ABUSE TRACKER

OHIO
Beacon Journal

Ernest Angley’s Grace Cathedral rocked by accusations involving abortions and vasectomies

By Bob Dyer
Beacon Journal staff writer

Depending whom you ask, one of two things is happening at the big Cuyahoga Falls church run by legendary television evangelist Ernest Angley:

• The devil himself has infiltrated the church, and Angley, who is a prophet of God, has been working tirelessly to fight him off.

• Angley’s church is a dangerous cult where pregnant women are encouraged to have abortions, childless men are encouraged to have vasectomies and Angley — who preaches vehemently against the “sin” of homosexuality — is himself a gay man who personally examines the genitals of the male parishioners before and after their surgeries. They also say he turns a blind eye to sexual abuse by other members of his church.

During the past few months, a tear has ripped through the 3,000-seat auditorium known as Grace Cathedral. One longtime associate pastor resigned, telling friends and family he felt he had been inappropriately touched by Angley for seven years.

The dispute exploded on July 13, when Angley and two others in his camp addressed the situation in a 2½-hour open service. The service was recorded by one of the attendees and shared with the Beacon Journal.

In response to swirling accusations that he is a homosexual who has abused both his associates and members of the congregation, Angley, 93, had this to say to a large Sunday gathering.

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AUSTRALIA
9 News

[with video]

Hillsong leader Brian Houston has spoken of the moment he confronted his pedophile father over sexual abuse allegations.

Speaking with Karl Stefanovic on TODAY this morning, he also said his congregation had offered him incredible support after he faced the Royal Commission inquiry last week.

Mr Houston’s father Frank, a Hillsong pastor himself, admitted abusing children in the 1970s to his son in 1999.

Frank Houston died in 2004.

“I confronted my father – [it was] the worst day of my life,” Mr Houston said.

“The shock of finding out was just horrendous.

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AUSTRALIA
TVNZ

The leader of the Hillsong Church has broken his silence on his paedophile father, addressing his 3000 strong congregation in New South Wales.

Brian Houston told his followers it was wrong of him not to report his father to police, but said other church leaders also knew and did nothing.

Giving his first sermon since testifying last week at the Australian Royal Commission on Child Sexual Abuse, Mr Houston said no-one told him to report his father.

“You had a situation where this was the first time I had ever heard about my father’s abuses. There was a victim, a survivor, who was adamant he did not want a police investigation and he didn’t want a church investigation,” he said.

Mr Houston was told in 1999 that his pastor father Frank had molested a boy in a Sydney household in the 1970’s.

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AUSTRALIA
Brisbane Times

October 13, 2014

Annette Blackwell

A primary school teacher given two severe warnings about inappropriate touching of children continued to teach for another six years at the same Pentecostal school, an inquiry has heard.

The Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse is examining how a Pentecostal church and its school handled complaints against Kenneth Sandilands, who taught there from 1983 to 1992.

Sandilands was jailed in 2000 for two years for offences against eight boys and girls at Northside Christian College at Bundoora in the northern suburbs of Melbourne.

In September 2014 he was sent back to jail for 26 months on a further six counts of indecent assault at St Paul’s Anglican primary School in Frankston, Victoria, where he had worked in the 1970s.

Denis Smith, senior pastor at the Northside Christian Life Centre church which ran the school, said on Monday the then-principal Ken Ellery investigated allegations against Sandilands in December 1986.

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AUSTRALIA
Daily Telegraph

Royal commission into child sex abuse: pastor said it would be ‘normal to have girls sitting on knee’ of teacher

JANET FIFE-YEOMANS THE DAILY TELEGRAPH OCTOBER 13, 2014

A CHURCH pastor who investigated allegations of sexual assault by a teacher said that having young girls sitting on their knee in class “would be quite normal in a teaching situation”, the child sex abuse royal commission has been told.

Three girls who reported the abuse in 1987 at Melbourne’s Northside Christian College were given a “firm lecture.”

The teacher, Kenneth Sandilands, 69, went on to plead guilty and was jailed for two years in 2000 for 13 counts of indecent assaulting eight victims at the college, which is run by Encompass Church, a member of the Australian Christian Churches which was formerly known as the Assemblies of God.

Last month, Sandilands, who retired in 1992 because he was going blind, was sentenced to a further 26 months in jail for abusing children at St Paul’s Anglican Primary School in Frankston between 1970 and 1974.

The commission has been told that there will be evidence that over the 10 years that Mr Sandilands taught at Northside Christian College between 1983 and 1992, there were allegations that he had sexually abused about 30 children.

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AUSTRALIA
Sydney Morning Herald

October 13, 2014

Rachel Browne
Social Affairs Reporter

A paedophile teacher continued to work in the classroom for six years after allegations of sexual abuse were first made against him, a royal commission has heard.

The Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse was told that jailed teacher Kenneth Sandilands was eventually allowed to resign from his position due to his failing eyesight.

At the time he left Northside Christian College in 1992, the Victorian school had received claims of abuse involving nine young children. The commission has been told up to 30 children were abused by Sandilands at the school.

Sandilands was jailed in 2000 for the offences committed at Northside Christian College and last month was sentenced to a further 26 months in prison for sexual offences committed at another Victorian school, St Pauls Anglican Primary School, between 1970 and 1974.

The commission was told Northside Christian Centre, which ran the school, did not check Sandilands’ references, instead relying on an endorsement by the Victorian education department.

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AUSTRALIA
Daily Mail

‘It’s obvious he was a paedophile and that his behaviour was repetitive’: Hillsong’s Brian Houston believes his father sexually abused victims over a decade… and he fears there could be more

By EMILY CRANE and DANIEL PIOTROWSKI and LILLIAN RADULOVA FOR DAILY MAIL AUSTRALIA

The son of Hillsong founder Frank Houston says it is obvious his father was a paedophile as he admits to not knowing how many victims the church leader allegedly sexually abused.

Brian Houston gave his first sermon at Hillsong on Sunday since testifying about his father’s sexual abuse last week at a Royal Commission, amid claims he tried to cover up his dad’s alleged paedophilia when he was first informed.

‘At that time I thought there was one (victim) and then 12 months later it became clear there were many more, mostly in New Zealand,’ Mr Houston told Today.

‘It’s obvious he was a paedophile and that his behaviour was repetitive and it seems like it was over a period of a decade in the late sixties and seventies.’

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AUSTRALIA
7 News

Child sex abuse inquiry: Teacher repeatedly raised concerns about paedophile Kenneth Sandilands touching children, inquiry hears

BY NICOLE CHETTLE
October 13, 2014

An inquiry has heard that a teacher repeatedly raised concerns about convicted paedophile Kenneth Sandilands touching students at a Melbourne Christian college.

The Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse is looking into how Northside Christian College handled complaints made against Sandilands, who was a teacher there in the late 1980s and early 1990s.

Margaret Furlong began working in the primary school section of the college in 1987 when she was 23.

She told the commission she repeatedly raised concerns with the principal about students who said they had been touched by Sandilands, who was later jailed for indecent assault.

Mrs Furlong said a culture of fear, bullying and harassment may have contributed to preventing the exposure of child sexual abuse.

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MINNESOTA
Rich Kupchella’s Bring Me The News

By Melanie Sommer

The Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis is expected to announce Monday a settlement to a clergy abuse lawsuit that was scheduled to go to trial in just a few weeks, according to reports from the Star Tribune and KARE 11.

They quote sources who say that lawyers for the archdiocese, the Diocese of Winona and the plaintiff’s attorney Jeff Anderson will outline terms of the settlement to a Ramsey County judge Monday morning – then make the details public at an afternoon news conference.

Sources quoted by the St. Paul Pioneer Press said the agreement not only settles the lawsuit that’s meant to go to trial on Nov. 3, but also covers hundreds of others who have also alleged they were sexually abused by clergy.

In addition to any financial settlements, the agreement will establish a new court-monitored protocol for handling allegations of sexual abuse against priests, according to KARE.

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MINNESOTA
Pioneer Press

By Emily Gurnon and Kristi Belcamino
egurnon@pioneerpress.com

A settlement between child sex abuse victims and church officials will be announced Monday, only a few weeks before a groundbreaking trial accusing the Roman Catholic church of turning a blind eye to clergy abuse was scheduled to begin, the victim’s attorney said.

Details of the confidential settlement between victims and the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis and the Diocese of Winona will be outlined before a Ramsey County judge Monday morning before an official announcement is made later in the afternoon.

Sources said the landmark agreement not only settles a lawsuit slated to go to trial Nov. 3 but also covers hundreds of other alleged abuse victims who have been waiting in the wings with their own allegations.

Along with the financial settlement, the agreement will stipulate how future allegations of abuse are handled.

“This feels to me like a new way and a new day,” said Jeff Anderson, attorney for the victims. “There is a strict difference between policy and protocol and action, but they (archdiocese officials) are committed to working with us than against us.”

Auxiliary Bishop Andrew Cozzens and Vicar General Charles Lachowitzer are expected to join Anderson and some of the victims at the joint news conference at 1 p.m. Monday at the Landmark Center in St. Paul. Anderson spent most of Sunday contacting survivors and former and current clients.

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MINNESOTA
Winona Daily News

Attorneys for sex abuse victims and the Diocese of Winona and Archdiocese of St. Paul-Minneapolis are expected to announce Monday a settlement related to multiple claims of abuse that date back a half-century, according to several reports.

Jeff Anderson and Associates, the firm preparing to take a case to trial next month on behalf of a man who claims he was abused by former diocesan and archdiocesan priest Thomas Adamson, announced on Sunday plans to hold an afternoon news conference Monday following a morning appearance in Ramsey County District Court.

The firm did not release additional details Sunday, but described the conference as featuring an announcement of a “historic child protection action plan.” The conference will be the first time in decades Anderson will appear together with archdiocese officials, the firm said.

Multiple media outlets, including the Star Tribune of Minneapolis and Pioneer Press of St. Paul, reported Sunday evening that the plan will come as part of a settlement that will cover not only the unidentified man who brought the existing suit, but potentially hundreds of others who have claimed abuse at the hands of priests.

The agreement will include both details on financial arrangements with victims, as well as lay out a process to handle and report abuse claims in the future, the Pioneer Press reported.

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MINNESOTA
Minnesota Public Radio

Madeleine Baran St. Paul, Minn. Oct 13, 2014

Attorney Jeff Anderson will announce a settlement agreement Monday in the landmark public nuisance lawsuit against the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis and the Diocese of Winona, according to a source with knowledge of the announcement.

The settlement will include an agreement for how church officials will handle future allegations of abuse, the source said. Vicar General Charles Lachowitzer and Auxiliary Bishop Andrew Cozzens, both of the Twin Cities archdiocese, are slated to attend the news conference at the Landmark Center in St. Paul. Victims of abuse have also been invited.

Anderson had filed the suit in Ramsey County last year on behalf of a man who said he was sexually abused as a child by the Rev. Thomas Adamson in the late 1970s. Adamson, who served in the Twin Cities archdiocese and the Winona diocese, is no longer a priest.

The lawsuit accused the Twin Cities archdiocese and the Winona diocese of creating a public nuisance by keeping information on abusive priests secret. Anderson and his colleague Mike Finnegan argued in court that the secrecy placed children at risk of abuse from unknown

Those claims were bolstered by an MPR News investigation last fall that showed top church officials continued to protect priests accused of abuse. One priest, the Rev. Clarence Vavra, had privately admitted to sexually abusing a child on an Indian reservation in South Dakota in the 1970s. MPR News found him living half a block from a school. In another case, Harry Walsh, a former priest who was accused of abusing two children, had been hired by Wright County to teach sex ed to at-risk teenagers.

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MINNESOTA
KSTP

By: Cassie Hart

Officials from the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis are expected to join sex abuse attorney Jeff Anderson to announce a child protection action plan on Monday.

Anderson has filed several lawsuits on behalf of alleged sex abuse victims, accusing individuals and the archdiocese of failing to protect children. This will be one of the rare occasions the two sides will come together.

Archbishop John Nienstedt has apologized to victims, their families and their communities and asks for forgiveness for the harm done.

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MINNESOTA
Star Tribune

Attorney Jeff Anderson and ­officials from the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis are slated to unveil a “historic child protection action plan” at a news conference Monday.

“This will be the first time in 30 years Anderson has stood with ­archdiocese officials to work in cooperation for child protection,” said a news release from ­Anderson’s office announcing the event ­scheduled for 1 p.m. at the Landmark Center in St. Paul.

Anderson is a St. Paul attorney who has spent a career representing victims of clergy sex abuse both in Minnesota and nationally. He currently represents an alleged victim of former priest Tom Adamson, in a historic lawsuit that has thrown open the church’s files on abusing priests. A trial is set for November.

The revelations have tarnished the reputation of the church and Archbishop John Nienstedt, who has been under fire for not doing enough to prevent priests ­— who had been credibly accused of child abuse — from molesting more victims.

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MINNESOTA
KARE

Steve Eckert, Investigative Producer KARE 7:58 p.m. EDT October 12, 2014

ST PAUL, Minn. – There’s a landmark settlement – scheduled to be announced Monday – in a clergy sex abuse law suit that has rocked the local Catholic church.

Sources tell KARE 11 News that lawyers for the church and for abuse victim’s attorney Jeff Anderson will outline terms of the settlement to a Ramsey County judge Monday morning – then make a public announcement at an afternoon news conference.

In addition to a confidential financial settlement, the agreement will establish a new court-monitored protocol for handling allegations of sexual abuse against priests.

The historic agreement comes just weeks before a trial was scheduled to begin in a case that accused the Archdocese of St Paul and Minneapolis – and the Diocese of Winona – of creating an “public nuisance” by covering up clergy sex abuse cases for decades.

For months, now, attorneys for child abuse victims have been publicly releasing thousands of pages of damaging internal church files they uncovered during court-ordered discovery.

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UNITED STATES
Christian Catholicism

Jerry Slevin

Pope Francis, and surely the “German Shepherd ex-Pope”, likely are very worried about the Five Hundredth Anniversary in three years of Luther’s Theses that started the Reformation. Will Francis’ current “three year Synod plan” succeed in time?

German Catholicism is already in decline. German government tax subsidies to German Catholic Bishops, recently over $6 billion annually, now provide the Catholic hierarchy with its largest dependable source of income worldwide. And the Vatican has repeatedly hurt its German position with, among other miscues, mainly unchecked clerical child sexual abuse, disrespect for German divorced and gay Catholics, the Bishop of Bling’s financial excesses, the Vatican’s gratuitous exploitation of anti-Muslim propaganda and even Pope Francis’ “welcome celebration” for Russia’s Putin.

Luther, of course, helped eliminate an earlier papal revenue stream from the sale of indulgences. One of Luther’s theses was: “Why does the pope, whose wealth today is greater than the wealth of the richest Crassus {an extremely wealthy ancient Roman}, build the basilica of St. Peter with the money of poor believers, rather than with his own money?” The unending revelations about the Vatican’s current financial scandals suggest Luther would still find much to reform at present.

Luther also advocated for a priesthood of all believers and for real lay oversight of Church leaders. He also married and fathered six children. His message and example have dogged the Vatican for a half a millennium.

Given the big bucks at stake with the German subsidy, it is then not surprising that Pope Francis’ Family Synod is focusing so much on appealing to divorced ex-Catholics, especially German ones, while the “womenless” Family Synod mostly (1) stonewalls on addressing the curtailment of children being raped by clerics, including German ones, and (2) tries to underplay the continuation of the Ban on the Pill..

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UNITED KINGDOM
Express

By: John Chapman
Published: Sun, October 12, 2014

City banker Simon Hodgkinson, whose wife Olivia has been linked with Bishop Kieran Conry, called on Catholic leaders to act.

Demanding that the former Bishop of Arundel be barred from the priesthood, Mr Hodgkinson is compiling a formal complaint over claims about Bishop Conry’s intimate friendships with women in recent years.

Mr Hodgkinson will submit his complaint to the Papal Nuncio, the Pope’s representative in the UK, along with Cardinal Vincent Nichols, the head of the Catholic church in England and Wales, and the Vicar General, one of the church’s most powerful figures.

The complaint will state that 63-year-old Bishop Conry broke his vows of celibacy and flouted the church’s central teaching on adultery and the sanctity of marriage and family life. It will also claim that the Bishop took advantage of his position of authority with women who had turned to him for spiritual comfort and advice after marital problems.

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MINNESOTA
Jeff Anderson & Associates

Media Advisory

This will be the first time in 30 years Anderson has stood with Archdiocese Officials to work in cooperation for child protection

WHEN: Monday, October 13, 2014, at 1:00PM CDT

WHERE: Landmark Center – Ramsey County Room #317
75 5th Street
St. Paul, MN 55101

NOTES: We will live stream the press event online from our website www.andersonadvocates.com.

Broadcasters wishing to take in a live feed of this press conference can access the following Satellite Coordinates:

Galaxy 17 21K Upper, Digital Only
Uplink Frequency: 14429.0000 V
Downlink Frequency: 12129.0000 H
Specs: HD Mpeg-2 4:2:0 DVB-S QPSK

Access Contact: Intelsat
Access Phone #: 800.321.3959
Access Reference #: 1390442

Window Opens at 12:30 PM Central for Testing
Event is Live from 1:00 PM to 2:00 PM Central

Contact Jeff Anderson: Office/651.227.9990 Cell/612.817.8665
Contact Mike Finnegan: Office/651.227.9990 Cell/612.205.5531

Contact Anne Steffens, Interim Director of Communications, Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis: Office/651.291.4525

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AUSTRALIA
Illawarra Mercury

By MICHAEL BACHELARD Oct. 12, 2014,

Every so often, a convicted Australian paedophile – we’ll call him “Malcolm” – transfers small amounts of cash via Western Union to his “friends” in Indonesia.

Perhaps Malcolm is just being nice to some poor families in a country where 43 per cent of the population subsists on less than $2 per day.

But Australian police believe his “small but suspicious” cash transfers of $30, $40, $50, mean Malcolm may be buying sex acts which children are forced to perform live for him in front of a webcam. In other words, they believe, he’s commissioning pay-per-view paedophilia.

But he does not stop there. Several times since 2013, most recently in the past three months, according to Australian Federal Police regional commander Chris Sheehan, Malcolm has travelled to Indonesia, usually for four to six weeks at a time.

“We know from our inquiries with the Indonesian police that he has a relationship with people here who have relationships with young children: family members,” Sheehan told Fairfax Media in his Jakarta office.

“We suspect he’s arranged for pay-per-view, and likes the child, so he comes to Indonesia to access the child.”

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ILLINOIS
The Raw Story

TOM BOGGIONI
11 OCT 2014

Montgomery, Illinois, woman who attempted to kill her three daughters told police that she wanted them to “meet Jesus Christ,” after receiving messages from her estranged pastor husband telling her the world was coming to an end, according to the Chicago Sun-Times.

Police arrived at the door of Pamela J. Christensen, 47, on Sept. 25 following two 911 hang-up calls to discover the woman covered in blood.

According to court documents, Christensen dropped to her knees and confessed that she had tried to kill her daughters.

The three girls, ages 12, 16 and 19, told police that their mother had dressed them all in white and had held a knife to them, asking them if they accepted Jesus Christ as their savior.

Two of the girls were stabbed, suffering minor injuries. Christensen had also stabbed herself in the chest and abdomen and was treated at a local hospital.

According to police, Christensen had initially tried to poison her daughters with a concoction made up of household cleaners in the hope that they would doze off and she could stab them in their sleep. The daughters reportedly refused to drink the poison.

According to the police report, Christensen told officers she that she was sending the girls home to “meet Jesus Christ,” following messages left on her phone from her husband, Vaughn Christensen, stating that the world was ending and that she needed to prepare the family to meet Jesus.

Vaughn Christensen is a former pastor at a Sugar Grove church.
A month prior to the stabbings, Christensen had served her husband with a restraining order, stating that the two were going through a divorce, and that her husband had become increasingly violent towards her and the children.

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PHILADELPHIA (PA)
Philadelphia Inquirer

JESSICA PARKS
LAST UPDATED: Sunday, October 12, 2014

Weeks after completing its last round of parish mergers and closures, the Archdiocese of Philadelphia announced on Sunday that 14 more parishes in Philadelphia, Montgomery and Delaware counties could be subject to changes.

The latest round of evaluations will include:

In Delaware County’s Springfield Township, the parishes of Saint Francis of Assisi, Holy Cross and Saint Kevin;

In Montgomery County, the parishes of Saint Alphonsus in Maple Glen, Saint Anthony of Padua and Saint Joseph in Ambler, Saint Catherine of Siena in Horsham, Saint Genevieve in Flourtown, and Holy Martyrs in Oreland;

In Philadelphia’s Port Richmond neighborhood, the parishes of Saint Adalbert, Saint George, Mother of Divine Grace, Nativity BVM, and Our Lady Help of Christians.

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OSTERREICH
Begegnun and Dialogue

[Father Helmut Schuller said he expects an opening of all issues and questions to be discussed at the bishops synod t the Vatican. Discussion so far has been blocked by the church, he said. A new openness should be the goal of the synod, he added. Schuller heads the Pastor’s Initiative in Austria.]

STANDARD: Papst Franziskus lädt ab kommendem Sonntag zur ersten Bischofssynode in seinem Pontifikat. Ehe, Familie, Sex – thematisch betrachtet, ist es wohl eine der spannendsten Synoden der letzten Jahrzehnte. Was erwarten Sie sich?

Schüller: Mindestens erwarte ich mir eine Öffnung der ganzen Themen und Fragen. Bisher war ja die Diskussion darüber in der Kirche blockiert. Da hat man stets auf unverrückbare Lehramtsposition verwiesen. Eine neue Offenheit wäre das große Ziel dieser Bischofssynode.

STANDARD: Es hat in den letzten 50 Jahren keiner gewagt, den Staub von
den moralischen Grundwerten zu wischen. Warum sollte man jetzt plötzlich in aller Offenheit darüber sprechen?

Schüller: Weil die Zeit reif ist – und Papst Franziskus die Basis für diesen wichtigen Diskurs geschaffen hat. Es ist ja schon ein Riesenschritt vorwärts getan, wenn derzeit Kardinäle öffentlich die Rolle von wiederverheirateten Geschiedenen debattieren. So etwas hat es bisher nicht gegeben. Und sobald die Diskussion eröffnet ist, entsteht eine Eigendynamik. Und die lässt sich auch nicht mehr von einer Seite kontrollieren. Daher erwarte ich mir auch konkrete Veränderungen.

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POLSKA/POLAND
Ocaleni

ocaleni.polska@gmail.com

Były już ksiądz Jacek S. z kościoła garnizonowego w Legionowie (Kuria polowa Wojska Polskiego), gdzie służył i uczył religii, został skazany na 10 lat pozbawienia wolności za gwałt na 14-latce i inne czyny pedofilskie. Sąd mógł wymierzyć mu karę łączną od 5 do 15 lat. Jednak obrona księdza zarzucała sądowi “rażącą surowość kary” i odwoływała się od wyroku. Na szczęście sąd apelacyjny uznał, że nie ma podstaw, aby karę złagodzić.

/ Jacek S., an ex-priest from the garrison church in Legionów (military curia of Poland), where he used to serve and teach religion, was sentenced to 10 years of prison for rape on a 14-year old girl and pedophilia. The court could have sentenced him from 5 to 15 years of prison. However, the defence of the priest accused the court of ‘flagrant decision’ and appealed. Luckily, the court of appeal decided that there is no ground for mitigation.

Ks. Jacka S. zatrzymano i aresztowano w styczniu 2012 r. Kuria Polowa WP zawiesiła go od razu w pełnieniu funkcji. Potem sam poprosił o przeniesienie do stanu świeckiego. Czyny, których dopuścił się Jacek S., nie powinny się nigdy zdarzyć (gwałt i molestowanie dziewczynek); zero tolerancji dla pedofilii – mówił w październiku 2013 r. biskup polowy Wojska Polskiego bp Józef Guzdek, który przeprosił osoby pokrzywdzone. Otrzymują one pomoc psychologiczną finansowaną przez ordynariat polowy, który zlecił też szkolenia księży dotyczące pedofilii i przemocy w rodzinie.

Cała sprawa, mimo ewidentnych dowodów przeciwko Jackowi S. (smsy, e-maile, zeznania lekarzy na temat zmuszania zgwałconej dziewczynki do dokonania nielegalnej aborcji, itd.), trwała – od zatrzymania księdza – prawie 3 lata! To dlatego, że oprawca odwoływał się od nałożonych na niego wyroków.

Ocalonym dzielnym dziewczętom gratulujemy odwagi oraz wygrania i ostatecznego zakończenia sprawy. Jesteśmy z Was dumni. Prawidłowa była też reakcja przełożonych księdza, aczkolwiek zastanawiające jest, czemu nikt nie zauważył tego nieszczęścia wcześniej?

Na przyszłość życzylibyśmy sobie, aby Kościół lepiej kontrolował swoich funkcjonariuszy oraz aby pedofile nie bronili się do upadłego – to tylko przedłuża sprawę, wydłuża cierpienie poszkodowanych i kompromituje Kościół.
——————————-

Jacek S. Was arrested in 2012 and suspeneded by Military Curia of Poland. He then requested to be defrocked. The crimes that Jacek S. commited should never be allowed (rape and sexual abuse of minors); no tolerance for pedopilia, said Józek Guzdek, bishop of Polish army, who apologized the victims in October 2013. They are provided with psychological support compensated by military ordinariate, which also decided to send priests to workshops on pedophilia and domestic violence.

Despite the incontrovertible evidence against Jacek S. (text messages, emails, doctors testimony regarding forcing the victim of a rape to undergo illegal aborion etc.), it took three years for the case to be resolved! It was possible because the abuser appealed to the court’s decision.

We congratulate the Survivors on their bravery and final victory. We are proud of you. The reaction of the priest’s superiors was proper, but we are wondering how come nobody noticed the tragedy for so long?

We kindly ask the Church to be more restrictive in controlling the priests. Pedophiles, do not even try to appeal– you only extend your victim’s suffering and you disgrace the Church.

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ST. LOUIS (MO)
Berger’s Beat

October 12, 2014 9:52 am | Author: berger

Ex-GOP presidential candidate Rick Santorum speaks on 10/20 in St. Charles. A few years back, he created a firestorm when the Catholic abuse crisis erupted in Boston and he claimed, “it is so surprise that Boston, a seat of academic, political and cultural liberalism in America, lies at the center of the storm.”

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The Economist

ACROSS the Western world, religious organisations have fought a hard and mostly successful battle to retain the right to “discriminate” when choosing their own priests, rabbis and imams. And that seems reasonable enough. Something peculiar would be going on if say, a Christian church were obliged, under equality legislation, to admit to the priesthood a person who professed either atheism or some other religion.

But the number of jobs over which religious bodies have some influence goes far beyond the ranks of clerics or prayer leaders. There are church-based charities and foundations. There are jobs like hospital chaplaincies where the employer is secular but appointments are subject to church vetting. There are university faculties, indeed entire universities, which are religious foundations. And across western Europe, churches have an influence over the education of children which is far out of proportion to the number of people who actually attend services. In Germany, more than 1m jobs are in the gift of the Protestant or Catholic churches, as the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) noted when considering a religious employment case.

On the face of things, the further you get from narrowly defined clerical institutions and posts, the harder it would seem to justify “discrimination” and the scrutiny of employees’ beliefs and private lives—something which would not be tolerated in any other walk of life. At any rate, that’s what secularists would strongly argue.

But the most recent high-profile court cases on both sides of the Atlantic have tended to vindicate religious groups. In 2012 the American Supreme Court rejected a complaint of unfair dismissal lodged by a teacher at a Lutheran school, on grounds that she was technically a “minister” and therefore serving at the church’s pleasure. Two landmark German cases considered by the ECHR were about employees of religious institutions who were laid off because of extra-marital affairs. The court upheld the complaint of an organist at a famous cathedral, but rejected that of a public-relations officer for the Mormons. In yet another case, the ECHR (in a split vote) rejected the complaint of a Spanish retired teacher and ex-priest who was fired because he married and joined a campaign against compulsory celibacy for priests.

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AUSTRALIA
Daily Mail

Facing his flock: Hillsong pastor Brian Houston defends not reporting his paedophile father to police in address to his congregation

By AUSTRALIAN ASSOCIATED PRESS and DANIEL PIOTROWSKI and LILLIAN RADULOVA FOR DAILY MAIL AUSTRALIA

In his first sermon since testifying about his father’s sexual abuse, Hillsong’s senior pastor Brian Houston defended his lack of action upon finding out his father was a paedophile.

Mr Houston told the congregation of thousands at Baulkham Hills in New South Wales on Sunday that he did not approach police because Frank Houston’s victim, named AHA, did not want to prompt an investigation into the abuse.

‘You had a situation where this was the first time I had ever heard about my father’s abuses,’ Mr Houston said to the huge crowd, according to The Daily Telegraph.

‘There was a victim, a survivor, who was adamant he did not want a police investigation and he didn’t want a church investigation.

The Hillsong leader also suggested that no other church leaders advised him to approach police about the abuse allegations, despite also being informed of the claims.

‘So, I genuinely believed at the time, by the way no one gave me any advice to counter this, that if he wanted to go to police, he was 36, he could,’ Mr Houston said.

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AUSTRALIA
Sydney Morning Herald

October 13, 2014

The handling of abuse allegations by NSW Police and Catholic Church is set to be probed at a police corruption watchdog hearing starting on Monday.

The Police and Integrity Commission (PIC) is investigating the conduct of a police officer in a Catholic Church professional standards group between 1998 and 2005.

The watchdog will also examine any agreement between the police and the church about how complaints of abuse at the hands of the church were dealt with.

The hearing comes after freedom of information (FoI) documents revealed the Catholic Church believed it had an understanding with the NSW police in 2003 that allowed them to conceal evidence against pedophile priests.

The file, accessed through FoI laws by NSW Greens MP David Shoebridge and obtained by ABC’s Lateline, documents the Catholic Church’s attempt to co-opt NSW police to strike into the illegal agreement.

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ITALIA
Il Mattino

[23,000 people downloaded and watched images of babies being violated by paying 500 euros. The price allowed people to buy an e-mail with the sequence of photos of tiny babies being raped and tortured. It is the latest discovery of a non-profit organization founded by Father Fortunato Di Noto who reported this to police in eastern Sicily. The priest said his organization has been viewing the site and found 1,290 photos and videos of child abuse involving about 700 children.]

Sono stati 23.100 visitatori che hanno guardato e scaricato immagini di neonati violati pagando 500 euro, il prezzo che permette di acquistare con una mail la sequenza di foto con piccolissimi violentati e torturati, che è possibile ricevere su proprio tablet o smartphone. È l’ultima scoperta su Internet dell’all’associazione Meter onlus, fondata da don Fortunato Di Noto, che ha denunciato tutto alla polizia postale della Sicilia orientale, con sede a Catania.

Complessivamente, secondo quanto riferito dall’associazione che ha visionato il sito, ci sono 1.290 scatti e video di pedofilia, con circa 700 bambini violati. Coinvolte anche delle donne e ripresi e fotografati una serie di abusi perpetrati da uomini adulti, a viso scoperto. Tra le foto, neonati e bambini che massimo arrivano a 10 anni.

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ITALIA
Repubblica

[Don Giovanni Desio, former pastor of Casal Borsetti in Ravenna, admitted to abusing a few kids – 14 and 15-year-olds. He is now in jail for six months on charges of pedophilia. Yesterday, during an interrogation he made light of the relationships with a third minor.]

Ha ammesso di aver avuto rapporti con alcuni ragazzini – 14 e 15enni – che frequentavano la sua parrocchia don Giovanni Desio, l’ex parroco di Casal Borsetti, nel Ravennate, in carcere da sei mesi con l’accusa di pedofilia.

Ieri, durante un interrogatorio, è stata fatta luce sulla relazione con un terzo minorenne – dopo i due che erano finiti all’attenzione degli investigatori sin dalle prime battute delle indagini – che lo andava a trovare in parrocchia. Si sarebbe trattato, ha spiegato il prete, di una sorta di “relazione amorosa” della quale non aveva parlato all’inizio per una supposta volontà di “protezione” nei confronti del ragazzino.

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DEUTSCHLAND
Der Westen

[Theologian Dorothee Trynogga since 2010 has investigated on behalf of the bishops cases of sexual abuse within the Essen diocese. She experienced many stressful conversations with victims and perpetrators and in the end had five convictions. She now gives her office to a successor.

The period covered the years from 1950 to the present day, focusing on the years 1960 to 1980. She found 88 potential offenders from the diocese, including 35 priests and 19 religious.]

Essen. Seit 2010 ist die Theologin Dorothee Trynogga im Auftrag des Bischofs Fällen sexuellen Missbrauchs im Bistum Essen nachgegangen. Sie erlebte viele belastende Gespräche mit Opfern und Tätern und am Ende fünf Verurteilungen. Jetzt übergibt sie ihr Amt einem Nachfolger.

Es waren menschliche Abgründe, in die Dorothee Trynogga nun fast fünf Jahre hineinblicken musste. Priester, die sich an Jugendlichen sexuell vergingen, Ordensschwestern, die Heimkinder schlugen, kirchliche Mitarbeiter, die eine Machtposition ausnutzten. Im Mai 2010, auf dem Höhepunkt der Debatte um Missbrauchsfälle im Bistum Essen, ernannte Bischof Franz-Josef Overbeck die Diplom-Theologin und fünffache Mutter offiziell zur „Bischöflichen Beauftragten für die Prüfung von Vorwürfen sexuellen Missbrauchs Minderjähriger und erwachsener Schutzbefohlener“. Zum 1. Oktober hat die 51-Jährige ihr Amt nun an ihren Stellvertreter Karl Sarholz übergeben.

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AUSTRALIA
Newcastle Herald

By GABRIEL WINGATE-PEARSE Oct. 3, 2014

THE relationship between the Catholic Church and NSW Police is being investigated once more, this time by the Police Integrity Commission.

Operation Protea, announced yesterday, will look specifically at police involvement in any “agreement, protocol or memorandum of understanding” between police and the Catholic Church concerning the handling of complaints of abuse by Catholic Church personnel or employees.

The investigation follows the release of internal police documents to Greens MP David Shoebridge under freedom-of-information legislation in October 2013.

As the Newcastle Herald reported at the time, the documents include an unsigned memorandum of understanding allowing the Church to produce edited abuse reports, carry out investigations and decline to release the results to police without court orders.

When a senior NSW Police officer advised the Church in August 2003 that the memorandum of understanding appeared to be “in direct conflict” with legal requirements to report crime, police did not investigate whether the Church had failed to report abuse cases.

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AUSTRALIA
ABC News

The New South Wales Police Integrity Commission has launched Operation Protea to investigate any agreements between the state’s police force and the Catholic Church which may have enabled the church to conceal information about child sexual abuse. Last year, the ABC revealed details of a drafted memorandum of understanding between the police and the Catholic Church and a special arrangement that saw a police officer sit on an internal church panel in charge of handling child abuse allegations against clergy. The inquiry will examine whether there was any police misconduct stemming from any formal or informal agreement with the church.

Transcript

MARK COLVIN: The New South Wales Police Integrity Commission has opened an investigation into agreements between the police force and the Catholic Church which may have enabled the church to conceal information about child sexual abuse.

Last year, the ABC revealed details of a draft memorandum of understanding between the police and the Catholic Church.

There was also a special arrangement that saw a police officer sit on an internal church panel in charge of handling child abuse allegations against the clergy.

The Police Integrity Commission has launched Operation Protea to look at whether there was any police misconduct as a result of any agreement to cooperate with the church.

Emily Bourke reports.

EMILY BOURKE: Exactly 12 months ago, the ABC’s Lateline program reported accusations that the Catholic Church tried to strike a formal agreement with New South Wales Police over how to handle allegations of child sexual abuse and what information would be handed over for investigation.

There are questions over whether this memorandum of understanding was ever signed, approved or even in operation.

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VATICAN CITY
The Daily Beast

Barbie Latza Nadeau

A growing chorus in Rome, straight and LGBT, echo Pope Francis as they ask the assembled bishops at a critical summit, “Who are you to judge?”

VATICAN CITY—Hundreds of celibate men from the Roman Catholic Church have spent the last week hearing people who actually have sex actually talk about it. The topics range from who should have it to when they should have it and how they should have it, which, according to British Bishop Vincent Nichols, is “not what we bishops talk about mostly, quite honestly.” Novelty aside, the real question is whether these avowedly chaste men of the cloth are listening.

The last time anyone at the Vatican openly obsessed about sex as much we’re seeing at the Extraordinary Synod of Bishops being held in Rome was back in 1968 when Pope Paul VI penned Humanae Vitae. That encyclical letter on the heels of the Second Vatican Council became the how-not-to manual of Catholic sexuality for some, and what amounted to a theological cold shower for others. The letter reiterated the unbendable teachings of the Catholic Church during the height of the sexual revolution, essentially banning everything that was revolutionary at the time, starting with The Pill, but hardly ending there. While the rest of the Western world explored free love, Catholics were instead told “no” to premarital sex, birth control, masturbation and homosexuality.

Pope Paul VI and the Church at that time could be forgiven for puritanical idealism. Humanae Vitae was in response to unbridled sexual liberation, written well before the advent of the Internet or sexting, when pornography was either pulp or peep show, and when “50 Shades of Grey” was what happened when priests accidentally washed their white clerical collars with their dark cassocks. So it is little wonder that Pope Paul VI’s Church defined sex as nothing more than a sort of marital perk between men and women that was “noble and worthy” with a special emphasis on the sins of using contraception. It was not necessary to try to avoid pregnancy, the pope said, because the Church teaches that sex is meant only for the purpose of procreation. Essentially, anyone having the type of sex that isn’t open to giving life—like gays and lesbians—shouldn’t be having sex at all.

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UNITED STATES
Minnesota SNAP

By Vinnie Nauheimer

Dear Bishop: ________________
Almost five hundred years ago on October 31, 1517, Dr. Martin Luther posted his 95 Theses on the door of the Cathedral of Wittenberg. At the turn of the second millennium the church once more finds itself in dire need of major reform. St. Paul admonishes us in Cortinthians 1: 5-6 “Do you not know that a little leaven leavens the whole lump? Cleanse out the old leaven that you may be a new lump.” The survivors of Clergy Sexual Abuse, their families, friends and the Catholic laity demand change, justice and reform. These are the Forty Theses of Clergy Sexual Abuse and we demand their immediate adoption by the Roman Catholic Church. We urge you and all members of the Roman Catholic clergy to forward these to the Vatican. Without the immediate implementation of these Forty Theses by the Roman Catholic Church neither the victims of clergy abuse nor the church can move forward.

FORTY THESES OF CLERGY ABUSE

1. The Pope must immediately release and open for public inspection all secret files contained in dioceses throughout the world including the Vatican that have information relating to the abuse of children.

2. The Catholic Church must release and make public the names of all priests, bishops, and cardinals who have had credible accusations of sexual abuse made against them, their current status as well as their current location.

3. The pope must, in writing, free all those survivors from their confidentiality agreements “Gag Clauses” with any dioceses around the world in order to let victims of clergy abuse speak freely.

4. The Vatican should demand of all clergy, as applicable, that as an act of atonement, they will, in writing, declare null and void all private confidentiality agreements made between them and their victims.

5. The Pope and the Vatican must release and forever disavow keeping any secrets of the “Holy Office” related to clergy or any other form of abuse perpetrated by the clergy.

6. All secret letters and instructions issued to cardinals and bishops worldwide such as “Crimen Sollicitationis” are to be declared null and void.

7. The hierarchy of the Catholic Church must change its policy on clerical abusers to demand under penalty that they report cases of abuse to their local civil authorities.

8. The pope will issue a Papal Bull reconfirming the love of Jesus for children and that none should be harmed as they, and not the clergy are our greatest treasure.

9. The hierarchy of the Catholic Church must recognize that the children are our future and if the church is to have one, their future too.

10. The hierarchy of the Catholic Church must recognize that all children have the inalienable right to grow up without fear of being sexually abused by any cleric or lay minister.

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UNITED KINGDOM
Telegraph

By Patrick Sawer
12 Oct 2014

The husband of a woman involved in a close relationship with the Bishop of Arundel is to make an official complaint to Catholic leaders about his behaviour and is calling for him to be barred from the priesthood.

His intervention coincides with new claims about Bishop Kieran Conry’s intimate friendships with women in recent years. It has been claimed he may have had relationships with as many as four women in total, raising questions as to whether the Catholic church hierarchy turned a blind eye to what he was doing.

Simon Hodgkinson, whose wife Olivia is the woman most recently linked with the Bishop, is now compiling a formal complaint against him. It will be submitted to the Papal Nuncio, the Pope’s representative in the UK, along with Cardinal Vincent Nichols, the head of the Catholic church in England and Wales, and the Vicar General, one of the church’s most powerful figures.

Citing canon law, the complaint will state that Bishop Conry not only broke his vows of celibacy, but in so doing flouted the church’s central teaching on adultery and the sanctity of marriage and family life by having such an intimate friendship with Mrs Hodgkinson, a mother of two, along with an affair with another married women.

It will also claim that the Bishop took advantage of his position of authority with both women, who had turned to him for spiritual comfort and advice after going through problems in their marriages.

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NEW JERSEY
The Record

OCTOBER 12, 2014
BY ABBOTT KOLOFF AND JEFF GREEN
STAFF WRITERS
THE RECORD

The impact of dozens of sex-abuse allegations against North Jersey priests has reached just about every corner of the region since 2002, when victims say they became emboldened to step forward because of an unfolding national sex-abuse scandal in the Roman Catholic Church.

A review by The Record of dozens of cases since 2002 shows at least 21 North Jersey municipalities have been affected in some way, including Englewood, Fair Lawn, Ho-Ho-Kus, Mahwah, Montvale, Oradell, Ridgewood, Ridgefield, Ridgefield Park, Rochelle Park, Paramus, Rutherford, Wyckoff, Park Ridge, Fairview, Edgewater, Paterson, Passaic, Clifton, Wayne and Pequannock. In many cases the priests were subjects of credible allegations, and in a few, priests were convicted of crimes. In rare instances, priests have been cleared of any wrongdoing.

Officials from the Newark and Paterson dioceses say they have removed at least 30 priests from active ministry and defrocked seven of them because of such allegations since 2002, when they say they changed their policies as part of a national bishops’ initiative. The clerics often had moved from parish to parish, spreading the impact beyond the communities where alleged sex abuse took place.

Twelve years later, church officials say they have made great strides in the way they handle abuse cases. Some top church officials admitted in 2002 that they kept quiet about some cases of abuse. That year, they agreed in a document called the Dallas Charter to provide more information to parishioners and the public.

Still, victims’ advocates say the Catholic Church often remains too secretive about what happens to priests who are removed from ministries because of sex-abuse accusations, including where they are living. Accused priests who have not been defrocked typically continue to receive pensions. In at least one case in North Jersey, a defrocked priest receives a stipend because he is destitute.

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UNITED KINGDOM
Mail on Sunday

By OLLIE GILLMAN FOR MAILONLINE

The cuckolded husband of a woman involved in a ‘close relationship’ with the Bishop of Arundel has called for him to be sacked from the Catholic Church.

Simon Hodgkinson, whose wife, Olivia, 43, is the latest woman to be linked to the bishop, is compiling a formal complaint against Kieran Conry over his intimate friendship with her.

It has been claimed that Bishop Conry had relationships with up to four women, breaking his vow of celibacy.

Mr Hodgkinson’s complaint will be sent to Cardinal Vincent Nichols, the head of the Catholic Church in England and Wales, the Papal Nuncio, the Pope’s representative in the UK, and the Vicar General, one of the Church’s most powerful figures, the Sunday Telegraph reported.

As well as stating Bishop Conry broke his celibacy vow, the complaint will say he has gone against Church teachings on adultery, marriage and family life by having a close relationship with Mrs Hodgkinson, a 43-year-old mother-of-two, and an affair with another married woman.

Mr Hodgkinson also claims the bishop abused his authority, taking advantage of both women after they turned to him for help with their marriages.

Graham Baldwin, from the charity Catalyst – which helps individuals whose family life has been affected by religious or cult groups – said: ‘Bishop Conry has … by his own admission on at least one occasion, committed adultery with a married woman, which in the eyes of the Church is a mortal sin.

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UNITED KINGDOM
Mirror

Oct 11, 2014 21:11 By Grace Macaskill

Widespread child sex abuse and rape by church members has been covered up by Jehovah’s Witnesses, it is claimed.

Elders have been accused of brainwashing abused women and girls into not going to the police so the church can maintain its squeaky-clean image, reveals the Sunday People.

The Christian religion, known for its door-to-door preachers, is said not to have taken enough action against suspected paedophiles in its ranks.

But now two women who were sexually abused are filing papers with the High Court saying the church failed in its duty of protection.

Their lawyer has warned this could be the tip of the iceberg – likening it to the sex scandals which have rocked the Catholic church.

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ROME
Crux

By John L. Allen Jr.
Associate editor October 12, 2014

ROME – Heading into an Oct. 5-19 Vatican summit of bishops to discuss the family, the single most controversial question was whether Catholics who divorce and remarry outside the Church ought to be allowed to receive Communion. Since the meeting reaches its halfway mark Sunday, it’s logical to wonder where things stand.

Alas, the answer is: We really don’t know.

To be sure, the divorce and remarriage debate is hardly the only iron in the fire at this Synod of Bishops on the family. African prelates have talked about the challenges of polygamy and witchcraft, while Middle Eastern voices have pointed to the impact of war on family life. Westerners have pondered how to overcome a pervasive cynicism about making a lifetime commitment to anything.

In addition, there are a couple of things we actually do know about the Communion question. One is that there’s no push for changing Church teaching that marriage is for life. As Archbishop Diarmuid Martin of Dublin, Ireland, put it Saturday, “Nobody’s talking about Catholic divorce.”

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AUSTRALIA
7 News

Documents show NSW Police Service warned twice that intelligence sharing arrangement with Catholic Church on child abuse claims was illegal

ABC

BY THE NATIONAL REPORTING TEAM’S LORNA KNOWLES – EXCLUSIVE
October 12, 2014

Documents obtained by the ABC reveal the NSW Police Service was warned twice by one of its own lawyers that an intelligence sharing arrangement with the Catholic Church on child abuse claims was illegal.

In explosive evidence expected to emerge at a Police Integrity Commission (PIC) hearing this week, an officer from NSW Police Service’s Crime Agencies Legal support sounded the warnings in 2001 and 2002 about a draft Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) between the church and NSW Police.

Under the draft MOU, a police sex crimes squad officer sat on an internal church body, known as the professional standards resource group.

Set up by Catholic bishops, the expert panel was created to advise the church on specific cases of child sexual abuse involving clergy and others.

The officer’s role was to advise whether church practices had breached the law. She would also advise on whether priests should be removed from their positions.

The PIC will investigate whether the participation of this officer, between 1998 and 2005, amounted to police misconduct.

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VATICAN CITY
John Thavis

Archbishop Diarmuid Martin of Dublin had some interesting things to say at today’s press briefing for the Synod of Bishops on the family. Archbishop Martin was present at the 1980 synod on the family (and at synods after that), and he reflected on what has changed – notably, the very open debate at this session, and the willingness to look at new approaches.

“On some of the subjects, the theological debate has been going on for years, and I don’t expect this synod is going to bring that to a conclusion. But this synod cannot simply repeat what was said twenty years ago. It has to find new language, to show that there can be development of doctrine, and that there has been a willingness to listen to what emerged in the questionnaires that went out and what emerged in the synod itself,” he said.

Archbishop Martin said that in general, there’s a movement away from seeing the church’s teaching on marriage as something that is “taught” to people, and a better understanding that the church itself learns through the experience of the sacramental marriages of its faithful. Catechesis is essential, he said, but the church also has to recognize that while many couples could not explain the theology of marriage and the family, they “understand it, and live it.”

The synod heard a lot about truth and mercy, and Martin said it was important to find real ways of bringing the two together. Because of the strong canonical tradition in the Catholic Church, he said, “we’re not good at dealing with exceptions.” He said we have both “rigorism” and “laxism” in the church, but “most people fall in the gray areas between those two, and we have to exercise our pastoral responsibilities in the gray areas, not falling into either extreme.”

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VATICAN CITY
Crux

By Josephine Mckenna
Religion News Service October 10, 2014

VATICAN CITY – From questions of welcoming a gay son home for Christmas to denying the sacraments for the children of gay and lesbian parents, an ongoing debate on the Catholic Church’s approach to homosexuality has raised the hopes of some LGBT advocates and provoked the ire of the church’s right wing.

At the two-week Synod on the Family convened by Pope Francis here, the issue of homosexuality is competing for air time with similar questions of denying Communion to divorced and remarried Catholics or how to respond to couples that live together outside of marriage.

But with a rapidly shifting legal landscape, and a pope who famously asked “Who am I to judge?”, the debate over homosexuality is eliciting personal and charged reactions from all corners of the church.

The controversial debate was unwittingly fired up by Australians Ron and Mavis Pirola, the parents of four and delegates to the church family summit.

The Sydney couple told nearly 200 bishops about friends who had invited their gay son and his partner home for Christmas.

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UNITED STATES
POPE FRANCIS the CON-Christ

Paris Arrow

DOUBLE VICTORY! Pope Francis defeated again! Vatican Mammon Beast aka Opus Dei Beast defeated again! Hail to our chief, St. Michael the Archangel for defeating Pope Francis and thus justice and truth triumph and prevail for the children of humanity.

The youngest winner of the Nobel Peace Prize, Malala Yousafzai of Pakistan, said in her acceptance speech in England where was healed from the gunshot wound and where she now resides and goes to school, “We change the world, one girl at a time, one book at a time, one pen at a time”. Likewise we too say, we change the world, one blog at a time.
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The announcement of the Nobel Peace Prize winners – 17 year old Malala Yousafzai of Pakistan and 60 year old Kailash Satyarthi of India – feels like the FIFA victory of Germany over Argentina – when 22 year old Mario Goetz made the single winning goal that saved the face of Brazil and saved its people from humiliation and pain especially from the rowdy 100,000 Argentinians who descended in Brazil and took over Rio de Janeiro and occupied Copacabana Beach.

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UNITED STATES
PopeCrimes& Vatican Evils.

Paris Arrow

The Nobel Peace Prize sided with children this year and not with old Pope Francis the head of complicit cardinals and bishops of the JP2 Army – John Paul II Pedophile Priests Army, read more in Cold-blood-ed John Paul is no saint for children because he said nothing and did nothing to save and protect them for 27 years http://popecrimes.blogspot.ca/2014/05/cold-blood-ed-pope-john-paul-ii-is-no.html

The Norwegian Nobel Committee chose the two winners of the Nobel Peace Prize “for their struggle against the suppression of children and young people and for the right of all children to education.” The Nobel Committee did not choose Pope Francis because he is the head of state of the Vatican fake country, the Holy See that has been found guilty of crimes against humanity’s children twice by the United Nations. Read our related article, UN condemns Vatican for crimes against children. HOORAH. 10 Reasons to abolish the papacy and why there should never be another pope http://popecrimes.blogspot.ca/2014/02/un-condemns-vatican-for-crimes-against.html

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UNITED STATES
The Open Tabernacle: Here Comes Everybody

Posted on October 11, 2014 by Betty Clermont

The head of the notorious Society of St. Pius X, Bishop Bernard Fellay, met with Cardinal Gerhard Mueller, prefect of the powerful Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, on Sept. 23, 2014, “with a view to the envisioned full reconciliation” with the Catholic Church. Known by its acronym, SSPX, the society “does not have a canonical status in the church [and] its ministers do not exercise legitimate ministries in the church.” Nevertheless, a French SSPX priest was allowed to say mass in St. Peter’s Basilica a month earlier.

The Vatican initiated “non-official” contact with the SSPX leading to an “informal meeting” between Fellay and church officials on Dec. 13, 2013, despite SSPX offering to hold the funeral Mass of a convicted Nazi war criminal the previous October and disrupting a November ceremony in Buenos Aires marking the anniversary of the beginning of the Holocaust.

Former S.S. Captain Erich Priebke had said he wanted a Catholic burial. Like thousands of other war criminals, he had escaped Europe via one of the Vatican ratlines and lived quietly in Argentina for the next 50 years until he was exposed by an ABC News investigative team.

Priebke was extradited to Rome and convicted in 1997 of participating in the 1944 Ardeatine Massacre of 335 Italian resistance fighters but remained unrepentant. He was put under house arrest due to his age where he died at age 100 on Oct. 11, 2013. When the Diocese of Rome, German and Argentine officials refused to bury him, SSPX offered to hold the funeral Mass but was prevented from doing so when “protesters surrounded the car which was carrying the body to their church.” Priebke was buried in an Italian prison cemetery.

In Buenos Aires, Catholics, Jews and Protestants hold an annual ceremony in the Catholic Metropolitan Cathedral “to mark Kristallnacht, the Nazi-led mob violence in 1938 when about 1,000 Jewish synagogues were burned and thousands of Jews were forced into concentration camps, launching the genocide that killed 6 million Jews.” SSPX members disrupted the Nov. 13, 2013, ceremony by shouting the rosary and the “Our Father” and distributed pamphlets stating, “followers of false gods must be kept out of the sacred temple.” Fr. Christian Bouchacourt, leader of the SSPX in South America, said his organization had the right to feel outraged when rabbis preside over a ceremony in a Catholic cathedral.

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VIRGINIA
New York Daily News

SEE IT: Videos show teen brutally attacked by Christian boarding school workers — leading to assault, battery convictions

BY NINA GOLGOWSKI
Friday, October 10, 2014

As a 14-year-old boy was viciously pummeled to the ground at a Christian boarding school surrounding witnesses not only turned the other cheek but their eyes as well.

Newly released video from Virginia’s Abundant Life Academy in Milford reveals two such brutal scenes which led to the convictions of four former workers who took a plea deal for misdemeanor assault and battery Thursday, WTVR reported.

The three life coaches and a program instructor — identified as Liam Galligan, 44, Jovany Rivera, 22, Timothy Jordan, 26, and William Honea, 49 — had been charged with assault by mob and assault after the video shot in April surfaced.

In one scene the boy is seen being tackled in the academy’s sanctuary hall while in another he’s flipped on his back from behind while standing in the cafeteria.

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VIRGINIA
The Raw Story

SCOTT KAUFMAN
10 OCT 2014

Video obtained by CBS 6 shows four Christian boarding school workers chasing down and beating the trouble youths they were supposed to be helping.

In the video, which was taken in April, three life coaches and a program director at Abundant Life Academy in Caroline County, Virginia can be seen beating a 14-year-old in their charge. He attempted to run away, but the four employees chased him down and began assaulting him again.

According to The Free Lance-Star, the teen was tackled and then violently restrained because he had been caught “talking to a girl.”

The investigation into abuse at the Christian center began in April, when four teenagers escaped from the facility. When authorities captured them, they claimed that they had fled the facility because of rampant abuse.

The boarding school’s mission, according to its website, is to “equip students and families to live a life of love, acceptance and forgiveness through modeling and training of biblical principles, bridging the gap between parents and children.”

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VIRGINIA
WTVR

[with video]

BY JON BURKETT

CAROLINE COUNTY, Va. — It’s shocking video of four boarding school workers assaulting a teen boy they were supposed to be helping — and their crimes were caught on camera.

The images were taken inside the cafeteria and sanctuary hall at Abundant Life Academy in Caroline County back in April.

The video shows a 14-year-old boy making a run for it, only to be snagged and then assaulted by three life coaches and a program director.

The four boarding school employees were arrested and charged with assault by mob and assault.

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UNITED STATES
Christian Catholicism

Jerry Slevin

Pope Francis, as an elderly “interim pope”, had about three years to go until his 80 year old normal Cardinal retirement age, when he admirably and reluctantly agreed last year to serve as interim pope. He projected a very friendly public image, but had little international or even Vatican experience, as the Vatican was in the midst of an unprecedented and unexpected crisis triggered by the first papal resignation in 600 years. Francis’ challenge was and is to preserve an unaccountable top down leadership structure and its wealth.

In 225 years since the French Revolution, no other European absolute monarchy has been able to evade democratic oversight of its actions and finances. Neither will the Vatican much longer, despite Francis’ and his Vatican cliques’ well funded and desperate efforts.

Francis then established, likely with the guidance of the ex-Pope and Cardinal Sodano, a two step process to convene (1) an interim Synod of Bishops, now under way, at least to discuss Church changes after a year and a half, and (2) a larger Synod of Bishops next October to discuss further potential final changes. This process in 2016 would allow Francis then, in his eightieth year, to implement as pope whatever changes evolved at the final Synod that he decided he wanted to approve. Francis then could retire and pass the papacy on to his much younger (now 59 years old) likely successor, Sodano’s protege, Cardinal Parolin, who is evidently being groomed as the top prospect to be the next pope.

This two step Synod plan would then for three years also enable Francis to contain mounting pressure from many Catholics for long overdue changes. In the meantime, other Vatican Cardinals could deal with the Synod charades, like disregarding lay Catholics’ questionnaires and locking out independent lay participation at the Synods. And ecstatic Catholic “reformers” and “wishful thinkers” and opportunistic papal cheerleaders could endlessly recycle all the “happy talk” of change, until Francis is finally flushed out in 2016.

Francis’ three year plan is, however, in real jeopardy. Reality has finally overtaken Pope Francis’ well funded myth makers. Marketed last year as the new “Francis of Assisi” and TIME’s Man of the Year, the new pope has this past week faced a confluence of bad news and resistance relating to more hierarchical scandals and uninspiring change proposals.

Pope Francis, with the ex-Pope’s and Sodano’s apparent concurrence, if not direction, as seemingly originally planned, could then let Sodano’s “man”, Cardinal Baldisserri, run the Synod, and the ex-Pope’s “man”, Cardinal Mueller, run the Vatican’s doctrinal and discipline department, as has already occurred. Pope Francis could then, as he has for 19 months, focus mainly on the Vatican’s No. 1 priority — trying to salvage, by political alliances with powerful elites, by massive media campaigns and otherwise, some cardinals and bishops who may be facing potential criminal investigations relating to child abuse and financial scandals that exploded under the mismanagement of the ex-Pope and his actor predecessor, Pope John Paul II.

Like Dumas’ Three Musketeers, the Catholic hierarchy is “all for one and one for all”, especially since, with their many shared secret sins, if one falls publicly, a domino effect may be triggered taking down many more, as happened with another secretive international all male group, the Mafia.

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ROM
Spiegel

[Oh what were the good time for a cardinal! The Vatican was all around. We met with friends in bars and restaurants and shared what they had. Even the Vatican bank with its secretive accounts was open to worldly customers when they came with a recommendation. Then came Jorge Mario Bergoglio and the quality of life of the eminences went downhill.

The Papal States once had about 100 cars in the service fleet but then came the pope, characteristically named Francis after St. Francis of Assisi, the go-googer and poverty preacher. Soon you could no more climb into a Mercedes sedan without receiving negative attention. And then the new dress code! Gorgeous silk robes that eminences wore that cost 10,000 euros or more. When Francis came with work shoes and the Francis dress, no one dared to shine in gold and purple.]

Von Hans-Jürgen Schlamp, Rom

Ach, was waren das für schöne Zeiten für einen Kardinal! Im Vatikan und rundherum! Man traf sich mit Freunden in den Bars und Restaurants und teilte, was man hatte. Geld hatten die Kirchendiener zwar nicht viel, aber zum Beispiel Eintrittskarten für das Kirchenreich, wo die Freunde steuerfrei tanken und einkaufen konnten. Auch die Vatikanbank mit ihren verschwiegenen Konten stand weltlichen Kunden offen, wenn sie mit einer Empfehlung aufwarteten.

Dann kam Jorge Mario Bergoglio, und mit der Lebensqualität der Eminenzen ging es bergab.

Etwa hundert Dienstwagen standen im Fuhrpark des Kirchenstaats, als Bergoglio am 13. März vorigen Jahres zum Papst gekürt wurde und sich bezeichnenderweise Franziskus nannte, nach dem heiligen Franz von Assisi, dem Weltverbesserer und Armutsprediger. Bald konnte man keine Mercedes-Limousine mehr besteigen, ohne gleich negativ aufzufallen.

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AUSTRALIA
News Mail

Emma McBryde | 10th Oct 2014

A WOMAN told the royal commission she was only one of 63 children who came forward about sexual abuse they suffered at Victorian teacher Kenneth “Ken” Sandilands’ hands.

Emma Fretton chose to testify without a pseudonym at the public hearing in Sydney today.

Ms Fretton said she was in Mr Sandilands class for years 1, 2 and 3 at Northside Christian College in the mid-1980s when he abused her.

The commission is examining the response of the church body in charge of the college – Northside Christian Centre – and Australian Christian Churches, then known as the Assemblies of God.

Ms Fretton testified she told two teachers Sandilands was touching her inappropriately and writing sexual stories about her family then forcing her to sign them.

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AUSTRALIA
The Australian

AAP OCTOBER 11, 2014

HILLSONG senior pastor Brian Houston consulted a lawyer about his father’s position when abuse allegations were raised but didn’t mention that meeting in his statement to the royal commission into the matter.

The man who is a leading light in the evangelical movement in Australia was in the witness box for a second day at a hearing of the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse in Sydney yesterday.

The commission is examining how Pentecostal churches responded to complaints of child sex abuse by its pastors.

It has heard that Frank Houston admitted in 1999 to abusing children in Australia and New Zealand, when his son was national president of the Assemblies of God in Australia, the umbrella organisation for more than 1000 churches. Frank Houston died in 2004, aged 82.

It has emerged in evidence that Brian Houston consulted a lawyer at prominent firm Mallesons about his father’s position. Mr Houston said: “Where I went as my father’s son to go to see a lawyer about my father — this commission is about institutional child abuse so in that sense, I don’t see that it was particularly relevant that I went to see a lawyer. It was something that was between a father and son.”

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AUSTRALIA
Religion News Service

Sarah Pulliam Bailey | October 10, 2014

(RNS) The founder of Hillsong, an Australian megachurch that has exported its influence to major global cities and into churches’ music across the U.S., is facing strict scrutiny for what he

In 1999, Brian Houston’s father, Frank Houston, who was also a minister, confessed to sexually abusing an underage male at his New Zealand congregation 30 years before. In response, the younger Houston, who was then president of the Assemblies of God in Australia, fired his father, took control of the church and merged it with Hillsong.

The elder Houston died in 2004.

On Thursday and Friday (Oct. 9-10), the son took the witness stand in Sydney and denied any attempt to cover up the allegations. Next week, Brian Houston will be in New York City for the church’s c, at Madison Square Garden.

In his testimony, Brian Houston denied trying to hide his involvement in a $10,000 compensation payment made to a man who was abused as a child by his father.

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ALABAMA
Heavy

An Alabama pastor told his flock during a sermon that he has full blown AIDS and, despite knowing of his HIV infection for years, continued to have sex with numerous parishioners. In further bombshells, Reverend Juan McFarland of the Shiloh Missionary Baptist Church in Montgomery revealed his cocaine abuse and the embezzlement of church money. Even so, he was allowed to preach for two more Sundays before church deacons finally yanked him from the pulpit.

Here’s what you need to know:

1. One of His Partners Is Being Tested for HIV

In September, McFarland told the parishioners at Shiloh Missionary Baptist Church that he had AIDS. He described how he was diagnosed with AIDS in 2008 and HIV in 2003.

WSFA News reports a member of the flock saying, “The church was very accepting of Reverend McFarland and was willing to help in any way possible.” It isn’t known if McFarland told his sexual partners that he had AIDS, although one woman he was with is being tested.

Al.com reports that McFarland isn’t taking medicine for his illness.

In addition to divulging his AIDS diagnosis, McFarland told his followers that he was a cocaine user.

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ILLINOIS
Chicago Tribune

By Sally Ho,
Tribune reporter

A former River Forest church official is again facing charges of sexually abusing a child — this time a 9-year-old boy from the church with whom he was watching a movie last year, authorities said.

John Hays, 57, of Chicago, was ordered held on $150,000 bond Friday on a second charge of aggravated criminal sexual abuse, according to the Cook County State’s Attorney’s office.

The alleged incident happened in Oct. 2013, when Hays visited the boy after he had surgery, prosecutors said. Hays had jumped into the same bed with the boy and allegedly touched the child inappropriately as he was falling asleep, prosecutors said.

At the time, Hays was working as the director of congregational life at First Presbyterian Church of River Forest. The victim and his family attended worship services there. Hays was an ordained minister, but did not serve as a pastor at the Presbyterian church, according to Kevin Murphy, an elder at the church. He was dismissed May 26, Murphy said.

Local police learned last month that a child may have been sexual abused last year in a River Forest home. Detectives interviewed the victim and witnesses with help from the Cook County state’s attorney’s advocacy unit and Proviso Children’s Advocacy Center.

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AUSTRALIA
News Mail

Leah White | 11th Oct 2014

FOUR decades after David McNamara was sexually abused as a young boy by a “ring” of Catholic Church paedophiles, the Northern Rivers man has filed his allegations, for the first time, with police after being officially released from a church “gag” order last month.

Mr McNamara claims he was first sexually abused by Father Roger “Gabriel” Mount in a sick bed at the Kendall Grange home for intellectually disabled boys near Newcastle when he was 12 years old.

“Just before I was pubescent, I was sexually abused, by Roger Mount, when I was in a sick bed,” he said.

“And then after that, he would sort of abuse me whenever it was convenient.

“He would come to my bed at night and touch me again, and after a while, he got me to touch his penis.

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PHILADELPHIA (PA)
NBC Philadlephia

By Vince Lattanzio

Editor’s Note: This special project features explicit content that may be disturbing to some readers. NBC10 does not identify victims of sexual abuse. To protect against further victimization, names — including those convicted — have been changed. Because of the nature of their work, NBC10 agreed to only use the first names of Homeland Security agents.

PHILADELPHIA — The photos are disturbing.

Children as young as infants forced to undergo sexual acts. Their assaults captured in time and then traded over the internet.

The videos are horrifying.

But it’s the audio that’s haunting.

“It makes you almost want to cry,” said Joe, a veteran special agent with Homeland Security Investigations’ Child Exploitation Unit in Philadelphia.

Part of a virtually unknown arm of the Department of Homeland Security’s Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) division, the unit granted NBC10 exclusive and unprecedented access revealing how they bring to justice the worst-of-the-worst pedophiles operating online and identify and rescue their victims — wherever they may be.

Their fight is relentless.

CP, as the unit is nicknamed, receives new leads every week at its offices inside the U.S. Customs House in historic Philadelphia about people consuming, distributing and producing child porn in Pennsylvania, Delaware and West Virginia.

The unit’s six male and three female federal investigators are broken into two types: Case Agents, who are similar to traditional detectives and Computer Forensic Agents, who scour computers, smartphones and other electronic devices for evidence.

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CANADA
The London Free Press

By Randy Richmond, The London Free Press
Friday, October 10, 2014

For years, John Swales battled social service agencies over how they treat men.

Next week, he’ll realize a long-held dream, built with the help of those agencies: A place for men.

“Something along the way had to shift. I decided to do my part and shift a bit,” said Swales, an outspoken sexual abuse survivor.

D4Men — Destination for Men — launches Thursday at the Goodwill Centre conference room. …

Swales and his brothers were sexually abused by Roman Catholic priest Barry Glendinning in the 1970s. That began a long struggle with alcohol and drug abuse that led Swales into prostitution and trouble with the law.

Swales successfully sued the Catholic church, but continued to fight what he saw as ­discrimination against male ­survivors. That battle peaked in 2010, when the province announced $2.2-million for male survivors that prompted competition for the dollars from some of the same agencies that Swales felt ignored his and other survivors’ troubles.

After the tempest eased, leaders of London social agencies and Swales struck a truce that has led to an increasingly friendly collaboration on several projects, including D4Men.

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UNITED KINGDOM
BBC News

By Nic Rigby
BBC News

The senior investigator looking into claims of physical and sexual abuse at a former Catholic orphanage says a new suspect has been identified.

Retired detective chief inspector Mark Ross has been brought back to head up an inquiry into abuse at the St Francis Boys Home in Shefford, Bedfordshire.

The abuse took place between the late 1940s and the early 1970s.

Mr Ross said 80 “potential victims” had been identified and 35 statements taken in a worldwide
Police have already interviewed two suspects.

“Each week, we are identifying more victims,” said Mr Ross.

“If they are still alive they should be brought to justice. These victims have been battling for justice for years.

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MARYLAND
Associated Baptist Press

By Bob Allen

Maryland’s highest court of appeal declined Sept. 22 to review what has been described as largest evangelical sex-abuse case to date, leaving intact lower-court decisions dismissing the class-action lawsuit on legal technicalities.

The Court of Appeals, the highest tribunal in Maryland, declined without comment to review a June 26 decision by the Court of Special Appeals dismissing Doe v. Sovereign Grace Ministries.

The lawsuit, originally filed in October 2012 in Montgomery County, Md., alleged a culture of enabling and covering up pedophilia in churches associated with Sovereign Grace Ministries, a Calvinistic church-planting network based in Louisville, Ky.

Special Court of Appeals Judge Deborah Eyler ruled that a group of alleged abuse victims and their families did not follow proper procedure in filing their appeal of an earlier dismissal in circuit court, and therefore her appellate court could not legally consider their argument.

In May 2013, Montgomery County Circuit Judge Sharon Burrell ruled that plaintiffs had missed a window of opportunity to sue for sexual abuse damages within three years of turning 18.

In their appeal, the plaintiffs said they were suing not over the abuse, per se, but alleged collusion by church leaders that didn’t come to light until 2011.

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VATICAN CITY
The Raw Story

DAVID FERGUSON
10 OCT 2014

The former Archbishop of St. Louis and current Cardinal Prefect of the Supreme Tribunal of the Apostolic Signatura, Cardinal Raymond Burke said in an interview published Thursday that families have a responsibility to protect their children from exposure to LGBT people. Family members or not, he said, people who “suffer from same-sex attraction” are “inherently disordered” and their relationships are “always and everywhere wrong, evil.”

David Badash at The New Civil Rights Movement reported that Burke made the series of bigoted statements in an interview published Thursday on antichoice website LifeSiteNews.com. …

In July, Burke’s former diocese — the Archdiocese of St. Louis — settled out of court with a woman known as Jane Doe 92, who alleged that the church hierarchy enabled and shielded from prosecution a priest who molested her from the age of 5 to the age of 9.

As part of the discovery process in the Jane Doe suit, the Missouri Supreme Court forced the St. Louis diocese to hand over a list of all of its priests who have been accused of sexual misconduct with children.

The list is sealed, but court records show “a matrix of 240 complaints against 115 priests and other church employees dating back decades.”

Jane Doe’s sex abuse case was only the second suit against the Catholic church in St. Louis history to make it to trial.

According to the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Burke’s former archdiocese “has spent more than $10 million on costs related to sexual abuse since 2004, according to its 2013 annual report.”

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ROM
Zeit

[It went quickly in recent weeks. First came the news of the arrest of former Archbishop Jozef Wesolowski for sexual abuse of boys in his time as ambassador to the Vatican. Then it was announced that Wesolowski had oodles of child pornography stored on his computers. In between a bishop had been deposed in Paraguay, who had promoted an alleged abuser to an important post in the diocese.

The bad news was good news for the church for these are steps toward a uniform legal culture. The Vatican is acting with unprecedented consequence. The church, with its 1.2 billion members, still has no consensus about abuse education and prevention. But in countries such as the USA, Australia, Ireland or Germany there are now comprehensive guidelines for dealing with victims and perpetrators. Unfortunately abuse of minors is still considered a problem of the West in parts of Eastern Europe and West Africa.]

VON HANS ZOLLNER

10. Oktober 2014

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In den vergangenen Wochen ging es Schlag auf Schlag. Zuerst kam die Nachricht von der Verhaftung des ehemaligen Erzbischofs Józef Wesołowski wegen sexuellen Missbrauchs von Jungen in seiner Zeit als Botschafter des Vatikans. Dann wurde bekannt, dass Wesołowski Unmengen kinderpornografischen Materials auf seinen Computern gespeichert hatte. Zwischendurch war ein Bischof in Paraguay abgesetzt worden, der einen in den USA verurteilten Missbrauchstäter in ein wichtiges Amt seiner Diözese befördert hatte. Mal wieder bad news für die katholische Kirche und good news für Presse?

Die bad news waren good news für die Kirche, denn beide Verhaftungen sind Schritte zu einer einheitlichen Rechtskultur. Der Vatikan agiert mit nie da gewesener Konsequenz, ohne bad news zu fürchten. Zwar kommen die Anklagen um Jahrzehnte zu spät. Und in der Weltkirche mit ihren 1,2 Milliarden Mitgliedern gibt es noch keinen Konsens zu Missbrauchsaufklärung und Prävention. Aber in Ländern wie den USA, Australien, Irland oder Deutschland gibt es nun flächendeckende Leitlinien zum Umgang mit Opfern und Tätern. Leider gilt in Teilen Osteuropas und Westafrikas der Missbrauch Minderjähriger noch als “Problem des Westens”. Doch die wichtigsten Entscheider im Vatikan haben begriffen, was nottut. Franziskus schuf eine Päpstliche Kommission zum Schutz von Minderjährigen, die nicht nur den Papst berät, sondern auch die römischen Ämter, die Ortskirchen und Ordensgemeinschaften. Zwar hat die Kommission keine direkten rechtlichen Befugnisse, denn entsprechende Organe gibt es schon. Doch nun wird überprüft, ob sie funktionieren. Die Kommission soll Gerechtigkeit für die Opfer erwirken, Prävention, Ausbildung von Personal und eine theologisch-spirituelle Auseinandersetzung mit dem Missbrauch.

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MISSOURI
National Catholic Reporter

Brian Roewe | Oct. 10, 2014

INDEPENDENCE, MO.
On a day of downpours in the Kansas City region, the real thunder rang here in a Jackson County courtroom, where lawyers on both sides of a lawsuit alleging sexual abuse by a priest struck to discredit each other’s expert witnesses on the issue of repressed memory.

On Thursday, Dr. Harrison Pope, a research psychiatrist at Harvard Medical School, retook the stand to continue what he stated the day before: There is no scientific evidence supporting the idea of repressed memory. The notion has so far been a central aspect of the suit brought by Jon David Couzens against the Kansas City-St. Joseph diocese.

Couzens has alleged that Msgr. Thomas O’Brien sexually abused him and three other boys on several occasions at Nativity of the Blessed Virgin Mary Church in Independence when they were children. Two of the other three boys have since died, and the third has denied any memory of abuse. O’Brien died in October 2013 at the age of 87.

Couzens has testified that memories of the abuse had remained buried in his mind until a May 2011 phone call from a friend, who was worried that her daughter had been sexually abused by a priest, resurrected them.

The Kansas City Star has reported that the case is the first for the diocese involving sexual abuse to go to trial.

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CONNECTICUT
The Connecticut Law Tribune

Isaac Avilucea, The Connecticut Law Tribune

In the 1990s and early 2000s, the Roman Catholic Church was rocked by allegations of rampant sexual abuse by priests. Since then, millions of dollars have been paid in settlements to victims. Now a string of lawsuits against Jehovah’s Witnesses shows sex abuse problems may be nondenominational.

Four accusers are suing East Spanish Congregation of Jehovah’s Witnesses New Haven and the Watchtower Bible and Tract Society of New York, saying they were sexually assaulted by Orlando Afanador, who held a leadership position in the New Haven congregation for five years starting in 1988.

The four lawsuits were filed by siblings Sybelle Almodovar, Evelyn Selimaj and Ferdinand Almodovar, and another woman, Bianca Martinez. The suits trace Afanador’s ascension in the church, detail the Witnesses’ internal hierarchy, and describe practices the plaintiffs say prevented followers from going outside the church to report abuse and that allegedly allowed Afanador’s actions to go unchecked for years. (In 2010, Afanador was criminally convicted of sexually assaulting a Nebraska boy.)

The Connecticut plaintiffs are represented by attorneys Thomas McNamara, of McNamara & Goodwin in New Haven, and Irwin Zalkwin, of San Diego, who plan to pursue the cases in state court. McNamara said church leaders got around legal obligations to report suspected sexual abuse to authorities by loosely asserting priest-penitent privilege, which protects pastoral communications that take place in confessionals. The problem, McNamara said, is church officials “stretched” application of the privilege to the point that “everything is confidential.”

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TEXAS
KVUE

LEANDER — Police arrested a man for an alleged sexual assault on Wednesday, according to the Leander Police Department.

Police said Kristopher Michael Kloc, 25, allegedly met the victim through a church where he works with the victim’s youth group. On September 8, Kloc arranged to pick up the victim outside the victim’s residence and they went back to his house, located in the 700 block of Camino Alto, the affidavit said.

After talking for a while, Kloc assaulted the victim, the affidavit said.

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MONTANA
The Raw Story

TRAVIS GETTYS
10 OCT 2014

Nearly a dozen Catholic nuns sexually abused at least 95 students at boarding and day schools run by the Ursuline Sisters of the Western Province, according to a lawsuit scheduled for trial later this year.

The suit — which was filed in 2011 in Lewis and Clark County, Montana – lists 95 plaintiffs but includes placeholders for up to 105 potential victims, reported the Global Sisters Report.

The trial is scheduled to begin Dec. 1, and the plaintiffs’ attorneys will attempt to prove 11 nuns who served from the 1940s to 1970s at St. Ignatius Mission School physically, sexually, and emotionally abused students from the Flathead Indian Reservation.

“It affected a whole generation of Native American kids,” said Vito de la Cruz, an attorney for the plaintiffs.

About 5,000 U.S. priests and deacons have been accused of sexual abuse in cases dating to the 1950s, but only an estimated 88 other female religious figures have been accused of abuse, according to the online database Bishopaccountability.org.

The database shows about 400 alleged victims of female religious figures, not including the Montana case.

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KANSAS CITY (MO)
Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests

He made one of the most stunning and memorable courtroom blunders in US history. But thanks to the generosity of Kansas City Catholics, and the viciousness of Kansas City’s bishop, a therapist is getting paid $800 an hour (a total of $55,000) to try to undermine the credibility of a man who says he was sexually abused by two priests.

Of all the mental health professionals in the land, Bishop Robert Finn and his lawyers picked this therapist as an “expert witness” in a clergy sex abuse and cover up trial that’s happening now in Independence, Missouri.

Park Dietz, who earns as much $400,000 a year, disputes the widely-accepted reality of “repressed memories.” (Think repressed memory is “unproven?” Talk with doctors and therapists who treat war veterans. Or nearly any psychologist, psychiatrist or social worker who deals with trauma.)

He’s help the diocese defend itself against a child sex abuse and cover up lawsuit brought by Jon David Couzens. It involves Missouri’s most prolific predator priest, Msgr. Thomas O’Brien. (Couzens was also abused by Fr. Isaac True. That part of his case has settled.)

Dietz is best known for his discredited testimony in the 2002 trial of Andrea Yates, a woman convicted of drowning her five kids. Under oath, Dietz claimed that before Yates committed the crime, the TV show Law & Order had aired an episode about a woman who drowned her children.

But there was no such Law & Order episode. When Dietz’ error was exposed, Yates’ murder conviction was overturned . According to Wikipedia, “the negative publicity following the Yates trial led Dietz to be dropped as an expert from Marcus Wesson’s murder trial.”

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UNITED STATES
Washington Square News

Lena Rawley, Staff Columnist
October 10, 2014

Two high school teachers in Louisiana were arrested on Oct. 1 after they videotaped themselves having a threesome with a 16-year-old student. Although the boy claimed the act was consensual, he was under the age of consent in Louisiana. Accordingly, the case was deemed a sexual assault and both teachers now face felony charges.

However, a different perception of the case is circulating on the Internet. A few days after the incident occurred, VICE published a piece highlighting the disgusting comments made regarding the situation, which included, “Nice,” “Atta boy,” “Best.Teachers.Ever” and “Damn…lucky dude!” Had the case involved a teenage girl and two male teachers, it is likely that the public would have demanded blood, calling for justice for the victim and for the predators to spend their entire lives behind bars. However, because the student is male and the two teachers are female, some think it is appropriate to make Van Halen references and treat the case like the tired plot line of an adult film.

Unfortunately, this reaction usually happens when cases involve male victims. Demonstrated by the reaction to the Louisiana case, many in the public do not consider sexual assault against men to be serious. Despite this perception, the problem is prevalent. One in six men are sexually assaulted before they turn 18. Studies conducted from 1996 to 2005 have consistently shown that 14 to 16 percent of American men have experienced sexual assault. The Rape, Abuse and Incest National Network reports that 10 percent of sexual assault victims in the United States are men.

Men who are sexually assaulted face issues similar to those faced by sexually assaulted women. They are just as likely to suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder, depression, alcoholism, drug abuse, intimacy issues and suicidal thoughts. They are also just as likely to underachieve in work and academics.

Yet, male sexual assault is rarely discussed. A 1998 study found that the problem is “common, underreported, underrecognized and undertreated.”

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NEW GUINEA
Radio New Zealand

The Catholic Church in Papua New Guinea says it has been trying to get a priest accused of paedophilia to return to Australia for the past three years.

Father Roger Mount is accused of sexually abusing boys in children’s homes in Australia in the 1960s and 70s.

Father Mount has been conducting Sunday Mass at the Sogeri Parish despite receiving a letter of suspension from the Archdiocese of Port Moresby in 2011.

The General Secretary of the Catholic Bishops’ Conference in PNG Father Victor Roche, says arrangements have finally been made for the priest to arrive in Port Moresby before departing for Australia.

“The church is not hiding him. It has been very open regarding this and the church has been all the time issuing that he should go back. The church on the whole takes this quite seriously and we want Father Roger Mount to go back to Australia and face the charges.”

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KANSAS CITY (MO)
The Kansas City Star

BY JUDY L. THOMAS
THE KANSAS CITY STAR
10/09/2014

Two psychiatrists on Thursday attacked a former altar boy’s claims that he was sexually abused by a priest and then repressed the memories of it for decades.

One told Jackson County jurors that there is no such thing as repressed memory. The other called it “pseudo science” and “science fiction.”

“There’s no scientific evidence for that phenomenon,” said Harrison Pope, a professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School. “It was a bit of a fad in the 1990s, but now it has largely vanished.”

Emotions ran high on the ninth day of a priest sexual abuse trial in Jackson County Circuit Court in Independence. The case stems from a lawsuit filed in 2011 by Jon David Couzens alleging that he suffered sexual abuse by Monsignor Thomas O’Brien when Couzens was a student at Nativity of the Blessed Virgin Mary School in Independence in the early 1980s. Couzens says that the Catholic Diocese of Kansas City-St. Joseph was told repeatedly that O’Brien was a danger to children but failed to prevent the abuse.

O’Brien, who has been the subject of dozens of sexual abuse lawsuits, died last fall at age 87.

Jurors have listened to three days of testimony on repressed memory, including that of a psychiatrist hired by Couzens’ attorneys. He said earlier in the week that Couzens was so traumatized by the abuse that he repressed the memories until 1988, when his mother sent him to see another priest at Nativity for anger issues.

That meeting — in the same rectory where some of the abuse allegedly occurred — triggered fragmented memories and led Couzens to blurt out that O’Brien was “touching us boys,” the psychiatrist said. But those memories were shut back down when the priest dismissed Couzens with a vulgar comment, he said.

On Thursday, the diocese’s two witnesses disputed that explanation.

Pope said there were only two logical explanations for Couzens’ story of sexual abuse.

“Some or all of the abuse did happen, but in reality Mr. Couzens was always able to remember it,” he said, “or some or all of the abuse did not happen and so it wasn’t there to be remembered in the first place.”

Pope said statements made by Couzens to the media in 2011 and to the priest in 1988 indicate that he did not repress memories of the alleged abuse.

“Mr. Couzens made comments on TV that clearly suggested” — telling reporters he’d long been haunted by memories — “that he was able to remember,” he said.

The statement to the priest in 1988 that O’Brien was sexually abusing boys, Pope said, shows that “he was in fact able to remember incidents of abuse at that time.”

Park Dietz, a forensic psychiatrist who said he was billing the diocese $800 an hour for his work, dismissed the notion that meeting the priest in the same rectory where the alleged abuse occurred had triggered Couzens’ memories in 1988.

“That’s nonsense,” said Dietz. “That’s something out of ‘The Exorcist.’”

He also disputed that the priest’s alleged harsh response shut Couzens’ memories back down. “It can’t be re-repressed,” he said.

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UNITED STATES
Global Pulse

Thomas Baker
October 10, 2014
United States

Emerging Adults In, Out of, and Gone from the Church by Christian Smith, Kyle Longest, Jonathan Hill, and Karl Christofferson, Oxford University Press

Here’s the bad news for Commonweal readers, and we may as well get right to it: Just over half the young people raised by parents who describe themselves as “liberal” Catholics stop going to Mass entirely once they become “emerging adults”—a new demographic category that means either prolonged adolescence or delayed adulthood, defined here in Young Catholic America as ages eighteen to twenty three.

But now, let’s put that sad trend in perspective: The picture isn’t all that much better for the children of “traditional” Catholics. Although only a quarter of those young adults say they’ve stopped going to Mass entirely, only 17 percent say they’re going every week, and in general, their allegiance to church membership and participation seems nearly as faded as the kids of so-called feckless liberals.

The fact is: In this discouraging book, the future looks bad for just about every flavor of Catholic. For those who remember Commonweal’s series on “Raising Catholic Kids” last November, the worry expressed by those dedicated, well-meaning parents seems here to be fully justified. You may hear about pockets of enthusiastically “orthodox” young adults out there somewhere, but as my old mentor in the market-research business used to say, the plural of the word “anecdote” is not “data.” Smith (a sociologist at the University of Notre Dame) and his co-authors have the data, and it tells us that the majority of Catholic “emergers” are, by our historical standards, not what we are used to thinking of as practicing Catholics at all. …

But never mind the post hoc theorizing—what do these young people themselves report about the reasons for their weakened ties to Catholicism? There is little evidence from the authors’ interviews that the issues so neuralgic for many Commonweal readers—the male hierarchy, bad preaching, sexual abuse, the church’s position on gay Catholics and marriage, the alliance of so many bishops with Republican political agendas—are at the top of their list of problems. (Other studies, such as those cited by Robert Putnam and David Campbell in American Grace, do suggest a recent trend of young people abandoning religion because of its closer alignment with conservative politics.) Instead, the most obvious factor identified in both the interviews and the survey data in Young Catholic America seems to be disaffection from Catholic sexual teaching, dramatically so with respect to both premarital sex and birth control.

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ROME
Crux

By John L. Allen Jr.
Associate editor October 10, 2014

ROME – In the 2013 conclave, Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio of Argentina was considered a long shot and yet emerged as Pope Francis. Today he had the opposite experience, going into the announcement of the 2014 Nobel Peace Prize considered a front-runner and yet finishing as an also-ran.

The award instead went to Indian Kailash Satyarthi and Pakistani Malala Yousafzay, with the Nobel committee citing their struggles on behalf of children’s rights, especially the right to education.

The Norwegian Nobel Committee cited the two “for their struggle against the suppression of children and young people and for the right of all children to education.”

Malala, 17, is the youngest ever winner of a Nobel Prize. A schoolgirl and education campaigner in Pakistan, she was shot in the head by a Taliban gunman two years ago.

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AUSTRALIA
Broken Rites

By a Broken Rites researcher (article updated 9 October 2014)

This Broken Rites article is the most comprehensive account avalable about the background of Christian Brother Ted Dowlan. Despite Dowlan being jailed in 1996, the Christian Brothers did not expel him. Instead, they said that they would be prepared to continue looking after Dowlan in the future. Dowlan later changed his surname to Bales and, helped by the Christian Brothers organisation, he moved into a private house of his own. In October 2014, after more of his earlier victims finally contacted the police, “Ted Bales” pleaded guilty to some more of his crimes and was remanded in custody to await a new sentencing.

It was Broken Rites that first documented the Christian Brothers policy of keeping sex-offenders if the offender wished to remain as a member. A Broken Rites researcher was present in the Melbourne County Court in July 1996, taking notes, when Brother Edward Vernon Dowlan was jailed for indecently assaulting boys in Victorian Catholic schools.

According to submissions made in court, Dowlan was openly molesting boys (in the presence of other boys) at his first two schools, so the Brothers’ Victoria-Tasmania administration moved him from his second school to a boarding school (St Patrick’s College, Ballarat), where Dowlan assaulted more boys. The parents of at least one St Patrick’s victim confronted St Patrick’s head Christian Brother about Dowlan’s offence. The Christian Brothers’ headquarters then kept transferring Dowlan to more schools, where he found yet more victims — until the police finally caught up with him in 1993.

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AUSTRALIA
Broken Rites

By a Broken Rites researcher (article updated 9 February 2014)

A convicted pedophile Christian Brother who changed his name from Ted Dowlan to Ted Bales to avoid publicity has admitted to another 55 offences committed during his long career as a Christian Brother in Victorian schools. Ted Bales, 64, is now behind bars after more of his earlier victims contacted the police.

Ted Bales pleaded guilty to these additional charges of sexual assault at the Melbourne Magistrates Court on 9 October 2014 and was immediately taken into custody. He will be sentenced in early 2015.

Originally known as Brother Edward Vernon Dowlan, he belonged to the Victoria-Tasmanian province of the Christian Brothers. He worked at Catholic schools in Melbourne, Ballarat, Geelong and Warrnambool.

In 2014, under his new surname of Bales, he was charged with indecently assaulting males in Ballarat, Forest Hill (Melbourne) and Warrnambool between 1970 and 1975 and in East Melbourne and Lower Templestowe (Melbourne) between 1980 and 1984.

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MICHIGAN
The Detroit News

The pastor of a Catholic church in Metro Detroit has been ordered to step aside in an investigation of church finances.

The Rev. Thomas Belczak, 60, had been pastor at St. Kenneth in Plymouth Township for 10½ years.

His removal comes less than six months after his brother, the Rev. Edward Belczak, was arraigned on similar charges involving a church in Troy.

Archdiocese of Detroit spokesman Ned McGrath said the cases aren’t related.

In a statement, the archdiocese said investigators are looking into possible “improper use” of money at St. Kenneth. McGrath declined to elaborate, saying the parish was not in any financial distress.

“It is anticipated that Fr. Belczak’s status will continue until this matter is resolved,” the archdiocese said in a statement.

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AUSTRALIA
Radio Australia

[with audio]

An Australian man who says he was sexually abused by an Australian priest currently living in Papua New Guinea says he would like to confront Father Roger Mount about what happened in the 1960s.

Father Roger Mount was rushed from his small rural parish in Sogeri to a hospital in Port Moresby, after a suspected drug overdose.

It came just hours after the elderly priest was made aware of plans to deport him to Australia.

David McNamara says he was sexually abused by Roger Mount when he lived in a St John of God facility in New South Wales in the Sixties.

Father Mount has previously denied the allegations but refused to be interview by the ABC this week.

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MICHIGAN
USA Today

Niraj Warikoo, Detroit Free Press October 10, 2014

PLYMOUTH, Mich. — A popular Catholic priest in Plymouth was removed Thursday as law enforcement officials investigate whether he improperly used parish funds — just as his brother, also a priest, is accused of doing at a Troy parish.

In a letter sent Thursday to parishioners at St. Kenneth Parish, Auxiliary Bishop Francis Reiss wrote that the Rev. Thomas Belczak, 60, “has been required to step aside as pastor of St. Kenneth Parish, effective October 9. This action results from a law enforcement investigation into the alleged improper use of St. Kenneth Parish funds.”

His brother the Rev. Edward Belczak, 69, and his church administrator were indicted in April for stealing about $700,000 from St. Thomas More Church in Troy over eight years, according to federal prosecutors.

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VATICAN CITY
ABC News

VATICAN CITY — Oct 9, 2014
By NICOLE WINFIELD Associated Press

The Legion of Christ religious order has suffered another blow with the announcement Thursday that its training center for consecrated women in the U.S. is closing because of poor enrollment.

The Mater Ecclesiae College in Greenville, Rhode Island, had catered to women who were deciding whether they wanted to live like nuns within the Legion’s Regnum Christi lay movement.

The consecrated branch of the Legion was plagued by serious spiritual and psychological abuses, requiring a Vatican-mandated overhaul just as the Legion itself was taken over by Pope Benedict XVI after revelations that its late founder, the Rev. Marcial Maciel, had fathered children and sexually abused his seminarians.

In a letter Thursday, the head of consecrated women in North America, Nancy Nohrden, said that the “difficulties and institutional changes” of the past few years had resulted in fewer vocations and lower college enrollment. She said the school would close at the end of the academic year.

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IRELAND
Irish Examiner

By Brian McDonald

A Christian Brother has been jailed for sexually abusing young schoolboys in his classroom.

Brother Thomas McCarry, aged 66, had admitted a series of sample charges of indecently assaulting four boys as young as 10 at a national school in the midlands between 1984 and 1987.

McCarry, of Clareville, Finglas Rd, Glasnevin, Dublin, displayed no emotion as he was handed concurrent sentences of two years at Mullingar Circuit Court sitting in Tullamore yesterday.

The court had earlier been told that the assaults all took place during school hours while the boys were aged 10 to 11 and in fifth and sixth class.

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AUSTRALIA
The Standard

By Genevieve Gannon Oct. 10, 2014

A convicted paedophile who changed his name to avoid publicity has admitted to another 55 offences committed while he was a Christian brother teaching in Victorian schools, including at Warrnambool.

Ted Bales, 64, was taken into custody yesterday after pleading guilty to indecently assaulting boys over a 16-year period in the 1970s and 1980s.

Bales, now a defrocked layman living in Thomastown, was formerly known as Edward Vernon Dowlan.

The name ‘Dowlan’ has frequently appeared alongside some of Australia’s most notorious clergy paedophiles, including Robert Charles Best and Gerald Francis Ridsdale.

A court hearing in April was told Bales changed his identity to avoid publicity because his name came up whenever the media reported on crimes involving the Christian Brothers.

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AUSTRALIA
9 News

The Christian Brothers have expressed deep and enduring regret for the sex crimes of one of their former Victorian brothers.

Ted Bales, 64, this week pleaded guilty to 55 counts of indecent assault spanning 16 years during the 1970s and 1980s.

The Christian Brothers Oceania apologised and expressed sorrow that children had been abused in its care.

“That children were abused and continue to bear the scars of those traumatic events is a matter of deep and enduring regret,” The Christian Brothers said in a statement on Friday.

Bales, now a defrocked layman living in Thomastown, was formerly known as Edward Vernon Dowlan.

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AUSTRALIA
7 News

ANNETTE BLACKWELL
October 10, 2014

Should the sins of the father be visited on the son?

There is a certain biblical resonance to the current case before the child sex abuse royal commission.

It is looking at how the Pentecostal movement and its then leader, Hillsong founder Brian Houston, responded to his father Frank Houston’s admission that he molested children.

Brian Houston has spoken of his humiliation at having to face the cameras and answer questions about his father’s “indefensible” crimes.

He stresses how deeply he feels for the victims.

Apart from Brian Houston’s suffering, what is certainly clear after the first week of evidence at the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse is while some evangelists might be good at spreading the word of God they’re not so hot at spreading the word one of their own is a pedophile.

Not doing so in a timely and clear fashion robbed churches of the power to keep Frank Houston at bay, not to mention leaving possible victims to cope alone, never knowing that their pastors could and would have helped.

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AUSTRALIA
news.com.au

Hillsong Church is a haven of a thing called prosperity theology. But does God really want you to be rich?

WE’VE all heard the phrase ‘worshipping the almighty dollar’.

But there are some people who take the phrase literally. To them, the almighty, as in God, is the key to wealth and riches. Serve him well and material wealth will be the reward.

This philosophy is the cornerstone of an American movement called “prosperity theology”, and one man who preaches its message to his Australian flock is Hillsong Church leader Brian Houston.

Pastor Houston, who is in the news this week over his response to child abuse allegations against his late father, William, at the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse, has not always taken kindly to being associated with the so-called “prosperity gospel”.

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UNITED KINGDOM
The Guardian

Michael Safi
theguardian.com, Thursday 9 October 2014

The head of Sydney’s Hillsong Church, Brian Houston, has denied trying to “hide” his involvement in a $10,000 compensation payment made to a man sexually abused as a child by his father, the high-profile Pentecostal preacher Frank Houston.

The royal commission into institutional responses to child sexual abuse is investigating the way Australian Christian Churches, formerly the Assemblies of God, responded to allegations of abuse against Houston and two other men.

Frank Houston, who died in 2004, admitted to molesting the man, known as AHA, in Sydney in the late 1960s and early 70s.

After the victim’s mother approached the church nearly three decades later, Frank Houston was suspended from preaching and approached AHA offering $10,000 compensation, allegedly saying, “I don’t want this on my head when I stand in front of God”.

Brian Houston, who succeeded his father as head of the Hills Christian Life Centre (now Hillsong), attended a meeting with Frank Houston, Gloria Jeans Coffee CEO Nabi Saleh, and a lawyer to discuss the allegations.

Following the meeting, the lawyer drafted a document offering AHA $10,000 compensation as a “final” payment.

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AUSTRALIA
3 News (New Zealand)

By Annette Blackwell

Hillsong church senior pastor Brian Houston consulted a lawyer about his father’s position when abuse allegations were raised but omitted mentioning his meeting with the lawyer in his statement to the royal commission into the matter.

The Auckland-born man who is a leading light in the evangelical movement in Australia was in the witness box for a second day at a hearing of the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse in Sydney today.

The commission is examining how Pentecostal churches responded to child sex abuse complaints by its pastors.

It has heard that Frank Houston admitted in 1999 to abusing children in Australia and New Zealand, when his son was national president of the Assemblies of God in Australia – the umbrella organisation for more than 1000 churches.

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AUSTRALIA
The Guardian

Michael Safi
theguardian.com, Friday 10 October 2014

A six-year-old girl who complained she was being sexually abused by her teacher watched a Christian pastor make a phone call to inform her mother, only to discover later he was faking the call, a royal commission has heard.

Emma Fretton began giving evidence on Friday that she was physically and sexually abused for more than four years from the age of six while a student at Northside Christian College in Bundoora in Melbourne’s north-east.

Fretton told the royal commission into institutional responses to child sexual abuse that a teacher, Kenneth Sandilands, would type out lewd stories about her family on a portable typewriter and make her sign the pages.

“He would make me repeat the stories and agree they were true,” she said, adding that if she denied the stories or asked him to stop, he would beat her with a wooden paddle.

She was also touched inappropriately by the teacher, along with at least six other girls.

The commission heard that at least 63 students considered joining a civil action against Sandilands, who was jailed for two years for indecent assault in 2001.

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AUSTRALIA
Illawarra Mercury

By RACHEL BROWNE Oct. 10, 2014

Hillsong Church founder Brian Houston told a royal commission that there may be more victims of his paedophile father Frank Houston who have yet to come forward.

In his final day of evidence, the evangelical preacher told the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse of learning the extent of his father’s alleged predatory acts in the 1960s and 1970s.

He told the commission he first became aware of allegations of abuse in 1999 but learned in 2000 there were further claims involving six boys in New Zealand.

When asked by counsel assisting, Simeon Beckett, whether he accepted that Frank Houston had abused other children, Brian Houston responded: “We probably don’t know how many. We may never know how far it went.”

Frank Houston, founder of the City Christian Life Centre which merged with the Hills Christian Life Centre to become Hillsong Church, died in 2004 without being charged with any offence.

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UNITED KINGDOM
Community Care

by Luke Stevenson on October 10, 2014

Guidance has been released advising frontline professionals on how to recognise signs that a child may be suffering, or likely to suffer, significant harm from abuse linked to a belief in witchcraft and spirit possession.

A training film commissioned by the Metropolitan Police’s Project Violet team, which works to address ritual child abuse, has been launched to help train all professionals who work with and safeguard children.

The numbers of allegations of abuse linked to a belief in witchcraft and spirit possession have been rising steadily, with the Metropolitan Police Service (MPS) receiving 27 allegations this year compared to just nine in 2011.

Examples of referrals investigated by the police included a child being forced to drink unknown substances to rid them of evil spirits, a pastor swinging a child around and banging their head to drive out the devil and parents removing children from school and taking them out of the country to attend an exorcism ceremony.

Speaking ahead of the multi-agency event in London, Terry Sharpe, from the Met’s sexual offences, exploitation and child abuse command, gave details about the abuse frontline workers were dealing with: “Families or carers genuinely believe that the victim has been completely taken over by the devil or an evil spirit, which is often supported by someone who within the community has portrayed themselves as an authority on faith and belief.”

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AUSTRALIA
news.com.au

HILLSONG senior pastor Brian Houston says it may never be known how many children his father Frank Houston abused.

On his final day of giving evidence at a royal commission into how Pentecostal churches responded to complaints of child sexual abuse, the popular Sydney preacher was asked if he now accepted his father had abused other children in New Zealand.

“I’ve no doubt, and we probably do not know how many. We may never know just how far it went,” he told the national inquiry on Friday.

Brian Houston outside the The Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual

For the past four days, the focus of the hearing has been on how Brian Houston and the body he led — the Assemblies of God (AoG) — responded to revelations in 1999 that church elder and well-known preacher Frank Houston had abused a boy in Sydney in the 1970s. Frank Houston had confessed to his son of just one incident with that boy.

But the victim, now in his 50s, told the commission there were many assaults on him by Frank Houston, who died in 2004.

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AUSTRALIA
news.com.au

THE chairman of Hobart’s exclusive Hutchins School has written to former students asking them to refer media inquries about child sex allegations back to the school.

David Morris sent an email to old boys of the school, which was passed on to the Mercury.
It concludes: “The School now has comprehensive policies and procedures to deal with such matters.

“If you have any further queries or if you are contacted by media, please direct them to the Headmaster’s office.”

The email referred to allegations of sexual assault against a former headmaster of school which will be examined at a public hearing of the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse next month.

The 1960s allegations against the late David Lawrence and former teacher Lyndon Hickman (1942-49 and 1964-65) were known to the all-male boarding school.

Mr Lawrence (1960-70) resigned as headmaster amid a scandal involving a relationship with a former student.

It is understood allegations were made to the commission at recent private hearings.
Mr Morris and Anglican Bishop John Harrower said the school and the Diocese would co-operate fully with the royal commission.

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AUSTRALIA
Newcastle Herald

By RORY CALLINAN Oct. 10, 2014

The Papua New Guinea-based Catholic priest ordered by the church to return to Australia after Fairfax Media revealed his alleged involvement in Australian child abuse cases appears to have stalled his departure by going into hospital.

The Catholic Church paid more than $100,000 to victims who alleged abuse by Father Roger Mount when he was a brother with the Catholic St John of God Order running children’s homes in NSW and Victoria in the 1960s and 1970s.

He moved to Papua New Guinea in the 1980s and became a Catholic priest – most recently in the Sogeri Parish about 45km north-east of Port Moresby – despite the allegations of child abuse being reported to the Catholic Church in Australia.

This week the Herald revealed that despite the abuse allegations, Mount was still operating as the priest in the remote parish and had been ignoring instructions to leave for more than two years and was living in the country illegally.

The Port Moresby Dioceses, which oversees Sogeri Parish, issued a statement saying Mount was to be sent back to Australia.

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UNITED STATES
Christian Catholicism

Jerry Slevin

Pope Francis, and the Family Synod sideshow, appear to be following Pope John XXIII’s earlier flawed synod strategy. John’s strategy, and now Francis’ approach, was simply to follow the classic politicians’ ploy and carve out topics that were especially embarrassing to or sensitive for the pope, like contraception or clerical rape of children, from the assembled bishops’ highly public agenda. These topics are then parked in secretive and “slow walked” Vatican controlled “advisory committees”, that are supposedly trustworthy because they have some carefully selected “showpiece” members. Currently, this may include the well respected and very brave Irish activist and priest rape survivor, Marie Collins.

Marie Collins has for many years been a leading Irish advocate for priest abuse survivors. She also had a role in setting up in Dublin the very effective One-In-Four organization. This group, now under the intrepid Maeve Lewis, advocates relentlessly for, and provides needed counseling to, Irish survivors of child sexual abuse. Marie Collins has since March been a member of Pope Francis’ Pontifical Commission on the Protection of Minors (or so-called “Child Abuse Commission”), that is still “under construction” after more than a year and a half of Francis’ papacy.

Pursuant to this synod strategy, a papal committee would then likely take years “quietly investigating” already well known priest child abuse issues and solutions. The pope, of course, would then be free to reject the committee’s secretive findings and advice, after the media frenzy subsides, as happened with Paul VI in 1968 with artificial contraception. But Paul VI failed dismally with this strategy and so likely will Francis.

Yes, the latest papal saint-to- be (the third in six months), Paul VI used this ploy in 1968, just before Francis’ ordination, when faced with John XXIII’s birth control commission’s strong endorsement of artificial contraception. Paul then suddenly and unexpectedly rejected his own commission’s strong endorsement after six years of “study”. Then, this earlier commission’s very influential married member, Patty Crowley, a leader of the Catholic Family Movement which had earlier initially advocated “natural family planning”, was shamefully shunned by the Church hierarchy, even by her own Cardinal in Chicago.

Let’s hope that Marie Collins will be very careful and wary to avoid being “used” by a pope, like Patty Crowley was used by Paul VI a half century ago in similar circumstances!

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.

MICHIGAN
Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Detroit

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Oct 9, 2014
For more information contact:
Joe Kohn, Director of Public Relations
Kohn.Joseph@aod.org
313-237-5802

Effective today, Father Thomas Belczak has been required to step aside as pastor of St. Kenneth Parish, Plymouth, pending further steps by Church officials. This action results from a law enforcement investigation into alleged improper use of St. Kenneth Parish funds. It is anticipated that Fr. Belczak’s status will continue until this matter is resolved. During this time, Fr. Belczak, 60, will not be permitted to be present at St. Kenneth; he will not be working or serving there in any capacity. Fr. Belczak will be allowed to continue his public ministry as a priest only in circumstances with the expressed consent of the Archdiocese of Detroit.

Father Robert Blondell, a senior priest of the Detroit archdiocese, has been named as administrator of St. Kenneth Parish.

The Archdiocese of Detroit has fully cooperated with law enforcement authorities and will continue to do so.

Letter to St. Kenneth Parishioners from Bishop Francis Reiss

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MICHIGAN
Press and Guide

By Erica McClain
Digital First Media

Father Thomas Belczak, a former deacon at Sacred Heart Parish in Dearborn, has been ordered to step aside as pastor of St. Kenneth Parish in Plymouth.

Belczak will step aside as a result of an investigation of alleged improper use of funds at the Plymouth parish, the Archdiocese of Detroit stated in a press release.

The 60-year-old pastor will not be permitted to visit the parish in any capacity. Father Robert Blondell, a senior priest of the Detroit archdiocese, has been named as administrator of St. Kenneth Parish.

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PHILADELPHIA (PA)
Philadelphia Inquirer

The Pennsylvania Supreme Court on Thursday set Nov. 18 to hear oral argument on the Philadelphia District Attorney’s petition to reinstate the child endangerment conviction of Msgr. William J. Lynn, the first Roman Catholic Church official charged in the clergy child sex-abuse scandal.

The high court will hear the appeal in Harrisburg in the court’s main courtroom in the Capitol.

At issue before the state’s highest court is the contested key legal theory underpinning the landmark 2012 prosecution of Lynn, 63, who as the Archdiocese of Philadelphia’s former secretary for clergy was the official responsible for investigating and recommending punishment for priests accused of sexual and other misconduct.

In July 2012, after a 13-week trial and 12 days of deliberations, a Common Pleas Court judge sentenced Lynn to three to six years in prison. He immediately went into custody.

The jury found that Lynn allowed the Rev. Edward V. Avery, who had a history of sexually abusing children, to live in a Northeast rectory where he later assaulted a 10-year-old altar boy. Avery pleaded guilty in the 1999 attack and is serving up to five years in state prison.

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PHILADELPHIA (PA)
TribTown

THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
First Posted: October 09, 2014

PHILADELPHIA — Pennsylvania’s highest court plans to hear oral argument next month in prosecutors’ attempt to reinstate the child endangerment conviction of a Catholic priest in Philadelphia.

The Philadelphia Inquirer reported (http://bit.ly/1neTiEZ ) the Supreme Court on Thursday scheduled for Nov. 18 the city district attorney’s bid to reinstate Monsignor William Lynn’s conviction.

The 63-year-old Lynn was convicted in 2012 but the state Superior Court threw it out in December, agreeing with his lawyers that his role as supervisor didn’t meet standards in the law for criminal culpability.

He’d been convicted of letting a priest live in a rectory where he attacked a 10-year-old boy. That priest pleaded guilty and is serving time.

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.

MICHIGAN
The Republic

THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
October 09, 2014

PLYMOUTH TOWNSHIP, Michigan — The pastor of a Catholic church in suburban Detroit has been ordered to step aside in an investigation of church finances.

The Rev. Thomas Belczak had been pastor at St. Kenneth Church for 10 1/2 years. His brother, the Rev. Ed Belczak, is under indictment in an alleged scheme to steal nearly $700,000 from a different church in suburban Detroit.

Archdiocese of Detroit spokesman Ned McGrath says the cases aren’t related.

In a statement, the Archdiocese says investigators are looking into possible “improper use” of money at St. Kenneth in Plymouth Township. McGrath declined to elaborate, although the parish is not in any financial distress.

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FLORIDA
ABC 7

[with video]

FORT MYERS, FL –
For the first time since allegations of bullying, lack of financial transparency, violating Canon law and a $5 million sexual abuse lawsuit broke, we asked Bishop Frank Dewane to publicly comment on the issues surrounding him and the Diocese of Venice.

Bishop Dewane was in Fort Myers Thursday for a prayer vigil supporting the pro-life movement “40 days for life.”

After numerous requests over several months for an interview on the allegations, we met up with the Bishop at the prayer session in front of Planned Parenthood to ask his side. We first asked him about the prayer vigil.

“I’m just here to pray with the group, ask the people about the vigil. I’m here to pray,” Bishop Dewane said.

We then asked him for his reaction to a $5 million sexual abuse lawsuit filed last month.

Reporter: “If you have comment, personally, as to the lawsuit that came out recently?”

Bishop Dewane: “It’s a lawsuit.”

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MONTANA
National Catholic Reporter

Dan Stockman | Oct. 9, 2014

A courtroom in Helena, Mont., could be the scene of a rare occurrence in the decadeslong crisis of sex abuse in the Catholic church: Roman Catholic women religious as defendants.

If the case goes to trial as scheduled on Dec. 1, the Ursuline Sisters of the Western Province will defend themselves against allegations that 11 sisters who served at the St. Ignatius Mission church and school on the Flathead Indian Reservation from the 1940s to the early 1970s physically, sexually and emotionally abused boarding and day school students.

While about 5,000 priests and deacons in the United States have been accused of sexual abuse since 2003 in cases stretching back into the 1950s, the best estimates of U.S. women religious accused of abuse — not counting the 11 in this case — is around 88, according to Bishop-accountability.org, an online archive established by lay Catholics to track abuse claims.

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ROME
Legionaries of Christ

At the end of the academic year, the college in Greenville, Rhode Island, will no longer be the formation center in North America for the Regnum consecrated women

Territorial Director for the Consecrated Women of Regnum Christi in North America, Nancy Nohrden, made an announcement today with what she described as a “heavy heart.” Mater Ecclesiae College (MEC), the formation center in Greenville, Rhode Island, will be closing at the end of this academic year.

“In a world where there truly is constant change, we sometimes must find new ways to carry out our mission,” she said in a letter sent today to the consecrated women in North America.

(Click here to read the letter.)

Citing fewer vocations and lower than expected enrollment at the college due to the “difficulties and institutional changes” during the last few years and the “reality of our current world,” Nancy said maintaining the college’s NEASC accreditation would be “unviable in the foreseeable future.”

She expressed her thanks to the many consecrated women who have served on the MEC team through the years, and emphasized that Regnum Christi will continue to form the young women in North America who are discerning a vocation to consecrated life in the Regnum Christi movement.

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