ABUSE TRACKER

AUSTRALIA
The Guardian

March 17, 2020

By Brigid Delaney

ABC’s documentary about a convicted paedophile priest is difficult to watch, but perhaps it’s necessary to bear witness

Despite an extensive royal commission, scores of criminal trials and excellent books such as Louise Milligan’s Cardinal and David Marr’s The Prince, there are still some unanswered questions about child sexual abuse in the now-tattered narrative of the Catholic church in Australia.

These include: why did these priests do such horrible things? How did they justify their crimes to themselves and to God? What kind of conversations may they have had with, say, their archbishop or monsignor, once they were rumbled by a parent or teacher or victim?

Accounts from the paedophiles themselves that may go some way towards answering those questions are also missing from this narrative. Perhaps this is because paedophiles do not want to talk due to shame or due to the media’s preference for – in some cases – giving victims airtime and denying a platform to abusers. And then there’s us, the audience. Do we really want to hear from them?

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WASHINGTON D.C.
Washington Post

March 17, 2020

By Tom Jackman

After a former Catholic priest from Northern Virginia was accused of sexual abuse that occurred in the 1980s, and his arrest was announced Monday, D.C. Council member David Grosso (I-At Large) revealed that he was the victim. Grosso said the opening of an investigation into his childhood trauma played heavily into his decision not to seek another term on the city council.

The alleged abuser, Scott Asalone, 63, is the former rector of St. Francis de Sales Catholic Church in Purcellville, Va., and more recently a management consultant and bookstore owner in Asbury Park, N.J. He was a member of the Capuchin Friars order who was removed from public ministry in 1993 and dismissed from the Friars in 2007, according to records released last year by the Catholic Diocese of Arlington. The diocese included Asalone’s name in a list of all clergy credibly accused of child sexual abuse in Northern Virginia.

Asalone was the first person indicted as a result of an investigation by the Virginia Attorney General’s Office and Virginia State Police into Catholic clergy abuse, after the Pennsylvania attorney general in 2018 uncovered hundreds of unprosecuted cases and more than 1,000 child victims. A multi-jurisdictional grand jury met in Fairfax County last week, Attorney General Mark R. Herring’s office said Monday, and issued an indictment Thursday charging Asalone with one felony count of carnal knowledge of a minor between 13 and 15 years old. The victim is identified in the indictment as “D.G.,” which said that the abuse occurred between April and September of 1985, when Grosso was 14 and Asalone was 29.

Asalone was taken into custody Saturday in New Jersey, Herring’s office said, and is awaiting extradition to Virginia. After Herring’s office made the announcement Monday, Grosso issued a statement about the arrest of a former clergyman for criminal sexual abuse of a minor. “The minor he assaulted was me,” Grosso said.

“This occurred during a very difficult time of my life,” Grosso said in the statement. “Though the deep scars remain, I largely believed this incident was behind me, especially after I underwent intensive therapy in the 1990s.”

Grosso said investigators in Virginia had recently obtained the Catholic Diocese of Arlington’s internal file on his case, contacted him several times in the past year and asked him to testify before the grand jury in Fairfax. “I did so,” Grosso said, “only to prevent Mr. Asalone from ever hurting another child.”

Grosso apparently reported the incident to the Catholic church in the 1990s and received a financial settlement at the time. In 2015, when Grosso was pushing for legislation to expand the statute of limitations in Washington for civil claims in sexual abuse cases, he told WAMU that “I had a situation happen to me when I was a teenager, so it’s personal for me.”

Grosso said that because he reported the abuse “in my early 20s and told my family about it, the reality was that there was nothing we could do because the statute of limitations in Virginia was so low that I couldn’t go after them in a court.”

Grosso told WAMU that he received a settlement and that the priest was removed from the church but faced no legal consequences. Virginia has a two-year statute of limitations for filing civil actions in personal injury cases. The state has no statute of limitations on felony crimes.

In 2018, Grosso helped pass the Statute of Limitations Amendment Act, which took effect in May 2019 and opened a two-year window for victims in the District to file civil claims even if they had been time-barred under the former three-year statute of limitations.

Grosso said in his statement that the investigation into “a crime the Diocese attempted to bury for decades” had “caused fresh trauma as I have been forced vividly to relive the tragic events of my childhood. I have again received therapy and made difficult decisions to advance my recovery. My conclusion not to seek another term as a council member was heavily influenced by this new case.”

In a brief interview on Monday, Grosso said it was important to “get the message out that people should speak up and that there is a chance for justice to happen.”

Grosso said: “It’s important, I think, when you have a platform like I do, to use it for the better of the community and to encourage people that it’s okay to speak the truth and to talk about what happened to you in an open way as best you can so that you can find some justice.”

Grosso said he decided to go public “because I understand the tremendous burden the victims of sexual assault and abuse carry throughout their lives. As I did many years ago, we all must find the courage to come forward, tell our stories, and seek justice and accountability from the perpetrator, as well as the church and other institutions that have hidden or excused their behavior.”

Grosso has been on the city council since 2013. He is a lawyer who earned his degree from Georgetown University. He announced in November that he would not seek a third term on the council.

Asalone was ordained as a Capuchin Friar in 1983, according to church records. The Arlington diocese said Monday that he served in Northern Virginia from June 1984 to January 1993. His only assignment during that time was at St. Francis de Sales. In January 1993, he was removed from St. Francis de Sales Parish by the Capuchin order, a diocese spokeswoman said. The Arlington diocese said it later learned that the Capuchins had received an allegation of sexual abuse of a minor by Asalone when he was a clergyman. The Capuchin order did not return a request for comment.

Catholic friars typically are sent to places where there are few Catholic priests or churches, such as rural areas or inner cities. Initially, Purcellville was sparsely populated, but it and St. Francis grew rapidly in the 1990s. Asalone was the pastor when the congregation built a new church in 1992, and a story in The Washington Post in 1997 said that Asalone was “on a sabbatical working as a Wall Street stockbroker.”

Asalone went on to work for Merrill Lynch and formed his own consulting firm in New Jersey in 1999, according to biographies he has posted over the years. He has spoken at many public gatherings about the need for positive psychology in the workplace. It was not clear whether he has retained a lawyer. The case will be tried in Loudoun County.

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WASHINGTON D.C.
Catholic News Service via Boston Pilot

March 16, 2020

By Dennis Sadowski

A reporting system accepting sexual misconduct allegations against U.S. bishops and eparchs is in place.

Called the Catholic Bishops Abuse Reporting Service, or CBAR, the system became operational March 16.

The mechanism incorporates a website and a toll-free telephone number through which individuals can file reports regarding a bishop.

The website is ReportBishopAbuse.org. Calls can be placed at (800) 276-1562.

The nationwide system is being implemented by individual dioceses under the direction of each respective cardinal, archbishop or bishop. The information gathered will be protected through enhanced encryption.

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FRESNO (CA)
Fresno Bee

March 16, 2020

By Robert Kuwada

Jim Bartko, the former Fresno State athletics director and a survivor of childhood sexual abuse by a Catholic priest, died Monday while undergoing surgery after collapsing during a morning workout. He was 54.

Bartko, who was back at the University of Oregon in a fundraising position, had filed a lawsuit last Thursday against the Diocese of Oakland under AB 218, the California Child Victims Act and recently published a book, “Boy in the Mirror,” detailing the abuse and its impact on his personal and professional life.

Hired by Fresno State in 2014, Bartko had pushed a transformative Bulldog Stadium renovation plan, hired coach Jeff Tedford, oversaw the return of a wrestling program and addition of women’s water polo, taking on an athletics department overburdened by 21 sports programs while dealing with insomnia and anxiety issues that went back to his childhood.

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FALLS CHURCH (VA)
WRIC-TV

March 16, 2020

By Alonzo Small

A former Catholic priest in northern Virginia has been charged with sexually abusing a teenager in a case that dates back nearly 35 years, and a city councilman for the District of Columbia came forward to say he was the victim.

Scott Asalone, 63, of Asbury Park, New Jersey, was charged in Loudoun County with carnal knowledge of a minor, Attorney General Mark Herring’s office said Monday.

Asalone was arrested Saturday in New Jersey and will be transferred to Virginia, Herring’s office said.

After Asalone’s arrest was announced, D.C. Councilman David Grosso issued a statement saying, “The minor he assaulted was me.”

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PITTSBURGH (PA)
Associated Press

March 16, 2020

Prosecutors have filed a notice of appeal of a western Pennsylvania judge’s ruling throwing out the conviction of a retired Roman Catholic priest accused of having assaulted a boy almost two decades ago.

A spokesman for the Allegheny County district attorney’s office said Monday that the brief setting out reasons for the appeal to Superior Court in the case of the Rev. Hugh Lang will be filed at a later date.

Judge Anthony Mariani said last week that he believed that Lang hadn’t received a fair trial. He said prosecutors should not have been allowed to submit evidence that Lang did an Internet search for defense attorneys before the release of a grand jury report on sexual abuse in the Catholic Church.

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HOUSTON (TX)
Houston Chronicle via Pressfrom.info

March 17, 2020

By Nicole Hensley

The trial of a Catholic priest accused of molesting three children at a Montgomery County parish will be postponed to June amid the novel coronavirus pandemic.

The decision was made out of concerns for public health. A lawyer for accused cleric Manuel La Rosa-Lopez said the case will be tried in June, rather than later in March. A jury was slated to be picked Friday.

The lawyer, Wendell Odom, said in an email the trial will now begin on June 15.

“Following the Texas Supreme Courts emergency declaration, the Judge and all parties agree the safety of everyone would be best served by rescheduling the trial until June,” Odom said in an emailed statement.

“It was foreseeable because of current circumstances,” said Nancy Hebert, of the Montgomery County District Attorney’s Office.

As of Monday afternoon, four people have been diagnosed with COVID-19 in Montgomery County.

Jason Millsaps, chief of staff to Montgomery County Judge Mike Keough, said courts were exempted from an order to cancel events that would bring together large groups of people. Each judge was allowed to decide how their court operations would proceed.

The case is being tried before 435th District Court Judge Patty McGinnis, who could not be immediately reached for comment.

La Rosa-Lopez, who is free on bond, is facing five counts of indecency with a child.

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ASBURY PARK (NJ)
Asbury Park Press

March 16, 2020

By Joshua Chung

A former priest living in Asbury Park has been indicted on charges of with [sic] carnal knowledge of a minor, according to Mark R. Herring, attorney general for Virginia.

On March 12, Scott Asalone, 63, was indicted for carnal knowledge of a minor between 13 and 15 years old, after Herring and Virginia State Police conducted an investigation of clergy abuse in the state, officials said. Asalone’s case will be tried at the Loudoun County Circuit Court in Leesburg, Virginia.

In 1985, Asalone was allegedly connected to a sexual contact case, which involved a former parishioner, officials said. During this time, Asalone was a member of the clergy assigned to St. Francis de Sales Catholic Church in Purcellville, Virginia.

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LYON (FRANCE)
The New York Times

March 16, 2020

By Aurelien Breeden

Bernard Preynat, 75, received a five-year sentence after admitting to assaulting boys over a 20-year period, a scandal that embroiled a top cardinal.

A former Roman Catholic priest in France was convicted and sentenced on Monday to five years in prison for sexually assaulting dozens of Boy Scouts several decades ago, in a case that embroiled a top cardinal in the country’s growing reckoning with clerical sexual abuse.

The former priest, Bernard Preynat, 75, was found guilty by a court in Lyon, in central France, according to his lawyer, Frédéric Doyez. Prosecutors had asked for an eight-year sentence, slightly less than the maximum 10 years for such offenses.

The hearing for the verdict was held behind closed doors in Lyon after the French authorities enforced new restrictions on public gatherings because of the rapidly spreading coronavirus epidemic.

Pierre Emmanuel Germain-Thill, one of Mr. Preynat’s victims, told Agence France-Presse that the sentence was “correct” given the former priest’s age.

“I am very relieved by this ruling,” Mr. Germain-Thill said. “We want to turn the page of this affair and continue to build our lives.”

Mr. Doyez, the lawyer, said in an email that he was considering an appeal but that it was ultimately Mr. Preynat’s decision. Under French law, Mr. Preynat has 10 days to appeal the conviction.

Mr. Preynat was accused of using his position as a Boy Scout leader to sexually abuse dozens of boys from the 1970s to the 1990s. A church tribunal pronounced him guilty of the abuse last year and stripped him of his clerical status.

At the criminal trial, held in January, Mr. Preynat admitted to some of the abuse and asked for forgiveness, testifying that as a scout chaplain he had abused as many as two boys “almost every weekend” and as many as four or five a week on camp outings — although he said he did not remember some of the specific acts that the victims had accused him of.

“For me, at the time, I was not committing acts of sexual assault but caresses, cuddles,” Mr. Preynat said at trial, according to news reports. “I was wrong.”

Many of the accusations against Mr. Preynat were past the statute of limitations, and only a few of victims were plaintiffs. But the case against him, which first emerged in 2015, led to a much wider indictment in France of the Catholic Church’s culture of silence about sexual abuse allegations.

Attention quickly focused on Cardinal Philippe Barbarin, then the archbishop of Lyon — one of France’s highest-ranking clergymen.

Although the abuse occurred before Cardinal Barbarin was appointed to his post in the Lyon Diocese in 2002, some of Mr. Preynat’s victims accused the cardinal of having failed to report the allegations to the authorities when they were brought to his attention. During his trial, Mr. Preynat testified that senior church officials had been aware of the abuse but had done nothing to remove him from office.

Cardinal Barbarin later acknowledged that he had heard about the abuse as early as 2010, but he said that he had personally questioned Mr. Preynat at the time and had left him in office after receiving assurances that no abuse had occurred since 1991. Mr. Preynat was removed from office in August 2015.

Prosecutors dropped charges against Cardinal Barbarin in 2016 after an investigation, but some of Mr. Preynat’s accusers used a special procedure to force the cardinal to stand trial.

The cardinal was found guilty last year of failing to report the abuse, but was acquitted in January on appeal. His resignation was accepted by Pope Francis this month.

During his trial, Mr. Preynat said for the first time that he had himself been the victim of abuse by clergymen in his youth, though lawyers for some of the plaintiffs said that they were skeptical of that last-minute allegation, calling it yet another lie from a man who for years had evaded punishment for his crimes.

An independent commission created by the Bishops’ Conference of France to shed light on sexual abuse by the country’s clergy has already heard from thousands of people reporting such cases, and a report is expected in 2021.

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KOTTAYAM (INDIA)
Express News Service

March 16, 2020

The claim of the accused that the prosecution witnesses are not trustworthy and there was no cogent evidence in the entire episode was turned down by the court.

In a major setback to Bishop Franco Mulakkal, former head of the Latin Catholic Diocese of Jalandhar, the Additional District and Sessions Court I, Kottayam, on Monday dismissed the discharge petition filed by him in connection with the rape case registered against him by the Kuravilangad police.

The judge G Gopakumar directed bishop Mulakkal to face the trial in the case, which was registered on the basis of a complaint filed by a Catholic nun of the same diocese.

Bishop Franco, who didn’t turn up before the court on the day, had filed the discharge petition on January 25, while the court was supposed to commence preliminary hearing on charges against him.

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KOTTAYAM (KERALA)
IANS

March 16, 2020

A court here on Monday dismissed the discharge petition filed by former Jalandhar bishop Franco Mulakkal, accused of sexually assaulting a nun between 2014 and 2016.

This means that the bishop will now have to face trial in the case, which will begin very soon.

It was on January 7 that Mulakkal, who is on bail, filed the petition in the Kottayam additional district sessions court.

Mulakkal’s ploy was to delay the trial and now with the lower court dismissing his discharge petition, it remains to be seen if he will approach a higher court.

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LYON (FRANCE)
AFP

March 16, 2020

A defrocked Catholic priest was given a five-year jail term Monday for sexually abusing boy scouts in his care several decades ago, a case that roiled the French Church over claims he was shielded from prosecution by his superiors.

Bernard Preynat, 75, had confessed at his trial in January in the southeastern city of Lyon to “caresses” he knew were forbidden after victims testified of the abuses they suffered at his hands.

The accusers were aged seven to 14 when the alleged crimes were committed between 1971 and 1991, when Preynat was a scout leader in Lyon.

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KOTTAYAM (KERALA)
Tribune India

March 16, 2020

A trial court here on Monday dismissed a discharge petition filed by Bishop Franco Mulakkal, in connection with the case of alleged rape of a nun in which he is the prime accused.

In his plea filed before the Additional District and Sessions Court I, Mulakkal had claimed that prima facie there was no case to frame charges against him.

Dismissing the plea, the trial court said the bishop should stand for trial in the rape case.

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AUSTRALIA
China News

March 16, 2020

By Chris Friel

Before the High Court of Australia Bret Walker used the word “illogic.” He was referring to the failure of the majority appellate judges to properly understand what I have called the “hiatus theory.” In this paper I want to suggest that a similar illogic pervades the misguided approach of prosecutor Kerri Judd, presenting her case on the next day after Walker.

The context, I trust, will be familiar. The allegation was that two choristers endured a five to six minute assault in the sacristy at St. Patrick’s. However, that place was described as a hive of activity after Sunday Mass and so the defence argued that it was impossible for such a thing to happen. There was just no opportunity; other people would have noticed what was going on. To the contrary, the prosecution wrestled with the problem of how to make this scenario possible by postulating a gap or “hiatus” in the activity that would somehow be consistent with the evidence heard in court.

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UNITED STATES
America Magazine

March 13, 2020

By John J. Conley

Lent began early this year.

Several weeks ago, L’Arche International released a report detailing credible accusations of sexual abuse by Jean Vanier, the charismatic founder of the L’Arche communities and the Faith and Light movement, apostolates devoted to the service of and solidarity with people with intellectual disabilities. The accusations by six women, all of whom were adults and none of whom were disabled, followed a similar pattern. Facing difficulties in their lives, each had sought out Vanier as a spiritual director. Preying on their vulnerability, Mr. Vanier pressured each of them into sexual relations, claiming that these relations had a mystical justification. According to one woman, Mr. Vanier told her, “This is not us; this is Mary and Jesus. You are chosen, you are special.” Each woman was sworn to secrecy. Years later, the women are still wrestling with the brokenness and the disorientation wrought by Mr. Vanier’s actions.

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ARGENTINA
Get Religion

March 12, 2020

By Clemente Lisi

Past popes have exerted an enormous amount of influence on politics around the world. A pope’s influential reach — and the large number of Catholics around the world — has often been vital in the shaping of laws and policy.

The best example is Saint Pope John Paul II. The Polish-born pontiff was instrumental in the fall of communism some three decades ago. His successor, Pope Benedict XVI, had a different approach. Not a media star like JPII, Benedict focused his efforts on Africa. With help from humanitarian aid organizations, the Vatican exerted a great amount of influence in many African nations where the church matters. The church continues to grow there.

This has helped shape how journalists cover the papacy and, thus, the Catholicism. Shaping world politics? That’s news. Shaping doctrines and how people worship? That’s news— maybe. It depends. Do the doctrines have anything to do with gender or sex?

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GALWAY (IRELAND)
Connacht/CityTribune

March 11, 2020

By Ann Healy

A 28-year-old man who sexually assaulted a woman as she slept in a friend’s house, went to his parish priest to look for guidance before telling his family about what he had done.

Brian Finnegan, from Kilsallagh, Williamstown, pleaded guilty before Galway Circuit Criminal Court last October to sexually assaulting the then 22-year-old woman in a house at University Road on October 15, 2017.

The Director of Public Prosecutions had initially directed the charge could be dealt with at District Court level if Finnegan entered a guilty plea, but he pleaded not guilty when the matter came before Galway District Court in 2018 and was sent forward for trial to the higher court.

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BUFFALO (NY)
WKBW

March 11, 2020

By Charlie Specht

But Orsolits, White files still barred from others

Two weeks before the Diocese of Buffalo declared bankruptcy, a state judge ruled that the diocese must turn over the “secret files” of two of its most “notorious” pedophile priests.

But most Catholics — and by extension, dozens of the priests’ alleged victims — are still barred from seeing the files because of conditions the judge placed on their disclosure.

State Supreme Court Justice Deborah A. Chimes ruled Feb. 13 that after months of fighting their release, lawyers for the diocese must disclose the personnel files of Fr. Norbert F. Orsolits and Fr. William F.J. White.

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NEW ORLEANS (LA)
WVUE

March 11, 2020

A New Orleans Archdiocese attorney said Wednesday the church paid out four financial settlements in cases involving former priest Lawrence Hecker, who is accused of sexually molesting children.

According to The Times-Picayune | The New Orleans Advocate, attorney Dirk Wegmann also said in court the church found out about at least one abuse allegation against Hecker in 1988.

That is 14 years before he was removed from public ministry.

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NEW ORLEANS (LA)
nola.com

March 11, 2020

By Ramon Antonio Vargas

Alleged victim’s attorney twice asked church lawyers if church was contemplating bankrupcty, didn’t get answer

An attorney for the Archdiocese of New Orleans said Wednesday that the church learned of at least one abuse allegation against accused predatory priest Lawrence Hecker in 1988, or 14 years before he was removed from public ministry and three decades before archdiocesan officials informed the community that he was a suspected serial child molester.

The lawyer also revealed that the archdiocese has paid out financial settlements in four cases involving Hecker, who worked at more than a dozen Catholic churches in the New Orleans area over 44 years before his forced retirement in 2002.

The statements from archdiocesan attorney Dirk Wegmann came in what was supposed to be a routine status conference in a lawsuit filed by an alleged Hecker abuse victim before Orleans Parish Civil District Court Judge Nakisha Ervin-Knott. However, the proceeding was often far from routine.

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LANSING (MI)
Daily Press

March 12, 2020

Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel’s investigation into sexual abuse by members of the clergy resulted in Gary Allen Jacobs being formally arraigned late Tuesday in Ontonagon County on two additional criminal sexual conduct cases. Hee allegedly committed the offenses in the 1980s while serving as a priest under the Catholic Diocese of Marquette in the Upper Peninsula.

Jacobs was originally charged in January on seven additional criminal sexual conduct charges in three separate cases that reportedly occurred in Ontonagon and Dickinson counties.

Since January, two new victims came forward making sexual assault reports against Jacobs, 74, now of Albuquerque, N.M. In the two cases, he is charged with three criminal sexual conduct counts stemming from incidents that reportedly occurred between the dates of Jan. 1, 1981 and Dec. 31, 1984 in Ontonagon County.

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ONTONAGON (MI)
WLUC/TV6 News Team

March 11, 2020

A former Upper Michigan priest is in jail and facing more charges in a criminal sexual conduct investigation.

According to the Michigan Attorney General’s Office, Gary Allen Jacobs was formally arraigned late Tuesday in Ontonagon County District Court on two additional criminal sexual conduct cases that he reportedly committed in the 1980s while serving as a priest under the Catholic Diocese of Marquette in the Upper Peninsula.

Jacobs is currently in the Ontonagon County Jail. The court denied him bond.

Jacobs was originally charged in January on seven additional criminal sexual conduct charges in three separate cases that reportedly occurred in Ontonagon and Dickinson counties.

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PHILADELPHIA (PA)
Associated Press

March 16, 2020

By Maryclaire Dale

Nearly two decades after the Roman Catholic priest-abuse scandal exploded in the U.S. in 2002, only one church official has ever gone to prison over it: Monsignor William Lynn, the longtime secretary for clergy in the Philadelphia archdiocese.

After an appeals court found his sweeping 2012 trial flawed and his conviction was twice overturned, Lynn, 69, is set to be retried Monday on a single child endangerment count. Prosecutors contend he endangered children by transferring a known predator priest, after a year of inpatient therapy, to their parish without warning in 1993.

The landmark case, now trimmed to its core, will look nothing like the gut-wrenching, four-month trial that unearthed the church’s “secret archives,” drew more than 20 haunted victims to the witness stand and led the judge to conclude that Lynn allowed “monsters in clerical garb … to destroy the souls of children.”

This time, a new judge plans to steer clear of the broader priest-abuse crisis that has cost the church an estimated $3 billion or more, and plunged dioceses around the world into bankruptcy and scandal.

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LYON (FRANCE)
Associated Press

By Nicolas Vaux-Montagny

March 16, 2020

A French priest who acknowledged sexually abusing at least 75 boys over decades was sentenced Monday to five years in prison, in France’s worst case of clergy abuse to reach trial.

The court in Lyon issued the verdict against 74-year-old Bernard Preynat behind closed doors because of the spreading coronavirus that has shuttered most activity in France.

Preynat’s case forced the first serious reckoning with sex abuse within the Catholic Church in France. Preynat testified that multiple cardinals and other senior church officials were aware of his misconduct dating back to the 1960s, but he wasn’t removed from the priesthood until last year.

Victims of Preynat’s abuse, primarily boy scouts, welcomed his conviction for sexually abusing minors. Preynat was a scout leader.

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GREENVILLE (SC)
Associated Press

March 15, 2020

Bob Jones University in South Carolina said it regrets not encouraging a teenager to go to police after she said she was sexually assaulted on campus by a former pastor.

The woman reported the assaults in 2005, saying four years earlier when she was 16, a then 37-year-old pastor took her to a university-owned apartment while visiting Greenville and attacked her, The Greenville News reported.

Jonathan Alan Weaver, 56, was charged last month by Greenville Police with two counts of first-degree assault and battery. South Carolina does not have a statute of limitations for any criminal offense.

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AUSTRALIA
CathNews

March 15, 2020

Lawyers for Cardinal George Pell have already filed supplementary material with the High Court amid hopes of a quick decision in his appeal. Source: The Herald-Sun.

The Cardinal’s legal team were asked to file a short note on the evidentiary relationship between the two separate incidents of abuse of which he was convicted.

The note was filed on Friday night following the second and final day of his appeal.

Sources close to the case doubt the issue will impact the decision in any significant way.

Victoria’s Director of Public Prosecutions, Kerri Judd, QC, now has until early next week to file a response to the note.

The full bench of the High Court has reserved its decision to be handed down at a later date.

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OKLAHOMA CITY (OK)
The Oklahoman

By Carla Hinton and Randy Ellis

March 16, 2020

A retired Catholic clergyman named in a list of predatory priests wants to retain the right to carry out priestly functions like officiating at weddings and funerals.

Enid attorney Stephen Jones said he will appeal to Rome on behalf of the Rev. James Mickus if the Archdiocese of Oklahoma City does not restore the retired priest’s “priestly faculties.”

Jones’ disagreement with the archdiocese stems from allegations against Mickus that were included in a report compiled by Oklahoma City-based McAfee & Taft. The law firm was hired by the archdiocese to investigate and report on its findings concerning priests with substantiated allegations of sex abuse against a minor.

The 77-page report released in October 2019 included an allegation that Mickus, 75, had sexually abused a minor while serving as an archdiocese priest at St. Francis Xavier Catholic Church in Enid.

Jones said Mickus acknowledges having a “consensual romantic relationship” with the person who made the allegation, but contends the man was an adult at the time.

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

GLASGOW (SCOTLAND)
The Sunday Post

March 15, 2020

by Gordon Blackstock

For years he didn’t think about him. Now he can’t stop.

Every night Eddie McColl, 75, says he remembers his kid brother Francis, who died at the age of 13. Both siblings, along with older brothers John and Willie, were taken from their widowed mother, Ellen, in the early ’50s. After coalman dad John died from tuberculosis, the family had been left on its uppers.

Eddie remembers being so poor, he would raid bins for clothes to wear to school in the tough area of Maryhill in Glasgow. Soon, the three younger brothers were taken to Smyllum Park orphanage in Lanarkshire to be protected and cared for. Or so they hoped.

In 2018, the Scottish Child Abuse Inquiry heard evidence that the orphanage – run by the religious order of nuns, the Daughters of Charity – was rife with physical and sexual abuse suffered by many of the children taken there.

John, a streetwise teenager, escaped life at Smyllum, originally running away before being allowed to live with an aunt. Francis, the youngest and not yet at school, was kept away from his brothers in the nursery wing.

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
Newcastle Herald

March 16, 2020

HUNTER paedophile priest Vince Ryan is good at playing the victim, despite truly horrific crimes against children that include forcing boys as young as nine to attempt anal intercourse in a church with other boys, for his sick pleasure.

Men died too young after they were raped and sexually assaulted by Ryan. He was a protected species who could and should have been stopped from the early 1970s, but wasn’t because of the senior clerics above who covered up his crimes.

Hunter Catholics have been warned that the ABC series Revelation, presented by Sarah Ferguson from Tuesday and featuring an interview with Ryan, will be confronting. That’s if they watch it, and they should.

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.

GEORGIA
Georgia Recorder

March 16, 2020

By Ross Williams

After a couple of failed attempts in recent years, Georgia lawmakers are again advancing legislation to allow adults who were victims of sexual abuse more time to sue organizations that employed their abuser.

This latest version of the Hidden Predator Act passed the House late last week and its fate is now in the state Senate. Its author, Warner Robins Republican Heath Clark, said the bill raises the age a victim can bring a civil suit for child sexual abuse from 23 to 38 years and expands the amount of time a victim can bring suit from two years after becoming aware of the abuse to four years.

If the bill becomes law, it would open a one-year window for victims whose statute of limitation has run out to file suit against a person who committed abuse or an entity that had an obligation to report the abuse but knowingly allowed it to continue or attempted to conceal it.

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.

ENGLAND
News & Star with the Cumberland News

March 15, 2020

By Phil Coleman

I CAN see the pain in his eyes.

As he sits in his living room, the walls adorned with original paintings of two stunningly beautiful Lake District valleys, Richard is reliving the terrible day 36 years ago when a trusted Church of England vicar cynically and brutally destroyed his childhood.

Decades have passed but deep anger remains.

Richard’s anger is not for Ronald Johns, the disgraced and later defrocked former Carlisle Cathedral canon who sexually abused him when he was a child. It’s for the bishop who turned a blind eye when Johns finally confessed he was a child abuser.

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.

HARRISBURG (PA)
The Tribune-Democrat

March 15, 2020

By John Finnerty

Harrisburg Bishop Ronald Gainer announces Wednesday, Feb. 19, 2020, that the diocese has filed to reorganize under Chapter 11 bankruptcy in the face of looming lawsuits over priest abuse.

The diocese has already paid out almost $13 million to settle claims filed by victims of priest abuse through a compensation fund set up by the church.

Adult survivors of priest abuse across Pennsylvania expect that other dioceses will follow the Roman Catholic Diocese of Harrisburg and declare bankruptcy to force victims tons seek damages through bankruptcy court rather than civil court.

Mary McHale, a Reading women involved with the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests said “I think it’s only a matter of time” before other dioceses in Pennsylvania declare bankruptcy, a move announced by the Harrisburg diocese in mid-February.

“It’s not a shock,” she said. “It’s another play in their playbook.”

McHale was abused by a priest in Reading, who began grooming her after she disclosed to him that she was gay. She only came forward after another woman publicly accused the same priest of 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.

ENGLAND
News & Star

March 15, 2020

By Phil Coleman

Any person in a position of responsibility who is told about the sexual abuse of a child should report it to the police, says Workington MP Mark Jenkinson.

The politician spoke out after the News & Star reported on the cases of two Allerdale men whose abusers were clergymen – one with the Catholic Church and the other with the Church of England – and both were allowed to continue working after they confessed their paedophilia.

Neither was reported to the police by their church bosses.

One was a victim of former Carlisle Cathedral canon Ronald Johns and he said he was appalled to learn about the case of former Workington priest Peter Turner, who was allowed to continue his ‘ministry’ in Workington after telling his abbot he had abused a child

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.

WHEELING (WV)
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

By Peter Smoth

March 15, 2020

In a Wheeling University room normally used for musical recitals, groups of Catholics sat in small circles, each with a single lit candle in the middle, and took turns discussing their struggles to remain Catholic in an era defined by scandal.

“As a parent of four children, and a health-care provider for children, I am just unable to comprehend how an organization would not protect vulnerable people, especially one that professes to have a moral authority,” one man said. And when that authority “starts unraveling, I have a lot of questions. What else am I believing that you tell me? Why should I believe you anymore?”

The exercise was a model for what’s known as “healing circles,” used as a tool for what’s known as “restorative justice,” and the aim of the conference was to promote its use in area parishes.

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.

MISSOURI
forsuchatimeasthisrally.com (blog)

March 13, 2020

New details on the abuse case at First Baptist Greenwood and a timeline of events based on news reports. More questions are raised about the role of the newest Southwest Baptist University trustee, Mike Roy.

Shawn Davies was under indictment for sexual abuse in Kentucky as of May 18, 2005 according to court records. Shawn was a pastor on staff at First Baptist Greenwood, MO and later convicted of abusing 7+ boys at the church.

He was not fired by the church until October 2005 – five months following the indictment.

Here’s the timeline that we’ve pieced together after reviewing dozens of news articles:

2001 – Sheriff in Kentucky begins first known investigation into sexual abuse by Shawn Davies according to court records. Abuse occurred in Davies’ role as pastor.

August 2003 – Shawn Davies is hired by First Baptist Greenwood / church senior pastor, Mike Roy. Abuse incidents at First Baptist Greenwood begin this same month.

May 18, 2005 – Shawn is INDICTED in Kentucky on sexual abuse charges.

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
adamhorowitzlaw.com (law firm blog)

March 15, 2020

Now it’s the Jehovah’s Witnesses. Maybe soon it will be the Baptists. We say: Bring it on!

Pennsylvania’s Attorney General has announced a new investigation into Jehovah’s Witnesses clergy sex crimes and cover ups. Activists are urging Missouri’s attorney general to launch a probe into Baptist clergy abuse and cover up.

Pennsylvania opens grand jury investigation into Jehovah’s Witnesses’ cover-up of child sex abuse

Mo. Attorney General Urged to Investigate Baptists

Again, we welcome these moves. For decades, law enforcement officials have tended to pursue smaller, easier cases against less influential and unpopular defendants. And their reluctance to believe that widely-respected officials would tolerate or enable heinous crimes, and then conceal them, proved problematic too.

Finally, that mindset is beginning to change.

In 2002, the first formal law enforcement probes into Catholic officials and their cover ups began. But there’s no question that child molesting clerics seek out and can be found in every religious group.

(A terrific list of grand jury investigations into church groups can be found here: http://www.bishop-accountability.org/AtAGlance/reports.htm)

“But why focus just on churches?” some believers and religious officials complain. “Why single us out?”

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

NEW YORK
Poughkeepsie Journal

March 14, 2020

By Ariel Gilreath

A former Hyde Park priest is being accused of the sexual assault of a 17-year-old in 2005.

And, a South Carolina university is apologizing for not doing more to assist the teen 15 years ago, in the wake of the priest’s arrest.

Shielagh Clark said she was sexually assaulted by her former pastor at Hyde Park Baptist Church, Jonathan Alan Weaver, but said she was too afraid at the time to pursue police charges.

Late last month, Weaver, 56, was arrested by the Greenville Police Department in South Carolina, and charged with two counts of first-degree assault and battery. Those charges are tied to an incident that allegedly occurred in 2001 when Clark was still in high school and on a trip with Weaver and other teenage students to Bob Jones University, according to warrants. Greenville police charged Weaver with assault and battery because that’s what the evidence supported, Lt. Alia Paramore said.

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

AUSTRALIA
The Saturday Paper

March 15, 2020

By Rick Morton

The final bid for George Pell’s freedom began with a test of faith.

Addressing the full bench of the High Court in Canberra this week, the cardinal’s silk, Bret Walker, SC, drew his line in the sand: believing the surviving victim was not enough to convict Pell to six years in prison for historical child sexual abuse. Faith can be wrong, he argued. Faith is slippery.

“It does not mean that all of us when we say, in or out of court, that we believe something are therefore also saying, let alone making true, the fact that we cannot be wrong in that to which our belief leads us,” Walker told the court. “The belief does not drive from the field the possibility of reasonable doubt.”

This was the scaffold upon which Pell’s defence would rest.

The credibility of the victim was not in question, Walker argued, but was he reliable? In asking the court to dismantle the faith placed in the survivor of abuse, he urged them to look elsewhere, at the “whole of the evidence”.

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.

CANADA
The Catholic Register

By Annabel Quinn

March 15, 2020

Last year I attended an incredible spiritual retreat in Trosly-Breuil, France, the birthplace of the first L’Arche community.

Jean Vanier was too ill to facilitate the retreat, but he attended Mass with us daily and allowed us to kiss his cheek, shake his hand and pose for many pictures. He warmly received our gift, a large canvas print of Corinthians, “Love is patient, love is kind….”

One evening the retreatants walked by candlelight into the cave-like sanctuary to sit in silence in front of the Blessed Sacrament. I sat on the floor against the back wall. Total silence and peace.

I realized I was sitting beside a pair of feet. I looked up and saw that I was sitting at the feet of Jean Vanier. I am ashamed to admit that I felt a little smug; I was the beloved child sitting at the feet of a living saint.

That was one of my most powerful moments as a Catholic. Today that memory has been shattered by the news that Vanier sexually coerced six (non-disabled) women under the guise of giving them spiritual direction.

I learned about his abuse when a friend sent me a “You OK?” text, along with one of the articles (the first of many) that detailed what Vanier had done. I was utterly gutted.

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.

ONTONAGON (MI)
WWJ News

March 14, 2020

A former Michigan priest who relocated to New Mexico has returned to the state to face additional charges for allegedly sexually abusing children decades ago.

Gary Allen Jacobs was formally arraigned late Tuesday in Ontonagon County on two additional criminal sexual conduct cases that he reportedly committed in the 1980s while serving as a priest under the Catholic Diocese of Marquette in the Upper Peninsula.

Jacobs was originally charged in January on seven criminal sexual conduct charges in three separate cases that reportedly occurred in Ontonagon and Dickinson counties.

Since January, two new victims came forward making sexual assault reports against Jacobs, 74, now of Albuquerque, New Mexico. In the two cases, he is charged with three criminal sexual conduct counts stemming from incidents that reportedly occurred between the dates of Jan. 1, 1981 and Dec. 31, 1984 in Ontonagon County.

The new charges include two counts of first-degree criminal sexual conduct involving a child between the ages of 13 and 15, and one count of second-degree criminal sexual conduct involving a child between the ages of 13 and 15. Both cases arise from his abuse of his authority status as the victims’ priest.

Jacobs faces up to life in prison if convicted as charged.

Jacobs was arrested Jan. 17 in New Mexico on three previously charged cases of criminal sexual conduct. Rather than await extradition from New Mexico, Jacobs voluntarily returned to Michigan to be arraigned on the new charges.

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.

PHOENIX (AZ)
Associated Press

March 13, 2020

By David Crary

Maria Chavira, a senior administrator in the Diocese of Phoenix, says Spanish-speaking Catholic parishes in her area are “bursting at the seams” and celebrates the emergence of Hispanics as the largest ethnic component of the church nationwide.

Throughout the Southwest, where the surge has been dramatic, Roman Catholic leaders are excited by the possibilities — and well aware of daunting challenges.

Hispanics now account for 40% of all U.S. Catholics, and a solid majority of school-age Catholics. Yet Hispanic Americans are strikingly underrepresented in Catholic schools and in the priesthood — accounting for less than 19% of Catholic school enrollment and only about 3% of U.S.-based priests.

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.

KAMLOOPS (BRITISH COLUMBIA, CANADA)
Vancouver Sun via Kamloops this Week

March 13, 2020

Keith Fraser / Vancouver Sun

Rosemary Anderson claims Father Erlindo Molon committed the assaults against her after she was hired as a teacher at the Our Lady of Perpetual Help school in North Kamloops in 1976

A former schoolteacher who alleges she was repeatedly sexually assaulted by a Catholic priest in Kamloops more than 40 years ago is seeking a record $2.4 million in damages for such cases in B.C.

Rosemary Anderson claims Father Erlindo Molon committed the assaults against her after she was hired as a teacher at the Our Lady of Perpetual Help school in North Kamloops in 1976.

She testified that, at the time, she was grieving the death of her father and seeking spiritual guidance from the priest, who is now 88 years old and suffering from dementia.

In final submissions at Anderson’s civil trial this week, her lawyer, Sandra Kovacs, outlined the quantum of damages being sought from the defendant, the Roman Catholic Bishop of the Diocese of Kamloops.

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.

WYOMING
Casper StarTribune

March 10, 2020

By Seth Klamann.

Cheyenne police’s follow-up investigation into allegations of sexual abuse by a retired Catholic leader in Wyoming concluded last week, right around the time that another alleged victim of the clergyman came forward in Missouri.

The investigation into retired Bishop Joseph Hart will turn 2 years old in April. Cheyenne police have said they began investigating in spring 2018, after the Diocese of Cheyenne launched its own investigation into Hart and concluded he’d sexually abused at least two then-adolescents in the 1970s and 80s. Since then, four more victims have been identified in Wyoming alone.

In Kansas City, Missouri, Hart served as a priest for roughly 20 years, before becoming bishop in Wyoming in 1976. He has faced allegations there by more than a dozen men.

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.

MONTREAL (CANADA)
Catholic News Service

March 14, 2020

The Canadian bishops’ standing committee for the Responsible Ministry and Protection of Minors and Vulnerable Persons met for the first time in January, but the fact that the identities of the majority of its members is kept secret irritates victims, who see a lack of transparency.

Archbishop J. Michael Miller of Vancouver, chairman of the standing committee, said it was clear “from our first meeting that they are eager to work and bring forward real change to prevent abuse from ever occurring, as well as to assume their critical role as advocates for the healing of victims-survivors.”

While not a decision-making body, the standing committee will assist and advise the Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops (CCCB) on its national safeguards. Its role is to “bring forward research-based information and identify emerging issues and best practices. It will address matters related to healing and prevention, act as a sounding board and consultative forum, and recommend priorities and initiatives for consideration by the appropriate CCCB bodies,” said a CCCB statement.

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.

FARGO (ND)
The Dickinson Press

March 14, 2020

By Jim Shaw

It is time for the North Dakota Legislature to open a new window, so victims of sexual abuse can seek civil action against their abusers. Many of the perpetrators were or are Catholic priests. Many of the victims were children. They were frightened, ashamed and traumatized. By the time they realized the seriousness of the offenses against them or had the courage to come forward, the statute of limitations had expired for them to take legal action.

So, the Legislature should open a new window of at least two years to allow all survivors to file suit against their alleged offenders. Experts say a lot of survivors in the state would like to take action now.

In just the last two years, 15 states revised their laws to open new windows or suspend their statutes of limitations. Minnesota opened a three-year window that ended in 2016. According to the Minneapolis Star Tribune, that led to an astounding 850 new child abuse sex claims, including roughly 500 against Catholic clergy.

One of those who filed a claim was Frank Meuers of Plymouth, Minn. Meuers says he was abused by a priest when he was 16. “I was devastated and confused when it happened,” Meuers said. “The shame is smothering. You blame yourself.”

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.

WYOMING
Crux

March 14, 2020

By Christopher White

Cheyenne, Wyoming’s police department has concluded the latest round of its investigation into Bishop Joseph Hart, who could soon become the first U.S. bishops to be criminally charged for abusing minors.

According to the Casper Star-Tribune, the investigation concluded last week and marks the second round of the investigation.

An earlier investigation completed in August 2019 recommended that charges be brought against a member of the Wyoming Catholic clergy and another person “seeking membership” in the clergy of abuse during the 1970s and 1980s.

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
Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC)

March 10, 2020

By Josh Robertson

Anglican Church officials wrongly told a woman who was sexually abused more than 60 years ago they had to hold off resolving her complaint, then offered a payout and an apology if she agreed to a gag clause.

Its apology for causing her “additional trauma and distress” through “unacceptable delays” came a day after the ABC questioned its latest missteps in the case, which led to Dr Hollingworth’s public downfall but still fuels calls for him to be stripped of millions of dollars of public benefits.

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.

DANBURY (CT)
The Register Citizen

March 13, 2020

By Kendra Baker

The case of a former local priest accused of sexually assaulting two boys is scheduled to resume in two weeks.

Jaime Marin-Cardona, 51, is charged with three counts of fourth-degree sexual assault, three counts of risk of injury to child and three counts of illegal sexual contact. He pleaded not guilty to all nine charges.

The warrant for Marin-Cardona’s arrest alleges that he groomed two boys over the course of four years, and sexually abused one of them over the same period of time.

The alleged abuse began in 2014 — the same year Marin-Cardona became a priest at Our Lady of Guadalupe Church on Golden Hill Road.

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

BUFFALO (NY)
Buffalo News

March 13, 2020

By Jay Tokasz

A trustee for the federal bankruptcy court has selected seven people suing the Buffalo Diocese over clergy sexual abuse to serve on a creditors committee that will investigate the diocese’s finances and negotiate a bankruptcy settlement.

U.S. Trustee William K. Harrington interviewed at least 20 people for seven spots on the committee, which will represent all unsecured creditors and play a major role in formulating a reorganization plan for the diocese.

“It’s a very important group. They will have a substantial amount of meetings to discuss the future of the Diocese of Buffalo and what the Diocese of Buffalo has to provide in terms of finances and documents so that victims can feel validated,” said attorney Mitchell Garabedian, who represents several dozen clients suing the diocese under the Child Victims Act.

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.

MADISON (WI)
Wisconsin State Journal

March 14, 2020

By Emily Hamer

Madison Diocese announced Friday a second credible allegation of sexual abuse against former priest Patrick Doherty.

Doherty, 85, was identified by the diocese in January as a priest who was “credibly accused” of sexually abusing children after an alleged victim came forward with a story of abuse from more than 40 years ago.

The most recent allegation stems from about 45 years ago when Doherty was a pastor in Boscobel, the diocese said. The alleged victim came forward after the January announcement.

The diocese said after conducting an investigation and receiving input from the Diocesan Sexual Abuse Review Board, it determined the Boscobel allegation has the “semblance of truth.”

The case has been forwarded to the Vatican for review and possible further action.

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.

ST. PAUL (MN)
Catholic News Service

March 12, 2020

By Joe Ruff

A U.S. bankruptcy judge gave final approval March 10 to a $34 million settlement agreement between 93 victim-survivors of clergy sexual abuse and the Diocese of New Ulm, Minnesota, as well as parishes within the diocese.

Claimants voted unanimously to approve the settlement.

Judge Robert Kressel’s final approval clears the way for the 93 clergy abuse survivors to begin receiving compensation under the settlement. It also marks the end of a three-year bankruptcy process for the diocese. The diocese also has committed to 17 child protection protocols.

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.

DANBURY (CT)
The Register Citizen

March 13, 2020

By Kendra Baker

The case of a former local priest accused of sexually assaulting two boys is scheduled to resume in two weeks.

Jaime Marin-Cardona, 51, is charged with three counts of fourth-degree sexual assault, three counts of risk of injury to child and three counts of illegal sexual contact. He pleaded not guilty to all nine charges.

The warrant for Marin-Cardona’s arrest alleges that he groomed two boys over the course of four years, and sexually abused one of them over the same period of time.

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

LANSING (MI)
Legal Examiner

March 12, 2020

By Mick S. Grewal Sr.

As survivors of child sex abuse continue speak out against the priests that attacked them, the Catholic Church continues to hide credible accused priests, allowing them to live, shop, walk, and freely roam communities throughout the US. But the communities the Catholic Church have chosen to set up these places of respite, where hundreds of priests die peacefully, without ever facing criminal charges, are carefully chosen.

One former monk says his main task while employed by the church was to cover up and displace child molesting priests. He says the communities which housed many priests were purposefully selected in states that have laws favorable to the Church, such as Missouri.

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.

CHICAGO (IL)
CNS

March 12, 2020

Jesuit Father Hans Zollner, one of the world’s leading experts on safeguarding minors, said the church is suffering “institutional trauma” from clerical sexual abuse, trauma that it must learn to integrate into its theology and understanding of salvation if it is to overcome it.

He visited the Archdiocese of Chicago March 1-3 to speak with seminarians, clergy and members of religious congregations on “The Present Status of Safeguarding in the Church,” which also was the topic of his March 2 DePaul University talk.

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UNITED KINGDOM
BBC News

March 12, 2020

A Church of England priest and former teacher jailed for sexually abusing two young boys has died in hospital.

The Reverend Christopher Howarth, who was an inmate at HMP Lewes, died on Tuesday.

The 72-year-old was convicted in 2015 of 26 offences against the boys who he met through his work at Holy Trinity Church near Uckfield, East Sussex.

The Prison Service said his death would be investigated by the Prison and Probation Ombudsman.

The “appalling abuse” had a “devastating effect” on his victims, the Crown Prosecution Service’s Jaswant Narwal said when he was sentenced.

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.

MADISON (WI)
WKOW

March 13, 2020

The Diocese of Madison says that they’ve received a second credible sexual abuse allegation against a former priest, according to an announcement Friday.

Bishop Donald Hying says they’ve determined that a second allegation of sexual abuse brought against Rev. Patrick Doherty has “the semblance of truth.”

This comes after the Diocese announced another credible sexual abuse allegation against the former priest on January 17.

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WHEELING (WV)
Catholic News Service via America magazine

March 11, 2020

By Colleen Rowan

Expanding the Diocese of Wheeling-Charleston’s Safe Environment Program, Bishop Mark E. Brennan is requiring additional protocols to increase safety and reduce risk of sexual abuse in Catholic schools and parishes.

In a Feb. 20 letter to all pastors, administrators and principals of Catholic schools, the bishop announced he is expanding the requirement for fingerprinting to be part of background checks and that the diocese has engaged Corporate Security and Investigations of Pennsylvania as a third-party service provider that will conduct Safe Environment spot checks, site assessments and training.

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ROME (ITALY)
Crux

March 13, 2020

By Elise Ann Allen

German Jesuit Father Hans Zollner, one of the Catholic Church’s leading experts in child protection, has said that more dangerous than clericalism in the clerical abuse crisis is a “paternalistic” attitude within the Church that both devalues laypeople and puts clergy on a pedestal.

While clericalism has become a hot-button issue under Pope Francis and while it certainly contributes to the problem of abuse, “What I think is a deeper problem is the paternalistic attitude that exists,” said German Jesuit Father Hans Zollner in an interview with Crux.

The problem with this attitude, he said, “has two sides: Both with those in the hierarchy not involving the gifts of a wide variety of faithful, and on the other hand, we have laypeople who enable a paternalistic attitude by believing bishops to be omniscient and having the power to affect immediate change.”

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

NEW ULM (MN)
Redwood Falls Gazette

March 13, 2020

U.S. Bankruptcy Court Judge Robert Kressel gave final approval to the $34 million settlement between the Diocese of New Ulm, parishes within it and those who have filed sexual abuse claims against the diocese and parishes March 10.

Claimants voted unanimously to approve the settlement.

This final approval clears the way for 93 survivors of sexual abuse to begin to receive compensation under the settlement, and it marks the end of a three-year bankruptcy process for the Diocese of New Ulm.

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
America Magazine

March 13, 2020

By Marcus Mescher

Friday, March 13, marks the seventh anniversary of the Francis papacy. Over the last seven years, Pope Francis has introduced and popularized memorable phrases meant to inspire the church. His call to build a “revolution of tenderness” reminds us that mercy is who God is and what God wants for and from God’s people (“Evangelii Gaudium,” No. 88). Francis has called on all people of goodwill to create a “culture of encounter” (No. 220) that resists the modern “throwaway culture” (“Laudato Si’,” No. 22), affirms human dignity and promotes the global common good.

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.

BUFFALO (NY)
Buffalo News

March 12, 2020

By Mike McAndrew

A former longtime principal of Lafayette High School in Buffalo is accused of molesting a student in a Child Victims Act lawsuit filed Wednesday.

Frederick D. Ganter is accused by an Erie County man of molesting him when the plaintiff was a 16- and 17-year-old sophomore at Lafayette in 1989 and 1990.

Ganter, 79, who now resides in Wilton Manors, Fla., was a principal at Lafayette from the early 1970s to the mid-1990s.

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PEWAUKEE (WI)
Fox 6 News

March 12, 2020

By Christina Van Zelst

The jury trial for a Pewaukee priest accused of sexually assaulting a girl during confession continued Thursday.

It was the fourth day of the trial where the focus was on the victim’s mother. The accused, Father Charles Hanel, allegedly sexually assaulted a 13-year-old girl in December 2017 during reconciliation at Queen of the Apostles Church.

The defense says the victim’s mom, who took the stand Thursday, is an undocumented immigrant, calling it an issue in the case and asking for a mistrial.

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SALT LAKE CITY (UT)
Fox 13 News

March 13, 2020

By Ben Winslow

It began with pulling back an overhaul of Utah’s tax code after public pushback and ended with a pandemic.

The Utah State Legislature adjourned the 2020 session after 45-days, spending $20 billion to fund government services we all use and passing 510 bills. …

… A bill to require clergy to report disclosures of abuse by perpetrators was introduced in the legislature and immediately drew heated pushback. Rep. Angela Romero’s inbox was flooded with angry — and sometimes threatening — communications after The Catholic League began lobbying hard against the bill. The legislation never got a hearing, but Rep. Romero said she plans to bring it back again next year.

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ATLANTA (GA)
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

March 13, 2020

By Sarah Kallis

The Georgia House passed a bill on Thursday that would allow more survivors of childhood sex abuse to file charges against their abusers and organizations that covered it up.

House Bill 479 would raise the age limit for victims to file abuse charges from 23 to 38. Under current law, if victims realize childhood abuse has caused them psychological problems, they have two years to take legal action. HB 479 would extend that time limit to four years.

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ST. BONAVENTURE (NY)
The Bona Venture

March 12, 2020

By Sean Mickey

St. Bonaventure University is considering renaming its administrative building, Hopkins Hall, after learning of a credible claim of sexual abuse.

The university was unaware of the claim until its connection was uncovered by The Bona Venture.

Msgr. James F. Hopkins is listed in the Diocese of Erie public disclosure list, which was last updated on April 5, 2019.

The list names individuals credibly accused of actions that “disqualify that person from working with children.”

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ALBUQUERQUE (NM)
Associated Press

March 12, 2020

A creditors committee of clergy abuse survivors believes the Archdiocese of Santa Fe moved assets to hinder creditors before it filed for bankruptcy protection, a lawyer said.

Attorney James Stang told a federal judge Monday that the committee may seek standing in the case to challenge the movement of assets, the Albuquerque Journal reports.

“The committee is ready to move forward on standing motions to avoid fraudulent conveyances that we believe occurred when the archdiocese corporately reorganized,” Stang said. “We believe there’s a basis for us bringing those fraudulent conveyance actions.”

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CANBERRA (AUSTRALIA)
The Guardian

March 12, 2020

By Melissa Davey

Judges ask for further written submissions which the bench will consider before delivering their decision at a date yet to be determined

Melissa Davey

The full bench of the high court in Canberra has reserved its decision about whether to grant Cardinal George Pell special leave to appeal his case for a final time, after listening to two days of arguments from his barrister and the prosecution.

The seven judges asked for further written submissions from the legal parties and have given them two business days to deliver. The bench will then consider those materials before returning to deliver their decision at a date yet to be determined. Once they return to court, if the court does grant special leave, the bench may then immediately decide whether to accept the arguments from Pell’s team and acquit him, or they could dismiss the appeal in which case the verdict would hold.

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PHILADELPHIA (PA)
WHYY radio (NPR affiliate)

March 12, 2020

By Aaron Moselle

More than three years after his release from state prison, Monsignor William Lynn is scheduled to face a familiar, but unwelcome sight: a Philadelphia jury.

Lynn, the first U.S. Catholic Church official to be convicted of covering up clergy sex abuse, will also face familiar allegations next week, when the Philadelphia District Attorney’s Office begins retrying the 69-year-old on one felony count of child endangerment.

While he was secretary for clergy, city prosecutors say Lynn recommended the Archdiocese of Philadelphia transfer a priest, who had been credibly accused of abusing children, to St. Jerome parish in Northeast Philadelphia. And that priest, Edward Avery, sexually molested a 10-year-old altar boy there in the late 1990s.

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NEW ULM (MN)
Associated Press

March 10, 2020

A bankruptcy judge on Tuesday approved a $34 million settlement between the Diocese of New Ulm in Minnesota and nearly 100 people who say they were sexually abused by priests and others.

Bishop John LeVoir apologized to sexual abuse survivors during the hearing, where U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Robert Kressel gave final approval to the settlement. Several survivors of clergy sexual abuse testified tearfully at the hearing, the Star Tribune reported.

“I apologize again on behalf of the church to all who have been harmed by clergy sexual abuse,” LeVoir said.

The diocese serving Catholics in southern and west-central Minnesota also agreed to implement 17 child protection protocols.

Attorney Jeff Anderson of St. Paul, who represents many of the survivors, told The Associated Press that both the settlement and the hearing were “powerful.”

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AUSTRALIA
Eternity News (blog)

March 12, 2020

By John Sandeman

On day two of the High court’s Pell hearing Victoria’s Director of Public Prosecutions, Kerri Judd, is setting out to establish that the guilty verdict is sound, the jury did consider all the evidence and the Court of Appeal got it right as well.

(Yesterday Pell’s lawyer Brett Walker SC argued that a balance of improbabilities had been set out by defence witnesses and that this evidence was not fully taken into account.)

The morning opens with the question of whether the video evidence of the complainant should have been viewed by the Court of Appeal. And ultimately whether they were swayed by it.

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CANBERRA (AUSTRALIA)
Associated Press

March 12, 2020

By Rod McGuirk

Australia’s highest court on Thursday said it will deliver a verdict at a later date on whether to overturn the convictions of the most senior Catholic to be found guilty of child sex abuse.

Cardinal George Pell’s lawyer, Bret Walker, told the High Court that if it found a lower court had made a mistake in upholding Pell’s convictions, he should be acquitted.

Prosecutor Kerri Judd told the seven judges that if there were a mistake, they should send the case back to the Victoria state Court of Appeal to hear it again.

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CANBERRA (AUSTRALIA)
Associated Press

March 10, 2020

By Rod McGuirk

Australia’s highest court on Wednesday began hearing an appeal by Cardinal George Pell against his convictions for molesting two choirboys in a cathedral more than two decades ago.

Some events in Pell’s career and the criminal case:

July 16, 1996: Auxiliary Bishop George Pell is appointed archbishop of Melbourne. He molests two choirboys that December inside St. Patrick’s Cathedral, according to testimony from one of the victims.

March 26, 2001: Pell becomes archbishop of Sydney.

Oct. 21, 2003: Pope John Paul II makes Pell a cardinal.

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AUSTRALIA
The Guardian

February 2, 2020

By Luke Henriques-Gomes

Victoria’s Director of Public Prosecutions rejects Pell lawyers’ argument in submission to high court

George Pell’s appeal to the high court “glosses over” evidence that supports his conviction for child sexual abuse, Victoria’s Director of Public Prosecutions has argued.

Pell, who has won the right to have Australia’s top court review his conviction, argues in legal submissions that the Victorian court of appeal erred when it found that jurors were not unreasonable to believe the testimony of his victim.

But in its own submission to the court, Victoria’s Director of Public Prosecutions said Pell’s appeal “glosses over evidence supportive of the account of the complainant”.

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CANBERRA (AUSTRALIA)
Herald-Sun via CathNews

March 12, 2020

By Shannon Deery

Much of yesterday’s High Court hearing focused on the issue with Bret Walker, SC, arguing Cardinal Pell routinely spent 10 or more minutes on the steps after Mass.

Mr Walker told the court if it was accepted that this occurred, it would have been impossible for him to offend.

For four-and-a-half hours Mr Walker spelled out Cardinal Pell’s appeal arguments, discussing evidence and acute legal points at length, before a full bench of the court.

But the court kept coming back to Cardinal Pell’s post-mass routine, and whether or not he would have had the time to commit the offences of which a jury found him guilty.

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CANBERRA (AUSTRALIA)
The Tablet

March 12, 2020

By Mark Bowling

Australia’s highest court has reserved a decision whether Cardinal George Pell will be allowed to appeal his conviction for child sex offences.

After two days of arguments from Cardinal Pell’s barrister and the prosecution, a seven-judge panel of the High Court of Australia has called for further written submissions.

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CANBERRA (AUSTRALIA)
Reuters

March 12, 2020

By Sonali Paul

Australia’s highest court on Thursday deferred ruling on an appeal to overturn the conviction of former Vatican treasurer George Pell for sexually assaulting two teenaged choirboys in the 1990s.

After two days of legal arguments, the High Court of Australia said it was still considering whether to allow the appeal, the last avenue for the 78-year-old cardinal to clear his name.

If the court does agree to consider the appeal, the seven-member panel of justices will then move straight into deciding whether to acquit Pell or uphold his conviction, a process that will not require another public hearing. A third option – sending the case back to a lower court – is also possible.

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ROSARIO (ARGENTINA)
Crux

March 12, 2020

By Inés San Martín

As bishops from Pope Francis’s native Argentina figure out how to pay their own salaries instead of taking funds from the state, a new poll shows that while seven in ten Argentines declare themselves to be Catholic, six in ten don’t know what activities the Church is doing in the country and seven in ten attend Mass less than once a month.

At first glance, the results of the study, commissioned by the bishops after they announced the progressive end of public funding for the Church late last year, aren’t all bad news: 67 percent of Argentines identify as Catholic, and most know the main missions of the Church: Evangelization, education and guidance, providing spiritual and emotional support, and material aid.

In addition, seven in ten Argentines believe that the basic sense of religion is to give meaning to life in this world.

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WESTERN AUSTRALIA
The Australian

March 11, 2020

By Victoria Laurie

West Australian Catholic Bishop Christopher Saunders has stood down from his senior role administering the Broome diocese amid claims of serious but undisclosed sex abuse allegations.

The Catholic Church in Perth issued a communique from the Vatican, dated 10 March, indicating that Bishop Saunders, 70, had “voluntarily stood aside from the ordinary administration of the diocese.”

The church move was in response to a Channel Seven TV report that police have been investigating historic allegations by two men that they had been victims of sex abuse by Bishop Saunders.

According to the Seven report, WA police have interviewed past and present members of the Bishop’s staff, including priests, who allegedly laid complaints against his behaviour. No charges have been laid against him.

WA Police minister Michelle Roberts confirmed to The Australian that she had “directly referred correspondence in relation to Bishop Saunders to police.”

When confronted by a reporter in Broome outside his church, Bishop Saunders said: “Without any reservation, without any doubt whatsoever, that has never happened, and it never would happen.”

He is one of the Kimberley’s most prominent religious figures, respected as an advocate and outspoken commentator on indigenous affairs and education in the region.

He spent his early life at missions throughout the northwest of the state before moving to the Kimberley. He arrived in Broome as a deacon in 1975 before becoming a priest the following year.

He served at La Grange Mission, 200 kilometres south of Broome and then at Kalumburu Mission, in the far north Kimberley, until 1988. As Bishop, he has been a regular visitor to far-flung Aboriginal communities.

Former Broome mayor Ron Johnstone, a friend of the bishop, said the airing of the allegations would be “a shock to Broome and the Kimberley.”

“Bishop Saunders is a visionary who has done fantastic work for the community,” he said. “He is a generous spirit, and I will not desert him in his hour of need,” he said.

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CANBERRA (AUSTRALIA)
The Australian

March 12, 2020

High Court delays final verdict

The High Court will weigh whether to acquit George Pell of child sex abuse after the prosecution dramatically shifted its position on key evidence on Thursday.

Bret Walker SC for Pell on Wednesday submitted that Pell, 78, be acquitted of molesting two choirboys in 1996 and 1997.

In a dramatic day, Victorian Director of Public Prosecutions Kerry Judd QC shifted position on the timeframe for when Pell could have molested the boys in St Patrick’s Cathedral in Melbourne.

Instead of arguing that there was a five to six minute window of opportunity for offending, Ms Judd said it could not be stated for certain how long the private prayer time lasted that, according to the prosecution case, ultimately created the chance for the cardinal to strike.

Melbourne University law professor Jeremy Gans said the second day in the High Court had been a “good day for Pell’’ and there was a chance the Pell may be acquitted.

It is also possible the case will be referred back to the Victorian Court of Appeal.

The High Court rose late yesterday to consider the appeal, with special leave yet to be formally granted.

It appears to be a mere formality that the appeal will be formally heard.

Ms Judd on Thursday abandoned the prosecution’s previous position over the amount of time that private prayer was held after Solemn Mass.

She said the five to six minutes of private prayer time may now have been longer, depending on what unfolded in the cathedral on the day.

The private prayer had occurred after the procession started to leave the church, the High Court was told.

The altar servers did not start clearing the altar for several minutes after mass ended to give parishioners time for private prayer to be conducted.

On the amount of time allowed for private prayer, Ms Judd said: “They are approximate times. It was not a precise five or six minutes.’’

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CANBERRA (AUSTRALIA)
BBC News

March 12, 2020

Australia’s top court has reserved its ruling on whether Cardinal George Pell’s bid to quash his sexual abuse convictions has been successful.

The ex-Vatican treasurer is serving a six-year jail sentence after a jury found he abused two boys in a Melbourne cathedral in the 1990s.

He is the most senior Catholic globally to be jailed for such crimes, but maintains his innocence.

Pell has challenged the verdict in the High Court of Australia.

During hearings on Wednesday and Thursday, defence and prosecution teams sparred over whether the jury had fairly considered all evidence.

The seven appeal judges then reserved their decision until a later date. They did not specify when.

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NEW ULM (MN)
Learfield Wire Service

March 11, 2020

Ninety-three victims of clergy sexual abuse will share 34-million dollars under a settlement with the Diocese of New Ulm. The reorganization plan was approved during a bankruptcy hearing Tuesday in Brown County. The settlement includes 17 new child protection protocols enacted by the diocese. Bishop John Le Voir said, “the Diocese of New Ulm and the Catholic church must do everything possible to protect the vulnerable so that this tragedy never happens again.” Around 26-million of the 34-million-dollar settlement will come from insurance, the diocese will pay seven-million cash and all the parishes will contribute a total of one million dollars.

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WEST VIRGINIA
National Catholic Reporter

March 12, 2020

By Peter Feuerherd

A group called Lay Catholic Voices for Change has sent a letter to Bishop Mark Brennan of Wheeling-Charleston, West Virginia, asking that the diocese investigate charges of sex abuse of minors by former Bishop Michael Bransfield. The letter also asked that Bransfield be ordered not to use the title bishop emeritus to describe himself.

Bransfield served as bishop of Wheeling-Charleston, which includes the entire state of West Virginia, from 2005 to 2018. He retired after reaching the mandatory retirement age of 75. Information from a church investigation released in June of last year said he misused millions of dollars from diocesan funds and sexually harassed adult seminarians.

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“ProPublica y el Houston Chronicle analizaron las listas publicadas por 52 diócesis de Estados Unidos que abarcan los 30 principales en términos de la cantidad de clérigos vivos acusados con credibilidad y ubicados en estados a lo largo de la frontera entre México y Estados Unidos. Los reporteros encontraron 51 curas que luego de acusaciones de abuso pudieron trabajar como sacerdotes o con hermanos religiosos en una gran cantidad de países, desde Irlanda hasta Nigeria y Filipinas”, reporta la investigación.

Ciudad de México, 11 de marzo (SinEmbargo).– La iglesia católica envió a distintos países a decenas de sacerdotes que eran acusados en Estados Unidos de violar menores de edad; todos fueron incorporados a iglesias y se les permitió ofrecer servicio e incluso trabajar con niños, de acuerdo con una investigación realizada por un equipo de Houston Chronicle y ProPublica encabezado por Katie Zavadski, Topher Sanders y Nicole Hensley.

“ProPublica y el Houston Chronicle analizaron las listas publicadas por 52 diócesis de Estados Unidos que abarcan los 30 principales en términos de la cantidad de clérigos vivos acusados con credibilidad y ubicados en estados a lo largo de la frontera entre México y Estados Unidos. Los reporteros encontraron 51 curas que luego de acusaciones de abuso pudieron trabajar como sacerdoteso con hermanos religiosos en una gran cantidad de países, desde Irlanda hasta Nigeria y Filipinas. Al menos 40 habían trabajado en Estados Unidos lo largo de la frontera sur, incluidos 11 en Texas. Ningún país fue un destino más común que México, donde al menos 21 sacerdotes acusados creíblemente encontraron refugio”, dice la investigación.

“El padre José Antonio Pinal, un joven sacerdote de México, llegó a su primera parroquia en el norte rural de California en 1980, recién salido del seminario. El sacerdote se hizo amigo de la familia Torres, ayudando a los padres, también in

“Pero en las oficinas del sacerdote en la Iglesia Católica del Sagrado Corazón en la pequeña ciudad de Gridley, Torres dijo que Pinal, que entonces tenía 30 años, le dio alcohol, le mostró películas con sexo y desnudos, y lo toqueteó y lo violó. El adolescente le dijo a otro sacerdote en 1989 y los abogados de la diócesis le aseguraron a la familia que a Pinal no se le permitiría estar cerca de los niños, dijo Torres”, agrega.

Treinta años después, en la primavera de 2019, la Diócesis de Sacramento puso el nombre de Pinal en su lista de sacerdotes acusados con credibilidad. La lista contenía cinco denuncias de abuso sexual contra Pinal que datan de fines de la década de 1980.

“Pinal había ‘huido a México’, según la lista, y la diócesis le había prohibido realizar trabajos sacerdotales en público en los 20 condados que conforman la diócesis. Pero una investigación realizada por ProPublica y el Houston Chronicle muestra que la Iglesia Católica permitió o ayudó a docenas de sacerdotes, incluido Pinal, a servir en el extranjero como sacerdotes después de ser acusados de abuso en los Estados Unidos”.

Los periodistas usaron redes sociales y localizaron fácilmente a Pinal, quien vive actualmente en Cuernavaca, Morelos. En una entrevista en su casa y en una serie posterior de intercambios de correos electrónicos, Pinal negó repetidamente abusar sexualmente de Torres o que huyó de California. “Pero en algunos de los correos electrónicos se refirió a lo que sucedió entre él y Torres, y en un correo electrónico enviado el miércoles por la noche, sobre un viaje que realizó con Torres, Pinal dijo: ‘Fue un desastre, pero lo que sucedió fue consensuado’”.

“Pocos meses después de las acusaciones en California, Pinal reanudó el trabajo sacerdotal, ministrando en pueblos indígenas en Tepoztlán y sus alrededores, una pequeña comunidad cerca de la Ciudad de México conocida por los sitios arqueológicos, y sirvió durante décadas en parroquias de la Diócesis de Cuernavaca”.

Con 68 años, Pinal ofrece el ministerio desde casa, “donde tiene cartas que muestran que la iglesia en Sacramento lo mantuvo en la nómina ya que lo ayudó a encontrar una nueva asignación. Pinal disfrutó de una cálida correspondencia con el entonces obispo de Sacramento y los funcionarios a cargo del ministerio hispano, quienes en los meses posteriores a las acusaciones le aconsejaron que trabajara en México por un largo período (5-6 años) antes de regresar a Estados Unidos”.

Y las cartas fueron firmadas por el obispo “con cariño”.

Katie Zavadski, Topher Sanders y Nicole Hensley, de Houston Chronicle y ProPublica, dicen: “Desde 2018, muchas diócesis católicas y órdenes religiosas en Estados Unidos, incluida la de Sacramento, California, han publicado listas de clérigos considerados creíblemente acusados de abusar de niños. Otros actualizaron y ampliaron listas que ya habían hecho públicas”.

“Pero las 178 listas publicadas a partir de enero y compiladas en una base de datos de búsqueda por ProPublica revelaron una red de información incompleta y a menudo inconsistente. Muchas veces las listas no especificaban el estado y ubicación actuales del sacerdote. Y aunque las diócesis frecuentemente afirman no saber nada sobre el paradero de un sacerdote, los reporteros de ProPublica y Chronicle los encontraron en los sitios web de las iglesias, en publicaciones religiosas y en las redes sociales. Los líderes de la iglesia a menudo no informaron las denuncias a la policía, no aplicaron restricciones permanentes dentro de la iglesia, ni hicieron caso u ofrecieron advertencias sobre los sacerdotes que enfrentan acusaciones. En al menos cuatro casos, los líderes de la iglesia facilitaron el traslado de los sacerdotes al extranjero”, dice el reportaje.

LA VISITA SUSPENDIDA

Apenas la semana pasada se dio a conocer que la visita a México de una misión del Vaticano para recabar testimonios e información sobre abusos sexuales y encubrimiento en la iglesia católica mexicana ha sido pospuesta y, de momento, no tiene nueva fecha.

La Conferencia del Episcopado Mexicano (CEM) indicó el viernes pasado en un comunicado que la visita, prevista del 20 al 27 de marzo, no se realizará debido a la situación sanitaria provocada por el nuevo coronavirus, COVID-19, por lo que la Santa Sede “ha suspendido toda actividad en el extranjero”.

La misión de Charles Scicluna, secretario adjunto de la Congregación para la Doctrina de la Fe, y monseñor Jordi Bertomeu podría haber alarmado a algunos en la jerarquía mexicana, ya que sólo un día después de su anuncio, el representante del Vaticano en México, Franco Coppola, reveló en rueda de prensa que cuatro obispos mexicanos estaban bajo investigación, unas pesquisas que, según aclaró a AP posteriormente, se iniciaron en mayo presuntamente por haber encubierto casos de pederastia.

La CEM señaló que la Nunciatura Apostólica mantendrá habilitado el correo electrónico para que quien lo desee les escriba sobre el tema: nunciatura.mexico@diplomat.va .

Coppola abrió esta vía directa de comunicación en diciembre y ya ha recibido decenas de denuncias, la mayoría por encubrimiento. Algunas de las víctimas de abuso, que ya se mostraban escépticas ante la misión, mostraron sus dudas hacia

“¿Por qué planean la visita de este calibre cuando varias semanas antes ya se hablaba del coronavirus?”, se pregunta otra de las víctimas, Jesus Romero Colin. “No sé si estaban midiendo el clima mediático y de las víctimas a ver cuántas iban a tener”.

Scicluna, el principal investigador del Papa en casos de abusos sexuales, vive en Malta, de donde es arzobispo y hasta el momento no se ha anunciado ningún contagio por coronavirus en la isla. En México, sólo se han confirmado siete.

México es el segundo país con mayor población católica y la visita había generado ciertas expectativas debido a que aquí se han acumulado por años denuncias de abusos y encubrimientos.

Los enviados papales eran, además, quienes formaron parte de una comisión similar que fue enviada a Chile en 2018, la cual supuso tal exposición de la jerarquía religiosa del país sudamericano que todos los obispos chilenos en activo pusieron su cargo a disposición de la iglesia y el Papa tuvo que pedir perdón por lo ocurrido en el país sudamericano.

Desde el año pasado, México ha regresado a los reflectores tras la aparición de nuevas víctimas de abusos de los Legionarios de Cristo, que en un informe en diciembre reconocieron haber detectado un centenar de pederastas. Algunos de ellos ya fallecieron, como el fundador de la orden, Marcial Maciel, que abusó de 60 adolescentes y fue obligado a retirarse.

Al margen de todos esos casos, que no pasaron por la CEM, el episcopado ha abierto investigaciones por abusos sexuales a 217 sacerdotes en la última década, según sus datos propios.

“No sé qué estén planeando”, comentó Ana Lucía Salazar, quien fue abusada por el sacerdote Fernando Martínez cuando tenía ocho años. “No creo que sea por eso”, dijo tras enterarse del comunicado.

Otra víctima de un legionario, Biani López-Antúnez, dijo a la AP que, si bien el coronavirus representa una emergencia sanitaria, “en México la integridad física, emocional y psicosocial de nuestros niños debe ser un tema prioritario”.

“No podemos quedarnos de brazos cruzados esperando al Vaticano mientras nuestros niños siguen siendo violentados por sacerdotes”, señaló.

–Con información de AP

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SOUTH BEND (IN)
CRUX

March 11, 2020

By Jack Lyons

When Bishop Frank Caggiano wanted to launch a tech-savvy initiative for the evangelization of young adults, he recruited a handful of laypeople experienced in youth ministry.

Together, they assembled a polished, multi-faceted program, including catechetical videos, through which teens could explore their faith online.

Then he asked some teens what they thought.

“The first thing out of their mouth: ‘Bishop, videos? Oh, come on. Podcasts!’” Caggiano said, who leads the Diocese of Bridgeport.

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AUSTRALIA
WAtoday

March 11, 2020

By Marta Pascual Juanola

One of Australia’s highest-ranking Catholics has voluntarily stood aside amid serious allegations.

On Wednesday afternoon the Catholic Church issued a statement saying Broome Bishop Christopher Saunders, 70, had stepped aside from the administration of the diocese and Monsignor Paul Boyers had been appointed to take care of the day to day running of the parish.

Police sources would not confirm the nature of the allegation, but agreed they were serious and local police were briefed about an incoming media presence in the town on Wednesday morning.

Bishop Saunders is one of Australia’s longest-serving bishops well-known for his interest in Indigenous affairs and involvement in Aboriginal study groups.

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AUSTRALIA
The Guardian

March 11, 2020

By Michael McGowan

As police reportedly investigate serious allegations, Perth Archbishop says Saunders had ‘voluntarily stood aside’

One of the highest ranking members of the Catholic church in Australia, bishop of Broome Chris Saunders, has voluntarily stood aside from his position amid serious allegations.

On Wednesday the Perth archbishop, Timothy Costelloe, said Saunders had “voluntarily stood aside” from his position after the Vatican announced an internal investigation into the diocese.

It comes as Seven News reported on Wednesday that Western Australia police had been investigating claims of sexual misconduct made against the bishop since October 2018. The Guardian has confirmed there is an ongoing investigation into a complaint of an historical sexual assault, however no charges have been laid.

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AUSTRALIA
7NEWS

March 11, 2020

By Chris Reason

One of the highest-ranking Catholics in Australia has been under police investigation for 18 months, 7NEWS can reveal.

Reverend Christopher Saunders, the Bishop of Broome, has been with the Church for the past 44 years.

However, since October 2018, the 70-year-old bishop has been under investigation for alleged historical sexual assault complaints.

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UNITED STATES
Catholic Standard

March 11, 2020

By Mark Zimmermann

A recent summit of Catholic leaders from across the United States was convened “to continue to respond to the twin crises in our Church, a crisis of abuse and a crisis of leadership failure,” said Kim Smolik, the CEO of the Leadership Roundtable that organized the gathering.

The 2020 Catholic Partnership Summit that met Feb. 28-29 at the Fairmont Hotel in Washington, D.C, had the theme, “From Crisis to Co-responsibility: Creating a New Culture of Leadership,” and drew 260 Catholic leaders from 63 U.S. dioceses, including bishops, diocesan staff, Catholic university presidents, corporate leaders, abuse survivors, philanthropists and more than 30 young adults.

Speaking in a press conference call with three other summit participants, Smolik noted that the Leadership Roundtable was founded after the 2002 sexual abuse crisis “to transform the leadership and management culture in our Church.”

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UNITED STATES
The Mighty

March 10, 2020

By Rachel Undoed

This topic is probably the hardest part of my story of survival. Or maybe it is just taking the longest to heal. I’ve had to speak so much about other aspects of the abuse to officials, lawyers, investigators and so on. But this topic… it still drags me deep down and I speak of it to almost no one, because acknowledging it, “admitting” it, means I am admitting to be immersed in a dark world, whether I chose it or not.

Being used in what the world calls “child pornography” brings a whole separate level of shame than other things I have experienced at the hands of my abuser. It leaves a thread connecting my past forever to my present. A thread that just cannot fade over time, and that prevents a certain level of closure I so desperately yearn for. When people speak of “leaving the past in the past,” or when therapists have me remind myself that “it’s over,” there is a deep part of me that can not fully hold onto that. With this, it feels like it will never be over.

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NEW ULM (MN)
Star Tribune (Minneapolis) (TNS)

March 11, 2020

By Dan Browning

After tearful testimony by several survivors of clergy sexual abuse and a heartfelt apology from Bishop John LeVoir, the Catholic Diocese of New Ulm and area churches won approval Tuesday of a $34 million settlement with nearly 100 claimants.

Just as important to the victims: The diocese agreed to adopt 17 protocols designed to protect children from abuse going forward and to turn over its files on credibly accused priests.

Nineteen people — abuse survivors and their supporters — stood inside a Brown County courtroom to witness the resolution of the Diocese’s bankruptcy case and hear a formal apology from LeVoir from the witness stand.

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AUSTRALIA
ABC Kimberley

March 11, 2020

By Erin Parke, Sam Tomlin and Ben Collins

One of Australia’s most senior Catholic Bishops has voluntarily stepped down after the Vatican ordered a review into the diocese of Broome, amid an ongoing police investigation into an allegation of sexual misconduct.

Bishop of Broome Christopher Saunders, 70, voluntarily stepped down on Monday, pending the review.

Archbishop of Perth Timothy Costelloe said in a statement the Emeritus Bishop of Wollongong, Peter Ingham, had been appointed to oversee the diocese effective from Tuesday.

“Bishop Christopher Saunders … has voluntarily stood aside from the ordinary administration of the diocese for the duration of the visitation,” he said.

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ROCKVILLE CENTRE (NY)
Channel 12 TV

March 10, 2020

Members of SNAP, the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests, are renewing calls for Bishop John Barres to resign and for him to release the names of all of the priests credibly accused of abuse.

The group is speaking out after a priest was sentenced to one to two years for indecent assault in Pennsylvania.

Barres was the bishop who appointed the priest to the parish where the abuse took place. That priest was removed from his prior parish after abuse allegations there.

Attorney Mitch Garabedian has represented hundreds of survivors of sexual abuse by priests over the years.

“There’s no reason that Bishop Barres should not have just gone to the police when he first learned of these accusations instead of practicing a cover-up,” said Garabedian.

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MICHIGAN
MLive.com

March 11, 2020

By Justine Lofton

A former Catholic priest who allegedly abused his power to sexually abuse children while working in the Upper Peninsula was arraigned on more criminal sexual conduct charges on Tuesday, March 10.

Gary Allen Jacobs, 74, was arraigned on two additional criminal sexual conduct cases that he reportedly committed in the early 1980s while serving as a priest under the Catholic Diocese of Marquette in the Upper Peninsula, the Michigan Department of Attorney General announced.

In January, Jacobs was charged with seven counts of criminal sexual conduct in three separate cases that allegedly occurred in Ontonagon and Dickinson counties, the release said.

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LANSING (MI)
WZZM-TV, Channel 13

March 11, 2020

Former priest Gary Jacobs was arrested in January in New Mexico. He was returned to Michigan for his arraignment.

A former priest under the Catholic Diocese of Marquette in the Upper Peninsula was returned to Michigan for an arraignment on two additional criminal sexual conduct cases that he committed back in the 1980s, according to Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel’s office.

Gary Allen Jacobs was formally arraigned on Tuesday in Ontonagon County. He was originally charged in January on seven criminal sexual conduct charges in three separate cases that happening in Ontonagon and Dickinson counties, a press release from the attorney general’s office said.

Since January, two new victims have come forward making sexual assault reports against the 74-year-old, who now lives in Albuquerque, New Mexico. In both cases, he was charged with three criminal sexual conduct counts stemming from incidents that happened between Jan. 1981 and Dec. 1984.

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BROOME (AUSTRALIA)
Catholic News Agency

March 11, 2020

Australian Bishop Christopher Saunders of Broome has temporarily stepped back from his duties following allegations of historical sexual abuse. The Vatican has begun an investigation into claims that Saunders sexually abused boys several decades ago.

Archbishop Timothy Costelloe, SDB of Perth, metropolitan archbishop of the province, announced that Saunders voluntarily stepped aside on Tuesday, March 10, in a letter to the diocese.

Bishop Peter Ingham, emeritus bishop of the diocese of Wollongong has been named as the Apostolic Visitor of the Broome diocese while the investigation continues.

“The Holy See, conscious of the particular situation in the Diocese of Broome and concerned for the pastoral care of the clergy, religious and laity of the Diocese, has appointed Most Reverend Peter W Ingham, Emeritus Bishop of Wollongong, Apostolic Visitator to the Diocese, effective today,” wrote Costelloe on March 10.

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CANBERRA (AUSTRALIA)
The Tablet

March 11, 2020

By Mark Bowling

The High Court of Australia has heard from Cardinal George Pell’s lawyer that trial evidence presented to jurors raised reasonable doubt that Pell sexually abused two choirboys after Sunday Mass more than two decades ago.

Prime amongst the questions of doubt raised by top appeals barrister, Bret Walker SC, is how Cardinal Pell could have sexually assaulted the boys in the priests’ sacristy of Melbourne’s St Patrick’s Cathedral, when according to the congregation’s master of ceremonies, the cardinal was on the front steps greeting parishioners.

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CANBERRA (AUSTRALIA)
Catholic News Agency via National Catholic Register

March 11, 2020

The legal team for Cardinal George Pell laid out their case for appeal before Australia’s High Court Wednesday.

Cardinal Pell himself remained in his prison cell, not permitted at the proceedings, while his lawyers presented arguments before the seven-judge court in Canberra March 11.

Cardinal Pell is seeking to appeal the 2-1 split decision of the Court of Appeal in Victoria to sustain his 2018 conviction on five counts of child sexual abuse over two separate instances.

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CANBERRA (AUSTRALIA)
AFP

March 11, 2020

Lawyers for disgraced Cardinal George Pell claimed Wednesday he remains behind bars for child sex abuse based on “wrong” and “egregious” legal decisions, as they concluded a last-ditch appeal in Australia’s top court.

The 78-year-old former Vatican treasurer is trying to overturn a six-year sentence for sexually assaulting two choirboys in the 1990s.

Pell, who once helped elect popes, is the highest-ranking Catholic Church official to be convicted of child sex crimes.

He was not present for the two-day hearing at the High Court in Canberra, but supporters and protesters gathered outside, waving Australian flags and carrying rival signs that read “keep the faith Cardinal Pell” and “Burn in hell Pell”.

The court’s seven judges could decide to reject the appeal — leaving Pell to serve the remainder of his sentence — or allow it, giving him the prospect of walking free. They could also send the case back to a lower court to reconsider.

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AUSTRALIA
The Australian

By John Ferguson

March 10, 2020

Lawyers for sex abuse survivors have quietly weighed further legal action against George Pell and the Catholic Church as the cardinal’s home diocese of Ballarat fights to fund payouts and run its day-to-day operations.

Legal sources have revealed that several people have surfaced to discuss allegations against Pell, 78, with potential civil action also flowing from some of the criminal charges that did not go to trial.

As Pell’s last-gasp High Court deliberations begin on Wednesday, The Australian can reveal that his incarceration has prompted inquiries from several people considering taking legal action against the cardinal.

The diocese of Ballarat or the church’s insurers are most at risk of having to fund any claims relating to his younger days in the church. Diocese of Ballarat business manager Andrew Jirik confirmed that other than Pell, the church still had dozens of outstanding abuse claims it was processing, and the church believed it could fund payments.

“We don’t know when this is going to end,’’ he said.

“We’d have dozens (of abuse claims) still outstanding.’’

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AUSTRALIA
SkyNews.com.au

March 11, 2020

Sky News host Chris Kenny says there has been an “incredible and understandable amount of public interest in this country and around the world,” over Cardinal George Pell’s child sex abuse conviction.

George Pell will remain behind bars in Victoria on Wednesday, while his legal teams appeals his case in Canberra.

The High Court appeal will be Pell’s last chance to have his conviction overturned, as the 78-year-old’s fate lies in the hands of a full bench of high court judges.

Over the two-day hearing they will assess whether the jury‘s verdict was unreasonable when finding Pell guilty on five charges of abusing two choir boys in the 1990s while he was Catholic Archbishop of Melbourne.

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