ABUSE TRACKER

GERMANY
Washington Times

By Cheryl K. Chumley-The Washington Times Wednesday, April 30, 2014

A German Catholic priest who fathered a daughter eight years after he vowed celibacy has nonetheless pressed forward with a petition to Pope Francis: Please waive my oath.

Stefan Hartmann recently revealed he has a daughter, and that’s drawn fire from the superiors in his parish in Oberhaid, United Press International reported. They asked him to leave.

But the priest, 59, is fighting back, posting on his Facebook page this message: “There is a human right to partnership, marriage and starting a family, even if you can voluntarily waive it for religious reasons.”

He then asked Francis for a “positive answer” that would let him keep his priestly position, UPI reported.

“I tried to walk the road of celibacy again, but since 2007 I have realized more and more that I am just not up to it,” he wrote. “I have known for some years now that the oath I took after just two and a half years of seminary training was too rushed and did not reflect the constitution of my character. …

[However, it’s still my] calling to be a Catholic priest, a pastor and a theologian.”

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NEW JERSEY
The Star-Ledger

READ THE JUDGE’S OPINION HERE

By Mark Mueller/The Star-Ledger
on April 30, 2014

In a case that could have broad implications for New Jersey’s cemetery industry, a judge has ruled the Archdiocese of Newark did not violate state law when it began marketing headstones and private mausoleums directly to consumers at its Catholic burial grounds.

The decision, released Tuesday in Superior Court in New Brunswick, deals a blow to the state’s headstone dealers, who argued in a lawsuit that Catholic cemeteries should fall under a law explicitly barring nonsectarian cemeteries from selling headstones and private family mausoleums.

The archdiocese became the first cemetery operator in the state, religious or otherwise, to enter the lucrative headstone business in April of last year. Two independent dealers and their trade association, the Monument Builders of New Jersey, filed the lawsuit three months later, saying the new venture would swiftly undercut them and drive them out of business.

On Tuesday, in the wake of the ruling against the dealers, Monument Builders President John Burns Jr. reiterated that prediction of financial ruin and said his group would appeal.

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AUSTRALIA
Sky News

A former Catholic priest who abused three Victorian schoolboys in the 1960s will spend another four months behind bars.

James Patrick Jennings, 81, indecently assaulted the boys while a priest at Bendigo’s St Vincent’s College in the 1960s.

He was jailed on Wednesday for three years, but two-and-a-half years of the term was suspended.

The sentence takes into account the two months he has already served in jail before his sentencing, meaning he will serve four more months.

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AUSTRALIA
Daily Telegraph

Royal Commission hears from victim: Priest told me to say three Hail Marys after abuse’

EMILY MOULTON THE DAILY TELEGRAPH APRIL 30, 2014

WHEN Ted Delaney finally found the courage to reveal he was being sexually abused, he didn’t receive help – he was simply told to say three Hail Marys.

The priest attached to Bindoon boys home, who took the confessional, Father William, didn’t care a crime had been committed against a young boy, all he wanted to know was had the former resident been a willing participant.

“When I was about 13 years old, I went to confession and fessed to Father William that Brother Parker was sexually abusing me,” Mr Delaney told the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sex Abuse today.

“I didn’t use those exact words, but I think I said something like ‘I wish to confess that one of the brothers is having sex with me and he is treating me like a woman’.

“Father William asked me who, and I said Brother Parker. Father William said ‘Did you participate?’ and I said ‘No’. Father William told me to say three Hail Marys and pray and I would be forgiven.”

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AUSTRALIA
Australian Teacher Magazine

PERTH, April 30 – A man who was left for weeks without treatment for broken bones while in the care of Christian Brothers at a Western Australia orphanage says the federal government neglected its responsibility to child migrants.

Giving evidence at the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse, Edward Delaney says he was told by a priest he would be forgiven for being raped by a brother if he said three Hail Mary’s.

When Delaney was 14, he fell while working at St Joseph’s Farm and Trade School, Bindoon.

“For two weeks I cried with the pain and finally when we were staying at Moore River (the Christian Brothers holiday home) I was crying so much I was taken to Royal Perth hospital.

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AUSTRALIA
7 News

BY EOIN BLACKWELL
April 30, 2014

A survivor of child sex abuse at a West Australian boarding school wants the remains of a former principal exhumed from the school and reburied with his “pedophile” mates, a royal commission has heard.

Gordon Grant, a former resident of St Joseph’s Farm and Trade School, Bindoon, also wants the marble-top tombstone of Brother Paul Keaney – the superior of the school in 1947 – dumped in a piggery.

Mr Grant, now in his 80s, was sent to Bindoon from Wales when he was 14.

While at the school, he was physically beaten by Brother Keaney and repeatedly sexually abused by other brothers.

Mr Grant says he wants Keaney’s remains exhumed from the grounds of Bindoon and reinterred at the 115-year-old Karrakatta Cemetery in Perth.

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AUSTRALIA
The Guardian (UK)

Australian Associated Press
theguardian.com, Wednesday 30 April 2014

A former Catholic priest who abused three Victorian schoolboys in the 1960s will spend another four months behind bars.

James Patrick Jennings, 81, indecently assaulted the boys while he was a priest at St Vincent’s College in Bendigo in the 1960s.

He was jailed on Wednesday for three years, but two-and-a-half years of the term was suspended.

The sentence takes into account the two months he has already spent in jail before his sentencing, meaning he will serve four more months.

Victorian county court judge, Wendy Wilmoth, said Jennings knew when the schoolboys he abused would be alone and in which dormitory they slept.

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VATICAN
La Croix (France)

[Summary: The committee appointed by Pope Francis to study sexual abuse in the church will meet on Thursday, May 1. One of the members, Marie Collins of Ireland, was abused by a priest when she was a child. She was one of the first in Ireland to report abuse by priests. She was hoping that this committee would include the voices of the survivors.]

Cette commission se réunit au Vatican pour la première fois jeudi 1er mai.

Lorsqu’elle a appris qu’une Commission pontificale pour la protection de mineurs serait créée au Vatican, Marie Collins, qui fut l’une des premières en Irlande à dénoncer les abus sexuels commis par des prêtres, attendait comme un « test » de connaître les noms de ses membres. « J’espérais avant toute chose qu’elle inclue la voix des survivants. » Elle était pourtant loin d’imaginer qu’elle serait « appelée à incarner cette voix », raconte-t-elle, reconnaissant avoir éprouvé un « choc » à l’annonce de sa nomination parmi les huit experts de la nouvelle instance constituée par le pape François, le 21 mars.

Elle-même agressée sexuellement par un prêtre en 1960, devenue porte-parole des « survivants » de la pédophilie dans l’Église irlandaise, comme ils se dénomment eux-mêmes, cette Dublinoise de 67 ans affirmait avoir toujours gardé la foi, mais perdu « toute confiance » dans l’institution. Elle avait pourtant accepté, il y a deux ans, de participer au symposium international organisé au Vatican pour coordonner la lutte contre les abus sexuels dans l’Église, malgré les critiques de certaines victimes l’accusant de trahison.

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MEXICO
El Comercio

[Summary: The Film “Perfect Obedience”, which is inspired by the case of Mexican pederast priest Marcial Maciel, opens Friday in Mexico. It brings to the screen the subject of sexual abuse that rocked the congregation of the Legionaries of Christ which was found by Maciel. He was closed to Pope John Paul II until he died in 2008 at age 87.]

La película mexicana ‘Obediencia perfecta’, inspirada en el caso del sacerdote pederasta mexicano Marcial Maciel, no busca la provocación sino “conmover y provocar reflexión”, dijo hoy su director, Luis Urquiza.

El filme, que se estrena el jueves en México, lleva a la pantalla el tema de los abusos sexuales que sacudieron a la congregación de los Legionarios de Cristo, fundada por Maciel. El sacerdote mexicano, cercano a Juan Pablo II, murió en 2008 a los 87 años alejado del ministerio público por órdenes del Vaticano debido a las acusaciones de abuso, pero nunca fue sometido a proceso.

Después de su muerte se supo también que había tenido tres hijos con dos mujeres. La película llegará a 500 cines en todo México pocos días después de la canonización de los papas Juan XXIII y Juan Pablo II y luego de que el actual Sumo Pontífice Francisco pidiera perdón por los casos de abuso sexual cometidos por clérigos contra niños.

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HAWAII
SF Gate

HONOLULU (AP) — The Hawaii Legislature has approved two bills that would give victims of child sex abuse more time to file complaints and prosecutors unlimited time to file criminal charges.

One of the proposals (HB 2034) would completely remove the statute of limitations for continuous sexual assault of a child or abuse in the first and second degrees.

The other (SB 2687) would extend the deadline for civil filings to 2016.

Victims had been given a two-year window to file lawsuits in cases that had passed the statute of limitations. But that window closed last week.

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AUSTRALIA
WA Today

April 29, 2014

Aleisha Orr
Reporter, WA Today

Men who were victims of sexual abuse as children while in the care of the Christian Brothers have told a public hearing in Perth that they not only had to go through the trauma of abuse but also the “traumatic” process of trying to receive compensation.

On Tuesday, a man known to the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse as ‘VV’ described sexual and physical abuse he experienced at Bindoon Farm School.

He said he “could not stop trembling” after the first time he was raped by one of the brothers, two weeks after arriving at Bindoon Farm School in 1954 at nine years of age.

VV said the abuse by brothers, priests and other boys continued until he left Bindoon in 1961 but he could not move on from what happened to him.

“People say you can get on with it, lift yourself above it. I tried to do this and I thought I was being successful but always… always in your mind there is the belief that you don’t deserve anything good,” he told the hearing.

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AUSTRALIA
WA Today

April 29, 2014

Aleisha Orr
Reporter, WA Today

The fifth witness to give evidence at the Perth hearings of the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse told of not only physical and sexual abuse but the suspicious deaths of two children at Bindoon Farm School while he was there in the 1960s.

Clifford Walsh arrived as a child migrant from the United Kingdom in Australia at the age of nine.
He recalled the deaths of Brian Duncan and another boy, Tony Sullivan amid stories of physical and sexual abuse of the children in care who he said were put to work rather than given education.

Mr Walsh said he had been told Tony Sullivan died after he had been sliding down a concrete bannister.

“I remember another boy saying Tony had just come out of one of the brothers rooms and was upset and disoriented when he fell over the bannister.”

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MALTA/AUSTRALIA
Times of Malta

A Royal Commission in Australia has heard more shocking evidence by Maltese men about the abuse they suffered from Christian brothers when they were orphan boys.

The commission, meeting in Perth, is investigating institutional responses to child sexual abuse.

The West Australian newspaper said hundreds of boys at the Bindoon, Tardun and Castledare institutions were beaten by day and raped by night.

Orphaned or distanced from parents unaware of their plight, nobody could hear the screams.
And those who did hear them refused to save them.

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AUSTRALIA
WA Today

April 29, 2014

Aleisha Orr
Reporter, WA Today

An overwhelming sense of loss has come through in the evidence given by witnesses at the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse.

Nine of 11 men who were sexually abused as children while in the care of Christian Brothers in Western Australian institutions, who are set to speak as part of public hearings in Perth, have talked about their experiences.

“I lost my country, I lost my language, I lost my culture, I lost my family and I lost any chance of a decent career,” Raphael Ellul told the commission at the second day of hearings.

Mr Ellul was a child migrant from Malta who was sent to Australia to “obtain a better future”, which he described as “rubbish”.

He arrived in Australia in 1960 at age 10 and was sent to St Mary’s Agricultural School in Tardun.

Mr Elull was not allowed to speak Maltese even though he knew no English and took three years to pick up enough Pidgin English “to get by”.

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ST. LOUIS (MO)
Bilgrimage

William D. Lindsey

David Clohessy for SNAP: Twice-Arrested Priest in St. Louis Still Being Defended by Small, Vocal Group of Local Catholics

I’d like to point readers today to David Clohessy’s posting at the SNAP blog site about the small but loud bunch of Catholics rallying around Father Joseph Jiang in St. Louis, after a teenaged girl alleged that Jiang sexually abused her when she was fifteen years old. As David notes, the girls’ parents believe her, as do the police, prosecutors, and St. Louis’s most experienced attorney dealing with clergy abuse cases, Ken Chackes.

As David also notes, in a court filing, law enforcement officials state that they have a phone message, several text messages, and a $20,000 check that Jiang is said to have left for the girl’s parents after they confronted him with their suspicions. Jiang has also been suspended by St. Louis archbishop Robert Carlson, and in the civil suit they’ve filed against Jiang (according to David, a criminal case has been dropped for complicated legal reasons), the parents of the girl state that Jiang admitted his guilt to them as well as to Carlson.

A boy has now come forth making allegations similar to those of the girl, and his parents believe him, as do the police and prosecutors. Even so, as Lilly Fowler and Jesse Bogan note recently for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, a small but very vocal group of St. Louis Catholics is claiming that Father Jiang is being persecuted, and that the allegations against him are insubstantial.

As SNAP officials and others connected to groups supporting abuse survivors have repeatedly noted, the formation of vocal pressure groups to defend religious officials accused of sexual abuse of minors almost always complicates the process of investigating the claims of those who have alleged abuse. It creates an atmosphere in which those claims cannot easily be investigated and adjudicated, and it frequently lends comfort and assistance to religious authority figures who turn out to have done precisely what it’s alleged they have done.

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MALTA/AUSTRALIA
Times of Malta

A Royal Commission in Australia has heard more shocking evidence by Maltese men about the abuse they suffered from Christian brothers when they were orphan boys.

The commission, meeting in Perth, is investigating institutional responses to child sexual abuse.
The West Australian newspaper said hundreds of boys at the Bindoon, Tardun and Castledare institutions were beaten by day and raped by night.

Orphaned or distanced from parents unaware of their plight, nobody could hear the screams.
And those who did hear them refused to save them.

Young Raphael Ellul, who was at Tardun, made it all the way to a police station in Mullewa, only to be clipped over the ear by the local officer, who told him, “Don’t tell lies about good Christian men”.

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AUSTRALIA
ABC News

By Irena Ceranic

A man sexually abused in a church-run institution was ignored by police and warned he would be charged if he continued to make abuse allegations, a royal commission has heard.

The Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse entered its third day of hearings in Perth today.

Edward Delaney was a child migrant from England when he was sent to a Christian Brothers institution at Castledare, and then sent on to Bindoon.

He has told the commission he was physically and sexually abused by the brothers at Bindoon over a prolonged period.

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AUSTRALIA
WA Today

April 30, 2014

Aleisha Orr
Reporter, WA Today

Victims of sexual abuse at Christian Brothers run institutions have slammed the law firm which represented them in a class action, alleging they were “forced” to sign a settlement they did not understand.

The Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse heard from the final two of 11 victims at Wednesday morning, the third day of Perth’s public hearing.

Gordon Grant and Edward Delaney spoke of sexual abuse at Bindoon Farm School.

Mr Delaney, who was taken as a child to Australia from the United Kingdom without the consent of his mother, described the class action put forward by Slater & Gordon in the 1990s as “a joke”.

He said he was told the church had made an offer and, “if I did not take the offer, I would get nothing.”

“If I did take the offer, that was the end of it. It was only around $3000. For what we went though, I felt this was an insult”.

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AUSTRALIA
WA Today

April 30, 2014

Aleisha Orr
Reporter, WA Today

Concerns about the living conditions at Bindoon Farm School were raised in documents from the West Australian government department responsible for child welfare at the time, an inquiry into institutional abuse has heard.

WA Department of Child Protection acting director general Emma White presented the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse with a number of documents on the third day of the public hearing being held in Perth.

An inspection report written in November 1947 about a visit to Bindoon Farm School the month before raised concerns with “the cleanliness and physical environment in which the children were being kept”.

A letter from the secretary of the government department to the Roman Catholic Archbishop of Perth in regard to this visit addressed these welfare issues.

“I have no doubt when I next visit in three or four weeks there will be a decided improvement along the lines I wish, and more particularly in the educational facilities.”

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AUSTRALIA
The West Australian

AMANDA BANKS LEGAL AFFAIRS EDITOR The West Australian
April 30, 2014

Allowing priests and brothers to marry would solve a lot of the problems of the Catholic Church, an abused former Christian Brothers’ resident told a royal commission in Perth this morning.

Giving evidence on the third day of the hearing into systemic sexual, physical and mental abuse of young boys at four WA Christian Brothers homes, Edward Delaney said there also needed to be greater scrutiny of the people allowed into the Catholic Church.

Mr Delaney, the 10th former resident of the orphanages to give evidence, told the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse that the Australian and British governments had a lot to answer for in regard to the atrocities committed against him at the Bindoon home for boys.

He said no amount of money could ever compensate him for the sexual, physical and mental abuse inflicted on him by the brothers who had been entrusted with his care.

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GEORGIA
Ledger-News

By Jessica Lindley
Posted on Apr 30, 2014

A former First Baptist Church of Canton volunteer accused of molesting a child at Bible school in the summer of 2010 pleaded guilty this month to the lesser offense of sexual battery against a minor.

Cherokee County Superior Court Chief Judge Jackson Harris sentenced Matthew Brent Sheffield on April 18 to serve eight years on probation for the aforementioned offense.

Conditions of his probation also require Sheffield to register as a sex offender.

According to court records, Sheffield was indicted by a Cherokee County Grand Jury in April 2011 on two counts of child molestation. The indictment charged Sheffield with inappropriately touching a juvenile’s thigh and leg in June 2010, as well as touching the boy’s buttocks.

A civil suit filed by the parents of the juvenile, which was dismissed with prejudice last July, contended that the alleged misconduct occurred during a Bible school program at First Baptist Church of Canton and again during a church sanctioned trip to the beach.

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AUSTRALIA
ABC News

A former Catholic priest will serve six months in jail for sexually abusing three boys at a Bendigo school.

James Jennings, 81, was a teacher at St Vincent’s College (which is now known as Catholic College Bendigo) in the 1960s, when he sexually abused three boys, who were aged 12 and 13 at the time.

The offences took place in their bedrooms, his office and the school sick bay.

One of the boys suffered frequent and sustained abuse over several years.

In a victim impact statement tendered in the county court, he said the abuse made him feel “exploited, humiliated, ashamed and embarrassed.”

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AUSTRALIA
Herald Sun

EMILY PORTELLI NEWS LIMITED APRIL 30, 2014

AN ELDERLY former Catholic priest who forced a teenage boarder to sexually gratify him and then confess his sin and beg forgiveness will serve only six months in jail.

James Patrick Jennings, 81, received a largely suspended three-year term of imprisonment for the sustained sexual abuse of three young boarders at a regional Victorian school in the mid-1960s.

County Court judge Wendy Wilmoth said allegations of abuse were reported to at least three priests at St Vincent’s College in Bendigo but took decades to reach the police.

The judge said one complainant — now in his 60s — came forward only when his local priest read aloud an apology from the local bishop for the sexual assaults on children by priests.

Judge Wilmoth said Jennings’ state of profound denial led him to allege the complainants — who had not met and had no knowledge of any other complaints against the former priest and teacher — had fabricated the assaults for financial gain.

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COLORADO
The Daily Sentinel

By Paul Shockley
Tuesday, April 29, 2014

Allegations of sexual abuse against a Catholic priest assigned to Grand Junction nearly five decades ago, claims raised in open court during a hearing on Friday at the Mesa County Justice Center, are the subject of an open case, a spokeswoman for the Mesa County Sheriff’s Office said Tuesday.

Heather Benjamin of the Sheriff’s Office said the agency is declining additional comment on the matter until Mesa County District Judge Valerie Robison issues a ruling on a motion for a new trial for 72-year-old sex offender Rodney Eddy.

Eddy’s bid for a new trial was the subject of a four-hour hearing Friday before Robison.

A man who served as a juror during Eddy’s second Mesa County jury trial in August 2010 testified on Friday he was sexually abused by a priest in Grand Junction in 1965, at age 12. In a screening questionnaire sent out in advance of Eddy’s trial, the man answered “no” when asked if he’d ever been a victim of sexual abuse. He also told investigators he was interested in “payback” for wrongs allegedly committed against him, once he learned about the nature of the allegations in Eddy’s case.

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OREGON
Portland Tribune

Wednesday, 30 April 2014 01:00 | Written by Tyler Francke

An $8.5 million lawsuit has been filed in Multnomah County Circuit Court against the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Portland, along with St. Luke Catholic Church in Woodburn, in connection with a 2012 sex abuse case involving a popular local priest.

Angel Armando Perez, 48, was a priest at St. Luke in August 2012, when he was charged with first-degree sex abuse (a Measure 11 offense), driving under the influence of intoxicants and two counts of furnishing alcohol to a minor. Under the terms of a plea agreement, Perez pleaded guilty in April 2013 and was assessed the mandatory minimum sentence for the sex abuse charge — six years, three months — which he is currently serving.

His victim was a Salem boy, 12 at the time, who is identified in court documents only as “J.T.” The initial complaint in the lawsuit, filed April 23 by the Barton Law Firm in Newport, describes the plaintiff and his family as “particularly devout, attending church regularly.” It also notes that, as immigrants, the church played a particularly important role in the family members’ lives.

The complaint claims that Perez, in the course of his ministerial duties as a priest, befriended the victim and established himself as a spiritual guide and trustworthy mentor.

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AUSTRALIA
Australian Teacher Magazine

PERTH, April 29 – A Christian Brother known for extreme violence at a West Australian boys’ school seemed to get a sexual thrill out of beating boys for minor transgressions, a survivor has told a royal commission.

Brother Bruno Doyle tried to stop the rampant sex abuse at St Joseph’s Farm and Trade School in Bindoon when he took over as head of the school in 1959, but he was still violent and sadistic, the commission heard.

The witness, known as VV, on Tuesday told the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual abuse he was once beaten almost unconscious by Brother Doyle.

The Christian Brother once “worked himself into a rage” and had an erection while beating VV.

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AUSTRALIA
The West Australian

[with video]

COLLEEN EGAN The West Australian
April 30, 2014

They were trapped.

Beaten by day and raped by night, hundreds of boys at the Bindoon, Tardun and Castledare institutions had no escape.

Orphaned or distanced from parents unaware of their plight, nobody could hear the screams.

And those who did hear them refused to save them.

Witnesses told the second day of the royal commission yesterday of their heroic yet futile attempts to escape the violence and depravity doled out by a sadistic club of Christian Brothers responsible for their care.

One child told a priest visiting to hear confession he was being sexually abused – and was chastised for making up lies.

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NEW YORK
The Jewish Daily Forward

By JTA
Published April 29, 2014.

A Hasidic man from Brooklyn was sentenced to five years probation for throwing bleach in the face of a rabbi who had accused the man’s father of being a sexual predator.

Meilech Schnitzler, 38, pleaded guilty on Monday in Brooklyn state Supreme Court to felony assault for throwing bleach at Rabbi Nuchem Rosenberg, an advocate for victims of sexual abuse in the New York City borough’s haredi Orthodox Jewish community.

In 2012, Rosenberg on his blog for sexual abuse victims accused Schnitzler’s father of being a child sexual molester. As Rosenberg walked past Schnitzler’s Brooklyn fish market, Schnitzler ran toward him with a cup of bleach and threw it in his face.

Rosenberg, of the same Williamsburg neighborhood in Brooklyn, was treated for burns on his face, around his eyes and in his left eye.

The incident came a day after Nechemya Weberman, a Satmar Hasidim leader, was convicted on 59 counts of sexual abuse of a then-18-year-old woman when she was between the ages of 12 and 15 and went to Weberman for counseling. Rosenberg supported and assisted the victim throughout the judicial process.

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CHICAGO (IL)
TheMediaReport

The anti-Catholic pressure group SNAP sets the bar very high in its purported quest to protect children from abuse – or it least when it comes to the Catholic Church.

In the past, SNAP’s hysterical founder and president, Barbara Blaine, has said that it is “reckless” and “irresponsible” for Church officials to fail to call law enforcement and keep an accused cleric in ministry “even for one day” before calling police and yanking an accused cleric out of ministry.

But if nothing else, SNAP is rich in hypocrisy. So it should come as no surprise that, according to an Archdiocese of Chicago press release, SNAP did not call police or alert Church officials even though it knew “for several weeks” about a shocking sex abuse allegation against a Chicago priest.

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MASSACHUSETTS
The Republican

By Jeanette DeForge | jdeforge@repub.com
Follow on Twitter
on April 29, 2014

EAST LONGMEADOW – Rev. James J. Scahill, a controversial but beloved priest known for being an outspoken critic of the way the Catholic church has handled the sex abuse scandal, will retire as pastor of St. Michael’s Parish in June.

Scahill, who is around 67, met with Rev. Timothy A. McDonnell, the bishop of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Springfield, to discuss his plans to retire recently, said Mark E. Dupont, spokesman for the diocese.

“It is not an unusual time. It is the end of the fiscal year and the program and there is plenty of notice to give the bishop a chance to find a new pastor for July,” Dupont said.

Scahill, who could not be reached for comment, is known internationally for his years of support of victims of priest sex abuse and his outspoken criticism of the way the Catholic Church has handled the crisis. He has appeared on a variety of international networks including the British Broadcasting Corp. and Cable News Network in 2010 after urging then-Pope Benedict XVI to deal more forcefully with sex abuse causes or resign.

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AUSTRALIA
Irish Examiner

By Jenny Johnson

A 10-year-old boy was told by a priest to make himself less attractive so as not to be a target for sexual abuse, a royal commission has heard in Australia.

The Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse has also heard that Christian Brothers pimped boys out to a visiting photographer at St Joseph’s Farm and Trade School, Bindoon, in the late 1950s.

A witness known as VV told the commission in Perth that a Christian Brother who raped him suddenly announced he needed to confess his sins.

“Then Brother Parker came back and said I needed to see Father Gerard. Father Gerard sat me down and told me what we were doing was very wrong, and that I should make myself less attractive,” VV said.

“I should stop leading Brother Parker on, because it was a sin. He told me it was my fault, all the while he sat there sucking a cigar, blaming a child for being assaulted.”

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.

ILLINOIS
Jeff Anderson & Assoicates

Updated Media Advisory

April 29, 2014

Chicago News Conference Wednesday

(Chicago, IL) – In addition to the Diocese of Joliet document release on April 30, 2014, in Chicago, IL, video from Bishop Imesch’s 2005 deposition will be released. Detailed summaries and timelines of the Diocese of Joliet files will also be available.

Copies of the transcript and video will be available on our websites www.abusedinchicago.com and www.andersonadvocates.com as well as on our YouTube channel, AndersonAdvocates.

WHEN/WHERE:

11:00AM CDT
Law Offices of Kerns, Frost & Pearlman and Jeff Anderson & Associates
30 West Monroe
Suite 1600
Chicago, IL 60603

Contact Jeff Anderson: Office: 651.227.9990 Mobile: 612.817.8665
Contact Marc Pearlman: Office: 312.261.4550 Mobile: 773.368.0142

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.

PHILADELPHIA (PA)
Philadelphia Inquirer

No question but that Catholic priest Andrew McCormick had one of the region’s most respected criminal defense lawyers for his trial in March for allegedly sexually assaulting a 10-year-old altar boy in 1997 at St. John Cantius church in Bridesburg.

Now, more than a month after the Philadelphia Common Pleas Court jury deadlocked in its deliberations, it seems lawyer William J. Brennan Jr. may be irreplaceable.

On Monday, McCormick, 57, was supposed to tell Judge Gwendolyn N. Bright the name of the lawyer who will represent him in the retrial. Instead, McCormick told the judge he was still lawyer-less although the reasons why were not explained.

Bright gave McCormick until May 29.

Brennan, appearing exhausted, withdrew as McCormick’s lawyer after the March 12 mistrial. Earlier, the veteran lawyer said he felt uncomfortable after discovering shortly before trial that he knew the extended family of the alleged victim.

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

AUSTRALIA
Mandurah Mail

By Kate Hedley April 29, 2014

WHEN Helena Maiolo was 12 years old she was thrown into a bin full of pig slop in a bid to try to shut her up.

More than 40 years later, the Mandurah woman refuses to be silenced.

Just one of tens of thousands who suffered at the hands of abusers while in State care, Ms Maiolo has made it her mission to speak out against child abuse.

Referring to herself, and others who were abused while institutionalised, as a ‘forgotten Australian’, the mother of four chose the opening week of the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse as the moment to have her say.

“I was told to keep quiet,” Ms Maiolo said.

“But they can’t shut me up now.

“I have a voice and I’m going to use it.”

Placed in care at just two years old following the breakdown of her parents’ marriage, Ms Maiolo and her three siblings learnt early on that abandonment was to become a central theme in their lives.

Speaking only for herself – the 56-year-old will not comment on experiences faced by her siblings – Ms Maiolo said being placed in a Salvation Army childrens’ home in Perth at 11 led to “horrific and ongoing” abuse.

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
Bilgrimage

William D. Lindsey

Is it just me, or do things feel really depressed right now, following the big papal circus of the day of the four popes? I had thought that the big papal circus was designed to have precisely the opposite effect. As Susan Jacoby rightly notes,

The dual canonization is an attempt to please the traditional Catholic base while luring back some among the millions of who have left the church in what was once Christendom’s western bastion.

Jacoby had previously explained the point about “luring back some among the millions who have left the church in what was once Christendom’s western bastion” by noting,

It is no accident that during John Paul’s conservative papacy — when the church refused to reconsider sexual prohibitions applying to the laity but covered up sexual abuse of children by priests — millions of practicing Catholics decamped in the United States and Western Europe. According to a Pew poll conducted in 2009, more than one out of five native-born Americans raised in the church no longer consider themselves Catholics.

And so as she notes that the dual canonization is being sold by media spin-doctors as an adroit way for Pope Francis to heal the divisions in the church and bring back many who have strayed, she observes:

It is difficult to imagine, though, that Catholics who no longer consider themselves Catholics are likely to return to a church that still condemns divorce, artificial birth control, in vitro fertilization, abortion for any reason and gay unions. Moreover, if the church continues to require priestly celibacy and refuses to consider the ordination of women (Francis has already reiterated his support for the latter policy), there will continue to be a severe priest shortage.

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.

ROME
Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests

New Vatican abuse panel to hold 1st meeting
Victims beg committee: “Take immediate action”
Use ‘bully pulpit’ to ‘denounce bad bishops,’ they urge
They also ask for open, public hearings in several countries
SNAP: “Vulnerable kids can’t wait a year or two for Vatican steps”
“Practical moves, that require no study, are needed right now,” they say

WHAT
Holding signs and childhood photos, clergy sex abuse victims will call on Pope Francis’ new child sex panel to take immediate steps to protect kids. Specifically, victims want the panel (at or shortly after their first meeting) to

–make public all agendas and minutes of their meetings,
–hold public hearings about the church’s on-going abuse and cover up crisis in at least a dozen nations, and
They will also beg the panel to immediately denounce
–the new, secretive Italian bishops abuse policy, and
–Individual bishops who are clearly concealing or have concealed abuse.

WHEN
Wednesday, April 30 at 11:00 a.m. (Rome time/Central European time)

WHERE
Hotel Orange- Via Crescenzio, 86, 00193 Roma, Italy; +39 06 686 8969

WHO
One-two clergy sex abuse victims who are leaders in an international support group called SNAP, the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests (SNAPnetwork.org). One is a Chicago woman who is the founder and longtime president of the organization.

WHY
Pope Francis’ new abuse study panel will meet for the first time ever on May 1 in Rome.

Over the past two decades, hundreds of similar church panels have been set up at the national and diocesan levels across the world, SNAP says. Those panels have been ineffective, SNAP says, in part because they tend to operate in secrecy with little real input from independent sources.

These hand-picked panel members –mostly all Catholic church-goers – have rarely spoken out in public, even in the most egregious cases of recklessness, callousness and deceit by Catholic officials.

So SNAP believes the pope’s new panel should make public all agendas and minutes of their meetings and hold public hearings about the church’s on-going abuse and cover up crisis in at least a dozen nations. SNAP also wants the panel to immediately denounce the new, secretive Italian bishops abuse policy, and individual bishops who are clearly concealing or have concealed abuse.

Historically, church spokesmen claim that these church abuse panels are to focus on the “big picture” and “long term proposals.” But SNAP says children can’t wait for one or two or three years of “study.” Regardless of what the church hierarchy wants, SNAP contends that these panels – or panel members – have both the chance and the duty to take action now to expose and deter cover-ups. The best way to do that, SNAP feels, is to rebuke the most serious and blatant “enablers,” the church supervisors who endanger kids by protecting predators and keeping secrets.

The panel should also urge bishops to fight for, not against, reforming secular child safety laws (like the archaic, predatory-friendly statutes of limitations).

SNAP believes that only similar swift and public action will help keep children safe, and that the panel will only be effective if it insists on concrete reforms, including the punishment of wrongdoers.

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.

ILLINOIS
Jeff Anderson & Associates

Media Advisory
April 29, 2014

Chicago News Conference Wednesday

Documents on 16 Priests from the Diocese of Joliet, Bishop Imesch to be Disclosed Wednesday

Sexual abuse survivors and their attorneys will respond to the release and announce the filing of five lawsuits

What: At a news conference on Wednesday, April 30, 2014 in Chicago, sexual abuse attorneys Jeff Anderson and Marc Pearlman will:
• Publicly release the files of 16 priests credibly accused of sexually abusing minors in the Diocese of Joliet.
• Announce the filing of five lawsuits naming the Diocese of Joliet.
• Reveal secret Diocesan communications detailing the Diocese’s efforts to conceal abuse and protect itself at the expense of innocent children.
• Introduce several sexual abuse survivors who will respond to the release of the files and share their experiences in fighting to make these files public.

WHEN: Wednesday, April 30, 2014 at 11:00 AM CDT

WHERE: Law Offices of Kerns, Frost & Pearlman and Jeff Anderson & Associates
30 West Monroe
Suite 1600
Chicago, IL 60603

WHO: Attorneys Jeff Anderson and Marc Pearlman, lawyers specializing in sexual abuse litigation who work together on behalf of sexual abuse survivors in Illinois helping them achieve justice and healing.

Notes:
• All documents will be available online Wednesday morning prior to the press event at www.abusedinchicago.com and www.andersonadvocates.com.

Contact Jeff Anderson: Office: 651.964.3458 Mobile: 612.817.8665
Contact Marc Pearlman: Office: 312.261.4550 Mobile: 773.368.0142

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

VATICAN CITY
Washington Post

By Josephine Mckenna | Religion News Service, Updated: Tuesday, April 29

VATICAN CITY — Pope Francis and his council of eight cardinals are unlikely to complete a radical shakeup of the Holy See’s administration, or Curia, before 2015, the Vatican said Tuesday (April 29).

The council, which includes Australian Cardinal George Pell, head of the Vatican’s new economic secretariat, has been meeting in Rome for the past two days and also received input from the Vatican’s secretary of state, Cardinal Pietro Parolin.

Francis joined the council’s discussions in between events on an intense appointment schedule that included an audience with King Juan Carlos of Spain after the historic double canonizations of Popes John Paul II and John XXIII on Sunday.

“The work is of some importance,” Pell said on Monday evening at a function to mark the 40th anniversary of diplomatic relations between Australia and the Holy See.

The former archbishop of Sydney recently moved to Rome to take up his new position. He said there is a great deal of work to be done but declined to comment further.

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VATICAN CITY
National Catholic Reporter

Joshua J. McElwee | Apr. 29, 2014 NCR Today

VATICAN CITY Former Vatican Secretary of State Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone has responded to criticism that his new residence at the Vatican is too large and opulent, saying the apartment is of normal size for a church prelate and that Pope Francis has called him to express support.

Reports in recent days had said Bertone, who served at the Vatican post from 2006-13, had gone to unusual expense to combine two previous apartments inside the Vatican into one 6,500 square foot residence.

Writing on the website of the Italian archdiocese of Genoa, which the cardinal led from 2002-06, Bertone says he received a call from Francis April 23 during which the pope informed the cardinal of “his sympathy and his disappointment for the attacks against me about the apartment.”

“The apartment is spacious, as is normal for the residences in the ancient palaces of the Vatican, and dutifully restored (at my expense),” writes Bertone.

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.

DEUTSCHLAND
BZ

[Summary: Nigel D., 53, now stands before the Berlin district court charged with child abuse. He had allegedly abused the boy for years while his own son was next to the bed. He taught at the Nelson Mandela School but also started a free church.]

Ein Wilmersdorfer Lehrer missbrauchte jahrelang einen Knaben, den er selbst unterrichtet hatte. Sein eigener Sohn lag daneben im Bett!

Jetzt steht er vor dem Berliner Landgericht. Nigel D. (53, Studium in Oxford) unterrichtete an der Nelson-Mandela-Schule Sport und Englisch. Es ist die einzige staatliche Schule Berlins, die zum Internationalen Abitur führt.

Anfangs war er Klassenlehrer des Jungen. Der Missbrauch begann, als das Kind elf Jahre alt war. “Irgendeine Störung in mir ermöglichte mir das”, so der Vater von vier Kindern im Geständnis, “ich blendete die Konsequenzen meines sexuellen Missbrauchs aus.” Der Junge sei der beste Freund seines Sohnes gewesen. Hätte regelmäßig nach dem Fußballtraining bei diesen geschlafen, oft im selben Bett.

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DEUTCHLAND
Bild

[Summary: The detective arrived in the evening bearing a search warrant for the rectory in Lauchheim. The faithful of St. Peter and Paul Church were horrified. Their popular pastor Wili S., 39, was under suspicion of having child pornography.]

Von ALEXANDRA ZU CASTELL-RÜDENHAUSEN

Stuttgart/Lauchheim – Die Kripobeamten kamen am Abend. In der Tasche hatten sie einen Durchsuchungsbeschluss wegen eines unglaublichen Verdachts. Razzia im Pfarrhaus, weil der katholische Pfarrer von Lauchheim (Ostalbkreis) Kinderpornos besitzen soll.​

Die Gläubigen der katholischen St. Peter und Paul-Kirche in Lauchheim sind entsetzt. Als sie gestern dabei sein wollten, wie ihr beliebter Pfarrer Willi S. (39) ihren Buben und Mädchen die Erste Hl. Kommunion spendet, der Schock: Am Altar stand eine Vertretung. Warum, erfuhren sie aus einer Mitteilung, die im Schriftenständer der Kirche lag.

Darin erklärt die zuständige Diözese Rottenburg-Stuttgart, dass die Wohnung von Pfarrer Willi S. durchsucht wurde, weil er im Verdacht steht, Kinderpornos zu besitzen und die Beweismittel gerade geprüft würden.​

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DEUTSCHLAND
Stuttgarter Nachrichten

[Summary: The Catholic community of Lauchheim is bewildered because the pastor of their church has been suspended on suspicion of possession of child pornography.]

In der katholischen Gemeinde in Lauchheim herrscht Fassungslosigkeit: In der letzten Woche war der Pfarrer der Gemeinde wegen des Verdachts auf Besitz von Kinderpornografie suspendiert worden. Die Ermittler sind durch eine BKA-Liste aufmerksam geworden – auf der auch der Name Edathy steht.

Rottenburg/Lauchheim – Ein Pfarrer aus Lauchheim (Ostalbkreis), der Kinderpornos besessen haben soll, steht nach dpa-Informationen auf der gleichen Kundenliste wie der SPD-Politiker Sebastian Edathy. Der Geistliche könnte demnach ebenfalls kinder- und jugendpornografisches Material eines kanadischen Anbieters bestellt haben. Die Polizei hatte die Wohnung des Mannes am vergangenen Donnerstag durchsucht und Beweismittel sichergestellt.

Der Anfangsverdacht hatte sich durch eine Liste des Bundeskriminalamtes ergeben, auf der der Name des Pfarrers auftauchte, sagte ein Sprecher der Staatsanwaltschaft Ellwangen. Auf dieser seien die Kunden von Anbietern aufgeführt, die diese Dateien vertreiben. Derzeit würden die Beweismittel geprüft. Die Auswertung werde noch Wochen dauern, sagte der Sprecher. Erst dann stehe fest, ob Anklage erhoben wird.

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NORTHERN IRELAND
RTE News

A man who served as a priest in the Derry diocese has denied at Northern Ireland’s Historical Institutional Abuse Inquiry that he abused a young girl at a residential home in Co Derry 30 years ago.

The hearing at Banbridge, Co Down is dealing with claims made by some of the residents of two homes run by the Sisters of Nazareth in Derry.

The brief of the Inquiry is to examine what happened at a number of Northern Ireland residential homes run by the churches and religious denominations, voluntary organisations and the state from 1922 to 1995.

Up to now the evidence has been about two homes run by the Nazareth Sisters in Derry.

In recent months the inquiry has heard allegations of physical and sexual abuse from former residents.

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

PENNSYLVANIA
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

April 28, 2014

By Peter Smith / Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

ROME — Pittsburgh Bishop David Zubik on Monday defended his decision to close the St. Anthony’s Church building in Monongahela and said those opposing the closure are a small minority who have misrepresented what has happened and behaved scandalously.

Bishop Zubik, interviewed in Rome where he is traveling on a pilgrimage, said protesters had no right to attempt a sit-in over the weekend after the final Mass at the century-old building, which already has been merged with a neighboring parish and is now slated to be closed.

“Nobody’s denying their right to appeal” to the Vatican, Bishop Zubik said. “The important thing is, we have to deal with this in charity and love. Screaming at the priest and making accusations that are patently false, that’s not the way. It’s an embarrassment and a scandal.”

About 30 protesters staged an all-night prayer vigil at the building after the last Mass on Saturday, but by Sunday the last protesters had left.

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

VATICAN CITY
National Catholic Reporter

Joshua J. McElwee | Apr. 29, 2014

VATICAN CITY The Vatican on Tuesday downplayed the progress of the select group of eight cardinals advising Pope Francis on reforming the governance of the Catholic church, saying not to expect final results until 2015.

In its previous meetings, the council has reviewed the work of Vatican congregations with much emphasis on reforming financial structures. The council will now shift its attention to studying the Vatican’s 12 pontifical councils, a Vatican statement said.

“The work to be done is still much, so it should not be expected that it will be completed in the current year, but in the following,” the Vatican said in a statement Tuesday regarding the work of the Council of Cardinals, which is meeting for the fourth time Monday through Wednesday at the Vatican.

Francis established the council last year to “study a project of revision” of the Vatican’s bureaucracy, appointing eight separate cardinals from six continents to advise him. Honduran Cardinal Oscar Rodríguez Maradiaga is the group’s coordinator; Boston Cardinal Sean O’Malley is its only participant from the United States.

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VATICAN CITY
National Catholic Register

by ANDREA GAGLIARDUCCI/CNA/EWTN NEWS 04/29/2014

VATICAN CITY — In an open letter, Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone has addressed accusations that he had angered Pope Francis with his “luxurious” new residence, saying he and the Pope are on good terms.

“I am personally grateful to Pope Francis for having called me April 23 to express his solidarity and his disappointment for the media attacks about the apartment, of which he had been informed as soon as the article was published,” the emeritus Secretary of State wrote in an open letter published in the magazines of the archdioceses of Vercelli and Genoa, both of which he led for a time.

Italian daily La Repubblica published an article April 20 claiming that the cardinal was moving into a lavish 6,500-square foot apartment in the Vatican’s San Carlo Palace, while Pope Francis has been urging clerics to adopt a modest lifestyle.

According to La Repubblica, the Pope himself had been angered by the luxury of Cardinal Bertone’s new apartment.

The paper claimed that the restructure combines two apartments, one formerly the home of the head of the gendarmerie, and another once home to a Vatican monsignor.

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UNITED STATES
Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests

Name of wrongdoer: now retired Cardinal Justin Rigali of Philadelphia

What he’s accused of: Prosecutors say he concealed dozens of cases of clergy abuse and kept dozens of predators in parishes just a few years ago.

How’s he’s being honored: He is a featured speaker at the Catholic Men Servant Leaders annual conference in Lexington, Kentucky. Even after harsh grand jury reports blasting him and his colleagues, Pope Benedict sent Rigali to eastern Europe to represent the Vatican and church events.

[SNAP]

Where he is now: Retired and living in Knoxville Tennessee

***
Name of wrongdoer: now retired Cardinal Edward Egan of New York City

What he’s accused of: Egan has been accused of refusing to remove priests accused of sexual abuse when he was bishop of the Diocese of Bridgeport from 1988 to 2000.

How’s he’s being honored: He was recently invited to celebrate mass at the Pueri Cantores Children’s Choir Festival, held at St. Ignatius of Loyola Roman Catholic Church in Manhattan.

[SNAP]

Where he is now: Retired

***
Name of wrongdoer: Cardinal Roger Mahony of Los Angeles

What he’s accused of: Roughly 23,000 pages maintained by the archdiocese and various religious orders regarding sex abuse were ordered to be made public. The documents, which he fought in court for years, reveal that his concerns were more about the scandal that would derail the church and his agenda rather than the protection of children.

[SNAP]

How’s he’s being honored: He appeared publicly with and met privately with Pope Francis in Rome in January. He also spoke at a recent Religious Education Congress in California.

Where he is now: Retired in California.

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ST. LOUIS (MO)
Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests

I’ve been doing this for 25 years now and have rarely seen such a small but loud bunch of people rallying around a predator priest like those backing Fr. Joseph Jiang in St. Louis.

A now teenaged girl says Jiang abused her a few years ago.

Her parents believe her.

The police believe her.

The prosecutors believe her.

St. Louis’ most experienced clergy sex abuse attorney believes her.

Law enforcement officials, in a court filing, say they have hard evidence, including a phone message, a number of text messages and a $20,000 check that Jiang reportedly left for the girl’s parents after they confronted him with their suspicions.

And his own archbishop suspends him.

[St. Louis Post-Dispatch]

However, the criminal case against Fr. Jiang was dropped for complicated legal reasons.

[Fox 2]

But her civil suit is continuing.http://www.snapnetwork.org/twice_arrested_priest_still_has_backers

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VATICAN CITY
Boston Globe

By John L. Allen Jr. | GLOBE STAFF APRIL 29, 2014

In Rome the pendulum is swinging from public theater to behind-the-scenes substance this week, as two closed-door meetings tackle two of the most serious challenges facing Pope Francis: Vatican reform and the child sexual abuse scandals.

Following Sunday’s massive canonization ceremony for Popes John XXIII and John Paul II, the pope’s “G8” council of cardinal advisors from around the world is meeting April 28-30 to ponder a reorganization of the Roman Curia, the Vatican’s central administrative bureaucracy.

Immediately afterwards, the new “Pontifical Commission for the Protection of Minors” instituted by Francis in December to lead the clean-up effort from the abuse scandals will have its first meeting.

The sequence is not coincidental, as one figure sits on both important bodies: Cardinal Sean P. O’Malley of Boston, the lone American in both cases.

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MISSISSIPPI
New York Daily News

BY DEBORAH HASTINGS
NEW YORK DAILY NEWS Saturday, April 26, 2014

A Mississippi man working as a Baptist preacher has been arrested for the rape of a Jackson high school student, authorities said.

Lenell McGee resigned last month as a janitor for the Forest Hill High School after a student accused him of taking her to a motel room and sexually assaulting her, reported WAPT-TV.

He was arraigned Friday and released after posting $50,000 bail.

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NEW YORK
Gothamist

A Williamsburg rabbi and sex abuse whistleblower is outraged over the Brooklyn DA’s handling of its case against a man who nearly blinded him in 2012. Nuchem Rosenberg, who has been ostracized by the ultra-Orthodox Jewish community for publicly identifying perpetrators of sexual abuse, was attacked on a Williamsburg sidewalk by a man who threw bleach in his face one December afternoon in 2012.

The suspect, Meilech Schnitzler, subsequently turned himself over to police, and today it was announced that he will avoid prison as part of a plea deal. Schnitzler had faced up to 7 years if convicted.

“We changed the DA but we didn’t change any behavior in the DA’s office,” Rosenberg fumed to the Daily News today, referring to former Brooklyn DA Charles Hynes, who lost a hard-fought election last year to new DA Ken Thompson. “The guy walks free… where is our protection?”

Schnitzler, 38, allegedly attacked Rosenberg because his father was named on Rosenberg’s website as a pedophile. “He taps on my shoulder, he says ‘whoops’ and throws it in my face,” Rosenberg said after the incident. He immediately flushed his eyes out with water, and insists his doctor told him he would be blind in one eye if he had not done that. A relative told the Times that Rosenberg sustained a corneal abrasion to his left eye and chemical burns around his eye.

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NEW YORK
New York Post

By Josh Saul
April 28, 2014

A Brooklyn rabbi and child sex-abuse advocate slammed segments of the Orthodox Jewish community and new Brooklyn District Attorney Ken Thompson on Monday after the man who threw bleach in his eyes got off with a no-jail plea deal.

Meilech Schnitzler, 38, was hit with a raft of charges including assault for the December 2012 bleach attack on Rabbi Nuchem Rosenberg in Williamsburg, but Schnitzler was allowed to plead guilty to just one count of assault in a deal that gave him five years probation but no time behind bars.

“They threw bleach on me because I’m a child activist and they want the child meat for free,” said Rosenberg, 64. “We thought Thompson was going to give us a better chance to fight the pedophiles, but it looks like the office is still the same with the community pressure.”

Rosenberg said he was targeted because of his support for the victim sexually abused by Satmar Hasidic youth counselor Nechemya Weberman. At the time of Schnitzler’s arrest, then-NYPD Commisioner Ray Kelly said Schnitzler’s father had been named on Rosenberg’s anti-abuse website.

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NEW YORK
New York Times

By SHARON OTTERMAN
APRIL 29, 2014

A Brooklyn man who threw bleach at an outspoken advocate for victims of sexual abuse in the borough’s ultra-Orthodox Jewish community avoided jail time in a plea deal that gave him five years of probation, a spokesman for the Brooklyn district attorney’s office said on Monday.

The man, Meilech Schnitzler, 38, pleaded guilty to a felony assault charge in Brooklyn Supreme Court on Monday, admitting he threw the bleach at the advocate, Rabbi Nuchem Rosenberg, in December 2012.

Rabbi Rosenberg said he was upset with the plea agreement.

“Six months in jail would have been enough to show this was serious,” he said. “Probation in our circles is a joke.”

Mr. Schnitzler had faced up to seven years in prison. The district attorney’s office said it agreed to the plea deal because it was Mr. Schnitzler’s first offense and Rabbi Rosenberg’s injuries were not permanent.

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VATICAN CITY
Vatican Information Service

Vatican City, 29 April 2014 (VIS) – The Council of Cardinals met yesterday, Monday 28 April, for the first sessions of its fourth Meeting. The Holy Father participated most of the time, except when he had other commitments of particular importance, such as the audiences with the King and Queen of Spain on Monday morning and with the president of Paraguay on Tuesday morning, and the Wednesday morning general audience.

Alongside the eight cardinal members of the Council, Cardinal Secretary of State Pietro Parolin participated regularly.

On Monday afternoon, the Council heard a report from the president of the Pontifical Commission for Reference on the Organisation of the Economic-Administrative Structures of the Holy See (COSEA), Joseph F.X. Zahra, in relation to some of the areas of activity within its remit.

Following its review in previous Meetings of the Congregations of the Roman Curia, the Council is now focusing on the Pontifical Councils, first in terms of general considerations, followed by an individual appraisal of each one. The Council is expected to complete a first report of its considerations regarding the Pontifical Councils during this Meeting.

The Council of Cardinals will hold a further four-day meeting in July (1-4 July).

There is still much work to be done, and it is therefore to be expected that it will be completed not this year, but instead during the next.

The previous Meetings of the Council took place on 1-3 October 2013, 3-5 December 2013, and 17-19 February 2014.

The first meeting of the new Council for the Economy will be held on Friday, 2 May.

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SCOTLAND
Independent Catholic News

Pope Francis has today (Tuesday 29 April 2014 – the Feast of St Catherine of Siena) appointed Bishop Joseph Toal, as Bishop of Motherwell; he is currently Bishop of Argyll & the Isles and has been Apostolic Administrator of the Diocese of Motherwell which has been vacant since 31 May 2013, when Pope Francis accepted the resignation of Bishop Joseph Devine.

Reacting to the announcement, Bishop Toal said: “Over the past eleven months, I have come to know the Diocese of Motherwell and appreciate the warmth and generosity of the clergy and laity, I look forward to deepening that relationship with them. While I am sad to be leaving my home diocese of Argyll and the Isles, I know the deep faith of the people there will sustain them as they await a new Bishop and I ask them to pray for me as I prepare to translate to the Diocese of Motherwell.”

Commenting on the appointment, the President of the Bishops’ Conference of Scotland, Archbishop Philip Tartaglia said: “While sympathising with the priests and people of the Diocese of Argyll and the Isles on the transfer of their much loved and respected bishop, I welcome the nomination of Bishop Joseph Toal as the new Bishop of Motherwell and I wish him every blessing in his new appointment.”

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AUSTRALIA
Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse

The Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse has received more than 40 submissions on its fifth issues paper, on civil litigation.

Submissions were received from a range of individuals and organisations, including Children’s Commissioners, legal experts, welfare and victim support groups, religious organisations and non-government organisations.

Royal Commission CEO Janette Dines said the Royal Commission was pleased with the level of feedback from the community in response to the Issues Paper.

“The Royal Commission received submissions from a range of organisations across Australia examining the effectiveness of civil litigation as one mechanism for providing redress, and possible reforms to improve civil litigation systems,” Ms Dines said.

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AUSTRALIA
Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse

28 April, 2014

The Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse is visiting Port Augusta this week as part of its national community engagement program.

Royal Commission staff will meet with community organisations, counselling and sexual assault service providers and other interested parties over three days beginning Tuesday 29 April 2014.

Royal Commission CEO Janette Dines said the visit provides an opportunity to update community stakeholders on what the Royal Commission has been doing and encourage survivors of child sexual abuse to come forward.

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AUSTRALIA
ABC News

[with video]

Posted Mon 28 Apr 2014

The Royal Commission into child sex abuse is sitting in Perth and will focus on homes run by the Christian Brothers, where many child migrants and Australian-born children were abused from the 1940s to the ’60s, with some saying the extent of abuse has yet to be uncovered.

Transcript

SARAH FERGUSON, PRESENTER: There have been national apologies, class actions, a Senate inquiry and a feature film that brought global attention to their cause. But former child migrants shipped to Australia from the UK say the true extent of their suffering is yet to be exposed. They hope the Royal Commission into Child Sexual Abuse sitting in Perth for the next fortnight will uncover the truth. Claire Moodie reports.

CLAIRE MOODIE, REPORTER: These are the walking wounded, survivors of homes run by the Christian Brothers in Western Australia.

ABUSE VICTIM: We want dignity, we want compassion and we want justice.

CLAIRE MOODIE: They’ve been waiting for decades for this day, protesting outside the Royal Commission into Child Sexual Abuse, they hope the inquiry will lift the lid on the true horrors of their past.

MARGARET HUMPHREYS, CHILD MIGRANT TRUST: Australians and others are going to have to face this and it’s going to be painful.

CLAIRE MOODIE: The commission’s focusing on four boys’ homes run by the Brothers in WA. The institutions housed Australian orphans and wards of the state, but also hundreds of child migrants, shipped from the UK and Malta.

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AUSTRALIA
Malaysia Chronicle

FOR John Hennessey being robbed of his innocence was not the most unforgivable thing he endured at the hands of the Christian Brothers – it was being robbed of the chance to have children of his own.

For five years he was brutally raped, beaten and emotionally abused by 10 brothers at Bindoon boys home during the 1940s.

Yet it was the after-effects of that abuse that he sees as being the most destructive.

The former Deputy Mayor of Campbeltown Council, who received an OBE for his role following the Granville train disaster, told the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses into Child Sex Abuse he was so scarred by his experience at the remote Catholic boys home in WA that he was unable to form any real relationship in his later years.

The commission is investigating how the religious order and successive WA governments responded to allegations of abuse at four Christian Brothers run homes in Bindoon, Clontarf, Tardun and Casltedare.

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AUSTRALIA
The West Australian

COLLEEN EGAN The West Australian
April 29, 2014

John Hennessey is 78 years old but if you listened to his words yesterday, all you could see was a frightened and lonely young boy, starved of love.

After choosing to take the oath on the Bible instead of an affirmation – he still believes in God – Mr Hennessey paused before starting his testimony, holding a picture of his late mother, May.

“I brought my mother with me,” he said.

From the 18th floor of a Perth skyscraper, the first witness at the royal commission took a packed public gallery on a harrowing journey from an illegitimate birth, to an early childhood in a home run by kindly nuns, to a harsh institution in WA to rival any tale by Charles Dickens.

Believing he was an orphan, unaware that his Irish mother had been told he was dead, 11-year-old John boarded a ship in Britain for a land he’d been told was full of fruit and kangaroos.

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OHIO
Youngstown Vindicator

Published: Tue, April 29, 2014 @ 12:05 a.m.
By Ed Runyan
runyan@vindy.com

WARREN

The priest at Mount Carmel Catholic Church in Niles says he hopes Michael Marrara will take responsibility for the $97,000 Marrara is accused of stealing from the parish since 2007 and make restitution.

Marrara, 58, of Sayers Avenue, pleaded not guilty to a felony charge of grand theft Monday morning in Trumbull County Common Pleas Court, where Judge Peter Kontos set bond at $10,000.

Father John-Michael Lavelle said he discovered within the first two weeks of his arrival at the parish in June 2012 that Marrara, then maintenance supervisor for the church, purchased about $22 worth of pool chemicals on the church’s credit card even though the church doesn’t have a pool.

When the pastor asked him about it, Marrara said he had meant to pay back the church for the chemicals but forgot.

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UNITED STATES
National Catholic Reporter

Jason Berry | Apr. 29, 2014

Home today is an apartment in Society Hill, Philadelphia, but when Juan Carlos Cruz was growing up in Chile in the 1980s, his family lived close to El Bosque, “the forest” — a tree-draped park avenue and a prime neighborhood in Santiago, the capital city. It was also home to a charismatic pastor, Fr. Fernando Karadima, surrounded by well-dressed boys from top schools, and later unmasked as a sexual predator.

Many El Bosque families walked to Mass at Sagrado Corazón (“Sacred Heart”). At the red brick church with a seven-story bell tower, politicians, corporate executives and military officers revered Karadima.

“We were a close family, with grandparents nearby and many friends in the area,” Cruz, now the head of a communications division for a Fortune Global 500 company, told NCR in recent interviews.

Everyone he knew growing up was conservative. His father was a banker who moved the family to Madrid after Salvador Allende, a Socialist, was elected president of Chile in 1970. Cruz attended middle school in Spain.

After Allende’s death in the 1973 coup that launched Gen. Augusto Pinochet’s dictatorship, the family moved back to Chile. In El Bosque, which was untouched by torture or disappearances, Pinochet was popular — and a figure of praise in Karadima’s sermons.

The priest had a magnetism that entranced Cruz. He was 15 when his father died, and he sought solace in Karadima. Six years later, Cruz entered a diocesan seminary.

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GENEVA
Prensa Latina

United Nations, Apr 28 (Prensa Latina) Next month the United Nations Committee against Torture will review the Vatican for the first time, in public sessions that will include talks with delegations with the Holy See and civil society, said today the United Nations from its headquarters in Geneva, Switzerland.

According to the committee, created by the Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment, adopted by the UN General Assembly in 1984 and open to signing, ratification and joining, the review will take place on May 5th and 6th and conclusions will be issued 17 days later.

The Holy See is one of the 155 States that signed the Convention, which came into effect in 1987, and therefore must be subjected to regular probes on its situation, said in a press release the Committee, made up of 10 independent experts.

Along with the Vatican, countries like Guinea, Cyprus, Lithuania, Montenegro, Sierra Leone, Thailand and Uruguay will be reviewed.

The review will take place three months after that the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child (CRC) urged the Holy See to implement more actions to fight child abuse carried out by the clergy, as well as removal and denunciation of perpetrators.

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NEW YORK
Failed Messiah

Brooklyn’s new District Attorney Kenneth Thompson has given a Satmar hasid who threw bleach in the face of anti-child-sex-abuse activist Rabbi Nuchem Rosenberg a non-prison sentence. This does not bode well for justice in Brooklyn and it should enrage anyone concerned with democracy and the need for equal justice for all.

Brooklyn’s new District Attorney Kenneth Thompson has given Meilich Schnitzler, a Satmar hasid who threw bleach in the face of anti-child-sex-abuse activist Rabbi Nuchem Rosenberg, a non-prison sentence. This does not bode well for justice in Brooklyn and it should enrage anyone concerned with democracy and the need for equal justice for all.

Put simply, people need to be able to safely walk the streets without fearing attack from opponents who don’t like the legal causes people advocate for.

And people need to know that if someone violates the law and physically attacks them, that assailant will be prosecuted to the fullest extent the law allows.

That did not happen after Taj Patterson, a gay black college student left a party in the early morning of December first and tried to walk home to Fort Greene, Brooklyn. According to Patterson and several eyewitnesses, Patterson was attacked by a mob of about 20 hasidim, most wearing what appeared to be Shomrim patches on their jackets. He was severely beaten and was left blind in one eye.

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AUSTRALIA
Brisbane Times

April 29, 2014

Former Catholic priest James Patrick Jennings knew when the schoolboys he abused would be alone and in which dormitory they slept.

Jennings, 81, indecently assaulted three boys while a priest at Bendigo’s St Vincent’s College in the 1960s.

One of his victims, who was abused over a number of years, said Jennings had deprived him of his adolescence and made him feel guilty his whole life.

“He left me feeling exploited, humiliated and with lost self-esteem,” he said in a statement read to the Victorian County Court on Tuesday.

Prosecutor Susan Borg said Jennings learnt his victims’ class timetables to find out when they’d be alone.

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AUSTRALIA
ABC News

A former resident of a Christian Brothers school in Western Australia has described living in constant terror at the institution where “violence was a way of life”.

John Hennessey is the first of a number of victims to give evidence at the Perth hearings of the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse.

He was a child migrant from the UK and told the hearing he was excited to come to Australia as an 11-year-old boy, considering it an adventure.

Mr Hennessey, who was a resident at the Bindoon Farm School north of Perth, broke down during his evidence today as he recounted the moment he realised “something was amiss”.

He was sexually and physically abused from age 11 until he was 16, when he left the school.

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AUSTRALIA
The West Australian

AMANDA BANKS AND COLLEEN EGAN The West Australian
April 29, 2014

Witnesses at the first Perth royal commission public hearing into child sex abuse yesterday described feeling devalued, angry and betrayed after reliving their experiences only to have the State Government almost halve maximum pay-outs under the compensation scheme for abuse in care.

Child migrant Oliver Cosgrove, who told the hearing into four WA Christian Brothers’ homes of his physical and sexual abuse at Clontarf and Castledare, said the application process under the WA Redress compensation scheme had been “onerous”.

He said the Liberal-National State Government’s decision to reduce the maximum payout under the scheme from $80,000 to $45,000 was “disgraceful and reprehensible”.

“I found that the Redress WA process did not provide justice,” Mr Cosgrove told the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse. “It provided an apology with a number on it,” he said.

John Wells, who was also abused at Castledare and Clontarf with his twin brother, told the hearing he was not interested in receiving apologies, which were nothing more than an attempt to clear consciences.

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AUSTRALIA
Courier Mail

EMILY MOULTON PERTHNOW APRIL 29, 2014

ENTERING a Brother’s room was like entering a lion’s den.

Boys who were “chosen” would often start crying even before they stepped in, acutely aware of what would happen next.

For VG, a young Maltese boy who was sent to Australia in the 1960s to further his education following the death of his father, there was nothing he remembered fearing more in his first few weeks at St Mary’s Agricultural School in Tardun.

“When a brother chose a boy to take to a room, the boy would often start crying,” the man, whose name is suppressed, told the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses of Child Sex Abuse today.

“At first I thought that the boys were being punished for something that they had done. After that I would often hear the boys say things like ‘No sir, please no sir’.

After about 12 months at Tardun, VG’s worst fears came true.

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AUSTRALIA
The Australian

NICOLAS PERPITCH THE AUSTRALIAN APRIL 29, 2014

FORMER child migrant John Hennessey was groomed into a “sexual pet’’ by a group of clergymen during five years of abuse at a West Australian Christian ­orphanage.

Mr Hennessey yesterday gave evidence to the royal commission into child abuse, where he described in graphic detail the repeated beatings and rapes he suffered between the ages of 11 and 16 after arriving from England in 1947.

He explained that Brother ­Superior Paul Keaney’s grooming programmed him to become used to the “most distorted, twisted patterns of sexual and social conduct” and left him to live a life of pain, confusion and loneliness ever since.

Mr Hennessy accused the state government and police of being in “collusive relations” with the church.

“I was simply exploited and abused by criminals who could relax in the knowledge that the state government and church were my legal guardians and would never bother to meet their responsibilities,” he said.

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MINNESOTA
News 8000

Author: Leah Linscheid, llinscheid@wkbt.com
Published On: Apr 28 2014

WINONA, Minn. (WKBT) –
A local organization is addressing a growing national concern for sexually abused children.

People often consider their churches or congregations a part of their family, and one of the places they feel most safe and welcome. Unfortunately, that can include sexual predators. According to national studies, 93 percent of sexual offenders consider themselves religious, and 20 percent of congregations have at least one convicted sex offender among their ranks. Those and other statistics have spurred the National Child Protection Center into action.

The center, based in Winona, has brought in faith communities from all corners of the country this week for a course on sexual assault, called Chaplains for Children. It’s the first program of its kind, and it’s addressing a problem that experts say is bigger than people realize.

“We increasingly realized in the child protection community how often sex offenders are engaged in religious activities,” said Victor Vieth, executive director for the center. “Research says sex offenders prey on the gullibity, they prey on the belief that this could never happen in our congregation. They consciously seek out congregations that never talk about child abuse, and don’t have good child protection policies.”

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AUSTRALIA
Pro Bono Australia

Posted: Tuesday, April 29, 2014

The Chair of the Catholic Church’s Truth Justice and Healing Council, Barry O’Keefe AM QC, died in Sydney last week.

O’Keefe, a former Commissioner of NSW’s Independent Commission against Corruption and former Chief Judge of the Supreme Court of New South Wales, died peacefully at St Vincent’s Hospital, Darlinghurst on April 24.

A statement from the Council said O’Keefe was appointed inaugural Chair of the Truth Justice and Healing Council in late 2012 and for the past 18 months had worked tirelessly to chart a path for reform within the Catholic Church as it deals with the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse.

The CEO of the TJHC, Francis Sullivan, said the passing of Barry O’Keefe was a great loss and he will be missed by his loving family and many friends.

“Barry’s formidable intellect, his unflagging courage and commitment, and his profound compassion for the survivors of child sexual abuse within the Church have been the driving force behind the work of the Council since it was established,” Sullivan said.

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AUSTRALIA
WA Today

April 29, 2014

Aleisha Orr
Reporter, WA Today

Men who were victims of sexual abuse as children while in the care of the Christian Brothers have told a public hearing in Perth that they not only had to go through the trauma of abuse but also the “traumatic” process of trying to receive compensation.

On Tuesday, a man known to the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse as ‘VV’ described sexual and physical abuse he experienced at Bindoon Farm School.

He said he “could not stop trembling” after the first time he was raped by one of the brothers, two weeks after arriving at Bindoon Farm School in 1954 at nine years of age.

VV said the abuse by brothers, priests and other boys continued until he left Bindoon in 1961 but he could not move on from what happened to him.

“People say you can get on with it, lift yourself above it. I tried to do this and I thought I was being successful but always… always in your mind there is the belief that you don’t deserve anything good,” he told the hearing.

VV said that he did not take part in a class action that many others took against the Catholic Church over the abuse because at the time he “just didn’t want to be involved”.

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AUSTRALIA
WA Today

April 29, 2014

Aleisha Orr
Reporter, WA Today

An overwhelming sense of loss has come through in the evidence given by witnesses at the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse.

Nine of 11 men sexually abused as children while in the care of Christian Brothers in Western Australian institutions are set to speak as part of public hearings in Perth.

“I lost my country, I lost my language, I lost my culture, I lost my family and I lost any chance of a decent career,” Raphael Ellul told the commission at the second day of hearings.

Mr Ellul was a child migrant from Malta who was sent to Australia to “obtain a better future”, which he described as “rubbish”.

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VATICAN CITY
Gazzetta del Sud

Vatican City, April 28 – A three-day meeting of the Council of Cardinals steering wide-ranging reforms to the Rome Curia, began Monday with Pope Francis, the Vatican press office said. Pope Francis has taken part in much of the work, coordinated by Honduran Cardinal Oscar Rodriguez Maradiaga, leaving only for public commitments including general audiences and meetings with international figures, the press office said. The council of eight cardinals, which has been informally dubbed the C8, has been closely studying changes to governance of the Catholic Church as well as possible reforms to the constitution of the Vatican City State, known as Pastor Bonus, instituted in 1988 by Pope John Paul II.

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PENNSYLVANIA
We Are Central PA

Jim Madalinsky

HOLLIDAYSBURG, BLAIR COUNTY – An attorney for the alleged victims of Brother Stephen Baker is asking what the hold up is?

On Friday the Altoona-Johnstown Diocese announced it was suspending mediation efforts for the sex abuse settlements, citing the ongoing investigation by the State Attorney General’s office.

Dr. Robert Hoatson is the co-founder of the group “Road to Recovery.” He represents some of Brother Baker’s alleged victims in Pennsylvania, Ohio and Michigan. Dr. Hoatson is calling out the diocese for pulling out negotiations that had been scheduled for weeks. Representatives from the diocese’s in Youngstown, OH and Detroit, MI had planned to meet with a mediator Friday in Philadelphia also. Now Dr. Hoatson is saying the dioceses is causing even more harm to the victims.

“It says to the victims that they’re once again siding with Brother Baker. Just like the people at Bishop McCort who sided with Baker, and the Franciscan fryers that sided with Baker, and the administrations that sided with Brother Baker,” Dr. Hoatson says.

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PENNSYLVANIA
Daily Reporter

THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
First Posted: April 27, 2014

HOLLIDAYSBURG, Pennsylvania — A lawyer representing 33 alleged victims of clergy sex abuse in central Pennsylvania is urging the Roman Catholic church not to pull out of planned mediation.

Attorney Mitchell Garabedian said Sunday the withdrawal will re-traumatize his clients and prevent them from healing. Talks had been scheduled to take place this week in Philadelphia.

The Diocese of Altoona-Johnstown said Friday that it’s suspending settlement talks until state authorities finish their investigation of Brother Stephen Baker.

The Franciscan friar worked at Johnstown’s Bishop McCort High School from 1992 to 2001. He committed suicide last year after being linked to abuse claims in Ohio.

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PENNSYLVANIA
WJAC

Updated: Monday, April 28 2014

By: Maria Miller

ALTOONA, Pa. — It’s a story 6 News first reported on Friday: Negotiations set to begin between the church and alleged victims of a former trainer at Bishop McCort Catholic High School have been postponed.

The Diocese of Altoona-Johnstown , only commenting through a statement, said it wouldn’t be right to start civil matters before a criminal investigation by the attorney general’s office is complete.

The decision is not sitting well with alleged victims and their attorneys. Boston attorney Mitchell Garabedian, who represents 33 of Brother Stephen Baker’s alleged victims, said his clients are being revictimized by the diocese’ decision. He said they were willing and ready to mediate this week, but are now left with no choice but to file suit.

“Why on the eve of the mediations would they all of a sudden say, ‘oh we’ve changed our minds, we’re not going to proceed?'” said Garabedian.

In a statement, the diocese said “It would be inappropriate for (them) to proceed with the civil matters while the attorney general’s investigation is active.”

Garabedian is all for that investigation but said the diocese shouldn’t have used it as an excuse when it’s known about it for at least three months.

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PENNSYLVANIA
Tribune-Democrat

Kathy Mellott
kmellott@tribdem.com

HOLLIDAYSBURG — Friday’s announcement by the Diocese of Altoona-Johnstown that it is suspending settlement talks with alleged victims of the late Brother Stephen Baker has generated a firestorm of controversy, with one victims’ advocate calling the news outrageous.

Robert Hoatson, founder and president of Road to Recovery Inc., protested outside diocesan headquarters in Hollidaysburg.

Late Friday afternoon, Tony DeGol, the diocese secretary of communications, sent an emailed statement that the diocese was temporarily suspending negotiations to reach settlements with the mostly men who claim they were sexually molested by Baker, a Franciscan friar.

Baker taught at Bishop McCort from 1992 to about 2001, however he was a frequent visitor for the school until about 2005 or 2006, according to sources who worked there.

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BOSTON (MA)
Boston Globe

By Milton J. Valencia | GLOBE STAFF APRIL 29, 2014

John T. McNeil, an assistant US attorney who prosecuted several corrupt politicians and police officers, has been named the top assistant to the US attorney for Massachusetts, Carmen M. Ortiz. McNeil takes over as first assistant US attorney, succeeding Jack Pirozzolo, who served in that role for more than four years and recently left for the private sector. McNeil has served with Ortiz as deputy chief of the criminal division, acting chief of the major crimes unit, and counsel to the US attorney. …

McNeil also initiated the first federal investigation of clergy sexual abuse and reached the first criminal settlement in the United States with a Roman Catholic diocese, the Archdiocese of Boston.

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NEW HAMPSHIRE
New Hampshire Union Leader

Editorial

For years he was known as Rev. Msgr. Edward J. Arsenault III, the highest-ranking priest in the Roman Catholic Diocese of Manchester. He will probably be called other things in prison.

Arsenault was sentenced last Wednesday to 4 to 20 years in New Hampshire State Prison for stealing hundreds of thousands of dollars from the Diocese, Catholic Medical Center in Manchester and the estate of the late Msgr. John Molan. He was ordered to repay $300,000 to his victims.

Arsenault stole by deception and trickery, skills he exhibited publicly for many years during his decade as a senior official in the Diocese of Manchester. During the priest sex abuse scandal, Arsenault was the Diocesan Spin Doctor. As the official spokesman, he misled the flock, the families and the media with masterfully crafted messages of misdirection and misinformation.

In that time of great pain and turmoil, he had the option of helping the victims. He did not have to be complicit in the bishop’s campaign to protect himself and the institution by hiding the truth, denying the great evil that had been committed, and dodging responsibility. But Arsenault worked with vigor and enthusiasm to deny justice to the sexually abused. He willfully sinned against the innocent.

So it was doubly insulting to see his attorney portray his service during that time as a factor to be weighed in his favor. “During the tumultuous years that the church sex abuse scandal was going on, Mr. Arsenault was the person who held the diocese together,” attorney Cathy Green said. Still he spins and deceives.

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AUSTRALIA
WA Today

April 29, 2014

Aleisha Orr
Reporter, WA Today

Brother Albert McGregor had not spoken a word about the sexual abuse he suffered as a child as a resident at Castledare Junior Orphanage and later at St Vincent’s Orphanage in Clontarf.

He figured his experience had not been a common one for children in the care of Christian Brothers in Western Australia.

It was not until he was an adult and three other men who had also grown up in WA Christian Brother-run institutions confided in him about sexual abuse, did he realise that it may have been a “widespread problem”.

Mr McGregor told his story to the first Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse public hearings being conducted in Perth.

On Monday the hearing heard the story of the man who was born in England and taken to a place called Nazareth House in Aberdeen in 1941 as a two month old.

His maternal grandmother ordered he be taken there as he had been born out of wedlock and was therefore “an embarrassment”.

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AUSTRALIA
Perth Now

EMILY MOULTON AND AAP PERTHNOW APRIL 29, 2014

THEY called him “Killer Moore”, the Christian brother whose “liberal” use of a leather strap sparked fear in almost every child at Bindoon Farm School.

Such was his reputation that Clifford Walsh “feared him” more than any other brother at the institution even though he was also brutally raped by a number of the others.

Mr Walsh was just nine when he received his first beating by Brother Moore, his second day at Bindoon.

He learnt very quickly the ferocity of his wrath. And his supposed crime? Being unable to carry a heavy crow bar for three miles.

Mr Walsh is the fifth person to give evidence at the first public hearing of the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses into Child Sex Abuse in Perth.

The commission is investigating how the Christian Brothers and successive WA governments responded to allegations of abuse at four homes at Bindoon, Contarf, Tardun and Castledare.

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AUSTRALIA
The Guardian (UK)

Australian Associated Press
theguardian.com, Tuesday 29 April 2014

A 10-year-old boy was told by a priest to make himself less attractive so as not to be a target for sexual abuse, a royal commission has heard.

The Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse has also heard that Christian Brothers pimped boys out to a visiting photographer at St Joseph’s Farm and Trade School, Bindoon, in the late 1950s.

A witness known as VV on Tuesday told the commission in Perth that a Christian Brother who raped him suddenly announced he needed to confess his sins.

“Then Brother Parker came back and said I needed to see Father Gerard. Father Gerard sat me down and told me what we were doing was very wrong, and that I should make myself less attractive,” VV said.

“I should stop leading Brother Parker on, because it was a sin. He told me it was my fault, all the while he sat there sucking a cigar, blaming a child for being assaulted.”

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AUSTRALIA
ABC News

By Rebecca Trigger and Courtney Bembridge

A man has described being “consumed by guilt and shame” as a result of savage abuse he suffered at church-run institutions north-east of Perth.

The man, known only as VV, was giving evidence to the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses into Child Sex Abuse in Perth on Tuesday.

“When I look back on my life I’m consumed by guilt and shame and a sense of betrayal, denial and abandonment,” he said.

“I have an overwhelming sense of helplessness, hopelessness and my inability to change my past and of complete desperation, knowing that my future would always be tainted by the past.

“I’m tired and weary from always wearing a mask, of portraying a false sense to the outside world, of bearing this guilt and shame regarding my past while living a nightmare of inner turmoil every single day of my life”.

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MALTA/AUSTRALIA
Malta Today

Matthew Vella 29 April 2014

Echoes of the violent world of child migrants, amongst them Maltese emigrants, entrusted to the Christian Brothers back in the 1960s are reverberating inside Australia’s Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse.

The evidence makes for harrowing reading, as a survey of the Australian press shows.

A child migrant identified as ‘VG’ who says he had been raised “in a loving and close family in Malta”, told the commission that reporting violent sexual assaults to priests in confessions only led to more brutal beatings and punishment at the Christian Brothers’ home of St Mary’s Agricultural School in Tardun, a small town in Western Australia.

VG was reported to have revealed “painful details of repeated assaults, neglect and cruelty” during the second day of the commission’s public hearing into the experiences of boys at four Christian Brothers orphanages.

VG was testifying with his wife at his side for support.

After the death of his father, he was told he would be going on an “adventure” when he was sent to Western Australia.

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MARYLAND/MASSACHUSETTS
Road to Recovery

MEDIA RELEASE
APRIL 27-28, 2014

Rabbi Stanley Levitt, a dangerous pedophile, is living and worshiping in Baltimore, MD
Massachusetts school settled with men who were sexually abused by Rabbi Stanley Levitt

What: A press conference announcing the settlement of a sexual abuse case against a dangerous pedophile, Rabbi Stanley Levitt, who is living in Baltimore, MD and worshiping at a Baltimore synagogue.

When: Tuesday, April 29, 2014 at 11:00 AM

Where: On the sidewalk in front of the synagogue housing the Ohel Yakov Congregation, 3200 Glen Avenue, Baltimore, MD, 21215.

Who: Michael Brecher, a Baltimore-area resident who is a sexual abuse victim of Rabbi Stanley Levitt; Robert M. Hoatson, Ph.D., Mr. Brecher’s advocate who is President of Road to Recovery, Inc., a non-profit charity based in New Jersey; other supporters, and friends.

Why: Michael Brecher was a young boy attending the Maimonides School in Brookline, MA in the 1970s when he encountered Rabbi Stanley Levitt, who sexually abused him and other boys. In December, 2013, the Maimonides School found Michael Brecher and others credible and paid a settlement of six figures to Mr. Brecher. Rabbi Stanley Levitt, the abuser, pled guilty in August, 2012, of sexually assaulting several young boys at a Boston area hospital, his Brighton, MA, home, and Jewish ritual locations. Levitt, who is 68 years old, now lives in the Baltimore area and continues to pose a risk to children. He has been welcomed to worship with the Ohel Yakov Congregation where many children attend with their families.

Michael Brecher will discuss the settlement he received in December, 2013, the details of his sexual abuse by Rabbi Stanley Levitt in Massachusetts, and the danger Mr. Brecher believes Rabbi Levitt continues to pose in the Baltimore, MD, area.

Contacts: Robert M. Hoatson, Ph.D., Road to Recovery, Inc. – 862-368-2800
Attorney Mitchell Garabedian, Boston, MA – 617-523-6250

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NETHERLANDS
I Am Expat

29 April 2014, by Alexandra Gowling

Confidence in churches, both Protestant and Catholic, has reached a nadir in the Netherlands, with numbers of Dutch churchgoers halving since 1970. The greatest drop is among Roman Catholics.

This is according to a new report by the Social and Cultural Planning Bureau on the appeal of Christian churches, participating in religious gatherings and the attitude of the Dutch to religious doctrines and the Christian faith tradition.

Fifty years ago, over a third of the Dutch population considered their minister or priest their major point of contact for problems. Now, this applies to only 10 per cent.

Instead, people are increasingly likely to see churches merely as a kind of public utility, used only when needed, such as for weddings or a funerals.

Decreasing faith in church

The decrease in faith in Christian churches has been steady since 1970. Then, more than 60 per cent of the population belonged to a religious community.

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CANADA
CBC News

A former Bathurst priest has again failed to turn up in court after a warrant for his arrest was issued earlier this year.

Charles Picot was expected to answer to three charges of gross indecency and indecent assault.

He’s been convicted twice before of similar charges, and acquitted on another.

A lawyer speaking on behalf of Picot said the former priest — now in his late 60s — is living in Montreal and battling cancer.

Picot was unable to make the trip and his lawyer said they need time to review the file.

But victim advocate Conrad Brideau said the wait is only going to make things more difficult for the alleged victim.

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ST. LOUIS (MO)
Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests

For immediate release: Monday, April 28, 2014

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

Fr. Robert R. Osborne has passed away. We are grateful he can’t hurt another child ever again. We sympathize with Osborne’s family and for the Catholic parishioners who felt close to him, but we hope his passing will help his victims find healing.

Fr. Osborne was one of eight St. Louis Marianists who have been accused of sexually abusing children. One of them (Brother John Woulfe) was sued in the past few weeks.

Fr. Osborne stepped down as the head of Vianney after he was sued for abuse, claiming the law suit would distract him from his job.

According to a 2006 lawsuit, Fr. Osborne used “his position to gain the trust” of a teenaged student, “coercing him to drink alcoholic beverages, making sexual comments to him, (trying) to observe and photograph him when he was undressed, hugging and kissing him, and making other overt and covert sexual contact with him.” At least one other accuser later came forward to police.

Even after a civil suit was settled, Fr. Osborne was not put in a remote and secure treatment facility, nor did he have his priestly faculties removed until several years later. Even after the settlement, Catholic officials let him say mass at a Kirkwood parish until SNAP exposed and criticized this reckless move.

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NEW YORK
Capital New York

By Ryan Hutchins Apr. 28, 2014

The Archdiocese of New York took a major step last week toward consolidating its dense network of 376 parishes, entering the final stages of planning for what is likely to result in the most significant sweep of parish closings seen here in recent memory.

Early last week, an advisory board that has been working for months with outside consultants to find ways to streamline the centuries-old archdiocese quietly sent its preliminary recommendations to local working groups—known as clusters—for review. It is the first time a broad consolidation plan such as this has been handled this way.

Among the locations being considered for closure by the committee, which is scheduled to issue its final blueprint to archbishop Cardinal Timothy Dolan in June, are the Church of St. John the Baptist and the Church of the Holy Innocents in Midtown Manhattan, according to internal documents obtained by Capital New York. Both would be consolidated into nearby St. Francis of Assisi on West 31st Street, which could take a new name.

St. John the Baptist, also on West 31st Street, is directly across from of Pennsylvania Station and a well known parish. It is run by the religious order of the Capuchin Franciscans and is home to the Saint Padre Pio Shrine, which attracts devotees to the 20th century saint. Holy Innocents on West 37th Street, the oldest building in the Fashion Center, was once known as the “actor’s church.” Playwright Eugene O’Neill was baptized there in 1888. Some Masses are still celebrated there in Latin.

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MISSOURI
Belleville News-Democrat

The Associated Press
April 28, 2014

KIRKWOOD, MO. — A Marianist priest who was removed as president of an all-boys Catholic school in Kirkwood after a pair of sex abuse complaints has died at 81.

The Marianist Province of the United States confirmed on Monday that the Rev. Robert Osborne died Sunday in Cupertino, Calif., at a health care facility for members of the Roman Catholic order. The St. Louis Post-Dispatch first reported Osborne’s death. No cause of death was released.

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MISSOURI
St. Louis Post-Dispatch

By Michael D. Sorkin msorkin@post-dispatch.com 314-340-83470

The Rev. Robert Osborne, former president of the all-boys St. John Vianney High School in Kirkwood, has died. The school removed him from office in 2006, after he was accused of sexually abusing students.

He was 81 and died Sunday (April 27, 2014) in Cupertino, Calif., at a health care facility for senior members of The Society of Mary (Marianists.) The cause of death was not immediately released. His death was confirmed by the Marianist Province of the United States.

In February, 2006, the Rev. Osborne temporarily stepped down as president of Vianney after a lawsuit accused him of having “sexually, physically and emotionally abused” a student. When another accusation followed, the school removed him permanently.

The Rev. Osborne consistently denied the accusations. A criminal investigation by the St. Louis County prosecutor’s office ended with no criminal charges.

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AUSTRALIA
The West Australian

AMANDA BANKS LEGAL AFFAIRS EDITOR The West Australian
April 29, 2014

A former resident of the Christian Brothers’ Bindoon orphanage yesterday exposed harrowing details of his exploitation by the home’s brothers, telling the first Perth hearing of a royal commission of his years of being groomed as a sex “pet” and sadistically beaten.

John Hennessey, the first witness at the hearing of the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse, described being repeatedly and mercilessly raped, forced into child labour and beaten so brutally that he once believed he would die.

At times breaking down, and prompting some in the packed public gallery to weep uncontrollably, Mr Hennessey said he had been subjected to the “most distorted, twisted patterns of sexual” behaviour by criminals who were safe in the knowledge that his legal guardian – the State Government – would never bother meeting its responsibilities.

Mr Hennessey, placed at the home in 1947 as a child migrant and remaining there for five years, said his abuse was clear evidence that the State Government and other institutions, such as police, had been in collusion with the Catholic Church.

He is one of 11 former residents of four WA Christian Brothers’ homes – Bindoon, Clontarf, Castledare and Tardun – who will give evidence to the royal commission over two weeks.

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NEW YORK
New York Daily News

BY OREN YANIV
NEW YORK DAILY NEWS Monday, April 28, 2014

A Hasidic Brooklyn man scored a no-jail plea deal Monday for dousing bleach on an anti sex abuse activist – an agreement that earned prosecutors a stinging rebuke from the victim.

Meilech Schnitzler, 38, will get five years of probation for felony assault after admitting he threw a cup of Clorox on Rabbi Nuchem Rosenberg in December 2012.

The acid attack came amid fury in the Satmar sect over the conviction of a prominent counselor for molesting a teen, and days after Rosenberg accused the defendant’s dad of being a pedophile.

The 64-year-old victim is a polarizing figure in the Jewish community who campaigned against former Brooklyn District Attorney Charles Hynes and for the election of DA Kenneth Thompson.

He strongly blasted the plea deal as he walked out of Brooklyn Supreme Court.

“We changed the DA but we didn’t change any behavior in the DA’s office,” he lamented. “The guy walks free … where is our protection?”

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UNITED STATES
BishopAccountability.org

Summary of Case: Carlton E. Whitten was ordained a priest of the California Province of the Society of Jesus in 1961. He was a teacher at numerous Jesuit high schools in California and Arizona, and he served in parishes. During his “semi-retirement” years he worked in parishes as a fill-in priest throughout the Western U.S., while based at the Bellarmine Preparatory School Jesuit residence in San Jose, California. While temporarily assigned to a parish in White Salmon, Washington, in December 2007, Whitten was accused of inappropriately touching a 17-year-old boy. The incident was said to have occurred recently. Prior to that the parish pastor, for whom Whitten was filling-in, confronted Whitten for allegedly viewing adult pornography on his computer. Whitten left the parish and returned to California. He has since been living at the Sacred Heart Jesuit Center in Los Gatos.

Ordained: 1961

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MICHIGAN
The Detroit News

Robert Snell
The Detroit News

Detroit — An indicted Catholic priest wore his clerical collar to court and clutched what appeared to be a photo of the Pope on Monday while being arraigned on charges he helped steal $700,000 from St. Thomas More Church in Troy.

The Rev. Edward Belczak, 69, of Troy was freed on $10,000 unsecured bond after U.S. Magistrate Judge Mona Majzoub entered a not guilty plea on his behalf.

Belczak was arraigned six days after federal prosecutors unsealed a five-count indictment that charged the priest and parish administrator Janice Verschuren, 67, of Bloomfield Hills, with stealing the money from the church and Archdiocese of Detroit between 2004 and 2012.

The stolen money allegedly included most of a $350,000 gift to the church from the family of a dead parishioner and cash donated by churchgoers during special Mother’s Day and Father’s Day collections, prosecutors said. The priest spent some of the money on a condominium in Palm Beach, Fla., according to the indictment.

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VATICAN CITY
Gazzetta del Sud

Rome, April 28 – Former Vatican Secretary of State Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone strongly denied Monday Italian media reports claiming that the prelate will move into an “opulent” flat measuring as much as 700 square meters in the Vatican while Pope Francis makes do with humbler lodgings. “In recent days some media outlets have spoken malevolently about the apartment where I will live in the Vatican and, to worsen the public humiliation, their ‘informant’ has doubled the square meters,” Bertone said in a letter to two diocesan newspapers. “It has been said, among other things, that the pope was furious with me for so much opulence. The size of ‘my’ apartment has even been compared to the presumed restricted nature of the residence of the pope,” he added in the letter to the diocesan weeklies of Genoa and Vercelli. Since his election last year, in a move criticised by some conservative Catholics, Francis has decided not to move into the vast papal apartments in the Apostolic Palace used by his predecessors, choosing instead to remain in a suite in the Santa Marta guesthouse used by cardinals during the papal Conclave.

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AUSTRALIA
Border Mail

By FIONA HENDERSON April 27, 2014

REGIONAL victims are urged to share their stories with the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse.

The commission’s chief executive officer, Janette Dines, said regional and remote communities were the focus of a national public awareness campaign launched on Saturday.

“A recent telephone survey found that there is a high level of awareness of the royal commission in regional communities across Australia,” Ms Dines said.

“Despite this, many people are still unsure about what the royal commission can look into.

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MINNESOTA
National Catholic Reporter

Brian Roewe | Apr. 28, 2014

Through six hours of testimony, Fr. Kevin McDonough did a little bit of everything. He corrected perceived inaccuracies, provided spellings of names, asked for clarifications and questions of his own, exchanged barbs with attorney Jeff Anderson, and even offered a compliment or two.

But more than anything, he steadfastly defended the decisions he made and his record on clergy sexual abuse during his almost 17 years as vicar general and six years as the delegate for safe environments of the St. Paul-Minneapolis archdiocese.

“During the period — and I know it personally only really from ’87, I believe that we got better and better at [protecting children] all the time. … I think this diocese was a real leader and worked very hard to — to protect children,” McDonough said.

The at-times-contentious deposition, taken April 16, related to the case of John Doe 1, the same litigation that brought Archbishop John Nienstedt for deposing 14 days earlier. Like Nienstedt’s testimony, both Anderson and the archdiocese published the full transcript on their websites.

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UNITED STATES
Yale Books Unbound

Michael Coogan—

On April 27, ornately robed clerics will celebrate the canonization of two recent popes, John XXIII and John Paul II. In the modern Roman Catholic Church until the last few decades, canonization­—declaring someone a saint—was rare and occurred only after a protracted process. Successive steps lead to canonization: first, one is declared “Servant of God,” then “Venerable,” then “Blessed,” and finally “Saint.” From the beginning of the fourteenth century to the mid-twentieth, only two popes were canonized and another three were declared “Blessed.” Not so any more: since the papacy of John Paul II a flurry of canonizations has been underway, not just for ordinary individuals deemed holy, but also for modern popes.

GWB LB DIGITAL 12:35 Statements with Pope John Paul II.
Pope John Paul II

Remarkably, all of the popes since the mid-twentieth century, except of course for those still alive, are on the path to canonization: Pius XII (1939–1958, declared Servant of God in 1990 and Venerable in 2009), John XXIII (1958–1963, declared Servant of God in 1965, Venerable in 1999, and Blessed in 2000), Paul VI (1963–1978, declared Servant of God in 1993 and Venerable in 2012), John Paul I (1978, declared Servant of God in 2003), and John Paul II (1978–2005, declared Servant of God in 2005, Venerable in 2009, and Blessed in 2011). Why this sudden, almost automatic rush to sainthood for recent popes?

Part of the answer lies in nineteenth-century realpolitik. For more than a thousand years, the pope was not just the spiritual head of the Roman Catholic Church, but also a monarch, the ruler of the Papal States in the central Italian peninsula. As sovereigns of this territory, popes engaged in diplomacy and war to maintain and expand their control. In the nineteenth century, however, the papal domain was virtually eliminated by the unification of Italy under Garibaldi and his successors, culminating with the capture of Rome by Italian forces in September 1870. All that was left of papal territory was tiny Vatican City. Only a few months before, when the fall of Rome was already inevitable, the First Vatican Council, at Pope Pius IX’s prompting, declared the doctrine of papal infallibility. If the popes could not be political sovereigns, it seems, they could at least have absolute spiritual authority, especially, as the official wording has it, when they say they are speaking infallibly on an issue of faith or morals.

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