ABUSE TRACKER

The acquittal of Bishop Franco Mulakkal of Jalandhar in the rape case filed against him by the former superior general of the diocesan congregation Missionaries of Jesus in June 2018 has shocked — not just her supporters — but many feminists and other right-thinking people in the country.

Sisters in Solidarity, the group of women activists, nuns and lawyers who are accompanying the sisters, supporting them in different ways right through, are numbed with disbelief. On examining the judgment, it is clear that the bishop’s highly paid defense counsel skillfully used technicalities to manipulate the facts and evidence to make the judge finally state in his order, “When it is not feasible to separate the truth from falsehood, when the grain and chaff are inextricably mixed up, the only available course is to discard the evidence in toto.” He concluded, “This court was unable to place reliance on the solitary…

View Cache

A Vatican appellate court rejected the appeal of two former top managers of the Vatican bank who were found liable for mismanagement.

In a statement released Jan. 21, the Institute for the Works of Religion, the formal name of the bank, said the court upheld its 2018 ruling against Paolo Cipriani, the former bank director, and Massimo Tulli, the former deputy director, and ordered them to pay more than 40.5 million euro ($45.9 million) in damages.

While no specific information was released regarding the exact instances of mismanagement committed by Cipriani and Tulli, the Institute for the Works of Religion said the court’s 2018 judgment centered on investments made “between 2010 and 2013, and which immediately proved to be harmful as they were problematic and, in several cases, also illegitimate and the subject of criminal proceedings.”

In February 2017, an Italian tribunal in Rome also found Cipriani and Tulli guilty…

View Cache

Future pope failed to remove abusive priests from ministry, inquiry by Munich law firm finds

Pope Benedict XVI mishandled four cases of clerical sex abuse during his tenure as an archbishop in Germany, according to an inquiry that faults him for failures to investigate and discipline abusers.

Results of the church-commissioned probe by a Munich law firm, released on Thursday, said that in two cases, priests under the future pope’s authority were criminally prosecuted for abuse yet allowed to remain in priestly ministry. At least one reoffended after being readmitted to service.

The accusations threaten to cast a shadow on the record of the former pope, who for more than two decades before his election oversaw the church’s disciplining of clerical abusers. His alleged mistakes in Munich reinforce the image of an overly disengaged manager whose papacy ended amid accusations of corruption and incompetence among Vatican officials. Defenders say he…

View Cache

Victims of child sexual assault make an emotional plea to state senators on Friday.

They want a longer window to seek justice.

Stacey Naiman appeared before the Legislature’s Judiciary Committee in support of LB 833.

The measure would eliminate the statute of limitations for victims to go after the private institutions that allowed the abuse to happen.

She said she was sexually assaulted by a priest she trusted when she was 15.

“I told him to stop several times. But he never listened and the abuse continued,” Naiman said.

She said she became withdrawn and emotionally devastated.

“I attempted suicide and carved ‘Go to hell’ into my leg,” Naiman said.

She finally told her family and reported the abuse to law enforcement in 1999.

“He admitted to everything in my report. However, the investigators told us that we had no grounds to press charges,” Naiman said.

It…

View Cache

Victims of sexual abuse at the hands of Catholic priests urged Nebraska lawmakers on Friday to pass a law that would let people who were abused decades ago file lawsuits against the church or other organizations that were negligent.

The proposal comes on the heels of a Nebraska attorney general report that identified 258 victims who made credible abuse allegations against church officials, dating back decades. None of those cases, however, are expected to result in prosecutions or legal judgments because the statutes of limitation for both criminal charges and civil lawsuits have expired.

Members of the Legislature’s Judiciary Committee are now reviewing a bill that would eliminate the statute of limitations for lawsuits. The sponsor, Republican Sen. Rich Pahls, of Omaha, said the measure is a start of a multiyear push to bring justice for victims of abuse.

Pahls said the attorney general’s report shows the need to bring…

View Cache

A $490 million deal to settle claims of sexual assault against a University of Michigan doctor will be handled in a similar way to the $500 million agreement worked out in 2018 by Michigan State University and the victims of Larry Nassar.

The school won’t have a role in how the money is divided. Rather a retired judge, maybe two, will be presented with individual claims and determine a figure, attorneys said.

Simple math pegs an average payment of more than $400,000 for each of the 1,050 people — most of them men — though some could be higher or lower, depending on the impact of Robert Anderson’s abuse.

“Everybody is not going to be the same,” attorney Jamie White said. “These men were not out for money. Most of them are established U. of M. graduates. This was more about holding the university accountable.”

WHAT HAPPENED?

Former students…

View Cache

The University of Michigan announced a $490 million settlement Wednesday with more than 1,000 people who say they were sexually assaulted by a sports doctor during his nearly four-decade career at the school.

The university said 1,050 people will share in the financial settlement, the latest in several large payouts made by American universities following accusations of repeated sexual abuse by employees.

Individuals and their attorneys will determine how to split $460 million, with no input from the university, the school said in a statement. An additional $30 million will be set aside for future claims.

Board of Regents Chair Jordan Acker told reporters that the agreement will resolve all survivor claims.

“We must support healing and restoration of trust in an environment where safety is paramount,” Acker said. “This agreement is an important step in that direction.”

Attorney Parker Stinar said the settlement was reached Tuesday night. The university…

View Cache

As an anti-clergy abuse and survivors advocacy organization, the policy of Nate’s Mission is never to provide victim information or criminal evidence of cover-up to any church organization, entity or official currently under criminal or civil investigation. This is precisely why our organization delivered the church whistleblower documents to Wisconsin Attorney General Josh Kaul as well as Milwaukee County District Attorney John Chisholm and Brown County District Attorney David Lasee.

It is perhaps understandable that Green Bay church officials may not have many of these documents because, according to church whistleblower documents, they systematically destroyed a large portion of their criminal evidence.

In this afternoon’s press release, the Green Bay diocese stated that they would provide documents relating to any “prosecutable crimes” to Attorney General Kaul’s office. Per Wisconsin state law, the Green Bay diocese does not possess the statutory authority to determine whether cases are prosecutable….

View Cache

The Diocese of Green Bay says it is communicating with Wisconsin Attorney General Josh Kaul’s office related to a statewide probe into clergy abuse.

The Diocese says it will provide “documents relating to any prosecutable crimes uncovered by the Attorney General’s Office during his review.”

The full statement comes one day after Nate’s Mission says it gave the Brown County District Attorney a list of abusive clergy, school faculty and volunteers. Among the list are 69 alleged offenders not on the Green Bay public registry.

“Church whistleblowers around the state have been obtaining this, finding this, getting this. Getting it to us. Getting it to survivors to get to law enforcement because they concerned,” Peter Isely, program director for Nate’s Mission, said.

Nate’s Mission is a Wisconsin-based project of Ending Clergy Abuse.

“We do not know the names to which Peter Isley of Nate’s Mission refers nor do we know…

View Cache

The Diocese of Green Bay responded Friday to an advocacy group’s allegations that it had covered up 69 additional priests connected to child abuse. 

“Regarding this declaration of new evidence, no one from Nate’s Mission, including Mr. (Peter) Isely, has contacted the diocese in recent months to report any specific information related to abuse,” said a statement from the Diocese of Green Bay.  “The diocese has and will continue its practice of notifying authorities of allegations of abuse it receives.”

The statement from the diocese comes a day after advocates from Nate’s Mission delivered documents to the office of Brown County District Attorney David Lasee. Isely, the advocacy group’s program director, told reporters on Thursday that the documents were obtained by whistleblowers operating from within the church. 

Isely did not show the Green Bay Press-Gazette the contents of the package or any of the documents to allow the newspaper to independently verify the organization’s claims.

…

View Cache

Conservatives on Friday defended former Pope Benedict against charges of mishandling sexual abuse cases decades ago, but victim groups and experts said the findings of a German report had tarnished the legacy of one of Catholicism’s most renowned theologians.

The report, commissioned by the German Church and published on Thursday, said the then Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger failed to take action against clerics in four cases when he was the archbishop of Munich from 1977 to 1982. read more

Benedict denied wrongdoing over the cases in an 82-page written statement sent to the investigators but Martin Pusch, one of the lawyers who presented the report, said that while the former pope claimed ignorance of some events “in our opinion, that is difficult to reconcile with the documentation.”

Benedict, 94, infirm and living in the Vatican, said through his secretary that he had not yet read the entire report, but would give…

View Cache

Pope Francis pledged Friday to provide justice to victims of clergy sexual abuse, a day after an independent audit faulted his predecessor, Pope Benedict XVI, for having botched four cases of abusive clergy when he was archbishop of Munich, Germany.

Francis met with the members of the Vatican office that handles sex abuse cases in a previously scheduled annual audience. The Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith was headed by Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger – Benedict before he became pope – for a quarter-century.

In his speech, Francis didn’t refer to the findings of a long-awaited report into how the Munich archdiocese handled abuse cases from 1945 and 2019. Ratzinger was archbishop there from 1977-1982.

But Francis said the church was continuing to discern the way forward in the abuse scandal, which has discredited the Catholic hierarchy at the Vatican and around the world.

“The church, with God’s help, is…

View Cache

I attended the annual March for Life in Washington, D.C., for the first and only time in January 1989, as a senior at a Catholic high school in the Archdiocese of Philadelphia. The experience looms large in my memory, thanks to a photograph that appeared on the front page of Philadelphia’s Catholic newspaper. Archbishop Anthony Bevilacqua is featured front and center, surrounded by enthusiastic teenagers. I’m on the archbishop’s left; he has his arm around me, and we are both smiling brightly.

I remember basking in Bevilacqua’s warmth and exuberant praise, believing him when he assured us that when it came to defending the sanctity of life, there was nothing more important that we could do than join the crusade to overturn Roe v. Wade.

I’m often tempted to send this photo to the many people who write to me, outraged that I’ve dared to suggest publicly that U.S. bishops’ obsession…

View Cache

The law firm that drew up the report, which faulted the current archbishop in two cases, said Benedict strongly denied any wrongdoing.

A report into sexual abuse in the Catholic Church in Germany’s Munich diocese has found that retired Pope Benedict XVI failed to act in four cases between 1977 and 1982 when he was Archbishop of Munich.

Lawyers who drew up the report said Benedict categorically denied any wrongdoing. The report also faulted Munich’s current archbishop, Cardinal Reinhard Marx, an important ally of Pope Francis.

The archdiocese commissioned the report from law firm Westpfahl Spilker Wastl nearly two years ago, with a mandate to look into abuse between 1945 and 2019 and whether church officials handled allegations correctly.

“In a total of four cases, we came to the conclusion that the then-archbishop, Cardinal Ratzinger, can be accused of misconduct,” said one of the…

View Cache

[Google translation; German text follows the translation.]

What conclusions should be drawn from the abuse report? There is criticism not only of the church – but also of the law enforcement authorities.

After the publication of a new report on abuse in the Archdiocese of Munich-Freising, the federal government asked the Catholic Church to carry out a comprehensive and transparent investigation. A government spokeswoman said in Berlin that it made the extent of sexual abuse and dereliction of duty by church dignitaries clear again in a “shocking way”. »The abuse and the subsequent handling of these acts is stunned. The complete clarification and the comprehensive processing are now all the more urgent,” said the spokeswoman for Federal Chancellor Olaf Scholz ( SPD ).

The report commissioned by the Archdiocese itself and commissioned by the Westpfahl Spilker Wastl chancellery comes to the conclusion that cases of sexual abuse in the diocese have not been dealt with appropriately for decades. The…

View Cache

Two cases involved abusers who were allowed to continue with pastoral duties, says lawyer

The former pope Benedict XVI failed to act against four priests accused of child sexual abuse when he was archbishop of Munich, a German investigation has claimed.

Benedict, who stood down as leader of the global Roman Catholic church in 2013, has denied the charges, said a law firm commissioned to investigate historic abuse allegations.

Martin Pusch of the law firm Westpfahl Spilker Wastl, said Benedict – then Joseph Ratzinger – “was informed about the facts”.

He added: “We believe that he can be accused of misconduct in four cases. Two of these cases concern abuses committed during his tenure and sanctioned by the state. In both cases, the perpetrators remained active in pastoral care.”

Benedict, whose resignation as pope took the world by surprise, has repeatedly rejected claims that he knowingly covered up abuse. In  View Cache

The question of a ‘delay’ in rape complaint cannot be answered without understanding the power structures that underline life within Catholic church.

“Because the framing (of law) is not if he is guilty, the framing is if he is found guilty,” said bishop Franco Mulakkal in 2018, in an interview with Republic TV.

In 2018, a nun at the Missionaries of Jesus convent in Kottayam accused the bishop of raping her 13 times between 2014 to 2016. Nearly four years later, he was acquitted citing lack of evidence, with no witness turning hostile and multiple nuns alleging that they too were harassed by the same bishop.

In the 24 pages of the “victim’s version” within the 289-page judgement were details of how Mulakkal had forcefully undressed, fingered and grabbed her, and kissed her breasts. “He also made an attempt to insert his sexual organ into the mouth…

View Cache

As Concerned Lay Catholics in St. Catharines, and across Canada, we learned recently of a $1-million settlement awarded by the Diocese of St. Catharines in compensation to a survivor for years-long sexual abuse by a priest of the diocese. (‘A Wolf In Priest’s Clothing’, Jan. 5.) In the words of Bishop Bergie, posted on the diocesan website: “We hope that the settlement brings some degree of closure for ‘Matt.’ We all have a responsibility to protect children and vulnerable people, to support those who have suffered abuse, and to work together to ensure that our churches are safe and welcoming places for all.”

Settlements are very important. They provide survivors with resources to deal with the lifelong impact of the trauma that results from sexual abuse. Every dollar awarded to survivors is very much needed.

Settlements, however, are only one component of a comprehensive pastoral response needed from the church. How…

View Cache

Former Pope Benedict XVI failed to take action against clerics in four cases of alleged sexual abuse in his archdiocese when he was Archbishop of Munich, a report found on Thursday.

Munich law firm Westpfahl Spilker Wastl (WSW) was asked to investigate allegations of sexual abuse in the Archdiocese of Munich and Freising between 1945 and 2019.

The report, commissioned by the archdiocese, said there were at least 497 victims of abuse, mainly young males. Many other cases had probably not been reported, said the lawyers.

A spokesman for the former pope did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Benedict, now aged 94, has been living in the Vatican since resigning as pontiff in 2013.

In a statement that did not mention the former pope, the Vatican said it would evaluate the full report and examine its details.

“In reiterating a sense of shame and remorse for the…

View Cache

Report says Benedict failed to tackle four abusing priests while archbishop of Munich

Survivors of Catholic clerical sexual abuse in Germany have welcomed a report accusing former pope Benedict XVI of protecting perpetrator priests as “the collapse of a monument”.

The report, published on Thursday and running to nearly 2,000 pages, says the 94-year-old former pontiff failed to tackle four abusing priests during his time as archbishop of Munich, and it questioned his assertion that he did not know about the abuse.

In testimony to investigators, his former deputy in Munich, Fr Gerhard Gruberm, said he was “pressured” to take responsibility for one abuse case when it first emerged in 2010, “to protect the [then] pope [Benedict]”.

“This tower of lies, erected to protect cardinal Ratzinger, pope Benedict, has today come crashing down,” said Matthias Katsch of Germany’s Eckiger Tisch survivors’ group.

Emeritus Pope Benedict XVI said on Thursday he…

View Cache

Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI is among three senior German clerics implicated in misconduct by a landmark report into clerical sex abuse in the Archdiocese of Munich. The former Pope is accused of failing to take action in four cases of alleged sexual abuse when he was Archbishop of Munich by a new report launched today, 20 January.

Cardinal Reinhard Marx, the present Archbishop, is accused of inaction in two such cases and Cardinal Friedrich Wetter, his predecessor, is accused in 21 cases.

The investigation, carried out by Munich law firm Westpfahl Spilker Wastl (WSW), identified 497 victims of abuse in the archdiocese, although researchers warned that more victims may not have reported their abuse.

Pope Benedict XVI, then Joseph Ratzinger, was Archbishop of Munich and Freising between 1977 and 1982, during which time, the report alleges, he responded with inaction to the abuse of minors by clerics under his authority.

…

View Cache

[NOTE: The full text of the Westpfahl Spilker Wastl report about abuse in the Archdiocese of Munich and Freising is available here.]

Rome – A church-commissioned German investigation on Thursday accused Pope Benedict XVI of “wrongdoing” in his handling of sexual abuse cases during his time running the archdiocese of Munich between 1977 and 1982.

The law firm that carried out the investigation said Benedict could be accused of wrongdoing in four cases, including one in which he knowingly accepted a priest into his archdiocese even after the cleric had been convicted of sexual abuse in a criminal court.

At a news conference to unveil the findings, a lawyer said that Benedict — known then as Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger — claimed to have no direct knowledge of the cases. But his denials were “not reconcilable with the files in evidence,” the lawyer, Martin Pusch said.

The report, commissioned by the…

View Cache

[NOTE: The full text of the Westpfahl Spilker Wastl report about abuse in the Archdiocese of Munich and Freising is available here.]

A newly released report by a law firm said the former pope failed to discipline priests in at least four cases of sexual abuse accusations in Germany.

A report released on Thursday faulted Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI for what the authors called misconduct in his handling of at least four cases of sexual abuse by Roman Catholic priests when he was the archbishop of Munich, according to the law firm that handled the investigation.

The report on the handling of clerical sex abuse of minors in the diocese of Munich and Freising covered the period between 1945 and 2019. Benedict was archbishop of Munich and Freising from 1977 to 1982 and had oversight over the clerics.

“In a total of four cases, we came to the conclusion…

View Cache

An advocacy group has turned over thousands of pages of documents from the five Wisconsin Catholic dioceses it says demonstrate a systemic coverup of sexual abuse by clergy members.

Nate’s Mission, an advocacy group aimed at ending clergy abuse in Wisconsin, handed the documents over to Wisconsin Attorney General Josh Kaul on Tuesday, in a move to further the investigation launched last year into abusive clergy and the coverup of abuse by Catholic dioceses.

The group is named for Nate Lindstrom, who accused multiple priests at St. Norbert Abbey in De Pere of sexually abusing him in the 1980s. He died by suicide in 2020, nearly one year after the abbey stopped sending secret payments he received for 10 years.

More:First came sex abuse allegations at the abbey. Then secret payments. Then a suicide.

The five dioceses include the Archdiocese of Milwaukee…

View Cache

On Tuesday, representatives of Nate’s Mission marched up the steps of the Wisconsin state Capitol to deliver alleged documents of clergy abuse to Attorney General Josh Kaul.

Nate’s Mission is an organization dedicated to ending clergy abuse in religious organizations.

“Thousands of pages of internal church files, memorandum, minutes of meetings, cases concerning the sexual abuse of children by clergy in the state,” Nate’s Mission program director Peter Isely said.

These documents include allegations involving the Diocese of Green Bay.

Isely claims Catholic leaders allegedly destroyed criminal and corporate evidence of fraud in the organization.

“This was done in 2007, that was then Bishop (David) Zubik. He ordered the systematic destruction of virtually all evidence of criminal behavior done by dozens of Green Bay priests in his diocese,” Isely said.

Nate’s Mission says the documents it has collected cannot be viewed by the public at this time.

The Diocese of…

View Cache

An advocacy group working to end clergy abuse in Wisconsin has delivered thousands of documents from Wisconsin’s five Catholic dioceses to the state attorney general, documents it says show a systemic coverup of abuse.

The documents were provided to Nate’s Mission by whistleblowers within the Archdiocese of Milwaukee and the Diocese of Madison, La Crosse, Green Bay and Superior, the group said.

The group handed boxes of documents to state Attorney General Josh Kaul on Tuesday to further the investigation launched last year into clergy abuse, the Journal Sentine l reported.

“This is criminal evidence that we’re looking at right here. Evidence of sexual abuse of children over the past decades, evidence of sexual abuse over the past decades,” said Peter Isely, a Nate’s Mission member.

Kaul said the investigation continues, but no further information was available.

“The Wisconsin Department of Justice continues to encourage anyone with…

View Cache

The chaplain at Brother Martin High School abruptly left his post earlier this month, just days after the school was notified of allegations that he kissed and fondled a Mt. Carmel Academy senior in 1990 while serving at another local Catholic institution, according to multiple sources with direct knowledge of the situation.

The Rev. Paul Hart was assigned by Archbishop Gregory Aymond to serve as Brother Martin’s chaplain in 2017, after a church investigation four years earlier confirmed the sexual misconduct but determined the student was not a minor under church law.

Reached by phone, Hart said his retirement from the all-boys high school, as well as from his job as director of retreats at St. Joseph Abbey in Covington, was due to his ongoing battle with brain cancer. The archdiocese said the same. 

But the picture appears far more complicated.

According to multiple sources, Brother Martin was unaware of…

View Cache

Not long after I finished Sarah Ferguson’s new novel Her Heart for a Compass, the tale of a Victorian-era Scottish woman who stood up to patriarchy, I listened to recordings of sessions from the Leadership Conference of Women Religious on the emerging future of religious life. I went to bed feeling discouraged by the questions arising in these particular LCWR conversations because they were more about coming to closure than transforming for the future.

As I slept, my unconscious merged details of the book and the LCWR sessions, because when I woke up, I had to grab a pen to note another question before it slipped away.

Are women religious trying to solve the wrong problem? Yes, we need to care for older religious. We do have a shortage of leadership. We are burdened with buildings and systems that need maintenance. We do have ministries we can no…

View Cache

The Kottayam court acquitting Bishop Franco Mulakkal while the survivor was expelled from her duties was a telling saga of how sexual predators not only survive but thrive in India.

Ezekiel 34:4 “The weak you have not strengthened, the sick you have not healed, the injured you have not bound up, the strayed you have not brought back, the lost you have not sought, and with force and harshness you have ruled them.

No person is fit for the office of a shepherd who does not well understand the diseases to which sheep are incident, and the mode of cure. And is any man fit for the pastoral office or to be a shepherd of souls who is not well acquainted with the disease of sin in all its varieties, and the remedy for this disease and the proper mode of administering it? He who does not know Jesus Christ…

View Cache

Judge Gopakumar relies on three crucial contentions to hold that the complainant’s statement detailing 13 separate instances of alleged rape in a span of four years is inconsistent.

FROM notions of how an ideal victim must behave to theories of possible enemies within the system plotting against the accused; speculation that the complainant could have had an affair with a married man to an earlier, narrower definition of rape.

These are some of the key factors behind the Kerala court’s acquittal of Franco Mulakkal, the former Jalandhar Bishop of the Catholic Church, of all charges in the alleged rape of a nun.

In his 289-page order, Additional Sessions Judge G Gopakumar of the Kottayam district court held that the victim’s statement is inconsistent. Under the law, the statement of the complainant in a rape case is considered sufficient evidence unless the defence can establish material inconsistencies in it.

Judge…

View Cache

Complainant and her supporters are in danger of further victimization after the verdict, says Catholic women’s group

A Catholic women’s group in India has urged church authorities to protect the rape complainant nun, her companions and witnesses in the Bishop Franco Mulakkal case.

Bishop Mulakkal of Jalandhar was acquitted of all charges including raping a nun from the Missionaries of Jesus (MJ) congregation by a court in Kerala on Jan. 14, with a judge saying the prosecution could not prove the allegations against him.

Sisters in Solidarity, a group comprising nuns, doctors, lawyers and other professionals, said that “they are in deep shock, disappointment and disbelief at the ‘not guilty’ verdict awarded to Franco Mulakkal.

The group’s statement dated Jan. 15 said the reaction appearing in media holding the court verdict as a “major victory for the Church” is very disturbing.

“We are pained to…

View Cache

Hierarchy violates both Catholic Church and civil laws in its inaction to address cases involving priests

The sex abuse case of a priest, considered a benchmark one in the Indian Church, ended in the conviction and life imprisonment of the accused last month. However, it is deeply distressing that the sincerity of the Church’s leadership was not manifested in its handling.

The allegations against 55-year-old Father Lawrence Johnson attracted the national Church’s attention as it happened to be the first publicly reported case after the Indian Church put in effect a Vatican-approved procedure to deal with allegations of sex abuse by Catholic clergy.

The priest of the Archdiocese of Bombay (now Mumbai) was accused of sodomizing a 13-year-old boy inside his parish’s sacristy on Nov. 27, 2014, barely four weeks after the Church announced its methods to follow the Vatican procedure to check the malady.

Church observers considered…

View Cache

 A Polish diocese apologized after its lawyer suggested a former altar server could have enjoyed being sexually molested by a priest, as a spokesman for victims warned the church still had “a long way to go” in combating abuse.

“We wish to stress unambiguously that we did not seek to diminish the responsibility of the perpetrator who committed crimes against a minor, still less cast blame on the person harmed,” the southern Bielsko-Zywiec Diocese said in a statement.

“We apologize to everyone outraged by these media reports — and to remove all doubts, the evidence in this case will be clarified in the near future by order of Bishop Roman Pindel … taking into account the injured party’s sensitivity.”

Anna Englert, diocesan attorney, had suggested a former child victim suing for damages could have been a homosexual who “gained satisfaction” from his “intimate relationship” with Father Jan Wodniak, who headed the…

View Cache

As New Jersey’s governor weighs the nomination of a new state attorney general, an ongoing investigation in the attorney general’s office has delayed the release of information about the activities of disgraced former cardinal Theodore McCarrick.

But with appointment of a new attorney general, it is possible the investigation could come to a close, allowing New Jersey bishops to release diocesan records on McCarrick.

“Under the leadership of Acting Attorney General Andrew J. Bruck, the New Jersey Clergy Abuse Task Force remains active and committed to seeking justice for victims of sexual abuse by members of the clergy in New Jersey,” a spokesman in the state’s attorney general’s office told The Pillar Friday.

A New Jersey clergy abuse task force was formed in 2018, in the wake of the sexual abuse scandal of former cardinal McCarrick, who was that year accused of sexually abusing minors, and of sexually harassing and coercing seminarians…

View Cache

Thomas Reardon, a former Roman Catholic priest in the Diocese of Kansas City-St. Joseph who over the years was named in more than two dozen child sexual abuse lawsuits, was found dead Sunday in a south Kansas City senior living facility.

Kansas City police told The Star that officers were dispatched with EMS personnel to Brookdale Wornall Place at 501 W. 107th St. on a dead body call just after noon Sunday. Upon arrival, they contacted employees who told them the deceased person was Reardon, a resident. No foul play was suspected, police said.

Reardon, 80, was ordained in 1967 and resigned from the priesthood in 1989. Decades later, he was laicized, or removed from the priesthood. In 2019, he was among 24 priests whose names Bishop James V. Johnston Jr. released as those who had been credibly accused of sexual abuse of minors. Johnston called the abuse…

View Cache

A week into the year-long independent anti-abuse commission convened by the Catholic Church in Portugal, 102 allegations had been made.

In a statement released to the Lusa Portuguese news agency, child psychiatrist Pedro Strecht, the coordinator of the independent abuse commission, said that the 102 testimonies received thus far, contain “moments of deep pain and suffering.”

The testimonies were received either online or via phone call.

The Independent Commission for the Study of Sexual Abuse in the Portuguese Catholic Church is collecting complaints from victims of cases that have occurred since 1950, which may be referred to the police. 

According to the coordinator, there are statements from people aged between 30 and 80, “all abused as children.” The commission has already set up face-to-face meetings with those who provided testimony.

Although it has received testimony from all over the country, as well as people who have emigrated, the commission says that “there…

View Cache

The first civil case has been filed under a Colorado law that took effect on the Jan. 1, 2022 allowing survivors can sue alleged perpetrators for cases going back to 1960. It was 1977, before and during a river rafting trip in which a then-teenage girl says she was sexually assaulted by a teacher from a private school.

“I immediately buried it. It was too overwhelming for me to handle at my age, and I didn’t tell anyone except a Catholic priest who I confessed it to,” Kate McPhee, now living in Vermont, told CBS4.

She was 15 years old back then. Now decades later she has filed a lawsuit against that teacher in Boulder District Court. CBS4 has not been able to reach him and are not naming him now.

She claims she suffered “pattern of sexual misconduct involving alcohol, drugs and massages.”

Recalling the incident, McPhee says, has been…

View Cache

Concerned Lay Catholics organization working with Recovery Speaking Initiative to amplify voices of clergy abuse victims

Church must address wounded souls

Re: Victim awarded $1 million in lawsuit against ex-priest Donald Grecco and diocese, Jan. 5

Concerned Lay Catholics is pleased to hear of the recent settlement of $1 million awarded to a survivor by the Diocese of St. Catharines. Settlements are very important. They provide survivors with resources to deal with the lifelong impact of the trauma that results from sexual abuse.

Settlements, however, are only one component of a comprehensive pastoral response needed by the church. The abuse of an individual is not an isolated event but always happens within the context of a community.

In addition to financial settlements, as a church we need to address the wounded souls and broken relationships individuals suffer along with their families, parishes and spiritual communities.

Recently Pope Francis announced an…

View Cache

[Via the Catholic Telegraph of the Archdiocese of Cincinnati]

Pope emeritus Benedict XVI served as pope from 2005 to 2013. He was born Joseph Ratzinger on April 16, 1927, at Marktl in the German state of Bavaria. He turns 95 soon.

There is lots to know about this man who became a priest, archbishop, a cardinal, and even a former pope.

He is fond of cats, pianos, and Mozart.

When he was a cardinal living in Rome, he would prepare plates of food for stray cats. If friendly cats near his Vatican offices were hurt, he would bandage their wounds.

As of 2005, the year he became pope, Benedict had a black-and-white short-haired cat named Chico living at his home in Bavaria.

When he moved to live in the Vatican apartments, he still had to follow the rules: no cats or dogs allowed.

His other…

View Cache

A diocese in Poland wanted to question the victim about his sexuality after he sued for damages

A Catholic diocese in Poland has been condemned after asking a court to determine whether an alter boy derived “pleasure” from a priest sexually abusing him.

Catholics in the country have criticized the diocese of Bielsko-Zywiec for trying to call an expert to determine whether the victim was gay and “showed satisfaction” in the abuse, which they deemed a “relationship.”

Janusz Szymik, 48, was abused by a priest — identified in court documents as Fr. Jan W. — for five years in the 1980s, starting when Szymik was a 12-year-old altar boy.

A Catholic Church investigation in 2015 found Jan W. guilty of abusing Szymik, banning him from his priestly duties for five years and requiring him to isolate from others.

Szymik later filed a civil suit against the diocese, seeking 3 million…

View Cache

[Includes video interview with King about her immigration stories.]

Danae King serves as the faith and values and immigration reporter at The Dispatch.

Why I became a journalist

From a young age, I’ve loved a good story. I read everything I could get my hands on. Eventually my love of reading turned into a love of writing and, coupled with my natural curiosity, a desire to be the person telling the stories, not just reading them.

As I started to find every opportunity to write, I began to realize my love for journalism went beyond telling stories and became more about making sure the truth is told. For me, journalism is about ensuring that someone is watching those in power, raising consciousness about injustices against those without power and getting the chance to educate people about things they may never otherwise hear or know about. 

Danae’s work: ‘There’s no…

View Cache

The Indian Church must bring in a new approach to victim support and transparency in procedures to combat the clergy abuse of minors and vulnerable adults.

On December 29, a special judge of a court set up under the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences Act convicted Roman Catholic priest Lawrence Johnson for sexually assaulting a minor boy.

The case highlights how church authorities failed to follow both the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences Act and rules set by the state and church Canon Law for victim protection.

Human rights activists and women’s rights organisations within the Catholic community have criticised the manner in which the rights of victims are routinely negated and abusers are shielded or supported on the pretext of “maintaining neutrality” or that the matter is sub judice.

That was also evident when a sessions court in Kerala’s Kottayam on January 14 acquitted Bishop…

View Cache

[Includes English-language background video.]

Bishop Franco Mulakkal was found not guilty on charges of rape. But now the Kerala Catholic Church has been left seriously divided, with some asking whether the church has too much power.

A Catholic bishop in India who had been accused of raping a nun multiple times over a period of two years was acquitted by a court in Kottayam, Kerala, last week.

Bishop Franco Mulakkal, who worked in the diocese of Jalandhar, was accused of carrying out the rapes from 2014 to 2016. The case sparked outrage and large protests in the southern state of Kerala. The ruling has left many members of the clergy questioning the power of the church in the state and how the church can move forward while deep divisions remain.

What did the judge say?

The victim said she went to the police only after complaining repeatedly to church authorities. Mulakkal was…

View Cache

Protection agency says many crimes still covered up, govt claims efforts to have cases reported are working

Sexual violence committed against children in Indonesia almost tripled in 2021, but true figures remain elusive because of a tendency not to report such crimes and cover them up, according to an agency dedicated to protecting victims.

The Witness and Victim Protection Agency (LPKS) said it recorded 288 complaints last year, a sharp increase on the 107 recorded in 2020.  

“At least 65.7 percent of these 288 incidents took place in schools,” Edwin Partogi Pasaribu, an agency spokesman, said on Jan. 16. 

He said the true figure was likely very much higher as many people do not come forward to report such acts while attempts are often made by institutions to cover them up.

However, the jump in reported cases showed that efforts to get people to come forward were beginning to…

View Cache

THERE has been a mixed response to a new law giving Irish adoptees and their relatives automatic access to their birth records.

The Birth Information and Tracing Bill, announced by Government on Wednesday, and currently making its way through the dáil, will establish a free tracing service for adoptees and their relatives.

In theory, the service will provide unrestrained access to birth certificates, medical records, and other information pertaining to an adoptee’s formative years.

But it’s not as simple as that.

For a start, not all files are accessible.

Tuam Babies Family Group founder Anna Corrigan’s two brothers, William and John, were supposed to have died in Tuam mother and babies home as infants in the early 1950’s.

Anna’s mother Bridget Dolan, a resident of Tuam for some years, kept this a secret throughout her life, and so Anna only found out about her brothers when she was in her…

View Cache

In its 2021 report titled, “The University Commission on Gonzaga’s Response to the Catholic Sexual Abuse Crisis,” the Jesuit-affiliated university described its newfound respect for survivors of sexual assault committed by priests. It proclaims that “reconciliation” with victims of clergy sex abuse “is only made possible with the establishment of justice, which requires actively seeking to dismantle systems of domination, abuse, and harm and building up new systems in their place.” It further opines that, “those who have been sexually abused and the broader communities harmed by such abuse are among those whose dignity has been violated,” and that “walking with those whose dignity has been violated requires action.”

Action. As a recent visitor to Gonzaga University and Saint Aloysius Catholic Church on its campus, I wonder if that might include publicly praying for predator priests who decimated Alaska Native children, perhaps not expecting a visit from an Alaskan.

I recently…

View Cache

Given their failure to protect children, their stance on the Maine ERA bill or any other subject should not have the weight that it does.

Here we go again. The Roman Catholic Diocese of Portland has come out with their objections to the Equal Rights Amendment (L.D. 344) passing in the Maine Legislature. Many, if not all, of their arguments are absurd.

These objections come from a church that – in 2022! – relegates women to mere lower-level functionaries within its own structure. Are they still living in 1522?

What gives me pause, though, is the power this institution has in our public discourse.

Other than the Boy Scouts of America, I know of no other institution that, under its watch, has failed so completely to protect children from sexual abuse and then denied and covered it up.

Why the Catholic Church carries…

View Cache

Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI has provided extensive answers—in all totaling 82 pages—to lawyers’ questions concerning sexual abuse cases in the Munich archdiocese, the mass-circulation newspaper Bild reported Friday. The lawyers’ queries were part of their investigation for a tensely awaited experts’ report set to be unveiled next Thursday.

“He welcomes the reappraisal in Munich as well as the publication of the report,” the newspaper cited Benedict’s private secretary, Archbishop Georg Gaenswein, as saying. Archbishop Gaenswein added that the former pope had taken the fate of the abuse victims “very much to heart.”

According to the newspaper, the experts’ report, which is also being keenly-awaited internationally, will be comprehensive. The research conducted by the Munich law office Westpfahl Spilker Wastl (WSW) at the behest of the archdiocese will take up 350 pages alone about one of the most prominent cases, that of a repeat-offender priest identified only as “Peter H.” In…

View Cache

At a press conference in Rome following their meeting with Pope Francis, the Spanish bishops said that a national newspaper that collected 251 allegations of sexual abuse involving the Catholic Church did a “service.”

“Sometimes we have not communicated well,” said Cardinal Juan Jose Omella, Archbishop of Barcelona and president of the Spanish bishops, on Friday. “El Pais has done a service, we received it and people [at diocesan level] have taken advantage of it, and we are grateful.”

“We open the way to approach the victims with dignity and with respect always to them, who have suffered. We have to look at the victims, look to the future and be proactive, to solve [the crisis] and get closer [to survivors],” Omella said.

He also said that he hopes to bring to light the abuses perpetrated by members of the Spanish clergy and by religious and lay people in Church-related settings,…

View Cache

Lawyers for Prince Andrew and Virginia Giuffre have filed their initial requests for witnesses in her lawsuit accusing the British royal of sexually abusing her at age 17.

Recently released documents show that the prince’s legal team is seeking witness accounts from her husband, Robert Giuffre, and her psychologist, Judith Lightfoot, as part of the civil case filed in the U.S.

Giuffre’s lawyers, meanwhile, are seeking witness accounts from the prince’s former assistant and a woman who claims to have seen him at a London nightclub with her during the time in question.

The lawsuit cleared a hurdle after a judge earlier this week refused Andrew’s request to have it dismissed.

Giuffre sued Andrew, 61, in August, saying she was coerced into sexual encounters with him in 2001 by Epstein and his longtime companion, Ghislaine Maxwell. Giuffre said she was sexually abused by Andrew at Maxwell’s London home, at Epstein’s…

View Cache

An executive with Boy Scouts of America was arrested in Florida on Friday after multiple allegations of child sexual abuse came to light.

John Bruce Larsen, 52, was taken into police custody in Volusia County and charged with two counts of sexual battery on a child less than 12 years of age, two counts of sexual battery on a child older than 12 but younger than 18, and four counts of lewd molestation for children under 12. He previously served as a district executive for the Boy Scouts’ Central Florida chapter.

Larsen is accused of sexually abusing at least three underage boys over an undetermined period of time. The allegations were relayed to local detectives in interviews carried out with the boys, according to an arrest report obtained by local news outlet WESH. Due to the heavily redacted content of the report, it is unknown if any of the victims…

View Cache

A Morgan County man and former practicing minister was sentenced to 10 years for the crime of child molestation.

William Bruce McDaniel, 74, was sentenced Monday in Morgan County Superior Court II. Under the terms of his plea agreement, he will be required to serve five years in prison plus five years of probation. If he violates the terms of his probation, the judge can order him to serve out the rest of his probation in prison.

He is also required to register as a sex offender in the state of Indiana and was ordered to have no contact with the victim for the next 10 years.

The Morgan County Sheriff’s Office filed charges against McDaniel in September 2020 alleging he molested a young girl at his South Vickery home between 2013 and 2017. Authorities learned of McDaniel’s actions after a family member came forward to report…

View Cache

The University of Notre Dame in Indiana and Georgetown University in Washington are among a group of some 16 private educational institutions named in a lawsuit alleging a conspiracy to fix student financial aid distribution formulas among them.

The effect of the financial aid policies, according to a lawsuit filed Jan. 9 in federal court in Chicago, has been to unlawfully manipulate the way those universities calculate financial need, and in some cases favor potential students who are children of wealthy donors.

Defendants are private national universities that have long been in the top 25 of the U.S. News & World Report rankings for such schools, notes the lawsuit.

“These elite institutions occupy a place of privilege and importance in American society. And yet these same defendants, by their own admission, have participated in a price-fixing cartel that is designed to reduce or eliminate financial aid as a locus of…

View Cache

A former pastor from the Central Valley was sentenced Friday in a Tulare County child molestation case, the county district attorney announced Tuesday.

On Friday, Gustavo Zamora, 69 of Lindsay, was sentenced to 25 years-to-life in prison for child molestation, according to a release from the Tulare County District Attorney’s office. Zamora, a former pastor once associated with a Lindsay church, was arrested in May 2020 after victims said he molested them when they were children, according to the Tulare County Sheriff’s Office.

In Oct. 2021, Zamora pleaded no contest to charges of “lewd acts upon a child under the age of fourteen.” Additionally, Zamora admitted that the crimes occurred against more than one victim, a special allegation.

According to court documents, the crimes took place between Jan. 12, 1984 and July 12, 2000 against five female victims between the ages of four and 14.

“Between 1984 and 2000, Zamora…

View Cache

The victims of a former Tulare County pastor learned their abuser will most likely die in prison. 

Gustavo Zamora, 69, of Lindsay, was sentenced to 25 years-to-life in prison for child molestation. On Oct. 1, Zamora pleaded no contest to six counts of lewd acts upon a child under the age of 14 and admitted that the crimes occurred against more than one victim — increasing his sentence.

The crimes also involved “substantial sexual conduct,” prosecutors said. Each count is a felony and are considered strike under the state’s Three Strikes law.

“While it may be difficult for some to process such news, especially regarding someone in a position of trust, the bravery of these victims to come forward cannot be understated,” District Attorney Tim Ward said. “Their courage should be an example to anyone who has suffered such abuse.”

The crimes took place between 1984 and 2000, against five girls between 4 and…

View Cache

Leading Egyptian businessman and media tycoon Mohamed Al-Amin was arrested last weekend by authorities, facing charges of human trafficking and sexually assaulting minor females for years.

The arrest was announced by the Ministry of Social Solidarity in a statement posted on Facebook, in which they pledged to hold any individual accountable for such violations, regardless of any considerations.

Sources have reported that the National Council For Childhood and Motherhood had received a complaint from a Beni Suef-based orphanage owned by the businessman last December, highlighting that he was frequently harassing and possibly raping young girls in the establishment throughout the years. 

The National Council For Childhood and Motherhood then briefed the Public Prosecutor’s Office of the complaint, after which investigations were being conducted secretly by authorities before the recent decision to arrest him from his household in the 5th Settlement district in Cairo.

Investigations and medical examinations have so far revealed that several female…

View Cache

Mohamed al-Amin’s alleged victims, all teenage girls, said he abused them in an orphanage he owned and in his holiday home

An Egyptian media tycoon with close ties to the government has been detained pending an investigation into allegations of sexual assault. The Egyptian public prosecution service says it is investigating reports that businessman Mohamed al-Amin sexually abused girls living in an orphanage that he owned and took them on trips to his holiday villa.

Amin, best known for establishing the pro-government CBC network in 2011, was arrested on Friday to be held for four days. The court decided to extend Amin’s pre-trial detention for a further 15 days in a hearing on Sunday where he told the court: “I never did anything wrong. I treated those girls like my own children.”

Allegations of sexual abuse at the Safe Hands Home for Girls were first made public in December by…

View Cache

Adopted people in the Republic of Ireland are set to get an automatic right under a new law to see their birth certificates for the first time.

Currently, adoptees must apply to the authorities to find out their identity at birth, but their parents can object and block the release of information.

But now “landmark legislation” has been published which would allow the “full and unredacted release” of birth information to adoptees aged over 16.

It also includes a new tracing service.

The provisions of the Birth Information and Tracing Bill were published by Minister for Children Roderic O’Gorman on Wednesday.

“For decades in this country, adopted people have been failed in being denied clear access to their identity information,” the minister said.

“With this bill, we are restoring to adopted people the information that so many of us take for granted as part of our own, personal stories.”

Mr…

View Cache

Ireland will allow adopted people automatic access to their birth records for the first time under new laws the government hopes will end a “historic wrong”, including for thousands sent for adoption in secret by Catholic institutions.

International laws say all children should be able to establish their identity but tens of thousands of adopted people in Ireland have no automatic right to their birth records or access to tracing services.

The legislation was published a year to the day since an inquiry found that thousands of infants died in Irish homes for unmarried mothers and their offspring mostly run by the Catholic Church from the 1920s to the 1990s. read more

Many infants were also taken from mothers and sent overseas to be adopted, that report, the latest in a series that have laid bare some of the Church’s worst abuses, found.

Children’s Minister Roderic O’Gorman said the new…

View Cache

A Catholic diocese in Poland apologized on Thursday for having asked a court to determine whether a man who was sexually abused as a child by a priest is gay, and whether the sexual contact may have consequently been pleasurable for him.

Following wide criticism, the Bielsko-Zywiec diocese said that its letter to the court should not have included questions about the victim’s sexuality or have suggested that he drew pleasure from contact with the priest. The diocese dispatched the letter in response to a lawsuit by the victim, Janusz Szymik.

“We apologize to Janusz and to all who have been scandalized” by the questions, the diocese said in a statement, vowing to change the letter’s wording.

Poland’s Catholic bishops had already strongly criticized the southern Polish diocese.

Szymik, who is now 48, was an altar boy when the abuse began in the 1980s. He sued the diocese in a…

View Cache

A Catholic diocese in Poland has apologized for asking the court whether a man who was sexually abused by a priest as a young boy was gay and whether he might have enjoyed the sexual encounters.

Janusz Szymik, 48, was an altar boy when the abuse began in the 1980s. Last year he sued the diocese of Bielsko-Zywiec, in southern Poland, in a civil court claiming that a priest in a local church had abused several boys, including him.

The priest, who has been identified only as Rev. Jan W., has admitted to the abuse.

Earlier this week, the Polish news portal Onet published some documents which had been submitted to the court by a lawyer for the church.

According to the documents, church officials wanted an expert “to check the plaintiff’s sexual orientation” and to determine whether he “showed satisfaction with maintaining an intimate relationship” with the man who abused…

View Cache

Already facing up to 24 years in prison for allegedly stealing thousands in Douglas County, Father Michael Gutgsell now faces another 20 years for a second suspected theft case, this one in Sarpy County.

More potential jail time for a once high-ranking Omaha priest charged in two separate theft cases and also linked to several other priests named in a recent state investigation of widespread sexual abuse by Catholic clergy. 

Already facing up to 24 years in prison for allegedly stealing thousands in Douglas County, Father Michael Gutgsell now faces another 20 years for a second suspected theft case, this one in Sarpy County.

The 73-year-old former Chancellor in the Omaha Archdiocese is accused of stealing $96,000 from Saint Joseph Church in Springfield, Gutgsell’s last church assignment.

Before that he was charged with raiding the bank account of another priest to the tune of at least $155,000.

As News Channel…

View Cache

Gutgsell is already facing felony charges of theft and theft by deception in Douglas County

The Rev. Michael Gutgsell, who served as Chancellor of the Archdiocese of Omaha for nine years, was charged Thursday with felony theft by deception in Sarpy County court.

Gutgsell is already facing felony charges of theft and theft by deception in Douglas County, accused of taking the savings of a retired priest and giving all of it and more to a man said to be homeless.

In Sarpy County, Gutgsell is accused of stealing more than $5,000 from St. Joseph Catholic Church in Springfield between October 2019 and July 2021.

In previous court appearances, Gutgsell’s attorney has said he gave $700,000 to the man over a period of eight years, including most of his own personal savings. Gutgsell has denied there was any attempt at extortion by the man instead saying he was…

View Cache

In the wake of a newspaper report revealing hundreds of allegations of sexual abuse in Spain, the country’s bishops assured Pope Francis that every diocese has established a commission that will investigate allegations of abuse.

Speaking with journalists Jan. 14, Spanish Cardinal Juan José Omella of Barcelona, president of the Spanish bishops’ conference, said there are no plans to establish a single independent commission, as in Germany, France or neighboring Portugal, to conduct a nationwide investigation of the handling of cases past and present.

Instead, individual dioceses will have their own independent commissions so that survivors can easily report to their local diocese.

“What is important is that we work for the good of the victims and that (sexual abuse) never happens again,” the cardinal said.

After spending more than two hours with Pope Francis at the end of their “ad limina” visit to the Vatican, Cardinal Omella, Cardinal Antonio…

View Cache

Clergy abuse victims asked the European Court of Human Rights on Thursday to make a definitive ruling on whether the Holy See can continue to avoid being held liable for sexual abuse committed by Catholic priests by claiming state immunity.

Lawyers for the victims asked the court’s Grand Chamber to hear the case, after a lower Chamber judgment in October agreed that the Vatican couldn’t be sued in a local Belgian court because it enjoys sovereign immunity. The lower judgment concurred with Belgian courts that had dismissed the case, also determining that the misconduct of priests can’t be attributed to the Holy See.

The 24 victims had argued the Holy See was indeed liable for their abuse because of the “structurally deficient” way the Catholic hierarchy had handled cases of priests who raped and molested children for decades, covering up the crimes rather than reporting them.

In the…

View Cache

Bishop Mulakkal, 57, has consistently denied the accusations, and claims he was falsely accused after he questioned alleged financial irregularities at the accuser’s convent.

A bishop charged with the repeated rape of a nun over the course of two years was acquitted by a court in India’s Kerala state on Friday.

Bishop Franco Mulakkal of Jullundur was cleared of the charges against him Jan. 14 in Kottayam.

The judge in the case found that “the prosecution failed to prove all the charges against the accused.”

Lawyers for the nun say they will appeal to the high court.

Bishop Mulakkal, 57, has consistently denied the accusations, and claims he was falsely accused after he questioned alleged financial irregularities at the accuser’s convent.

The bishop was arrested in September 2018 amid protests calling for a police investigation of the allegation. He was subsequently released on bail. The bishop was charged in April…

View Cache

After a trial of more than 100 days, the additional sessions court pronounced a single line verdict saying it had found him not guilty of the charges.

Bishop Franco Mulakkal, a former priest accused of raping a nun multiple times over two years in a case that sparked massive outrage and protests in Kerala, was acquitted by a court today.

Franco Mulakkal, 57, was the first Catholic bishop in India to go on trial for rape on the complaint of a nun. After a trial of more than 100 days, the additional sessions court pronounced a single line verdict saying it had found him not guilty of the charges.

He was seen exiting the court in Kottayam with a smile after the verdict.

In 2018, the nun from the Missionaries of Jesus congregation under the Jalandhar diocese had accused Bishop Franco of repeatedly raping her between 2014 and 2016 while…

View Cache

An Indian court has cleared a bishop accused of raping a nun between 2014 and 2016 in a case that had shocked one of the country’s oldest Christian communities.

Franco Mulakkal, 54, was arrested from the southern state of Kerala in 2018. He had denied the allegations.

The case sparked widespread protests after the nun alleged that the Catholic Church had ignored her complaints.

The Vatican had temporarily relieved the bishop of his duties.

On Friday, a trial court in Kottayam city of Kerala found him not guilty of the charges.

“The prosecution failed to prove all the charges against the accused,” said Kottayam Additional Sessions Judge (ASJ) G Gopakumar.

The nun’s lawyers said they would challenge the verdict in the high court.

But the bishop’s legal team said it had “shattered the entire evidence” against him.

“It is a hotly challenged case. It is bound to be taken…

View Cache

An Indian court has acquitted a Catholic bishop who was charged with raping a nun in a case that sparked widespread outrage and protests. Bishop Franco Mulakkal, 54, was acquitted by a court in the southern Indian state of Kerala on Friday, which said the prosecution had failed to prove any of the charges against him.

The nun, whose identity is protected under Indian law, had alleged that Mulakkal, who was the bishop of a diocese in Jalandhar in the northern state of Punjab at the time, raped her 13 times between 2014 and 2016 when he would visit the convent where she lived in southern state of Kerala. 

The convent, Missionaries of Jesus, is part of the Jalandhar diocese. The nun faced “harassment” and “threats” from the bishop for two years in a bid to keep her silent about the alleged rape, but she “finally gathered courage in 2016”…

View Cache

Following the acquittal in the nun rape case, a visibly relieved and emotional Bishop Franco Mulakkal burst into tears and said, “Praise the lord.”

A court in Kerala on Friday found Roman Catholic Bishop Franco Mulakkal ‘not guilty’ of the charges of raping a nun in a convent in the southern state.

A visibly relieved and emotional Bishop Mulakkal, who arrived in the court to hear the verdict, burst into tears, hugged his followers and lawyers, sharing his joy over the verdict. “Praise the lord,” he said.

The priest thanked the people who had stood by him during trying times, and quoted a proverb to describe his ordeal and subsequent vindication.

“I prayed for the judgement of God to come be the judgement of the court. I am a missionary who needs to show the world that there is god and god’s power. I got a chance to…

View Cache

Elsewhere in Germany, the investigation of a leading archdiocese’s expense accounts has been halted.

A leading Church expert on the prevention of sexual abuse has criticised the Pope’s response to the abuse crisis.

“From our point of view, that is from the point of view of western-European and Anglosaxon countries, far greater consistency is called for in demanding what laws already permit,” the director of the Institute of Anthropology. Interdisciplinary Studies on Human Dignity and Care (IADC) at the Gregorian in Rome, Fr Hans Zollner SJ, told the German weekly Welt am Sonntag on 2 January. 

According to Zollner, the Pope specifically could be far more decisive, guaranteeing greater legal security and give the victims the right to a place in procedural law in the Vatican, he pointed out.

While Francis belonged to a different generation and other church issues were more important for him, Francis was learning, Zollner said. “He himself…

View Cache

Spain’s Catholic Church is to set up local commissions to hear complaints from victims of abuse after holding talks with Pope Francis on Friday about allegations over eight decades detailed in a Spanish newspaper.

El Pais in December published the results of a three-year investigation it said uncovered potential abuse by 251 priests and some lay people from religious institutions against at least 1,237 victims between 1943 and 2018.

It said its correspondent gave a 385-page dossier to the pope on Dec. 2 while the papal entourage and journalists were flying from Rome to Cyprus.

Cardinal Juan Jose Omella, the president of Spain’s Bishops’ Conference, discussed sex abuse issues with him at the Vatican and said each diocese would set up a commission to receive accusations and then investigate.

They “will gather complaints, support those people who feel they have been harmed and prevent these things from happening again”, Omella…

View Cache

A Trial court in Kerala Friday acquitted Franco Mulakkal, the former Jalandhar Bishop of the Catholic Church, of all charges in the alleged rape of a nun in a high-profile case that had led to an unprecedented public protest in the state more than three years ago by other nuns in support of the complainant.

Mulakkal was present in the courtroom when Kottayam Additional Sessions Judge G Gopakumar pronounced the verdict. He later broke down in the corridor outside, hugged his lawyers, and told reporters before leaving the premises: “Daivathinu sthuthi’ (Praise the Lord).”

However, one of the nuns who had spearheaded the protest against Mulakkal, Sister Anupama, expressed disbelief at the verdict.

Speaking to reporters with tears in her eyes, she said: “We cannot believe this verdict. We will continue this fight until the day our fellow sister gets justice, even if it means we have to die. All the…

View Cache

An Indian court on Friday acquitted a Roman Catholic bishop of charges of raping a nun in her rural convent, a case that became a major issue amid allegations of sexual harassment in the church.

Sessions Judge G. Gopakumar in a brief order said the bishop was not guilty of charges that he repeatedly raped the nun between 2014 and 2016.

Bishop Franco Mulakkal was present in the court in Kottayam, a southern Indian city. Supporters cheered and chanted “Praise the Lord” as he left the court.

The detailed judgment is likely to become available later Friday.

The prosecution, representing the nun, will appeal the verdict, said lawyer Sandhya Raju.

Police charged Mulakkal with rape, illegal confinement and intimidation of the nun. She said she went to police only after complaining repeatedly to church authorities. Eventually, a group of fellow nuns launched unprecedented public protests to demand Mulakkal’s arrest in…

View Cache

The bishop, Franco Mulakkal, had been accused of repeatedly assaulting the nun in the southern state of Kerala over a two-year period.

A Catholic bishop who was accused of repeatedly raping a nun in southern India over a two-year period was acquitted on Friday, bringing an end for now to what appeared to be the country’s first case of its kind.

The bishop, Franco Mulakkal, who had been on trial since 2020, had consistently said he was innocent. “Praise the Lord,” he said after the verdict in the city of Kottayam in Kerala State.

The judge overseeing the trial, G. Gopakumar, said prosecutors had failed to prove their case, according to news reports. Investigating officers in Kerala said the ruling would be appealed to a higher court.

The case, believed to be the first in India in which a bishop was charged with raping a nun, highlighted…

View Cache

The presumption of innocence must also apply to Pope Benedict XVI over possible negligence, says Pree

As Germans await publication of a report on how leaders of the Archdiocese of Munich and Freising handled cases of historic abuse, a canon lawyer casts doubt on accusations against retired Pope Benedict XVI over possible negligence.

Helmuth Pree, a retired university professor, wrote in the weekly newspaper Die Zeit that the presumption of innocence must also apply to a pope. The German Catholic news agency KNA reported he was responding to media coverage about information said to be in the abuse report, due out Jan. 20.

Archbishop Joseph Ratzinger — now retired Pope Benedict — headed the Munich Archdiocese from 1977 to 1981.

KNA reported Pree expressed surprise at the media coverage of the case in early January. He criticized the assessments canon law professors Norbert Lüdecke and Bernhard Anuth had given in a joint interview….

View Cache

A Catholic church in Poland has asked a court to determine whether a Polish man who was sexually abused as a child by a priest is gay and whether the sexual contact may have been pleasurable for him.

The man, Janusz Szymik, who is now 48, was an altar boy when the abuse began in the 1980s. Szymik sued the diocese of Bielsko-Zywiec, in southern Poland, in a civil court last year.

The priest, who has been identified only as Rev. Jan W., admitted to the abuse. Szymik is now seeking 3 million zlotys ($760,000) in compensation from the diocese.

The Onet news portal earlier this week disclosed the contents of documents it obtained that were submitted to the courty by a lawyer for the church. The documents show the church wanting an expert “to check the plaintiff’s sexual orientation” and to determine whether he “showed satisfaction with maintaining an…

View Cache

CORDOBA, Argentina – For several years, a large number of the allegations of clerical sexual abuse that reach the Vatican have come from Latin America, where arguably, only Chile has fully grasped the scope of the crisis.

In Bolivia, for instance, the bishops conference only recently produced a set of abuse guidelines.

According to a 2015 report from the ombudsman office – the latest one available online – 23 percent of children in Bolivia suffer some form of sexual abuse before reaching the age of 18, and on average, 12 children are abused every day.

Susana Inch is a lawyer who works as a consultant for the bishops conference, specializing in sexual abuse.

“On the one hand, I am fortunate to work with bishops and priests who have made a commitment to this issue, which is not always easy,” she said, while acknowledging that simply “acting in the face of abuse”…

View Cache

Gary Berthiaume, a former priest, withdrew his guilty pleas after being sentenced to spend up to 15 years in prison on charges he sexually abused at least three boys.

Oakland County Circuit Judge Daniel O’Brien rejected his earlier sentencing agreement after learning the details of Berthiaume’s crimes. O’Brien found the one year and one day sentence offered by the Michigan Attorney General’s Office to be inappropriately short after hearing victim impact statements.

O’Brien sentenced Berthiaume, 80, to spend the next 20 months to 15 years in prison on Jan. 11.

On Nov. 21, 2021, Berthiaume entered pleas of “guilty” and “no contest” to two counts of second-degree criminal sexual conduct and to one count of gross indecency, respectively.

In Michigan, a defendant may enter a “Killebrew plea,” which is essentially a conditional guilty plea in exchange for a lighter sentence. This plea can be withdrawn if the judge sentences the…

View Cache

A Kerala court is set to deliver verdict in the nun rape case involving Bishop Franco Mulakkal. Here is a timeline on how Franco Mulakkal became the first Catholic bishop in India to be arrested for sexually assaulting a nun.

A Kerala court is set to deliver verdict in the nun rape case involving Bishop Franco Mulakkal. The bishop allegedly raped a nun at her convent several times between 2014 and 2016. Following a complaint, several nuns from the convent protested against the bishop levelling allegations of sexual assault.

Here is a timeline on how Franco Mulakkal became the first Catholic bishop in India to be arrested for sexually assaulting a nun.

June 29, 2018: Kuravilangad police register a case on the basis of a complaint filed by a nun against Bishop Franco Mulakkal of Jalandhar Diocese. According to the complaint the nun was raped several times by the bishop at…

View Cache

Franco Mulakkal was the first Indian Catholic bishop to be arrested in a case of sexual abuse against a nun in Kerala.

Ahead of Kerala special court’s verdict in the nun rape case, Sister Lucy, who was dismissed from her congregation for criticising Bishop Franco Mulakkal, said the judgment would be “victory over devil”. Mulakkal is an accused in the Kerala nun rape case. The special court is likely to deliver its verdict on Friday.

“Tomorrow’s sexual harassment case verdict would be a victory over devil,” Sister Lucy said.

Sister Lucy criticised the police and government saying that they did not “try enough” to ensure justice to all the nuns allegedly assaulted by Franco Mulakkal. She said she was targeted for speaking up against the bishop in the wake of sexual assault allegations.

“After I took a stand there was continuous torture. They have expelled me from…

View Cache

After decades of dealing with the boyhood trauma of being molested by a priest, Jim Bartko sued the Roman Catholic church two years ago.

But the lawsuit was dismissed when he died four days after speaking publicly about it.

A new law has now revived his case, allowing his estate to file for damages he could have sought for his suffering if he were still alive.

Lawyers for Bartko’s children filed the lawsuit last week in Alameda County Superior Court against the Oakland Diocese for allegedly failing to prevent abuse by the former Rev. Stephen Kiesle that occurred between 1972 and 1975 at St. Joseph’s Parish in Pinole, 18 miles (29 kilometers) northeast of San Francisco.

“They used to call him ‘the pied piper’ because everywhere he went, the kids followed him around,” attorney Rick Simons said Tuesday of Kiesle. “He once said, ‘There wasn’t a single one I didn’t…

View Cache

The Catholic Bishops’ Conference of Portugal (CEP) establishes a new independent Commission to shed light on sexual abuse in the Church, launching an investigation that will give voice to the victims covering a period of over 70 years.

A new independent commission has been established by the Portuguese Bishops’ Conference (CEP) to investigate into sexual abuse in the Portuguese Church by giving voice to the victims.

Giving voice to silence

The creation of the Commission, operating under the slogan “Giving voice to silence” (“Dar Voz ao Silêncio”), was announced during the last bishops’ Plenary Assembly in November, and comes on the heel of the release of the CIASE Report on sexual abuse in the Church in France.

It will be funded by the CEP, although it will open to contributions from other partners in civil society. The team is composed of experts from different backgrounds and coordinated by…

View Cache

Jim Bartko’s children last week filed a lawsuit against the Diocese of Oakland on behalf of their late father, thanks to a new California law.

An administrator in the University of Oregon’s athletic department, Bartko sued Rev. Stephen Kiesle, 74, for alleged sexual assault that occurred between 1972 and 1975 at St. Joseph’s Parish in Pinole, a city northeast of San Francisco.

Four days after announcing his lawsuit at a news conference, Bartko collapsed and died while working out in Oregon in March of 2020. His cause of death was a hemorrhage due to cirrhosis, a result of excessive drinking due to more than four decades of keeping the alleged abuse secret.

The lawsuit was dismissed after Bartko’s death, but the new law has revived his case and his estate is allowed to file for damages he would have sought if he were alive. The lawyer for his adult son…

View Cache

Springfield Bishop William D. Byrne has announced the creation of a nine-person committee to oversee the implementation of the recommendations of the Independent Task Force on the Response to Sexual Abuse within the Diocese of Springfield.  The Task Force’s strategic plan was shared with the public last September (http://diospringfield.org/12026-2/).

The committee members are Peter Caffrey, Henry East-Trou, Kristina Drzal Houghton, Jackie Humphreys, Ronald Johnson, Andrew Rome, James Ross, Jose Tosado, and Irene Woods. Caffrey is a survivor of clergy sexual abuse.

Jeffrey Trant, director of the diocesan Office of Safe Environment and Victim Assistance, will serve as senior staff to the committee.

“The Implementation and Oversight Committee is an important next step in turning the strategic plan that was developed with input from survivors, clergy and the broader community from words into concrete and meaningful actions,” said Trant. “The committee will set priorities, measure outcome, and serve as a…

View Cache

The Roman Catholic Diocese of Springfield has named a nine-member committee tasked with overseeing reforms to how the church addresses sexual abuse.

On Wednesday, Springfield Bishop William Byrne announced that the new Implementation and Oversight Committee will lead the implementation of recommendations put forward by an independent task force that assessed the diocese’s response to sexual abuse.

Last September, the task force recommended changes to the process of responding to allegations of sexual abuse. Among its findings were that law enforcement should first investigate such accusations, not solely the diocese. The task force also nominated the slate of candidates who will now become members of the oversight committee.

In a statement, Byrne said that he was grateful to the diverse group who have accepted the invitation to serve on the committee. He said that work will ensure “that the diocese will improve its response to allegations of abuse within our…

View Cache

International law walks a tightrope between the rights of sovereign States and the rights of those who comprise them. Tip too far to either side and the system breaks – sovereignty either becomes unbridled power, or becomes meaningless. This delicate balancing is most evident when sovereign power and human rights directly collide, as was the case in J.C. and Others v. Belgium. The European Court of Human Rights (‘ECtHR’ or ‘the Court’) was asked to determine whether a grant of state(like) immunity for the Holy See could constitute a violation of Article 6(1) of the European Convention on Human Rights, which enshrines the right to a fair trial, as state immunity had effectively limited the right of access to a court for victims of sexual abuse by members of the Catholic Church in Belgium. Although the outcome – the ECtHR finding no violation – is predictable and follows…

View Cache

In September 2020, the Supreme Court of the Philippines acquitted a man of child sexual abuse charges after he impregnated a 12-year-old girl.

The incident took place in 2012, when the man was 27. He was sentenced to more than 14 years in jail by a lower court in 2016, but appealed. The defendant argued that the sexual relationship was consensual, since the girl bore him not just one but two children before he was sentenced.

The country’s top justices ruled in his favor, saying that the court was “not prepared to punish two individuals and deprive their children from having a normal family life simply because” the girl was a minor at the time. The court also ruled that the benefits of living in a nuclear family outweighed “any perceived dangers” from the relationship.

The persistence of such attitudes at the highest levels of the Philippine establishment is the result…

View Cache

The landmark passage of a law banning child marriage in the Philippines enacted on Thursday hopes to turn the cultural tides on whether marriage, relationships, and sex with those under the age of 18 is a cultural practice or statutory rape. While the law is viewed as a huge win, the fight still continues to raise the age of consent in the country from 12 to 16, and push the government for stricter enforcement while revising the cultural ethos in a country rife with gender inequality and long-standing practice of adult men dating or marrying young girls.

The age of consent for a child in the Philippines has been 12 for the past 90 years, one of the youngest in the world and the youngest in all of Asia. This has led to 1 and 6 girls in the Philippines marrying before the age of 18 and one child in…

View Cache

As we’ve noted on this blog many times, the problem of sexual abuse in the Catholic Church is not limited to the abuse of children. Adults can be victimized as well, a reality that the Catholic community has been slow to recognize. 

The case of former cardinal Theodore McCarrick illustrates this problem: The Vatican’s own investigation showed that Church officials knew about McCarrick’s abuse of young adult seminarians but largely ignored it for decades; they failed to take definitive action against McCarrick until they received a formal report in 2017 that he had abused a minor. 

But recent developments suggest that the abuse of adults is receiving more attention within the Church. 

CHANGES TO CANON LAW

In June 2021, Pope Francis released revisions to Book VI of the Code of Canon Law, which spells out the Church’s penal sanctions. The revisions specifically address cases…

View Cache

The date Jan. 6 means different things to people. For me, as a Catholic, it is the Feast of the Epiphany. It marks the date on the liturgical calendar when the Magi, according to the Bible, brought gifts to the baby Jesus.

This year, the date became a polarizing remembrance of the 2021 U.S. Capitol insurrection, riots or whatever else one calls it, depending on their political affiliation. For me, this Jan. 6 marked a special anniversary — the 20th anniversary of the groundbreaking Boston Globe “Spotlight” team’s investigation into predator priests. The series of articles won the Pulitzer Prize in 2003 in the Public Service category.

I must admit that the anniversary went by without much fanfare. It’s surprising, given that the ramifications from those original series of news articles reverberate within the church, both in the U.S. and globally, and that it was even made into…

View Cache

Social media platforms could be forced to do more to tackle child sexual abuse online, under new European Union plans expected to be announced in the coming months.

The rules would replace current interim legislation that allows the voluntary reporting of child sexual abuse material (CSAM) with a legal obligation to recognise, report and remove it.

“I will propose legislation in the coming months that will require companies to detect, report, and remove child sexual abuse,” EU home affairs commissioner Ylva Johansson told Germany’s Welt am Sonntag newspaper on Sunday.

“A voluntary report will then no longer be sufficient,” she said.

Meta, the parent company of Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp, would be particularly affected by any change in regulations, Johansson told the paper. The company currently accounts for around 95 per cent of child sexual abuse notifications.

The EU’s current rules on reporting CSAM leave it up to social media platforms…

View Cache

The European Union plans to legislate in the coming months to require technology companies to do more to tackle child sexual abuse, beefing up current voluntary arrangements, a top official said in a newspaper interview.

EU Home Affairs Commissioner Ylva Johansson told Germany’s Welt am Sonntag that internet service providers and social media firms had reported 22 million offences related to child sexual abuse in 2020, up from 17 million in 2019.

But she said that was only a fraction of the real number.

“I will propose legislation in the coming months that will require companies to detect, report, and remove child sexual abuse,” Johansson was quoted as saying.

“A voluntary report will then no longer be sufficient.”

Under current EU rules, social media networks and mail and messenger services such as Facebook (FB.O) and Google (GOOGL.O) have a choice whether or not to follow up…

View Cache

A 2004 story in The New York Times bore the headline, all in caps: ABUSE SCANDAL HAS BEEN ENDED, TOP BISHOP SAYS.

That top bishop was a young Wilton Gregory who, two years earlier and as head of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, had herded the rest of the U.S. hierarchy through the first phase of accountability for the scandal.

The headline was based on a Gregory declaration, made following the release of two studies of the scandal. “The terrible history recorded here today is history,” he said.

That, of course, turned out to be more wish than reality. The finality implied in the statement has yet eluded the bishops, a point made clear by the recent searing assessment by Barbara Thorp, who took on the job of directing the Boston Archdiocese’s response to victims back in 2002, when the ecclesial world there…

View Cache

A national framework for a five-year, $30 million (US$23.5 million) fundraising campaign to help with healing and reconciliation of residential school survivors and their communities is coming in the new year, Bishop William McGrattan, vice president of the Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops, told The Catholic Register weekly.

Church officials hoped that plans for the campaign, first announced Sept. 27, would be complete by November, but getting the framework in place for a national diocese-by-diocese effort has turned out to be more complicated than first thought.

Bishop McGrattan said he hoped that in January or February, “announcements of details would be able to be shared with the public and with Catholics.”

“We realize that it has taken longer than expected, but it’s important that we do this right and that we make sure that it is both transparent and that it demonstrates accountability,” Bishop McGrattan said.

“We’ve drawn upon the expertise of people in terms of…

View Cache

An essay by Kathleen McChesney on the impact of the U.S. bishops’ Charter for the Protection of Children and Young People drew a sharp rebuke by the executive director of the Survivor’s Network of Those Abused by Priests.

Zach Hiner, the group’s director, said the steps outlined in the charter “needed to be taken,” but he likened McChesney’s essay to “patting oneself for winning the marathon when you’re only a mile in.”

Hiner, in a Jan. 10 phone interview with Catholic News Service, said “delayed disclosure” of abuse is “a fact.” He noted that “most people in the United States do not come forward until their 50s,” so anyone abused in the past 20 years “would not likely be coming forward until 2030, 2040.”

The essay by McChesney, the first person to head the U.S. bishops’ Office for Child and Youth Protection, was published Jan. 5 by America Media, one day before the 20th anniversary of the first in a…

View Cache