ABUSE TRACKER

AUSTRALIA
The Guardian

Australian Associated Press
Wednesday 19 November 2014

The father of the Tasmanian premier told a teacher to keep quiet about alleged sexual abuse at an elite Hobart school in the 1960s, an inquiry has been told.

The royal commission into institutional responses to child sexual abuse heard that sexual abuse at the Hutchins school in the 1960s was common knowledge.

Geoffrey Ayling, a science teacher, resigned in 1966 and changed careers after his attempts to raise the alarm were stifled, he told the commission in Hobart on Thursday.

He consulted his friend and lawyer Michael Hodgman, who was a Hutchins old boy. Hodgman was later a Tasmanian politician and is the father of the premier, Will Hodgman.

“Mr Hodgman’s advice to me was to me was that I should say nothing,” Ayling recounted. Hodgman died in 2013.

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CHICAGO (IL)
Chicago Tribune

By Manya Brachear Pashman,
Chicago Tribune

Archbishop Blase Cupich will make the first of three visits to ethnic parishes across the city this Sunday, when he celebrates Mass at the predominantly African-American St. Agatha Catholic Church.

The visit will bring him face to face with some of the biggest issues within the archdiocese. At St. Agatha, the largest African-American congregation on the West Side, Cupich will see how one parish has grappled with violence in its surrounding neighborhood, clergy sex abuse by one of its own and a struggling school that will be downsized to an early childhood center next school year.

“His emphasis on violence, anti-violence, immigration, the sex abuse stuff all hits home here in Chicago,” said the Rev. Larry Dowling, pastor of St. Agatha, who said he didn’t know why Cupich chose to make the parish his first stop. “In a lot of ways it makes some sense if he’s going to make a statement symbolically. Our parishioners are interpreting it as affirmation of what we have been through and moving forward.”

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MINNESOTA
Valley News Live

[with video]

By Neil Carlson, Reporter/Photographer

A former Greenbush, Minnesota priest, who was just extradited from his home in India was formally charged with 3 counts of criminal sexual conduct in Roseau. Joseph Jeyapaul is charged with sexually assaulting 2 females, who were 14 and 16 years old at the time of the attacks in 2004 and 2005.

Jeyapaul remains in jail on a bond of 2-million dollars cash if he doesn’t want any conditions placed on his release.

However, it’s not the kind of thing folks expect to have to talk about in a small, tight knit Community like Greenbush.

Fifty-nine year old Joseph Jeyapaul was a priest at this church. In one incident, he’s charged with having a 16-year old girl touch his genitals at his nearby home.

He’s also charged with forcing a second victim, a 14-year old girl to perform oral sex on him. Jeyapaul allegedly told that victim that he would kill her family if she told anyone. He also told the girl that she was a bad person and she should kill herself.

However, Prosecutor Karen Foss says that victim is ready and willing to testify against Jeyapaul.

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UNITED STATES
CNN

By Henry Hullah, CNN

We must monitor people with power in order to protect the vulnerable, human rights lawyer Geoffrey Robertson told Christiane Amanpour on Wednesday.

An expert on the “culture of silence” surrounding abuse in the Roman Catholic Church in Ireland, Robertson explained the common theme that ran through the church, the media and beyond.

“The revelations started with the Catholic Church in Ireland,” he told the program.

“Then we discovered it in celebrities here and a number of them have been convicted and now we’re finding other examples.”

“And what comes across to me, having studied it is the utter vulnerability of seven, eight, nine year olds to power.”

“[In] a sense, in the Catholic Church, the priest as the representative of God – any command is unflinchingly obeyed. The star, entering the star’s dressing room at the BBC, it’s an enormous power.”

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VATICAN CITY
Crux

By Inés San Martín
Vatican correspondent November 19, 2014

ROME — Almost a year after the Vatican announced plans for a new papal commission to lead the charge for reform on the Church’s child sexual abuse scandals, the chief of staff for the group says it’s now hitting its stride.

“We’re talking about changing Catholic structures, collecting what we’ve done in the past 12 years,” said the Rev. Robert Oliver, referring to reforms adopted since the abuse scandals erupted in the United States in 2002.

The commission, Oliver said, wants to lead the universal Church in “learning from the best practices as well as our mistakes, sharing this knowledge with those who need it, and discussing how we can work to make sure that our children will be safer.”

Oliver, a former advisor to Cardinal Sean P. O’Malley of Boston on sexual abuse matters, is Secretary of the Pontifical Commission for the Protection of Minors announced last December. He sat down for an exclusive interview with Crux at the commission’s new Vatican headquarters.

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AUSTRALIA
Sky News

The sexual abuse of boys at an elite Hobart school in the 1960s was common knowledge but attempts to raise the alarm were stifled, a national royal commission has been told.

A royal commission has heard sexual abuse of boys at an elite Hobart school in the 1960s was common knowledge.

Science teacher Geoffrey Ayling resigned from The Hutchins School in 1966 and changed careers.

“I no longer wanted to work in the school … because of the prevalence of pedophiles among teaching staff,” Mr Ayling, now 75, told a commission hearing in Hobart on Thursday.

At the time there were six teachers among the senior staff of about 16 whom he believed had an interest in boys.

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SPAIN
Aleteia

Many media outlets have reported this Tuesday on a supposed phone call from Pope Francis to a young man in Granada (Spain) who suffered from sexual abuse when he was a minor. A group of priests are implicated in the case.

According to the Religión Digital website, Francis called the victim this past August, asked him for forgiveness in the name of the Church, and committed himself to following the case through to the end to ensure justice is done. For the moment, the archbishop of Granada has removed from ministry several priests who are implicated in this case.

Various media outlets have published the Pope’s supposed conversation with the young man, who has been given the alias “Daniel.” This is the account:

“Who is it?” Daniel answers. “Am I speaking with Daniel?” comes the reply from the other end of the phone, in a strangely familiar voice. “Yes, it’s me. Who’s calling?” “Good afternoon my son, I am Fr. Jorge.” “I’m sorry,” Daniel responds, “you must have the wrong number. I don’t know any Fr. Jorge.” And he is astonished when he hears, “Well, I’m Pope Francis.”

For a few seconds, Daniel can’t even make a sound. On the other end, his interlocutor thinks that he has hung up. “Are you still there?” His tone of voice is unmistakable. It’s the Pope!

“My son, calm down. I read your letter several times. I couldn’t help being moved, and feeling profound sorrow when I read your story. I want to ask you for forgiveness in the name of the whole Church of Christ. Forgive this grave sin and very serious crime which you have suffered. These wounds make the whole Church suffer.” Tears run down Daniel’s face. He can’t stop crying, nor say a single word.

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UNITED STATES
POPE FRANCIS the CON-Christ.

Paris Arrow

“If” is the most powerful word of con-men, lay or religious con-men.

Con-artists always use the word “if” with the promise of a fairy tale ending in tomorrow (which never comes). Cardinal Sean O’Malley spoke with a classic Vatican poker face and as a Franciscan con-artist using the big conniving word “IF” in CBS 60 Minutes – when he declared his new famous Catholic religious fairy tale, “If I started a church, I’d love to have women priests” – thereby deceiving idiots Americans particularly stupid Catholic women. O’Malley’s con line sounds similar to that of a married man telling his mistress, “If I started as a single guy and if I wasn’t married, I’d love to marry you”. Notice the nonchalant use of the word “love” by both con-artists – one is a religious cardinal and the other a layman.

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BOSTON (MA)
Crux

By Cardinal Seán P. O’Malley
The Pilot
November 19, 2014

Last Sunday evening I was privileged to be featured on the CBS television program “60 Minutes,” which is actually three 20 minute segments. I was featured in segment two of the broadcast. The whole experience was fascinating. I was very impressed by the entire team, their work ethic, professionalism and dedication. Those 20 minutes are distilled out of many hours of hard work. Correspondent Norah O’Donnell and producers Frank Devine and Magalie Laguerre-Wilkinson are all Catholics. Their faith and their regard for the Church was evident. Frank is a very well-informed Catholic who can engage in theological debate about “internal form” or any aspect of the life of the Church.

From the beginning of the process I was aware that the questions would not be about the weather and the Red Sox. The program’s interviews include difficult questions that are often on many people’s minds. For some people, being featured on 60 Minutes would be exhilarating, but television interviews are not at the top of my list of favorite things to do. Newscasts these days can be about sound bites and quick messaging. In contrast, 60 Minutes does a good job of trying to go deeper into the topics they address. My interview touched on three provocative issues that are seldom addressed by members of the hierarchy, but which once raised capture everyone’s attention. These matters call for more time and consideration than can be given in a 20 minute broadcast segment.

Not surprisingly, Norah asked a question about Bishop Robert Finn of the Diocese of St. Joseph-Kansas City and accountability. While it is the case that the sexual abuse policies adopted by the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops would preclude someone convicted of not reporting a crime from teaching religious education or having any position supervising children, some of the advance reporting about this matter did not reflect the nuances of my answer to the question. In response to Norah, I said that the Vatican must attend to this situation. The Holy Father is aware of this need, and recently an Episcopal Visitator was sent to Bishop Finn’s diocese. The Holy See had the sensitivity to send a Canadian bishop to conduct the visitation.

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AUSTRALIA
7 News

Child sex abuse inquiry: Ex-headmaster admits failing to question staff, pupils over paedophilia claims

By Rosemary Bolger and Linda Hunt
November 20, 2014

A former headmaster of a prestigious Hobart boys’ school has admitted he failed to interview former students and teachers over paedophilia claims against another former headmaster.

John Bednall, who was headmaster at Hutchins School in the 1990s, was giving evidence at the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse.

In 1993, a former student, known as AOA, wrote to Dr Bednall seeking an apology from the school for the abuse he allegedly suffered at the hands of former headmaster David Lawrence in the 1960s.

Dr Bednall conducted a five-week investigation into AOA’s allegations and found there was no supporting evidence that he was abused.

When asked at the inquiry whether he had interviewed any staff members or anyone from the Hutchins School Board, Dr Bednall replied: “No”.

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CALIFORNIA
Monterey Herald

By Julia Reynolds, Monterey Herald
POSTED: 11/19/14

SALINAS >> Palma High School in Salinas is being sued over alleged sexual abuse of several former students by a priest who taught at the school in the 1980s, attorneys announced Wednesday.

The Minnesota law firm of Jeff Anderson and Associates, which has pursued clergy sexual abuses cases nationwide, announced it will hold a press conference Thursday morning to outline details of the allegations against the Rev. Gerald Funcheon and Crosier Fathers & Brothers, over abuse they say occurred at Palma and St. Odilia’s School in Minnesota.

Funcheon is a former chaplain and teacher at the school. Palma president Brother Patrick Dunne said late Wednesday he couldn’t comment because he hadn’t seen the lawsuit.

Last year, nine former Palma students joined some 400 people who are sharing a $16.5 million settlement with the Irish Christian Brothers for sexual abuse they suffered at schools affiliated with the order in the United States and Canada.

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BELGIE
VTM

[The West Flemish priest – now operating in Brazil – who has been accused of abusing at least two minors more than 20 years ago, has been asked to return to Belgium. Bishop Jozef De Kesel of Bruges decided today to recall the priest after consultation with several experts.]

De West-Vlaamse priester (54) die op dit moment in Brazilië werkt en beschuldigd wordt van misbruik van minstens twee minderjarigen meer dan twintig jaar geleden, moet naar België terugkeren. Dat heeft de bisschop Jozef De Kesel van Brugge vandaag beslist, nadat hij over de zaak verschillende deskundigen heeft geraadpleegd. Het opvangpunt voor klachten van seksueel misbruik zal hem zo vlug mogelijk ondervragen.

In 2011 dienden twee slachtoffers, een man en een vrouw, een klacht in tegen de priester. Ze vertelden, onafhankelijk van elkaar dat ze door de man waren misbruikt. Hij was toen nog leerkracht in een middelbare school in Brugge. De priester zat toen al in Brazilië. Het parket van Brugge heeft hem naar België laten komen om hem te kunnen ondervragen, maar ze konden alleen vaststellen dat de feiten verjaard waren. Daarna kon de priester, met goedkeuring van de bisschop, terugkeren naar Brazilië. Daar gaf hij onder meer les aan straatkinderen.

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SPAIN
Catholic News Agency

Granada, Spain, Nov 19, 2014 / 04:11 pm (CNA).- The Archdiocese of Granada, Spain, has defended its response to the case of three priests accused of abusing an underage boy over a decade ago, offering solidarity to the alleged victim.

“From the moment credible reports of the accusations were filed before the Holy See by a young man from Granada alleging sexual abuse by a group of priests of the diocese, this archdiocese has scrupulously followed the procedures established by canonical discipline for these cases, which is available to all on the home page of the Holy See’s own website,” the archdiocese said in a statement this week.

The alleged sexual abuse took place approximately a decade ago, when the alleged victim was an adolescent. The now 24-year-old man recently filed a lawsuit against the priests.

“Once it was learned the lawsuit had been filed, the archbishop made himself available to civil authorities to collaborate in whatever way necessary, which he has done up to now,” the archdiocese said.

In response to reports in the media that he did not act soon enough in the case, Granada Archbishop Javier Martinez Fernandez told reporters in Madrid during the Spanish Bishops’ fall assembly that in mid-October the alleged victim asked him for a pause in ecclesial action against the priests in order to allow civil authorities to proceed with their case. He said civil authorities made the same request.

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AUSTRALIA
Yass Tribune

By JOANNE McCARTHY Nov. 19, 2014

DETECTIVE Chief Inspector Peter Fox will leave the NSW Police Force at midnight on Thursday – exactly 36 years, seven months and three days after walking in.

He feels vindicated by evidence at last month’s inquiry into police involvement with a Catholic Church child sexual abuse reporting group, and relieved to leave without disciplinary action against him over the November 2012 television interview that led to a royal commission, but ended his career.

And he’s not going quietly.

‘‘When the hell are they going to do something about charging someone?’’ he said about the key recommendation of the NSW Special Commission of Inquiry report in May this year that slammed him, but found there was ‘‘sufficient evidence warranting the prosecution of a senior Catholic Church official in connection with the concealment of child sexual abuse’’ by the late Hunter priest Jim Fletcher.

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ESPANA
El Diario

[Granada: The alleged abusers call themselves The Clan of Romanones and are named for one of the leaders. The group includes a dozen people, ten of them priests. The priests do not wear clerical collars, have high economic level and many have flats and a duplex in the center of the beach.]

Jesús Bastante
19/11/2014

Se hacen llamar “el clan de los Romanones”, en honor de uno de sus líderes. Son una docena, diez sacerdotes y dos laicos. Ultraconservadores de pensamiento, aunque con formas y prácticas muy modernas. Ellos son los presuntos abusadores y encubridores del caso de abusos sexuales que el Papa Francisco ordenó investigar en la diócesis de Granada, y cuyo proceso judicial está a punto de concluir, detenciones incluidas.

Los sacerdotes no usan alzacuellos, tienen un alto nivel económico y disponen de muchos bienes, repartidos por Granada y la provincia, donde cuentan con diversas propiedades, amplias parcelas, incluso un dúplex en la playa. En todos estos lugares se produjeron, presuntamente, los abusos denunciados por Daniel y padecidos por varias víctimas más en los últimos años. Algunos son sacerdotes en parroquias de la capital y uno forma parte incluso de la Curia diocesana.

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VATICAN CITY
National Catholic Reporter

Cindy Wooden Catholic News Service | Nov. 19, 2014

VATICAN CITY
In what the Vatican bank described as recognition that it has established serious measures to prevent money laundering, it announced the Italian government has promised to return 23 million euros (U.S. $29 million) that had been blocked for more than three years.

Even though the Italian government in 2011 said it was releasing the funds, the Italians believed “issues regarding customer due diligence remained unsolved” and so held on to the funds, said a statement Tuesday from the Institute for the Works of Religion, the formal name of what is commonly called the Vatican bank.

The Italian treasury police seized the funds, which the institute had deposited in a Rome bank, during a money-laundering investigation. The Vatican repeatedly insisted the deposit was legitimate and that the Vatican bank was committed to “full transparency” in its operations.

“The repatriation” of the funds was possible thanks to “the introduction of a fully fledged anti-money laundering and supervisory system in the Holy See in 2013,” Tuesday’s statement said.

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AUSTRALIA
Sky News

A former Hobart school headmaster who investigated reports of student sexual abuse will give evidence at a royal commission.

John Bendall was the principal at elite boys’ school Hutchins in the early 1990s when reports were received from men claiming to have been groomed and sexually assaulted while students at the
school in the 1960s.

The Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse has been told that while Dr Bendall found at least three staff members had ‘an unhealthy interest in boys’ in the 1960s, the school board refused to acknowledge the claims of abuse or issue an apology.

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MINNESOTA
Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests

For immediate release: Wednesday, Nov. 19

Statement by Barbara Dorris of St. Louis, Outreach Director of SNAP, the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests ( 314 503 0003, SNAPdorris@gmail.com )

Bail has been set at $1 million for a twice-accused predator priest. For the safety of kids, we hope he stays behind bars until trial. And we hope others will call Roseau County law enforcement agencies now if they have any inklings or information about Fr. Joseph Jeyapaul’s crimes.

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NEW YORK
Courthouse News Service

By ADAM KLASFELD

MANHATTAN (CN) – Once the Yiddish paper known as the “conscience of the ghetto,” the now-bilingual Jewish Daily Forward sparked righteous fury from a Brooklyn father who claims the paper smeared him with illegal wiretaps because he blew the whistle on rape in a devout and insular community.

The defamation complaint that Samuel Kellner, of Borough Park, filed Friday stems from allegations that cantor Baruch Lebovits sexually abused Kellner’s 12-year-old son and other children.

Indicted in 2008, Lebovits was convicted in Brooklyn two years later, but he was freed on appeal because of evidence withheld from his lawyers. The disgraced cantor then went after Kellner with allegedly doctored recordings depicting him as an extortionist.

For a time, the Brooklyn District Attorney’s office sought to retry Lebovits while simultaneously prosecuting his accuser. The charges against Kellner were ultimately dropped as shaky, while Lebovits copped to lesser counts that shuttled him in and out of prison within 86 days this year.

Before Lebovits pleaded guilty, his family allegedly tried to revive the case against Kellner by leaking illicitly recorded tapes – including lawyer-client communications – to The Forward’s Paul Berger, who ran excerpts in a November 2013 article.

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WASHINGTON
Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests

For immediate release: Wednesday, Nov. 19

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

Controversy continues to swirl around decisions by Seattle Catholic officials that victims and concerned parishioners consider deceitful, hurtful and reckless.

Today, the National Catholic Reporter writes about the recent cases of Fr. Harold Quigg and the defrocked and recently deceased Fr. David Jaeger.

Parishioners link the two cases, “viewing both as indicative of a lack of archdiocesan diligence in regard to priests found to be credibly accused of sexual abuse of children,” NCR reports.

Regarding Quigg: It’s not enough to say “oops, we let a credibly accused predator priest keep ministering.” Someone must be disciplined. Otherwise, nothing changes.

Regarding Jaegar: Honoring admitted predators also discourages other victims, witnesses and whistleblowers from reporting offenders and preventing crimes. This kind of selfish, callous church event is one reason clergy sex crimes and cover ups keep happening.

Here’s the bottom line: Clerics can make it harder or easier for people to disclose suspected child sex crimes. The two or three dozen clerics involved in these controversies are making it harder.

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MILWAUKEE (WI)
The Republic

THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
November 19, 2014

MILWAUKEE — A former priest accused of sexual abuse won’t be getting any money from the Archdiocese of Milwaukee in its bankruptcy case.

Federal bankruptcy Judge Susan Kelley has tossed out a claim from Marvin Knighton, who says he was wrongly defrocked and money he contributed to his retirement account should be returned to him.

Knighton was charged with child sexual abuse in 2002 but acquitted by a jury the next year. The church still removed him from the priesthood, however, saying its investigation found two allegations against him had merit.

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MINNESOTA
KAAL

A judge has set bond at $1 million cash for a Roman Catholic priest extradited from his native India on accusations of sexually assaulting a 14-year-old girl in Minnesota.

The Rev. Joseph Jeyapaul was arraigned on criminal sexual conduct charges in Roseau County District Court Wednesday. Prosecutors also charged the 59-year-old priest with assaulting a second victim.

Prosecutors say he raped a girl multiple times in 2004 and 2005, starting when she was 14. Jeyapaul has denied the allegations.

Jeyapaul came to Minnesota in 2004 and served at the Blessed Sacrament Church in Greenbush at the time of the alleged abuse.

He returned to India in 2005 and while he was overseas, the Diocese of Crookston received allegations that he had an inappropriate relationship with a 16-year-old girl.

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WASHINGTON
National Catholic Reporter

Dan Morris-Young | Nov. 19, 2014

An overflow funeral Mass with some 20 celebrants and choir at St. Joseph Parish in Seattle followed by a catered reception for a former priest who admitted to sexually abusing boys has left some parishioners confused and angry and Seattle Archbishop J. Peter Sartain talking about revisiting archdiocesan protocols for funerals of priests removed from ministry for child sex abuse.

Those supportive of the liturgy and previous evening’s vigil for admitted abuser David Jaeger, 70, emphasized church teaching on mercy and forgiveness, honoring a friend, hope in the Resurrection, and paying respect for Jaeger’s pastoral work, notably his ministry to the gay and lesbian community and people with AIDS.

The vigil and Mass were held July 28-29 at St. Joseph after family and planners received permission from its pastor, Jesuit Fr. John Whitney. Whitney said they had told him that Seattle’s other Jesuit-staffed parish where Jaeger attended, St. Ignatius, would be too small to accommodate the number of people expected. (St. Joseph seats about 700.)

The Vatican accepted Jaeger’s petition to be laicized in 2005 after it had been revealed he admitted to sexually exploiting up to 10 boys. Jaeger died July 22 from complications of Alzheimer’s disease, according to an obituary in The Seattle Times.

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MINNESOTA
DL-Online

By Kevin Bonham

ROSEAU, Minn. – Cash bail of at least $1 million was set today for a Roman Catholic priest who fled to his native India eight years ago to avoid facing felony criminal sexual conduct charges stemming from incidents involving teenage girls between 2004 and 2005.

The Rev. Joseph Jeyapaul is facing two counts of first degree criminal sexual conduct, each of which carries a maximum penalty of 30 years imprisonment or $40,000 fine, or both. He also is facing one count of fourth-degree criminal sexual conduct, which is subject to a maximum penalty of 10 years or a $20,000 fine.

He is accused of sexually assaulting a parish member in Greenbush, Minn., when the victim was 14 and 15 years old, in 2004 and 2005. At the time, Jeyapaul was administrator of Blessed Sacrament Catholic Church in Greenbush, as well as St. Joseph’s Catholic Church in Middle River, Minn., and St. Edward’s Catholic Church in Karlstad, Minn.

In 2007, the charges were amended to include similar allegations involving a second girl who was 16 during the same time period.

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LATEINAMERIKA
Katholisches

[Mass exodus of Latin American Catholics to Evangelicals]

(New York) Die Katholische Kirche erlebt in Lateinamerika einen ungeahnten Aderlaß. Es findet ein Massenexodus statt. Das Phänomen einer starken Fluktuation ist aus den USA bekannt. Jeder dritte getaufte US-Katholik kehrt der Kirche im Laufe seines Lebens den Rücken und wechselt die Konfession oder Religion. Umgekehrt findet eine Zuwanderung aus anderen Konfessionen und Religionen statt. Getaufte Katholiken und Konvertiten machen zusammen ein Drittel der US-Bevölkerung aus. Tatsächlich als Katholiken bekennen sich aber nur 24 Prozent.

In Lateinamerika ist das Phänomen neuer, weshalb auch von einer US-Amerikanisierung die Rede ist. Richtig sichtbar wurde das Phänomen seit den 80er Jahren, als evangelikale Gruppen aus den USA Lateinamerika überschwemmten. Es hieß, die USA wollten sich nach dem Ende der Militärdiktaturen neue zuverlässige Partner aufbauen und dazu grundlegende Strukturen der lateinamerikanischen Gesellschaft verändern. Inzwischen gibt es nach US-amerikanischem Vorbild eine Vielzahl eigenständiger lateinamerikanischer evangelikaler Gemeinschaften, die Katholiken anziehen. Die Entwicklung wird im Zusammenhang mit soziopolitischen Veränderungen gesehen, die mit dem wirtschaftlichen Aufstieg einiger Länder, vor allem Brasiliens einhergehe. Es sei der Wohlstandsprotestantismus, der die aufstrebende Mittelschicht anspreche und jene Teile der Unterschicht, die den Anschluß an die Mittelschicht suchen, ganz unabhängig von den realen Aussichten.

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ESPANA
RAGAP

[Government official Santiago Perez said police are planning two lines of public inquiry to shed light on the degree of involvement of clergy and other church workers in allegations of child sexual abuse. Potential accomplices are also being investigation. However, all facets of the investigation are currently under a gag order.]

El pasado lunes, RAGAP informaba sobre el escándalo que sacudía a la Iglesia por un abuso sexual gay de varios sacerdotes y personas laicas a un chico que, cuando sucedieron los hechos, era menor de edad.

Ahora, el subdelegado del Gobierno en Granada, Santiago Pérez, ha informado que existen dos líneas de investigación policial con la intención de arrojar luz al grado de participación de los religiosos. Igualmente, se está investigando a los posibles cómplices de los hechos, así como si puede haber otros afectados, aunque de momento todo está bajo secreto de sumario. De momento, se habla de una docena de detenidos, los cuales vivían en diversos puntos de la provincia de Granada.

Los periodistas preguntaron a Pérez si se cree que pudiese haber una red de pederastia, a lo que éste respondió que “se ha abierto el proceso de investigación y todo está bajo secreto de sumario, pero no me atrevería a decir tanto, simplemente hay unas conductas que se están investigando y a partir de ahí tendremos resultados bastante pronto”, ha explicado, según recoge Europa Press.

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AUSTRALIA
Courier-Mail

Victim tells of 20-year wait for apology as Royal Commission hears of sex abuse claims at exclusive school

A  VICTIM of child sexual abuse at Hobart’s Hutchins School has told a royal commission he was insulted when the school sent him an apology just weeks ago — after more than 20 years of requests.

The Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse yesterday held its first day of public hearings into the exclusive boys’ school.

The witness, known by the pseudonym AOA, repeatedly fought tears as he recounted how he was repeatedly sexually abused by headmaster David

Ralph Lawrence during private French tutoring in the mid-1960s.

AOA was one of four former Hutchins students who gave evidence that such abuse, involving multiple members of staff, was rife at the school during the 1960s.

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ESPANA
RIA Novosti

Diez religiosos y dos seglares de la diócesis de Granada han sido apartados de sus funciones tras la intervención directa del papa Francisco tras una denuncia de pederastia.

El escándalo afecta a 12 personas, 3 sacerdotes sobre los que pesa una acusación de abuso sexual a menores, 7 religiosos y 2 seglares que están acusados de encubrir el delito.

Se trata, hasta el momento, del mayor escándalo de abusos sexuales del clero descubierto en España y la reacción del Papa no se ha hecho esperar.

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SPAIN
El Pais

VALME CORTÉS
Granada 17 NOV 2014

The Archbishop of Granada has removed 10 priests from their duties after they were accused of sexually abusing a young man when he was a minor.

The case was reported directly to the Vatican by the alleged victim, prompting a personal response from Pope Francis, and is now being investigated by a Granada court.

According to website Religión Digital, the young man had spent years “trying to bury the horror of all of that [abuse] in the depths of his memory.” But motivated by “the possible damage” that “other boys and girls could be suffering,” he wrote a five-page letter to the pope.

Then, on August 10, “Daniel” (not his real name) received a phone call from an unknown number while he was driving. “Who is this?” asked the man, now in his 20s. “Good afternoon son, this is Father Jorge,” the voice on the phone said, according to a number of sources with whom Religión Digital spoke. “Sorry, you must have made a mistake, I don’t know Father Jorge.” “Well, it’s Pope Francis.”

Perhaps unsurprisingly, the man was left dumbstruck by the call. “Are you still there?” the pope asked. “Son, calm yourself, I have read your letter a number of times. I couldn’t be more upset about it and feel huge pain on reading your story. I want to ask forgiveness in the name of all of the Church of Christ. Forgive this terrible sin and terrible crime that you have suffered.”

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MINNESOTA
Canonical Consultation

11/18/2014

Jennifer Haselberger

Yesterday, Emily Gurnon of the Pioneer Press reported that Father Curtis Wehmeyer was charged in Chippewa County, WI, with second-degree sexual assault arising from contact with an unconscious boy while on a camping trip in 2011. I was not surprised to learn that additional charges had been filed against Father Wehmeyer, who pleaded guilty in 2012 to charges related to his molestation of two minor males, as well as to seventeen counts of possession of child pornography. It has long been anticipated that additional victims would come forward.

I was not even surprised to learn that the new charges involved sexual contact alleged to have occurred during the time in which the Archdiocese of Saint Paul and Minneapolis was supposedly monitoring Father Wehmeyer’s behavior, and at approximately the same time that Father Kevin McDonough was opining that Father Wehmeyer was ‘not really all that interested in an actual sexual encounter’.

What I did find surprising, however, was the final paragraph of the article, which stated,

‘The Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis has requested that
he [Father Wehmeyer] be defrocked. Local leaders are awaiting
a decision from the Vatican.’

This, I find mind-boggling. How can it be possible that this case has been languishing in Rome for two years, without a determination?

It is not as though there is an unresolved question as to his guilt. Father Wehmeyer pleaded guilty- with a straight plea- and the transcript of his plea allocution was included in the materials sent to the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith in November of 2012. At that court appearance, which occurred earlier in the same month, Father Wehmeyer admitted to the acts of which he had been accused, the criminal nature of those acts, and acknowledged that the victims were minors at the time that the abuse occurred. Furthermore, he denied that there were any mitigating circumstances that might have impacted his culpability.

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ITALIA
Corriere della Sera

[Father Marco Ghilardi, former parish priest in Serina, is accused of sexually abusing a country girl who is now 19. The first hearing is scheduled for June 24. He is accused of molesting the girl since she was age 6.]

Si difenderà a processo don Marco Ghilardi, ex curato della parrocchia di Serina, accusato di abusi sessuali su una ragazza del paese che oggi ha 19 anni. Difeso dall’avvocato Roberto Bruni, il sacerdote ha sempre proclamato la sua innocenza. La prima udienza è stata fissata per il 24 giugno.

Fu la ragazza a denunciarlo poche settimane dopo aver compiuto i 18 anni. Lo accusa di averla molestata da quando aveva 6 anni, nel 2001, un anno dopo che lui era arrivato a Serina, fino al 2008, nei primi anni delle scuole medie.

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ESPANA
El Mundo

[The pope corners the archbishop.]

Estaba convencido de que, como siempre, los trapos sucios se iban a seguir lavando en casa. Pero, esta vez, la estrategia del ocultamiento le falló al arzobispo de Granada, Francisco Javier Martínez, y la bomba del mayor escándalo de abusos sexuales del clero en España le estalló por sorpresa: el caso de las 12 personas, 10 religiosos y dos seglares, apartadas de sus funciones tras la intervención del Papa. De todas ellas, tres son curas, sobre los que pesa la acusación de de ser los autores de los abusos. Otros siete religiosos y dos seglares serían los encubridores.

Ante la tormenta, la reacción de monseñor Martínez ha sido enrocarse y expresar victimismo. No da la cara. Ni ante los medios, a los que quiso acallar con un simple comunicado repleto de medias verdades. Ni ante los propios obispos. Ayer, sus compañeros en el episcopado, reunidos en asamblea plenaria, lo esperaban para que los informase a fondo de todo lo sucedido, sus causas y sus consecuencias, en la «reservada», una reunión totalmente secreta que mantuvieron los prelados.

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ESPANA
Archidiocesis de Granada

Ante la información publicada el lunes 17 de noviembre en algunos medios de comunicación.

Desde el momento en que se tuvo noticia fehaciente de la acusación presentada ante la Santa Sede por un joven de Granada, de haber sufrido abusos sexuales por parte de un grupo de sacerdotes de la diócesis, este arzobispado ha seguido escrupulosamente el procedimiento previsto para estos casos por la disciplina canónica, que está a disposición de todos en la Home Page de la página web de la propia Santa Sede.

De acuerdo con esa praxis, se han seguido los trámites establecidos en la misma para verificar si la mencionada acusación tenía verosimilitud. Apenas llevada a cabo esa investigación preliminar, que no tiene aún carácter judicial, este arzobispado impuso las medidas cautelares a los sacerdotes directamente acusados de los abusos, retirándolos del ejercicio del ministerio sacerdotal.

Igualmente remitió las conclusiones de la investigación a la Santa Sede. Al mismo tiempo, y dado que el denunciante es hoy persona mayor de edad, y que por tanto sólo él tenía capacidad para formular denuncia judicial, una vez se supo que ésta había sido interpuesta, el arzobispado se puso a disposición de la autoridad judicial para colaborar en lo que fuese necesario, lo que ha venido haciendo hasta el momento.

El arzobispado, al igual que la multitud de fieles cristianos, es consciente de que la inmensa mayoría de los sacerdotes vive ejemplarmente el ejercicio de su ministerio, y dan un precioso testimonio, a veces heroico, de entrega a Dios y a los hermanos. Al cuerpo entero de la Iglesia le hieren y le duelen inmensamente que se puedan producir escándalos de esta naturaleza, cuya certeza y alcance tendrá que determinar finalmente la autoridad judicial en la investigación abierta.

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ESPANA
ACI Prensa

MADRID, 18 Nov. 14 / 11:28 am (ACI).- El Arzobispado de Granada (España) ha informado que tres sacerdotes de la diócesis han sido suspendidos “a divinis” tras haber sido acusados por un joven mayor de edad que habría sido víctima de abusos sexuales hace unos diez años. En la investigación que se ha iniciado ya, habría otras siete personas involucradas.

“Desde el momento en que se tuvo noticia fehaciente de la acusación presentada ante la Santa Sede por un joven de Granada (España), de haber sufrido abusos sexuales por parte de un grupo de sacerdotes de la diócesis, este arzobispado ha seguido escrupulosamente el procedimiento previsto para estos casos por la disciplina canónica, que está a disposición de todos en la Home Page de la página web de la propia Santa Sede”, afirma una nota del Arzobispado de Granada.

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SPANIEN
Blick

Madrid – Papst Franziskus setzt den Kampf gegen den sexuellen Missbrauch von Kindern in der Kirche fort. Nach einem Klagebrief eines Missbrauchsopfers an den Papst wurden in Spanien mehrere Priester suspendiert.

Nach jüngsten Beschuldigungen eines heute erwachsenen Mannes aus Granada habe man intern ermittelt und die Betroffenen entpflichtet, teilte die Erzdiözese Granada im Süden des Landes am Montagabend mit.

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MALTA
Malta Independent

Dominican priest Father Charles Fenech this morning was seen entering and exiting the law courts building to attend a case separate from the one of alleged sexual abuse.

According to sources, the priest has attended many sittings for this particular case of defamation.

However, he has failed to appear three times to be charged of alleged sexual abuse, presenting medical certificates on each occasion of absence.

The Church Response team had known about the alleged sexual abuse claims for eight years but no outcome had been reached.

The next sitting in which Father Fenech is expected to appear in court on the sexual abuse charges is scheduled for 17 December.

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NORTH DAKOTA
Valley News Live

By Ashley Bishop

Those involved with the justice system in North Dakota continue to look for a former West Fargo priest, who faces two charges of allegedly touching 11 and 14-year-old boys. Former West Fargo priest Fernando Sayasaya fled the country after the allegations came out more than 15 years ago.

The sexual abuse charges against Fernando Sayasaya were filed in December of 2002. This was five years after he started serving at Blessed Sacrament Church in West Fargo. He is believed to have fled the United States in 1998.

Cass County State’s Attorney Birch Burdick says they have an idea where Sayasay is.

“We believe him to be in the Philippines and there is an extradition treaty with the Philippines,” said Burdick.

Burdick says his office has taken the actions needed to extradite Sayasaya. The federal government is now in charge of finding the former priest and Burdick is playing the waiting game.

“We’re waiting to hear that he has been found and he can be extradited back and in the control of authorities. As far as we know that has not happened. When they locate him they will notify us,” said Burdick.

Burdick says he gets updated about Sayasaya search periodically; his last update was in September.

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AUSTRALIA
The Australian

NOVEMBER 20, 2014

Matthew Denholm
Tasmania Correspondent
Hobart

AN elite Hobart boys’ school has apologised to victims of sexual abuse by four teachers in the 1960s, but is accused of “covering up” and “whitewashing” the crimes for decades.

The Hutchins Anglican School yesterday admitted to the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse that four former students who gave evidence “were sexually abused by members of staff in the 1960s”.

However, evidence yesterday suggested many more boys may have been abused, with one witness referring to concerns a “pedophile ring” had operated.

The commission heard detailed allegations of sexual abuse by four former teachers, including ex-headmaster David Lawrence, and claims of inappropriate conduct by two others.

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MALTA
Malta Today

Fr Charles Fenech, the priest accused of sexually abusing a woman, today appeared in another court case brought against him, heard behind closed doors.

The criminal defamation case, filed on a report by Edgar Bonnici Cachia, is also being heard behind closed doors.

Upon emerging from the court, Fenech refused to reply to questions put to him by the press as to whether he had any comments to make on the grave accusations filed against him.

Fenech is facing charges of violent sexual abuse against a mentally unstable patient and holding the woman against her will and committing indecent acts in public.

One of Fenech’s alleged victims who spoke to MaltaToday on condition of anonymity, said that though the Church has known about the allegations for years, Fenech has never been removed from his position as director of the Kerygma Movement.

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UNITED STATES
NECN

Anne Barrett of BishopAccountability.org talks about the unfinished business Francis will face when he visits Philadelphia in 2015.

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AUSTRALIA
9 News

The head of a religious group running services for Aboriginal people in the Northern Territory for 20 years knew nothing of horrendous abuse at one of its homes until a national inquiry was underway.

The conduct of Reverend Trevor Leggott, general director of Australian Indigenous Ministries (AIM) was roundly criticised on Monday by two barristers representing people who were horribly abused at the Retta Dixon home for Aboriginal children in the 1960s and 70s.

The sex abuse royal commission in September uncovered horrendous sexual, psychological and physical abuse of Aboriginal children – some of them very young – at the home.

But Rev Leggott admitted he was not really aware of the abuse until he read witness statements before the commission.

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AUSTRALIA
ABC News

A group which represented Ballarat survivors of child abuse at the United Nations hopes the UN acknowledges the harm survivors have suffered.

Earlier this month, the Care Leavers Australia Network (CLAN) spoke to the UN committee against torture, which is due to hand down its report next week.

CLAN alleges children in care were used for experiments and suffered electric shocks.

The group’s Leonie Sheedy said it was important the UN acknowledged the various forms of abuse inflicted upon children in care.

“I want them to acknowledge in their final report that we do have the royal commission about sexual usage but there are more ways to harm children than sexual usage – it’s the brutality, it’s the beatings, it’s the unpaid labour,” she said.

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AUSTRALIA
The Australian

NOVEMBER 19, 2014

SIX teachers at Hobart’s elite Hutchins boy school engaged in sexual abuse of, or inappropriate conduct involving, young students in the 1960s, a royal commission has heard.

The allegations, and complaints of cover-up and stonewalling by the Anglican school, were detailed during a hearing earlier today of the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse.

In response, counsel for the exclusive school, Neil Clelland QC, told the commission it now accepted that four former students due to give evidence “were sexually abused by members of staff in the 1960s”.

“The current (school) board wishes to apologise for the hurt and distress caused,” Mr Clelland told the commission.

Mr Clelland also offered a particular apology to a victim, known only as AOA, for the school’s failure to adequately respond to his claims that he was groomed and sexually abused by the school’s then-headmaster David Ralph Lawrence.

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AUSTRALIA
The Advocate

It took twenty years of requests for an elite Hobart school to apologise to a student who was sexually abused by its headmaster in the 1960s, a Royal Commission has been told.

Sitting in Tasmania for the first time, the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse was told the Hutchins School initially denied of a former student’s plea for an apology.

The former student, known as AOA, was sexually abused by former headmaster David Ralph Lawrence, and maintained contact with him after leaving the school and the state, counsel assisting the commission Angus Stewart, SC, said.

Mr Stewart said the school had only apologised to AOA last month, despite reporting the abuse in 1993, as well as media reports and the assistance of federal MPs.

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VATICAN CITY
Catholic Culture

Pope Francis has named René Brülhart the president of the Financial Information Authority, a Vatican body created in 2010 to combat illegal financial activities.

Brülhart directed Liechtenstein’s financial intelligence until 2012, when he was appointed the Financial Information Authority’s director.

In November 2013, Pope Francis assigned the authority three functions: “prudential supervision and regulation of those entities that carry out professionally a financial activity; supervision and regulation for the prevention and countering of money laundering and financing of terrorism; [and] financial intelligence.”

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UNITED KINGDOM
Press TV (Iran)

[with video]

Founder of NAPAC says the UK should adopt a zero tolerance approach to people who abuse children.

Chief executive of National Association for People Abused in Childhood Peter Saunders says that Britain needs to have a complete revision in child protection policies and procedures.

Saunders adds it’s good to have a child protection ministry or a child protection dedicated police force, abusing children is a massive social problem.

A report, published by a group of British lawmakers working on the Rotherham exploitation scandal, said on Tuesday child protection systems in Britain must be reviewed.

11 British MPs are investigating allegations of child sex abuse in Rotherham.

Their report described Rotherham Council’s protection policies as “divorced from reality”, thus enabling abusers to continue their crime.

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MONTANA
KAJ18

Sanjay Talwani – MTN News

HELENA – The Catholic Diocese of Helena and several creditors have has taken a step that could settle hundreds of allegations of sexual abuse.

A joint filing in federal bankruptcy court on Monday by the Diocese and a committee of creditors indicated the church plans to set up a $16 million trust fund for victims that would ultimately be administered by an agent of the court.

Most of that money will come from insurance. In two different lawsuits, 362 people have alleged abuse at the hands of church employees. The Diocese declared bankruptcy in January.

The plan still requires final approval from other creditors with claims against the Diocese as well as from Montana’s bankruptcy judge.

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MONTANA
Reuters

BY LAURA ZUCKERMAN
Tue Nov 18, 2014

(Reuters) – A Montana Roman Catholic diocese has asked a judge to approve a bankruptcy reorganization plan that includes a $16.4 million settlement for hundreds of adults claiming childhood sexual abuse by clergy and lay workers, attorneys said on Tuesday.

The Helena diocese, serving some 44,500 Catholics in 57 parishes and 38 missions in western Montana, including the state capital, is the 11th U.S. diocese to file for Chapter 11 protection since 2004 due to liabilities stemming from abuse claims.

Under the agreement, which must be approved by a U.S. bankruptcy court, the church would contribute $2 million and its insurance carriers $14.4 million to settle claims brought by 362 people who filed two lawsuits against the diocese in 2011, said Dan Fasy, an attorney with one of four firms representing the plaintiffs.

The settlement was reached after years of negotiated mediation between the church and victims of childhood sexual abuse.

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VATICAN CITY
Catholic News Agency

Vatican City, Nov 18, 2014 / 09:01 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- Though the Vatican’s communications reform committee met last week, it is still to be seen how the committee’s proposals will be incorporated within a larger reform of the Roman Curia.

The committee met for three days last week, and began an exploration of the Vatican’s media branches; but no official communication on the meeting has been delivered.

According to sources, the committee, which is chaired by Chris Patten and includes both curial officials and external experts, has visited Vatican Radio, Vatican Television, Libreria Editrice Vaticana, and L’Osservatore Romano.

At the present time, the reform idea is one of integration and consolidation, so as to streamline procedures, and to generate greater revenue.

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UNITED STATES
Prensa Latina

By Federico Martínez, La Prensa Contributor

The call arrived late afternoon: A 15-year-old Latina in Toledo had been brutally, sexually assaulted. She was suffering from severe trauma and to make the situation more challenging, she didn’t speak English.

Jessica Torres-García, whose job as an outreach coordinator for the YWCA of Northwest Ohio’s H.O.P.E. Center is to try and help sexual assault victims in the Latino community, rushed out of her office to meet the victim and her mother at a local hospital.

“When I get to the hospital I’ll talk to the victim and her mother to find out what happened,” said Mrs. Torres-García, who notes Lucas County, lacks trained bilingual health care providers and law enforcement officials. “I will serve as a translator for the police and hospital staff.”

Mrs. Torres-García will also make sure the victim and her mother are aware of their legal rights, what community resources are available to them and if they desire, she’ll accompany them to follow up doctor visits and help them fill out police reports. There is also a women’s shelter at the YWCA.

According to national figures only 40 percent of all rapes are reported to law enforcement. Incidents of rape are even less likely to be reported in the Latino community. Lucas County does not record the number of Hispanic women who are sexually assaulted. Those statistics only include categories for white and black people. …

“There’s still such a stigma to sexual assault in the Latino community,” said Mrs. Torres-García. “Religion plays a role in it – the Catholic Church puts an emphasis on being pure so if a woman gets raped they are often too embarrassed or ashamed to tell anybody.

“Victims tend to turn to family members,” said Mrs. Torres-García, but most rapes are conducted by family members and relatives, so there is often pressure by the family to keep quiet.

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NEW HAMPSHIRE
Concord Monitor

By JEREMY BLACKMAN
Monitor staff
Monday, November 17, 2014
(Published in print: Tuesday, November 18, 2014)

A former Concord man with ties to Trinity Baptist Church who is accused of molesting his stepdaughter two decades ago went on trial again yesterday in Merrimack County Superior Court, five months after his first appearance ended in a mistrial.

Daniel Leaf, 55, of Tilton is charged with two counts of aggravated felonious sexual assault. His stepdaughter, Tina Anderson, claims he abused her between 1990 and 1992, beginning when she was about 9 years old. Anderson disclosed the abuse in 2010 during a rape investigation involving a fellow congregant of the Concord church.

County prosecutor Wayne Coull told jurors yesterday that Anderson had tried to come forward when she was young, but she was told by church officials “essentially to shut up.” Leaf’s attorneys counter that he had no contact with Anderson after 1991, and that Anderson has previously denied the abuse.

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AUSTRALIA
7 News

By Andrew Drummond
November 19, 2014

A schoolboy partially blinded by smoke in Tasmania’s worst bushfires needed one-on-one tuition.

In the shadow of Black Tuesday in 1967, sexual abuse began for a Year 6 student at Hobart’s elite Hutchins boys’ school, a royal commission has been told.

Now aged 60 and giving evidence under the pseudonym AOE, the man has told how music teacher Ron Thomas touched and rubbed against him while the pair sat at a piano.

“I would try to get up and run away but Thomas would catch me and hold me on the floor face down,” AOE said.

It was just one of many stories heard by the Royal Commission Into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse, which opened its first public hearing in Hobart on Wednesday.

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OHIO
Columbus Dispatch

By Randy Ludlow

Columbus lawyer John K. Fitch calls it “a horrific injustice for children who are raped or otherwise sexually abused.”

If victims and their parents turn to court seeking pain-and-suffering damages from their assailants, and those who enabled them, they are limited by Ohio law to the recovery of $250,000.

“A child could be raped 50 times and limited to $5,000 per rape under Ohio law. It’s outrageous,” Fitch said.

He is asking the Ohio Supreme Court to rule that state law unconstitutionally deprives childhood sexual-abuse victims of adequate compensation for mental trauma that could last a lifetime.

His appeal involves a case last year in which a Delaware County jury awarded $3.5 million in “ non-economic” damages to a woman who was 15 years old when she was raped by her pastor at Delaware Grace Brethren Church in Sunbury.

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CHICAGO (IL)
Daily Herald

By Don Babwin
Associated Press

Blase Cupich became the archbishop of Chicago on Tuesday after his predecessor handed him a bishop’s staff and relinquished the chair that symbolizes the leadership of the nation’s third-largest diocese.

During a Mass at Holy Name Cathedral, the transfer of power was completed as Cardinal Francis George, who is battling cancer, stepped aside to retire after being the spiritual leader of more than 2 million Catholics since 1997.

Later, Cupich, 65, spoke forcefully on the sexual abuse scandal that has plagued the church, including Chicago’s archdiocese. In one of his last official acts, George released files on three dozen priests who had been accused of sexual abuse in the last 60 years and whose crimes were in many cases concealed by the archdiocese.

“Working together to protect children, to bring healing to victim survivors and to rebuild the trust that has been shattered in our communities by our mishandling is our sacred duty,” he said, “as is holding each other accountable, for that is what we pledge to do.”

As he comes to an archdiocese that has shrunk in recent years and been forced to close schools amid declining enrollment, Cupich also spoke of the “formidable task” of passing on the faith to the next generation and his desire to bring young people back to the faith.

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AUSTRALIA
ABC News

By Sam Ikin and Rosemary Bolger

A national investigation into child sexual abuse has heard it was widely known that sexual abuse was occurring at a Hobart private boys school in the 1960s.

At the first public hearings in Tasmania for the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse, witnesses have broken down giving evidence.

They spoke about the abuse by former staff at Hutchins School and their anger at the school for not dealing with the issue.

One told the hearing that as late as last year, the school was attempting to whitewash what had happened.

Four former students gave evidence about the sexual abuse they suffered at the hands of school staff, including former headmaster David Lawrence.

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VATICAN CITY
Crux

By Inés San Martín
Vatican correspondent November 18, 2014

ROME — A letter sent to Pope Francis has triggered Spain’s largest clerical sex abuse scandal to date, leading to charges being filed against 10 priests after a college professor wrote to the pontiff to describe sexual abuse he claims to have suffered as a child.

Upon receiving the letter, Francis reportedly telephoned the victim on Aug. 10. In Spanish media accounts, the victim is identified as “Daniel”; his real name has been withheld for privacy reasons.

In the victim’s Aug. 10 conversation with Francis, according to media reports, the pontiff apologized in the name of the Church for the abuse he suffered and encouraged the victim to file civil charges against the priests who he said abused him.

According to Spanish reports, a subsequent police investigation uncovered a criminal network of pedophiles that involves at least 12 people among priests and laity from different parishes in the Spanish city of Granada.

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

UNITED STATES
Huffington Post

Greg Archer

We live in an entertainment era filled with overdoses of testosterone. Let’s face it, even Stallone, Schwarzenegger and Willis refuse to let go of the bravura that catapulted them toward stardom decades ago, and female protagonists — really strong and embraceable ones — are often overshadowed by their male counterparts. We have made glorious headway in television, however — Viola Davis, Julianna Margulies and Edie Falco are among the ladies who have captured our attention in the last decade.

And, of course, we can always find compelling female characters in books, in all the forms they arrive in these days.

That said, it’s refreshing to discover a noteworthy female protagonist in Cate Harlow. She’s the fiery private investigator in author Kristen Houghton’s latest endeavor, For I Have Sinned, a memorable read peppered with sass, shame and the sex controversies surrounding Catholic priests. That may sound like a tall order to fill, but Houghton manages to thread together an engaging and often suspenseful outing.

Only those who’ve had their ears clogged with unholy water during the last three decades would be surprised to learn of the brouhaha surrounding Catholic sex abuse cases. Numerous allegations, investigations, trials and convictions of these child sex abuse cases first began chipping away at the church’s spiritual foundation decades ago, but it wasn’t until 2002, when the Boston Globe, began a deep investigation into the matter, that the scandals involving priests and other Catholic officials, spawned more headlines and regularly made the evening news. That a bevy of cases were brought against certain titans of the Catholic church who never reported sexual abuse allegations, preferring to, instead, save face and move abusive priests to other parishes, is yet another sin could forget — or forgive. Since 2001, however, we’ve uncovered more news that over the last 50 years, there have been allegations of roughly 3,000 priests.

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

NEW MEXICO
ABQ Journal

By Olivier Uyttebrouck / Journal Staff Writer
PUBLISHED: Wednesday, November 19, 2014

Lawsuits filed against the Archdiocese of Santa Fe this week allege that four men, ages 46 to 52, and a 54-year-old woman, were abused by priests as children.

The five priests named all were the subject of previous lawsuits dating to the 1990s, including Jason Sigler, 76, who returned to Albuquerque last year after completing a prison term in Michigan.

The new actions bring to 30 the total number of lawsuits filed against the archdiocese by Albuquerque attorney Brad Hall since October 2011. Of those, 14 have been settled for undisclosed amounts, he said.

Each lawsuit alleges that the archdiocese “knew or should have known” that the priest had been accused of prior sexual misbehavior, but church leaders did nothing to prevent attacks or warn parishioners.

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

CALIFORNIA
Merced Sun-Star

BY ROB PARSONSRPARSONS@MERCEDSUNSTAR.COM
11/18/2014

LOS BANOS

Parishioners of St. Joseph’s Catholic Church in Los Banos expect a new pastor to take the reins of the parish next month, replacing the Rev. Robert Gamel, who remains under investigation by the Los Banos Police Department for possible possession of child pornography.

The Rev. Efrain Martinez will transition into the Los Banos church formally by Dec. 15, according to Teresa Dominguez, chancellor for the Roman Catholic Diocese of Fresno. Dominguez confirmed the appointment Tuesday in an interview with the Merced Sun-Star.

Dominguez stopped short of calling the appointment “permanent,” saying a shortage of priests in California makes it difficult for church officials to keep all positions filled.

“But it’s for the stability of the parish and the appointment is definitely expected to last for an extended amount of time,” Dominguez said.

Few details were available Tuesday regarding the new pastor, but Dominguez said he has been ordained for several years and is moving to the area from Selma.

News of the appointment came about three months after the Los Banos Police Department confirmed an investigation into Gamel, the parish’s former leader. Gamel, 64, has been under investigation for allegedly possessing nude photographs of a teenage parishioner on at least two occasions.

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

FLORIDA
NBC Miami

The Archdiocese of Miami is being sued for negligence after a Catholic high school teacher was convicted for having a sexual relationship with a student who was 16 years old at the time.

John Farrell, a former CGHS math teacher, is currently doing jail time after being convicted on 20 counts of unlawful sexual activity with a minor.

The lawsuit, filed by the now 18-year-old victim, alleges the Archdiocese of Miami, Archbishop Thomas Wenski and Cardinal Gibbons High School were negligent in supervising Farrell and other administrators who engaged in similar activities. According to the lawsuit, Farrell knew that various CGHS administrators had engaged in sexual relationships with other students and that one of those administrators had married a former student. The lawsuit claims Farrell engaged in the relationship knowing that he would not be reprimanded by the school.

“Farrell believed that other teachers were having relationships with students or had had them in the past and that the administration looked the other way, so that it was okay for him to do it,” said Jeff Herman, the victim’s attorney. “Obviously, that’s a big concern.”

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

PENNSYLVANIA
Big Trial

TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 18, 2014

By Ralph Cipriano
for Bigtrial.net

Under a stained glass dome and bronze statues of Moses and Solomon, the state’s highest court this morning debated the fate of Msgr. William J. Lynn.

“God save the Commonwealth and this honorable court,” the court crier shouted in the packed, ornate chambers of the state Supreme Court on the fourth floor of the state Capitol in Harrisburg.

Up at the raised mahogany bench, Chief Justice Ronald D. Castille got things rolling by announcing, “The issue here was this application of the [child] endangerment statute.”

That really is the issue in the Lynn case. The other justices, however, did not seem to want to stick to that script as they fired one extraneous shot after another at Thomas A. Bergstrom, the monsignor’s defense lawyer.

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

PENNSYLVANIA
Reuters

BY DAVID DEKOK
HARRISBURG Pa. Tue Nov 18, 2014

(Reuters) – Pennsylvania’s top court on Tuesday heard arguments in the case of Monsignor William Lynn, weighing whether the highest-ranking clergyman convicted in the U.S. Roman Catholic Church child sex abuse scandal should be returned to prison.

Lynn was convicted in 2012 of covering up child sex abuse by priests in Philadelphia, but a three-judge panel later ruled that the abuse law applied only to those with direct responsibility for the care and welfare of children.

Lynn, 63, was a former secretary of the clergy for the Philadelphia Archdiocese who oversaw the work of 800 priests.

He was found guilty of covering up sex abuse, often by transferring predatory priests to unsuspecting parishes.

Prosecutors want his conviction reinstated and Lynn returned to prison. He had served 18 months of a three- to six-year sentence before his conviction was overturned last year.

Hugh Burns, arguing for the Philadelphia District Attorney’s Office, said there was sufficient authority in the law and various court rulings to convict Lynn.

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

CHICAGO (IL)
Newser

Cupich becomes leader of Chicago archdiocese, speaks forcefully about sexual abuse scandal

By DON BABWIN | ASSOCIATED PRESS

CHICAGO (AP) — Blase Cupich became the archbishop of Chicago on Tuesday after his predecessor handed him a bishop’s staff and relinquished the chair that symbolizes the leadership of the nation’s third-largest diocese.

During a Mass at Holy Name Cathedral, the transfer of power was completed as Cardinal Francis George, who is battling cancer, stepped aside to retire after being the spiritual leader of more than 2 million Catholics since 1997.

The installation of Cupich — who was bishop of the Diocese of Spokane, Washington, when he was selected by Pope Francis to succeed George — marks the first time in the history of the Chicago archdiocese that a new archbishop assumes leadership while his predecessor is still alive.

It also represents the pope’s first major American appointment, and sends a message by replacing a leading conservative cardinal with the more moderate Cupich that the pope wants more focus on mercy and compassion instead of divisive social issues.

Cupich, 65, spoke forcefully Tuesday on the sexual abuse scandal that has plagued the church, including Chicago’s archdiocese. In one of his last official acts, George released files on three dozen priests who had been accused of sexual abuse in the last 60 years and whose crimes were in many cases concealed by the archdiocese.

“Working together to protect children, to bring healing to victim survivors and to rebuild the trust that has been shattered in our communities by our mishandling is our sacred duty,” he said, “as is holding each other accountable, for that is what we pledge to do.”

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

UNITED STATES
Omaha.com

POSTED: MONDAY, NOVEMBER 17, 2014
By Michael O’Connor / World-Herald staff writer

On a hot day in August, Bishop Blase Cupich traveled three hours, pulled a folding table from the trunk of a car and used it as an altar to say Mass at a farmworker camp in rural Washington state.

The Omaha native and bishop of the Spokane Diocese had arrived to offer spiritual healing after wildfires swept through the area, destroying migrant worker camps.

Cupich (pronounced SOO-pitch) is said to carry the heart of a pastor — a trait many believe drew the attention of Pope Francis, who this fall named him as the next leader of the powerful Archdiocese of Chicago. Observers say the pontiff’s selection of Cupich as Chicago’s archbishop is the clearest indication yet of the direction Francis wants to steer American church leaders. Cupich himself isn’t so sure. …

One of the biggest controversies during his Spokane tenure involved the fallout he inherited from a previous bishop’s decision to seek bankruptcy protection over sex abuse claims.

David Clohessy of the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests said Cupich could have been more open about the abuse cases tied to the bankruptcy.

Cupich disputed the group’s characterization of his actions, noting that the bankruptcy was filed before he arrived in Spokane.

The Rev. Michael Savelesky, vicar general of the Spokane Diocese, said Cupich showed compassion toward victims and understood they were still hurting emotionally.

“He made sure promises made to them for counseling and healing were followed through with,” Savelesky said.

Joe Mudd, assistant professor of religious studies at Gonzaga University, a Catholic institution in Spokane, said Cupich has carried out his duties with an eye toward people who feel broken or on the fringes of society and the church.

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

UNITED STATES
Hamilton and Griffin on Rights

The Top Ten Religious Tenets or Practices that Have Endangered Our Children and that State Legislators Need to Know Before Voting for Extreme Religious Liberty Statutes Like the State RFRAs

It is an odd juxtaposition in history: Believers are demanding more “religious liberty” in the states (as in more than the First Amendment ever provided) when, at the same time, we have cascades of child sex abuse scandals in one religious organization after another and Islamic fanatics, untethered by law or human rights, beheading even converts on chilling videos. It is not as though we can any longer pretend that all religious actors are benign and praiseworthy. Some are downright scary.

Yet, religious lobbyists are demanding state Religious Freedom Restoration Acts (RFRAs) with abandon, making it possible for believers to challenge and overcome unnamed laws to protect unnamed practices—even those that protect our children. And they are not satisfied with the vanilla version of RFRA, but rather push for an extraordinary burden on the government that virtually guarantees the law will not be applied to them.

The following describes ten religious beliefs that have contributed to the abuse, neglect, abandonment, and death of children and should be known by state legislators if they consider supporting a misleadingly named and misguided RFRA.

No “religious liberty” statute should ever make it easier for any adult–including believers–to abuse, neglect, abandon, or kill children or for religious organizations to perpetuate the same. No legislator should vote for child endangerment.

1. Refusing ordinary medical care to sick children based on faith, leading to their permanent disability or death from diabetes, meningitis, pneumonia, diseases otherwise prevented by vaccination like measles and mumps, or leukemia, among other ailments.

Faiths: Followers of Christ, Church of Christian Science, Church of the New Born, Jehovah’s Witnesses (belief against blood transfusions), Amish and Mennonite (failure to get immunizations), among others

2. The rule against “scandal” in the context of clergy sex abuse promulgated in 1922 and 1962 mandated secrecy by the hierarchy and clergy who learned about it and even the victims themselves.

Faith: Roman Catholic Church

3. Mesirah, the belief that Jews should not turn other Jews into the authorities, which has meant that numerous pedophiles were not reported to the police and, therefore, had more opportunities to abuse more children

Faith: Orthodox and ultra-Orthodox Judaism

4. Shunning and/or banishment by their lifetime family and friends when victims disclose sex assaults by siblings

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

UNITED STATES
TheMediaReport

David Pierre

It was only a couple years ago that CBS’ 60 Minutes fêted Ireland’s Archbishop Diarmuid Martin as he took the Church to task over decades-old abuse claims in Ireland. Indeed, 60 Minutes has a long and storied record of outright hostility against the Catholic Church.

So we were surprised that Archbishop of Boston’s Cardinal Seán O’Malley agreed to appear on 60 Minutes and assist them in once again rehashing the sex abuse story and hammer the Church.

And it was a further surprise to see Cardinal O’Malley agree with host Norah O’Donnell that Diocese of Kansas City-St. Joseph Bishop Robert W. Finn should be expelled over his alleged mishandling of a priest later convicted of child pornography. In two previous posts (1, 2), we noted that the Finn case might be among the most misreported stories of the entire Church abuse narrative, and we highly suspect that O’Malley himself is not very much aware of the particulars of this distorted tragedy.

We now wonder how O’Malley’s appearance could have possibly fulfilled his role of spreading the Gospel.

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

CANADA
The Daily Courier

Sue Bailey The Canadian Press

ST. JOHN’S, N.L. – Former Newfoundland and Labrador residential school students suing for an apology and compensation listened Tuesday to procedural wrangling that could delay their case for months.

Judge Robert Stack of the provincial Supreme Court said he’ll likely rule Monday on a federal application that derailed what was supposed to be the first day of a two-month trial.

Lawyer Jonathan Tarlton, who’s defending the federal government in five certified class-action lawsuits, raised concerns that pre-trial filings weren’t complete.

Lawyers for the province and former operators of the schools blamed a procedural misunderstanding as they told Stack they weren’t ready.

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

CANADA
CBC News

As the residential school class action lawsuit against Ottawa gets postponed in St. John’s, one survivor says the Labrador school that was supposed to educate her turned into her prison.

Former students of residential schools in Labrador were at Supreme Court on Tuesday, expecting the trial against the federal government to go ahead, but the lawyers representing Newfoundland and Labrador, Moravian Mission and The Grenfell Association were not ready to proceed.

Nora Ford was five years old when she first attended the residential schools in North West River and Cartwright, where she went for 10 years, and says her mother thought she turned her daughter over to be educated and get a chance at a better life — but that’s not what happened.

“There are no words. I can’t describe how it felt — it was just as if I died,” she said. “I wanted to run away from the time I got there.”

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

FLORIDA
WSVN

[with video]

FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. (WSVN) — A South Florida teen abused by her former teacher is taking legal action against the school.

Back in June 2013, former Cardinal Gibbons High School teacher, John Farrel, was accused of sexually abusing a 16-year-old girl.

Earlier this year, he was convicted of 20 counts of unlawful sexual activity and sentenced to 20 months in state prison.

Now, the victim is taking action against the school. Her attorneys filed a lawsuit against the Archdiocese of Miami and Cardinal Gibbons High School, Tuesday, believing the school should have protected the student

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

CHICAGO (IL)
KETV

[with full text of Archbishop Cupich’s homily]

By David Earl

CHICAGO, Ill. —History was made in Chicago Tuesday when a native son of South Omaha, picked by Pope Francis himself, rose to lead more than 2 million people as an archbishop for the church. He assumed leadership of one of the nation’s largest archdioceses, which Cardinal Francis George has headed since 1997.

The Mass marked the first time in the history of this archdiocese that a new archbishop assumed leadership while his predecessor is still alive. The 77-year old George is retiring as he battles cancer.

In front of a packed Holy Name Cathedral, Omaha’s Blase Cupich — the ninth archbishop of Chicago — began by paying tribute to his South 36th Street roots. …

The gospel, the story of Jesus walking on water, turning turbulent seas into a calm ocean, is something Cupich knows a little about after working to tackle the tough issues facing the modern Catholic Church.

“Working together to protect children, to bring healing to victim survivors and to rebuild the trust that has been shattered in our communities by our mishandling is our sacred duty,” said Cupich.

Managing a monumental task like that will go hand-in-hand with Cupich’s style: being a fearless pastor that has never closed a door on someone in need.

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

UNITED STATES
Questions from a Ewe

I understand some hearts are aflutter after Cardinal Sean O’Malley’s recent interview on the US television show “60 Minutes.” During the interview Sean hinted that he felt convicted-criminal-for-failure-to-report-child-abuse-and-active-Opus-Dei-bishop-of-Kansas-City, Robert Finn, maybe shouldn’t be an active bishop anymore. Rather than rejoicing, I find myself disillusioned that a) O’Malley is the first of the more than 5,000 worldwide bishops to open his mouth on this…over TWO YEARS AFTER Finn’s conviction and b) this STILL has not been addressed by the pope. Talk about a “no-brainer” action to take…

In Roman Catholic Clergy time, perhaps two years is the equivalent of breaking the sound barrier for speed, but to me, it seems slow and underwhelming. After all, I repeat: Finn is still the active bishop of an entire diocese despite Sean’s groundbreaking public criticism. If Finn had ordained a woman, he would have been relieved of his duties before the sun set on the next day. It doesn’t speak well to papal priorities that the welfare of children is something to ponder for years before acting.

Sean also said the Vatican’s handling of the US nun’s visitation was a “disaster.” Thanks, Sean…Glad you caught on to that one too, albeit a little slower than the Finn situation.

But what really caught my attention were Sean’s statements about women and Jesus. Here’s a synopsis:

Reporter Norah O’Donnell asked if excluding women from the hierarchy was “immoral.” O’Malley replied, “Christ would never ask us to do something immoral. It’s a matter of vocation and what God has given to us.”

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CHICAGO (IL)
Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests

For immediate release: Tuesday, November 18, 2014

Statement by David Clohessy, Executive Director of SNAP ( 314-566-9790 cell, davidgclohessy@gmail.com )

Talking about abuse doesn’t prevent abuse. Acknowledging the obvious isn’t progress. Neither are vague pledges. Only decisive action prevents abuse.

We’ll know Archbishop Cupich is serious about safeguarding kids when he orders all pastors to list all predators in all parish bulletins and posts on his archdiocesan website the whereabouts of at least the living predator priests. And we’ll know he’s serious when he defrocks, demotes, disciplines or denounces several of the current archdiocesan staff who have hidden clergy sex crimes.

The Cardinal, His Men and the McCormack Legacy

We hurt kids, not help them, when we prematurely assume that “the new guy” will somehow automatically be “the new guy” regarding child safety. The only responsible course of action is for all of us to withhold judgment about Cupich and children’s safety until we see tangible decisions – not gestures – that either protect or endanger children.

We urged Cupich to quickly go to a church where Fr. Daniel McCormack worked. We’re glad he is doing this. But this is a symbolic move. In and of itself, it does not safeguard a single child. When he’s there, we hope he goes beyond pablum. He should emphatically beg every single person who may have seen, suspected or suffered clergy sex crimes and cover ups to call law enforcement.

Remember: Just weeks ago, Cupich quietly suspended a credibly accused predator priest but told only his flock, not the public. He refused to disclose when the allegations surfaced. He urged other victims to call church officials, not secular authorities. And he made no mention of possible criminal prosecution or of the need for Catholics and citizens to share what they know about the priest with law enforcement. This is disturbing and reckless.

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

CALIFORNIA
Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests

For immediate release: Tuesday, Nov. 18, 2014

Sex abuse victims’ group to hold first support meeting in Stockton
All adults abused in a religious setting, as child or adult, are welcome
Special outreach to 34 survivors who are part of Stockton Diocese bankruptcy
SNAP hopes meeting will “help heal the wounded and protect the vulnerable”

An international self-help organization for men and women who were molested by religious figures will hold its first confidential support group meeting in Stockton on Saturday, November 22nd from 1-3 pm at the Troke Branch Library at 502 W. Benjamin Holt Drive, Stockton. Those who suffered institutional abuse and their families and supporters welcome. But the meeting is not open to the public.

SNAP, the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests, is the group behind this effort. The mission of SNAP is to support survivors, protect children and raise awareness of sex crimes against children in religious and institutional settings. For 25 years, SNAP has worked to establish a worldwide network of survivors.

Despite the word “priest” in the organization’s name, any adult who was abused in any religious setting, either as a child or as an adult, is welcome to attend the kick-off meeting on November 22nd.

According to Kathleen Conti, the Stockton SNAP leader, the group especially hopes that the 34 victims who recently filed a claim against the Stockton Catholic Diocese with the bankruptcy court will take this opportunity to come together to meet and to form a support network.

“Although I am a survivor of abuse in the Jehovah’s Witnesses, SNAP has become my extended family,” Conti said. “I hope that by starting a group in the Stockton area I can pass that gift along to others.”

Tim Lennon, the SNAP leader from San Francisco, who is helping Conti, added, “We want to reach out all victims who are still suffering in silence. Both victims and their supporters are invited to join us at this meeting. By sharing our stories, we recognize that we are not alone, and we can begin to heal.”

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

AUSTRALIA
The Examiner

By ISABEL BIRD Nov. 18, 2014

THE Royal Commission investigating the responses of the Hutchins School into sexual abuse allegations in the 1960s begins today, with 11 witnesses to be called over two weeks.

Tasmania is the last state or territory in Australia to have a public hearing held by the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse.

Five former students, one former teacher and two former headmasters of the school will be questioned by the commission regarding the alleged sexual abuse of boys by former headmaster David Lawrence and former French teacher Lyndon Hickman.

The response of the Anglican Diocese of Tasmania will also be examined, with former Anglican assistant bishop Ronald Stone and current Bishop John Harrower called as witnesses.

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SPAIN
Buenos Aires Herald

A few days ago, a young man from Granada, Spain whose real identity remains unidentified, wrote a letter to the pontiff telling him he had been sexually abused by priests. His case got media attention because Daniel – a pseudonym to preserve his real name – on Sunday heard his cell phone rang. It was Pope Francis personally calling him to ask him for forgiveness in the name of the Roman Catholic Church.

Last week, Daniel wrote Francis a five-letter page in which he described in detail everything he went through during his childhood and adolescence.

After reading the letter, the Argentine pope decided to call him.

“I could do nothing else but to feel moved and feel an immense sorrow while reading your story. I want to ask you for forgiveness in the name of all the Church of Christ. Forgive us for this too serious sin and too serious crime you have suffered. Forgive us, my child, for the sorrow that was caused you and for so much you must have suffered,” Francis was quoted as telling Daniel by the Religión Digital newswebsite.

“These wounds make the Church feel completly resentful. You have my full support and the support of the whole Church,” the pontiff reportedly said adding that he was thanking God for Daniel “to keep his faith and continue in the Church.”

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

UNTIED STATES
Commonweal

The Editors

Schadenfreude can be a grave temptation and, if not resisted, a serious sin. There are some, both inside and outside the church, who have taken a certain glee in the fate of Cardinal Raymond Burke. Burke, the former archbishop of St. Louis, first made a name for himself as one of the American hierarchy’s most outspoken conservatives and energetic culture warriors. He came to national attention for warning that he would refuse to give Communion to Democratic presidential nominee John Kerry. A canon lawyer, Burke argued that denying Communion to prochoice Catholic public officials was a cut-and-dried issue. He understands most things to be cut and dried. That is not, however, how Pope Francis sees things, and the pope has taken steps to sideline the cardinal. Last year Burke was removed from the Vatican’s Congregation for Bishops, and just last month he was relieved of his duties as head of the church’s high court. Instead, Burke has been given the ceremonial title of patron for the Knights of Malta.

Burke has not taken his removal from the centers of influence in Rome quietly. He has been perhaps the most outspoken critic of the recent Synod on the Family, repeatedly charging that the synod’s discussion of homosexuality, cohabitation, and the readmission of some divorced and remarried Catholics to Communion has sown dangerous “confusion” among the faithful. The church under Pope Francis, the cardinal warns, “is like a ship without a rudder.” Burke insists that what the church has taught about homosexuality and marriage is unchanging and unchangeable. Look it up in the Catechism, he urges.

Popes are free to staff the Vatican with whomever they think best suited to steward the church and implement whatever program of retrenchment, stasis, or reform is needed. Burke’s vision for the church calls for a defensive and rejectionist posture toward the modern world. Francis clearly thinks that strategy will result in a further eclipse of the gospel and marginalization of Catholicism. The pope’s aim is to steer the church away from the culture wars and toward a joyful engagement with Catholics and non-Catholics alike. “Joyful” is not the first word that comes to mind when listening to Cardinal Burke. Many find Francis’s openness a promising departure from the last two pontificates, while a vocal, entrenched minority, identifying themselves as the “orthodox,” see papal initiatives like the Synod on the Family as a kind of betrayal. Some, including Burke, speak darkly about the possibility of schism.

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

MONTANA
ABC News

HELENA, Mont. — Nov 18, 2014

By AMY BETH HANSON Associated Press

The Roman Catholic Diocese of Helena has filed a bankruptcy reorganization plan that proposes a $16.4 million settlement for hundreds of people who said clergy members sexually abused them for decades while the church covered it up.

The plan, filed late Monday, calls for the 362 victims identified in two lawsuits filed in 2011 to receive a minimum payment of $2,500 each. An abuse-claims reviewer will determine the actual payment based on the severity and long-term effects of the abuse. The plaintiffs’ attorneys, unsecured creditors and any future abuse claims also will be paid out of the trust.

“As attorneys for the victims, we are relieved that this long battle is finally coming to an end,” Seattle attorney Timothy Kosnoff wrote in an email to The Associated Press on Nov. 14. He expected the plaintiffs to be paid early next year and expressed his “regret that it has taken so long for this modest amount of justice to be brought to them.”

The plan calls for insurance companies to contribute $14.4 million to the trust, while the diocese is asking the court’s approval for a $3.5 million loan so it can contribute $2 million to the trust and cover administrative expenses and operating expenses.

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

AUSTRALIA
Armidale Express

By DANNIELLE MAGUIRE Nov. 19, 2014

A FORMER priest has been committed to trial for historic child sex abuse, facing a total of 76 charges.

In a committal hearing yesterday afternoon, Magistrate Karen Stafford ruled there was significant evidence for a jury to convict the defrocked priest of an indictable offence.

The hearing related to three counts of sexual assault of a person under 16-years-of-age and brought five witnesses before the Armidale Local Court.

The witness list included an alleged victim, his mother and a detective senior constable.

The court heard the victim informed his mother and partner of the alledged assault upon hearing a radio program’s segment about the priest and partaking in an interview on the show.

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

UNITED KINGDOM
The Spectator

Damian Thompson

In the magazine a couple of weeks ago I asked if we were in the early stages of a Catholic civil war fuelled by confusion over Pope Francis’s apparent willingness to soften the Church’s pastoral approach to divorcees and gay people. Hostilities began during the disastrous Synod of the Family, at which liberal officials gave a press conference implying that the Church was about to admit remarried divorcees to Holy Communion and celebrate the positive aspects of gay unions.

The synod fathers, furious at this hijacking of the proceedings, voted down every liberal proposal – leaving the Pope looking foolish. He has since sacked Cardinal Raymond Burke, the most truculent of the conservatives, from his post as prefect of the Vatican’s supreme court. To say that Burke’s allies are offended is an understatement.

Among the more extreme traditionalists (the label for conservatives attached to the old Latin liturgy) Francis has now become ‘the enemy’. They recognise that he is technically Pope, but their true allegiance is to Benedict XVI. The Pope Emeritus is frail but mentally alert – and worried. He doesn’t regard his successor as any sort of enemy, but he’s not happy. Recently he mounted a defence of the Tridentine Mass that was more outspoken than anything he said as Pope. It appeared to contain a coded tribute to Burke.

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UNITED STATES
Patriot Talon

Posted: Tuesday, November 18, 2014 1

Presley Sanderson

I find few things more sinister than the segregation of children from society, the withholding of information for purposes of indoctrination, and the spread of hostility toward sexuality.

Many religious communities attempt to segregate themselves from society and exempt themselves from secular law.

You may remember the atrocious attempted cover-ups of child molestation under Pope John Paul II, by Cardinal Bernard Law or by Pope Benedict XVI.

These are terrible offenses committed by the Catholic church – habitual rape and torture of children covered up by simply moving the rapists to different congregations, as documented by the Huffington Post and author Christopher Hitchens.

Now, the Orthodox Jewish community of New York has joined the list of offenders against morality.
The following details may be found in a story done by the New Yorker.

Sam Kellner was once a reputable man in his close-knit Orthodox Jewish community located in Borough Park, Brooklyn.

That is, until his son informed him he was molested by a man from the synagogue.

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UNITED STATES
Waiting for Godot to Leave

Kevin O’Brien

It pains me to point out that National Catholic Register, once a fairly solid and trustworthy publication, has become the only mainstream journal (to my knowledge) to buy into the trad hysteria over the removal of one of the worst bishops in the world.

Edward Pentin has been Pent-up too long, it seems. Here he buys into the rallying cry of the extreme right wing in the Church that the bishop of the City of the East in Paraguay was unjustly removed.

Here’s my comment, which I assume will be published at the site …

Livieres handling of Urrutigoity was shameful. He let a known sexual abuser in his diocese, despite having been warned against doing so by Urrutigoity’s former bishop. He made him a monsignor and his vicar general, giving him unfettered access to boys, even after Urrutigoity admitted to sleeping with boys as a form of “spiritual direction”.

It is shameful that NCR is buying into the reactionary hysteria over the removal of an obviously harmful bishop. I’m sure left / right politics entered into this, and the Vatican said Livieres was not removed solely because of Urrutigoity – but a bishop who would enable an abuser like that and make him his vicar general is a bishop who should be not only removed, but tarred and feathered on his way out of town.

In addition, Urrutigoity has been involved in a number of shady financial dealings, has thereby (allegedly) victimized many donors financially, and is clearly (according to a number of people, including many of his bishops and superiors) a dangerous man in many ways.

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PENNSYLVANIA
Philadelphia Inquirer

AMY WORDEN, INQUIRER HARRISBURG BUREAU
POSTED: Tuesday, November 18, 2014

HARRISBURG – A Philadelphia prosecutor asked the Pennsylvania Supreme Court Tuesday to reinstate a criminal conviction against Msgr. William J. Lynn in a 2012 child sexual-abuse case.

Hugh Burns, chief of the district attorney’s appellate unit, said it was clear that Lynn was culpable because he had supervised priests who oversaw the care of children.

A jury convicted Lynn in 2012 of child endangerment and sentenced him to three to six years in prison for his role in a case involving a priest under his supervision who sexually assaulted a 10-year-old altar boy.

A Superior Court panel overturned the conviction, saying the endangerment law had been misapplied.

Lynn’s attorney, Thomas Bergstrom, argued the allegations predate a 2007 change in state law that for guilt required an individual’s having been been directly involved in supervising a child.

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UNITED STATES
Bilgrimage

William D. Lindsey

At his Christian Catholicism site, Jerry Slevin maintains that if Pope Francis represents “a ray of hope” for the Catholic church, as many Catholics wish to believe, the window of opportunity for hopeful light to enter the church will close, perhaps definitively, if Francis is not prophetic and transparent. Meanwhile, Catholics watch, and are increasingly less convinced by the convenient, shopworn arguments about hierarchical power that have been overused to thwart the open discussion and faithful dissent necessary to maintain a vital church.

And if Francis does not let the light flood through the windows,

The Vatican likely will be unable to contain much longer the cumulative and growing pressure, both internal and external, for change. Well publicized Vatican scandals continue to proliferate before a steadily skeptical world audience that is unconvinced either by the Vatican’s limited efforts so far or by its many public relations diversions. Many Catholics and others are becoming more impatient about protecting innocent victims of continuing Vatican scandals and misguided policies — including millions of poor women, children, couples, divorced persons and gay folks. The building governmental pressures indicate increasingly that the Vatican can change voluntarily or, as has already repeatedly happened in the financial area generally and in the child protection area in Australia, the Vatican will be compelled to change involuntarily.

The crisis through which the church is passing, the worst crisis since the Reformation, Jerry reminds his readers, represents hope in that it points many Catholics back to what is at the foundation of it all, Jerry argues — Jesus and the gospels:

Significantly, the Catholic majority intuitively understands that these risks generated by the present crisis, especially from building governmental pressures on the Vatican, have paradoxically also generated an unprecedented opportunity to restore the Church to an earlier condition — to a Church that Jesus’ first disciples would have recognized as completely consistent with Jesus’ Gospel message of love of God and of neighbors, even of enemies. This will be a welcoming Church again that satisfies the needs of both conservative and progressive Catholics.

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UNITED STATES
New Jersey Jewish News

by Deborah Rosenbloom
November 18, 2014

With all the conversations surrounding the allegations against my congregation’s former rabbi, Barry Freundel, no one is saying what desperately needs to be said — that voyeurism is sexual assault and that eliminating sexual assault in our communities should be the direction of our next steps.

In e-mails, blogs, and articles, the reaction to allegations that Freundel installed hidden cameras in order to view women in the mikva has focused repeatedly on the specific location of the crime, the importance of making mikvot safer, and the abuse of rabbinic authority. But deciding to change who controls the mikva is a narrow perspective on the wider issue of violence against women, and addressing this as an isolated incident would be a mistake. Although considering policies to make our religious spaces safer is certainly worthwhile, it is important that we recognize voyeurism as a form of sexual assault, with its own place on the spectrum of violence against women.

Sexual assault is often thought to be synonymous with rape. But according to the National Institute of Justice, sexual assault encompasses a range of unwanted sexual behaviors, including voyeurism. Whether the perpetrator is peeping through a window, hiding video cameras in locker rooms, posting illegally obtained intimate photographs, or forwarding explicit private photographs intended for one viewer only, he is committing sexual assault.

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VATICAN CITY
GMA News (Philippines)

By PHILIP PULLELLA, Reuters
November 19, 2014

VATICAN CITY – An Italian bank has returned to the Vatican 23 million euros ($28.8 million) that was blocked in a 2010 money laundering investigation, the Vatican bank said on Tuesday, in a sign that the Holy See’s efforts to make its finances more transparent are paying off.

The Vatican bank, whose official name is Institute for Works of Religion (IOR), said in a statement that the move was “a consequence of the introduction of a fully-fledged anti-money laundering and supervisory system”.

A Vatican bank spokesman said the IOR hoped it would mark a turning point and put the IOR on a new footing in relations with Italian financial institutions. The IOR, which was founded in 1942, has been plagued by financial scandals over the decades.

The Bank of Italy did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

In 2010, as part of a global effort to halt illicit financing, the Bank of Italy ordered Italian banks to improve their anti-money laundering efforts. As part of their response, Italian financial institutions curtailed their dealings with the IOR, waiting for it to improve standards.

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PENNSYLVANIA
The Legal Intelligencer

Max Mitchell, The Legal Intelligencer
November 18, 2014

The attorney representing the first Catholic Church administrative official convicted of endangering the welfare of children abused by other priests argued today before the state Supreme Court that the conviction should not stand because the official did not have any supervisory interactions with the children.

Thomas A. Bergstrom of Buchanan Ingersoll & Rooney argued before the six justices in Harrisburg that the reason the court should uphold the Superior Court’s decision tossing out the conviction of Monsignor William J. Lynn is that Lynn did not knowingly endanger the child who had been abused by a priest Lynn oversaw.

“He didn’t know this child. He never met this child. He didn’t know this child existed,” Bergstrom said.

Lynn had been convicted under an earlier version of Pennsylvania’s law criminalizing endangerment of the welfare of children, which did not specifically indicate that the law extended to someone who employs or supervises parents, guardians, or supervisors. However, in December 2013, a unanimous three-judge Superior Court panel in Commonwealth v. Lynn reversed the conviction and discharged Lynn, holding that because Lynn was not a direct supervisor of any of the alleged victims, the pre-amended statute did not apply in the case.

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CANADA
Ottawa Citizen

MEGHAN HURLEY

Father Joseph LeClair was released from jail earlier this month after serving almost two-thirds of his sentence for stealing from Sunday collections and church accounts at Blessed Sacrament Parish in the Glebe.

The convicted fraudster was granted a temporary absence by the Ontario Parole Board that began on Nov. 9 and ended Tuesday.

It means, LeClair was released from jail nine days early: He would have been released Tuesday after serving two-thirds of his sentence.

The parole board said in a decision that they granted LeClair a temporary absence for good behaviour from the Central East Region Correctional Centre in Lindsay, Ont.

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ST. LOUIS (MO)
Berger’s Beat

…A priest who generated controversy at and quickly left a parish here has been quietly put back on the job. Fr. Darrell Mitchell was removed from St. Ambrose parish on The Hill in 2007, when SNAP exposed his presence there. Now, the group has learned Fr. Mitchell is saying mass at a Cathedral parish in Yakima, WA where naked photos of kids had been found on his computer. While in our town, Mitchell also worked at St. Joseph Catholic Church in Clayton.

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NEW MEXICO
The Republic

By RUSSELL CONTRERAS Associated Press
November 18, 2014

ALBUQUERQUE, New Mexico — Five more victims are suing the Archdiocese of Santa Fe and are accusing priests of sexual abusing them as young children and teens decades ago.

The lawsuits filed in New Mexico State District Court in Albuquerque come as more than two dozen victims have made similar claims in recent years against priests in court documents.

According to the latest lawsuits, three of the victims were abused by priests in Las Vegas, New Mexico, in the late 1970s and early 1980s. Court documents say another victim, a female, was abuse by a priest in Albuquerque on a church bus.

The lawsuits seek an unspecified amount in damages.

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PENNSYLVANIA
Houston Chronicle

By MARK SCOLFORO, Associated Press | November 18, 2014

HARRISBURG, Pa. (AP) — Pennsylvania’s highest court is considering whether to reinstate a criminal conviction against a Philadelphia Roman Catholic church official for putting at risk a child who was sexually abused.

The state Supreme Court on Tuesday heard a city prosecutor argue that the crime of endangering the welfare of children applies to Monsignor William Lynn, saying he was supervising the welfare of children even if he wasn’t supervising a particular child victim.

But Lynn’s lawyer says the allegations date back to before the law was changed in 2007. He says that under the law’s older version someone would have to be directly supervising a child to be guilty.

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CANADA
The Telegram

Proceedings began Tuesday in a class-action lawsuit against the Government of Canada on behalf of survivors of residential schools in Newfoundland and Labrador.

Lawyers, class members and reporters poured into Courtroom No. 5 at Supreme Court in St. John’s in the morning. The court continues in session this afternoon.

Ches Crosbie, one of the leading plaintiff lawyers, said during a short break that he expects the trial to be delayed.

The class action was started after Prime Minister Stephen Harper officially apologized to residential school survivors in 2007, but left out survivors in this province. The same survivors were excluded from a massive settlement that was reached.

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CANADA
CBC News

Fred Andersen and other former students of residential schools in Labrador will be in court in St. John’s Tuesday to fight for an apology and compensation from Ottawa.

They’re among just over 1,000 plaintiffs in five certified class-action lawsuits who were excluded from Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s apology in 2008 and a related compensation package.

Lawyers for the federal government deny it was responsible for schools located in St. Anthony, Cartwright, North West River, Nain and Makkovik that opened before the province joined Confederation in 1949.

The International Grenfell Association ran the first three, while the German-based Moravian Missionaries ran the other two.

“We had no choice. We had to go,” Andersen, now 62, said in an interview. He recalled how frightened he was leaving Makkovik, an Inuit community on the Labrador coast, at the age of 13.

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AUSTRALIA
7 News

AAP

November 19, 2014

Tasmania’s Anglican bishop will be among the witnesses giving evidence at the state’s first public hearing of a royal commission into child sexual abuse.

Bishop John Douglas Harrower is one of 11 people – including former students and past and present staff from private Hobart boys’ school, Hutchins – named on the witness list ahead of Wednesday’s opening hearing.

The hearings will spend eight days looking at how the school and the Anglican diocese responded to allegations of sexual abuse against former headmaster David Lawrence and teacher Lyndon Hickman, both now dead.

The alleged abuse dates back to the 1960s.

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CHICAGO (IL)
Chicago Sun-Times

By SUE ONTIVEROS November 17, 2014

A great many Catholics thought the naming of Pope Francis meant a new day in our church.

Me? Well, much as I admire his devotion to helping the poor and his desire to be a force who brings people together, I know in reality he’s the guy in the far-away home office. Nice guy, good guy, but he’s quite removed from my Catholic reality.

Anyone who’s ever worked in a satellite office for a big company knows what I’m talking about. Sure, there can be a set of rules sent down from the home office. But how — and if — your manager in the outlying operation where you’re situated decides to follow them can be something entirely different, especially when they’ve been doing things their way for a very long time.

You know, like the guys who run the Catholic Church in the United States, the cardinals and bishops.

But once Pope Francis gets to move in his handpicked team of managers, well things might be a lot different, even so far away from the home office.

Well, now that day could be here for Chicago. Our new archbishop, Blase Cupich, is being installed Tuesday.

My prayer as he takes the reins is a very personal one: please God, let his actions show me I can return to church. I miss going to mass.

Oh, let me tell you, it took a lot for the Catholic Church to finally drive me away.

I hung in despite my utter disappointment with the handling of the priest sex abuse cases in the archdiocese. After all I discovered about the repeated missteps in the situation as I wrote column after column about it, I remained planted in a church pew almost weekly.

Mainly I stayed and put our weekly envelope in the basket because I didn’t want to hurt my own parish, a place I loved.

But then the archdiocese got so vocal in opposition to gay rights in Illinois. That was it for me. No one was saying the Catholic Church had to perform gay marriages. Why, when there were so many pressing issues for the archdiocese to address, did it have to choose to take up this one? I wouldn’t attend mass if I was not contributing, and no way was I going to fund such mean-spirited actions. So, I exiled myself, only returning for funerals.

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VATICAN CITY
National Catholic Register

by Edward Pentin 09/30/2014

There has been increasing disquiet and accusations of injustice over the forced removal of a Paraguayan bishop, ostensibly because of his “difficult” relations with other bishops and priests.

The Vatican has said Bishop Rogelio Ricardo Livieres Plano was removed last month not so much because he appointed a priest accused of sexual abuse as his vicar general or allegations of embezzlement – as many had thought – but because of internal disagreements.

“The important problem was the relations within the episcopacy and in the local church, which were very difficult,” Vatican spokesman Father Federico Lombardi said Sept. 26. Concerns about the former vicar general, Father Carlos Urrutigoity, were “not central, albeit have been debated,” he added. “There were serious problems with his management of the diocese, the education of clergy and relations with other bishops,” Father Lombardi said.

But that being the case, a leaked letter Livieres wrote to Cardinal Marc Ouellet, prefect of the Congregation for Bishops, still points to a possible injustice. In the letter, Bishop Livieres insisted he had not had an opportunity to defend himself, that other bishops conspired against him, and that he was being “persecuted” for his orthodoxy (in an interview with CNS, he said it was because of his opposition to liberation theology, a claim rebuffed by Father Lombardi as “naive”).

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CHICAGO (IL)
Crux

By Michael O’Loughlin
National reporter
November 18, 2014

CHICAGO — During a ceremony rich with ritual and symbolism, the next archbishop of Chicago was welcomed to his new assignment Monday night as a prelude to his formal installation as head of the nation’s third-largest Catholic community today.

And Blase Cupich, named by Pope Francis to replace ailing Cardinal Francis George, wasted no time in outlining his priorities: the poor, the disadvantaged, immigrants. And he called for more civility in public discourse — including among Church leaders.

Although temperatures plunged to the low teens Monday night, keeping many Chicagoans indoors, there was a decidedly warm atmosphere inside Holy Name Cathedral to greet Cupich.

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IRELAND
Irish Examiner

By Conall Ó Fátharta
Irish Examiner Reporter

The Government was “conscious of the danger” of offering redress for Magdalene survivors just months before setting up the McAleese inquiry to investigate the issue.

The admission is made in a March 2011 Department of Justice draft memorandum for the Government, seeking permission to establish an inter-departmental committee to review a November 2010 Irish Human Rights Commission (IHRC) report on the Magdalene laundries.

Released under the Freedom of Information Act, it states that the then justice minister, Alan Shatter, was “conscious of the danger” of redress and of Finance Minister Michael Noonan’s view that proposals raised in an earlier memo “would very likely generate pressure for opening redress”.

Mr Shatter felt an inter-departmental committee, which he proposed be headed by his department, would “strengthen the position of the Government in dealing with the ongoing campaign”.

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IDAHO
The Raw Story

ARTURO GARCIA
17 NOV 2014

Despite the deaths of least 12 children from “faith healing” Christian families in their state, lawmakers and public officials in Idaho have refused to challenge a state law providing a religious exemption from manslaughter and murder charges, Vocativ reported.

The childrens’ families belonged to a Pentecostal group known as the Followers of Christ, which punishes members who seek medical care by shunning them from their church. According to state law, parents can substitute prayer as a form of treatment. The religious exemption covers manslaughter, capital murder and negligent homicide charges, but cannot be cited if a parent uses any other form of treatment on top of praying for the child.

“If the parent combines prayer with orange juice or a cool bath to bring down a fever, the parent loses the exemption,” Rita Swan, co-founder of the advocacy group Children’s Healthcare Is a Legal Duty, said.

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IRELAND
Irish Examiner

Initial enthusiasm from campaigners that the inquiry would be as wide ranging as possible, has been replaced by a worried scepticism, writes Conall Ó Fátharta

AS WE await the formation of the Commission to Inquire into Mother and Baby Homes, the private attitude of Government to another related scandal — the Magdalene Laundries — is instructive.

Following the publication of the McAleese report, this newspaper pointed out that Taoiseach Enda Kenny’s two-week delay in offering a formal state apology may have been explained in one simple word: Money.

More than that, it was pointed out that the key concern for Government was about how to handle offering any redress that could open the floodgates “to more compensation schemes arising from other human rights abuses in mother-and-baby homes and psychiatric institutions”.

For the former of these institutions, we have now reached that point.

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CANADA
Metro

By Sue Bailey
The Canadian Press

ST. JOHN’S, N.L. – Fred Andersen and other former students of residential schools in Labrador will be in court in St. John’s, N.L., Tuesday to fight for an apology and compensation from Ottawa.

They’re among just over 1,000 plaintiffs in five certified class-action lawsuits who were excluded from Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s apology in 2008 and a related compensation package.

Lawyers for the federal government deny it was responsible for schools located in St. Anthony, Cartwright, North West River, Nain and Makkovik that opened before the province joined Confederation in 1949.

The International Grenfell Association ran the first three, while the German-based Moravian Missionaries ran the other two.

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