ABUSE TRACKER

TEXAS
Roman Catholic Diocese of Fort Worth – The Bishop’s Office

March 14, 2014

Dear Friends,

As Bishop of the Diocese of Fort Worth, I have the sad duty to inform you about an allegation of sexual abuse by a priest who served at Notre Dame Catholic School many years ago. Rev. Hugh John Sutton served as a teacher and chaplain at Notre Dame from 1964 to 1992. Father Sutton was ordained for the Diocese of Pueblo, Colorado. He left Wichita Falls and the Diocese of Fort Worth in 1992 and died in 2004. Civil authorities have been notified of this claim.

Allegations of inappropriate sexual conduct are always deeply troubling, and this allegation against Father Sutton was found to have a semblance of truth. This weekend, members of my staff and I will be visiting the parishes served by Notre Dame during the years Father Sutton was there, to make an announcement of the allegations and to invite others who may have been abused to contact me or Judy Locke, the diocesan Victim Assistance Coordinator, to report abuse.

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UNITED STATES
Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests

For immediate release: Monday, August 25

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

Now, after a page 1 New York Times story, Vatican officials have striped a former archbishop of his diplomatic immunity. We hope Josef Wesolowski is caught by police before he flees.

[Huffington Post]

It should not take embarrassing international headlines to force the Vatican to turn over a fugitive to law enforcement. Helping secular officials catch, charge and convict child molesting clerics routinely, not rarely, should be the norm.

There isn’t much progress when wrongdoers change only when caught.

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VATICAN CITY
New Zealand Herald

Tuesday Aug 26, 2014

The Vatican says its former ambassador to the Dominican Republic, who has been accused of sexually abusing young boys in the Caribbean country, has lost his diplomatic immunity and could be tried by Dominican courts.

The Vatican spokesman, the Rev Federico Lombardi, said Josef Wesolowski had ended all diplomatic activity for the Holy See and lost his related immunity and therefore “might also be subjected to judicial procedures from the courts that could have specific jurisdiction over him.”

The Vatican recalled Wesolowski last August after rumors emerged in the Dominican Republic that he had sexually molested young boys.

Earlier this summer, a Vatican tribunal found him guilty under canon law and ordered him to return to the lay state.

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VATICAN CITY
Vatican City

11/ 4/2011

The Holy See wants to verify whether the accusations made against Archbishop González Nieves are valid. The faithful have taken his side as controversy grows

ANDRÉS BELTRAMO ÁLVAREZ
VATICAN CITY

The Vatican has ordered an apostolic visit for the Archdiocese of San Juan, Puerto Rico. An extensive and in-depth inquiry, which has already caused controversy in the country. Holy See authorities want to confirm whether some of the accusations made against Archbishop Roberto Gonzalez Nieves are true, especially with regards to the alleged mismanagement of the ministry. But the Puerto Rican faithful are willing to defend their pastor.

In addition, Gonzalez Nieves is willing to defend himself by arguing, among other things, that the cases of abuse identified in his ecclesiastical territory were duly reported to the Vatican and consideration was given according to the precepts of Canon Law. …

It is for this reason that the enormous interest of the Apostolic Nuncio of the Dominican Republic and Apostolic Delegate to Puerto Rico, Jozef Wesolowski attracted so much attention both in Rome and in San Juan, that the visit would take place at all costs.

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PUERTO RICO
Free Republic

March 31, 2008 | Liz Arelis Cruz Maisonave

(English-language translation)

TOA ALTA- The Catholic Church’s Apostolic Delegate to Puerto Rico, [Monsignor] Josef Wesolowski, called on troubled Puerto Ricans to be calm in the wake of last week’s news that the Governor faces 19 charges of alleged acts of corruption.

The Monsignor, who is Pope Benedict XVI’s envoy to Puerto Rico and the [Apostolic] Nuncio to the Dominican Republic, was in Puerto Rico during the weekend to acquaint himself with the Puerto Rican Catholic Church and visited the premises of what will be the Shrine of Our Lady of Divine Providence in Cupey.

“We wish for calm and serenity to follow the great paths of democracy. With serenity, the island may overcome the difficulties it may face. History is filled with difficult times, but things may always end well,” [Wesolowski] stated before celebrating the great Feast of Divine Mercy, which took place yesterday at Lauro Dávila Félix Arena.

This was his first visit to Puerto Rico, but the Polish-born cleric will return for the Congress on the Family, which will be held in Mayagüez on the third week of April. He was pleased with the affection he has been given in both Puerto Rico and the Dominican Republic and pointed out that redoubling the Catholic Church’s efforts to strengthen family unity is among his plans.

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DOMINICAN REPUBLIC
Dominican Today

13 August 2014

Santo Domingo.- Public defender Rodolfo Valentin on Tuesday said the National District 7th Instruction Court held a hearing Tuesday to review evidence submitted in the pedophilia case against former Vatican envoy Joseph Wesolowski.

He said Ole Miranda, 18, who was one of Wesolowski’s alleged victims, would’ve been interviewed, but failed to appear.

Valentine said the depositions started at the request of the National District Office of the Prosecutor, which is gathering evidence to send to Poland and seek the former diplomat’s extradition.

He revealed that he was appointed public defender in the case at the Court’s request, but “from the standpoint of respect for constitutional guarantees and due process, it cannot empower a public defender when they don’t even know the defendant.”

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VATICAN CITY
Catholic News Service

By Francis X. Rocca
Catholic News Service

VATICAN CITY (CNS) — The Vatican denied covering up for a former papal ambassador accused of sexually abusing boys and suggested he might have to stand trial on the charges in the Dominican Republic.

Jesuit Father Federico Lombardi, the Vatican spokesman, released a statement Aug. 25 in response to journalists’ questions about former Archbishop Jozef Wesolowski, a Pole who served as nuncio to the Dominican Republic until August 2013.

According to an Aug. 23 article in the New York Times, the Vatican “secretly recalled (Wesolowski) to Rome last year before he could be investigated, and then invoked diplomatic immunity for Mr. Wesolowski so that he could not face trial in the Dominican Republic.”

Father Lombardi responded that the Vatican, by recalling the diplomat from his post last summer, “moved without delay and correctly in light of the fact that former nuncio Wesolowski held the position of a diplomatic representative of the Holy See.”

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VATICAN CITY
Fox News Latino

Josef Wesolowski, the former Vatican ambassador to the Dominican Republic embroiled in a sexual abuse scandal in the country, will now be tried by Dominican courts after he lost his diplomatic immunity.

The Vatican spokesman, the Rev. Federico Lombardi, said late Monday that Wesolowski had ended all diplomatic activity for the Holy See and lost his related immunity and therefore “might also be subjected to judicial procedures from the courts that could have specific jurisdiction over him.”

The Vatican recalled Wesolowski last August after rumors emerged in the Dominican Republic that he had sexually molested young boys. Earlier this summer, a Vatican tribunal found him guilty under canon law and ordered him to return to the lay state. A Vatican criminal trial is pending, but Monday’s ruling means he can now be tried in the Dominican courts.

According to The New York Times, Wesolowski offered young boys money to perform sexual acts – and was known by many in the country as “the Italian.”

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VATICAN CITY
Washington Post

Defrocked diplomat may become first priest accused of sexual abuse to be tried at the Vatican

By Michelle Boorstein August 25

The world may be about to witness a first: the Vatican putting on trial one of its own officials for sexual abuse. On Monday a Vatican spokesman said church authorities are in the midst of figuring out what the procedure would even look like.

“This is history in the making and we must wait to see how this will develop,” said the Rev. Thomas Rosica, an English-language spokesman for the Vatican.

The case of Josef which as a city-state has its own judicial systemi exploded earlier this summer when the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith — the Vatican’s doctrine-enforcing arm — found the former ambassador to the Dominican Republic had sexually abused boys there and laicized, or defrocked, him. That was the first time someone officially representing the pope had been punished for sexual abuse. The Polish priest is appealing that decision.

On the criminal front, media reported that Dominican authorities never charged Wesolowski because he had diplomatic immunity. But that question reemerged this past weekend when the New York Times quoted legal experts in the Dominican Republic questioning why Wesolowski would not be forced to face his accusers locally. Wesolowski was recalled to Rome in the summer of 2013 before local officials could investigate there. Some advocates for clergy sex abuse survivors said the case is a test for Pope Francis’s claim of zero-tolerance and that Wesolowski should be imprisoned.

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VATICAN CITY
Vatican Information Service – news.va

Former nuncio Josef Wesolowski has recently appealed, within the prescribed limit of two months, the most serious canonical sentence of a return to the lay state that has been imposed upon him. The appeal will be judged without delay over the course of the coming weeks, most likely in October 2014.

 It is important to note that former nuncio Wesolowski has ceased functioning as a diplomat of the Holy See and has therefore lost his related diplomatic immunity, and has been previously stated, the punitive procedure of the Vatican’s civil judiciary departments will continue as soon as the canonical sentence becomes definitive.



Regarding stories that have appeared over the past few days in various media, it is important to note that the Authorities of the Holy See, from the very first moments that this case was made known to them, moved without delay and correctly in light of the fact that former nuncio Wesolowski held the position of a diplomatic representative of the Holy See. This action relates to his recall to Rome and in the treatment of the case in relation to Authorities of the Dominican Republic.

 Far from any intention of a cover-up, this action demonstrates the full and direct undertaking of the Holy See’s responsibility even in such a serious and delicate case, about which Pope Francis is duly and carefully informed and one which the Pope wishes to address justly and rigorously.

 We must finally state that since former nuncio Wesolowski has ended all diplomatic activity and its related immunity, he might also be subjected to judicial procedures from the courts that could have specific jurisdiction over him.

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UNITED STATES
Catholic Culture

The case of a former Vatican envoy in the Dominican Republic, who has been laicized for molesting young boys, could test the Vatican’s determination to prosecute abusive clerics, a New York Times article suggests.

In a detailed report on the case of former Archbishop Jozef Wesolowski, the former apostolic nuncio to the Dominican Republic, the New York Times observes that the Vatican did not inform civil authorities of evidence that the nuncio had engaged in sexual abuse of children.

The Times story reports that Wesolowski routinely preyed on young boys, until investigative reporters in the Dominican Republic uncovered evidence of his misconduct. When the Vatican learned of that evidence, in August 2013, the nuncio was quickly recalled to Rome.

In June of this year, the Congregation for the Doctrine of Faith found Wesolowski guilty of sexual abuse, and the archbishop was laicized. He remains in Rome, pending an appeal of that canonical sentence, and could also face criminal charges before a Vatican tribunal.

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VATICAN CITY
Reuters

VATICAN CITY Mon Aug 25, 2014

(Reuters) – A Polish archbishop accused of child sex abuse in the Dominican Republic has appealed against a Roman Catholic tribunal’s decision to defrock him, the Vatican said on Monday.

Jozef Wesolowski, who had served as a Vatican nuncio or ambassador to the Caribbean nation, was sentenced in late June to be expelled from the priesthood, an extremely rare step against such a senior church official.

“Former nuncio Josef Wesolowski has recently appealed, within the prescribed limit of two months, against the most serious canonical sentence, that of a return to the lay state, which has been imposed upon him,” Vatican spokesman Father Federico Lombardi said in a statement.

The appeal will be judged “without delay” over the coming weeks, most likely in October 2014, Lombardi said. He said that Wesolowski, who was recalled last August to the Vatican, had lost diplomatic immunity when he stopped functioning as a diplomat of the Holy See.

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VATICAN CITY
ABC News

VATICAN CITY — Aug 25, 2014, 3:14 PM ET

By NICOLE WINFIELD Associated Press

The Vatican said Monday that its former ambassador to the Dominican Republic, accused of sexually abusing young boys in the Caribbean country, had lost his diplomatic immunity and could be tried by Dominican courts.

The Vatican spokesman, the Rev. Federico Lombardi, said in a statement that Josef Wesolowski had ended all diplomatic activity for the Holy See and lost his related immunity and therefore “might also be subjected to judicial procedures from the courts that could have specific jurisdiction over him.”

The Vatican recalled Wesolowski last August after rumors emerged in the Dominican Republic that he had sexually molested young boys there. The case was highly sensitive, given that the Polish-born Wesolowski was an ambassador of the Holy See — not just one of the world’s 440,000 priests — and had been ordained both a priest and a bishop by St. John Paul II.

This summer, a Vatican tribunal found him guilty under canon law of abusing young boys and defrocked him, the harshest sentence under church law and the first time such a high-ranking Vatican official had been sanctioned for sex abuse. Wesolwski recently appealed that sentence and a final decision is expected in October, Lombardi said.

After that appeal is heard, the Vatican’s criminal courts will take up the case and jail time is possible if he is found guilty.

As a papal diplomat and citizen of the Vatican City State, Wesolowski faces criminal charges by the tribunal of the Vatican City, which recently updated its laws to specifically criminalize sex abuse of children. It is not clear, however, if the new 2013 law can be applied retroactively.

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DOMINICAN REPUBLIC
Dominican Today

Santo Domingo.- The charges for child sexual abuse, hanging over the Vatican’s ex-ambassador to the Dominican Republic, Jozef Wesolowski, have fueled the debate about the diplomatic immunity the Pope’s former envoy enjoys, which prevents him from being tried outside the Vatican.

In its Sunday edition the U.S. newspaper The New York Times published an article that highlights how Wesolowski walked in the area of the monument to the 16th-century Spanish friar Antonio de Montesinos, on the Malecon of Santo Domingo, in search of minors to commit sexual acts.

According to the article, the boys say he gave them money to perform sexual acts. They called him “the Italian” because he spoke Spanish with an Italian accent.

“He definitely seduced me with money,” Francis Aquino Aneury told The New York Times. He was 14 when the man he met shining shoes began offering him increasingly larger sums for sexual acts. “I felt very bad. I knew it wasn’t the right thing to do, but I needed the money.”

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VATICAN CITY
National Catholic Reporter

David Gibson Religion News Service | Aug. 25, 2014

As Pope Francis tries to reshape the Catholic church’s response to the clergy sex abuse crisis, the case of Jozef Wesolowski, the former nuncio — or Vatican ambassador — to the Dominican Republic has drawn close scrutiny, most recently in a Sunday New York Times article that detailed the former archbishop’s predations.

The story also recounted how Wesolowski was brought back to the Vatican to face charges there rather than in the Dominican Republic because he had diplomatic immunity, an argument that sounded legalistic to many and could undermine the pontiff’s “get tough” stance.

Late Monday, the Vatican responded with a statement explaining that since Wesolowski was defrocked in June, he is no longer an archbishop nor is he a Vatican diplomat and when his appeals are exhausted he “might also be subjected to judicial procedures from the courts that could have specific jurisdiction over him.”

What that could mean for Wesolowski is unclear. It’s not known whether the Vatican has an extradition agreement with the Dominican Republic (or Wesolowski’s native Poland) or whether Italy could try or extradite him. The former archbishop has been spotted by fellow Dominican prelates strolling around Rome’s historic district.

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VATICAN CITY
Dominican Today

Vatican City.- Former Vatican envoy to Dominican Republic Josef Wesolowski, indicted on sexual abuse of boys, has been stripped of his diplomatic immunity and faces prosecuted in the Caribbean country, AP reports citing the Holy See.

Vatican spokesman Federico Lombardi Monday afternoon said Wesolowski no longer works as a diplomat for the Holy See and has no diplomatic immunity, and therefore “may be subjected to judicial proceedings in courts that have jurisdiction over him.”

The Vatican secreted Wesolowski out of the country in August last year amid rumors he sexually abused boys in the Dominican Republic.

In recent weeks, a Vatican tribunal found the former envoy guilty under canonical law and was defrocked. Wesolowski has criminal proceedings pending against him in the Vatican.

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KANSAS CITY (MO)
National Catholic Reporter

Brian Roewe | Aug. 25, 2014

KANSAS CITY, MO. A judge’s recent affirmation that the Kansas City-St. Joseph diocese pay $1.1 million for breaching abuse settlement terms has led a retired Milwaukee priest to again request that the pope initiate a penal process investigating Bishop Robert Finn for violations of church law.

In a letter dated Aug. 21, Fr. James Connell, a canon lawyer, wrote to Pope Francis to inform him of recent developments that “solidify the need for a penal process in this matter.”

“It just struck me that it would be wise to get it documented that further court actions confirmed Finn being wrong with the way he handled things and the church really ought to be doing something about that,” Connell told NCR.

On Aug. 14, Jackson County Circuit Judge Bryan E. Round upheld an arbitrator’s March decision that the diocese violated five of 19 nonmonetary terms included as part of a 2008 settlement with 47 clergy abuse survivors. Both Round and arbitrator Hollis Hanover ordered the diocese to pay $1.1 million in damages. Spokesman Jack Smith confirmed to NCR the diocese would not appeal the decision.

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WORCESTER (MA)
Telegram & Gazette

By Elaine Thompson TELEGRAM & GAZETTE STAFF
elaine.thompson@telegram.com

WORCESTER — The Rev. Stephen M. Gemme, former pastor of St. Bernadette Parish in Northboro was indicted last week on charges he embezzled more than $230,000 from the parish and school to fuel a gambling habit.

A Worcester County grand jury on Thursday returned indictments against Rev. Gemme, charging him with five counts of larceny by a common scheme over $250. He is to be arraigned in Worcester Superior Court Wednesday.

The Worcester Catholic Diocese last year said the pastor, who was appointed to the parish in 2003, had stolen methodically from two separate church and school accounts since at least 2009. It went undetected until a member of the school’s advisory board flagged a financial irregularity in a school account and informed Bishop Robert J. McManus in mid-July. Rev. Gemme immediately acknowledged a gambling problem, according to the diocese.

He was removed from his posts and sent him to residential treatment at an undisclosed location for a self-confessed gambling addiction.

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UNITED STATES
Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests

[SNAP apeluje: Wesołowskiego do więzienia, a jego ofiary powinny się ujawnić! / SNAP: Vatican must jail Polish archbishop now! – Ocaleni (Polska)]

For immediate release: Monday, Aug. 25, 2014

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

Catholic Church officials in Rome and the Dominican Republic must take action to protect kids now from former Archbishop Josef Wesolowski.

We call on Vatican officials to either put Wesolowski in a Vatican jail or turn him over to secular authorities immediately.

We call on Dominican Catholic officials to actively seek out others who were hurt by Wesolowski and help secular prosecutors convict Deacon Francisco Javier Occi Reyes, who procured boys for the then-archbishop, by making announcements about both clerics in parishes, urging those who saw, suspected or suffered their crimes to come forward, get help and call police.

We call on Dominican Catholics and citizens to stop donating to their dioceses until this happens.

Finally, we call on every person with knowledge of or suspicions about crimes by Wesolowski or Reyes to find the strength to report to law enforcement. Secular authorities, not church authorities, can best safeguard kids from those who commit, enable or conceal heinous crimes against children.

We applaud the courage of the Dominican boys who were sexually violated by this now-defrocked Polish archbishop who Vatican officials continue to protect from prosecution. For their healing, and for the safety of other children, Wesolowski must be put behind bars immediately.

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UNITED STATES
The Dallas Morning news

Evidence of Vatican complicity in sex-abuse case highlights global pattern documented by The News

By Reese Dunklin rdunklin@dallasnews.com
August 25, 2014

The Vatican moved its top diplomat out of the Dominican Republic because of sex-abuse complaints, failed to tell criminal authorities and then harbored him in Rome as his list of accusers grew.

The case, reported Sunday by The New York Times, underscores findings from our landmark 2004-2005 investigation into the Catholic Church’s global transfers of predator priests.

In “Runaway Priests: Hiding in Plaint Sight,” we found several accused clergy who fled to Rome with their superiors’ help. At least two were fugitives from criminal charges.

Another priest we featured was also a diplomat, an American who had been the Vatican’s No. 2 official in India. A top aide to Pope John Paul II was warned in the 1990s that the priest had abused an Ohio girl. But the priest remained on duty until around the time of our inquiries in 2003.

Pope Francis has vowed greater accountability in addressing the Catholic Church’s sex-abuse crisis since taking over. Earlier this year, he begged victims for forgiveness.

Yet Pope Francis was alerted to the Dominican Republic diplomat’s misconduct before the secret transfer last August, authorities told The Times. The allegations should have been reported to police, according to Vatican rules.

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MINNESOTA
Star Tribune

Article by: JEAN HOPFENSPERGER , Star Tribune Updated: August 25, 2014

Job taken by former BCA chief Timothy O’Malley created at suggestion of church abuse task force.

The former superintendent of the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension has been named to fill a top St. Paul-Minneapolis Archdiocese position addressing clergy sex abuse.

Timothy O’Malley, currently an administrative law judge, will fill a new leadership position created by the archdiocese in response to the wave of clergy abuse allegations over the past year.

“We are honored that Judge O’Malley has offered to share his experience and insights with the church to help protect the young and vulnerable and hold accountable those who have caused harm,” said Archbishop John Nienstedt in a news release.

“He brings with him a high level of intellect, an impressive background of experience and leadership with local law enforcement, the FBI, the Bureau of Criminal Apprehension and the judicial system, and he has a compassionate heart for victims/survivors.”

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OHIO
The Plain Dealer

By James F. McCarty, The Plain Dealer
on August 25, 2014

CLEVELAND, Ohio – A Cuyahoga County Common Pleas Court judge today ruled that the soliciting case against a Cleveland priest could go forward after rejecting defense challenges to the constitutionality of the law.

The Rev. James McGonegal, 69, the former pastor of St. Ignatius of Antioch Church, is charged with soliciting sex from an undercover ranger at Edgewater Park last October. The charge is a felony because McGonegal is HIV positive, but failed to divulge this to his intended partner.

Judge Stuart Friedman released a written opinion today in favor of the prosecution’s position that the law used to charge the priest is valid, and that defense attorney Henry Hilow’s request for dismissal was groundless.

Friedman scheduled McGonegal’s trial for Sept. 9.

“We’ll be ready to go to trial on the 9th,” said Joe Frolik, a spokesman for the county prosecutor’s office.

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AUSTRALIA
The Australian

AUGUST 26, 2014

Dan Box
Crime Reporter
Sydney

NSW police have launched a major new investigation into alleged child sex abuse within the Anglican Church in Newcastle.

Detectives have formed a strike force, codenamed ­Arinya-2, to investigate the ­alleged abuse, which is understood to involve multiple alleged victims and said to have taken place in the mid-1970s.

The investigation is the most recent of several inquiries into alleged child sex abuse within Newcastle’s major Christian churches. A previous case of ­alleged child sexual abuse in the Anglican Church was sent to trial at Newcastle District Court in 2001, but was ultimately “no-billed”, meaning prosecutors ­decided not to pursue the case.

A criminal prosecution that is no-billed can be brought back before the court if there is further evidence to support it, unlike other cases where the “double jeopardy” principle prevents an accused person facing trial twice for the same offence.

More recently, NSW police have investigated abuse allegations against three clerics from the Newcastle Anglican diocese, including a former dean of the city’s cathedral. The three priests — Andrew Duncan, Graeme Lawrence and Bruce Hoare — were formally defrocked in 2012 after an internal church inquiry found they had sex or were involved in group sex sessions with a teenage boy aged as young as 14. A fourth priest, Graeme Sturt, was prohibited from exercising any ministry for five years.

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MALTA
Malta Today

Speaking out critically of the Catholic Church is actually a crime in this country. It’s called ‘offending religious sentiment’, and the penalties are harsher for offending Catholic sentiment than the sentiments of any other religion

Raphael Vassallo 21 August 2014

I trust that Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle will forgive me for stealing the title of their classic 1974 sci-fi masterpiece novel for this article. But there are some ingenious turns of phrase that are just too clever not to be used again.

‘The Mote in God’s Eye’ is one of them. I won’t bore you with the details, but in the book it refers only to an optical illusion caused by the conjunction of two stars – a red supergiant (‘the Eye’) and a much smaller, sun-sized yellow star (‘the mote’) – when viewed from a particular planet.

But you needn’t have read the book to appreciate how well the same expression might work outside that context. Gozo bishop Mgr Mario Grech’s homily on the feast of Santa Marija last week was a classic case in point.

The theme was ‘freedom’, with particular emphasis on ‘freedom of expression’. Here are some choice quotes lifted from a newspaper report… and which I have taken the liberty to categorise under three different headings.

1. Tradition

“Many Christians are obsessed with tradition and this is hindering them from discovering spiritual freedom, according to Gozo Bishop Mario Grech.”… “Instead of thinking ahead with vision, they prefer to think backwards,” Mgr Grech said…

2. Political pressure

“Mgr Grech also hit out at the lack of individual freedom as a result of the ‘subtle pressure’ created by partisan politics. Although political participation was a good thing, Mgr Grech said partisan considerations held back individuals from saying what they wanted: ‘Others choose to genuflect not to fall out of grace with those in power,’ he added.”

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MALTA
Malta Today

Daniel Mizzi 21 August 2014

The Attorney General and the police have today filed an appeal against the Gozo court’s decision to grant bail to a 40-year-old priest accusing of molesting three young girls.

On Tuesday, the Gozitan priest, whose name cannot be published by court order, was granted bail against a deposit of €1,000 and a personal guarantee of €5,000 after pleading not guilty to charges of child molestation, in what it is understood to have been criminal acts taking place over several months and involving a number of minors.

In his conditions for bail, the young priest has been prohibited from approaching the victims and their homes, and also ordered to stay in and around his house.

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KANSAS CITY (MO)
KSPR

KANSAS CITY, Mo. (AP) –
A judge is expected to decide soon whether to dismiss probation for the highest-ranking U.S. church official convicted of a crime related to the child sexual abuse scandal.

The Kansas City Star reports that Jackson County Prosecutor Jean Peters Baker filed a probation status report for Bishop Robert Finn on Friday. Finn leads the Diocese of Kansas City-St. Joseph. He was convicted in September 2012 of one misdemeanor for failing to report child abuse suspicions.

While offering no opinion on whether probation should be dismissed, Baker did praise two diocese employees’ efforts to keep the diocese in compliance with the terms of the probation.

Jackson County Circuit Judge John Torrence will review the report before ruling on Finn’s probation. It’s set to expire Sept. 5.

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AUSTRALIA
Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse

The Royal Commission will hold a public hearing in Darwin commencing on Monday 22 September 2014 into the Retta Dixon Home.

The scope and purpose of the public hearing is to:

1. Hear the experience of men and women who were sexually abused as children at the Retta Dixon Home in Darwin, Northern Territory between 1946 – 1980.

2. Inquire into the response of the Australian Indigenous Ministries (formally the Aborigines Inland Mission) (AIM) and the Northern Territory and Commonwealth governments to allegations of child sexual abuse against AIM workers who were employed at the Retta Dixon Home.

3. Inquire into the response of the Northern Territory’s Police Force and the Office of the Director of Public Prosecutions in 1975 and 2002 to allegations raised by residents of the Retta Dixon Home against Donald Henderson.

4. Inquire into the current laws, policies and procedures governing children in out-of-home care in the Northern Territory today.

5. Inquire into the redress schemes available to persons who were victims of child sexual abuse while resident at the Retta Dixon Home.

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AUSTRALIA
Sky News

A Baptist home in the Northern Territory where mixed-race and Aboriginal children were sexually assaulted over three decades will be the focus of the next hearing to be held by the national inquiry into child abuse in institutions.

The hearing scheduled for Darwin on Monday, September 22 will hear from men and women who were sexually abused as children at the Retta Dixon Home between 1946 – 1980.

The Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse will also examine how the evangelical Baptist organisation, the NT and commonwealth governments responded to allegations of abuse against workers who were employed at the home.

The home was run by Aborigines Inland Mission (AIM) which was founded in 1905 by a Baptist Missionary, Retta Long (nee Dixon).

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POLSKA
Wiadomosci

[For Nuncio Accused of Abuse, Dominicans Want Justice at Home, Not Abroad – The New York Times]

“New York Times” opublikował artykuł poświęcony polskiemu duchownemu oskarżonemu o molestowanie dzieci na Dominikanie. “To pierwszy raz, kiedy ambasador Watykanu, który służył jako osobisty wysłannik papieża, został oskarżony o molestowanie seksualne nieletnich – pisze w internetowym wydaniu “NYT” Laurie Goodstein. Mieszkańcy Dominikany chcą, aby Wesołowski był sądzony w ich kraju. – Powinien być sądzony w kraju, w którym czyn miał miejsce – powiedział Antonio Medina Calcaño z Autonomicznego Uniwersytetu Santo Domingo.

Dziennik przypomina historię polskiego arcybiskupa Józefa Wesołowskiego, który został wykluczony ze stanu kapłańskiego, i zarzuca Watykanowi, że w dużej mierze pomógł nuncjuszowi uniknąć stawienia się przed świeckim sądem. Jak czytamy na stronach “NYT” Wesołowski otrzymał już najwyższą karę, którą przewiduje prawo kanoniczne Kościoła i 27 czerwca został przeniesiony do stanu świeckiego. Watykan, który jako miasto-państwo ma swój własny system sądowniczy, ogłosił również – po raz pierwszy w historii – starania o oskarżenie za nadużycia seksualne według prawa karnego.

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AUSTRALIA
The Age

Jane Lee and Cameron Houston

The Catholic Archdiocese of Melbourne has been forced to provide the Royal Commission with its balance sheet and other private financial dealings, which reveal the church controls a vast portfolio of property and investments valued at $309 million and reaped almost $53 million in income last year.

Head of the Melbourne Archdiocese’s finances, Francis Moore, prepared the church’s financial records for 2013 and conceded it could afford to triple its payments to victims of clerical abuse without a significant impact on its bottom line.

After taking into account net liabilities of $87 million, the Melbourne Archdiocese has net assets of $222 million, from which it could fund additional ex gratia payments to victims.

The payments – made once victims sign a deed promising they will not sue the church – are currently capped at $75,000. The average pay-out for sexual, physical and emotional abuse is about $36,100.

Melbourne Archbishop Denis Hart announced from the witness stand on Monday that he had appointed former Federal Court judge, Donnell Ryan, QC, to review ex gratia payments made under the Melbourne Response, the church’s internal process for handling victims’ complaints. This would include the scale of future payments.

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IRELAND
Irish Examiner

By Conall Ó Fátharta

The terms of reference for the inquiry must be as wide as possible, writes Conall Ó Fátharta.

THE decision of the Government to delay the terms of reference for the mother-and-baby-homes inquiry until the autumn should have raised a few more eyebrows than it did.

As anybody campaigning for justice on any issue here will tell you, the terms of reference for any investigation are everything. After all the platitudes about truth and transparency fade from newspapers and airwaves, what you are left examining is the small print of what will and what will not be open for inquiry and investigation.

In his brief time as children’s minister, Charlie Flanagan was a breath of fresh to campaigners for justice for women who went through Ireland’s infamous mother-and-baby homes.

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IRELAND
Irish Examiner

By Conall Ó Fátharta
Irish Examiner Reporter

Infant death rates at the Bessborough mother-and-baby home in Cork soared to almost 70% in the early 1940s.

The revelations come just two months after the Government announced a statutory commission to investigate practices, deaths, illegal adoptions and vaccine trials at the country’s mother-and-baby homes.

Previous research done by adoption campaigners indicated a death rate of around 50% and above at Bessborough throughout the late 1930s and 1940s.

However, material uncovered by the Irish Examiner in the Cork City archives shows an official investigation carried out by the Cork County Medical Officer in 1943, on foot of inquiries from a Department of Local Government inspector, confirmed a death rate of 68% at the home.

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IRELAND
Irish Central

Patrick Counihan @irishcentral August 25,2014

A new mother-and-baby home scandal has come to light with reports of a near 70 per cent mortality rate at Bessborough in Cork in the 1940s.

The shocking new report, carried in the Irish Examiner newspaper, highlights government concerns at the time over the infant death rates.

The story comes just two months after the Tuam scandal which prompted the establishment of a state commission to investigate practices, deaths, illegal adoptions and vaccine trials at the country’s mother-and-baby homes.

The Irish Examiner reports that previous research done by adoption campaigners indicated a death rate of around 50% and above at Bessborough throughout the late 1930s and 1940s.

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UNITED STATES
Daas Torah

Full Disclosure: David Morris is one of my heroes. Someone who has successfully devoted his time and energy to help other people with a major chesed organization and one dealing with child abuse .[My nephew Rabbi Shmuel Zalman Eidensohn runs competing chesed and child abuse organizations in Beit Shemesh and works together with Rav Malinowitz] He wrote a chapter in my sefer on child abuse where it is interesting to note – he does not once mention going to the police in cases of child abuse – but only to his organization Magen. He is also very intelligent and sincere – but like all of us has issues where his emotion blinds his rational thought. One of them is Rav Malinowitz and anything connected with him.

1) Friday he published a rather egregious example of misinformation and slander. To set the stage for his slander against Rav Malinowtiz he first brought up something unrelated to the Seminary Scandal – the suicide of a child abuse victim – Corporal Dave Gordon. Yes it is true that the trauma of being molested as a child unfortunately endured into adulthood for Dave Gordon. But the Seminary Scandal is not a case of child abuse. The Seminary Scandal involved adults who were involved in either being touched or hugged by their teacher. It is not clear at this stage to what degree the contact was forced and unwanted or was consensual. This is not the same as a child being molested or raped. Both halacha and secular law recognize a distinction between consensual and involuntary contact and that which involves a child and an adult. Thus the case of Dave Gordon – while unfortunate – was just brought in to inflame emotions. Or to be more generous, while David Morris was upset about the death of Dave Gordon – he incorrectly free associated to the Seminary Scandal in order to criticize Rav Malinowitz.

2) David Morris is offering any existing victims – something he doesn’t know to be true – the services of his organization dealing with sexual abuse. While that is very generous – it would be helpful to first establish there are in fact victims. However the offer is clearly a club to attack the IBD for what he alleges is improper response to victims. Even though in fact he doesn’t know that victims exist or how they have been dealt with – either by the CBD or the IBD. Rather strange to offer help in a crime that you don’t know even happened?! While the CBD is claiming unofficially that there were women who were raped – however no official declaration has been made nor has any evidence been produced or even a single woman making anonymous public claims. Clearly no one has gone to the police. David Morris is fully aware that he has no evidence that there are victims who have been traumatized. Unlike Frum Follies he apparently does not have a pipeline to Gottesman and the CBD. But he believes whatever Frum Follies posts – at least as long as it is an attack on Rav Malinowitz. In other words his justification for this offer is that since Rav Malinowitz is involved and he just “knows” that Rav Malinowitz will mishandle the victims that means there must be victims that need help.

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UNITED STATES
Frum Follies

Dear Rabbi Eidensohn,

I read your response to my post of Friday [8/22/14] with… profound sadness that a distinguished person who has done so much to make the world a safer place for children and all types of abuse victims, should forget all he learned, and all he wrote, and all we learned from him.

Many people who have had great respect for you have watched in the last two months as you have chosen to wage a truly bizarre campaign with only one obvious goal – participating in the minimizing, whitewash and cover-up of a painful scandal.

There is no need to rehash all the charges and counter-charges. Suffice it to say you have chosen to minimize, distract and obfuscate about an abuser and those who enabled him – you have put the wherewithal of the institutions and of three rabbonim, above the safety of the students.

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MINNESOTA
Roman Catholic Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis

Date: Monday, August 25, 2014

Source: Jim Accurso, Media and Public Relations Manager

Former Superintendent of MN Bureau of Criminal Apprehension (BCA) to fill key leadership role recommended by Safe Environment Task Force

Archbishop John Nienstedt announced the appointment of Deputy Chief Administrative Law Judge Timothy J. O’Malley to the new position of Director of Ministerial Standards and Safe Environment for the Archdiocese of Saint Paul and Minneapolis. The creation of this new position was one of the key recommendations called for in the independent Safe Environment and Ministerial Standards Task Force Report and Recommendations in April 2014. He begins his new role at the archdiocese on September 15.

“We are honored that Judge O’Malley has offered to share his experience and insights with the Church to help protect the young and vulnerable and hold accountable those who have caused harm,” said Archbishop John Nienstedt. “He brings with him a high level of intellect, an impressive background of experience and leadership with local law enforcement, the FBI, the Bureau of Criminal Apprehension and the judicial system, and he has a compassionate heart for victim/survivors.”

Judge O’Malley said, “I am honored to join the team that the archdiocese put together and hope my contributions position us to better serve those who have been abused and their families. Like many others, Catholics and non-Catholics alike, I have been profoundly troubled and disappointed by how the Church has addressed reports of abuse. I want to help change that. The archdiocese must do everything possible to prevent the kind of abuse that Pope Francis has accurately and pointedly described as ‘despicable.’ Protecting children must be our highest priority.”

Michael Campion, former Minnesota Public Safety Commissioner and fellow former BCA superintendent, said of the appointment, “Tim has a high level of integrity, displays a strong backbone, and stands up for the right thing. He has the expertise and gravitas that is needed for an important position such as this. He is not one to be intimidated nor shy away from a challenge. Above all else, he is fair. He will serve victims well.”

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MINNESOTA
Seattle PI

MINNEAPOLIS (AP) — The Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis has named the former head of the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension to a key position in the wake of clergy sexual misconduct.

Administrative law Judge Timothy O’Malley will serve in the newly created position of director of Ministerial Standards and Safe Environment. The position was recommended by a task force that investigated the way church officials have handled accusations of priest misconduct.

The archdiocese is combining all safe environment and ministerial standards programs under one office, which O’Malley will direct.

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NEW ZEALAND
NZ City

A former Catholic brother facing hundreds of child sex charges in Australia is challenging Justice Minister Judith Collins’ decision to extradite him.

Australian authorities are trying to extradite Bernard Kevin McGrath, 65, from New Zealand to face 252 child sex charges.

A Christchurch District Court judge agreed to McGrath’s extradition in June last year, but it was up to Ms Collins to make the final decision and the case was referred to her in April.

Ms Collins’ office confirmed on Monday an order for McGrath’s surrender to Australia has been issued.

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NEW ZEALAND
The Press

ANNA PEARSON

Former Catholic brother Bernard Kevin McGrath will face child sex abuse charges in Australia, the justice minister has ruled.

In November 2012, Australia requested the extradition of McGrath on 252 charges of sexual offending between 1977 and 1986.

Authorities allege that he raped, molested and abused dozens of young boys at church-run institutions.

In June last year, Christchurch District Court Judge Jane Farish decided McGrath’s extradition should be granted, but the case was successfully appealed to the High Court.

The case was then referred back to district court level, from where Judge Farish sent it on to Justice Minister Judith Collins.

”I am satisfied that there are extraordinary and compelling reasons for the matter to be referred to the minister,” Judge Farish said in January.

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AUSTRALIA
The Guardian

Australian Associated Press
theguardian.com, Monday 25 August 2014

A former Catholic brother facing hundreds of child sex charges in Australia is challenging the decision by New Zealand’s justice minister, Judith Collins, to extradite him.

Australian authorities are trying to extradite Bernard Kevin McGrath, 65, from New Zealand to face 252 child sex charges.

A Christchurch district court judge agreed to McGrath’s extradition in June last year, but it was up to Collins to make the final decision and the case was referred to her in April.

Collins’s office confirmed on Monday that an order for McGrath’s surrender to Australia had been issued.

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AUSTRALIA
ABC News

By New Zealand correspondent Dominique Schwartz and Giselle Wakatama
Updated 25 Aug 2014

A former Catholic Brother wanted in Australia for alleged child sexual abuse is challenging a decision to extradite him from New Zealand.

Bernard Kevin McGrath has been fighting authorities’ efforts to bring him back to Australia for two years.

In 2012, New South Wales police requested his extradition so he could answer 252 charges of sexual offending.

The charges relate to allegations McGrath sexually abused 35 boys in the 1970s and 1980s in the Lake Macquarie region, south of Sydney.

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GUAM
KUAM

[with video]

by Sabrina Salas Matanane

Guam – Close to 300 people have signed off on a petition and letter that was sent to the archbishop hoping they’ll see “their way”. Yet another controversial document has been posted on the JungleWatch blog, which focuses on the dealings with the local Catholic church.

This letter was sent to Archbishop Anthony Apuron last Friday by former senator Tommy Tanaka, a parishioner from Saint Francis Church in Yona. “We want to respectfully advice the archbishop that the Parish of Saint Francis is not desiring having a neo priest assigned to it. we have seen the impact of other parishes where the priest from neo have been assigned and parishioners are confused and they go to other places and seeing that Yona has been a Capuchin parish since the early1950’s we respectfully requested that it remain a Capuchin parish,” he explained.

Tanaka, who was born and raised Catholic, and has been attending St. Francis Church in Yona for more than ten years he is one of almost 300 parishioners who hope the archbishop will see it ‘their way’. Although there has been no indication the archbishop plans to assign a priest from the Neocatechumenal Way, they are being proactive to ensure their church remain a “capuchin-pastored parish”. Tanaka says with the Redempotoris Mater Seminary nearby they are asking the archbishop not to impose the way at St. Francis.

He explained, “My feeling personal feeling is Catholics are free to choose their path to God. but personally speaking I choose to continue to practice what I grew up with and I have no desire to seek a different way for me and therefore I have no desire for someone trying to bring a different path to god we’re happy with the capuchins and we want to keep St. Francis parish capuchin that’s our whole intent I have no problem with the way as a practice I just don’t want it being imposed on St. Francis Church in Yona.”

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UNITED STATES
Frum Follies

Late last week, the 15 remaining students enrolled in the 2nd year program (shana bet) of the Pninim seminary controlled by Elimelech Meisels were sent a notice informing them the seminary program was cancelled this year.

They were not offered any alternative placements. I do not know if they refunded the tuition payments, whether they plan to, and if so, on what schedule. Last year, this same 2nd year program had approximately 35 students. I do not know if it was grossly under enrolled before the scandal broke, or whether some 20 other students already withdrew.

BACKGROUND

Meisels has been embroiled in the highly publicized “Seminaries Scandal” since July 10th when the Chicago Beis Din (CBD rabbinical court) advised against attending any of the four seminaries he operated because of the results of their investigation into allegations of “unwanted physical contact of a sexual nature” with his students. Pninim was the seminary where he was the principal and spent the most time.

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PUERTO RICO
Jamaica Observer

SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico (CMC) – The United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agency says a suspended Catholic priest has pleaded guilty to child exploitation charges for taking a minor on a cruise with the intent to engage in criminal sexual conduct.

Israel Berrios-Berrios who pleaded guilty in court on Thursday was arrested on May 13 at his residence in Naranjito, Puerto Rico, following an indictment that charged him with transporting a minor with the intent to engage in sexual activity.

Prosecutors charged that Berrios-Berrios transported a 15-year-old male minor to Miami, Florida, where they took a four-day cruise to the Bahamas.

“While on the cruise, Berrios-Berrios engaged in lewd acts with the minor,” prosecutors claimed.

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AUSTRALIA
Sydney Morning Herald

August 25, 2014

Angus Livingston and Melissa Iaria

The Catholic Church might increase payouts to abuse victims in the Melbourne archdiocese although it maintains that its much-criticised complaints scheme works well and is caring.

The church is considering lifting or removing the $75,000 cap on compensation payments to victims in the Melbourne archdiocese.

Melbourne Archbishop Denis Hart said overall the Melbourne Response scheme remains a sound and appropriate mechanism for responding to complaints of child sex abuse.

The system operates effectively and efficiently and the process is conducted with professionalism and real compassion, he told the abuse royal commission.

He said he had been moved by reports of how “caring” the scheme’s independent commissioners were.

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AUSTRALIA
ABC News

By Cheryl Hall
Updated 25 Aug 2014

It took more than 20 years and three requests to Rome to defrock a priest convicted of child sexual abuse, the Catholic Archbishop of Melbourne Denis Hart has told an inquiry.

Archbishop Hart told the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse that Father Michael Glennon was first convicted and jailed in 1978 but it was not until 1998 that he was laicised.

He was convicted five times on multiple charges and died in jail in January this year.

Archbishop Hart, who was vicar general of the Melbourne diocese before being appointed archbishop in 2001, replacing George Pell, told the hearing it was very difficult before 2001 to get approval from the Vatican to defrock a priest.

“The difficulty would be a serious concentration on procedure,” he said.

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AUSTRALIA
9 News

AAP

Melbourne Archbishop Denis Hart says the protection of children has always been the priority, but abuse victims disagree he has been quick to act on child sex abuse claims.

Archbishop Hart said when there’s litigation between the church and abuse victims, his attitude had been that the church had a responsibility to meet victims’ needs with compassion and resolve their claims fairly and as early as possible.

“When these criminals do these awful things, it gives me no joy whatsoever and that’s why I’ve always been … very quick to act because the protection of children is the absolute priority,” he told the abuse royal commission on Monday.

Archbishop Hart also told the commission he was conscious of the “heavy burden of responsibility” owed generally by the church to Emma and Katie Foster, two sisters abused by pedophile priest Kevin O’Donnell.

Emma later took her own life and Katie was left permanently disabled in a road accident.

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AUSTRALIA
Blayney Chronicle

By Rachel Browne Aug. 25, 2014

It was a random phone call in 2006 that set Newcastle Herald journalist Joanne McCarthy on a path which ultimately exposed the extent of horrific crimes by paedophile priests and led to the royal commission into child sexual abuse.

The award-winning reporter told Australian Story of the day she was at her desk when she received a call from a reader wanting to know why no media had reported that a priest named John Denham had been convicted of child sex offences a number of years before.

So she rang Denham, who was immediately defensive.

“I’ve spoken to a few paedophile priests,” she said. “They’re a breed. Massive egos. At first he denied that he had been convicted. Then his next line was, ‘I hope you have a good lawyer.'”

Last week, Denham gave evidence at his sentencing hearing before a Sydney court, after pleading guilty to 25 charges relating to offences against 20 victims.

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VATICAN CITY
Press TV (Iran)

Following Pope Francis’s vow to punish those clergymen who sexually abuse children, a Vaticanist says it is necessary for the credibility of the church to organize itself against sex abuses.

“Certainly, for the credibility of the church, it is important that the church organizes itself in the best way,” says Marko Politi, an Il Fatto-Vaticanist.

The comment comes at a time that human rights activists and the alleged victims of church pedophilia demand the implementation of immediate and practical regulations that could ensure an end to the sexual abuses by clergymen.

“I think that the UN panels are important in order to stimulate the Catholic Church to act better and better in this field,” adds Politi.

During a meeting with six victims of sexual abuse by priests at his private morning mass in the Vatican residence back on July, the Head of the Roman Catholic Church, Pope Francis, vowed to punish clergymen who sexually abused children, describing their actions as “satanic.”

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AUSTRALIA
The Age

August 25, 2014

Jane Lee
Legal Affairs Reporter for The Age

The Catholic Church’s Melbourne archdiocese could afford to double or triple its $75,000 cap on compensation for sexual abuse victims but would need to review the other programs it funds.

The royal commission into child sexual abuse entered its second week of hearings in Melbourne on Monday. The commission is investigating the effectiveness of the church’s Melbourne Response, which has paid more than $17 million to 326 abuse victims since 1996.

Asked whether the archdiocese of Melbourne could afford a doubling or tripling of its current cap on compensation payments, Francis Moore, its executive director of administration, said: “I think it would certainly require some adjustments to the way the Archdiocese operated, and whether the archdiocese could continue all of the programs that it currently provides – could it be managed? Yes, I suspect it could. But not without impacts elsewhere.”

Counsel assisting the commission, Angus Stewart, asked whether increasing the cap would require the archdiocese to sell off assets.

Mr Moore replied that, depending on how much the cap was increased, “it might be more than the accumulated income can cover, in which case there would be a need to go to the reserves of the archdiocese”.

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AUSTRALIA
The Australian

AUGUST 25, 2014

Rachel Baxendale
Reporter
Melbourne

CATHOLIC Archbishop of Melbourne Denis Hart has appointed a former federal court judge to review the church’s complaints scheme, despite maintaining the process is conducted with professionalism and compassion.

Archbishop Hart told the child abuse royal commission in Melbourne this afternoon he had appointed Donnell Ryan QC to head a review of the Melbourne Response.

The scheme has paid more than $17 million to 326 abuse victims since it began in 1996.

Mr Ryan will be asked to examine possible improvements to the scheme, including lifting or removing the $75,000 cap on compensation, changing how the amount of compensation paid to victims is determined, and considering whether the amount of compensation paid to victims in the past should be reviewed.

Archbishop Hart said that although he took all complaints about the Melbourne Response seriously and did not wish to discount victims’ pain, the complaints had been “relatively small” in number.

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AUSTRALIA
Herald Sun

Catholic Church to review compensation for sexual abuse victims, says Archbishop Denis Hart

PADRAIC MURPHY HERALD SUN AUGUST 25, 2014

A CONTROVERSIAL cap of $75,000 compensation for victims of sexual abuse by Catholic clergy could be scrapped, Archbishop Denis Hart told the royal commission into sexual abuse.

Archbishop Hart said he had appointed former Federal Court judge Donnell Ryan QC to review compensation levels offered to victims of abuse by clergy in the Melbourne archdiocese.

“(He will provide a report) on whether the cap should be increased or removed,” Archbishop Hart said.

Amid regular gasps from the public gallery, Archbishop Hart defended the church’s handling of sexual abuse cases.

“I think the church seeks all along to act according to justice, charity and compassion,” Archbishop Hart said.

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AUSTRALIA
The Guardian

Melissa Davey
theguardian.com, Monday 25 August 2014

The archbishop of Melbourne has described the scheme implemented by the church to investigate child sex abuse claims as compassionate and caring, despite victims heavily criticising it.

Archbishop Denis Hart said the Melbourne Response, implemented in 1996 by the Catholic archdiocese of Melbourne and still investigating child sex abuse claims today, operated with integrity.

“I think that the church seeks always to act according to justice, charity and compassion,” Hart told the royal commission into institutional responses into child sexual abuse on Monday.

“There is evidence from time to time of very real compassion shown. I know that’s not universal, but it shows that it is possible and it shows the type of work that we are doing, that it [compassion] has to be an objective.”

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MALTA
Times of Malta

A court this morning banned publication of details about a case where an 18-year-old man from Marsascala is accusing of defiling a 14-year-old girl at the Splash and Fun Park.

Defence counsel made a request for the court to ban publication of testimony by the victim and her friend.

Police Inspector Josric Mifsud objected, pointing out that in the Gozo priest sexual abuse case, the court had lifted a ban on publication after noting that there was no connection between the priest and his alleged victims. The situation was similar in this case,

The court, however, decided on an outright ban on publication of the details of the case and asked reporters to leave the courtroom.

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PENNSYLVANIA
The Express-Times

By Matthew Bultman | The Express-Times

Statements made by former Warren County employees revealing years of suspicion that ex-Sheriff

Edward Bullock had a perverted interest in young boys carry potentially heavy weight in civil litigation against Bullock and the county, according to legal experts.

The experts, including one with experience in similar lawsuits, agreed the county appears vulnerable as the statements indicate those in a position of authority knew — or should have known — Bullock may have been preying on children but took no steps to prevent it.

“It’s very significant that people would come forward,” said Jeffrey Fritz, a Philadelphia-based attorney who represented numerous victims in the Jerry Sandusky case at Penn State. “It’s the smoking gun.” …

Mark Crawford, director of the New Jersey Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests, said the parallels are stark between what is alleged to have happened in Warren County and previous high-profile sexual abuse scandals involving the Catholic church, Penn State and the Boy Scouts.

People are often hesitant to be a whistleblower, particularly if the person is in a position of authority or is well respected within the community, Crawford said. There can be additional concerns over bad publicity being brought upon the organization, he said.

“Whenever you have an institution that has a vested interest in keeping a reputation, people tend to look the other way,” Crawford said. “Instinctively, they try to protect their own reputation, so to speak, instead of doing the right thing.

“It appears this may be one of those examples,” he said.

Kenneth Lanning is a former FBI agent, who worked in the agency’s behavioral science unit, and authored the book, “Child Molesters: A Behavioral Analysis.” He said cover-ups or cases of people looking the other way often come down to two factors: ignorance and damage control.

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MILWAUKEE (WI)
Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

By Annysa Johnson of the Journal Sentinel

For the second time in two years, lawyers for the Archdiocese of Milwaukee and sex abuse victims will sit down with a mediator next month in hopes of hammering out a settlement in the archdiocese’s nearly 4-year-old bankruptcy.

None of the parties associated with the case would estimate what it would take to resolve the underlying issues, including a pending lawsuit over $60 million in trust set aside for maintenance of the archdiocese’s cemeteries.

But two things appear certain: Abuse survivors will undoubtedly push for more than the $3 million-plus they were offered as part of the reorganization plan proposed by the archdiocese in February. And the archdiocese appears reluctant to budge, at least at the outset.

“If anything, our starting position is the (reorganization) plan,” said Jerry Topczewski, chief of staff for Archbishop Jerome Listecki. “That’s what’s on the table, and we think it’s a viable plan.”

James Stang, lead attorney for the creditors committee, suggested there would have to be some give for the mediation to succeed.

“They want the bankruptcy done with,” Stang said of the archdiocese. “It’s been hard on the community, it’s been hard on the survivors…and they want to move on.

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 Open Tabernacle: Here Comes Everybody

Posted on August 24, 2014 by Betty Clermont

Honduran Cardinal Oscar Rodriguez Maradiaga was named by Pope Francis as head of a group of cardinals to help him govern the Church one month after the former Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio was elected pope. “Vice pope” or the pope’s “right-hand man” is how Rodriguez Maradiaga is usually described in the press.

Australian Cardinal George Pell was appointed by the pope this past February as prefect of the Secretariat of the Economy, giving him control of all Vatican finances and administration including hiring and salaries.

Yet the backgrounds of these now powerful men which demonstrate Pope Francis’ disdain for both the poor and the victims of clerical sex abuse remain unreported by the U.S. media.

Rodriquez Maradiaga actively supported the 2009 coup against the progressive and democratically elected president of Honduras, Manuel Zelaya Rosales. The cardinal was condemned by Latin Americans:

Cardinal Oscar Andres Rodriguez: The path you have chosen to be an accomplice of the military dictatorship is not the way of the Gospel. You cannot be against your people and allow violence and repression in the name of supposed safety and law and the committing of serious human rights violations.

Mr. Oscar Andrés Rodríguez Maradiaga has brought disrespect to his ecclesiastical position by joining the coup and attacking the Honduran people and their democratic institutions, taking sides in a situation so critical for Honduran society….[H]ere he is, heretically offending the faith in the God of Life that he says he proclaims in order to allay himself with the forces of Death. And, there they are, our brothers, killed in cold blood by military assassins legitimated by the word, equally assassin, of Cardinal Rodriguez.

The cardinal appears to have allied himself with the Honduran oligarchy behind the coup….He has adopted a stance that renders him, if not an accomplice of the Honduran coup leaders, then certainly a cardinal who is very useful to their plot….He appears to have chosen what is arguably the most Machiavellian way of trying to stop Zelaya from returning to Honduras.

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AUSTRALIA
Frum Follies

According to the Herald Sun of Australia, David Samuel Cyprys was accused of assaulting a teenager in jail while serving his prison sentence for assaulting nine Jewish children. Incredibly, after he was convicted of child sexual abuse in 1991, he was allowed to continue working at the Chabad-dominated Yeshiva College of Melbourne where he preyed on children for another two decades.

I am willing to bet many parents complained and were given any of these standard lines to assure them this would not happen again:

* This is the first we have ever heard of such a thing and we will investigate;
* We will get him into therapy;
* We will keep an eye on him;
* He has a family, so this is the best way to deal with it;
* You can’t go to the police; it is forbidden under Jewish law;
* You will destroy your standing in the community and the marriage prospects of you kids if you make a public fuss, instead of letting us handle it privately.

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AUSTRALIA
Sydney Morning Herald

August 25, 2014

Kieran Tapsell

In his video appearance before the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse on August 21, the former Archbishop of Sydney, Cardinal George Pell, insisted that the Catholic Church should be treated like every other organisation in society. It should not be held responsible for the crimes of its priests in the same way as the “ownership or leadership” of a trucking company is not responsible if one of its drivers picks up a hitchhiker and molests her.

Pell conceded that “if in fact the authority figure has been remiss through bad preparation, bad procedures or been warned and done nothing or insufficient, then certainly the church official would be responsible”.

Pell’s analogy revealed the fatal flaw in his own argument the moment he used the word “company”. If a trucking company had been remiss as he described, and people were injured as a result, the trucking company would be liable. Those injured would have access to the company’s assets to meet any judgment, even if its directors or officials were dead or had no assets.

Pell spent over $750,000 on lawyers in the Ellis case to prove that the Catholic Church was not like his trucking company, but is an unincorporated association that could not be sued. All of its billions are tucked away in a corporate trust that does nothing else than hold property. The only person who could be sued in that case was Cardinal Freeman, who had been warned about Ellis’s abuser, and yet let him continue as a priest. Cardinal Freeman was incapable of being sued because he was resting in peace in the crypt of St Mary’s Cathedral.

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AUSTRALIA
The Age

August 25, 2014

Editorial

Leadership is about asking a simple, profound question – ”is this right?” – and then acting appropriately in response. On this measure, Cardinal George Pell, who now resides in the Vatican after his stints as archbishop of Sydney and before that of Melbourne, has serially failed.

His performance throughout the slow and painful emergence of evidence during the past few decades of rape and other abuse of children by Catholic priests on occasions has been disgraceful.

Let there be no mistake: he has been at the pinnacle of an important organisation – one in which so much trust is placed – that has sought to minimise the financial and reputational damage to itself of the despicable criminal behaviour of some of its clergy. It is an organisation that previously even protected perpetrators by covering up their crimes.

Instead of seeking prosecution of these men, this is a church that in some instances merely transferred them to other dioceses, where their predatory acts continued. As the chairwoman of the recent Victorian parliamentary inquiry into child abuse, Liberal MP Georgie Crozier, said early in the hearings: ”The evidence is quite clear; the criminal sexual abuse of children occurred under the watch of the Catholic Church and it was covered up … These facts are not in dispute.”

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AUSTRALIA
The Australian

AUGUST 25, 2014

THE Vatican has asked the Catholic archdiocese of Sydney to review an investigation conducted under previous archbishop Cardinal George Pell, which criticised the credibility of two alleged victims of church child sex abuse.

The Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse is also investigating the matter, following the publication of the resulting church decree in The Australian this year.

This decree, provided to the ­alleged victims in January, provides a powerful and controversial insight into the secretive canon law processes used by the Catholic Church to ­respond to claims of child sex abuse.

After more than a decade of lobbying by one of the alleged victims, the Vatican’s powerful Congregation of the Doctrine of the Faith authorised Cardinal Pell “to conduct an administrative penal process” into the case. Cardinal Pell personally appointed three senior Australian clerics to undertake the investigation and forwarded the resulting decree back to the congregation.

The decree itself states that its authors “decided not to see themselves as judges charged with ­determining the guilt or otherwise” of the priest alleged to have committed the abuse.

“What is being tested is the ­reliability, the credibility of those making the complaints,” the ­decree states. It describes one ­alleged victim as “an exaggerator” with “a detailed dossier of these ‘remembered’ events clogging his computer’’. A previous decision by the church to pay this alleged victim financial compensation was done “for actuarial reasons and to appear pastorally concerned”, the decree said.

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IRELAND
Boston globe

By Kevin Cullen | GLOBE COLUMNIST AUGUST 24, 2014

TUAM, Ireland — In 1975, Frannie Hopkins and Barry Sweeney were playing in an apple orchard just off the Dublin Road where the old St. Mary’s mothers and babies home used to be.

Frannie Hopkins, 12, jumped from a wall and whatever he landed on made a funny noise. Barry Sweeney, 10, followed suit and the hollow they felt made them curious.

They pulled back some weeds and found a concrete slab, pulled back the slab, and to their utter amazement saw a collection of skulls and bones.

“I’d say there were a dozen sets of bones,” Frannie Hopkins told me, standing on the spot. “It was a concrete chamber, a crypt or a tomb or a tank.”

For reasons both complicated and not entirely surprising, it is only now that the macabre discovery two boys made 39 years ago has become yet another exercise in Ireland’s ongoing, agonizing confrontation with its uncomfortable past.

Yet, in a sometimes frenzied rush to now consciously confront that ugly past, the concrete chamber that Frannie Hopkins and Barry Sweeney found has been transformed, in some recent accounts, into a septic tank into which evil nuns stuffed the remains of some 800 children who died at the home for unwed mothers run by the Sisters of Bon Secours between 1925 and 1961.

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MALTA
Times of Malta

Editorial

Sunday, August 24, 2014

Is local Church in crisis?

Fr Joe Borg lit a fuse in his The Sunday Times of Malta column last weekend when he questioned Archbishop Paul Cremona’s ability to lead the local Church. He said that while others discussed the issue behind closed doors, he felt as a matter of conscience the duty to speak out about the issue.

If for nothing else, he deserves credit for being upfront. There are many discontented people in various walks of life, priests included, who would do well to take a leaf out of this particular book. However, the second issue that needs to be addressed is, does he have a point?

We asked the Archbishop for an interview on the issue. We got a one-line statement the day after the column was published, saying that he was committed to serve the Church to the best of his ability, and after catching up with him on Friday, he said it is the Pope who decides his future. But no interview.

This in itself is evidence of a problem. The Archbishop is a good man. No one questions that. He has had health problems. Everybody sympathises with that. But, as a question raged over whether Pope John Paul II should carry on in the latter stages of his papacy – and we all know the step Benedict took – so the issue must be addressed as to whether the Church’s best interests are served with Mgr Cremona at the helm.

This is a question the Church itself must resolve. But it can only do this if it first shows a hitherto unseen willingness to discuss it. In truth, rumblings have been around for quite some time and clergymen are doing themselves no good by running away from them.

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LOUISIANA
The Advertiser

Editorial

August 23, 2014

In the face of demands from a victims’ advocacy group, Bishop Michael Jarrell continues to stand firm on his resolve not to reveal the names of 15 priests on whose behalf the Diocese of Lafayette and its insurers paid $26 million to the families of victims in sex abuse cases that spanned the 1980s and ’90s.

In the place of information, representatives of the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests and the media have received only reports of shoddy record-keeping, poor memories on the parts of investigating bishops and flat-out refusals.

In response to questions from The Daily Advertiser, Jarrell would say only that seven of the 15 priests have died, five moved away and none are in the ministry.

We do know that one of them is Gilbert Gauthe, the infamous convicted pedophile who is reportedly living in Texas since his release from jail. Another is the late David Primeaux, who committed suicide in 2012 in Virginia.

That leaves seven of the 15 unaccounted-for and living anonymously among us. As Jarrell put it, it’s “almost impossible” to monitor their activities.

And that is unsettling.

It was decades ago, some reason — what’s the point of knowing who was involved in the incidents?

The point is that these men were not caught shoplifting or cheating on their taxes. They were accused of molesting children.

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DOMINIKANISCHEN REPUBLIK
Die Welt

[For Nuncio Accused of Abuse, Dominicans Want Justice at Home, Not Abroad – The New York Times]

By Constanze Reuscher, Rome

Als Botschafter des Papstes in der Dominikanischen Republik soll Erzbischof Wesolowski jahrelang Jungen missbraucht haben. Doch der Bischof läuft frei in Rom herum – vom Vatikan geschützt.

Er hatte schon ein paar Bier getrunken, als er durch die Rotlichtviertel von Santo Domingo zog, genügend Geld in der Tasche, auf der Suche nach schnellem Sex. Er suchte nach ganz jungen Männern, er suchte nach Kindern. Er nannte sich nur “Josie”. Viele wussten dennoch, wer er war: Der Botschafter des Heiligen Stuhls, der vatikanische Nuntius, vom Papst in die Dominikanische Republik entsandt – der polnische Erzbischof Josef Wesolowski.

Im Schatten der ältesten katholischen Kathedrale Amerikas betrieb er jahrelang sexuellen Missbrauch. Gemeinsam mit dem polnischen Pater Wojciech Gil soll er sich mit jungen Messdienern in seinem Haus am Strand vergnügt haben. Zwei weitere Geistliche aus seiner Botschaft stehen unter Verdacht, Frauen und Kinder zum Sex gezwungen haben. Ein dominikanischer TV-Sender soll Wesolowski dabei gefilmt haben, wie er ein Kinderbordell in Santo Domingo betrat.

Inzwischen ist der 66-jährige Wesolowski Amt, Würde und auch den Stand des Geistlichen los. Papst Franziskus rief ihn schon 2013 von seinem Posten als Botschafter des Heiligen Stuhls ab. Im Juni wurde er offiziell aus dem Priesterstand entlassen. Der Vatikan hat zudem angekündigt, ihm wegen der “weltlichen” Verbrechen, die er begangen hat, den Prozess zu machen.

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CANADA
Ottawa Citizen

ANDREW NGUYEN

August 24, 2014

André Samson thought the only way to hide his sexual orientation was to be celibate and enter the priesthood.

But when he was ordained, he quickly discovered that there were many others in the church who shared his secret.

Nearly a year ago, Samson summoned the courage to come out on the popular TVA show hosted by Denis Lévesque. After the show, he wandered over to a nearby restaurant in a celebratory mood and thought, “I really felt for the first time in my life, I felt free.”

Following his appearance, Samson said he received hundreds of emails from strangers applauding him for his courage, but what stung the most was that not one of them was from a Catholic priest.

Just last year, Samson suffered backlash from his colleagues after attempts to raise the issue of sexual abuse. His attempts led to a confrontation at the large Montreal church where he was serving, he was treated as a pariah and eventually lost his position at the church.

Samson, who remains a priest, said he feels he has a responsibility to speak out: “If not me, who will?”

He added that many priests and bishops continue to hide their sexual orientation because of their dependence and their fear of being rejected by the church, but he wants others to revel in who they really are.

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LOUISIANA
The Advertiser

By Ken Stickneyk stickney@theadvertiser.com August 23, 2014

Public scandal surrounding priest molestation cases in the mid-1980s struck the Diocese of Lafayette at a time when it was woefully ill-prepared to deal with it.

But court papers reviewed by The Daily Advertiser in recent weeks suggest diocesan leaders should have seen trouble coming years earlier.

Those papers were made known recently after Minnesota Public Radio investigated sex abuse in the Archdiocese of St. Paul-Minneapolis, uncovering a wealth of documents about numerous priests in the Diocese of Lafayette who had been accused of sexual misconduct since the 1950s. The link between the dioceses — what led MPR to the court files stored in Texas — was Bishop Harry Flynn, who served in both dioceses.

The court papers, which included legal depositions of key diocesan figures in Lafayette, suggest strongly that former Bishop Gerard L. Frey, who served from 1973-1989, lacked the knowledge, savvy and judgment he needed to address sexual misconduct among his priests. One psychologist who worked with the diocese said simply, “It appeared to me that Bishop Frey was hit with a truck.”

But Frey wasn’t alone. Depositions show little communication between diocesan clergy and the diocesan leadership about the onset of trouble. The bishop and clergymen testified under oath that they had little knowledge of myriad, isolated incidents from around the diocese, although the legal papers suggest otherwise in many cases. Priests’ files reportedly contained few specifics, diocesan leaders testified, perhaps intentionally.

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FLORIDA
News-Press

Mary Wozniak, mwozniak@news-press.com August 24, 2014

The 16-year-old boy molested by a priest serving at a Fort Myers church is now a 37-year-old man who remains haunted, angry and determined to help stop others from suffering his fate.

The Port Charlotte man spoke of his experience at the hands of the Rev. Jean Ronald Joseph for the first time Wednesday, exclusively to The News-Press. His story is one of an accuser’s worst nightmare: Outed by the accused and his attorney at a news conference; the letter he sent to church officials describing the abuse and its effect on him read aloud; his own community turning its back on him.

A six-figure settlement with the Diocese of Venice in the case was announced Tuesday by his attorney, Adam Horowitz. The News-Press does not name victims of sexual abuse.

The victim, who came forward in 2008, said he spoke out 15 years after the 1993 incident not because he wanted money but to stop Joseph, who his dying mother considered a second son, from participating in her funeral.

“For many years, I just acted like it never happened and tried to move on with my life,” he said. When his mother was dying from cancer and lupus, he knew he had to tell her. Besides, he said he realized he was getting older, and knew he had to face what had happened.

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MALTA
Malta Independent

Sunday, 24 August 2014 by Neil Camilleri

The Gozitan priest who stands accused of abusing three girls allegedly touched one of his victims, a teenager, in front of her mother, at a family event.

Sources close to the case said Father Jesmond Gauci attended a family BBQ in Gozo and was caught by the girl’s mother touching the girl “inappropriately”. It is understood that the girl’s mother has said she is willing to testify against the priest.

The Malta Independent on Sunday is also informed that the police have discovered several text messages allegedly sent by the priest to at least one of the girls.

The source said the allegations had nothing to do with the school where Fr Gauci taught and that the victims were all Gozitan girls in their teens. The alleged events took place in and around February.

The same source confirmed that Gozo Bishop Mario Grech had personally reported the case to the police. This newsroom has learnt, however, that Mgr Grech first reported the case to the Education Ministry, since Fr Gauci taught religion at a Hamrun state school for boys. The Ministry then advised him to report everything to the police. The report was lodged soon after the alleged abuse took place and investigators have spent the intervening months building up the case.

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KANSAS CITY (MO)
KMBC

KANSAS CITY, Mo. —A judge is expected to decide soon whether to dismiss probation for the highest-ranking U.S. church official convicted of a crime related to the child sexual abuse scandal.

The Kansas City Star reported that Jackson County Prosecutor Jean Peters Baker filed a probation status report for Bishop Robert Finn on Friday. Finn leads the Diocese of Kansas City-St. Joseph. He was convicted in September 2012 of one misdemeanor for failing to report child abuse suspicions.

While offering no opinion on whether probation should be dismissed, Baker did praise two diocese employees’ efforts to keep the diocese in compliance with the terms of the probation.

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LOUISIANA
Daily World

— Joelle Casteix is a member of Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests.

In early August, Lafayette Bishop Michael Jarrell — through his spokesman — said that there is “no purpose” in releasing the names of priests accused of sexual abuse.

The diocese and its insurers paid approximately $26 million to 123 child victims of these men — men accused of horrible sex crimes against children.

No purpose? Victims of sexual abuse and their supporters beg to differ. In fact, Jarrell must heed the highest purposes: public safety, victim healing and his moral duty as bishop.

Dioceses all over the nation have released the names of credibly accused clerics. Even the Archdiocese of Los Angeles, which has been blasted by survivors and the public for the cover-up of abuse, has released the names of men and women who sexually abused children.

Why is the public release of names so important?

1. Public safety. Eight of these men are still alive. We don’t know who they are or where they live. They could be volunteering with children, coaching sports, or leading Boy Scout troops.

In essence, Jarrell is creating a public nuisance. He knows who these men are. He knows that they could be molesting children right now. But he refuses to tell us who they are. That’s appalling.

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LOUISIANA
The Advertiser

— Bill Donohue is the president of the Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights.

Kudos to Lafayette Bishop Michael Jarrell for not publishing the names of priests accused of a sexual offense. His decision is identical to the one that the leaders of every other institution, public and private, have long come to: It is unethical to do so. Why should the Catholic Church be any different?

A reporter came to my office a few years ago asking me about this issue. Specifically, she asked how I could defend a bishop for not posting the names of accused priests on his diocesan website. I immediately asked for her boss’ name and phone number. She wanted to know why. “Because I am going to report you for sexually harassing me, and then I want to see if your name is going to be posted on the website of your cable news employer.”

She got the point.

I am the CEO of the Catholic League. If someone called me making an accusation against one of my staff members, I can assure you I would not call the cops. No employer would. I would do the same as everyone else: I would conduct my own internal investigation, and would only go to the authorities if I thought the charge was authentic.

There is a profound difference among an accusation, a credible accusation, a substantiated accusation and a finding of guilt. The assumption behind all three levels of accusations is that the accused is innocent, yet this seems not to matter much anymore, especially when the accused is a priest.

The leader of a professional victims’ group maintains that we need to know the names of the credibly accused priests in Lafayette so that parents can protect their children. Nonsense.

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DOMINICAN REPUBLIC
The New York Times

By LAURIE GOODSTEIN

AUG. 23, 2014

SANTO DOMINGO, Dominican Republic — He was a familiar figure to the skinny shoeshine boys who work along the oceanfront promenade here. Wearing black track pants and a baseball cap pulled low over his balding head, they say, he would stroll along in the late afternoon and bring one of them down to the rocky shoreline or to a deserted monument for a local Catholic hero.

The boys say he gave them money to perform sexual acts. They called him “the Italian” because he spoke Spanish with an Italian accent.

It was only after he was spirited out of the country, the boys say, his picture splashed all over the local news media, that they learned his real identity: Archbishop Jozef Wesolowski, the Vatican’s ambassador to the Dominican Republic.

“He definitely seduced me with money,” said Francis Aquino Aneury, who says he was 14 when the man he met shining shoes began offering him increasingly larger sums for sexual acts. “I felt very bad. I knew it wasn’t the right thing to do, but I needed the money.”

The case is the first time that a top Vatican ambassador, or nuncio — who serves as a personal envoy of the pope — has been accused of sexual abuse of minors. It has sent shock waves through the Vatican and two predominantly Catholic countries that have only begun to grapple with clergy sexual abuse: the Dominican Republic and Poland, where Mr. Wesolowski was ordained by the Polish prelate who later became Pope John Paul II.

It has also created a test for Pope Francis, who has called child sexual abuse “such an ugly crime” and pledged to move the Roman Catholic Church into an era of “zero tolerance.” For priests and bishops who have violated children, he told reporters in May, “There are no privileges.”

Mr. Wesolowski has already faced the harshest penalty possible under the church’s canon law, short of excommunication: on June 27, he was defrocked by the Vatican, reducing him to the status of a layman. The Vatican, which as a city-state has its own judicial system, has also said it intends to try Mr. Wesolowski on criminal charges — the first time the Vatican has held a criminal trial for sexual abuse.

But far from settling the matter, the Vatican has stirred an outcry because it helped Mr. Wesolowski avoid criminal prosecution and a possible jail sentence in the Dominican Republic. Acting against its own guidelines for handling abuse cases, the church failed to inform the local authorities of the evidence against him, secretly recalled him to Rome last year before he could be investigated, and then invoked diplomatic immunity for Mr. Wesolowski so that he could not face trial in the Dominican Republic. …

The deacon sent copies of the letter to Cardinal Nicolas de Jesus López Rodriguez, the head of the church in the Dominican Republic, and to a Dominican bishop, Gregorio Nicanor Peña Rodríguez. The cardinal then carried the evidence to the Vatican, where he met directly with Pope Francis, according to interviews with the Dominican authorities. On Aug. 21 last year, Mr. Wesolowski was secretly recalled to Rome. …

According to experts in international law, the Vatican could have waived diplomatic immunity. In Santo Domingo, there have been small protests and petitions signed by more than a thousand people calling on the Vatican to extradite Mr. Wesolowski to the Dominican Republic. Advocates have accused the government of acquiescing to the church. “We think there has been a lot of impunity in this case, and no transparency,” said Sergia Galván, executive director of the Women and Health Collective, which represents abuse victims. “If he’s no longer a diplomat, if he was stripped of that title, he no longer has immunity.”

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UNITED STATES
CNN – The Hunt with John Walsh

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Call 1-866-THE-HUNT or click here

As a pastor, Victor Barnard inspired his congregants with his charisma and apparent devotion to the teachings of Jesus Christ.

“I had never met anybody that I thought loved the word of God as much as Victor Barnard did,” said Ruth Johnson, a former member of Barnard’s River Road Fellowship.

“He was a pastor; he basically took personal care in people, invested into them, and tried to bring the best out of you,” said David Larsen, a former leader of the River Road Fellowship, which consisted of about 10 to 15 members.

Larsen said he helped Barnard set up a so-called “shepherd’s camp” in the mid-1990s in Pine County, Minnesota, to help bring more people into the church. Several of his congregants, including Johnson, moved to the rural area about 100 miles north of Minneapolis to be a part of the camp.

“We sold our homes and the funds went into renovation and things that needed to be rehabbed,” Johnson said. Some congregants who had experience in construction and electrical work helped set up the camp, she said.

Pine County Sheriff Robin Cole said the congregation “kept to themselves.”

Barnard also traveled across the country trying to recruit new members into his fellowship, including Linsday Tornambe’s parents in Harleysville, Pennsylvania, outside Philadelphia.

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AUSTRALIA
Sydney Morning Herald

August 24, 2014

Peter FitzSimons
Columnist

Cardinal Pell gets the roadhouse blues

The breathtakingly arrogant venality and cruel callousness of Cardinal George Pell continues to stun me. Speaking via video link from Rome to the Royal Commission into institutional child abuse on Thursday he compared the responsibility of the Catholic Church for sexually abusing children to that of a “trucking company”. You see, if the company’s driver picked up a passenger and then sexually assaulted that person, then “I don’t think it appropriate for the … leadership of that company be held responsible”.

He said that. He really said that!

So, Cardinal Pell, what if the trucking company had a strict policy since its foundation that none of its drivers could have any sexual outlet whatsoever, for their entire adult lives? What if the trucking company had a long and sordid history, globally, not only of their drivers picking up children and abusing them, but also of moving their drivers from state to state so that after every complaint they could be shielded from prosecution, thus allowing them to continue their abuse? What then, Cardinal Pell? For your position to be consistent you have to advocate that if a trucking company continued to employ drivers that took children into their cabs and abused them, that company should not be held responsible.

Given Pell’s position on not even releasing the documentation held by the Vatican over these cases of abuse, he must also maintain it is OK for the head office of this international trucking company in, say, New York, to decline to help authorities investigating this abuse, by refusing to give those files to police. Simply staggering, from first to last. HOW DOES PELL SLEEP? And how does anyone defend this?

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AUSTRALIA
The Independent (UK)

[transcript of the 21 August hearing]

NATASHA CULZAC Saturday 23 August 2014

A Cardinal has provoked outrage after claiming that the Catholic Church should be no more responsible for the abuse of children than a trucking company is of a driver who picks up and molests a woman while on the job.

Cardinal George Pell was speaking to Australia’s royal commission into institutional responses to child sexual abuse on Thursday, via a video link from the Vatican, when he said that there are instances when the Church should not be blamed.

The inquiry is looking at a scheme set up by the Church in 1996, which had independently looked at child abuse allegations, offered free counselling and compensation payments to victims.

“Let me give a non-controversial example. If there is a series, for example, of trucks carrying merchandise around the country, if in fact these are improperly serviced or the drivers are pushed to work for too long, obviously there is a culpability somewhere in the authority chain.

“If in fact the driver of such a truck picks up some lady and then molests her, I don’t think it’s appropriate – because it is contrary to the policy – for the ownership, the leadership of that company to be held responsible.

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UNITED STATES
National Catholic Reporter

Michael Sean Winters | Aug. 22, 2014 Distinctly Catholic

Damien Thompson has an essay at the Spectator, where he is an associate editor, about Pope Francis, why he was elected and what the principal goal of his pontificate is. Thompson, who is a gifted writer, is a less gifted analyst. He correctly spies an often over-looked hermeneutical key to understanding Pope Francis – he is a Jesuit – but instead of hitting the nail on the head, Thompson hits his thumb.
Thompson’s central claim is that the Catholic left is wrong to be hoping for doctrinal change from Pope Francis, that he was “was elected to do one thing: reform the Roman Curia, the pitifully disorganised, corrupt and lazy central machinery of the church.” Thompson writes that, “The Pope has declared a spiritual culture war on the bureaucrats who forced the resignation of his predecessor,” although I am not sure I would characterize the pope’s efforts to reform the curia as a “culture war,” in part because the Vatican curia is at best a sub-culture and the pontiff’s spiritual armament is more invitational than war-like.

This paragraph is especially troubling:

Last year Francis described his ‘court’ as ‘the leprosy of the papacy’. By ‘court’ he may have been referring to monarchical trappings — but employees of the Curia suspected that he was talking about them. For those good priests who found themselves trapped in a sclerotic bureaucracy it came across as a needless insult. ‘Morale is tremendously low,’ says a Vatican source. ‘And matters aren’t helped by Latin American clergy swanning around Rome telling us how they’re bringing us simplicity. There’s a new ultramontanism of the left. You can disagree with anything the church teaches so long as you think Francis is fabulous.’

I imagine that most “good priests” in the curia, and there are many, were as horrified as the cardinal-electors by the corruption within the organization. If morale is low now, because of the pope’s insistence on simplicity, then perhaps these good priests are not so good after all. Thompson’s source, whom he quotes approvingly, is undoubtedly correct about there being a “new ultramontanism of the left,” but I think the Holy Father’s aims, whatever the aims of those who invoke him, are not so easily cast into simple left-right terms as this source seems to think.

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UNITED STATES
Orthodox Church in America

Chancellor’s Diary

One of the “behind the scenes” responsibilities of the chancery is to deal with preventing and addressing sexual misconduct. As we all know this is a concern that affects every organization, but it’s not something that needs to be reported on the front page every day. I think of it as a sanitation department: every town has to have one but it shouldn’t make headlines unless something goes badly wrong. But with dioceses and parishes working diligently to follow the Holy Synod’s recently revised Policies, Standards and Procedures (PSPs) in this area, questions naturally do arise. So a few days ago I received a letter from someone concerned about protecting the clergy from false allegations.

I was disappointed to read the recently promulgated sexual misconduct policy. I am disappointed in the lack of protection for clergy in the guidelines… I prayerfully ask the Synod to reconsider the document.

Here is the reply I sent yesterday (slightly edited).

Thank you for your comments. In fact, you are not the first person to raise concerns about protections for clergy. However, the standards for clergy behavior are very high. The bishop ultimately must decide—based on the evidence—whether the accused clergyman (“the respondent”) is someone who can be fully trusted to be a good shepherd. If on balance of probability there is likelihood that misconduct occurred, then the bishop has to err on the side of protecting his—Christ’s—flock.

But the bishop’s decision must be based on a fair reading of the evidence, and the respondent has every opportunity to present his facts. While it is true that the PSP’s may need further review, there are a number of important checks and balances already in place:

* the respondent is free to bring whatever evidence or witnesses he has to the Response Team during the investigation
* the respondent may involve legal representation if he so chooses
* the respondent may have some other defense person or advocate to assist him, including of course his confessor or spiritual father
* the respondent has the right to a church court to present his case with a defense team if necessary
* the respondent has the right to appeal an adverse church court decision to the Holy Synod

The development of the PSPs over many years involved the review of practices in other churches and organizations. It also involved professionals in the areas of psychology, psychiatry, law and investigations. But our own procedures and those of others are evolving (witness what is happening in the military and on college campuses), so it should be expected that they can and will be improved.

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UNITED STATES
Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests

For immediate release: Friday, August 22, 2014

Statement by Melanie Jula Sakoda of Moraga, California, Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests (SNAP), SNAP Orthodox Director ( 925-708-6175, melanie.sakoda@gmail.com )

The chancellor of a New York based Eastern Orthodox Church published an entry in his online journal yesterday concerning the group’s sexual misconduct policy.

Archpriest John A. Jillions, chancellor of the Orthodox Church in America (OCA), shared a question he received about the guidelines, along with his response.

Jillions wrote that he received an email from someone concerned that the OCA’s policy does not do enough to protect clergymen from “false allegations.” In his response, the chancellor nailed one very important point: “If on balance of probability there is likelihood that misconduct occurred, then the bishop has to err on the side of protecting his—Christ’s—flock.”

However, we are disappointed that the chancellor failed to mention an even more important point: that is, false allegations are extremely rare. At least one of the resources on the OCA website spells this out explicitly.

Moreover, as survivors of clergy sexual abuse we are extremely disturbed that the OCA apparently still feels that allegations and investigations must be shrouded in secrecy. Jillions said the issue is “not something that needs to be reported on the front page every day. I think of it as a sanitation department: every town has to have one but it shouldn’t make headlines unless something goes badly wrong.”

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ARGENTINA
Buenos Aires Herald

The recovery of Ana Libertad’s identity is sure to attract attention not only toward the Netherlands, where Ana Libertad has been living, but also to the Vatican, where Jorge Bergoglio became Pope Francis a little more than a year ago.

In his previous life as Jorge Bergoglio, the now-pontiff was the target of criticisms from the De la Cuadra family for not helping them when they appealed to the Jesuits in Europe in their search all the way back in 1977 to find Elena de la Cuadra, Ana Libertad’s mother.

At the time, she had been missing for months but the family had been told by survivors that she had been seen at a Navy concentration camp. Desperate, the family used a connection with the global head of the Jesuit order, Pedro Arrupe, to lobby for her release. He put them in touch with Bergoglio, who was also part of the order. He provided a letter of introduction to a bishop with connections to the military dictatorship.

The only answer that came back , said Estela, was that her sister’s baby was now “in the hands of a good family. It was irreversible.” Neither mother nor child were heard from again until yesterday, when news broke of the positive identification of Ana Libertad in the Netherlands.

For Estela de la Cuadra, Bergoglio did the bare minimum to keep up appearances within the Jesuit order and that it was evidence of complicity between the Catholic church and the military junta. She has also testified against Bergoglio in court, accusing him of having more knowledge about baby-snatching than he is willing to admit publicly.

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AUSTRALIA
Broken Rites

Father Glenn Humphreys, aged 61, a member of the Australia-wide Catholic order of Vincentian Fathers, has been convicted by a jury in Western Australia for sexual abuse committed in that state. Father Humphreys has also ministered in other parts of Australia, including St Stanislaus College in Bathurst NSW. In the W.A. court documents, his current address was given as Marsfield in Sydney.

On 21 August 2014, Father Humphreys was found guilty of sexually abusing a teenage boy on church property in Western Australia 30 years ago. Humphreys was charged with abusing the teenager between 1983 and 1986 while he was assistant priest at a church in Perth.

After six hours of deliberation, a W.A. District Court jury convicted Humphreys of four counts of unlawful and indecent assault.

The court was told Humphreys had assaulted the boy in the church’s presbytery and in a bathroom at a nearby primary school.

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UNITED STATES
City of Angeles

[with video]

Kay Ebeling

From John Brown on YouTube

Once again, in order to get the truth out, Guerrilla Journalists are doing the work that paid journalists don’t have time to do, John Brown will be posting all testimony from now on from The Royal Commission on his YouTube channel and City of Angels Blog will be embedding the videos here, like the one below, over the coming weeks. Word from the Commission was the files were “too long” to post on their website, but Brown is downloading, digitizing, and uploading these videos of testimony in progress in Melbourne from his garage in Toowoomba. (Support this work by clicking the PalPal button on the left with high fives, please)

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WORCESTER (MA)
Telegram & Gazette

By Thomas Caywood TELEGRAM & GAZETTE STAFF
tcaywood@telegram.com

WORCESTER — The College of the Holy Cross has settled a lawsuit filed last year by former basketball player Ashley Cooper, who had alleged in her complaint that she was struck and verbally abused by veteran coach Bill Gibbons.

Holy Cross officials declined to discuss whether the settlement included any payment to Ms. Cooper.

“The parties have reached a confidential settlement of all claims in this case, and will have no further comment on this matter,” Holy Cross spokesman Ellen Ryder said in a written statement.

Ms. Cooper’s lawyers did not immediately return calls seeking comment.

The U.S. District Court in New York, where the case had been filed, was notified of the settlement agreement Aug. 15, according to court records.

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UNITED STATES
Waiting for Godot to Leave

Kevin O’Brien

Cardinal Pell, in open court, in front of victims of sexual abuse, speaking via webcam from the Vatican …

likened the Catholic Church’s responsibility for child abuse to that of a ”trucking company”. If a driver sexually assaulted a passenger they picked up along the way, he said, ”I don’t think it appropriate for the … leadership of that company be held responsible.”

What a completely stupid, crass, unfeeling, unchristian, unspiritual, vulgar and awful thing to say. One of the lawyers involved corrected Pell’s analogy …

Warrnambool lawyer George Foster of Maddens Lawyers labelled the comments as “appalling”.

“I act for people who have been the subject of sexual abuse (and) Cardinal Pell’s analogy given to the royal commission likening the church’s legal liability to abused children as that of a truck company whose driver molested hitchhikers is appalling,” he said.

“May I suggest a more appropriate one: A boss who knows or suspects that his driver deliberately flouts the road laws continues to send him out on jobs.

“Late one night the driver sees a hitchhiker, deliberately lines him up and runs over him. The driver gets out of the truck, goes back to the hitchhiker, further assaults him and robs him.

“The driver then gets back into the truck, reverses over the stricken hitchhiker several times and then drives off while “flicking the bird” to the hitchhiker through his open cabin window.

“The driver then goes back to the depot and tells his boss what has happened. His boss tells him to clean the blood and guts off the bull bar, to tell no one and if challenged say that it was all the hitchhiker’s fault.”

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PUERTO RICO
Imperial Valley News

Written by ICE

San Juan, Puerto Rico – A suspended Catholic priest pleaded guilty Thursday to transporting a minor with the intent to engage in criminal sexual conduct. U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s (ICE) Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) conducted the investigation that led to the arrest and subsequent guilty plea of the suspended priest.

HSI special agents arrested Israel Berrios-Berrios May 13 at his residence in Naranjito following an indictment that charged him with transporting a minor with the intent to engage in sexual activity. According to the government’s version of facts, Berrios-Berrios transported a 15-year-old male minor to Miami, Florida, where together they took a four-day cruise to the Bahamas. While on the cruise, Berrios-Berrios engaged in lewd acts with the minor.

“The arrest and guilty plea of this man are especially disturbing given the position of trust he occupied,” said Angel M. Melendez, special agent in charge of HSI San Juan. “Identifying people who violate their positions of public trust by contributing to the exploitation of children is a top priority for HSI. Anyone who targets children for sexual exploitation should also consider themselves a target by HSI and by our law enforcement partners regardless of who they are. We have an obligation to protect those most vulnerable in our society who cannot protect themselves.”

In June 2011, the Puerto Rico Crimes Against Children Task Force (PRCACTF) was created by HSI San Juan to respond to the need for an island-wide approach to fighting the escalating number of predatory crimes against children. The task force is a partnership between HSI San Juan and members of local, state and federal law enforcement, as well as local and state government officials and community leaders.

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MONTANA
Flathead Beacon

BY MOLLY PRIDDY // AUG 22, 2014

At least six local men have been arrested and charged with sexual abuse of children in connection with an online investigation that ended on Thursday.

According to the Flathead County Sheriff’s Office, there were seven men arrested total, and six of them were from the Kalispell area. Sheriff Chuck Curry reported that one of the suspects is a part-time youth pastor.

Curry confirmed the names of the local men as Justin Allen Zeiss, Benjamin David Emrich, Christopher Paul Adams, Karl Cilroy Wortley, Joshua Frederick Naethe, Daniel Anthony Hall, and Missoula resident Curtis Foster.

Court records indicate the investigation involved an undercover operation, with an ICAC agent posing as a woman offering up a 12-year-old girl for sex, and then arresting the men who communicated with the agent and showed up at a residence to engage is sexual conduct with the girl.

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MONTANA
ABC Fox Montana

[with video]

By Jackie Coffin

KALISPELL –
A four-day online sex sting ends with the arrest of seven men for sexual abuse of children, and more arrests are pending.

Flathead County Sheriff Chuck Curry says the Montana Internet Crimes Against Children Task Force worked with 12 law enforcement agencies to conduct the sting, targeting online predators.

Curry says six of the seven men are from Kalispell, and one is a part-time youth pastor.

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IRELAND
The Argus

Anne Campbell
Published 23/08/2014

THE DUNDALK man who exposed Cardinal Sean Brady’s role in a church inquiry into sex abuse by paedophile priest Brendan Smyth says the All-Ireland Primate is not resigning, but rather retiring ‘as if he has done nothing wrong’, while also revealing that five more of the dead cleric’s victims have come forward since the publication of his book.

It was revealed last week that Cardinal Brady, the parish priest of Dundalk, had written to Pope Francis ahead of his 75th birthday at the weekend offering his resignation as cardinal, in accordance with the Church’s own guidelines for clergy.

But Brendan Boland, whose book ‘Sworn to Silence’ was released last month, revealed how, as a 14-year-old boy in Dundalk in 1975, he was made sign an oath of secrecy after he told the then Fr Brady, and other priests, how he had been abused by Smyth and gave the names and addresses of others whom he believed had suffered the same fate.

Mr Boland’s book says another boy in Cavan was also sworn to silence and Smyth went on to abuse children for a further 18 years.

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AUSTRALIA
The Standard

Aug. 23, 2014

EDITORIAL: THE arrogance of Cardinal George Pell knows no bounds.

His appearance at the royal commission into sex abuse on Thursday confirmed what many victims of horrific acts at the hands of Catholic clergy already knew, he cares very little about them.

Appearing at the commission, not in person but via a video link from the Vatican, Cardinal Pell likened the Catholic Church’s responsibility for child abuse to that of a trucking company whose driver had assaulted a hitchhiker.

The point he was making was that the leadership of the company — in this case the Catholic hierarchy — should not be held responsible.

Cardinal Pell was the architect of the so-called Melbourne Response when he was Archbishop of the Melbourne Diocese in the mid-1990s. It has been roundly criticised by victims’ groups over its limitations to compensation and its failure to condemn guilty priests.

Much anticipated, Cardinal Pell’s appearance before the commission on Thursday might have been an opportunity for him to show a softer, more human side. It might also have been a chance for him to offer a hint of atonement, regret or even sorrow for the crimes of the past.

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AUSTRALIA
The Guardian

David Marr
theguardian.com, Thursday 21 August 2014

Rome has been good to Cardinal Pell. Soft folds of skin fall to his chin. He looks a little older, more comfortable and a very long way away. Hopes of a glimpse of St Peter’s were dashed. He sat in front of the plainest possible curtain for his two-and-a-half-hour grilling by the royal commission.

Surely it was one of his life’s mistakes to compare the church to a trucking company? It opened the cardinal to scorn on all sides. Did he have in mind truckies interfering with hitchhikers? Yes. Did the church have no more integrity than a trucking company?

“The church is not always of the highest integrity,” he said with regret. “It existed for 2,000 years and there is a long history of sin and crime within the church, and one of the functions of the leadership of the church is to control and eradicate this.”

He was against sin and crime; for victims; and full of apologies. He began his testimony from Rome with an apology. He recalled the apology he gave when he became the Archbishop of Melbourne. He apologised once more to Chrissie and Anthony Foster, the parents of the two little girls raped by Father Kevin O’Donnell. He so regretted things were not better between them and the church.

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AUSTRALIA
Deccan Herald

Sydney: Australia’s leading Catholic cleric George Pell, a top Vatican official, came under fire on Friday after drawing an analogy between the church’s response to child abuse and a trucking company.

Cardinal Pell, head of a new Vatican finance ministry, made the comments on Thursday. He acknowledged to a Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse in Melbourne that the church had a moral obligation to the victims of paedophile priests.

But he suggested that when it came to its legal responsibility, the actions of its priests were not necessarily the fault of the church, citing the hypothetical example of a woman being molested by a truck driver.

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KANSAS CITY (MO)
The Kansas City Star

BY JUDY L. THOMAS
THE KANSAS CITY STAR
08/22/2014

Bishop Robert Finn may be one step closer to completing his probation.

Jackson County Prosecutor Jean Peters Baker on Friday released a probation status report for the spiritual leader of the Catholic Diocese of Kansas City-St. Joseph.

Baker’s five-page report described the status of each of nine special conditions of Finn’s probation while offering no opinion on whether the two-year probation should be dismissed. Baker did, however, praise the diocese’s ombudsman, Jenifer Valenti, and director of child and youth protection, Carrie Cooper, for helping keep the diocese in compliance with the terms of the probation.

“The State wants to take this opportunity to commend Ms. Cooper and Ms. Valenti for their efforts on behalf of the children of the diocese,” Baker wrote. “Together they have worked tirelessly to implement changes in the culture of the diocese. These changes help to insure that children are protected.”

Jackson County Circuit Judge John Torrence — who convicted Finn on Sept. 6, 2012, of failing to report child abuse suspicions involving the Rev. Shawn Ratigan — will now review the report, then decide whether to dismiss Finn’s probation, which is set to expire on Sept. 5. If the judge dismisses the probation, Finn’s case will become a closed record.

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UNITED STATES
PopeCrimes& Vatican Evils.

Paris Arrow

With news compilation

On Thursday night, appearing at the Royal Commission via video link from the Vatican in Rome, Cardinal Pell equated the Catholic Church’s responsibility for child abuse to that of a “trucking company”. “If a driver sexually assaulted a passenger they picked up along the way, I don’t think it appropriate for the ownership leadership of that company be held responsible.” This is one of the most ludicrous statements that can only come from a twisted criminal mind who has many times covered-up criminal bestial pedophile priests – as a “prince of the mighty Roman Catholic Church” in Australia and his Vatican reward – was to get promoted as the treasurer of the Vatican Bank — appointed by another criminal the biggest in mankind’s history, read our related article –- Hidden Heist in the Holy See.

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OREGON
Houston Chronicle

PORTLAND, Ore. (AP) — The Oregon Supreme Court has handed a 90-day suspension to a Salem lawyer accused of ethics violations for the way he allocated settlement money to victims of alleged sexual abuse by a Catholic priest.

Daniel Gatti represented 15 men from 2001 to 2007 who said they were abused at an Oregon reform school in the 1970s. The state paid $1 million to settle the lawsuits. The Portland Archdiocese paid $600,000.

One client — a prison inmate — complained he didn’t get a detailed accounting of the settlements and that Gatti was less than forthright.

It its decision Thursday, the court said Gatti might have been exceedingly fair in divvying up the money, but it wasn’t his decision to make.

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OREGON
Oregonian

By Aimee Green | agreen@oregonian.com
on August 22, 2014

The Oregon Supreme Court has suspended the license of a Salem attorney for 90 days because of the way he communicated with his clients as he divided up a settlement fund for victims of sexual abuse by a Catholic priest.

The high court found on Thursday that Daniel J. Gatti violated professional rules of conduct by failing to properly explain and receive permission from the sex-abuse victims, his clients, when he represented them as a group. Gatti represented 15 men who as youths decades ago had been incarcerated at the MacLaren Home for Boys and said that they were molested by the facility’s chaplain, the Rev. Michael Sprauer.

Gatti represented the victims from 2001 to 2007 — settling most of their cases with the Archdiocese of Portland for $600,000 and, later, the State of Oregon for about $1.05 million. He took three cases against the state to trial — garnering jury verdicts of $590,000 for one plaintiff, $595,000 for another plaintiff and no money for the third.

Although Gatti said he was going to divide up the state settlement proportionately to how he divided up the archdiocese settlement, he didn’t do that, according to a supreme-court summary of the case.

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AUSTRALIA
The Standard

By MATT NEAL Aug. 23, 2014

A WARRNAMBOOL lawyer who has been working with sexual abuse victims has blasted Cardinal George Pell for likening the church to a trucking company.

Cardinal Pell told the Royal Commission on Child Abuse that the Catholic Church was no more legally responsible for priests who abuse children than a trucking company that employs a driver who molests women.

“If the truck driver picks up some lady and then molests her, I don’t think it’s appropriate, because it is contrary to the policy, for the ownership, the leadership of that company to be held responsible,” Cardinal Pell told the commission via video link from Rome.

But Warrnambool lawyer George Foster of Maddens Lawyers labelled the comments as “appalling”.

“I act for people who have been the subject of sexual abuse (and) Cardinal Pell’s analogy given to the royal commission likening the church’s legal liability to abused children as that of a truck company whose driver molested hitchhikers is appalling,” he said.

“May I suggest a more appropriate one: A boss who knows or suspects that his driver deliberately flouts the road laws continues to send him out on jobs.

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ISRAEL
Tzedek-Tzedek

Full Disclosure: As Tzedek-Tzedek readers will be aware, I established and run Magen. I initiated the organization as a responsible & professional response to child/sex abuse cases, particularly in the frum community.
———–

Yesterday, I attended the grim and tragic funeral of Corporal Dave Gordon z”l.

Dave was a child sex abuse victim, who bravely stepped forward and spoke out publicly, advocating for other victims to also come forward. Dave volunteered his available time to Magen, to help in promoting this cause and protecting other children from being victimized and abused.

In Dave’s case, the damage of the molestation he suffered as a child, played out tragically, even in this 21 year old, heroic, served-in-Gaza, IDF soldier.

The psychological trauma sex-abuse victims endured and often continue to endure for years and even decades, cannot be understated, minimized or overlooked.

As many are now aware, there is an extended blog-war (now officially declared a war of attrition) about Elimelech Meisels and the allegations that he sexually abused his seminary students; and the secondary allegations that, even in Meisels absence, the seminaries are still not safe due to the complicity and/or negligence of members of the staff who are still in positions of authority.

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VATICAN CITY
Religion News Service

Josephine McKenna | August 22, 2014

VATICAN CITY (RNS) One of the most powerful men in the Vatican, charged with cleaning up corruption and fostering financial reform, has outraged survivors of sex abuse by clergy by likening the church to a trucking company that refuses to take responsibility for a driver who molested women.

Cardinal George Pell, a member of Pope Francis’ advisory Council of Cardinals, was appointed the Vatican’s first economic prefect early this year by a pontiff who openly admires his “tenacity.”

But the former archbishop of Sydney has been unable to put Australia’s clerical sex abuse scandal behind him since his move to Rome.

Victim support groups expressed their anger this week after Pell gave video testimony from the Vatican to an Australian government inquiry looking into responses to child sex abuse by the Catholic Church and other institutions.

Using a hypothetical example, Pell said the church was no more responsible for cases of child abuse carried out by church figures than a trucking company would be if it employed a driver who molested women. …

The Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests, which represents 18,000 people around the world, said it was appalled by Pell’s testimony and accused the Vatican of failing to protect children.

“He shows that he really has absolutely no conception of what is appropriate or inappropriate behavior and what are appropriate or inappropriate things to say to survivors,” said SNAP’s Nicky Davis, who attended the inquiry in Melbourne, Australia.

Victims were also outraged by the Vatican’s refusal to hand over files requested by the Australian inquiry since the pope has signaled a tougher approach to fighting clerical sexual abuse and established a Vatican committee that includes Irish abuse survivor Marie Collins.

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VATICAN CITY
Gazzetta del Sud

Vatican City, August 22 – Survivors of clerical sex abuse are outraged by testimony from Cardinal George Pell comparing the Vatican to a trucking company that could not be blamed if a driver molested a hitchhiker. Pell, now the Vatican’s economic honcho, made the remark while testifying via videolink from Rome to an Australian probe into historic abuse and alleged cover-ups when he was Melbourne archbishop in the 1990s. Saying it would not be appropriate for legal culpability to be “foisted” on church leaders, he drew an analogy between the Catholic Church and a trucking company, citing a hypothetical example of a case involving a woman who was molested by a truck driver. “It would not be appropriate, because it’s contrary to the policy, for the ownership, leadership of that company to be held responsible,” Cardinal Pell said. “Similarly with the church and the head of any other organisation. “If every precaution has been taken, no warning has been given, it is, I think, not appropriate for legal culpability to be foisted on the authority figure. “If in fact the authority figure has been remiss through bad preparation [or] bad procedures or been warned and done nothing or [done something] insufficient, then certainly the church official would be responsible.” Nicky Davis from the Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests (SNAP) was in the audience of the royal commission during Cardinal Pell’s comments. She said the truck analogy left the audience “open mouthed in shock”. “We were literally saying to each other, ‘Did he really just say that?’,” she said.

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CANADA
Lethbridge Herald

BY THE CANADIAN PRESS ON AUGUST 22, 2014.

PEACE RIVER, Alta. – A Catholic priest in northwestern Alberta who is accused of sexually assaulting a minor has been told he cannot travel outside Canada to attend a funeral because he is considered a flight risk.

The order was issued following a preliminary hearing Thursday in Peace River for Abraham Azhakathu, who is facing charges of sexual assault and sexual interference.

The 59-year-old man’s brother died in India earlier this year, but a request by the accused to participate in a memorial service was rejected by both the Crown prosecutor and provincial court Judge C. K. Thietke (TEE’-kah).

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