ABUSE TRACKER

INDIA
The American Bazaar

By The American Bazaar Staff

WASHINGTON, DC: Roman Catholic priest Rev. Joseph Palanivel Jeyapaul, who has been incarcerated at the Tihar Jail in New Delhi for two years, is likely to be extradited soon by the Indian government to face trial in Minnesota, over allegations of sexual assault of a teenage girl during his time of service there nearly 10 years ago.

It’s now up to the federal government to decide whether Jeyapaul should be sent to the U.S. to stand trial, said Naveen Kumar Matta, a public prosecutor for India’s Ministry of External Affairs, reported the Associated Press. The United States had requested in 2011 that Jeyapaul be extradited.

Jeyapaul had evaded arrest on criminal charges in Minnesota, and returned to India, in 2005, and was appointed as the director of community education at Ooty diocese, but was placed under suspension in 2010 when the charges surfaced, reported the Deccan Chronicle.

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MINNESOTA
Jeff Anderson & Associates

Media Advisory

September 10, 2014

(Duluth, MN) – Tomorrow at 1:00 PM in St. Louis County District Court, the Diocese of Duluth will ask the Court to issue a protective order to keep confidential the files and documents pertaining to clergy accused of sexual misconduct in the Diocese.

The Duluth Diocese released a list of 17 names of priests with credible allegations of child sexual abuse in December 2013 and its request for a protective order demonstrates a step in the wrong direction. Keeping clergy abuse documents and testimony secret puts kids at risk.

*Jeff Anderson and Mike Finnegan, attorneys representing two sexual abuse survivors of Father John Nicholson and Father Robert Klein will be available to answer questions tomorrow afternoon immediately following the hearing.

St. Louis County Courthouse
Judge David Johnson’s Courtroom
1:00PM Hearing
Thursday, September 11, 2014
100 North 5th Ave. W.
Duluth, MN 55802

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

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CHICAGO (IL)
WGN

[with video]

BY JULIAN CREWS

The Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests is calling Francis Cardinal George to address concerns about a priest who used to serve in the Back of the Yards neighborhood.

Father Bruce Wellems is a widely admired Claretian missionary priest.

SNAP obtained documents detailing his abrupt resignation from a California mission.

In a written press release, Claretian spokespeople acknowledge the decision pointing to inappropriate conduct with a fellow minor when Bellems himself was a youth.

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OHIO
Sidney Daily News

Greg Sowinski gsowinski@civitasmedia.com

WAPAKONETA — The former director of education at St. Augustine Catholic Church in Minster pleaded guilty Tuesday to two felony theft charges.

Jane Boeke, 54, will face up to three years in prison when she is sentenced on the two counts that each are fourth-degree felonies. A sentencing date has not been set but Judge Frederick Pepple said it likely will be in the next two months.

Boeke agreed to pay $190,000 restitution to the Archdiocese of Cincinnati. The amount only covers the thefts, not any cost of the investigation by the Archdiocese or police agencies. The parish in Minster and the archdiocese agreed to the amount, Auglaize County Prosecutor Ed Pierce said.

Boeke stole the money by using two separate credit cards, a VISA and a Sam’s Club card, to make purchases from 2001 to 2013. She was issued the cards but only was allowed to make purchases for the parish, Pierce said.

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PENNSYLVANIA
Pottstown Mercury

By Kelly Lyons, klyons@21st-centurymedia.com
POSTED: 09/10/14,

MALVERN — When Justice4PAKids co-founder Bob Riley wanted to organize a fundraiser for his new organization with a distinct mission, he wanted to raise money in a unique way. So the motorcycle enthusiast started the event Motorcycle Ride4PAKids.

“Everybody has a golf tournament,” Riley said. “We wanted something new and different.”

Now in its second year, participants will meet for the Ride4PAKids between 9:30 and 11 a.m. on Saturday, Sept. 20, at The Office Bar & Grille in Charlestown. The ride will start at 11 a.m. and finish at about 1 p.m. The 3-year-old nonprofit Justice4PAKids focuses on raising awareness of sexual abuse of children through seminars for adults and body-safety coloring books for children.

Riley said he became more interested in the issue when a grand jury report released in February 2011 alleged that the Archdiocese of Philadelphia allowed priests to continue working after they were accused of pedophilia.

“Frankly as a dedicated Catholic, I said I really don’t want to bring the Catholic Church down, but I really want to do something to remedy the situation,” Riley said. “I have to become more educated about the situation.”

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VATICAN CITY
Latin Post

By Olivia Demarinis (staff@latinpost.com)

With orders from the Vatican, two priests from the United States have been placed in key roles in the Catholic Church’s anti-abuse commission. The appointments of the priests, Cardinal Sean P. O’Malley and Rev. Robert Oliver, came from Pope Francis himself.

O’Malley, a veteran of the Boston archdiocese, was named the president of the new commission, which is formally called the Pontifical Commission for the Protection of Minors and was created in December 2013 following numerous child sexual abuse scandals. Before this announcement, the Vatican had referred to O’Malley’s role only as a member of the commission, but sources at the Crux said he was instrumental in organizing the group’s activities.

Oliver has ties to the Chicago area but worked as an advisor to O’Malley in Boston on abuse-crisis related issues until 2012.Since then he has been doing work in the Vatican’s Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. He has now been named the Secretary of the anti-abuse commission.

During a phone interview, Oliver said he was proud of the church’s steps to fighting against abuse.

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DOMINICAN REPUBLIC
Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests

For immediate release: Wednesday, Sept. 10, 2014

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

A judge on Monday declined to order a Catholic archbishop to be extradited from the Vatican to the Caribbean to face child sex charges.

We’re deeply disappointed. And we’re worried that the cleric may disappear before prosecutors and police in Italy, Poland and the Dominican Republic can apprehend him.

He’s Archbishop Józef Wesolowski (though he was recently defrocked). In September 2013, he was exposed as credibly accused child molester, but only after Vatican officials had quietly whisked him to Rome.

We don’t understand this ruling, nor the delays by law enforcement officials in three nations to pursue this dangerous cleric. We hope this ruling will be quickly overturned or that secular authorities in other countries will arrest him.

We hope Vatican officials do all they can to help police and prosecutors pursue Wesolowski and we hope that every single person who saw, suspected or suffered his crimes will find the courage to come forward, report to police, and start healing.

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VATICAN CITY
U.S. Catholic

By Josephine McKenna
2014 Religion News Service

VATICAN CITY (RNS) Pope Francis’ decision to appoint two U.S. priests to key positions aimed at tackling the Vatican’s sex abuse crisis drew an angry response from abuse victims.

In the shake-up the Rev. Robert Geisinger, a canon lawyer previously based in Chicago, was named chief prosecutor responsible for abuse cases. He replaces his U.S. colleague, the Rev. Robert Oliver, who was named to the Vatican’s anti-abuse commission, created by Francis last year.

Cardinal Sean O’Malley of Boston, who organized the pope’s first meeting with victims of abuse from England, Ireland and Germany at the Vatican in July, has now been confirmed as president of that commission.

Oliver, a Boston priest and canon lawyer, worked on the explosive abuse crisis in his own archdiocese before being appointed as the Vatican’s promoter of justice last year. He is expected to work with O’Malley as he seeks to add new members to the commission from Asia and Africa.

The appointment of both Geisinger and Oliver was slammed by SNAP, the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests, which claimed both had failed to do enough to stop abuse while they were in the U.S.

Oliver’s appointment to O’Malley’s commission provoked an angry response from abuse victims who said the pope needed to adopt far “bolder measures.”

“The pope has just promoted a priest from Boston with a disappointing track record,” said Barbara Dorris, SNAP’s outreach director, in a statement.

“For a pontiff who shows boldness in other areas, when it comes to abuse, he moves very slowly and timidly. Bolder measures are needed.”

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MINNESOTA
Winona Daily News

The Diocese of Winona’s request to move the civil suit over a former priest accused of abuse has been denied.

The diocese had argued that the lawsuit couldn’t be fairly tried in Ramsey County District Court, and had requested that it be moved. A three-judge state court of appeals panel disagreed in a ruling released Wednesday, concluding that the district court’s earlier dismissal of the change of venue claim was justified.

The case is scheduled to go to trial Nov 3. The plaintiff, a Twin Cities man identified only as John Doe 1, is seeking unspecified financial damages on negligence claims and the disclosure of more documents on a public nuisance claim. He has claimed to have been sexually abused by Thomas Adamson, a former Winona diocese and Archdiocese of St. Paul-Minneapolis priest, nearly 40 years ago.

That public nuisance claim was also disputed by the diocese, which sought to dismiss it. Earlier this month, the Ramsey County judge presiding over the case, John Van de North, declined to dismiss the suit, clearing the way for it to reach trial. It will be the first clerical sexual abuse case nationwide to use the public nuisance theory at trial, attorneys for the plaintiff have said. The public nuisance claim has already led to the unprecedented disclosure of tens of thousands of church documents and the names of dozens of accused priests.

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MINNESOTA
KEYC

By Maytal Levi, News Reporter

The New Ulm Diocese is named in a sexual abuse lawsuit filed today in Brown County.

This isn’t the first time the New Ulm Diocese has been in the media in connection with the states sexual abuse scandal.

Today a lawsuit was filed on behalf of two former altar boys who say they were sexually abused by Father Michael Skoblik at St. Joseph’s Parish in Silver Lake.

Skoblik served in the New Ulm Diocese from 1965 to 1988.

He died in 1989.

This is the 8th claim, Jeff Anderson and associates have filed against the New Ulm Diocese.

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MINNESOTA
Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests

For immediate release: Wednesday, Sept. 10, 2014

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

There’s a simple reason, we believe, why New Ulm’s bishop refuses to disclose the names of all predator priests in his diocese. He’s protecting his predecessor who is now Minnesota’s top Catholic official: Archbishop John Nienstedt of the Twin Cities.

Nienstedt is now under tremendous heat – and rightfully so – for ignoring and concealing clergy sex crimes and cover ups in St. Paul-Minneapolis. For years, he has clearly kept dangerous clerics on the job, despite multiple reports of child sexual crimes, sexual misdeeds, and inappropriate, hurtful and troubling wrongdoing.

(See many stories at Minnesota Public Radio’s website.)

Nienstedt headed the New Ulm diocese from 2001 to 2008. We’re certain that he acted as irresponsibly in New Ulm as he has acted in the Twin Cities. And some of the church officials in New Ulm who committed or concealed child sex crimes might face prosecution (because their crimes were relatively recent). So from the Catholic hierarchy’s point of view, it’s crucial that these secrets remain secret for as long as possible.

We are convinced that New Ulm Bishop John LeVoir is just doing now what his colleagues and predecessors across the globe in the catholic hierarchy have done for centuries – putting the reputation and power of a colleague ahead of the safety of kids and the healing of victims.

We hope that Bishop LeVoir will change course, show courage, and expose those who committed abuse and concealed predators in his diocese – whether they are archbishops or custodians. We aren’t confident that he will, unless forced to do so by a judge or by public pressure.

Roughly 30 US bishops have posted predator’s name on their websites. LeVoir should do this pronto. It’s the quickest and cheapest and easiest way he can safeguard the vulnerable.

Finally, we are glad Winona Bishop John Quinn lost his bid to have a clergy sex abuse and cover up trial moved elsewhere.

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DOMINICAN REPUBLIC
Dominican Today

Santo Domingo.- A judge in the Dominican Republic on Monday refused to issue a warrant to arrest former Vatican envoy Józef Wesolowski, charged with sexually abusing minors.

National District instruction judge Román Berroa ruled that since the country forms part of the Vienna Convention, a diplomat cannot be prosecuted outside the State which he represents.

The judge also notified the decision to National District prosecutor Yeni Berenice Reynoso, who heads the effort to extradite the former bishop, the highest ranking official of the Catholic Church to face such indictment.

In her request, Reynoso said the Vatican’s former representative should face charges in the country of allegedly paying boys to perform sexual acts

In that regard Justice minister Francisco Domínguez has stated that the Vienna Convention precludes Wesolowski’s extradition to the Dominican Republic.

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REPUBLICA DOMINICANA
Listin Diario

[Summary: A judge has refused to issue an international arrest warrant against former Apostolic Nuncio Jozef Wesolowski, who is accused for forcing children to perform sex for pay. Judge Roman Berroa Hiciano said the warrant is unnecessary because the country is a signator of the Vienna Convention which ruled that a diplomat cannot be prosecuted outside of the state he represents. The judge also notified National District Prosecutor Yeni Berenice Reynoses of his decision.]

Ramón Cruz Benzán
Santo Domingo

La orden de captura internacional y arresto en contra del exnuncio apostólico Józef Wesolowski, quien está acusado de obligar a menores a ejercer favores sexuales por paga, fue rechazada por el juez coordinador de los Juzgados de la Instrucción del Distrito Nacional.

El magistrado Román Berroa Hiciano adoptó la decisión por considerar que no procede, porque el país es signatario de la Convención de Viena, la cual descarta que un diplomático pueda ser enjuiciado fuera del Estado que representa.

Asimismo, el juez notificó sobre la decisión a la fiscal del Distrito Nacional, Yeni Berenice Reynoso, quien con su pedimento buscaba allanar el camino para solicitar la extradición del exdecano del cuerpo diplomático acreditado en el país.

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SOUTH AFRICA
IOL

September 10 2014

By Botho Molosankwe

Johannesburg – A fugitive Israeli rabbi wanted for sexual crimes in his country has once again evaded police.

The elderly Rabbi Eliezer Berland fled from the police on Monday night, ramping pavements in a car and knocking over plants as he fled.

Hawks spokesman Paul Ramoloko confirmed on Wednesday morning that their investigators received information that Berland was in Sandringham, Joburg.

On Monday night they waited for him and saw him drive up the road. Ramoloko said Berland was travelling with a group of men and they do not know their affiliation to the rabbi.

“Our team tried to nab him. We had a mini roadblock and as soon as he saw that, he jumped out of the car he was travelling in and into a BMW that was nearby. The BMW climbed on the pavements and drove on them, hitting people’s trees and pot plants as they fled. We could not shoot at him because it is not how we wanted to operate this. We know that we will get him,” he said.

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MINNESOTA
Jeff Anderson & Associates

Court document

News Release

September 10, 2014

Decision in Doe 1 case to be discussed at today’s 1:00PM press conference

(St. Paul, MN) – Today the Minnesota Court of Appeals denied a motion for a writ of mandamus by the Diocese of Winona in the Doe 1 v. Archdiocese of St. Paul & Minneapolis, Diocese of Winona and Thomas Adamson civil lawsuit.

The Diocese was seeking to compel Ramsey County District Court Judge John Van de North to change venue in the Doe 1 case. The Minnesota Court of Appeals determined the District Court did not abuse its discretion in denying the Diocese of Winona’s motion to change venue.

· Today’s Order and additional information can be found on our website at www.andersonadvocates.com.

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

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LOUISIANA
Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests

For immediate release: Wednesday, September 10, 2014

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

A Louisiana newspaper has revealed that a Lafayette area predator priest was quietly sent to Alexandria where he worked for the church.

He is Fr. Joseph Pelletieri, who was a priest and school principal in Crowley, but also worked in Wisconsin, Alexandria, and Baton Rouge. It’s unclear whether he’s still alive or if so, where he may be now.

Secretly and repeatedly moving a credibly accused child molester like this demonstrates the callousness of Catholic officials’ when it comes to children’s safety.

We fear that Fr. Pelletieri may have abused other children in each of the dioceses he was quietly sent to. As far as we can tell there was no warning given to parents, parishioners, or the public about this dangerous predator being sent to work in these dioceses among unsuspecting congregants, colleagues and neighbors.

And we strongly suspect that Alexandria Catholic officials knew about the child sex abuse allegations against Fr. Pettetieri before he arrived there.

Regardless of when Alexandria’s Bishop Ronald Herzog knew about Fr. Pettetieri, within hours of The Lafayette Advocate’s Sunday story about these allegations, the bishop should have told parishioners, police, prosecutors and the public about them. That’s the absolute bare minimum that a caring shepherd would do.

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NORTHERN IRELAND
Irish Times

Gerry Moriarty

Wed, Sep 10, 2014

A woman who was sent to Australia from a Belfast care home when she was a child has told the North’s Historical Institutional Abuse inquiry that she suffered feelings of “abandonment and isolation” when as an adult she became engaged to be married.

The 63-year-old native of Co Tyrone who was giving evidence by video link from Australia to the inquiry in Banbridge, Co Down, today said she was transported to Australia in 1955 when she was aged four.

Prior to that she had been in care at the Nazareth House home run by the Sisters of Nazareth in Belfast. The woman, who asked to maintain her anonymity, was one of approximately 130 children who were sent to Australia as part of a child migration programme between 1922 and 1995.

Some 50 men and women have made statements to the inquiry with 11 of them providing oral evidence from Australia over the past two weeks.

While some witnesses in this module of the inquiry gave evidence of suffering sexual and physical abuse in Australia the Dungannon woman, who is the last to provide oral evidence from Australia, said she had a fortunate experience as a child in the Melbourne area.

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CHICAGO (IL)
Emes Ve-Emunah

Clarity. That is the beauty of the fine mind of Rav Gedalia Dov Schwartz, the Zaken Ha’ir – Chicago’s rabbinic elder. Not only is his mind perfectly clear, he has the character to match. He is fearless in his determination to protect our daughters and see justice done. Smear campaigns by people with agendas other than the justice at hand – do not faze him. He does what is right. He stands up and tells it like it is.

This is what he has done in a letter he wrote and signed (on behalf of the Special Chicago Beis Din) to Aaron Twersky, the attorney for the four seminaries trying to get their name back; reinstate the accreditation so necessary to attract American – tuition paying – students; and restore the approval needed to receive various types of federal funding which requires compliance to its rules regarding sexual abuse. That letter has been made available to the public. Information contained therein sheds new light on this case and will be incorporated in the words below. My thanks to Yerachmiel Lopin for disseminating it on his blog.

As most people who read this blog know by now, Rabbi Schwartz is the Av Beis Din of the RCA and the Rosh Beis Din of the CRC. He is part of the Special Beis Din here in Chicago (CBD) set up for the exclusive purpose of dealing with cases of sexual abuse. There are four prominent and highly respected Rabbonim available to serve on this Beis Din: Rav Schwartz; Agudah Moetzes and Telshe Rosh HaYeshiva, R’ Avrohom Chaim Levin, Agudah of Illinois Dayan and Talmid Muvhak of R’ Moshe Feinsten, Rav Shmuel Fuerst, and Rabbi Zev Cohen, Rav of Congregation Adas Yeshurun and Rosh Kollel of the Choshen Mishpat Kollel that grants its graduates the special Semicha given to Dayanim called Yadin Yadin.

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UNITED STATES
Crux

By John L. Allen Jr.
Associate editor

From the eruption of the sexual abuse scandals in the Catholic Church almost a decade and a half ago, one classic mode of denial in the Vatican and around the Catholic world has been to dismiss the crisis as an “American problem.”

Famously, when a senior Vatican official first faced the press in 2002 with regard to abuse cases, most questions came in English. Colombian Cardinal Dario Castrillon Hoyos testily called that an “x-ray” of the problem – meaning, it was basically an American issue.

Both out loud and in private, some churchmen in Rome and other parts of the world often have said that while abuse of minors by priests is reprehensible, the idea of a “crisis,” and the perceived need for aggressive measures to combat it, has been driven by the sensationalistic media culture and litigious judicial system of the United States and nations most in its sphere of influence.

In a recent Crux interview, Cardinal Timothy Dolan of New York confirmed that this prejudice is still alive.

“We find it very demoralizing to hear bishops in other parts of the world, even some leaders in Rome, who still feel this is an Anglo-Saxon problem,” Dolan said, adding that some of his fellow bishops see the abuse issue as restricted to “the United States, England, Ireland, and Australia.”

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UNITED STATES
Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests

For immediate release: Wednesday, Sept. 10

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

A Chicago priest who was promoted today by Pope Francis has some links to the case of a notorious, serial convicted predator priest who has ties to Mother Teresa.

Fr. Robert Geisinger will move to Rome to deal with child sex abuse and cover up cases. We’re anxious to hear from him about his dealings with Fr. Donald McGuire, a once high profile but now-imprisoned Jesuit in Fr. Geisinger’s own province who – despite multiple reports of abuse – was allowed to keep ministering until law enforcement officials finally arrested him.

In 2002, Fr. Geisinger was sent a detailed, three page, single spaced letter from a colleague (Fr. Rick McGurn) about Fr. McGuire:

[BishopAccountability.org]

Notice the phrase: “long list” of Fr. McGuire’s “inappropriate behaviors.”

Not until 2005 were criminal charges brought against Fr. McGuire. We see no evidence that Fr. Geisinger ever helped police or prosecutors investigate Fr. McGuire, or any child molesting cleric. We challenge him to produce such evidence if he has any.

The letter show s that Fr. McGuire is repeatedly warned about his contact with children. But Fr. McGuire does exactly what he wants. More and more abuse reports and complaints against Fr. McGuire surface over time, yet neither Fr. Geisinger nor his colleagues take any effective action whatsoever. (At this time, Fr. Geisinger was in charge of “all matters of canon law” for the Jesuits. In other words, he was a high ranking cleric with the power to make a difference.)

The letter shows that Jesuit officials – including Fr. Geisinger – go on and on worrying about following canonical rules and whether or not Fr. McGuire will cause problems for them. There’s no mention or concern evidently about the kids that he has assaulted or is assaulting kids. It is clear from the letter that Fr. Geisinger knew – or at a least strongly suspected – that Fr. McGuire was a criminal. Yet Fr. Geisinger went along with the plan to keep Fr. McGuire under wraps and away from law enforcement.

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AUSTRALIA
Newcastle Herald

By JOANNE McCARTHY Sept. 10, 2014

A CATHOLIC priest who admitted having regular secret sex with a woman, despite his vow of celibacy, has been stripped of his right to minister as a priest.

Father Tom Knowles had his faculties removed after the Church acknowledged Central Coast woman Jennifer Herrick had ‘‘endured a great deal of emotional and psychological pain and suffering’’ because of the secret relationship.

‘‘This is permanent and he cannot minister publicly as a priest again, either in Melbourne or anywhere else in the Catholic Church,’’ Father Graeme Duro, the head of Father Knowles’s order, the Congregation of the Blessed Sacrament Fathers, said.

The priest’s right to minister in public was withdrawn last year but only confirmed to the Newcastle Herald by the Church this week.

The action was taken by Archbishop of Melbourne Denis Hart after Ms Herrick complained about the devastating impact of the secret relationship on her life.

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UNITED STATES
Catholic Culture

By Dr. Jeff Mirus
Sep 10, 2014

The decision of Pope Francis to appoint an American Jesuit to spearhead the Church’s prosecution of clerical sex abuse cases is very likely also a shot across the bows of the Society of Jesus itself. It is an excellent way to buttress forces of renewal within the Jesuits by utilizing one of their number in what we may describe, with extreme understatement, as an internally sensitive role.

The Society of Jesus is, unfortunately, known for defending homosexuality, including the admission of gay men to the priesthood, despite the Church’s 2005 ban on this practice (see the instruction from the Congregation for Catholic Education, On Priesthood and Those with Homosexual Tendencies). The anecdotal evidence is overwhelming for a lavender mafia in Jesuit seminaries, and a search of our news archives will bring up numerous reports of Jesuit universities working very hard to make their campuses gay-friendly.

The Jesuit magazine America has led the fight against barring seminarians with marked homosexual tendencies from ordination. In 2002, America attempted to forestall any such restrictions by, among other things, making the absurd claim that the sexual abuse crisis was unrelated to homosexuality. Five years after the ban, America published a protracted argument by a Jesuit priest that for a Church which relies heavily on gay priests, it shows “cognitive dissonance” to attempt to keep more such men from being ordained.

This problem is so obvious that every Catholic observer knows that both active homosexuality and the not-so-subtle defense of active homosexuality are significant characteristics of the Society of Jesus in our time.

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UNITED STATES
Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests

For immediate release: Wednesday, Sept. 10, 2014

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

The Pope has just promoted a priest From Boston with a disappointing track record, ties to Cardinal Bernard Law and a narrow and legalistic view of the abuse and cover up scandal. For a pontiff who shows boldness in other areas, when it comes to abuse, he moves very slowly and timidly.

Here, in 900+ words, are a half dozen specific reasons we oppose the appointment of Fr. Robert Oliver.

In March of 2013 and again in March of this year, we called on the pope to demote Fr. Oliver because he has led Boston church officials in quietly “backsliding” on abuse measures over most of the past decade.

In May, we criticized Fr. Oliver for claiming that “procedures” must be “developed” to deal with bishops who enable or hide clergy sex crimes. That’s patently ridiculous.

Catholic officials quickly bring the hammer down on Catholic writers who write something they consider wrong or Catholic teachers who say something they consider wrong. Like most monarchs, Catholic officials don’t quibble over ‘procedures,’ they just exercise their nearly limitless power.

Often, when Vatican wrongdoing is exposed – like the UN’s Committee Against Torture did on the day Oliver’s claim was publicized – church officials immediately ratchet up their promises to give the impression that they’re taking action. Fr. Oliver’s remarks were another example of this old public relations ploy.

To pretend that now somehow there’s some suddenly uncovered and unspecified “procedure” deficit that prevents popes and bishops from quickly demoting or disciplining the proven wrongdoers (like Cardinal Bernard Law or Bishop Robert Finn or Monsignor William Lynn) or credibly accused wrongdoers (like Archbishop Josef Wesolowski who’s accused of molesting several kids in Poland and the Caribbean or Fr. Carlos Urrutigoity, who is accused of repeated sexual misconduct but was second-in-command of a diocese in Paraguay) is absurd at best or deceitful at worst.

This crisis won’t end as long as Catholic officials keep promoting other Catholic officials who’ve shown little or no real courage in addressing it. Bolder measures are needed.

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MILWAUKEE (WI)
Fox 6

MILWAUKEE (AP) — No deal has been reached after two days of mediation in the Archdiocese of Milwaukee’s bankruptcy case.

Attorneys for the archdiocese, victims of clergy sexual abuse and others involved in the case met Monday and Tuesday in Minneapolis to try to come up with a settlement.

Archdiocese spokesman Jerry Topczewski said Wednesday no deal was reached but two more days of mediation are scheduled for Sept. 22 and 23.

Topczewski says mediation is confidential and he can’t discuss details but archdiocese officials remain optimistic.

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UNITED STATES
Waiting for Godot to Leave

Kevin O’Brien

I just wrote about how an allegedly abusive English teacher was using art and literature not at the service of others or of understanding and appreciating God and life, but for selfish and twisted reasons.

Australian Archbishop Mark Coleridge says the same thing about certain priests (my emphasis) …

Archbishop Coleridge reflected on the “Holiness Code” as found in the Book of Leviticus.

“We can imagine not just in terms of geography, but in terms of people. [Out of] all the tribes of the earth, God has chosen one nation: Israel. Within Israel, God has chosen one tribe to exercise the priestly office. Out of one tribe, God has chosen one man, the high priest, who is the only man who can enter the Holy of Holies.”

He said it is “an evermore intense choosing and separating of peoples and a person in the end for the sake of the mediation of the blessings; a call of separation for the sake of service”.

On the other hand, “clericalism involves a separation, but not for the sake of service of others”.
“It’s all one way traffic. It’s about me,” Archbishop Coleridge said. “And I think this touches upon sexuality in eucharistic overtones. If you take the language of the Eucharist, ‘This is my body which is given to you’. That implies a eucharistic vision of sexuality that is utterly contradicted by sexual abuse. Because what [sexual abuse] says, in fact, is ‘this is your body taken for me’. It’s anti-Eucharist.”

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MINNESOTA
Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests

For immediate release: Wednesday, Sept. 10, 2014

Statement by SNAP leader Frank Meuers of Plymouth ( 952-334-5180, frankameuers@gmail.com )

Ramsey County’s prostoecur doubts he can bring criminal charges against ten Twin Cities predator priests. We believe he should try harder, do more aggressive outreach and keep scouring the statutes vigorously.

Remember: Al Capone was nailed on income tax evasion. And remember: Often, where there’s a will, there’s a way. And also remember: to the overwhelming majority of victims, even a failed prosecution is better than none at all, because it may deter future crimes.

We believe that prosecutors and police chiefs in all the 12 counties covered by the St. Paul-Minneapolis archdiocese should ask every pastor for:

–permission to speak at masses about this scandal and use any such opportunity to beg victims witnesses and whistleblowers to step forward, and

–a page of their parish bulletin to issue the same plea in writing.

Then they should also individually ask every Catholic employee in their jurisdictions (especially clerics), in writing and over the phone, to voluntarily share what they know or suspect about clergy sex crimes and cover ups.

Each church staffer – lay or ordained – should be given a firm deadline. And the police and prosecutors should then publicize, by name, those who refuse to cooperate.

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UNITED STATES
Waiting for Godot to Leave

Kevin O’Brien

There’s a scene in the novel Catcher in the Rye in which Holden Caulfield is taken in by a teacher who appears to be trying to comfort him and offer him refuge, when in fact this teacher tries to molest him. There are more than a few real life characters like that, men who can only be described (as Caulfield describes them) as phonies.

***

This long New Yorker article on a man named Berman who is alleged to have been a sexual abuser and a kind of cult leader is hard to read. It’s hard to read because I had a mentor who, in the 1970’s, was also a kind of cult leader and who was said to have abused a number of girls over the course of his career, and who, like the English teacher described in the New Yorker article, used his charismatic personality and a penchant for mind games to fascinate and manipulate his fawning followers.

But it’s helpful to read things like this for at least one reason.

Some men are simply frauds. Sometimes it’s good to realize that certain authority figures are not the least bit interested in exercising their authority for the good of others, but for their own sordid and sick interests. This can be true with priests and bishops, and it can be true for English teachers and cult leaders. In the same way that some abusive priests don’t give a fig about God except in so far as He can serve as a cover for their behavior, some dilettantes don’t give a fig about art or literature except in so far as it can make them feel superior to others and control them.

Scott Rosenberg, a 1977 graduate who became a co-founder of Salon.com, took Berman’s class and struggled with the contradiction between Berman’s authoritarian approach and his love of art. In an essay for the class, Rosenberg wrote, “I have read a modest amount – not a great deal but enough to be able to judge works for myself. I enter a class in which the teacher tells me my opinion is worth nothing … the teacher himself seems to be deciding who the ‘great’ men are, what the ‘great’ works are, and all other matters of ‘greatness’.”

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VATICAN CITY
National Catholic Reporter

Carol Glatz Catholic News Service | Sep. 10, 2014

VATICAN CITY
Pope Francis appointed two U.S. priests to top positions at the Vatican for dealing with the sexual abuse of minors.

The pope named U.S. Fr. Robert Oliver to be the new secretary of the Pontifical Commission for the Protection of Minors, and appointed Jesuit Fr. Robert Geisinger to replace Oliver as the promoter of justice at the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith — the Vatican’s chief prosecutor of sex abuse crimes.

The Vatican made the announcement Wednesday.

Oliver fills a new full-time position of secretary for the pontifical commission, which Pope Francis established in December.

A Vatican source told Catholic News Service there would be another announcement “soon” of more new members to be added to the commission, as it aims to expand the number of representatives from around the world, especially from Africa and Asia.

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CALIFORNIA
U-T San Diego

By Susan Shroder
SEPT. 9, 2014

SAN DIEGO — A vigil and funeral Mass are scheduled next week for Bishop Cirilo Flores, who died Saturday, and a diocesan administrator was elected Tuesday, the Diocese of San Diego said.

Monsignor Steven Callahan was unanimously elected as administrator by the six members of the College of Consultors, the diocese said in a statement.

Callahan has been vicar general of the diocese since January 2003.

Flores, who was appointed bishop last September, died at Nazareth House in San Diego after a battle with prostate cancer. He was 66.

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CALIFORNIA
Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests

For immediate release: Wednesday, September 10, 2014

Statement by Joelle Casteix of Newport Beach, CA, Western Regional Director of SNAP, the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests ( 949-322-7434 cell, jcasteix@gmail.com )

A controversial priest has been chosen as “temporary administrator” of the San Diego diocese.

We were dismayed to hear this.

The blogger is Rocco Palmo of Whispers in the Loggia. The cleric is Msgr. Steven Callahan, the long-time vicar general for the diocese, who has a troubling history.

We are sad that San Diego clerics chose an “administrator” with a such a tarnished reputation of complicity in clergy sex abuse and cover up cases.

— In a 2004 deposition, Callahan admitted that he destroyed secret personnel files which contained valuable evidence about child sex abuse and cover-up.

— In 2011, Callahan was vicar general when Fr. Alexis Davila was reinstated as a priest after pleading guilty to sexually assaulting a young woman. Davila was only removed after victims informed the press.

— Callahan was Bishop Robert Brom’s “right-hand man” in 2007 when the diocese sought bankruptcy protection to avoid embarrassing child sex abuse and cover up trials. The behavior of the diocese in the bankruptcy process was so awful that the federal judge in charge of the case called Brom and his attorneys “disingenuous” and “lacking candor.”

The only way to ensure that the status quo of child sex crimes and cover-ups end is to stop promoting wrongdoers. The next diocesan administrator should have been a cleric with no history in the diocese. That way, Catholics could have been assured that the administrator’s loyalty is to safety and child protection, and not to powerful local men and women who commit or cover-up sex abuse.

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UNITED STATES
These Stone Walls

Editor’s Note: The following is a guest post by William Donohue, Ph.D., President of the Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights, to mark the 20th anniversary of the unjust imprisonment of Father Gordon MacRae.

His troubles began in 1983. Father Gordon MacRae was working at a clinic for drug-addicted youths in New Hampshire when a 14-year-old told his psychotherapist that the priest had kissed him; there was nothing to the story, so nothing came of it. Three years later, when the young man was expelled from a Catholic high school for carrying a weapon, he started telling his counselor how MacRae had fondled him. It turns out that the adolescent was quite busy at the time making accusations: he said two male teachers also molested him. An investigation into all of these cases was made, and they were all dismissed.

Ten years after the first charges against MacRae were tossed, the same man resurfaced with new accusations. The preposterous nature of the charges meant they would go nowhere, but as fate would have it, they would nonetheless play a role in helping to bolster a criminal charge against MacRae one year later.

It wasn’t over for MacRae, not by a long shot. In 1988, a teenager at a hospital that treats drug abusers told the priest about sexual encounters he allegedly had at the hospital and then exposed himself. MacRae, taking no chances, reported this to his superiors. While they believed him, they nonetheless suspended him pending an investigation. But the effect that this incident had on a local detective was not sanguine. In fact, he proved to be a zealot who made it his duty to get all the goods on MacRae, even to the point of making some details up.

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NORTHERN IRELAND
BBC News

A witness at the Historical Institutional Abuse Inquiry has appealed for help to trace her Irish family’s medical records.

The woman was shipped from Nazareth House in Belfast to Australia when she was four.

Now in her 60s, she said she wanted to see her records because two of her children had died at a young age.

She said the information was “extremely important” as she had other children and grandchildren.

She told the inquiry sitting in Banbridge on Wednesday that she was born to a Catholic mother in Dungannon and said she found out in recent years that her father was “a Protestant landowner”.

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TEXAS
Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests

For immediate release: Wednesday, September 10, 2014

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

A Catholic cleric who molested in El Paso is back in the news. A Louisiana newspaper reports that he made regular visits recently to a school, but now has reportedly stopped doing so after his trips were made public.

Br. Samuel Martinez was reportedly visiting the Holy Family Community on the campus of John Paul The Great Academy in Lafayette on weekends. He is credibly accused of molesting at least ten children.

Br. Martinez belongs in a remote, secure treatment center run by independent professionals, not church officials. And Catholic officials – in El Paso and in Louisiana – should personally visit every parish where he worked, even briefly. They should stand up at masses and beg anyone who may have information or suspicions about Br. Martinez’ crimes or misdeeds to contact law enforcement immediately.

We urge parents, parishioners, and the public to not let Br. Martinez’s alleged ill health lull them into a false sense of security. It takes just seconds for a predator – even one who may be sick – to stick his hands down a boy’s pants or his tongue in a girl’s mouth. So Br. Martinez is still a dangerous predator.

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CALIFORNIA
Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests

SF Catholic church group is sued for cover up
Priest threatened to kill a young boy he molested
And his supervisors guilt-tripped the boy’s mother
They threatened her with “eternal damnation” over “lost souls”
SNAP to priest’s boss: “Tell parishioners where offender is now”
“Put him in treatment center and explain your deceit,” they say
Group seeks help from archbishop in “reaching out” to other victims

WHAT

Holding signs and childhood photos, clergy sex abuse victims will urge Bay Area Catholic officials to

–disclose the whereabouts of an admitted child molesting cleric who was sued last week and was quietly sent at least twice to unsuspecting parishes without warning,
–put the predator priest in a secure treatment facility where he can’t be near kids,
–explain why they allegedly transferred the cleric out of the US, and
–discipline a priest whose still on the job who deceived parishioners and refused to tell them their pastor admitted molesting a boy.

WHERE

Outside of Capuchin Religious Order Provincial headquarters, 1345 Cortez Ave. in Burlingame CA
(A church and school are on the same campus: http://www.olaschoolk8.org/

WHEN
Wednesday, Sept. 10 at 1:00 p.m.

WHO
Three-four men and women who are members of SNAP, the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests (SNAPnetwork.org), the nation’s largest and oldest support group for men and women abused in religious and institutional settings

WHY
Last week, a Burlington-based Catholic religious order was sued because it allegedly concealed the child sex crimes of a priest. The priest, Fr. Luis Jaramillo, first molested in Los Angeles, then admitted molesting in Oregon in 1988-89. But his supervisors never told law enforcement and successfully threatened and guilt-tripped the boy’s mother into staying silent.

[Oregonian]

His church supervisors refuse to say where he is now but some believe he is in Mexico or Argentina.

After being accused of molesting two boys in Los Angeles, Fr. Jaramillo was transferred from Los Angeles to eastern Oregon in 1987, the suit says. Then, he abused again. “A Capuchin Franciscan supervisor asked Fr. Jaramillo about the alleged abuse; court documents say Fr. Jaramillo admitted to ‘kissing the boy on the mouth and petting his legs and fondling his genitals,’” according to The Oregonian, After the boy told his mother about the abuse and that Fr. Jaramillo threatened to kill him if he resisted, the mother complained to church officials, the suit alleges.

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VATICAN CITY
The Tablet (UK)

10 September 2014 13:45 by Liz Dodd

Pope Francis has appointed two US priests to senior roles in the Vatican’s campaign to tackle sexual abuse crimes.

An American Jesuit and canon lawyer, Fr Robert Geisinger, has been named the Vatican’s chief prosecutor for serious violations of canon law like child abuse, assuming the role of promoter of justice at the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF).

His predecessor in the role, Fr Robert Oliver, from Boston, Massachusetts, has been named secretary of the new Pontifical Commission for the Protection of Minors.

Fr Oliver’s time at the CDF was overshadowed by accusations from survivor groups that he had helped to cover up sexual abuse in the Archdiocese of Boston.

While admitting they had no evidence to substantiate this claim, a spokesman for the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests, SNAP, pointed to Fr Oliver’s role as an advisor to Cardinal Bernard Law, who was forced to resign over revelations that he had covered up abuse.

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VATICAN CITY
Vatican Information Service

Vatican City, 10 September 2014 (VIS) – The Holy Father has appointed: …

– Rev. Fr. Robert J. Geisinger, S.J., (U.S.A.), as procurer general of the Society of Jesus.

– Msgr. Robert W. Oliver of the clergy of the archdiocese of Boston, as secretary of the Pontifical Commission for the Protection of Minors. Msgr. Oliver was formerly promoter of justice of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith.

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UNITED STATES
Waiting for Godot to Leave

Kevin O’Brien

Calvary. See it.

It’s got some rough language and some violence, but it’s the most serious attempt to deal with the Sexual Abuse scandal I’ve seen. It’s also about a Good Priest. And it’s about the sacrifice of Christ, played out in the life of a Good Priest. The acting, writing and directing are brilliant. The characters are mesmerizing.

It is a fully Catholic movie, deeply spiritual, but set in a very modern, realistic believable anti-christian setting.

It is the most Christian film you’re bound to see.

* And you’d never see it on EWTN (the Catholic network – even if the foul language were bleeped and the violence edited out).

* The Media Report would hate it and condemn it.

* That Donohue guy would denounce it.

* And Super-Catholic Michael Voris may very well miss the point and rail against it, if he ever sees it.

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VATICAN CITY
Crux

John L. Allen Jr.
Associate editor
@JohnLAllenJ

Two priests from the United States, one with ties to Chicago and the other a veteran of the Boston archdiocese, have been named to key Vatican roles by Pope Francis in his clean-up effort with regard to the Church’s child sexual abuse scandals.

​Fr. Robert Oliver, who served as a key advisor to Cardinal Sean P. O’Malley of Boston on issues related to the abuse crisis until 2012, has been named to the new position of Secretary to the Pontifical Commission for the Protection of Minors.

​That body was created by Pope Francis in December 2013 to lead the charge for reform on the fight against sexual abuse, and includes O’Malley as a member.

​The appointment effectively means that Oliver will run the council’s day-to-day operations, and will serve as chief of staff for O’Malley and the other members of the commission, which also includes an abuse survivor from Ireland named Marie Collins.

​Oliver had previously served as the Promoter of Justice in the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, a role akin to a District Attorney’s position in the United States with regard to offenses under church law which fall under the congregation’s jurisdiction.

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MAINE
Bangor Daily News

By Judy Harrison, BDN Staff
Posted Sept. 09, 2014

PORTLAND, Maine — A plaintiff in a slander suit pending in federal court has been taken into custody in Haiti after being accused of sexually abusing children, according to The Associated Press.

Michael Geilenfeld, executive director of St. Joseph Family of Haiti and a former Catholic brother, was detained Friday by police in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, his Maine attorney, Russell Pierce of Portland, confirmed Tuesday.

“He’s been detained without an arrest warrant,” Pierce said. “It’s arbitrary, illegal, and it was done without proof and no due process.”

Geilenfeld’s detention most likely will delay the trial in the defamation case scheduled to begin Oct. 7 in U.S. District Court in Portland.

Hearts With Haiti Inc., based in Raleigh, North Carolina, and Geilenfeld, 62, of Port-au-Prince in February sued Paul Kendrick, 64, of Freeport. The plaintiffs alleged that Kendrick’s false allegations that Geilenfeld has sexually abused children defamed Geilenfeld and the organization, causing fundraising events in the U.S. to be canceled.

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IRELAND
Irish Examiner

By Ann Cahill
European Correspondent

The Government has been urged to broaden the investigation into how unmarried mothers and their children were treated to include all the institutions from which up to 100,000 children were adopted.

A large group of Irish women, some of them mothers, others who had been child victims of the system, spoke of their horrific experiences during a hearing in the European Parliament organised by Sinn Féin.

They fear the terms of reference, due to be announced by the Government this month, will concentrate on around nine institutions identified as mother-and-baby homes.

But Dr Sean Lucey, a healthcare and welfare historian in Queens University Belfast, warned that this would not be enough to fully address the issue.

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UNITED STATES
National Catholic Reporter

Thomas Reese | Sep. 9, 2014 NCR Today

The list of those attending the Synod of Bishops on the Family is a disappointment to those hoping for reform of the curia and for those who hope that the laity will be heard at the synod.

The appointment of 25 curial officials to the Synod on the Family is a sign that Pope Francis still does not understand what real reform of the Roman Curia requires. It makes me fear that when all is said and done, he may close or merge some offices, rearrange some responsibilities, but not really shake things up.

According to current law, moto proprio Apostolica Sollicitudo, an extraordinary synod is made up of major episcopal leaders of the Eastern Catholic churches, presidents of episcopal conferences, and three religious chosen by the Union of Superiors General. It also states, “The cardinals who head offices of the Roman Curia will also attend.” The pope may also appoint additional bishops and clerical and lay observers.

Having curial officials as members of a synod fails to recognize that they should be staff not policymakers. They could attend the synod as staff but should not be voting members. For the most part, they should be observers and not speakers. They have all the other weeks of the year to advise the pope. This is the time for bishops from outside Rome to make their views known.

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VATICAN CITY
Catholic Culture

Catholic World News – September 10, 2014

Pope Francis has appointed an American Jesuit as the Vatican’s top prosecutor in sex-abuse cases.

Father Robert Geisinger, a canon lawyer who serves as the procurator general of the Society of Jesus, is assuming the position of promoter of justice at the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith.

Father Geisinger succeeds Father Robert Oliver, a Boston archdiocesan priest who was appointed to the position in late 2012. Pope Francis has named Father Oliver the secretary of the recently established Pontifical Commission for the Protection of Minors.

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.

VATICAN CITY
Omaha.com

Associated Press

VATICAN CITY (AP) — Pope Francis has named a fellow Jesuit to be the Vatican’s new sex crimes prosecutor after deciding to move the current one to be the No. 2 on his new sex abuse commission.

The Rev. Robert Geisinger, an American, is currently the top canon lawyer at the Jesuit order’s headquarters in Rome.

He replaces Monsignor Robert Oliver as the “promoter of justice” at the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, which processes all sex abuse cases.

The Vatican said Wednesday that Oliver would be the No. 2 in Francis’ commission to protect children and promote the best practices to combat abuse in the church. The commission, which has been slow to get off the ground, is headed by Oliver’s old boss, the archbishop of Boston, Cardinal Sean O’Malley.

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VATICAN CITY
Vatican Radio

(Vatican Radio) Pope Francis has appointed Fr. Robert J. Geisinger SJ to the post of Promoter of Justice for the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF). He takes over from Fr. Robert W. Oliver, who has held the position since Jan. 3, 2013.

Fr. Geisinger has served as the General Procurator for the Society of Jesus and is a member of the Chicago Province. Fr. Oliver, of the Archdiocese of Boston, has been appointed Secretary to the Vatican Commission for the Safeguarding of Minors.

The Promoter of Justice is often referred to as the CDF’s ‘chief prosecutor’ and is charged with investigating canon-law offenses that are regarded as being the most serious, including crimes against the sanctity of the Eucharist, violations of the seal of confession and allegations of the abuse of minors by clergy.

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UNITED STATES/ISRAEL
Frum Follies

Breaking- No Accreditation for Seminaries until Other Staff Testify, Some Staff are Fired, and Meisels Surrenders Control

The Chicago Special Beis Din (CBD rabbinical court) notified the Israeli Beis Din (IBD, this past Thursday (9/4/14), of their conditions for recommending the restoration of accreditation by Touro and HTC Colleges to the seminaries controlled by Meisels. The letter was signed by Rabbi Gedalia Dov Schwartz (RGDS), Av Beis Din (head of the rabbinical court) on behalf of the whole CBD and addressed to the IBD’s attorney, Aaron Twersky (AT). The full text is below the article complete with Exhibit A, an article by Rabbi Menachem Mendel Shafran, Av Beis Din of the IBD.

Conditions for Accreditation Recommendation

(Direct quotes unless labelled comment)

(Bolding was added by blogger, Yerachmiel Lopin)

Remedial measures … are necessary in our view to ensure a safe environment for students…

The Beis Din would like to hear additional testimony from certain staff members before finally determining the appropriate remedial measures.

Comment: A number of members of the seminary refused to testify to the CBD. I am guessing these are staff accused of enabling abuse. This demand is an obvious rejection of the IBD/3IRs claim that allegations of enabling were investigated and all existing staff were deemed to have a chezkas kashrus (presumption of being trustworthy). The CBD insists a proper investigation still needs to conducted with and about staff.

That determination can and will be made promptly following the completion of that testimony, and the Beis Din will withdraw its prior statements [here and here] as soon as those remedial measures [below] are satisfactorily implemented…

Comment: The carrot is rapid reinstatement of accreditation. The CBD makes a case that US accrediting colleges would otherwise be at risk of violating U. S.“Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972” because, as defined by that act there was “sexual violence” and some other employees were “aware of both specific Instances of misconduct and, more generally, gross violations of the norms of behavior in seminaries, and (ii) enabled this behavior by failing to take action to stop it”

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UNITED KINGDOM
The Guardian

Simon Danczuk
The Guardian, Tuesday 9 September 2014

Just when it looked as though the inquiry into child sex abuse could finally get under way, it once again has to face whitewash accusations. After the absurd appointment of Lady Butler-Sloss, which ensured the inquiry got off to a farcical start, Theresa May has made the equally dubious appointment of a replacement chair in Fiona Woolf. This time it emerges the chair has close links with Lord Brittan. Yes, Leon Brittan, the former home secretary who has been accused of covering up a massive child abuse scandal.

May’s inquiry was supposed to reflect the change in attitudes to these crimes, showing a willingness to bring perpetrators to justice and face failings that have destroyed lives. Above all, it was about telling the story of people who have been ignored for far too long.

Until now I’ve not questioned the home secretary’s judgment on the inquiry. I was pleased she resisted calls from within her party against the need for a child abuse inquiry. And I accepted that perhaps a genuine mistake was made in the appointment of Butler-Sloss. But I’m beginning to wonder if she doesn’t want this inquiry to ever really see the light of day. After all, even the most basic of checks would have revealed glaring problems with Woolf that were always going to cause difficulties and ensure victims had no confidence in the process.

I spoke to the home secretary last week about the appointment, and she politely went through the people she wanted to lead what will be a victim-oriented inquiry. I was a little unsure of the chair, given her obvious lack of knowledge about the matters she would be investigating, but I accepted there was a robust panel in place to guide her.

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CALIFORNIA/ILLINOIS
The Worthy Adversary

Posted by Joelle Casteix on September 9, 2014

This is a long story of anonymous emails, research, and vigilance. And it’s all coming to a head tomorrow.

Victims expose secret sex abuse and cover-up letters

Chicago youth activist and LA priest accused of abuse

Official demanded all emails about allegations destroyed

Church officials “quietly removed” cleric from LA parish

He’s now working with youngsters in Chicago

Where is the often-promised church “transparency?” group asks

WHAT:
At news conferences in Chicago and Los Angeles, victims of child sex abuse will expose for the first time previously secret letters that show church officials are currently covering up for a high-ranking priest and Chicago youth activist. The letters show that:

– the priest has a credible accusation of child sexual abuse against him,
– a church official told priests to “destroy” incriminating emails, and
– Chicago archdiocesan staff wanted the allegation kept secret

Victims will also

– demand complete transparency from Chicago and LA church officials
– urge both archbishops to reach out to parishes where the priest worked, and
– offer support to parishioners who have been “kept in the dark.”

WHERE AND WHEN:

CHICAGO: At 1:30 PM outside of the Chicago Archdiocese – 835 N. Rush St (corner of Pearson)
LOS ANGELES: At 11:00 AM Outside of San Gabriel Mission Parish- 428 S. Mission Drive (at Ramona) San Gabriel

WHO:
Three or four adults who were abused as kids by clergy and belong to a support group called SNAP, the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests (including a Chicago woman who is the SNAP president and a California woman who is the SNAP volunteer Western Regional Director).

WHY:
A Chicago church official recently ordered the destruction of incriminating emails about an LA priest who was recently sent back to Chicago where he previously worked – and now works – as a youth activist.

The secret letters about Claretian priest Fr. Bruce Wellems were written in May by his supervisor, Claretian provincial Fr. Rosendo Urrabazo, who has a history of quietly moving credibly accused predator priests.

The letters, which were written while Wellems was pastor at San Gabriel Mission in the Los Angeles archdiocese, were obtained by SNAP.

The first letter says that Wellems engaged in “inappropriate behavior with a younger child when he was a teen.” The allegations were allegedly “rediscovered” in a file review. A second letter says that the Chicago Archdiocese was “reconsidering” any public announcement about the allegations and that priests should destroy all copies of both letters.

Wellems was quietly sent back to Chicago from Los Angeles in May or June where he is now a “missionary” working with inner-city youth. Before working in LA, he was the executive director of Boys Town Chicago, Inc, a short-term residential assessment center in the Back of the Yard.

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.

MILWAUKEE (WI)
Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

By Annysa Johnson of the Journal Sentinel Sept. 9, 2014

The Archdiocese of Milwaukee and its bankruptcy creditors have failed to reach a settlement after two days of negotiations, but the parties have agreed to continue settlement talks in two weeks.

The parties are scheduled to return to the negotiating table for two more days of talks Sept. 22 and 23, said Michael Finnegan, whose St. Paul, Minn., law firm represents most of the 575 men and women who have filed sex abuse claims in the bankruptcy.

He declined to comment on the round of talks that concluded Tuesday in Minnesota, or to speculate about prospects for a settlement.

Jerry Topczewski, chief of staff for Archbishop Jerome Listecki, who was in Minnesota for the meetings, could not be reached for comment.

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

UNITED STATES
Waiting for Godot to Leave

Kevin O’Brien

The Media Report comments on my post We Must Do what our Bishops will Not …

I cannot help but notice that folks like Kevin and SNAP keep on creating these new, unheard-of-before “standards” for how the Church is supposed to behave.

Since when are organizations under a moral obligation to notify victims upon the death of a perpetrator?

*When* has this *ever* happened??

Ever?

It seems Kevin and the bigots at SNAP want to bludgeon the Church for failing to uphold a standard that has never even existed before.

I’ll be willing to grant The Media Report’s point. I’ll be willing to say that bishops should not be held to the pastoral standard of reaching out to victims when the man who abused their son repeatedly over several years and drove him to suicide dies. Yes, comforting the afflicted is asking a bit too much of bishops. They have more important things to do, clearly. And, if you can believe the commenter at Rod Dreher’s article, most bishops showed “indifference or contempt” when the victim’s suicide letter was read aloud to them. So clearly they’re busy men preoccupied with more important things than common human decency.

I’ll grant all of that.

* But when they know one of their priests is taking pornographic pictures of children, including infants, they should tell parishioners. They should not make sure the evidence gets destroyed. They should not spend $1.4 million of diocesan money to defend themselves from two misdemeanors. They should not allow their brother bishops and that guy Donohue to lie about what they’ve done, especially when the evidence about their enabling of sex abuse exists in a report they themselves have commissioned.

* They should not blame the mother of a boy who was molested by a priest who parked his trailer in the parish parking lot and lured boys inside it. They should not insist that they are upholding the Dallas Charter when they’re not. They should not make covering their asses their primary goal.

* They should not tacitly identify victims by issuing press releases questioning their motivation for accusing their favorite priest of abuse. They should not settle civil cases out of court when abundant evidence such as texts and emails would come to light if the case went to trial. They should not answer dishonestly in a deposition and then spin their dishonest answer by creating a false context that the transcript of the deposition does not support.

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

CALIFORNIA
San Jose Mercury News

By Malaika Fraley
Oakland Tribune
POSTED: 09/09/2014

HAYWARD — A former staff member at a Hayward private school was order to trial Tuesday on 10 felony sex crime charges for allegedly sexually abusing a student over a two-year period.

Oakland resident Mia Cummings, who turns 30 Thursday, had been an after-school care assistant at All Saints Catholic School since 2005 when she was arrested late last year and jailed in lieu of $800,000 bail.

Alameda County deputy district attorney Samantha Kim said that Cummings first began being inappropriate with the male victim through Facebook contact.

Cummings is accused of sexually abusing the child beginning in December 2011 when he was 12 through 2013. Police began investigating her based on a report from another staff member.

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

UNITED STATES
The Valley Catholic

By John Mulderig
NEW YORK (CNS) — Set in rural Ireland, the bleak but powerful serio-comedy “Calvary” (Fox Searchlight) kicks off with a startling premise. In the confessional, a grown victim of childhood sex abuse by a priest tells Father James Lavelle (Brendan Gleeson), the dedicated pastor of a County Sligo parish, that in a week’s time he intends to avenge himself by killing the innocent clergyman.

With the perpetrator of the crimes against him dead, and despairing of being healed by therapy, the victim reasons that to take the life of a cleric would draw people’s attention.

As writer-director John Michael McDonagh chronicles the seven days that follow Father James’ life-threatening encounter, we learn that this thoroughly decent but otherwise ordinary man of the cloth is a widower and father ordained after his wife’s death.

He deals with his emotionally fragile daughter (Kelly Reilly) and with the variety of errant or merely eccentric souls who make up his small flock (including Chris O’Dowd, Orla O’Rourke, Dylan Moran, Aiden Gillen and M. Emmet Walsh), all the while wavering about how to respond to the threat on his life.

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

UNITED STATES
Cornell Daily Sun

By SEAN DOOLITTLE

“Do not despair, one of the thieves was saved. Do not presume; one of the thieves was damned.”

Those familiar with the musings of St. Augustine or, much more likely, the works of Samuel Beckett, will no doubt recognize the above quote which introduces Calvary. The quote concerns itself with the two thieves crucified atop Calvary (or Golgotha, what have you) alongside Jesus, one penitent and one impenitent. To St. Augustine, our fates are almost entirely left up to chance, and whether or not we are saved or damned is out of our control; embracing destiny is the only option.

Beckett cited the quote as a major influence in writing the enigmatic Waiting for Godot, the play that kickstarted the “Theatre of the Absurd” movement and put the Irish playwright on the map. In the play, Vladimir and Estragon find themselves hopelessly meandering, searching without reason, for Godot, for purpose, for God, for meaning. Caught in a cycle, the characters never achieve anything; things just happen.

Thus is the ongoing theme of Calvary, John Michael McDonagh’s second directorial outing following 2011’s The Guard. McDonagh, much like his brother Martin McDonagh (writer and director of some of the best black comedies of the past decade ever, including In Bruges, Seven Psychopaths and my personal favorite, The Pillowman) is no stranger to the absurd and the tasteless. A clear lineage can be traced between the works of the McDonagh brothers and their pioneering countryman, Beckett. While Beckett and both McDonagh’s past work have more or less equally balanced the humor with the darkness, Calvary is often much more gallows than gallows humor. But that isn’t necessarily a bad thing.

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.

ARIZONA
The Arizona Republic

[with video]

Police have accused a Phoenix man of taking advantage of his position as a minister to sexually abuse at least two women and two girls in his congregation.

Jorge Vasquez, 47, was arrested Thursday and is being held in a Maricopa County jail on suspicion of six counts of child molestation, two counts of sexual conduct with a minor, four counts of sexual abuse, two counts of sexual assault and four counts of kidnapping, among other allegations.

Detectives from the Family Investigations Bureau of the Phoenix Police Department first learned about the allegations earlier this month, according to a police statement issued Friday.

Investigators say they developed probable cause to believe Vasquez engaged in sexual contact with females ages 12 to 33 against their will during counseling sessions or on other occasions during his 7-year tenure as pastor at La Roca, or the Rock Church, near 21st Avenue and Buckeye Road.

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

UNITED STATES
The New York Times

Ross Douthat

My Sunday column dealt with the extremely grim subject of the recent revelations about rape and official indifference in the English city of Rotherham, where Pakistani gangs “groomed” and sexually assaulted hundred and hundreds of (mostly white) girls and young women while social workers and cops seemed to look the other way. My piece tried to contextualize the grievous failure of the English authorities by linking the disaster to other high-profile cases of sexual abuse — in Roman Catholicism, of course, but also in New York’s private schools, at Joe Paterno’s Penn State, in Hollywood, elsewhere — and after the column appeared I noticed a few readers and Twitterers suggesting that as a Catholic I have an ulterior motive in generalizing about sex abuse, because generalizations are a good way to evade or minimize the particular sins of my own church.

I don’t think that’s a particularly fair reading of what I actually wrote, and I don’t think a browse of my past writings suggests that I have any interest in evading the issue of the church’s scandal. But there’s a grain of truth here, in the sense that I doubt I would have as strong an interest in these kind of stories, or have accumulated as much knowledge (perhaps more than is healthy, I sometimes think) about the ways and means of sexual abuse, if I weren’t a Catholic journalist with a vested interest in understanding exactly what happened in my own church. And to self-scrutinize a little bit, when you’ve spent a long time in the darkest basements of a family you still proudly belong to, an institution whose fundamental claims you still accept, there probably is a horrible, “it’s not just us” reassurance that comes with researching different-but-similar horrors in other contexts, recognizing commonalities and patterns and the universality of certain kinds of sins.

So readers should, by all means, keep that background and those possibilities in mind when I (or other Catholics, for that matter) write on patterns of sex abuse and rape in society writ large. But at the same time, they should also recognize that it’s possible to come up out of those dark basements with some hard-earned wisdom, wisdom that might be particularly worth sharing with those precincts of the culture — liberal, secular, tolerant, cosmopolitan — that pride themselves on being least like the ancient, hierarchical, dogmatic Catholic Church. Because it was very easy, I think, for people in those precincts who paid a kind of cursory attention to the Catholic scandals to come away with the assumption that there wasn’t all that much there that was applicable to their own contexts and situations — that Catholicism just had a celibacy-plus-hierarchy problem, which created warped people and warped incentives that wouldn’t have existed in a more egalitarian and less repressed environment.

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.

MINNESOTA
The Republic

THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
September 10, 2014

ST. PAUL, Minnesota — A county attorney in Minnesota says some allegations of priest abuse may be too old to prosecute.

Ramsey County Attorney John Choi says the statute of limitations in 10 cases of sexual abuse of minors by Catholic priests will be a barrier to prosecution, unless a loophole can be found.

St. Paul police have been investigating claims of clergy abuse involving the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis. A series of lawsuits have been filed against the archdiocese because of a change in state law which allows the litigation for claims dating back decades.

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.

WASHINGTON
Care2

by Robin Marty
September 9, 2014

Mega church pastor Mark Driscoll has made headlines this week in the wake of an announcement that a number of his churches will be closing down. Driscoll has been well-known for his incendiary comments about Christianity, patriarchy, homosexuality and Biblical morality, but the most recent revelation — that he once referred to women as “penis homes” — has left a number of people wondering how a person like Driscoll could have had enough followers to fill one church, much less a series of them.

Sadly, his metaphor (“Knowing that His penis would need a home, God created a woman to be your wife and when you marry her and look down you will notice that your wife is shaped differently than you and makes a very nice home.”), was penned in 2001. Here are four more recent and just as problematic quotes from Pastor Driscoll.

1) “‘Serve‘ your husband.“ How do you show your love and obedience to God? According to Driscoll, oral sex on your husband does the trick. “I said, ‘You need to go home and tell your husband that you’ve met Jesus and you’ve been studying the Bible, and that you’re convicted of a terrible sin in your life. And then you need to drop his trousers, and you need to serve your husband. And when he asks why, say, “Because I’m a repentant woman. God has changed my heart and I’m supposed to be a biblical wife. She says, ‘Really?’ I said, ‘Yeah. First Peter 3 says if your husband is an unbeliever to serve him with deeds of kindness.’” Of course, there’s no mention of a husband serving his wife with anything in return.

2) “I would not have married her.“ Driscoll is a happily married man. Possibly. But in his own book he outs his own wife’s “sin” of being a victim of sexual abuse, blaming her for hiding her secret and allowing them to have really bad sex because of it. “My previously free and fun girlfriend was suddenly my frigid and fearful wife. She did not undress in front of me, required the lights to be off on the rare occasions we were intimate, checked out during sex, and experienced a lot of physical discomfort because she was tense… One night, as we approached the birth of our first child, Ashley, and the launch of our church, I had a dream in which I saw some things that shook me to my core. I saw in painful detail Grace sinning sexually during a senior trip she took after high school when we had just started dating. It was so clear it was like watching a film — something I cannot really explain but the kind of revelation I sometimes receive. I awoke, threw up, and spent the rest of the night sitting on our couch, praying, hoping it was untrue, and waiting for her to wake up so I could ask her. I asked her if it was true, fearing the answer. Yes, she confessed, it was. Grace started weeping and trying to apologize for lying to me, but I honestly don’t remember the details of the conversation, as I was shell-shocked. Had I known about this sin, I would not have married her.”

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

NEW ZEALAND
NZ Catholic

by ROWENA OREJANA

AUCKLAND — Clericalism is at the heart of the sexual abuse issue that has plagued the Catholic Church in Australia.

Brisbane Archbishop Mark Coleridge told more than 100 priests of Auckland diocese that there is a “whirlpool effect” in the Australian Catholic Church, and the two powerful cross-currents at work are: the Royal Commission, and Pope Francis’s apostolic exhortation,Evangelii Gaudium.

“A strange point of convergence [between the two cross-currents] is … what is often called clericalism. [Clericalism] is somehow central to the cultural difficulties, or the cultural
phenomena that enabled abuse to happen,” he said. “Somehow, we thought the law doesn’t apply to us.”

In the priests’ reflection of what clericalism is, Fr Anthony Malone provided a definition that his group, which included Auckland Bishop Patrick Dunn, came up with.

“We said it is focused on status, the misuse of power, and it’s allowing people to make others elite and allowing those people to see themselves as elite. They are aloof and non-available, and the opposite of that is total service,” explained Fr Malone.

Archbishop Coleridge agreed. “The power is certainly entrusted to the ordained. But how do you use the power: to create or to destroy? That’s when power is dangerous, and religious
power can be particularly dangerous. That is one of the things that emerges very clearly in these cases of sexual abuse,” he said.

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.

IRELAND
International Business Times

By Bindu Jacob | September 10, 2014

Cardinal Seán Brady resigned from his position as the leader of the Catholic Church in Ireland, and the Vatican accepted his resignation.

Cardinal Seán Brady resigned from the position as leader of the Catholic Church in Ireland, and the Vatican accepted his resignation. Cardinal Seán Brady resigned on an account of child sex abuse scandals by clerical and his attempt to hide the case

Cardinal Seán Brady’s term was beset with clerical child sex abuse scandals — and he confessed that he helped cover up one case.

In 1975, when Brady was a young priest, he swore two teenage sex abuse victims to secrecy during an internal church meeting. The two boys were one of the countless victims of the infamous paedophile priest, Fr. Brendan Smyth.

Cardinal Brady, however, resigned on age grounds — and not for his sex abuse cover-up. The canon law states that a bishop must resign from service as soon as he turns 75 years old, and the Pope decides whether to accept it. The Cardinal turned 75 last Aug. 16 and his resignation was approved by Pope Francis just within a month, which was deemed unusually fast.

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.

MINNESOTA
Star Tribune

Article by: CHAO XIONG , Star Tribune Updated: September 10, 2014

Criminal charges against priests in 10 cases involving the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis are not likely.

Criminal charges are not likely to be filed in 10 cases of alleged sexual abuse of minors by Catholic priests because the incidents are so old, Ramsey County Attorney John Choi said.

The statute of limitations in each case “is going to be a barrier,” he said, unless loopholes can be found to circumvent time constraints. “But,” Choi added, “I’m pessimistic about that.”

Choi’s comments follow nearly a year of investigation by St. Paul police into cases of alleged clergy abuse involving the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis. The criminal investigations in Ramsey County followed a series of lawsuits filed against the church since a 2013 state law allowed the filing of suits for claims dating back decades.

The cases have gripped the state and church while taxing local law-enforcement resources.

Choi said that he expects to announce official charging decisions in about a month regarding the 10 cases, one involving a deceased suspect.

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

UNITED STATES
Christian Catholicism

Jerry Slevin

Pope Francis’ Synod in three weeks, Wall Street’s pre-US election push with Vatican help, the National Catholic Reporter (NCR) censorship strategy, the disappointing start for the Boston Globe’s Crux website for Catholics, the “new rolling of the Nuns on the Bus” and efforts to protect children from priest rapists — these are all seemingly about to collide!

The apparent conservative takeover of NCR continues. Its “lifting” of David Gibson’s Religion News Service (RNS) report, about Sr. Simone Campbell (of the Nuns on the Bus) and “dark money”, has been “planted”, apparently, where it is inaccessible to NCR blogger comments. It inexplicably has been placed in NCR’s conservative “Hilton Foundation funded Global Sisters Happy Talk private enclosure” on NCR’s website. Other RNS “lifted” stories are not usually so restricted by NCR. Why is this being sealed off from comments?

NCR’s “spin tricks” continue to proliferate, it seems, no? For more background, please see my “What Is Really Up At the National Catholic Reporter?” here

[Christian Catholicism]

Of course, “dark money” manipulation apparently may include some of NCR’s donors, not just the Koch Brothers (who donated $1 million recently to the US bishops’ Catholic University of America), no?

Who do you suppose are behind some of NCR’s key donors and advertisers, such as FAIDICA’s Hilton Foundation and the National Leadership Roundtable on Church Management? Hardly Mother Teresa types, to be sure!

Please see, for example:

[FADICA – Foundations and Donors Interested in Catholic Activities]

and

[The National Leadership Roundtable on Church Management]

I now have to wonder who suggested to billionaire financier, John Henry, to set up the Boston Globe’s new website, Crux, and to call and hire for Crux John Allen, NCR’s former chief “papal spinner”, now replaced at NCR by Tom Reese, a pliable and obedient Jesuit who is still swooning over a Jesuit Pope, even one who reportedly was quite disliked by many Argentinian Jesuits.

John Henry obviously has many Wall Street contacts, likely including some associated with key donors and advertisers at NCR. Disappointingly, Crux’s early efforts seem to me mostly to indicate just another papal spin outlet. This is what I had expected it would be, especially given Allen’s extensive history of”softball” papal promotions at NCR. A reporter like Allen apparently can get more interviews “pitching softballs” and accepting uncritically papal propaganda, than by being an objective and critical thinker. Allen may not understand that there is a difference between journalism and cheer leading.

I hope the Boston Globe newsroom has, at least, put some drapes over its earlier Pulitzer Prize for its game changing stories a decade ago about Cardinal Law and the Catholic hierarchy’s broader priest child abuse cover-ups. Wow, does the Vatican papal media machine recover quickly, or not?

Of course, Pope Francis had earlier worked closely with Cardinal Law and Carl Anderson in Spain, well after the Boston scandal disclosures, on a Curial Commission about “family matters”.

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.

MINNESOTA
Jeff Anderson & Associates

Media Advisory

September 9, 2014

St. Paul Press Conference Wednesday
Survivors, advocates pursue transparency and disclosure

What: At a news conference on Wednesday in St. Paul, attorneys Jeff Anderson and Mike Finnegan will:

· Announce the filing of a sexual abuse lawsuit in Brown County on behalf of two former altar boys, Doe 37 and Doe 38, who were sexually abused by Father Michael Skoblik at St. Joseph’s parish in Silver Lake, Minnesota. The lawsuit includes a claim of public nuisance naming the Diocese of New Ulm as the defendant.

· Demand Bishop John M. LeVoir release the names of 12 priests who have been accused of child sexual abuse in the Diocese of New Ulm. To-date, New Ulm is the only diocese in Minnesota who refuses to release the names of credibly accused priests.

WHEN: Wednesday, September 10, 2014 at 1:00 PM CDT

WHERE: Office of Jeff Anderson & Associates
366 Jackson St. Suite 100
St. Paul, MN 55101

Notes: Copies of the complaint will be available at www.andersonadvocates.com.

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

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MICHIGAN
Battle Creek Enquirer

Trace Christenson September 9, 2014

A former Grand Rapids Christian radio host pleaded guilty Tuesday to raping an 11-year-old boy in Battle Creek.

John Richard Balyo, 35, pleaded guilty to first-degree criminal sexual conduct in the May 17 assault in a Beckley Road motel room.

He faces a minimum of 25 years in prison and could be sentenced to a maximum of life.

Balyo also faces a minimum of 15 years in prison after pleading guilty in July in U.S. District Court to sexual exploitation of a child and possession of child pornography. He will be sentenced there Nov. 6 and in Calhoun County on Nov. 10.

The sentences will be served concurrently.

Balyo, dressed in an orange Calhoun County jail uniform, appeared with his attorney, David Dodge, before Circuit Judge Conrad Sindt.

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MICHIGAN
MLive

By John Tunison | jtunison@mlive.com
on September 09, 2014

CALHOUN COUNTY, MI — John Balyo, the former Christian radio host accused of molesting young boys in at least two counties, has pleaded guilty to a felony in Calhoun County Circuit Court.

Balyo already is awaiting sentencing in U.S. District Court in Grand Rapids after admitting he photographed sex acts with a 12-year-old boy at a Kalamazoo County hotel.

Balyo, 34, was a former morning show host for WCSG in Grand Rapids.

He pleaded guilty to first-degree criminal sexual conduct Tuesday, Sept. 9, in Calhoun County District Court and will be sentenced Nov. 10.

A charge of second-degree criminal sexual conduct will be dismissed at sentencing, a Calhoun County Circuit Court clerk said.

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NEW YORK
Survivors Network of Those Abused by priests

For immediate release: Tuesday, Sept. 9, 2014

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

Thirty four abuse victims from Yeshiva University are asking the Second Circuit Court of Appeals to re-examine a recent ruling against them. We desperately hope the court listens.

As adults, we can either make it harder or easier for victims of rape and child abuse to report crimes. The three judge panel that sided with Yeshiva officials over these victims is making it harder to report crimes. That, in turn, leads to more adults and kids being sexually assaulted.

If more predators are to be caught, we must relax or repeal archaic laws that protect the guilty and endanger the innocent.

We commend these brave victims for persisting in their struggle for justice. It’s clear that Yeshiva officials hid and enabled heinous crimes against students. This will become even clearer if New York’s justice system will give these wounded but courageous victims their ‘day in court.’

We beg the Second Circuit judges to let these pained men have this opportunity

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AUSTRALIA/NORTHERN IRELAND
The Guardian

Henry McDonald, Ireland correspondent
theguardian.com, Tuesday 9 September 2014

Children abused in Northern Ireland’s children’s homes and orphanages who were shipped to Australia were painted black in order to entertain passengers on their voyages, a victim told an inquiry on Tuesday.

A former child migrant who was transported from a care home in Derry to western Australia revealed at the historical institutional abuse inquiry that “our faces were painted black to make us look like Aborigines” as part of on board “entertainment” for paying passengers.

The man is now in his 70s and asked for anonymity when he gave evidence to the inquiry at Banbridge courthouse in County Down. He had to wipe away tears as he described the humiliation on board the ship and later the abuse he suffered in an Australian care home. After being abused in the Termonbacca care home run by the Catholic church in Derry he was sent to Australia in 1953.

Describing the impact of the abuse both in the Derry home and later in Australia, he said: “I had no idea how to parent my children, or even how to cuddle and love them. I really don’t know what love is.”

Another witness to the long-running tribunal into decades of abuse in the region’s care homes and orphanages told the courthouse that the abuse he had endured in the Bindoon home in Australia was even worse than what he had suffered in Termonbacca. The ex-Australian Air Force recruit said: “After Bindoon, Termonbacca turned out to be a holiday camp.”

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NORTHERN IRELAND
Derry Journal

A man once housed at a Catholic Church run home in Derry has told the inquiry into institutional abuse in Northern Ireland that he and other young boys who were shipped to Australia had their faces painted black in order to make them look like Aborigines.

Now in his 70s, the man told the inquiry sitting at Banbridge Courthouse that he was sent to Australia from Termonbacca in 1953.

He also said he was the victim of both physical and sexual abuse and continued by saying that on the boat journey to Australia the child migrants were made to entertain paying passengers and “our faces were painted to make us look like Aborigines.”

Another witness who later joined the Austrailian Airforce said he was beaten to “exact the most fear and terror” at Termonbacca and then suffered physical and sexual abuse at a Catholic training in Bindoon in Australia.

“After Bindoon, Termonbacca turned out to be a holiday camp,” he said.

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KENTUCKY
WDRB

LOUISVILLE, Ky. (WDRB) – A Meade County grand jury has indicted a priest on charges of sexual abuse.

The Louisville Archdiocese says they received a report in May of this year from a man who says he was sexually abused in the 1970s by Rev. Joseph Hemmerle.

Hemmerle was a priest at the St. Francis and Holy Cross Parishes in Marion County; the alleged abuse took place in Meade County.

A grand jury indicted Hemmerle on Sept. 9 on three counts of sexual abuse and six counts of sodomy involving a child under the age of 12.

The Archdiocese says Hemmerle is on administrative leave pending a police investigation.

The Archdiocese of Louisville released the following statement concerning the allegations:

“The Archdiocese of Louisville learned today that Father R. Joseph Hemmerle has been indicted in Meade County on several counts of sexual abuse. The Archdiocese has cooperated with law enforcement officials as they have investigated these allegations and will continue to fully cooperate. Archbishop Joseph Kurtz places Father Hemmerle on administrative leave in May of 2014 after an individual came forward who reported that he had been sexually abused by Father Hemmerle in the 1970s. Father Hemmerle had been serving as a pastor of Holy Cross Parish in Holy Cross, Ky. and St. Francis Parish in St. Francis, Ky. The Archdiocese encourages victims of sexual abuse to report their abuse to the police, and we hold all victims of abuse in our prayers.”

Barbara Dorris, Outreach Director for the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests, also released a statement:

“A Louisville priest has been charged with child sex crimes stemming from allegations by a second victim. We hope church officials take this more seriously than they apparently did after the first allegations were reported. We are also grateful to the brave victims who have come forward and are giving courage to others to do the same thing. In May, Fr. Hemmerle was removed from ministry again after a second victim came forward. He has now been charged with nine counts of sexual crimes against children. Fr. Joseph Hemmerle was first accused of abuse in 2001, after a man came forward and told the Archdiocese of Louisville. The Archdiocese put Fr. Hemmerle back in ministry, falsely claiming police had cleared him. These alleged internal church investigations often exonerate priests who are later civilly sued or criminally charged with child sex crimes. Ironically, if there’s one prelate in the U.S. who should get this right, it’s Louisville Archbishop Joseph Kurtz. He’s the head of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops. His Archdiocese has faced more than 250 abuse and cover up lawsuits and has at least 63 proven, admitted and credibly accused child molesting clerics. But Kurtz and his staff put back on the job a priest who’s now been arrested and has had 12 or 13 more years to assault kids. We hope every single person who saw, suspected or suffered clergy sexual abuse, by Fr. Hemmerle or any other official will find the courage to come forward, report to police, help others and start healing. As this case clearly shows, when victims come forward they give courage to others who have been suffering in silence and self blame.”

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.

KENTUCKY
WHAS

Posted on September 9, 2014

LOUISVILLE, Ky. (WHAS11) — A Catholic priest and former Trinity High School student was indicted on charges of sexual abuse.

The Reverend Joseph Hemmerle is charged with six counts of sodomy and three charges of sexual abuse.

The allegations stem from a case in Meade County in the 1970s.

The alleged victim was under the age of 12.

Hemmerle was placed on leave from the archdiocese back in May.

He had been serving as the pastor at St. Francis Assisi and Holy Cross parishes in Marion County, Ky.

The Archdiocese of Louisville issued this statement surrounding the case of Joseph Hemmerle, a Catholic priest indicted on multiple counts of sexual abuse:

The Archdiocese of Louisville learned today that Father R. Joseph Hemmerle has been indicted in Meade County on several counts of sexual abuse.

The Archdiocese has cooperated with law enforcement officials as they have investigated these accusations and will continue to fully cooperate.

Archbishop Joseph Kurtz placed Father Hemmerle on administrative leave in May of 2014 after an individual came forward who reported that he had been sexually abused by Father Hemmerle in the 1970s. Father Hemmerle had been serving as a pastor of Holy Cross Parish in Holy Cross, Ky. and St. Francis Parish in St. Francis, Ky.

The Archdiocese encourages victims of sexual abuse to report their abuse to the police, and we hold all victims of abuse in our prayers.

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

NEW YORK
The Jewish Daily Forward

By Paul Berger
Published September 09, 2014

A group of former students who say they were sexually abused at Yeshiva University High School for Boys have asked a full federal appeals court to reconsider a smaller judicial panel’s ruling that upheld the dismissal of their lawsuit.

The students’ attorney, Kevin Mulhearn, submitted a petition September 8 calling for an en banc, or full court, hearing of the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit after a three-judge panel from the same court supported the dismissal of the students’ $680 million lawsuit.

The appeals followed an earlier judge’s rejection of the suit on the grounds that the statute of limitations for trying it had passed.

Calling the three-judge panel’s conduct “manifestly unjust, grossly improper, and…a blatant abuse of judicial power,” Mulhearn argues in his petition that the court “improperly assumed the role of Yeshiva University’s advocate and attorney.”

If the court refuses to rehear his case, Mulhearn has vowed to appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court.

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

NEW YORK
New York Daily News

Tuesday, September 9, 2014

BY MICHAEL O’KEEFFE

The lawyer for 34 men who claim Yeshiva University covered up decades of sexual abuse picked a fight on Tuesday with the appeals panel that shot down a $680 million lawsuit last week, accusing the three judges who denied his appeal of being in the tank for the Washington Heights school.

Attorney Kevin Mulhearn didn’t pull any punches in papers filed on Tuesday asking the full Second Circuit Court of Appeals to rehear the case.

“The panel decision mocks the law, ignores the facts, insults the survivors of childhood sexual abuse and diminishes the dignity and integrity of this court,” Mulhearn wrote. “The panel decision is grossly flawed, intellectually dishonest and antithetical to well-settled Supreme Court and Second Circuit jurisprudence.”

Mulhearn called out three Second Circuit judges who upheld U.S. District Court Judge John G. Koeltl’s decision to toss the case, accusing them of acting as attorneys and advocates for Yeshiva rather than as objective jurists.

“If the Second Circuit Court upholds the panel decision, it will diminish its own honor and prestige,” Mulhearn said, accusing the panel of acting like a “a kangaroo court.”

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.

KENTUCKY
The Courier-Journal

Chris Kenning, ckenning@courier-journal.com 1:06 p.m. EDT September 9, 2014

Four months after he was removed from his ministry following an allegation of abuse, the Rev. Joseph Hemmerle was indicted Monday on six counts of sodomy and three counts of sexual abuse involving a minor, according to Meade County court officials.

Debbie Medley, the Meade County Circuit Court Clerk, said Hemmerle was arrested after the grand jury indictment and released after posting $5,000 of a $25,000 bond. She said the charges indicate the alleged victim was under 12 years of age.

Hemmerle, who could not be reached Tuesday, had been serving as pastor at St. Francis of Assisi and Holy Cross parishes in Marion County.

According to a May 8 letter from Archbishop Joseph Kurtz to parishioners, Hemmerle was placed on administrative leave after the archdiocese was “contacted by an individual who reported that he had been sexually abused by Father Hemmerle in the 1970s.”

He also said the matter was being relayed to authorities in Meade County.

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.

KENTUCKY
Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests

For immediate release: Tuesday, September 9, 2014

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

A Louisville priest has been charged with child sex crimes stemming from allegations by a second victim. We hope church officials take this more seriously than they apparently did after the first allegations were reported.

We are also grateful to the brave victims who have come forward and are giving courage to others to do the same thing.

Fr. Joseph Hemmerle was first accused of abuse in 2001, after a man came forward and told the archdiocese of Louisville. The archdiocese put Fr. Hemmerle back in ministry, falsely claiming police had cleared him. These alleged internal church investigations often exonerate priests who are later civilly sued or criminally charged with child sex crimes.

Ironically, if there’s one prelate in the US who should get this right, it’s Louisville Archbishop Joseph Kurtz. He’ the head of the US Conference of Catholic Bishops. His archdiocese has faced more than 250 abuse and cover up lawsuits and has at least 63 proven, admitted and credibly accused child molesting clerics. But Kurtz and his staff put back on the job a priest who’s now been arrested and has had 12 or 13 more years to assault kids.

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

UNITED STATES
dotCommonweal

Grant Gallicho
September 9, 2014

Read part one here, part two here, and part three here.

“At the beginning of the Gospel of St. John,” Fr. Carlos Urrutigoity wrote in a September 2001 fundraising letter, “we see the calling of the first apostles.” Upon meeting Jesus, they ask where he lives. “Come and see,” Jesus replies. “The Evangelist then simply states, ‘They went and saw where he lived and stayed with him that day,’” Urrutigoity continued. He was seeking financial support for the clerical-formation program of the Society of St. John, a traditionalist Catholic group he had founded in Scranton, Pennsylvania, in 1998—months after he was expelled from the schismatic Society of St. Pius X. But he wanted more than a seminary. Urrutigoity planned to build a liberal-arts college and a village for traditionalist-minded Catholics. His profligate spending, along with a string of sexual-misconduct allegations stretching from Argentina to Pennsylvania, ensured none of that would ever come to fruition.

Like the first followers of Jesus, Urrutigoity wrote in his September 2001 letter, the young men who joined the SSJ would be required to leave their families and friends. Novices would have to “detach themselves from all worldly affairs in order to give themselves entirely to the Lord.” That would mean “minimal contact with the outside world,” Urrutigoity explained—“no newspapers, no internet.” Those strictures would prove especially important to the Society in the weeks and months that followed. The day after Urrutigoity composed the letter, Dr. Jeffrey Bond—hired by Urrutigoity in April 2000 to establish his hoped-for college—circulated the first of a series of e-mails and open letters denouncing Urrutigoity for alleged sexual misconduct and Bishop James Timlin for allowing him to remain in ministry.

Indeed, Timlin—who invited Urrutigoity and the Society of St. John into the Diocese of Scranton, brokered the schismatics’ return to full communion with Rome, and proved unable to stop them from running up millions in debt—took every opportunity to defend them, even well after the diocese had settled the sexual-abuse lawsuit that would eventually lead to the group’s canonical suppression.

No one could say Timlin hadn’t been warned.

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.

KENTUCKY
Fairfield Citizen

LOUISVILLE, Ky. (AP) — A Catholic priest that had been removed from ministry has been indicted on charges he sexually abused a minor in Meade County in the 1970s.

The Rev. Joseph Hemmerle was indicted Monday on six counts of sodomy and three charges of sexual abuse. The indictment says the victim was under 12 years old.

Louisville Archbishop Joseph Kurtz placed Hemmerle on leave in May after an individual contacted the archdiocese and reported that he had been abused by Hemmerle in the 1970s. Kurtz said the prosecutor in Meade County was also contacted about the allegation.

Hemmerle had been serving as pastor at St. Francis of Assisi and Holy Cross parishes in Marion County when he was removed.

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.

NORTHERN IRELAND
BBC News

A man has told the Historical Institutional Abuse Inquiry that he and other young boys being shipped from Northern Ireland to Australia had their faces painted black to make them look like Aborigines.

More than 100 children were shipped to Australia in the mid 1900s.

Now in his 70s, the man was sent there in 1953, from the Termonbacca children’s home in Londonderry.

He also said he was the victim of physical and sexual abuse.

The former child migrant said that on the boat journey to Australia, the boys were made to entertain paying passengers and “our faces were painted black to make us look like Aborigines.”

He went on to explain the impact of the abuse in later life: “I had no idea how to parent my children, or even how to cuddle and love them.”

‘Abuse’

The witness, who wiped away tears a number of times during his evidence, said he suffered physical and sexual abuse in Australia.

“I really don’t know what love is,” he said.

Another witness, who joined the Australian Airforce, told the inquiry that he still lives with regrets about not doing more to save young girls from abuse, while he himself was a child. …
Institutions under investigation

Local authority homes:

• Lissue Children’s Unit, Lisburn
• Kincora Boys’ Home, Belfast
• Bawnmore Children’s Home, Newtownabbey

Juvenile justice institutions:

• St Patrick’s Training School, Belfast
• Lisnevin Training School, County Down
• Rathgael Training School, Bangor

Secular voluntary homes:

• Barnardo’s Sharonmore Project, Newtownabbey
• Barnardo’s Macedon, Newtownabbey

Catholic Church-run homes:

• St Joseph’s Home, Termonbacca, Londonderry
• Nazareth House Children’s Home, Derry
• Nazareth House Children’s Home, Belfast
• Nazareth Lodge Children’s Home, Belfast
• De La Salle Boys’ Home, Kircubbin, County Down

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.

LOUISIANA
Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests

For immediate release: Tuesday, September 09, 2014

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

In an unusual and troubling twist, a Louisiana bishop paid an alleged child sexual abuse victim even though he doesn’t think the accusation is true.

The Lafayette Advocate newspaper quotes a spokesman for Houma-Thibodaux’s Bishop Shelton Fabre, as saying even though the diocese has made at least one financial settlement with a man who said he was abused in the 1990s, “there has not been a case that we deemed to be true.”

The paper went on to report that “{Louis} Aguirre said that since the 2002 bishops charter the diocese has not alerted parishioners about allegations against priests because none have been credible.”

Huh?

We strongly suspect – and evidence strongly suggests – that this alleged victim is in fact a legitimate victim. But why on earth would Bishop Fabre give money to someone he thinks is besmirching a priest’s reputation by making up a story?

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

PENNSYLVANIA
SF Gate

Tuesday, September 9, 2014

HUNTINGDON, Pa. (AP) — A bishop has put a central Pennsylvania priest on leave while allegations of unspecified “misconduct involving adults” are investigated.

Tony DeGol, a spokesman for the Roman Catholic Diocese of Altoona-Johnstown, wouldn’t detail the accusations, except to say they occurred years ago.

Bishop Mark Bartchak announced the Rev. Chinemere Onyeocha (SHIN’-eh-meer awn-YOH’-shah) is on leave and cannot function publicly as a priest.

The 42-year-old priest had been assigned to St. Catherine of Siena parish in Mount Union, Huntingdon County.

Weekend Masses at the church will continue with other priests, but weekday Masses have been suspended indefinitely.

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.

LOUISIANA
Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests

For immediate release: Tuesday, September 09, 2014

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

A Louisiana newspaper has disclosed that a Lafayette predator priest was quietly sent to work in the Lake Charles diocese and still lives there now. Because Catholic officials hid the abuse report for more than 40 years, we strongly suspect that the priest is living or working among unsuspecting neighbors or colleagues. So for the protection of kids and the healing of victims, we urgently call on Lake Charles Bishop Glen Provost to:

–warn his flock about the priest (through news conferences, news releases, on church websites, etc.),

–aggressively seek out anyone who may have seen, suspected or suffered the cleric’s crimes and

–disclose whether there are or have been other pedophile priests who molested elsewhere and were secretly transferred to his diocese.

From January 1986 until October 1987, Lake Charles diocese officials quietly let Fr. Valerie Pullman come to work in their jurisdiction, even though he had been accused in 1972 and sued for molesting a child, the Lafayette Advocate reported on Sunday.

The revelation comes from long-secret Catholic church records that were unsealed in litigation and sought first by Minnesota Public Radio (for a profile of a former Louisiana bishop).

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FLORIDA
Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests

For immediate release: Tuesday, September 09, 2014

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

A credibly accused predator priest who lived in Ft. Myers has passed away. He is Fr Marshall Larriviere, who allegedly molested at least two kids in Louisiana.

His passing on Aug. 27 was disclosed Sunday by a Louisiana newspaper.

In 2003, Fr. Larriviere was accused in a lawsuit of molesting a girl in the 1960s. Later, another girl joined the lawsuit. In 2008 the Lafayette Louisiana Catholic diocese quietly settled with the two victims for an undisclosed amount. He was “outed” in Florida in March.

Whether a predator priest has been defrocked, suspended, is ‘AWOL,’ and no matter whose payroll he is or was on, bishops must use their resources to protect kids and alert parents about predators through church websites, parish bulletins and pulpit announcements. They should also announce when a predator priest has died.

We hope that everyone who saw, suspected, or suffered clergy sex crimes in Ft. Myers -whether by Fr. Larriviere or other clerics – will call police, expose wrongdoers, protect kids and start healing.

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VATICAN CITY
Vatican Information Service

Vatican City, 2014 (VIS) – The following is the full text of the presentation by Cardinal Lorenzo Baldisseri, secretary general of the Synod of Bishops, of the participants in the upcoming Synod in October 2014:

“Why are two full pages of names being published today in the Osservatore Romano? Because these names correspond to people from all over the world, who will take part in the Extraordinary General Assembly of the Synod of Bishops (5-19 October) on the theme: “Pastoral challenges to the family in the context of evangelisation”. The aim of the meeting is to propose to today’s world the beauty and the values of the family, which emerge from the proclamation of Jesus Christ Who disperses fear and supports hope.

Synodus – which means ‘taking a path together’ – is the expression that indicates the eccesial space in which we convene in order to meet and to reflect – in the dual faith in God and man – before today’s challenges to the family. The list that follows is made up of representatives from the five continents, subdivided as follows: 114 presidents of Episcopal Conferences, 13 heads of the ‘sui iuris’ Eastern Catholic Churches, 25 heads of the dicasteries of the Roman Curia, 9 members of the Ordinary Council of the Secretariat, the secretary general, the under-secretary, 3 nominees from the Union of Superior Generals, and 26 pontifical nominees. Other participants include 8 fraternal delegates, 38 auditors, including 13 married couples, and 16 experts. The total number of participants in the Synod Assembly is 253.

In the dynamic of the renewal of the Church ordered by Pope Francis, the updating of the institution of the Synod is explained in particular in the preparatory process and in the process of the Assemblies themselves. This project, initiated with the convocation of the Synod Assembly, is developing in a new and renewed way, with concrete actions. The criterion for renewal is that of first painting the picture and then adding the frame. The rules in force provide the track along which the train of renewal proceeds. As we go ahead, the steps necessary for changing the rules or eventually setting about a full reconstruction of the Synod as an entity will become evident.

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VATICAN CITY
Vatican Information Service

Vatican City, 9 September 2014 (VIS) – The following is a list of participants in the Third General Assembly of the Synod of Bishops, dedicated to “Pastoral challenges to the family in the context of evangelisation”:

A. LIST OF SYNOD FATHERS ACCORDING TO ORDER OF PARTICIPATION

I. President

FRANCESCO, Supreme Pontiff

II. Secretary GENERAL

– Cardinal Lorenzo BALDISSERI

III. DELEGATE presidentS

Cardinals André VINGT-TROIS, archbishop of Paris, France, Luis Antonio G. TAGLE, archbishop of Manila, Philippines, Raymundo Damasceno ASSIS, archbishop of Aparecida, president of the Episcopal Conference of Brazil.

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IRELAND
Crux

By Sarah MacDonald
Catholic News Service

ARMAGH, Northern Ireland — The new primate of All Ireland has pledged to be a “servant leader” whose aim is to bring the Irish Catholic Church through a process of “humble renewal.”

Archbishop Eamon Martin, 52, succeeded Cardinal Sean Brady as primate of All Ireland, a leadership role that covers the 26 dioceses in the Irish Republic and Northern Ireland. For nearly 17 months, Archbishop Martin had served as Cardinal Brady’s coadjutor in Armagh, and his succession was automatic when Pope Francis accepted Cardinal Brady’s resignation Sept. 8.

The new Irish primate told Catholic News Service that his priorities would be “to get to know my people and to facilitate a movement that will allow people to be confident in their faith without being polemical and condemnatory.”

Dismissing those who see the role of primate as “some kind of massive CEO position” he said it is a figurative and honorary position because of Armagh’s significance as the see of St. Patrick.

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IRELAND
Vatican Radio

[with audio]

Archbishop Eamon Martin has become Archbishop of Armagh and Primate of All Ireland after Pope Francis on Monday accepted the resignation of his predecessor, Cardinal Sean Brady. For the past 16 months Archbishop Martin has been the Coadjutor Bishop of the Diocese, with the right of succession. Aged 52, the new archbishop is a native of Derry in Northern Ireland. He spoke to Susy Hodges about his feelings on his first day in his new post, the challenges facing the Catholic Church and the state of the Northern Ireland peace process.

Archbishop Martin described himself as “a little bit nervous and fearful for the future” but also said he is “buoyed up” by the support and prayers of so many people. He said he considers his greatest challenge in his new position is “to have the courage to get up and go out” to the peripheries and in the words of Pope Francis views “his pastoral ministry in a missionary key.”

The archbishop says because of the impact of the clerical sex abuse crisis and other difficulties in recent years, the Church in Ireland has often tended to be too inward-looking.

“In some ways, the Church has become a little bit focused in on ourselves because we’re been going through a very tough time here in Ireland with all the scandals of the abuse and also with increasing secularism and fewer vocations.”

Asked whether he feels confident that with the safeguards now in place to protect children and vulnerable adults such abuse won’t ever happen again, Archbishop Martin warns that they can never be too complacent on this point.

“Sadly we can never say never, that there won’t be somebody there who will use their position in the Church to perpetrate these heinous crimes….. we have to be vigilant, to have robust procedures and guidelines.”

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NEW YORK
The Daily Beast

Batya Ungar-Sargon

An ultra-Orthodox elementary school principal has been accused of sexual abuse, but accusations of physical abuse go back much further.

In an ultra-Orthodox enclave of Upstate New York, a former student has accused a principal of sex acts. But amidst the allegations of sexual abuse, allegations of physical abuse have also begun to resurface. Rabbi Gavriel Bodenheimer, the principal of Bais Mikroh, a Yeshiva in Monsey for grades K-8, was arraigned on Aug. 12 and charged with three counts of criminal sexual acts and one count of sex abuse. Bodenheimer, who is 71 and a father of 14 and grandfather of 100, faces a maximum sentence of 25 years.

The abuse allegedly began when the accuser was seven years old, in August 2009, and went on for a year, until July 2010. According to the charges, the sexual acts took place in Bodenheimer’s office at Bais Mikroh, where the boy was a student. The accuser and his mother went to the police in December of 2013. A police investigation to establish probable cause took eight months, according to Lieutenant Emma at the Ramapo Police Department, who says the arrest was publicized in the hope that more victims will come forward.

But Bodenheimer’s lawyer, Deborah Wolikow-Loewenberg, said on the phone that her client is not guilty. He denies all the allegations and is proceeding to trial.

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UNITED KINGDOM
ITV

A “big minority” of British children are subjected to sexual abuse, with as many as one in four falling victim to “this dreadful social problem”, the head of a children’s charity told Good Morning Britain.

Founder of the National Association for People Abused in Childhood, Peter Saunders, said the convictions of perpetrators was “being driven by survivors and the media”.

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UNITED KINGDOM
The Advertiser

A POLICE investigation into historic allegations of physical, sexual and emotional organisational abuse in the 1940s, ’50s and ’60s at St Francis Boys Home in Shefford is to be overseen by a senior officer.

Mark Ross and a team of detectives will ensure all previous allegations are investigated within current police guidance and review all of the information provided by the victims and witnesses.

In the course of the review, the investigation team will be contacting all victims and witnesses of previous and present investigations, and will ensure the current investigation is comprehensive, transparent and the victims are fully supported with assistance from partner agencies.

Mr Ross said: “The investigation has evolved due to the large number of victims and witnesses. We are now in a very different era and social attitudes and the criminal justice has changed significantly in the last 50 years. I aim to provide all of the victims involved with an outcome.

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UNITED STATES
Bilgrimage

Things This Blog Has Been Called This Week — A Sequel, Responding to Terri Hemker’s Question to Me Yesterday

William D. Lindsey

Because Terri Hemker asks me a direct question in this comment here yesterday, and because it’s directly related to my reason for needing some time to muster my resources and think about matters for a few days (something I blogged about yesterday), I’m going to contravene my rule of silence now to answer Terri’s question with a posting. This is my reply to her in the discussion thread in which she asked her question.

Terri asks me,

Bill, are you being sent intimidating letters or email or receiving calls from NCR threatening you in any way? Because that would really tick me off and that really wouldn’t be wise for anyone to do! I don’t have any money for anyone to take and I have no physical strength but, what I do have is determination and plenty of time on my hands.

Here’s what I replied to Terri:

Terri, since you ask me a direct question here and since it’s related to my reason for taking a break from my blog for several days, I want to answer.

Yes. Someone connected to NCR began threatening me in emails within 4 days after I posted my first report about Jerry’s censorship at NCR, the report that has had 1726 reads, as of today. I won’t go into details unless this person chooses to escalate her attacks.

The attacks have already moved from condescending statements informing me that I am theologically ignorant, to disparaging statements about my “blog” (her quotation marks) and me personally, to implied threats of legal action.

This person has close ties to NCR and also to the USCCB, and if she chooses to escalate the attacks, then I think both those entities would be drawn into a messy public discussion about how they do their behind-the-scenes work. That messy public discussion would occur in the media and on blogs, and perhaps also in courtrooms.

This is not to say that the person sending me threatening and insulting emails is acting on behalf of NCR. I do not know that. I know only that she is on their journalistic team, and such of her work as I have critiqued at my blog is published there.

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UNITED KINGDOM
Comet 24

James Scott
Tuesday, September 9, 2014

A senior investigator is to lead a review into historic allegations of abuse at St Francis Boys’ Home in Shefford.

Op Haryana will look into claims of physical, sexual and emotional abuse in the 1940s, 1950s and 1960s at the boys’ home, which was run by the Catholic Church until it closed in 1974 and was turned into flats.

An investigation was opened in May last year after complaints were received against the home, but was closed in November after Bedfordshire Police concluded there was insufficient evidence to take the case forward.

A month later the case was reopened after 28 ex-residents came forward with allegations that they were physically or sexually abused at the home.

Two surviving suspects have now been identified and are the subject of further investigation.

Mark Ross, who will lead the review, said: “The investigation has evolved due to the large number of victims and witnesses. We are now in a very different era and social attitudes and the criminal justice has changed significantly in the last 50 years. I aim to provide all of the victims involved with an outcome.

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.

LOUISIANA
The Advertiser

By Claire Taylorctaylor@theadvertiser.com September 8, 2014

A retired Christian Brother accused of molesting boys at a Catholic school in El Paso, Texas, lives in Lafayette but no longer visits a Lafayette school campus on weekends because he is suffering from cancer, a spokesman for the order said Monday.

“At the risk of sounding cynical, hundreds of times over the last quarter-century we’ve heard Catholic officials make similar claims,” David Clohessy, director of the Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests, told The Daily Advertiser on Monday.

Catholic officials have said accused clergy are deceased when they aren’t or have Alzheimer’s when they don’t, he said.

“Even if it’s true, molesters don’t need to be physically healthy to hurt kids,” Clohessy said. “We know of very elderly priests in wheelchairs that have molested kids.”

Brother Samuel “Sammy” Martinez, 78, of the Brothers of Christian Schools, was accused of sexually abusing at least three boys when he was principal of Cathedral High School in El Paso between 1976 and 1985, according to El Paso Times stories published in January and March 2012.

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.

IRELAND
Inside Ireland

By Ciarán Hanna

The new Archbishop of Armagh and Primate of All Ireland Eamon Martin has said he is ‘humbled to be following in the footsteps of St Patrick’, on the day he took office following the resignation of Cardinal Seán Brady.

On 8th September, Pope Francis accepted Cardinal Brady’s resignation and 52-year-old Archbishop Eamon Martin became the 116th Archbishop of Armagh and Primate of All Ireland in succession to Saint Patrick.

Cardinal Brady had let Catholic Church in Ireland for 18 years, but the last few years have been dominated by child sex abuse scandals in the Irish Catholic Church.

There were also claims that in 1975, the then Fr Brady covered up allegations of abuse by Fr Brendan Smyth.

On leaving Cardinal Brady thanked ‘the people, priests and religious of the Archdiocese of Armagh’ for their ‘welcome, friendship and so much kindness over many years’.

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AUSTRALIA
The Guardian

You’ve read reports about how the Catholic church covered up evidence involving paedophile priests. You’ve followed the hearings of the royal commission into institutional responses to child sexual abuse, established by Julia Gillard in 2012 following the shocking allegations of a cover-up in NSW.

But nothing can prepare you for watching the grooming and abuse of an innocent 12-year-old boy by a respected school chaplain as it plays out dramatically in front of you.

The cosy chats in the front seats of the car, the secluded spot, the threat of harm to his parents, the gift of a lighter and the unwanted caresses.

If you’ve struggled to understand how it was that chaplains or parish priests who abused boys for decades were not stopped or why the church covered it up or why the victims took two decades to disclose the offences, a searing new television drama Devil’s Playground will bring you closer to an understanding.

Arguably Foxtel’s most challenging Australian drama series to date, Devil’s Playground is both a sequel to Fred Schepisi’s 1976 acclaimed feature film The Devil’s Playground and an original work.

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IRELAND
Irish Central

Patrick Counihan @irishcentral September 09,2014

Cardinal Sean Brady has asked victims of clerical sex abuse in Ireland for their forgiveness after Pope Francis finally accepted his resignation as leader of the Catholic Church in Ireland.

Victim support groups have welcomed the decision after the 75-year-old sought retirement at the age of 75 last month.

He had been heavily criticized for his part in the Fr Brendan Smyth case when he swore two victims of the pedophile priest to secrecy during an internal church inquiry in 1975.

State broadcaster RTE reports that their evidence was never handed over to police. Smyth continued to abuse children until he was finally jailed in 1994.

Cardinal Brady has insisted his role in the canonical inquiry was as a notetaker but victim groups have campaigned against the priest who has held the role of Archbishop of Armagh since 1996.

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IRELAND
Irish Times

Patsy McGarry

Tue, Sep 9, 2014

The new Catholic primate and Archbishop of Armagh Eamon Martin (52) spoke yesterday of being “overwhelmed, fearful at what lies ahead but trusting in God I’ll be helped along and with people’s prayers.” At the same time he was “looking forward to it. It’ll be quite an adventure”.

Speaking to The Irish Times yesterday he said his biggest challenge would be “to get the message of the gospel to people whose lives are so busy and flustered with financial challenges, family difficulties, personal problems, to help them find that sacred space where they can feel the presence of God; find that still voice within.”

Agreeing the situation was difficult for the Church in Ireland, he commented that “the gospel has had to be presented in so many difficult environments down the centuries.” The Irish Church “of the 1940s and 1950s is gone and we would not want that back. It was very much tarnished gold.”

In this “increasingly secular world many have drifted away from regular practice but still sought support at particular moments in life.” For him “personally, there could be no more exiting time to be a priest or bishop.”

Commentary

A matter he found difficult in commentary following his appointment as Coadjutor Archbishop of Armagh was that, where the Church in Ireland was concerned, some described it was ‘ drawing of a line’ where the clerical abuse issue was concerned.

There was no such “drawing of a line” on abuse survivors, he said, for many of whom it was a lifelong matter, as was also the case with those who suffered trauma during the Northern Ireland Troubles. The protection of children could only be assured through “vigilance” and people “remaining on high alert” whether in the church or society at large.

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IRELAND
Irish Times

Patsy McGarry

Tue, Sep 9, 2014

What was striking yesterday was the warmth and affection with which so many church leaders and others spoke of Cardinal Seán Brady. A naturally humble, decent and unassuming man, he formed easy friendships across the divisions which have bedevilled church relations on this island for centuries.

His non-threatening demeanour helped in no small way to pave the way towards an unprecedented normality in such relations among the four main churches in Ireland, but also with more hardline Protestants too. This helped to make the 1998 Belfast Agreement possible and to sustain the peace process since.

It was his old friend and colleague in Kilmore diocese Bishop Leo O’Reilly who described Cardinal Brady yesterday as “a humble pastor of deep faith”. This, he said, “equipped him well over the last 20 years as he led the Catholic Church through our most turbulent period since the Penal Laws.” The cardinal also, said Bishop O’Reilly, “prioritised and oversaw the development of robust child safeguarding guidelines for the church”.

Inquiry

While that is true, it is also the case that for the past four years the child abuse issue cast a cloud over Cardinal Brady’s tenure at the top. In 2010 it emerged that he had taken part in an 1975 inquiry into claims by 14-year-old Brendan Boland that he had been abused by Fr Brendan Smyth. He swore Brendan Boland to secrecy and another boy he spoke to about being abused by Smyth at the time. Neither case was reported to the police or to parents of any children named to him as victims of Smyth, who continued to abuse for 18 more years.

It is believed Cardinal Brady wanted to stand down in 2010 but Rome resisted. Since then he has been “taking a hit for the team”. He is not the first senior Irish churchman to do so. It was Cardinal Desmond Connell who protested at a fraught 2002 press conference in Maynooth that the abuse issue had “devastated” his period as archbishop of Dublin. He is not alone. The root in each case has been unquestioning loyalty to the institution.

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IRELAND
Irish Independent

Cardinal Brady will be glad to step out of the limelight but should have quit in 2010

David Quinn Twitter
Published 09/09/2014

The acceptance by Pope Francis of the resignation of Cardinal Sean Brady as Archbishop of Armagh and Primate of All Ireland brings to an end a chapter in the life of the Irish Catholic Church.

Cardinal Brady is the last remaining senior prelate who is indelibly associated in the public mind with the Church’s appalling handling of the clerical sex abuse scandals.

Dr Brady became the Archbishop of Armagh in October 1996. He had been Cardinal Cahal Daly’s Coadjutor Archbishop and he automatically took over from Cardinal Daly once the cardinal stood down. In just the same way his own Coadjutor, Archbishop Eamon Martin, now automatically succeeds Dr Brady.

The year 1996 was a fateful one in the recent history of the Irish Church. Earlier that year, the bishops published their first-ever child-protection guidelines, signalling they were finally learning – albeit slowly and very painfully – the lessons of their past disastrous handling of the child abuse scandals.

Most of the scandals that have badly damaged the reputation of the Church pre-date 1996, that is, the incidents of abuse that later come to light happened prior to 1996, with a big majority occurring in the 1970s and 1980s.

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NORTHERN IRELAND
UTV

A woman who was sent from a Catholic home in Northern Ireland to Australia in 1947 has told the Historical Institutional Abuse Inquiry there is a need for an apology for the child migration scheme.

The woman, who was at Nazareth house in Londonderry when she was transported, told the inquiry that when she first arrived in the country she was told she was there to “fill the empty cradles of Australia”.

She also described how she was part of a child labour force.

Giving evidence by video link, the woman, who wanted to remain anonymous, said she wanted justice and for someone to be held accountable for the deaths of her two brothers – who took their own lives.

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NORTHERN IRELAND
BBC News

A woman has made an impassioned plea to the Historical Institutional Abuse Inquiry seeking an apology for a child migrant scheme from Northern Ireland to Australia.

More than 100 children were shipped out in the mid 1900s.

The woman described how children were told upon arrival that they were there “to fill the empty cradles of Australia”.

She said they were later subjected to cruelty.

Giving evidence, via video link from Australia, she said the children had became part of what she described as a “child labour force” at a home run by Catholic nuns.

Appealing for an apology, the former child migrant said she wanted “someone to be made accountable” for the suicides of her two brothers.

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LOUISIANA
KATC

The Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests has called for a religious brother accused of child molestation to stop being allowed on a Lafayette school campus, following a KATC investigation.

Bro. Samuel Martinez, a member of the Brothers of Christian Schools, who was accused of molesting 10 boys in the 1980s, lives in a Lafayette retirement home and is transported to the Holy Family Community on the campus of John Paul The Great Academy on weekends for religious exercises, a KATC investigation uncovered.

“We urge officials at the John Paul the Great Academy and the Brothers of Christians Schools to do the right thing and keep a credibly accused serial child molester away from children,” SNAP Director David Clohessy said in a statement.

Martinez is not allowed to live on the campus like the other brothers because he’s under a safety plan. When he is taken to the campus, he is under constant supervision with another adult, Bro. David Sinitiere told KATC. Sintiere is the most recent head of the order’s New Orleans-Santa Fe District.

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IRELAND
Religion News Service

Andrew Coffman Smith | September 8, 2014

BELFAST, Northern Ireland (RNS) For years, the head of the Catholic Church in Ireland, Cardinal Sean Brady, refused to heed repeated calls for him to step down over alleged cover-ups of sexual abuse of children by clergy.

Now at 75, the age cardinals are required to step down, Brady finally tendered his resignation, which Pope Francis accepted on Monday (Sept. 8).

“It has been a great joy and privilege for me to serve … and also to travel and meet people from all over Ireland in my role as primate,” he said in a statement referring to his title as archbishop of Armagh and primate of all Ireland.

Since he became head of the Catholic Church in Ireland in 1996, Brady has been dogged by allegations of child abuse cover-ups. His tenure, during which he became cardinal in 2007, has also been plagued by falling church attendance and strained relations with the Irish government.

In 2012, Brady publicly apologized for mishandling allegations of abuse after it emerged that in 1975 he was present at church meetings with two teenagers who alleged they were sexually abused by the Rev. Brendan Smyth. Instead of going to the authorities, the priests swore the alleged victims to secrecy, victims groups charged.

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By ROD DREHER • September 8, 2014

This news jolted me when I learned it just now:

Robert Larson, the Catholic priest convicted of sexually abusing altar boys while serving in the Wichita diocese, has died.

Diocesan officials on Thursday said Larson died Aug. 27 at the age of 84. He was buried in his home state of Michigan.

“We pray for all victims of sexual abuse and for their families,” the Most Rev. Carl Kemme, bishop of the Wichita diocese, said in a statement following Larson’s death. “We continue to learn from them and we recommit ourselves to vigilance in protecting children and young people from the tragedy of sexual abuse.”

Bob Larson was not just any child-molesting priest. As the Wichita Eagle reported back in 2000, Larson destroyed a number of lives. Here, from a National Review Online piece I wrote in 2002, is the story of several of them:

No statistics exist documenting the number of clergy-abuse victims who have killed themselves, but stories like that of Horace and Janet Patterson of Conway Springs, Kansas give us a feel for the worst kind of pain priest sexual abuse can contribute to. In the fall of 1999, their son Eric, 29, shot himself in the head with a Colt .45, ending years of torment that seemed to begin when he was first molested at age 12.

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