predecessor or the circumstances under which he left the post.

Bishop-elect Beckman is a priest of the Diocese of Nashville where he has served as pastor of Saint Henry parish since 2015, according to the announcement. He earned his master’s degree in religious studies from the Catholic University of Louvain in Belgium in 1989 and was ordained to the priesthood in 1990 for the Diocese of Nashville.

Pope Francis accepted Bishop Richard Stika’s resignation last June, closing a turbulent chapter for the southern U.S. diocese that was marked by a remarkable revolt by some of its priests. They accused Stika of…

View Cache

In a six-man race for the Southern Baptist Convention presidency, one candidate made headlines over the weekend for his stance on the 42 sexual abuse lawsuits reportedly pending against the denomination.

Critics pounced when David Allen, a seminary preaching professor, called those lawsuits a “distraction” from the gospel imperative.

This set off a chain of social media posts, mainly on X, with Allen’s supporters and critics parsing what he did or didn’t say.

Sexual abuse survivor advocate Tiffany Thigpen shot back on X: “Actually, we ARE distractions because unlike you all, we refused to sit in the pit of despair. We believe in God’s justice and mercy We are reaching back despite our suffering to keep it from happening to others We ARE ministry. We ARE distracting the show. THAT is your problem.”

Clergy sexual abuse survivor David Pittman tweeted: “Thank you for exposing your heart by referring to us as distractions.”

Among Allen’s…

View Cache

The researchers carried out 82 interviews and four focus groups. The participants were drawn from 14 of the 22 Catholic dioceses and 16 religious orders across England and Wales.

The whole Catholic Church should listen more to the victims and survivors of clerical child abuse and the experience of affected parish communities and consider appropriate action, a new report says.

The Cross of the Moment report is based on research led by Durham University’s Centre for Catholic Studies. It is the first study of how the abuse crisis has impacted the whole Catholic community in England and Wales.

The report suggests that aspects of the culture and practices of the Catholic Church are implicated in how clerical child sexual abuse has happened. They also partly explain how the response of the Church has often failed, causing further pain and harm, described by victims and survivors as…

View Cache

Victims of spiritual or sexual abuse, some nuns and monks choose to leave their communities. After years of religious life marked by misconduct, finding balance and re-establishing a social life proves to be a real challenge.

When religious life, undermined by misconduct, turns into hell, leaving is just the first step. As abuses of power, spiritual abuses, and situations of dominance have been exposed in some religious communities in recent years, victims who have managed to escape face a monumental challenge: regaining the balance of an ordinary life.

“It was very violent to leave the monastic habit overnight,” explains Manon*, who left after ten years in a Benedictine community. The religious habit protects and exposes at the same time. Shedding it is a relief and a loss of identity. “It weighs on me, but it is a passport,” confides a sister currently struggling. “The first time I removed my veil,…

View Cache

The community of Île-à-la-Crosse had a special screening Monday of a short film about the survivors of the Île-à-la-Crosse boarding school who are trying to be officially recognized by both the federal and provincial governments and compensated for what happened, just like at Indian Residential Schools.

Metis Nation-Saskatchewan Vice-President Michelle LeClair explains that Île-à-la-Crosse, with its Metis students, was left out of the Indian Residential Schools Settlement Agreement. She says that back in the 1840s it was a Catholic school funded provincially as well as federally, but the harms and the abuse were the same as at the Indian Residential Schools.  The students were called a number instead of by their names, they were not able to speak their language, and survivors suffered physical, emotional and sexual abuse.

LeClair says when the residential schools were being recognized and compensated there just wasn’t the proper recognition at the time for the…

View Cache

Interview with a psychotherapist and victimologist who assists individuals who have left religious communities because of abuse

Isabelle Chartier-Siben, a physician and victimologist, serves as the president of the association “C’est à dire,” which supports victims of abuse, particularly within the Church. In an interview with La Croix’s Capucine Licoys, she discusses the care of religious individuals who have left deviant communities, a group she has been assisting for about 30 years.

La Croix: Many former religious abuse victims describe a control that continues beyond leaving the community. How does this mechanism work?

Isabelle Chartier-Siben: When a religious person leaves due to a change of vocation, there is a period of readjustment to the ordinary world. This can be a painful but surmountable stage. In deviant communities, the outside world is somewhat “paranoidized,” described as dangerous, perverse, and incapable of understanding their supposed privileged relationship with God. The victim ends up convinced of the superiority…

View Cache

A woman who was sexually abused by a Hillsong worship leader has refused to sign a settlement offer by the Australian megachurch because it included a non-disclosure agreement (NDA).  

On Thursday, Anna Crenshaw, daughter of a Pennsylvania pastor, told reporters outside of a court in Sydney, Australia, “I will not give up my voice. This has never been about money for me, but about justice and accountability, which we’ve not received this week.” 

According to NCA Newswire, the failed settlement would have required Crenshaw to sign an NDA. It also required Crenshaw to co-sign a statement saying that Hillsong had reported the assault immediately, which would conflict with her repeated statements in recent years. 

A former student at Hillsong College, Crenshaw, now 26, has stated that she was touched inappropriately by former Hillsong staff administrator Jason Mays at a party in early 2016.

In…

View Cache

Key Points:

• Christa Brown, a survivor of clergy sexual abuse and a well-known advocate for reform in the SBC, publishes new book, “Baptistland: A Memoir of Abuse, Betrayal, and Transformation.”
• In Q&A, Brown discusses how she’s grown more skeptical and less hopeful of change in the SBC despite recent steps that many others consider substantive.

It’s long passed the point at which Christa Brown gives the Southern Baptist Convention the benefit of the doubt.

A survivor of clergy sexual abuse and well-known advocate for reform, Brown initially sought change in a state Southern Baptist convention in Texas and then in 2006 shifted her attention to the entire Nashville-based SBC. Her attitude about her advocacy has changed over the years.  

“I will not apologize for my skepticism one bit. I think they have earned it, and it will be a long time before they re-earn any trust from me,” said…

View Cache

Three women are accusing the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) and a megachurch in Houston of failing to protect them from a youth pastor who sexually abused them as minors, according to a lawsuit filed last month.

The women, referred to as “Jane Does,” allege the SBC and Champion Forest Baptist Church “invited, encouraged, and enabled a predator to be part of their trusted inner circle,” the lawsuit states. The women are asking for more than a million dollars in damages.

The women were 14, 15, and 16 when former youth pastor Timothy Jeltema started to sexually abuse them, the lawsuit states. The women claim the pastor took advantage of his position of power to do so.

Jeltema is currently in prison after pleading guilty to child sex crimes in 2022, The Roys Report (TRR) previously reported. He was sentenced to five years for two charges of online…

View Cache

While membership in the nation’s largest Protestant denomination is down, participation in worship and baptisms went up in 2023. But a new statistical report found that many Southern Baptist Convention churches do little to address sexual abuse.

The bad news for Southern Baptists is that the denomination, the nation’s largest Protestant group, shrunk in 2023, with a drop of about a quarter-million people.

The good news, according to the Southern Baptist Convention’s annual statistical report, is that the decline slowed from 2022. In addition, of those who remained, more went to church and more newcomers took the plunge to get baptized.

The SBC’s 2024 Annual Church Profile, released Tuesday (May 7), showed that membership dropped to 12.9 million members, the lowest since the late 1970s. Having peaked at 16.3 million in 2006, membership has been in decline ever since, with nearly 3.5 million members in total lost. About half of…

View Cache

Local committee suggests Ruyant Crescent be renamed Jak Zheii Place

A street in Inuvik, N.W.T., might soon have a new name.

Ruyant Crescent is a short residential loop in the town’s west end, named after Father Max Ruyant, a Catholic priest who ran Grollier Hall for more than 20 years. The hall was a government-funded boarding facility, established in the 1950s for children from the Sahtu, Beaufort Delta and Kitikmeot regions in the N.W.T and Nunavut.

Grollier Hall, which closed in the ’90s, was the site of “many acts of sexual and psychological abuse,” according to the National Centre for Truth and Reconciliation. Former students have also shared stories of children who died there.

Jak Zheii Place, the suggested new name for the street, was put forward by the town’s volunteer naming committee. The name means “blueberry” in Gwich’in, and was proposed after the committee sat down and…

View Cache

Legislation needed to limit use of stay applications and ensure justice for child abuse survivors, MP says

New South Wales parliament will consider a bill to further restrict churches and other institutions from using stay applications to prevent abuse survivors having their cases heard.

Last year, Guardian Australia revealed the widespread use of stay applications to permanently halt civil cases brought by survivors where perpetrators had died.

The Catholic church and other institutions effectively used the passage of time to block survivors from having their cases heard by arguing a fair trial was no longer possible.

The tactic was adopted despite clear evidence before the royal commission that significant barriers meant survivors took, on average, 22 years to come forward, and that institutions had themselves hindered justice by concealing abuse from law enforcement and destroying records.

The high court delivered a significant blow to the use of stays in November, finding…

View Cache

Many people believe that excommunication is the Catholic Church’s equivalent of capital punishment — the worst punishment that the church can impose on a believer. Some even see it as the earthly equivalent of being cast into hell.

People call for priests who abuse children to be excommunicated because they want the priests to receive the most severe punishment available. When a serial abuser such as former Jesuit priest Marko Rupnik is excommunicated for a related offense, they are shocked to hear that his excommunication was lifted a week after it was imposed.

What is going on here?

First, not all crimes demand excommunication. If you are found guilty of one that does, in some circumstances you are not excommunicated unless you knew what you’d done is an excommunicable offense and you persisted in the offense.

Actions that can lead to excommunication include violation (desecration) of the sacred species (Eucharist),…

View Cache

A Met cop has spoken out about her role in the investigation into historic child sexual abuse by a former priest and his recent sentencing.

James Murphy, 77, of The Alders Mallow, County Cork, Ireland was sentenced on April 29, at Inner London Crown Court.

Murphy pleaded guilty on February 16, at the same court to seven offences of indecent assault relating to four victims aged between five and 11. The offending took place between 1975 and 1988.

PC Helen French spent almost five years developing the case against Murphy, after one of his victims came forward to police in 2019.

PC French said: “My colleagues on the response team started to get reports against Murphy.

“Because the allegations involved a priest, we knew it was going to be a complex case and there was the potential of a large victim base.”

As the investigation progressed, officers established that…

View Cache

A former Santa Fe priest accused of sexually abusing a minor is expected to take a plea deal. Daniel Balizan was arrested last year after being accused of sexually abusing a minor between 2012 and 2022.

Balizan is accused of committing the abuse while being a priest for the Santa Maria de La Paz Catholic Church in Santa Fe. Federal court documents show Balizan is expected to take a plea deal later this month. He is still facing two lawsuits claiming he committed the same crime to two other minors while at the Santa Fe church.

View Cache

If you’re a Catholic in the state of Florida and you’re fed up with how the church hierarchy is or is not dealing with children’s safety, predator priests, and ill-advised secrecy, know you are not alone. If you’re sick of sitting in the pews and feeling helpless, there are ways to help make a difference, and we at Horowitz Law have many ideas. Let’s start with the three best steps you can take.

3 Steps to Take for Church Reform

1. Contact your state senator and state representative and urge them to repeal or reform Florida’s archaic, arbitrary, secrecy-guaranteeing, and predator-friendly statute of limitations.
2. Join a group that’s doing something (VOTF-Voice of the Faithful, SNAP-the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests, BishopAccountability.org. If you don’t feel like joining, a donation is helpful.
3. Ask fellow Catholics and ex-Catholics if they ever saw, suspected, or suffered abuse….

View Cache

A bill meant to criminalize clergy from engaging in sexual relationships with parishioners they counsel will not advance this year.

Editor’s note: Sacramento Snapshot is a weekly series during the legislative session detailing what Orange County’s representatives in the Assembly and Senate are working on — from committee work to bill passages and more.

From Sen. Dave Min, D-Irvine, the bill sought to bring California in line with several other states that have included clergy and religious counselors among the list of people — like physicians, psychotherapists and certain counselors — prohibited from engaging in sexual acts with a patient or client. It said consent could not be a defense for clergy members accused of sexual battery and established misdemeanor and felony charges.

“Religious leaders are given an incredible amount of authority — moral authority and actual authority — in temples or churches or…

View Cache

ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. (KFOX14/CBS4) — Two New Mexico law firms have filed a lawsuit against the Catholic Diocese of El Paso for sexual abuse of children by priests.

The lawsuit alleges that catholic priest Fr. Lucio Lopez from the San Miguel Parish in San Miguel County, New Mexico (south of Las Cruces) abused a child weekly for two years sometime between 1959 and 1960.

According to the lawsuit, Lopez used his position to sexually abuse the child, convincing them the abuse was normal.

Lopez reportedly told the victim they had been “‘chosen by God’ to obey him and fulfill his sexual needs.”

The lawsuit also accuses the Catholic Diocese of El Paso and the San Miguel Parish of negligence for failing to prevent the abuse and ensure the safety of parishioners.

Huffman Wallace & Monagle LLC and Davis Kelin Law Firm LLC, the two firms representing the plaintiff in the lawsuit, released…

View Cache

SÃO PAULO, Brazil – One year after the diary of a Jesuit describing more than 80 cases of child abuse came to light in Bolivia, the Society of Jesus repudiated the accusation that it’s a “criminal organization” and that it shouldn’t be blamed for the crimes.

The Bolivian Community of Survivors of Ecclesial Sex Abuse, however, reaffirmed that the Jesuits have institutional responsibility for “systematically covering up” over 400 cases, arguing that superiors and provincials were aware of the crimes.

The diary of late Spanish-born Father Alfonso Pedrajas (1943-2009), known as Padre Pica, was first mentioned in a story published by Spanish newspaper El Pais in April of 2023. The article detailed how his writings were discovered by a nephew and then handed to the newspaper.

According to Pica’s diary, the first abuse happened in Lima, Peru, in 1964. Most of his crimes, however, took place when he worked at the John…

View Cache

The Baltimore Sun took home 20 first place prizes in the annual Maryland Delaware DC Press Association awards ceremony Friday held in Annapolis. The news organization also received multiple runner-up awards.

Stories singled out with the best in show designation included The Sun’s database of those accused in the Catholic Church of abuse who are beyond Baltimore’s archdiocese by Jonathan M. Pitts, Annie Jennemann, Maya Lora, Lia Russell and Cassidy Jensen, a man who served 34 years in prison for killing a teen who now mentors youth by Alex Mann, an examination of patients with dementia who have run ins with the police by Angela Roberts and Cassidy Jensen, a profile of Jonathon Heyward, the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra’s musical director, by Mary Carole McCauley and a way of interactively exploring the more than 800 bills that passed the Maryland Assembly by Annie Jennemann.

Stories that won first place covered topics such as a Baltimore…

View Cache

The all-encompassing nature of church life can provide predators with the ideal cover for committing sexual abuse within congregations, abuse survivor and author Christa Brown said.

“Access and trust. Pastors and churches have both access to kids and enormous trust within the community and within the church,” Brown said during a recent “change-making conversations” webinar hosted by Baptist News Global and moderated by BNG Executive Director Mark Wingfield.

Likewise, that trust makes it difficult for many to believe victims when they come forward, said Brown, who as a child was sexually abused by the youth pastor of her Southern Baptist congregation in Farmers Branch, Texas.

“People would like to believe this happens to kids who are lax in morals, but nothing could be further from the truth,” she said. “The truth is, what made me the most vulnerable to this type of predator was my own faith.”

Brown’s abuser exploited her devotion to…

View Cache

A former attorney and Mormon bishop in Vacaville is on trial for the sexual abuse of his then-11-year-old adopted daughter, and other church associates are giving some pretty damning testimony on the witness stand.

In today’s episode of It’s Often Clergy People and It’s Never Drag Queens embroiled in real-world child sexual abuse scandals, the Vacaville Reporter brings us the news of the ongoing trial of James Glenn Haskell, a former attorney and Mormon bishop who now faces 16 counts of child sexual abuse in a Solano County Superior Court. Haskell and his wife had four adopted children, all of whom have since been removed from the home.

The most troubling allegations involve the eldest daughter, who was 11 years old at the time of the alleged crimes. Wednesday’s witnesses included a Solano County Child Welfare Services employee who’d visited the home, and two friends of the family and/or church associates who…

View Cache

A New Hampshire jury awarded $38 million to the man who blew the lid off abuse allegations at the state’s youth detention center Friday, finding in a landmark case that the state’s negligence allowed him to be beaten, raped and held in solitary confinement as a teen.

David Meehan’s attorney said his client was “overwhelmed and overjoyed” by what he called the largest jury award in a civil case in New Hampshire history, though the state said the amount will be reduced to $475,000 under its law that caps damages.

“David now feels like he has a reason to live,” Rus Rilee, Meehan’s attorney, said.

Meehan, 42, went to police in 2017 and sued the state three years later. Since then, 11 former state workers have been arrested and more than 1,100 other former residents of the Youth Development Center in Manchester have filed lawsuits alleging physical, sexual and emotional abuse spanning six…

View Cache

A former Santa Fe priest has agreed to plead guilty in a child sex abuse case, according to a federal court filing earlier this week.

Federal prosecutors and defense attorneys for Daniel Balizan announced in a joint motion filed May 1 that they had arrived at a plea agreement, although the details have not yet been released.

A federal judge is scheduled to decide later this month whether Balizan, who faces charges of coercion and enticement of a minor, will await sentencing on the abuse charges from his home in Springer or in a jail cell.

Many at Santa María de la Paz say they’re keeping faith despite the “shock” of the allegations. 

Daniel Balizan is accused of enticement of a minor with the intent to engage in sexual activity. 

The former pastor at Santa Maria de la Paz Catholic Community was arrested last week on charges of sex abuse…

View Cache

An attorney closely involved with the Archdiocese of New Orleans bankruptcy case is advocating for a fresh strategy in addressing clergy abuse allegations. He proposes the appointment of a special monitor to oversee future abuse claims following alarming revelations from a recently released search warrant.

“Previous Archbishop’s knew other complaints and failed to report the abuse,” said Attorney Roger Stetter.

A search warrant affidavit signed last week by Scott Rodrigue, a special victims investigator with the State Police, detailed disturbing allegations. It revealed that certain victims were transferred among priests and recounted the ordeal of a victim of Father Lawrence Hecker, who reported his rape shortly after it happened. Despite the report, no legal action was taken.

Furthermore, the affidavit mentioned that Hecker, who is currently awaiting trial, was diagnosed as a ‘pedophile’ by a psychiatrist. Yet, he was released and reassigned to another parish.

According to Stetter, the protracted…

View Cache

Religion Unplugged believes in a diversity of well-reasoned and well-researched opinions. This piece reflects the views of the author and does not necessarily represent those of Religion Unplugged, its staff and contributors.

Over 35 years ago, when I became the director of a small but growing support group called SNAP, the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests, I vowed to never “rank” the pain of any victim. 

“It’s all horrific,” I told myself.

Every survivor is hurt differently and heals differently, I quickly realized, and nothing could be gained by assuming or believing that one was “hurt worse” or was “more vulnerable” than another. Though it may seem counterintuitive, I believe, a child who was groped over his clothing once may be just as traumatized as another child who was raped repeatedly.

The first real challenge to this belief came in the early 1990s when I heard from several…

View Cache

A well-known warrior in the #ChurchToo movement reveals in a new book how she escaped from an abusive Texas home and an abusive Southern Baptist church.

Christa Brown, a former Texas appellate attorney, is revered as perhaps the best-known of the brave women (and men) who blew the whistle on abusive clergy and coverups at churches in the powerful Southern Baptist Convention (SBC). She began her quest at age 51, by bravely sharing her own story of being repeatedly sexually abused as a teen by her youth pastor, Tommy Gilmore, the man she’d gone to for counseling at her church in Farmers Branch. She first came forward as a whistleblower in 2009.

“I think I was ahead of things. That was before #MeToo and #ChurchToo and all of that,” she says. While still running a busy Austin law practice, Brown for years collected and shared stories of others who sought help…

View Cache

Defense attorney tries to introduce 32 hours of sermons into evidence

After the prosecution rested its case against a Wichita Falls pastor accused of sexually abusing three young girls, church members took the stand to testify for the defense Friday.

Ronnie Allen Killingsworth, 78, was indicted on six counts of indecency with a child in connection with incidents involving three girls between 2000 and 2011.

Killingsworth was free Friday from jail on $150,000 in bonds.

The victims testified earlier in the trial that sexual abuse happened in the pastor’s office at Rephidim Church in Wichita Falls.

Texas Ranger Matt Kelly was on the stand Friday in 78th District Court to testify about his investigation into the case.

He told the jury he talked to the suspect’s son, Allen Killingsworth, a detective with the Wichita Falls Police Department. Kelly testified Allen Killingsworth questioned the validity of the alleged victims’ accusations and…

View Cache

Authorities have expanded an investigation of clergy sexual abuse in the Roman Catholic Church in New Orleans to include senior church officials suspected of shielding predatory priests for decades and failing to report their crimes to law enforcement.

Louisiana State Police carried out a sweeping search warrant last week at the Archdiocese of New Orleans, seeking a long-secreted cache of church records and communications between local church leaders and the Vatican about the church’s handling of clergy sexual abuse.

The search signaled a new phase of the investigation that will seek to determine what particular church leaders, including Archbishop Gregory Aymond and his predecessors, knew about claims that the warrant describes as “ignored and in many cases covered up.”

“The Archdiocese of New Orleans has been openly discussing the topic of sex abuse for over 20 years,” Bill Kearney, an archdiocese spokesman, said in a statement. “In keeping with this,…

View Cache

Priests in the Archdiocese of New Orleans allegedly transported children out of state to abuse them.

The Roman Catholic Archdiocese of New Orleans has come under fire as the target of a Louisiana sex-trafficking probe, according to an 11-page search warrant made public Tuesday. But a recent ruling by the Louisiana Supreme Court might stand in the way of any victims seeking to hold the church accountable.

The document requested that the archdiocese hand over “ANY and ALL documents that pertain in any way to the sexual abuse of a minor by clergy members employed or otherwise associated with the Archdiocese of New Orleans,” specifying that those records violate the state’s child sex-trafficking laws.

The warrant also demands any and all communications between Gregory Aymond, the archbishop of New Orleans, and “ANY department within the Vatican pertaining to child sexual abuse.”

Aymand reportedly led a cover-up…

View Cache

Religion Unplugged believes in a diversity of well-reasoned and well-researched opinions. This piece reflects the views of the author and does not necessarily represent those of Religion Unplugged, its staff and contributors.

Over 35 years ago, when I became the director of a small but growing support group called SNAP, the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests, I vowed to never “rank” the pain of any victim. 

“It’s all horrific,” I told myself.

Every survivor is hurt differently and heals differently, I quickly realized, and nothing could be gained by assuming or believing that one was “hurt worse” or was “more vulnerable” than another. Though it may seem counterintuitive, I believe, a child who was groped over his clothing once may be just as traumatized as another child who was raped repeatedly.

The first real challenge to this belief came in the early 1990s when I heard from several…

View Cache

A pastor was arrested after being accused of sexually abusing his two foster daughters, California deputies say.

Jose Manuel Lozano, 54, was booked into jail Thursday, April 25, on a continuous sexual abuse of a minor charge, the San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Department said in a May 1 news release.

After investigations, deputies said they believe the Hesperia man, a pastor at a local church, sexually abused his foster daughters, ages 10 and 16.

Lozano led services at Zion Assembly Church of God Hesperia, a branch of Zion Assembly Church of God International, the Los Angeles Times reported.

Zion Assembly Church of God International did not immediately respond to McClatchy News’ request for comment on May 3.

A representative told the Los Angeles Times that the organization “condemns Lozano’s ‘ungodliness’ and that he was removed from office March 15, when the allegations came to…

View Cache

Authorities have expanded an investigation of clergy sexual abuse in the Roman Catholic Church in New Orleans to include senior church officials suspected of shielding predatory priests for decades and failing to report their crimes to law enforcement.

Louisiana State Police carried out a sweeping search warrant last week at the Archdiocese of New Orleans, seeking a long-secreted cache of church records and communications between local church leaders and the Vatican about the church’s handling of clergy sexual abuse.

The search signaled a new phase of the investigation that will seek to determine what particular church leaders, including Archbishop Gregory Aymond and his predecessors, knew about claims that the warrant describes as “ignored and in many cases covered up.”

“The Archdiocese of New Orleans has been openly discussing the topic of sex abuse for over 20 years,” Bill Kearney, an archdiocese spokesman, said in a statement. “In keeping with this,…

View Cache

A well-known warrior in the #ChurchToo movement reveals in a new book how she escaped from an abusive Texas home and an abusive Southern Baptist church.

Christa Brown, a former Texas appellate attorney, is revered as perhaps the best-known of the brave women (and men) who blew the whistle on abusive clergy and coverups at churches in the powerful Southern Baptist Convention (SBC). She began her quest at age 51, by bravely sharing her own story of being repeatedly sexually abused as a teen by her youth pastor, Tommy Gilmore, the man she’d gone to for counseling at her church in Farmers Branch. She first came forward as a whistleblower in 2009.

“I think I was ahead of things. That was before #MeToo and #ChurchToo and all of that,” she says. While still running a busy Austin law practice, Brown for years collected and shared stories of others who sought help…

View Cache

Three months after a lawsuit against the Catholic Archbishop of Vancouver over alleged clerical sexual abuse was settled out of court, six more accusers have come forward and have filed their own lawsuits.

The allegations are leveled against John Kilty, a priest at North Vancouver’s Holy Trinity church and elementary school from the 1940s until the 1980s.

Kilty has since died.

Five men and one woman, who can’t be identified, are behind these latest lawsuits.

All six were students at the elementary school in the 1960s and 1970s and allege being sexually assaulted at Kilty’s home and during field trips.

Their lawyer emphasizes the six filings are separate and are not a class action lawsuit.

“We respectfully view class actions for sexual abuse survivors as highly problematic.”

The reason they are problematic, according to a report cited by the lawyer, is that in a class action, class members have a…

View Cache

Marko Rupnik is credibly accused of molesting 25 nuns, some in blasphemous occult rituals.

ope Francis is facing an avalanche of pressure to defrock Fr. Marko Ivan Rupnik, a celebrity priest and personal friend of the pope, after the ex-Jesuit’s artwork was prominently displayed at a Mass for the installation of the papal ambassador to the US on April 21.

Rupnik, a world-famous mosaic artist, has been credibly accused of sexually, physically, emotionally, and psychologically abusing at least 25 nuns — sometimes in groups, and sometimes forcing them to drink his bodily fluids from a consecrated chalice.

While global outrage over the allegations forced Francis last October to lift the statute of limitations preventing Rupnik from facing a church trial, the Vatican has thus far failed to reveal if it has begun judicial procedures against him.

Rupnik Artwork on Book of the Gospels

A cascade of complaints was unleashed on…

View Cache

A Hesperia pastor is in police custody following an investigation into allegations he sexually abused two minors under his care as a foster parent.

Jose Manuel Lozano is awaiting trial at the High Desert Detention Center in Adelanto, where he is being held in lieu of $5-million bail. Investigators described his alleged victims as girls ages 16 and 10.

The 54-year-old Hesperia resident led bilingual services for a predominately Latino and Spanish-speaking congregation at Zion Assembly Church of God Hesperia, an affiliate of Zion Assembly Church of God International, headquartered in Tennessee. A representative from the latter said in an interview that the organization condemns Lozano’s “ungodliness” and that he was removed from office March 15, when the allegations came to light. He was arrested last week.

Pastors at neighboring churches said they were shocked and dismayed upon hearing of Lozano’s arrest.

“It just reminds us of all the ways…

View Cache