ABUSE TRACKER

CORPUS CHRISTI (TX)
KIII TV

August 25, 2019

By Brandon Scott and Marcelino Benito

A Catholic priest in northwest Harris County is stepping down from his position while the archdiocese investigates allegations of “inappropriate behavior with an adult.”

The Archdiocese of Galveston-Houston confirmed the move Sunday.

“I started shaking,” said Eduardo Lopez de Casas. “I wasn’t sure if I could continue singing.”

Father Alfonso Delgado agreed to withdraw from all ministry until the investigation is complete, the diocese said.

Lopez de Casas was leading music during this morning’s mass. He’s also a member of Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests.

“I was in shock,” said Lopez de Casas. “As a victim when you hear this, it’s almost like you’re reliving your own experience.”

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.

HOUSTON (TX)
Houston Chronicle

August 25, 2019

By Nicole Hensley

Another priest accused of sexual misconduct has been removed from a north Harris County parish where a cleric was also suspended earlier this year.

hurch leaders at Prince of Peace Catholic Community announced during services Sunday that parochial vicar Alfonso Delgado was under investigation following an allegation involving another adult.

Pastor Gerald Goodrum divulged the removal after reciting a homily and at least four hail mary’s, said Eduardo Lopez de Casas, a leader of Houston’s Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests who was working a Mass service as a cantor. The nature of the allegation and when it was said to have happened was not revealed.

Goodrum asked that parishioners with any information about the allegation to contact law enforcement.

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WASHINGTON (DC)
Christian Post

August 26, 2019

By Michael Brown

The internet is burning up with news of yet another scandal in the church, this time with serious accusations against Charismatic evangelist Todd Bentley. What is God saying to His people through this current crisis?

Regarding Todd’s situation, I have no specific comment, since: 1) I have not supported him being in ministry since his divorce and remarriage in 2008, and I am on public record to that effect. 2) I have no connection of any kind to Todd and his ministry. (I also disagreed publicly with the way other leaders handled things in Lakeland, where Todd became prominent.)

But, after prayer and reflection, I do believe there are important things to share that are applicable beyond this current, alleged scandal.

First, this is not the time to throw stones at Charismatics, as some non-charismatic critics have been quick to do. To be sure, we Charismatics have done a very poor job of self-policing, which is a major reason I wrote the book Playing with Holy Fire. And, to be sure, we have had more than our share of sexual scandals. (Note that I write “we” and “our” as a Charismatic myself. I will gladly point the finger within my own circles.)

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NEWARK (NJ)
Star Ledger

August 26, 2019

By Sophie Nieto-Munoz

A disgraced Roman Catholic priest who admitted to sexually assaulting a teenage girl three decades ago will be sentenced Monday in Superior Court in Middlesex County.

Thomas P. Ganley, 63, pleaded guilty to sexually assaulting a girl who was a member of the youth group he led in the 1990s. The priest’s case was the first criminal case prosecuted after the start of the Attorney General’s Clergy Abuse Task Force, which was formed last year to investigate allegations of clergy abuse.

Ganley, who will be sentenced by Judge Diane Pincus, faces four years in prison. He will also be required to register as a sex offender under Megan’s Law and will be forbidden to have unsupervised contact with any child under 18.

When he was arrested in January, Ganley was a parochial vicar at St. Philip and St. James Catholic Church in Phillipsburg and a chaplain at St. Luke’s Warren Campus Hospital.

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PITTSBURGH (PA)
Post-Gazette

August 26, 2019

By Peter Smith

The new spiritual leader of West Virginia’s Roman Catholics is big on “hope.” He mentioned it several times during his homily last week when he was installed as bishop of the Diocese of Wheeling-Charleston.

So, given the cleanup task ahead of him, Bishop Mark Brennan can only hope for more moments like what he experienced after that service.

He had just emerged from the Cathedral of St. Joseph in Wheeling behind a train of dozens of priests and bishops in their festive clerical garb, the sounds of organ and brass still reverberating within. He went up to an elevated pulpit in an exterior turret to bless the crowds clustered below, dressed in their Sunday best even though it was a Thursday afternoon.

“Bishop, we’re over here!” shouted Yvette Smith, one of a cluster of women across the street. They were dressed in T-shirts and jeans or shorts in the humid afternoon. They live in apartments across the street or around the corner, and they often enjoy watching people coming and going from the beautiful weddings and other ceremonies that contrast with the otherwise bleak neighborhood.

This time, they weren’t just spectators.

Bishop Brennan accepted their invitation, walking over, talking with the women and offering blessings.

“Nobody’s ever taken the time to come over here,” Ms. Smith said, adding that the visit lifted her spirits on a discouraging day. She plans to attend Mass at the cathedral in the future.

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Good Men’s Project blog

August 24, 2019

By Brian Clites

It has been one year since the Pennsylvania grand jury report named 300 sexually abusive Roman Catholic priests in the state. After an 18-month investigation, the grand jury concluded that “over one thousand child victims were identifiable, from the church’s own records.”

At the same time, the jury also noted that the real numbers could be much higher. It said,

“We believe that the real number – of children whose records were lost or who were afraid ever to come forward – is in the thousands.”

As a scholar who has spent the last eight years interviewing Catholic survivors of clergy sex abuse, I know that even though there were only a few convictions in Pennsylvania, the release of the grand jury report was a watershed moment for survivors.

The report opened up space for new conversations and helped communities come to terms with the horror of their past.

Grand juries comprise up to 23 citizens. They investigate potential crimes under the leadership and jurisdiction of a prosecutor.

Each state governs the amount of time that victims have to prosecute a given crime, which is called the statute of limitations. Although the Pennsylvania grand jury report spurred other states to extend their statute of limitations, Pennsylvania has not.

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NEW YORK (NY)
New York Post

August 22, 2019

By Priscilla DeGregory

After years of failed attempts to sue Yeshiva University, 38 former students who say they were sexually abused by three rabbis and other school staff decades ago can now seek justice under the Child Victims Act.

The victims say while they attended all-boys Yeshiva University High School, the principal, Rabbi George Finkelstein, and four other staffers variously sexually abused them, beginning in 1955 and continuing through 1986, according to the Manhattan Supreme Court lawsuit.

The school received more than 20 complaints from parents and students about the alleged abuse but did nothing, the court papers allege.

One victim, Mordechai Twersky, claims he was twice sexually abused by Finkelstein in 1980 — and despite letting school officials know, they kept the rabbi at the school and even gave him the “Educator of the Year” award in 1985.

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GREENSBURG (PA)
Tribune-Review

August 25, 2019

By Deb Erdley

“It’s not about the money.”

In another time and place, Jack (not his real name) said he’d take the $41,990 offered through the Greensburg Catholic Diocese’s compensation fund for clergy sex abuse survivors and toss it back.

Nothing will ever erase what he says the Rev. John J. Nyeste, a trusted priest, did to him 53 years ago in a secluded farmhouse.

These have not been the best of times for Jack.

At 64, struggling to make ends meet and dealing with health problems, the one-time Connellsville altar boy and former seminarian says he’ll likely take what the church is offering. He was given until Monday to make his decision.

He is among hundreds of survivors of clergy child sexual abuse weighing monetary offers that seven Pennsylvania dioceses have extended.

The local dioceses will underwrite such settlements, but they otherwise washed their hands of the process. Church leaders have outsourced the duty of weighing claims to third-party mediators such as Kenneth Feinberg and Camille Biros or, in the case of the Greensburg Diocese, a Harrisburg-based service known as Commonwealth Mediation and Conciliation.

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DENVER (CO)
Crux

August 24, 2019

By John L. Allen Jr.

[With photo]

Rome – This Wednesday happened to be the feast of St. Pius X, who served as pope from 1903 to 1914 and whose primary claim to fame was unleashing an “anti-modernist” purge in the Catholic Church, the targets of which were a loosely defined network of Biblical scholars, theologians and others trying, in various ways, to reconcile the faith with science and modern thought.

Pius X issued an encyclical in 1907, Pascendi Dominici Gregis, which was more or less the charter document of the campaign, describing “modernism” as “the synthesis of all heresies.” He also imposed an “anti-modernist oath” on all clergy that lasted until 1967.

Here’s what makes this interesting: If you run a Google search using the keywords “Pope Francis” and “modernism,” you’ll get more than a half-million results, most of them accusing Francis of being a modernist himself.

Yet there he was on Aug. 21, attending a Mass for the feast in a side chapel in St. Peter’s Basilica like an ordinary member of the faithful, sitting unobtrusively in the sixth row. While we have no idea what was in Francis’s mind at that moment, it’s hard not to think he wanted to honor the memory of his predecessor – suggesting, among other things, that perhaps Francis’s view of “modernism” and the Church’s efforts to resist it are a bit more nuanced than is often appreciated.

Francis’s surprise drop-in didn’t make headlines – in part, of course, because it came on the same day an Australian court announced its ruling on Cardinal George Pell’s appeal of his conviction on child sex abuse charges, rejecting that appeal in a 2-1 split decision.

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DENVER (CO)
Crux

August 17, 2019

By Inés San Martín

San Francisco, Argentina – Although by now Catholics in some parts of the world have lived with the ferment caused by revelations of clerical sexual abuse for decades, a bishop who heads a commission for preventing abuse in Argentina says that in Pope Francis’s native country, the crisis is “just beginning.”

“It’s not that the abuses are beginning, but society’s awareness, with cases becoming public,” said Bishop Sergio Buenanueva, of San Francisco, in the region of Cordoba. “The cases that expose this problem to the public produce a domino effect which, I believe, is positive.”

Buenanueva also told Crux that while he believes Pope Francis is having a deep impact on the local church, no pope, even history’s first from Argentina, has the capacity to reverse a centuries-long trend of secularization.

On the abuse crisis, the bishop insisted that transparency is healthy.

“In the first place, it’s positive for the victims, who’re now being heard by the Catholic Church and society at large,” he said. “The media has been part of this, and the justice system is doing its job too, with priests being condemned with adequately harsh punishments.”

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DAYTON (OH)
Journal-News

August 24, 2019

By Michael D. Pitman

https://www.journal-news.com/news/liberty-twp-church-offers-discussion-series-wake-sex-abuse-allegations-its-former-priest/SMLmZoLYtPKm49hEkdXGNK/

St. Maximilian Kolbe is offering this weekend to parishioners a “short, yet powerful book” after each mass in the wake of a sex abuse scandal involving a former pastor of the Liberty Twp. parish.

Father Jim Riehle is establishing a series of Discussion and Holy Hour for Healing sessions.In a message to parishioners, Riehle wrote the book “addresses so much of the struggle, the pain, and the anger surrounding the evil of sexual abuse and the stain this has left on our church.”

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Former Pastor Geoff Drew was indicted on Aug. 19 in Hamilton County on nine counts of raping a boy who recently came forward in the wake of other allegations.

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The book, “Letter to a Suffering Church” by Bishop Robert Barron, directly addresses the issues currently facing the church, wrote Riehle.

Riehle said said he’s “encouraging” parishioners read the book “because I believe it addresses important and difficult topics” and hopes it will spark a conversation. He also hopes the book at the ensuing discussions will be “a small, first step towards the peace and healing and change that we all desire.”

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DENVER (CO)
Crux

August 25, 2019

By John L. Allen Jr.

Rome – Back in long-ago 1998, I spoke to a member of a small conservative Catholic watchdog group in the U.S. that had just publicly accused a prominent local priest of sexual abuse. I asked why all the churchmen this group targeted seemed to be liberals, and the answer was unhesitating: “Where there’s smoke, there’s fire.”

What he meant is that if a cleric is doctrinally and politically suspect, at least in this group’s eyes, then there’s likely moral corruption too.

In other words, what one might call the “weaponization” of clerical sexual abuse charges as part of the wars of culture in Catholicism is nothing new. Decisions to lodge such charges or to make them public, as well as whether people are inclined to believe or reject them, often are tied up with politics, try as reasonable souls might to remain objective.

This comes to mind in light of a recent controversy surrounding Venezuelan Archbishop Edgar Peña Parra, the “substitute,” or number three official, in the Vatican’s Secretariat of State. He was appointed to that role by Pope Francis last year, and it’s a key one – the substitute, who’s responsible for the Vatican’s daily workflow, is the only person, including the Cardinal Secretary of State, who can simply walk in on the pope unannounced.

When Peña Parra was appointed a year ago, the Italian newsmagazine L’Espresso published a letter suggesting negative reports about him as a seminarian in Venezuela, but they mostly concerned his sexual orientation and didn’t clearly suggest abuse.

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IRONDALE (AL)
National Catholic Register

August 24, 2019

Father Geoff Drew was arrested Aug. 19 on allegations dating back 20 years, which concern Drew’s time as music minister at St. Jude parish, prior to his ordination as a priest.

Cincinnati – A Cincinnati news station is reporting on the contents of a letter, sent to Archbishop Dennis Schnurr and Auxiliary Bishop Joseph Binzer in August 2018, accusing them of ignoring “red flags” related to a priest now indicted on nine counts of rape.

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Local news station WCPO reported that in the letter in question, a longtime lay leader at St. Maximilian Kolbe Parish told Schnurr he had failed to deliver on his promise of being “unequivocally committed” to children and that the church had ignored “red flags” about Father Drew.

WCPO reported that the author of the letter is a mother of three children who attended St. Maximilian Kolbe in Liberty Township, where Father Drew was pastor from 2009 to mid-2018.

CNA reported earlier this month that complaints were raised to at least one archdiocesan official about Drew’s inappropriate behavior with teenage and pre-teenage boys as early as 2013. Complaints were made to auxiliary bishop Joseph Binzer, who is the archdiocesan vicar general, in 2013 and 2015.

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DENVER (CO)
Crux

August 24, 2019

By Inés San Martín

After being away from my home country of Argentina for the past five years, only going back to visit with the family for Christmas and the odd long weekend, I decided to avoid Rome’s scorching summer this year and head back on a reporting mission to take the country’s temperature regarding my fellow Argentinian, Pope Francis.

Beyond the specific stories I came to pursue, I wanted to see if I could find a so-called “Francis effect.” I spoke to several bishops, priests and lay people, all of whom acknowledged that when it comes to Mass attendance, vocations, and the like, there is no such impact, at least not one that can tangibly reverse the country’s rapid secularization.

There is, however, a Francis effect in Argentine society. Perhaps predictably, it’s a mix of both lights and shadows, the bitter and the sweet.

*
And there are those who question his track record when it comes to addressing the clerical sexual abuse crisis.

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LITTLE ROCK (AR)
Bilgrimgage blog

August 24, 2019

By William Lindsey

Ruth Krall has generously prepared a brief afterword to her six-part series of essays entitled “Recapitulation: Affinity Sexual Violence in a Religious Voice.” I’ve published those six essays in installments at Bilgrimage, and at the end of this posting, will provide links to the entire series. The basic premise of Ruth’s series of essays is that sexual abuse of vulnerable people by leaders is an endemic problem in religious groups across the globe, and, as she states in the afterword below, “Until the world community learns how to accurately assess this world public health/community mental health phenomenon of clergy sexual abuse of the powerless and the vulnerable, the problem will continue to proliferate.” Ruth’s essay follows.

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BUFFALO (NY)
Spectrum News

August 24, 2019

By Madison Elliott

A Springville man spoke openly for the first time Saturday after filing a lawsuit against the Diocese of Buffalo under the Children’s Victim Act.

Richard Brownell, 62, alleges Father John R. Aurelio abused him when he was only 11-years-old. He says it started in 1968 when he was a parishioner at St. Gerard’s.

Aurelio, who was not a priest at St. Gerard’s at the time but instead at St. Leo’s, was introduced to Brownell through Father Bernard Mach.

On Saturday, Brownell recounted times when Aurelio allegedly gave him marijuana, alcohol and took advantage of him. He says Mach knew of the abuse and did nothing. Mach himself was also accuse of sexually assaulting a young boy in the early 90s.

In court documents, Brownell accuses the church of protecting Aurelio by “providing plaintiff with safe environment to in which to participate in in educational, youth and recreational activities.”

In 1993, Brownell spoke to a local TV news station about his abuse, but said he was able to fend off Aurelio’s advances. Now, after hearing the stories of other victims, he was inspired him to speak out.

“I’m still humiliated. I still feel the humiliation, but no more,” said Brownell. “I’ve come forward to lend my voice to those victims who haven’t found theirs yet.”

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RUTLAND (VT)
RuTland Herald

August 24, 2019

By Patrick McCardle

The release of a list on Thursday of 40 Catholic Church clergy members who have been the subject of at least one “credible accusation” of sexually assaulting a minor has not affected local Catholic schools which are set to start their fall school year next week.

Whether the scandal, one of the latest involving the Catholic Church, will be discussed during Sunday’s services will be up to the priests at local churches, according to Monsignor John McDermott.

On Friday, Lisa Millard, the new principal at Christ the King School said she hadn’t gotten questions or comments based on the report.

The report, compiled by an independent committee requested by the Diocese of Burlington, listed 39 priests accused of misconduct during their tenure and one facing an out-of-state allegation. From that list, 20 had spent time assigned to Rutland County churches including Christ the King.

Millard said CKS could accommodate about 300 students. During the school year, which is set to begin Thursday, the student body is expected to be 201.

“That’s growing every year,” she said.

While an informational meeting is planned for early in the school year, Millard said she hadn’t decided whether she will address the report. As of Friday afternoon, she said no parents had talked about withdrawing students.

Mike Alexander, principal at Mount St. Joseph Academy, said he expected to start his school year on Thursday as well, with at least 77 students, and possibly one more student expected to join the school.

Alexander said the average number of students through the past 10 years has been 81 so the enrollment for the coming year is about what he expected.

Alexander said he had not heard any concerns in response to the report.

If he believed a meeting for parents on the topic was necessary, Alexander said, he would reach out to the diocese for direction.

McDermott said the diocese has not directed the priests at Vermont’s Catholic churches to respond in a specific way.

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SAN LORENZO (CA)
Patch

August 23, 2019

A Catholic priest at a Fremont church has pleaded no contest to five felony counts of lewd acts upon a child for molesting a boy over an 18-month period in 2016 and 2017, according to court records.

The Rev. Hector David Vela, 42, also known as Hector David Mendoza-Vela, entered his plea in the courtroom of Alameda County Superior Court Judge Thomas Stevens in Dublin on Aug. 16.

In return for his plea, the Alameda County District Attorney’s Office agreed to dismiss 25 additional counts of lewd acts upon a child for inappropriately touching the boy in his genital area between June 2016 and December 2017, when the boy was 14 and 15 years old.

The plea agreement calls for Vela to be get a term of four years and eight months in state prison when he’s sentenced on Sept. 27.

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COLUMBUS (OH)
Columbus Dispatch

August 23, 2019

By Danae King

A priest accused in a lawsuit of molesting an 8-year-old boy in New York City about 30 years ago once served in the Roman Catholic Diocese of Columbus.

The Rev. Carleton Jones, a member of the Dominican Order, served at St. Patrick Catholic Church, Downtown, from 1992 to 1995, according to diocesan spokesman George Jones.

George Jones said the Columbus Diocese has no record of any complaints against Father Jones from his time in Columbus, but the Order of Dominican Friars Province of St. Joseph, which is based in New York, notified the diocese and St. Patrick about an allegation against him in October.

George Jones said the alleged abuse was announced at St. Patrick even though it took place outside the Columbus diocese, but it was later deemed not credible by the Province of St. Joseph.

The lawsuit, filed Wednesday in New York Supreme Court, alleges that Father Jones abused the 8-year-old boy at a New York City church while preparing him for his First Communion approximately 30 years ago.

“He was brought to the friar to help him learn, and when he was in private, horrible travesties happened,” said Evan Oshan, the plaintiff’s attorney.

The Dispatch is not naming the man because the newspaper doesn’t name potential victims of sexual abuse.

The Columbus diocese directed questions to the province, which did not return phone and email requests from The Dispatch for comment on Thursday and Friday.

The Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests (SNAP) sent a news release about Father Jones, saying that Ohio Catholic officials should tell local residents about the allegation “for the safety of children and healing of survivors.”

The lawsuit names as defendants Father Jones, the Province of St. Joseph, and St. Catherine of Siena parish in New York City, where he served at the time. The suit alleges that the defendants were negligent in their duty to protect the child.

The plaintiff first reported in September 2018 that he had been abused years ago, Oshan said, but was able to file the lawsuit because New York state enacted a law giving sexual-assault victims a one-year window to file litigation.

The Columbus Diocese released a list of 34 priests accused of sexual abuse of minors in March and later added to it. There are now 40 names on the list.

For full coverage on sexual abuse by priests in the Diocese of Columbus, visit www.dispatch.com/catholicsecrecy.

Dispatch Librarian Julie Fulton contributed to this story.

dking@dispatch.com

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SPRINGFIELD (MA)
The Republican

August 23, 2109

By Anne-Gerard Flynn

The Roman Catholic Diocese of Burlington, which covers the state of Vermont, has posted the names of 40 priests it says had credible allegations of sexual abuse filed against them since 1950 by victims who were under 18 at the time of the alleged incidence.

The posting, which is said to contain more than two dozen names not previously made public, is the work of a seven-member committee appointed last October by Burlington Bishop Christopher Coyne to review diocesan files to compile a list of priests with credible allegations, as many other dioceses have done.

The names of and allegations against two men with ties to Western Massachusetts who appear on the list have already been public for years.

Lawsuits previously settled by the diocese previously revealed accusations against Edward Paquette, who was laicized by the Vatican in 2009 and who has lived in Westfield, Mass. since 1978 when he had his faculties for ministry removed by then Vermont Bishop John Marshall.

Paquette grew up in Westfield, but never ministered in the Diocese of Springfield, though allegations of abuse were made against him here. He was ordained in 1957 for the Diocese of Fall River where he served until 1963 when he had his faculties for ministry removed in that diocese for similar reasons.

He underwent counseling and was hired for seven years by the Diocese of Fort Wayne-South Bend, Indiana, which now lists him with seven credible abuse allegations on its website. When he returned to Westfield, he appealed to Marshall to hire him in Vermont, citing counseling he underwent in Indiana. He ministered for six years in Vermont before numerous allegations of abuse forced Marshall to remove him from ministry.

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ROYAL OAK (MI)
Royal Oak Tribune

August 23, 2019

By Aileen Wingblad

A deacon from Sterling Heights on trial for allegedly sexually assaulting a teenage altar boy at a Troy church in 2017 was accused of inappropriate touching of a young girl months before the boy came forward with allegations, according to testimony heard Friday in Oakland County Circuit Court.

Hurmiz Ishak, 66, is charged with three counts of criminal sexual conduct involving the boy, who was between the ages of 13 and 16 at the time of the alleged incidents. And while Ishak was suspended from his duties at St. Joseph Chaldean Catholic Church after the allegations were made in October 2018, one of several of the church’s leaders who’ve testified so far said that it wasn’t the first time Ishak was ordered to stay away from the church due to alleged misconduct.

Earlier in 2018, a young female altar server had reported to a church leader that Ishak had touched her inappropriately, according to one of the church’s priests — who said she was somewhere between 12 and 15 years old at the time.

Assistant prosecutor makes his opening statement, telling jurors Hurmiz Ishak is “a wolf in sheep’s clothing.”

None of the witnesses called to the stand are being identified, as ordered by Judge Phyllis McMillen, who is overseeing the trial. The Oakland Press isn’t naming the alleged victim either, due to the nature of the alleged crimes.

Ishak’s young female accuser, the priest testified, told him about “inappropriate touching” by the deacon, which was promptly reported to police and Children’s Protective Services, he said. No charges were filed, but the allegations did lead to Ishak’s first suspension from his deacon duties. He was allowed to return to the church a couple months later.

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BURLINGTON (VT)
Vermont Public Radio

August 22, 2019

By Jand Lindholm and Ric Cengeri

As the clergy abuse scandal in the Catholic Church continues to unfold, Vermont has not been immune. Last fall, Bishop Christopher Coyne of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Burlington created a committee of lay people to examine the files of Vermont priests for reports of child sexual abuse. We’ll hear what they found.

Joining us are Bishop Coyne and John Mahoney, a member of the committee, to discuss how the review was conducted and allegations substantiated.

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CINCINNATI (OH)
700 WLW News

August 23, 2019

Speaking on 700WLW on Friday afternoon, the Cincinnati Archdiocese Communications Director, Mike Schafer, says church leaders are both aghast and embarrassed after the series of events that’s ultimately led to felony charges of rape being filed against a priest.

Father Geoff Drew this week pleaded not guilty to nine counts of rape dating back some 30 years. Fr Drew had been accused of “creepy”–though not criminal–behavior in 2013 and 2015. Despite Auxiliary Bishop Joseph Binzer knowing about that, he still supported Fr Drew’s transfer to St Ignatius, which has a large student population. When word of the transfer got out, a man came forward to say he was raped as a child by Fr Drew. That led to a nine-count indictment in Hamilton County.

The local representative for SNAP (Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests) has called for the Vatican to remove both Auxiliary Bishop Binzer and Archbishop Schnurr. Schafer says Binzer is no longer in charge of priest assignments, telling our own Bill Cunningham “some people are great at part of their job and they’re not great at another part of their job, and he’s been removed from the part of his job that, apparently, he wasn’t great at.”

Schafer says if church leadership could go back, they would’ve removed Fr Drew following a second complaint about behavior in 2015. He says no one in the church knew about the rape allegations until Fr Drew was indicted and arrested. He’s being held on $5 million.

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HAINES (AK)
Chilkat Valley News

August 22, 2019

On Aug. 21, the Catholic Diocese of Juneau released a report naming seven priests credibly alleged to have committed acts of sexual misconduct with minors and vulnerable adults—three of whom served at Sacred Heart Church in Haines from as far back as 1959, to as recent as 2007.

The Dioecies of Juneau established an independent commission in December 2018 to review files of alleged sexual assault dating back to 1951 when the parish was established. The five-member commission included law enforcement officers, lawyers and retired judges.

The commission was charged with evaluating all charges of reported sexual misconduct “to determine whether there was credible evidence to support the belief that any of them had engaged in sexual misconduct, as well as an accounting of improper handling of any sexual abuse cases by those in authority.”

Among the accused are Edmund Penisten, who served in Haines from 2004 to 2007, Javier Gutierrez (1986 to 1988), and Francis Cowgill (1959 to 1964).

Penisten is alleged to have viewed child pornography in 2010, and put on administrative leave in 2019, according to the report.

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CHICAGO (IL)
Sun Times

August 23, 2019

By Mitch Dudek

Advocates for victims of priest sex abuse called Friday for Attorney General Kwame Raoul to use his power of subpoena to compel the Catholic church in Illinois to hand over evidence in an ongoing probe into clergy sex abuse of minors.

Leaders of SNAP and The Archangel Foundation, nonprofit sex abuse survivor advocacy groups, also were critical of a recent private meeting between Raoul and Cardinal Blase Cupich.

Larry Antonsen, a leader with SNAP, said the one-on-one meeting doesn’t lend credibility to the integrity of the investigation.

“The church talks about transparency, and then the cardinal asks for a private meeting with the attorney general, which sounds kind of fishy,” Antonsen said during a news conference outside Cupich’s Gold Coast office.

“Across, the country, there’s still cover-ups going on, and there’s no reason that I know of why we should trust Cardinal Cupich or any other member of the hierarchy. I really think subpoena power should be used. That’s the only way we’re ever going to get where we’re going to actually believe what we see.”

A spokeswoman for Raoul said Friday the meeting Aug. 7 at Raoul’s Thompson Center office was “productive” and the two “discussed a variety of issues that have been important throughout the investigation.”

Cupich asked for the meeting, she said.

An archdiocese spokeswoman was not available for comment.

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

August 21, 2019

They name 5 accused priests who were in Eastern KS

SNAP blast KS Catholic archbishop for “still hiding them”

Prelate belatedly posted a list of 22 alleged abusive priests

But his list is “incomplete” and “leaves kids at risk” group says

SNAP: “Church staff should tell KBI what they know about crimes”

WHAT:
As part of a new ‘outreach’ campaign, abuse victims and their supporters will
–disclose a list of five credibly accused child molesting clerics who worked in/near Topeka but have virtually gotten no public or press attention here, and
–hand out fliers door-to-door seeking “anyone who may have seen, suspected or suffered crimes” by any of these clerics or others who worked in the Topeka area.

And they’ll urge Kansas City’s archbishop to
—explain why these names were left off his “accused” list,
—add the clerics’ names (along with photos, whereabouts and work histories of all publicly accused clerics) to his website, and
—include the identities of ALL who have sexually abused (including nuns, bishops, brothers, seminarians and priests).

They will also urge
—all Kansas bishops to post similar lists of accused clerics, and
—all current and former church-goers and staff to report known/suspected abuses and cover ups to the Kansas Bureau of Investigation.

VISUALS: The group will hold signs and childhood photos before leafleting.

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

August 23, 2019

He admits four abuse ‘mistakes’

But no wrongdoer is identified or apparently punished

“Disciplining the deceitful will stop cover ups,” group says

SNAP ‘outs’ 2 ‘credibly accused’ clerics who were left off list

And it worries that high ranking predator is in Salina diocese

They want KS bishop to discose “others who are or were here too”

WHAT
Holding signs and childhood photos at a sidewalk news conference, clergy sex abuse victims and their supporters will
–blast Salina church officials for refusing to release a FULL list of child molesting clerics,
–reveal the names of two credibly accused priests who are/were in his diocese but have received virtually no attention here,
–criticize them for hiding the names of church officials who made ‘mistakes’ in four clergy sex cases,
–urge them to ‘come clean’ about any other predators (besides a prominent cardinal) who have been sent into his diocese, and
–beg those with information or suspicions about abuse to contact the Kansas Bureau of investigation.

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

August 23, 2019

A priest who has just been accused of abusing a New York child also spent time in Cincinnati, according to church documents.

Fr. Carleton Parker Jones, a Dominican cleric, was sued days ago in Manhattan for reportedly sexually assaulting an eight-year-old boy while he was preparing for his first confession and first communion with Jones.

An on-line parish document says that he is moving to Cincinnati Archdiocese.

For the safety of children we believe it is the moral and civic duty of Cincinnati Archbishop Dennis M. Schnurr to publicly disclose that Jones has been accused of child sex abuse – and disclose any information he has about Fr. Jones, especially other assignments in Ohio that he may have had. Finally, church officials in both Ohio and New York should reveal Fr. Jones’ whereabouts and insist that he live in a secure, remote, independently-run facility or treatment center until this troubling case is resolved.

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KALAMAZOO (MI)
Kalamazoo Gazette

August 23, 2019

By Ryan Boldrey

After two investigations into a former Otsego priest this decade resulted in zero charges, a leading support group for survivors of clergy sexual abuse points to a recent investigation by the Michigan State Attorney General’s Office into the same priest as to just why it is imperative to continue to investigate sexual misconduct where it allegedly occurred.

The Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests (SNAP) issued a statement in response to Thursday’s charges levied against the Rev. Brian Stanley by Attorney General Dana Nessel’s office, calling out the Diocese of Kalamazoo for not doing enough when it was warranted.

“Without her team taking a closer look at church records, it is likely that Father Stanley would never have faced criminal charges. Instead, communities are better informed, and children are safer thanks to her ongoing investigation,” said Zach Hiner, the executive director for SNAP.

If convicted, Brian Stanley, 57, could face up to 15 years in prison and would be required to register as sex offender.

Stanley has been charged with felony false imprisonment of a 17-year-old boy, who according to the attorney general’s office, Stanley was asked by the boy’s parents to counsel. Charges by Nessel’s office accuse the priest of “secreting away” the boy and “holding him against his will in the janitor’s room of St. Margaret’s Church in 2013.”

“Stanley reportedly immobilized the young man by wrapping him tightly in plastic wrap, then used masking tape as additional binding to cover his eyes and mouth,” the AG’s office states. “Stanley left the victim, bound and alone, in the janitor’s room for over an hour before returning and eventually letting him go.”

The alleged crime, according to Nessel, is considered “sexually motivated” and if convicted, Stanley would be required to register as a sex offender and face up to 15 years in prison.

The incident, according to the diocese, was first reported to the Diocese of Kalamazoo in 2013, prompting Stanley to be placed on administrative leave immediately, according to a statement from the diocese. The diocese states that it reported the allegation to Child Protective Services, who in turn referred the matter to the Otsego Police Department.

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ERIE (PA)
Erie Times

August 23, 2019

By Bernard J. Rabik

Question: What are statutes of limitations?

Answer: Simply put, the statutes of limitations describe how long you have to bring charges or a claim against someone who has victimized you. Each crime has its own statute of limitations, though they are the same for many of them. The idea is that they keep someone from being charged with a crime or sued for a wrongdoing long after the incident is supposed to have happened. If you hit another auto with your vehicle, the justice system says the other driver can’t wait 30 years to bring you to court.

Not all crimes have statutes of limitations, though. For example, someone could never admit to murder feeling secure that time had run out to commence legal proceedings against him or her.

State’s statutes of limitations

You may think that if you are the victim of someone else’s actions, you would be swift in taking them to court. But, this isn’t always the case. For that matter, you may not actually know who was responsible for an accident or injury. If you were hurt, your main concern may be looking after your health in the immediate future. There are all kinds of circumstances, which could delay you from doing the obvious.

When a plaintiff misses the cutoff date, the defendant can use the statute of limitations as a defense against any civil lawsuit that is filed. If the defendant establishes that the statute of limitations applies and has indeed “run,” the court will normally dismiss the case, unless some rare exception applies to extend the filing deadline.

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KALAMAZOO (MI)
WTVB TV

August 23, 2019

Documents seized by the attorney general’s office from Catholic Diocese offices around the state last fall have resulted in a charge being filed against a 57-year-old priest who used to be the pastor of St. Charles Borromeo Catholic Church in Coldwater and Our Lady of Fatima in Union City.

Father Brian Stanley of Coloma was arraigned by Allegan County Magistrate Daniel Norbeck Thursday on a charge of unlawful imprisonment.

Stanley was able to get his bond reduced from $100,000 to $5,000 on the condition he can not have any contact with minors.

According to documents, a teen was wrapped up in plastic wrap and masking tape with his eyes and mouth covered and left in a janitor’s closet for an hour at St. Margaret Church in Otsego in 2013. The teen’s parents had taken him to Stanley for counseling due to poor grades and drug use.

Attorney General Dana Nessel says documents from the Kalamazoo Diocese showed a history of such bindings dating back decades by Stanley, and she classified it as a sexual crime. He faces up to 15 years in prison if convicted, and would have to register as a sex offender.

The Diocese of Kalamazoo released a statement Thursday which stated the incident alleged in the Attorney General’s complaint was reported to the Diocese in 2013. They then referred the matter to the Otsego Police Department for investigation. Father Stanley was then placed on administrative leave pending the outcome of the investigation. But according to the Otseg

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FAYETTEVILLE (AK)
Arkansas Democrat

August 23, 2019

By Ron Wood

An unidentified person has sued the Diocese of Little Rock and St. Joseph Catholic Church in Tontitown, claiming they were negligent for allowing a priest to sexually abuse him.

The lawsuit was filed on behalf of “John Doe 201” and says the priest involved was Joseph Correnti, who committed suicide in 2002.

The Washington County Circuit Court lawsuit claims “Doe 201” was sexually battered by Correnti when “Doe” was 14 to 15 years old. The suit says Correnti served at St. Joseph from 1995 to 2002.

“Doe 201” discovered the effects within the past three years of the sexual abuse perpetrated by Correnti, according to the lawsuit.

Rick Woods filed the lawsuit, which contends that there are at least five known victims of Correnti’s sexual abuse.

The diocese knew, or should have known, of Correnti’s “sexual misconduct, impulses, and behavior,” according to the lawsuit. But, it allowed Correnti to have unlimited contact with children, including “Doe 201,” the suit claims.

“Defendants had the duty to protect the moral purity of plaintiff and other Roman Catholic children within the Diocese of Little Rock and at St. Joseph’s Catholic Church,” according to the lawsuit. “Defendants breached their duties by exposing plaintiff to a known pedophile.”

The church and diocese failed to follow policies and procedures designed to prevent child sex abuse or failed to implement sufficient policies, and didn’t warn parents there was a risk of child sex abuse, according to the lawsuit.

The suit alleges that the church failed to report Correnti’s actions to police.

The lawsuit seeks unspecified damages for severe and permanent psychological, emotional and physical injuries, shock, emotional distress, physical manifestations of emotional distress, embarrassment, loss of self-esteem, disgrace, humiliation and loss of enjoyment of life.

“Doe 201” also continues to incur expenses for medical and psychological treatment, therapy, and counseling, and cannot lead a normal life, according to the lawsuit.

Correnti committed suicide April 3, 2002, according to Fayetteville police and the Washington County coroner.

He left a note alluding to the sexual misconduct scandal within the Catholic Church at the time.

“Especially in circumstances in the church today, I am sure that some may feel this has a connection, but it rather has to do with my long term depression,” Correnti wrote.

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CINCINNATI (OH)
WCPO TV

August 22, 2019

By Craig Cheatham

In a letter written to Archbishop Dennis Schnurr in August 2018, a longtime lay leader at Saint Maximilian Kolbe Parish told Schnurr he had failed to deliver on his promise of being “unequivocally committed” to children and that the church had ignored “red flags” about Father Geoff Drew.

Drew stands charged with nine counts of rape and has pleaded not guilty to all. According to prosecutors, he repeatedly assaulted an altar boy over a three-year period from 1988-’91.

The alleged attacks took place in Drew’s office at St. Jude Church, where he was the music minister. The victim, now 41, was 10 and 11 when Drew raped him, according to Hamilton County Prosecutor Joe Deters.

The WCPO I-Team first reported on the contents of the letter two weeks ago.

It was written by a mother of three children who attended St. Maximilian Kolbe in Liberty Township, where Drew was pastor from 2009 to mid-2018. When he left, he became pastor of St. Ignatius Loyola in Cincinnati, a parish with the largest Catholic elementary school in Ohio.

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AMARILLO (TX)
ABC & TV

August 23, 2019

By Morgan Burrell

Since the formation of the Charter for the Protection of Children and Young People in 2002, the Catholic Church has been responsible for addressing allegations of sexual abuse of minors by Catholic clergy, according to the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops’ website.

The Charter incorporated instruction on reconciliation, healing and the prevention of future acts of abuse, the Conference site states.

Along with the establishment of the Charter, the Diocese of Amarillo began utilizing a safe environment program.

“Initially, when we started this in 2002, we sort of had our own program we had to work with, with what we had available because it was brand new thing throughout the United States, it was required,” said Deacon Blaine Westlake, the director of the safe environment program for Diocese of Amarillo. “As time went on, we found better and better programs. Bishop (Patrick J.) Zurek just recently authorized us to implement the new ‘Circle of Grace,’ which is the title of the program, throughout the diocese.”

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WICHITA (KS)
KSNW TV

August 22, 2019

By Bret Buganski

The Catholic Church is promising to be transparent. Its message is to begin healing from the scandal to find the priests who’ve been accused of sexually abusing children. But how forthcoming are the Catholic Dioceses in our area? Decades after some accusations, there are still many questions.

The Catholic Diocese of Salina released a list in March, 2019, including 14 names of priests with what the Catholic Church calls “substantiated allegations” of clergy child sex abuse.

The Salina list, indicates the year the priest was ordained, the list of parishes they served in and the estimated time frame of the abuse. It also lists if there is one allegation of abuse or more than one, but doesn’t list the total number of allegations. In Kansas there are 4 Catholic Dioceses, but only Salina and Kansas City have released theirs. Wichita and Dodge City have not yet released a list to the public.

“It says they can’t afford to be transparent, it looks apparent to me,” said Janet Patterson.

Her pain never goes away. The Patterson family accused Father Robert Larson of sexually abusing their son Eric for nearly a year while he was an altar server in Conway Springs. Eric took his own life in 1999 after years of battling depression. Janet said they didn’t know about the alleged abuse until months before he died.

Larson was convicted of molesting boys in 2001, and a judge sentenced the former priest to five years in prison. He served the rest of his days in a St. Louis treatment facility until his death in 2014. Although Larson’s case is widely known, there is no publicized list from the Diocese of Wichita that includes his name or any other priest.

When KSN News called the Diocese of Wichita and asked an official when the list will be released, the answer provided was that it “wasn’t complete” and was “under audit.” KSN also requested an on camera interview with Bishop Carl Kemme but was told he was “on retreat” and “unavailable.”

On its website, Bishop Kemme writes, “A pledge to heal,” saying the diocese will address “every instance of an allegation of sexual abuse.”

Patterson is frustrated to know a list has yet to be released by the diocese, but not surprised.

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LONDON (ENGLAND)
The Tablet

August 22, 2019

Police in India’s Kerala state are investigating the actions of a Catholic priest and five women religious after a complaint by a nun who was dismissed from her congregation. The nun accused the six of defaming and harassing her through social media.

Sister Lucy Kalapura, a member of the Franciscan Clarist Congregation, complained to police that Father Noble Thomas Parackal and five women religious of the congregation collaborated to share closed-circuit TV footage of her entering her convent with two male journalists on social media with the intention of defaming her, UCA News reported.

The religious congregation dismissed Sister Kalapura, 54, with Vatican approval, citing several instances of indiscipline and disobedience. However, she appealed to the Vatican against the dismissal and continues to live in the convent.

Along with the video, Father Parackal posted comments that the dismissed nun had used the back door of the convent to invite two men inside. The 54-year-old nun claimed the tone of the comments seemed to question her character.

Sister Kalapura complained to the local police chief in the community where the convent is based.

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NEW YORK (NY)
Crux

August 23, 2019

By Christopher White

Yet another U.S. bishop has been caught up in the wave of sex abuse cases unleashed by the state of New York’s “lookback window” that took effect earlier this month.

Bishop Edward Kmiec, the now retired bishop of Buffalo, has been named in a lawsuit against the diocese of Buffalo by 23 plaintiffs alleging that the diocese systematically covered up the abuse of minors.

Kmiec, now 83 years old, served as bishop of the diocese from 2004 to his retirement in 2012 after serving as bishop of Nashville and as auxiliary bishop in Trenton, New Jersey. He was succeeded by Buffalo’s current bishop, Richard Malone.

NEW: Clerical abuse scandal makes headlines this week across US

The lawsuit claims the diocese engaged in a “racketeering enterprise” and is in violation of the Racketeers Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act (RICO), which is meant to target criminal organizations.

Using the RICO statute is a rare move in suits against the Catholic Church, although the recent cascade of cases in light of last year’s Pennsylvania Grand Jury — which chronicled over 1,000 cases of abuse at the hands of 300 priests — has led to an uptick in efforts to use RICO as a means of challenging Catholic institutions.

The suit describes an environment of “harassing, threatening, extorting, and misleading victims of sexual abuse committed by priests” and of “misleading priests’ victims and the media to prevent reporting or disclosure of sexual misconduct,” and comes at a time when the diocese and Malone are under Vatican scrutiny for their handling of abuse cases.

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SONOMA (CA)
Index Tribune

August 22, 2019

By Anne Ward Ernst

Tracking down almost 2,500 boys will be a daunting task, but officials at Hanna Boys Center want to locate any sex abuse survivors whose stories have not come out yet and make reparations. To accomplish this they will hire a private investigator to find them.

“It’s a long overdue move,” said David Clohessy, an advocate of survivors of sexual abuse by priests. “Finally, Hanna Boys Center officials say they’ll seek out those who were molested at the facility. Santa Rosa Bishop Robert Vasa should do likewise, using church bulletins, pulpit announcements and parish websites.”

Clohessy, a former director with Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests (SNAP), has appeared in a support role in Sonoma with two alleged sex abuse survivors who claim they were sexually molested by Father John Crews when Crews ran Hanna Boys Center between 1983 and 2013.

Brian Farragher, Hanna’s current CEO, said they will be looking for students who were at Hanna between the years of 1983 and 2017. That period covers both the time when Crews was director of the center and, later, when another sexual predator, Kevin Thorpe, worked as a youth counselor and clinical director at Hanna. Thorpe was arrested in 2017 for sexual misconduct and was later sentenced to 21 years in prison for sexual abuse. Hanna and the Diocese of Santa Rosa recently agreed to a $6.8 million settlement with two brothers who were abused by Thorpe.

The former students Hanna seeks will be asked if they were abused in any way, or if they know of anyone who was victimized. And, where appropriate, Farragher said they will be offered treatment, support and restitution.

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

August 23, 2019

By David Clohessy

One of my favorite poems begins “Sometimes things don’t go, after all, from bad to worse.”

I think of this line when my spirits sag and our progress seems slow. I stay motivated by finding and clinging to ‘silver linings’ like the one I just noticed the other day.

Fr. Norman Rogge may be the only priest anywhere to have twice pled guilty to child sex crimes, twice gotten probation, and twice been put back to work in a parish.

Fr. Fred Lenczycki may be the only priest anywhere to have twice pled guilty to child sex crimes and twice sent to prison.

Rogge’s encounters with the justice system began in 1974 and ended in the 2000s.

Lenczycki’s encounters with the justice system began in 2004 and ended just last week in St. Louis (when a prosecutor asked for a ten year sentence and the judge agreed).

Slowly and painfully, things DO change. Let’s remind ourselves, often, of this fact.

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BAKERSFIELD (CA)
The Californian

August 22, 2019

By John Cox

Accused priest Craig Harrison has filed a slander lawsuit against a Catholic group that recently disseminated letters and emails alleging the Bakersfield clergyman committed sexual abuse while working at a Firebaugh church in the early 2000s.

The suit filed Aug. 6 in Kern County Superior Court says Stephen Brady, president and founder of Illinois-based Roman Catholic Faithful Inc., whose self-professed goal is to rid the church of clerical corruption, shared and published “false, defamatory, libelous and slanderous statements” during a May 29 news conference in Bakersfield.

The correspondence Brady publicized during the news conference detailed allegations that Harrison had sex with two high school students while serving as pastor of the Firebaugh church and that he would examine boys’ private parts daily as a way of checking whether they had been using drugs.

The letters and email originated with an unrelated investigation conducted in 2004 by a retired FBI agent in Merced.

Brady said Thursday it was not his goal to harm or defame Harrison, and that he was only sharing information he uncovered while trying to find out whether the accusations against the priest were true. He called the lawsuit unwarranted.

“I have nothing personal against Monsignor Harrison whatsoever,” Brady said. “I was just looking for the truth.”

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ANCHORAGE (AK)
Associated Press

August 22, 2019

By Rachel D’Oro

An independent review has found credible accusations of past sexual misconduct against seven clergy members of an Alaska Catholic diocese, including a former priest who died in a July plane crash and another priest who was placed on administrative leave in recent months, church officials said Thursday.

The Diocese of Juneau released the results of the review, which identified six priests and a religious brother as those accused of misconduct involving minors or vulnerable adults during the diocese’s nearly 70-year history.

Bishop Andrew Bellisario could not immediately be reached for comment. At a press conference Wednesday, he offered a “very sincere” apology, the Juneau Empire reported.

“It brings a lot of shame and a lot of regret and a lot of sorrow to me personally as bishop of this diocese, but it is something that needs to be expressed to those who have been harmed,” he said.

In a letter Wednesday to church members, Bellisario said he established an independent commission consisting of former judges and a police official last December to review all personnel files going back to the diocese establishment in 1951.

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PHILADELPHIA (PA)
Philadelphia Inquirer

August 22, 2019

By Jeremy Roebuck

Among the prominent men accused of sexual abuse in a cache of recently unsealed court documents tied to financier Jeffrey Epstein’s alleged trafficking of underage girls, one name stood out to clergy sex-abuse victims in Philadelphia: George J. Mitchell.

Better known for his stints as a former Senate majority leader and a U.S. special envoy, Mitchell until May had led the board overseeing the Archdiocese of Philadelphia’s compensation fund for those abused by priests.

Philadelphia Archdiocese opens claims process for sex abuse victims compensation fund
Although he has forcefully denied the claims and his accuser has offered few details of their alleged encounter, the news has drawn consternation and bewilderment from Philadelphia-area victims and their advocates.

Some simply smirked at the optics that the man handpicked to oversee the archdiocese’s most significant attempt to date to compensate abuse victims had himself been accused as an abuser. Others said that Mitchell’s ties to Epstein have only deepened their reservations about the Church’s reparations process — a program many of them already viewed with skepticism.

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WHEELING (WV)
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

August 22, 2019

By Peter Smith

Bishop Mark Brennan entered the Cathedral of St. Joseph amid all the pomp, procession and fanfare typical of a bishop’s installation.

Less typically, he wasted little time in naming the elephant in the cathedral, acknowledging the alienation of many West Virginia Catholics in the wake of sexual and financial scandals that brought an abrupt end to his predecessor’s tenure.

“The scandals we have learned about have caused painful disappointments, anger, confusion and distrust of church leaders,” he said in his homily. “We have to face that situation with open eyes and determined spirits to bring about lasting change.”

The Boston-born bishop, who spent much of his career as a Maryland parish priest before becoming an auxiliary bishop in Baltimore, was appointed in June by Pope Francis as bishop of Wheeling-Charleston.

The diocese estimates it has nearly 75,000 Catholics across the entire state, with a significant amount concentrated in the Northern Panhandle, where cities like Wheeling and Weirton share the industrial and Catholic immigrant heritage of the Ohio River Valley communities in neighboring states.

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CHICHESTER (ENGLAND)
Church Times

August 23, 2019

By Hattie Williams

The diocese of Chichester should not be too hasty in its attempts to consign sexual abuse to history, a new report suggests.

The diocese was marked out by the Independent Inquiry into Child Sex Abuse (IICSA) for special interest, based on the number of high-profile cases of abuse. An earlier report by Dame Moira Gibb also examined aspects of abuse in Sussex.

This week, the diocese quietly published a third report, Sexual Abuse by Clergymen in the Diocese of Chichester: ‘You Can’t Say No to God’, which was written by Professor David Shemmings from the University of Kent, and his wife Yvonne Shemmings, who works with him in training and research.

The authors warn the diocese “not to be tempted to approach the future by adopting the mantra ‘That was then; this is now’.

“Inevitably there is now an understandable need to move on from what many believe has been a terrible stain on the diocese, but this can, in our view, only be safely and respectfully done by regularly training everyone’s collective eyes and ears on what happened in the past.”

Children were “sexually abused and humiliated” throughout the diocese, at all levels of seniority among the clergy, the authors write. “[Children] were sometimes plied with drink or drugs (and sometimes both). . . They were sometimes made to feel that the abuse they suffered was their fault or, even worse, ordained and sanctioned by God. As one of the individuals interviewed put it ‘You can’t say “No” to God.’”

The Shemmings were commissioned by the diocese to conduct a “small qualitative research study and review of key documents” to understand why the abuse happened. They interviewed 17 people, among them survivors of abuse, investigating police officers, and safeguarding professionals, to discover patterns of offending behaviour and victimisation, as well as possible links between offenders, institutions, and organisational responses.

In their analysis, the authors pick out patterns of secrecy and fear. “The apparent ‘openness’ of a diocese where, theoretically at any rate, people can come and go as they please, requires additional and more subtle levels of coercion. . . The level of fear some of the abusers instilled in the children and young people was pernicious and sometimes extreme.”

The use of alcohol and expensive gifts to groom children was common, and the power wielded by abusers who “mixed with the rich” was clear, they write.

There was a “difference of opinion” among interviewees, however, about whether this abuse was “unique” to Chichester, whether abusers were “predatory” and chose the Church or diocese because it presented an opportunity to abuse, or “whether there was something endemic about the ‘closed’ (some said ‘secretive’) community within the Church, which, coupled with the requirement for homosexual priests to remain celibate, produces in some men an unquenchable and unrequited need for intimate close relationships that can sometimes cross a line and become abusive and even coercive.”

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

August 22, 2019

Hanna Boys Center officials say they will finally seek out those who were molested at the facility. Santa Rosa Bishop Robert Vasa should do likewise, using church bulletins, pulpit announcements and parish websites.

In outreach messages, church and center staff should stress the importance of contacting the independent, unbiased and experienced professionals in law enforcement first, not employees of the diocese or the home. We feel it is especially crucial that those with knowledge or suspicions of wrongdoing at Hanna contact the California attorney general who is investigating sexual abuse by clergy and its cover up in the state.

While helping to heal adults who were assaulted as children is important, we hope that the diocese and the center will be completely transparent with any survivors who come forward and let them know if accepting this help will exclude them from filing a lawsuit in the future. This is particularly important since it is likely that California, like New York, will soon open a civil window, and help is also available through the Sonoma County Family Justice Center.

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. LOUIS (MO)
Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests

August 22, 2019

A priest who has just been accused of abusing a New York child also worked in Columbus. For the safety of children and healing of survivors, Ohio Catholic officials must now alert their flock and share with law enforcement here any information they may have on the alleged offender.

Fr. Carleton Parker Jones, a Dominican cleric, was sued days ago in Manhattan for reportedly sexually assaulting an eight-year-old boy while he was preparing for his first confession and first communion with Jones. An on-line parish document shows that, from 1992-1995, Fr. Jones was at St. Patrick Church on North Grant Avenue in Columbus.

We believe it is the moral and civic duty of Columbus Bishop Robert Brennan and church officials at St. Patrick’s to use church bulletins, parish websites and pulpit announcements to aggressively seek out anyone who may have seen, suspected or suffered crimes or cover-ups involving Fr. Jones and beg them to call police.

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

August 22, 2019

Days after the conviction for sexually abusing two boys was upheld, Pope Francis and the Vatican refuse to take steps to defrock or otherwise discipline Australia’s top catholic official. This is an embarrassing move by Vatican officials and only further underscores how out of touch they are when it comes to cases of clergy sexual abuse.

Cardinal George Pell was the third-highest ranking official in the Vatican before his conviction. Now he will spend the next six years in prison. And yet despite the fact that he has been convicted by a jury of his peers and seen his conviction upheld by a Australian appeals court, Cardinal Pell remains a Cardinal, with all the rights and honors it entails.

The Vatican argues that Cardinal Pell “has always maintained his innocence throughout the judicial process.” Fortunately for us, most the world’s justice systems do not consider a mere denial of charges as an adequate defense against them. It certainly was not an adequate defense in Australia. It is embarrassing and backwards that church officials in Rome even try to suggest such a denial is a good enough defense for their purposes.

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GUILDERLAND (NY)
The Enterprise

August 22, 2019

By Elizabeth Floyd Mair

Five adult siblings recently claimed a childhood of physical, sexual, and psychological abuse by Francis Melfe, a Roman Catholic priest whom, they say, kept them and their mother as his mostly-secret family at a large suburban Guilderland home.

Edith Thomas, the mother of the five adult children, told The Enterprise this week, “They haven’t spoken to me since 1992.”

She has prayed for them every day since then, she said.

She declined further comment except to add, “Whatever they want to tell, they can tell, and anything they say is the truth.”

The children now range in age from 47 to 62. One of them, the youngest, was fathered by the priest, their suit says. One of the plaintiffs declined comment, and the others could not be reached. Francis Melfe did not respond to requests for comment.

The Enterprise has a policy of not naming victims of sexual abuse.

JoAnn Harri of Smalline and Harri, of Albany, called the plaintiffs “proud survivors” and said that they have all been exemplary parents to their own children. Harri is representing the plaintiffs, together with her partner, Martin D. Smalline.

In their complaint, Thomas’s children allege a decade of sexual abuse, from 1969 through 1979, by Melfe against them while the priest maintained an elaborate deceit to try to keep his identity from their neighbors. He left the priesthood in 1979.

The complaint also alleges that the church hierarchy knew, before Melfe ever met this family, that he had been transferred from St. Joseph’s Church in Troy to St. Mary’s Church in Hudson “because he was stealing from St. Joseph’s Church and had been abusing children there.” Asked by The Enterprise how they know that, Harri said that they know “from another witness, an unnamed witness.”

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DENVER (CO)
National Catholic Register

August 22, 2019

By Lauretta Brown

Attorneys general in 20 states and the District of Columbia are conducting investigations into child sex abuse and cover-ups by the Church. These investigations continue one year after the bombshell Pennsylvania grand jury report, which subsequently helped prompt new guidelines from the Vatican on the handling of sexual abuse.

There are known investigations into Church sex-abuse allegations and cover-ups in New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Maryland, Missouri, Virginia, Vermont, Florida, New Mexico, New York, Delaware, California, Kansas, Indiana, Colorado, Georgia, Nebraska, West Virginia, Illinois, Michigan and Iowa. There could be as many as 45 states investigating the Church behind the scenes, as well, according to Pennsylvania Attorney General Josh Shapiro.

The Pennsylvania report has also reportedly prompted statute-of-limitations reform laws in 21 jurisdictions, which extend or eliminate their statute of limitations for reporting child sex abuse.

On Aug. 14, 22 plaintiffs filed a lawsuit against the Diocese of Buffalo, New York, a province of the Society of Jesus, multiple priests, eight parishes, three high schools and a seminary, among others, alleging “a pattern of racketeering activity” that enabled and covered up clerical sexual abuse under federal racketeering laws, called RICO statutes, which primarily are used against organized crime like the mafia.

The state investigations have already spurred thousands of allegations of sexual abuse as well as some arrests.

The office of New Jersey Attorney General Gurbir Grewal told the Register that the state’s clergy-abuse hotline has received more than 540 calls since it was created in September 2018 as part of a task force to investigate allegations of sexual abuse by members of the clergy in the state’s dioceses.

Their investigation secured the guilty plea of Father Thomas Ganley, 63, of Phillipsburg, New Jersey. After an accusation was made through the hotline, Father Ganley was investigated by the task force and pleaded guilty in April to second-degree sexual assault, admitting that he engaged in sexual acts with a teenage girl in the 1990s, when she was 16 or 17 years old and he had supervisory authority over her.

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

August 22, 2019

Another Michigan priest is being charged with child sex crimes because of the outstanding work of Attorney General Dana Nessel and her team. We commend her and the staff for all their hard work in reviewing the files from the Diocese of Kalamazoo. We hope this story inspires others who may be suffering in silence to come forward, make a report to the AG, and start healing.

According to news reports, Fr. Brian Stanley was arrested for kidnapping. The complaint alleges that the priest wrapped a teenager tightly in plastic, taped his eyes and mouth shut, and then left him alone in a janitor’s room at an Otsego, MI parish for more than an hour. Fr. Stanley later returned and released the boy.

The incident was reported to the Diocese of Kalamazoo in 2013. The priest was immediately suspended and, according to church officials, the allegations were also reported to police who said that “the complaint was not criminal and there would be no charges.” Fr. Stanley was then reinstated, it would appear without any internal investigation.

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NEW YORK (NY)
New York Jewish Week

August 20, 2019

By Hannah Dreyfus

Mordechai Twersky, one of the plaintiffs in a 2013 lawsuit against Yeshiva University accusing administrators and teachers of a decades-long cover-up of physical and sexual abuse at its affiliated high school, said the flagship Modern Orthodox institution “left us for dead” after a U.S. District Court judge dismissed the suit.

Citing federal and state statutes of limitations, which had expired, the judge wrote in a decision handed down on Jan. 30, 2014, “No exceptions apply.”

As of last week, that is no longer the case.

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LANSING (MI)
The Flint Journal

August 22, 2019

By Ryan Boldrey

The ongoing investigation into sex-abuse claims involving Michigan’s seven Catholic dioceses has resulted in more charges by the state Attorney General’s office, this time of a former Otsego priest.

Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel announced today that Father Brian Stanley, of Coloma, is being charged with one felony count of false imprisonment. If convicted, Stanley would face up to 15 years in prison and be required to register as a sex offender, according to state law.

“Stanley is accused of secreting away a teenage boy and holding him against his will in the janitor’s room of St. Margaret’s Church in 2013,” states a news release issued by Nessel’s office.

The priest reportedly immobilized the young man by wrapping him tightly in plastic wrap. He then used masking tape as additional binding to cover his eyes and mouth, according to the Attorney General’s office.

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WASHINGTON (DC)
Catholic News Service

August 22, 2019

By Russell Shaw

Reacting to the scandal of clergy sex abuse and cover-up 17 years ago, eight bishops offered a bold proposal.

The conference of bishops, meeting in Dallas, had lately adopted a charter and norms for the protection of children. Now the eight called for something more.

Convene a plenary council or regional synod, they urged their fellow bishops, and use it to get at the roots of what had happened so as to prevent anything like that from ever happening again. The signers of their joint letter included Cardinal Daniel N. DiNardo of Galveston-Houston, then bishop of Sioux City, Iowa, and now president of the national bishops’ conference, and Archbishop Allen H. Vigneron of Detroit, an auxiliary bishop there back then.

More than a hundred bishops expressed interest in the suggestion, which eventually came to focus on the synod option. The bishops’ conference took some note of it. But in time, enthusiasm faded and the proposal died as the hierarchy went about implementing their new child protection measures.

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LA JOLLA (CA)
Celibacy, Sex & Catholic Church

Posted August 8, 2019; revised July 30, 2019

By A.W. Richard Sipe, Marianne Benkert, and Thomas P. Doyle

[Note from Tom Doyle: In 1993 Attorney Stephen Rubino came up with the phrase “religious duress” to describe the internal constraint involuntarily experienced by people, in this case Catholics, who have internalized religious indoctrination to the extent that it can seriously impede a person’s capacity to accurately perceive and evaluate abusive actions perpetrated by clergy. In short, the effects of religious indoctrination made it nearly impossible for sex abuse victims to disclose the abuse.

Richard and Marianne Sipe and Tom Doyle developed the idea through extensive research and published several articles about it, including most recently the article linked above. The concept was used in civil cases to overcome the statute of limitations. It met with little success in the U.S. courts. Judges misunderstood it and erroneously thought it somehow violated the First Amendment.

On June 7, 2019 the Supreme Court of Canada rendered a judgment that used the concept extensively. A key article by Doyle and Marianne Sipe is quoted several times as is another by Doyle.]

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

August 22, 2019

The Diocese of Burlington, VT has released the names of proven, admitted and publicly accused child molesting clerics today. This is a long overdue step towards transparency, and there is still more work to do.

With this move, church officials in Vermont are taking a belated step towards transparency and healing. Releasing these names publicly is crucial not only for the safety of children and healing of survivors, but also to encourage victims who may be suffering in silence to come forward and to deter future clergy sex crimes and cover-ups.

Still, the fact remains that this is a long-overdue move prompted by pressure from media, parishioners and the public that Bishop Christopher Coyne should have taken immediately upon arriving in Burlington four years ago.

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BURLINGTON (VT)
Vermont Digger

August 22, 2019

By Kevin O’Connor

The statewide Roman Catholic Diocese of Burlington knew at least 40 Vermont priests faced accusations of sexually abusing children over the past seven decades but did nothing to alert the public or police, a lay-led church committee announced Thursday.
The committee, given unprecedented access to personnel files once seen by only Catholic leaders and lawyers, issued an online report that named the accused clergy — none whom are currently working but several who are still alive — and acknowledged past officials of the state’s largest religious denomination covered up the claims so as not to spark court suits or scandal.

“While most of these allegations took place at least a generation ago, the numbers are still staggering,” Vermont Catholic Bishop Christopher Coyne said Thursday. “These shameful, sinful, and criminal acts have been our ‘family secret’ for generations.”

The report showed no current misconduct. All but one of the allegations occurred before 2000.

While the report is public, detailed revelations about priest misconduct have not been made available to the press.

“Many abusers and their victims are deceased, so some might ask ‘Why engage in this process?’” the committee wrote. “Publication of a list may cause harm to the legacy of accused perpetrators, but the list also may offer some long-missed consolation to victims and their families and friends.”

“What is particularly painful is knowing how lives were changed irreparably by what happened to the victims when they were young,” the committee wrote. “For some there might have been the opportunity for healing, but for many there may have been a series of life choices intended to cover scars that only resulted in more pain and disappointment. Lives have been lost because of the abuse that occurred.”

Church leaders acknowledge publicizing the list of priests could subject the diocese to more lawsuits. More than 50 accusers have won nearly $31.5 million in settlements in the past several decades. Their shared lawyer, Jerome O’Neill of Burlington, still has six cases pending in court.

“My reaction is disappointment,” O’Neill said of the report he believes should have been released long ago by previous church leaders. “It was more important for those bishops that they protect the reputations of their child-abusing clergy and the diocese itself than to protect children from being sexually assaulted.”

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NEW YORK (NY)
Irish Central

August 22, 2019

In advance of a mandated national third-party reporting system for allegations or complaints regarding bishops, the Catholic dioceses of four New England states have launched a third-party, independent system to report abuse by Catholic bishops.

The dioceses in Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Vermont and Maine make up the Boston Province, led by Boston Cardinal Sean O’Malley, who is the metropolitan archbishop of the province.

The bishops of the province have agreed to make a reporting system available now in the wake of Pope Francis’ document ‘Vos Estis Lux Mundi’ (‘You are the light of the world’) and the bishops’ vote during their spring general assembly in June to implement it.

The Pope issued the landmark document in May to help the Catholic Church safeguard its members from abuse and hold its leaders accountable.

The motu proprio was one of the measures that came out the Vatican’s February summit on clergy sexual abuse attended by the presidents of the world’s bishops’ conferences.

“I am grateful to Cardinal O’Malley for his leadership in implementing this important facet of ‘Vos Estis Lux Mundi’ here in the Boston Province,” Springfield Bishop Mitchell Rozanski said in a statement in response to the August 14 announcement of the Boston Province establishing the independent reporting system.

“This is an important step in assuring accountability for bishops in continuing to be vigilant in our Church for the safe environment of all our members, particularly our most vulnerable,” he said.

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BURLINGTON (VT)
Free Press

August 22, 2019

By Elizabeth Murray

The Roman Catholic Diocese of Burlington will release the names of priests against whom credible and substantiated allegations of child sexual abuse have been made. The names will be released Thursday morning.

The report was compiled by a lay committee, appointed by Bishop Christopher Coyne, to examine priest personnel files. The committee was comprised of four men and three women, including one priest abuse victim and one non-Catholic.

The allegations against clergy who served throughout the state date back to the 1950s, the Diocese said.

According to a statement written by the Bishop on the Diocese’s website, there has only been one credible and substantiated claim of abuse in 16 years. The allegation involved an 18-year-old who formed an emotional relationship with a member of the clergy when that teenager was a minor.

“There are no priests in ministry who have had a credible and substantiated allegation made against them,” the Bishop wrote.

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WASHINGTON (DC)
Washington Informer

August 21, 2019

By D. Kevin McNeir

Since his installation as the leader of the Archdiocese of Washington, May 21, Archbishop Wilton D. Gregory has provided needed leadership at a time when the Catholic Church has found itself inundated by troubling scandals and revelations.

Throughout his many years of service, Archbishop Gregory has remained a man known for and respected because of his principles and dedication to seeking truth and doing the right thing. That said, his first few months have seen him visiting parishes throughout the Archdiocese — offering solace, guidance and laying out a plan of action.

He spoke with The Washington Informer recently about his life, his new assignment and his plans to restore one of our most fragile human relationships: trust.

Washington Informer: How do you speak to people in today’s current atmosphere of fear in the U.S. when many say their faith has been shaken? How do you inspire people and what do you say particularly to Black Catholics?

Archbishop Gregory: I say the same thing to everyone, Catholic or not. I speak to their dignity as people recognizing the struggles they’ve endured and remind them of the importance of civil discourse. Yes, people are afraid in so many settings. Part of that fear is generated by a loss of the awareness of the dignity we each have as a child of God — no matter what religion or those who do not claim any religious affiliation, they still should be treated with dignity.

Second, you encounter people as Pope Francis says, by speaking and listening. Right now, not a lot of listening has been going on in the human dialogue. A lot of protestations, hostile language — but very little listening, sincere listening. I really try to listen and in that listening come to understand others and their opinions. Hopefully, in that kind of dialogue I can engender a mutual respect.

WI: There have recent challenges in the Catholic church in terms of leadership. Still, we hold those at the top to greater accountability. How do you restore that trust?

Gregory: Trust is a fragile virtue and while it takes time to establish it can be ruptured quickly. I hope to offer to the Archdiocese a strengthening, a reestablishing of trust. But I’m aware that it will not happen overnight, especially because the breakdown occurred within the leadership. Still, as the Bible tells us, to whom much is given, much is required. It will take time to reestablish those trusting relationships — that’s clear to me. There’s no way I can be naïve about the uphill battle I face.

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WASHINGTON (DC)
Christian Post

August 21, 2019

By Leonardo Blair

When the late Bishop Eddie Long’s named successor, Bishop Stephen A. Davis, announced his resignation from New Birth Missionary Baptist Church in Lithonia, Georgia, after 16 months on the job, he cited the need to attend to his family and church in Alabama.

Last Wednesday during an altar call at New Birth Birmingham — a church planted under the spiritual guidance of Long — Davis revealed he left his spiritual father’s congregation because of the politics of corrupt leaders he described as “fools.”

In a somewhat cryptic segue near the end of a Facebook Live broadcast Davis, who was not available to elaborate when his church was contacted by The Christian Post on Tuesday, explained how he worked free for the entire time he led the church after Long’s death and buoyed the church financially as well.

“They didn’t say anything over there in Georgia when I gave $180,000. I worked the entire 16 months for free. Didn’t take a dime. Paid for my own condo for six months. Kept the debt off the Long family, $3,500 a month that they didn’t have to pay on Bishop Long’s condo. I paid it. I took the car back that I had given him as a gift, taking the pressure off the Long family. I gave $85,000 personally. They allowed wicked men to lead them. They lost their God sent. Now they have to settle for hirelings,” Davis said.

“I tithed every month. They didn’t know I made their payroll, those who work for New Birth Missionary Baptist Church. Without my funding they wouldn’t have been paid. I want every one of them to know, they lost the best thing that could have ever happened to you,” he said as his congregation applauded.

“Tommy George, Mike Roberts, threatened me,” he continued. “Told me they could have gotten rid of me. I told them they never had me. So go back to your ‘hellatious’ leaders and tell them I’m still coming to Georgia.

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DEDEDO (GUAM)
KUAM News

August 22, 2019

Sweeping changes by the Roman Catholic Church and the sexual revolution of the ’60s and ’70s may be among the reasons for the rise in clergy sex abuse. That’s what Archbishop Michael Byrnes explained during a speech today before local business leaders.

In trying to explain why so many Catholic clergy, including here in Guam, became involved in the far-reaching child sexual abuse scandal, Archbishop Byrnes referenced the reflections of the retired Pope Benedict. He says the Pope believed that an unprecedented 1962 gathering of top religious leaders to discuss church doctrine known as the Vatican Council II lead to a transformation that not all clergy could adjust to.

“It was kind of, at least in the United States, there was just this mass defection of priests. I remember being in a parish in Detroit, the parish I grew up in, and in one year, four of our priests left the priesthood,” Byrnes said.

He says many became disaffected and unhappy, and not just with the doctrinal changes.

“A lot of the priests were used to praying like this, the idea was that the priest was leading the prayer and everyone was joining him and he didn’t have to look at the people,” Byrnes continued. “They literally were turned around and we’re comfortable with that now but some of these guys weren’t comfortable with that, but it wasn’t just that, it was a whole new idea of the priesthood, of engagement of the lay faithful.

“It’s not saying that that was bad, this was a time of upheaval, and I even remember my dad, his favorite priest, his friend left the priesthood, it hurt. It hurt.”

Byrnes says the changing attitudes toward sex in the 60s and 70s, may have also impacted the church’s training of priests, an example.

“It became the practice of teaching moral theology for the sake of confession was that they would show pornographic movies to these seminarians so that when they heard of particular sins they wouldn’t freak out somehow,” he said. “There’s probably a better way of doing that.”

His comment was met with laughter from the attending Rotarians.

But the archbishop says the cause may boil down to one thing.

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SYDNEY (AUSTRALIA)
The Catholic Weekly

August 22, 2019

By Dr. Philippa Martyr

What do you do when something doesn’t turn out the way you had hoped?

I can never read the life story of St Joan of Arc without experiencing a terrible emotional crisis towards the end. Joan’s fate in prison was not yet determined, and there was a chance she would be freed – but then she discovered she was going to be sold to the English armies.

Joan then tried to escape or commit suicide (or both) from her prison cell by leaping from the window, a drop of some 60 feet.

Finding God in suffering – easier said than done
She wasn’t injured, but she later realised that she had done the wrong thing by trying to escape. It showed a lack of trust in God’s plan for her, and she confessed her escape attempt to a priest.

I think this is one of the things that shows her sanctity: that she could completely lose heart and yet walk back from that, knowing that God had ordained a different type of suffering for her future.

Joan is behaving in the same way that Jesus did when He’s described as setting His face bravely towards Jerusalem. It’s an acceptance of the awfulness to come, even though you know it will be awful – and terribly unjust.

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MELBOURNE (AUSTRALIA)
The Age

August 22, 2019

The dismissal of Cardinal George Pell’s appeal against his conviction, vindicates and provides some solace to those who have spoken out against being sexually abused by priests and other paedophiles. May it give them some peace that their experiences have been believed and they have truly been heard. This judgment helps to restore one’s faith in the justice system, which so often seems to reward those with the most power and money.

Suzy and Nick Toovey, Beaumaris

Don’t blame judiciary, blame the hierarchy

For those Catholics feeling bad right now. Feeling hunted. Feeling let down. You have been. Not by the judiciary, but by your hierarchy. The time is now, not to circle the wagons but to look outwards. Look to your fellow Catholics whose lives have been ruined, through no fault of their own, because they or a loved one have been sexually assaulted as a child or because they have called out what they saw and lost their livelihoods as a result.

Julian Guy, Mount Eliza

Now, the defining moment has come

Today all print and TV media outlets are referring to convicted sex offender George Pell as Cardinal George Pell. Technically he is still a cardinal until and if the Vatican defrock him. However the media and the rest of society, if they need to speak of him at all, should refer him as George Pell convicted child abuser.

Peter Roche, Carlton

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MADRID (SPAIN)
Crux

August 22, 2019

By Inés San Martín

Chile’s President Sebastian Piñera, has urged for the Catholic Church to be investigated over clerical sexual abuse, and he gave his full support to new law that ends the statutes of limitations on abuse cases.

However, when it comes to the allegations made against his uncle, the world’s oldest living bishop, he’s having a hard time believing it.

Archbishop Bernardino Piñera, who served as Archbishop of Serena from 1983-1990 after previously serving as Bishop of Temuco, is being investigated by the Vatican over allegations that he sexually abused a minor 50 years ago. The news was announced by the Holy See’s embassy in Chile on Tuesday.

Soon after, the president said: “As a nephew, I find it hard to believe because I know his behavior, his attitude over a lifetime, and I find it hard to believe a complaint that is made against a man who’s 103 years old today, over an alleged event that occurred 50 years ago.”

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BUFFALO (NY)
Buffalo News

August 22, 2019

By Bruce Andriatch

In the midst of last week’s long-time-coming lawsuit avalanche filed by people who say they were victims of sexual abuse by Catholic priests, a friend raised an interesting point.

Through the Child Victims Act, some of the plaintiffs were allowed to file anonymously, meaning they were permitted to keep their names a secret. But the men they accused were identified by name. My friend said that didn’t seem fair.

A two-word response immediately popped into my head. One of those words was: “Tough.” (Decorum prevents me from printing the other one.)

The Catholic Church and its leaders do not deserve an ounce of sympathy. Consider for a moment the centuries of damage inflicted on children, much of it tacitly sanctioned by the inaction of bishops and cardinals, all in the name of avoiding scandal and protecting predators, criminals who should have been in a prison, not on an altar. Then cry me a river flowing with milk and honey about “fairness.”

I say this as a Catholic. Disappointed, disillusioned and disgusted, but still a Catholic.

It took me a lifetime to get to this point. A year ago this week, The News published an open letter I wrote, in which I expressed horror that my church, which is like my family, had systematically looked the other way while countless innocent lives were being destroyed. My reason was the release of a Pennsylvania grand jury report documenting decades of despicable acts by hundreds of priests, yet another in a string of criminal and journalistic investigations that kept finding the exact same thing: abuse followed by denial followed by cover-up.

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Patheos blog

August 21, 2019

By Anne Kennedy

“Oh Goodie,” says Jesus.

As I said yesterday, this week is full of all manner of little treats. Today let’s look at the completely un-astonishing and yet heartbreaking news that two people properly removed from ministry for the abuse of their pastoral offices and because of sexual sin, are going to leap back into the pulpit anyway, because of course they are, because what else are they going to do. Explains James MacDonald who has been out of the pulpit for what…fifteen minutes? If that:

“We have prayed to practice our biblical teaching on love and God has surely allowed us to be stretched. There is much we could say, as so much is not at all what has been portrayed. But we look to the Lord for forgiveness where I did fail as a leader and for vindication of false statements that will not cover forever what others have done,” he said.

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CHARLESTON (WV)
Associated Press

August 21, 2019

By John Raby

A lawsuit accusing the former bishop of West Virginia’s Roman Catholic diocese of molesting boys and men has been settled.

The terms of the recent settlement are confidential, Wheeling-Charleston Diocese spokesman Tim Bishop said in a statement. The diocese declined further comment.

A former personal altar server sued ex-Bishop Michael Bransfield and the diocese in March, saying he was sexually assaulted in 2014 and harassed for years prior. The filing asserted Bransfield would consume at least half a bottle of liqueur nightly and had drunkenly assaulted or harassed seminarians.

Coming on the heels of a new wave of sex abuse allegations in the U.S., the Bransfield scandal added to the credibility crisis in the U.S. hierarchy. Several top churchmen received tens of thousands of dollars in church-funded personal gifts from Bransfield during his tenure in Wheeling-Charleston, which covers the entirety of one of the poorest U.S. states.

The Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests, known as SNAP, said in a statement Wednesday it hopes the settlement encourages other clergy abuse victims to come forward.

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NEW YORK (NY)
TIME Magazine

August 21, 2019

By Gina Martinez

An Australian appeals court on Wednesday upheld the conviction of Cardinal George Pell, who was found guilty earlier this year of molesting two 13-year-old choir boys in the 1990s. And yet, Pell still retains his title in the Catholic Church.

The Vatican said it is waiting for Pell to make his final appeal to the High Court, Australia’s supreme court, before launching its own investigation. It noted that Pell has always maintained his innocence. One abuse survivors’ group says the decision to hold off on discipline is “cowardly” and shows the Church hasn’t made it nearly far enough on responding to sexual abuse.

Pell, Pope Francis’ former finance minister, is the highest-ranking church official to ever be convicted of child sexual abuse. He has been imprisoned since an Australian court sentenced the 78-year-old to six years in prison in March.

Tim Lennon, the president of Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests (SNAP), says the church should have been decisive following Pell’s conviction and immediately defrocked him.

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SAN FRANCISCO (CA)
Bay Area News Group

August 21, 2019

By Joseph Geha

An East Bay priest who repeatedly sexually assaulted a child is facing nearly five years in state prison, officials said.

Hector David Mendoza-Vela on Friday pleaded no contest to five counts of lewd or lascivious acts on a child age 14 or 15, court documents show.

Last month, he pleaded not guilty to 30 criminal counts filed against him in April by the Alameda County District Attorney’s Office.

Mendoza-Vela is facing four years and eight months in prison under a plea agreement with the district attorney’s office, according to Teresa Drenick, a spokeswoman for the office.

He will also be required to register as a sex offender for life, and must stay away from the victim for 10 years, Drenick said.

As part of the agreement, the remaining 25 charges against him were dismissed, court records show. He will be sentenced on Sept. 27 at the East County Hall of Justice in Dublin.

Mendoza-Vela, also known as Father David Mendoza-Vela, had served as a priest in Alameda County since 2013, working at St. John’s Catholic Church in San Lorenzo and more recently at Corpus Christi Church in Fremont.

Prosecutors said previously that in an interview with authorities, Mendoza-Vela, “confessed to inappropriately touching” the genitals of a 14- or 15-year-old boy over his pants “at least 20 times” from June 2016 through December 2017, while he was a priest at St. John’s.

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BURLINGTON (VT)
WCAX TV

August 21, 2019

By Darren Perron

A 10-month investigation into potential pedophile priests is done. The Catholic Diocese of Burlington will release its report Thursday. But our Darren Perron obtained details of that report, revealing decades of abuse by 40 priests.

“I’m 66 years old… This individual had an elevated place in my family’s life. So, no, I never told my parents,” John Mahoney said.

He didn’t tell them that he was repeatedly abused by a priest starting in eighth grade. Mahoney kept the secret– until now.

“I’ve been wanting this for a long time,” he said. “There may be some small consolation that the world knows this person’s name.”

That name is Father Edward Foster. The former Burlington priest is one of 40 accused of child sexual abuse in a new report commissioned by the Catholic Diocese and Bishop Christopher Coyne.

“We needed to do this,” Bishop Coyne said. “We needed to get the family secrets completely out there.”

The bishop created a seven-member committee made up of laypeople to pore over thousands of documents, the files of more than 50 potential pedophile priests.

“If there was one substantiated and credible allegation against the priest, it was enough for his name to be placed on the list,” Coyne said.

But in many cases, there were multiple allegations. Some families were paid to keep quiet and priests were moved from parish to parish.

Reporter Darren Perron: Did the church fail these children?
Bishop Christopher Coyne: Oh, definitely. We failed these children. We failed the children, the teenagers, the families. These actions were criminal. They were sinful. They were immoral. They weren’t dealt with well. There are no excuses for what we did.

The committee’s report on the abuse took about 10 months to complete.

“The files, some of them were 1,000 pages or more. We wanted to make sure we got it right,” Mike Donoghue said.

Donoghue, a journalist, is on the committee.

“We expect that there will be some people coming forward,” he said.

Donoghue expects more allegations once the list of priests is published and he says the committee is still reviewing some files, so more names could be added to the 40.

“It’s a sad number,” the bishop said. “It’s an awful number.”

But Coyne points out all but one of the allegations happened before 2000. The one since is against former priest Stephen Nichols.

The bishop says protocols like background checks, ongoing training to spot abuse and abusers, audits, and mandatory reporting to police are helping to protect Vermont kids now.

“There is absolutely no priest working in the Diocese of Burlington that places children at risk,” Coyne said.

Darren Perron: Did it put more kids at risk by not releasing this information sooner?
Bishop Christopher Coyne: I want to put that concern to rest. None of these people have been in ministry since 2000 on.

“It took way too long,” attorney Jerry O’Neill said.

For about 20 years, O’Neill has represented more than 50 abuse victims suing the church, which has now paid out $31.5 million. Six cases are still pending.

O’Neill says he tried during settlement proceedings to get the diocese to release the files for 16 years. He says not doing so still put kids at risk outside the church.

“If they had released the files sooner, some of these perpetrators clearly could have been molesting in the meantime. Not within the church, but outside the church, they’re still perpetrators,” O’Neill said. “So many of the survivors are furious for how long it’s taken the church and this diocese to identify the people who were the molesters.”

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JUNEAU (AK)
Juneau Empire

August 21, 2019

By Ben Hohenstatt

The Diocese of Juneau released the results of an Independent Commission’s review of sexual misconduct allegations since the diocese was established in 1951.

The report identifies seven local clergymen — six priests and one religious brother — that the commission found had been “credibly alleged” to have engaged with sexual misconduct involving minors and vulnerable adults.

The Independent Commission was established by the Diocese of Juneau in December 2018 to review files regarding allegations of sexual misconduct since the diocese was established nearly 70 years ago in 1951.

Those named in the report include:

• Francis A. Cowgill, who died in 2000, and is alleged to have committed sexual misconduct involving minors from 1956 to 1964. Cowgill was assigned to Pius X School in Skagway and Sacred Heart Church in Haines from 1952 to 1959, Holy Family Cathedral in Anchorage from 1959 to 1964 and St. Mary Church in Kodiak from 1964 to 1966.

• Javier Gutierrez, who was dismissed from the clerical state in 2018, and is alleged to have committed sexual misconduct involving minors and vulnerable adults in the 1980s. Gutierrez was assigned to Cathedral of the Nativity of the Blessed Virgin Mary in Juneau from 1982 to 1984 and in 1986, Holy Name Church in Ketchikan from 1984 to 1986, St. Peter’s Church in Douglas in 1986 and St. Therese of the Child of Jesus Church in Skagway and Sacred Heart Church in Haines from 1986 to 1988.

• Patrick Hurley, who returned to his religious order — Order of St. Benedict — in 1985, and is alleged to have committed sexual misconduct involving minors from 1984 to 1985. Hurley was assigned to Holy Name Church in Ketchikan in 1983, Cathedral of the Nativity of the Blessed Virgin Mary from 1984 to 1985 and St. Therese of the Child of Jesus Church in Skagway from 1984 to 1985.

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SANTA ROSA (CA)
Press Democrat

August 19, 2019

By Mary Callahan

Administrators at the Hanna Boys Center residential treatment facility and school will hire a private investigator to track down alumni from at least the past 3½ decades to root out any previously undiscovered cases of sexual abuse, however old, in an effort to try to make amends.

Once selected, the investigator will be tasked with locating up to 2,500 former students who attended the beleaguered institution dating back to 1983, Chief Executive Officer Brian Farragher said in an interview.

They’ll be asked if they were victimized in any way or if they know others who might have been. If it’s needed, Hanna will work to provide support and treatment and, “where appropriate,” even make restitution, Farragher said.

“We believe that it’s the only way forward for us,” he said.

Farragher revealed the proposal as part of Hanna’s rollout of a long-term strategic plan designed to turn a corner on a period of turmoil at the nearly 75-year-old institution that includes accusations of abuse against Farragher’s predecessor and a high-profile criminal case involving former clinical director Kevin Thorpe, who is in state prison.

Staffers at the Sonoma-area residential center also are suffering through significant cultural upheaval as they adjust to a new treatment framework called trauma-informed care. It has also undergone a reorganization that involved significant layoffs that included many veteran employees who had committed their careers to working with the facility and its population.

Despite speculation among some longtime workers that Farragher might plan to phase out residential care altogether, he and board chairman Tullus Miller said they foresee a future in which Hanna both operates as a model home for at-risk youths and develops national leadership in the area of trauma-informed care through its new research and training arm, the Hanna Institute.

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MANHATTAN (KS)
Manhattan Mercury

August 21, 2019

By Savannah Rattanavong

A victim advocacy group is calling for the Catholic Diocese of Salina to show more transparency in revealing details of sexual abuse by clergy members.

At a meeting with members of the media Tuesday outside the Seven Dolors of the Blessed Virgin Mary Catholic Church, where two former priests who have been credibly accused worked, David Clohessy and Larry Davis of the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests (SNAP) accused the diocese of withholding names of three more priests with substantiated abuse claims. The men all worked in the diocese’s area at some point. One of the men, Father Donald McCarthy, served in Manhattan in the 1960s and 1980s, but the claim of abuse didn’t take place in town.

SNAP also staged protests at other locations across Kansas Tuesday.

“All those people in the church (who were involved or complicit) need to be brought to justice,” Davis said. “Then also that can start the healing process for the victims. We hope that it finally breaks loose. We want to bring to people who are suffering an avenue for peace and justice.”

In March, the diocese, which oversees the Manhattan area, released a list of 14 clergy members who had substantiated allegations of sexual abuse of a minor. The report included three priests who had served in Manhattan since the 1950s, and several more who served at other area churches. The list included priests William Merchant, who died in 1975, and John Moeder, who died in 2012. Both served at Seven Dolors.

SNAP called for the diocese to include photos, locations and work histories of all “proven, admitted and credibly accused clerics,” name and punish the individuals responsible for “covering up” the abuse and admit wrongdoing in not thoroughly investigating past claims of sexual abuse.

Clohessy, SNAP’s Missouri director, and Davis said they would like to see more consequences through the law or the church for people who have had substantiated claims against them. Clohessy said this endeavor is not only about seeking justice after the fact but also preventing abuse from happening in the first place.

“(Adults) can heal ourselves,” Clohessy said. “It’s a lot easier if people in power positions can help us, but we can take care of ourselves. Kids can’t. The easiest way (to prevent abuse) is to put every name of every predator out there, even if a priest hasn’t been in this diocese for 30 years.”

In a statement Tuesday, the Salina Diocese said it has been cooperating with the KBI investigation looking into sexual abuse of minors by members of the Kansas Catholic clergy, as well as with past investigations into priests.

The diocese said SNAP alleged it had omitted the names of Father Donald McCarthy, who died in 2017, and Ronald Gilardi and Thaddeus Posey, two priests from the Capuchin Province of St. Conrad, Colorado.

The Capuchin Province also released a list of substantiated allegations in March, which included Gilardi and Posey.

The Salina Diocese said it cooperated with law enforcement when Texas officials tried McCarthy in 2007. He was found not guilty. The statement said the diocese’ Lay Review Board also reviewed the allegation from Texas, but could not substantiate the claim.

McCarthy’s duties in Manhattan included assistant pastor at Seven Dolors from 1962 to 1963, guidance counselor at Luckey High School from 1963 to 1965 and superintendent at Manhattan Catholic Schools from 1984 to 1986.

“The Lay Review Board of the Salina Diocese continues to evaluate allegations, and cooperate with the KBI as new allegations are made,” it said. “When an allegation is proven to be substantiated, the diocese will add the name of the clergy member to its list, which can be found at salinadiocese.org/home/clergy-abuse.”

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DAYTON (OH)
WDTN TV

August 21, 2019

A former Dayton and Beavercreek priest, who was indicted on nine counts of rape on Monday, pleaded not guilty to all charges in court Wednesday.

Geoffrey Drew, 57, faced a judge on Wednesday in Hamilton County where he pleaded not guilty to all nine counts of rape against him. Drew’s bond was set at $5 million.

According to WLWT in Cincinnati, Drew said through his lawyer that he had no idea who his accuser was or how he would have come in contact with him.

Drew is accused of raping a young alter boy while he served as Music Minister at St. Jude School in Cincinnati. He was employed at St. Jude from 1984 to 1999, although the acts allegedly took place between 1988 and 1991. Drew was not a priest at that time.

Drew was ordained in 2004 and was a parochial vicar at St. Luke in Beavercreek from July 1, 2004 to June 30, 2005, according to the Archdiocese of Cincinnati. He then became pastor of St. Rita in Dayton from July 1, 2005 to June 30, 2009.

“This is absolutely sickening,” Hamilton County Prosecutor Joe Deters said. “I will never understand how someone in a position of authority and trust abuses that trust by sexually assaulting young children.”

“The Archdiocese of Cincinnati has fully cooperated with this investigation and will continue to do so,” Archdiocese of Cincinnati Archbishop Dennis Schnurr said. “The protection of young people is of paramount importance and can never be compromised.”

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NEW YORK (NY)
Newsweek

August 21, 2019

By Jake Maher

A retired bishop in New York State announced he was taking a leave of absence two days after a lawsuit was filed alleging he molested an teenage boy.

On August 16, Bishop Emeritus Howard Hubbard of the Diocese of Albany took an absence from the Diocese of Albany. In a suit filed August 14, a plaintiff identified only as P.R alleged Hubbard sexually abused him repeatedly in the mid-1990s, when P.R. was 16.

Hubbard “used his position as a priest to groom and to sexually abuse” the then-teen between 1994 and 1998, according to WNYT.

The lawsuit was filed the first day New York’s Child Victims Act (CVA) went into effect. The statute, which will remain in effect for one year, removes the statute of limitations on filing a lawsuit alleging child sex-abuse. It’s already been used to sue the Governing Body of the Jehovah’s Witnesses for covering up abuse, and legal experts expect more religious institutions and community organizations to face similar suits.

Hubbard, who notified current bishop Edward Scharfenberger of his decision to take a leave of absence, maintains his innocence.

“With full and complete confidence, I can say this allegation is false. retired in my life,” he said in a statement. “I have been a priest for 55 years. My ministry is my life. But stepping aside temporarily now is the right thing to do.”

He added that Catholics—and the larger community—”must be assured that our church leaders, active or retired, and indeed all clergy are living in accord with the highest standards that our sacred ministry requires.”

It’s not the first time Hubbard has been accused of sexual misconduct: In the early 2000s, a California man alleged his brother had a sexual relationship with Hubbard before his brother’s death by suicide in 1978, at age 25. Another man claimed Hubbard had solicited sex from him when he was a teenage sex worker in Albany in the 1970s.

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ST. PAUL (MN)
Catholic News Service

August 21, 2019

By Joe Ruff

Paula Kaempffer, a survivor of clergy sexual abuse she suffered as an adult working in the Church, knows firsthand about the kind of healing that can take place.

And as the new outreach coordinator for restorative justice and abuse prevention for the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis, she said healing “takes a lot of personal work” and “a lot of inner strength to recapture the power that has been taken away from you.”

She said she is grateful that she has done that work and “come out on the other side.”

Now she intends to help other victims/survivors and others across the archdiocese seek ways to move from anger and other difficult emotions into healing.

“I think most parishes have not had an opportunity to talk about this issue,” she said.

Kaempffer’s office also is offering a listening ear and resources to help people who might face a variety of challenges, including the emotions of a property crime or homicide, said Janell Rasmussen, deputy director of Ministerial Standards and Safe Environment, the archdiocesan office that oversees its child protection efforts.

“Her outreach will be much broader than sexual abuse,” Rasmussen said.

Kaempffer said her faith was an integral part of her own healing.

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ROME (ITALY)
Crux

August 21, 2019

By John Allen

Although Australian Cardinal George Pell’s appeal of a conviction on child sexual abuse charges was rejected Wednesday, that ruling may not be the end of the legal road. As of this writing, Pell’s attorneys were still weighing whether to file a final appeal to Australia’s High Court.

Those attorneys told reporters that Pell continues to maintain his innocence, as he has since the charges first became public in June 2017.

Though Pell’s judicial odyssey may not be over, Wednesday’s ruling likely does represent the final word on another aspect of the case: George Pell is now officially the Alfred Dreyfus of the Catholic abuse crisis, meaning that opinions about his guilt or innocence are at least as much a reflection of one’s ideological convictions as about the actual evidence in the case.

Dreyfus, of course, was the French artillery officer of Jewish descent charged with treason in 1894 for allegedly passing military secrets to the Germans, spending five years on Devil’s Island. Dreyfus was eventually acquitted and reinstated to his army position, but for more than a decade, opinions about his guilt or innocence functioned as a bellwether for broader political and cultural tensions, pitting Catholic and traditionalist “anti-Dreyfusards” against pro-Republican and anti-clerical liberals.

One could, by the way, just as easily compare Pell to Alger Hiss, the urbane American diplomat accused in 1948 of being a Soviet spy. Like Pell, Hiss was tried twice, with the first ending in a hung jury and the second resulting in a conviction. In that case, too, opinions for a long time were far more about the clash between hawks and doves during the Cold War than the facts.

Similarly, opinions about Pell today often reveal far more about the prejudices of the observer than about the actual reality of what happened.

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MORGANTOWN (WV)
Dominion Post

August 20, 2019

By David Beard

A lawsuit brought by a former seminarian who alleged that former Bishop Michael Bransfield sexually assaulted him and that Bransfield regularly drank himself drunk before engaging in “grossly inappropriate” sexual behavior with other young seminarians has been settled.

The settlement came abruptly, though the reasons haven’t been revealed.

The civil suit was filed in Ohio County Circuit Court in May. The accuser, who goes by the initials J.E., now lives in Pocahontas County, but during the period covered in the suit lived in St. Clairsville, Ohio, and attended the Cathedral of St. Joseph in Wheeling.

Along with Bransfield, the defendants were the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB), the Diocese of Wheeling-Charleston and 20 “John Does.” Ten of the John Does are employees or agents of the USCCB and 10 are employees or agents of the diocese.

Diocese spokesman Tim Bishop said in an email exchange, “The Diocese can confirm that the case has been dismissed. The case was settled by agreement of the parties. At the request of the plaintiff, the terms of the settlement are confidential. The Diocese will have no further comment regarding the case.”

J.E. was represented by Warner Law Offices of Charleston. The Dominion Post left phone messages and emails over the course of several days seeking information and comment, but neither of his attorneys responded.

J.E. alleged that Bransfield was a binge drinker, consuming nightly a half or full bottle of Cointreau, an orange liqueur. He would “drink until he was intoxicated, at which point he would engage in grossly inappropriate behavior, including … making sexually suggestive gestures, hugging, kissing, inappropriately touching and fondling seminarians.”

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

August 20, 2019

A Catholic priest may face criminal child sex abuse charges in North Dakota. We call on church officials to use all their resources to encourage anyone with knowledge about these allegations to call law enforcement immediately.

In early April, the Diocese of Fargo disclosed that police were investigating Fr. Wenceslaus Katanga on allegations of child abuse. Just today the Cass County Attorney’s Office announced there are “no corroborating witnesses or physical evidence to support” the accusations in their county.

However, during the probe more allegations against the priest surfaced in another county, and there is a chance charges can be filed by prosecutors in McHenry County.

We believe it is crucial that serious accusations like this be thoroughly examined by law enforcement professionals. If church officials want what is best for children in their diocese, they should want this a complete investigation too. We call on Bishop John Folda of the Diocese of Fargo to use church bulletins, parish websites and pulpit announcements to reach out to anyone who may have information about these allegations. He should urge current and former churchgoers and staff with pertinent knowledge to immediately call police or prosecutors.

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MANHATTAN (KS)
KSNW TV

August 20, 2019

An advocacy group is calling on the Salina Catholic Diocese to be more transparent in allegations of priest sexual abuse.

Standing in front of a Manhattan church where two accused priests once served, David Clohessy and Larry Davis are demanding action.

“We want to bring the people that are suffering, an avenue for peace and justice,” said Davis.

Davis and Clohessy are members of SNAP, the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests, Clohessy serving as the Missouri Director. They said they chose the Seven Dolors parish in Manhattan, because two of the priests that served at this parish, were listed as priests with substantiated allegations of abuse against minors.

The Salina Diocese released a list of 14 names of priests in March of 2019 along with the parishes they served in and the estimated time of abuse. Among the names, Father William Merchant, who died in 1975, and Father John Moeder, who died in 2012. Both served at Seven Dolors, although the Diocese does not list when they served there, or where the men were serving when the alleged abuse happened. That’s one of the things that both Davis and Clohessy are asking to be released.

“The Bishop didn’t disclose their whereabouts, didn’t share their photographs and didn’t go into the full details of their work history, we think that’s the absolute bare minimum he should do to both protect kids and heal victims and help the church turn a page,” said Clohessy.

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KANSAS CITY (MO)
National Catholic Reporter

August 21, 2019

By Michael Sean Winters

A three-judge panel in Australia has upheld the guilty verdict against Cardinal George Pell. On two of the claims put forward by Pell for overturning the verdict, the three judges were unanimous. On the third claim — the key issue of reasonable doubt — they divided two to one. Pell is already serving a six-year sentence for abusing a minor.

In announcing their decision, the justices emphasized that they found Pell’s accuser credible. In the Anglo-Saxon legal system, great deference is given to a jury’s assessment of credibility. An appeals court may overturn a lower court decision based on an issue of law, but rarely would they overturn a conviction based on a jury’s assessment of credibility. But, the judges went further, positively stating that they agreed with the jury in finding the accuser credible. They also slammed Pell’s attorneys who wanted to present an animation of the scene that the judges labeled “tendentious in the extreme.”

The other fact that was obvious in the judges’ statements was that these cases of sexual abuse rarely have a corroborating witness. That is not how sex abuse works: The perpetrator always tries to conceal the crime. The jury is almost always faced with a “he said/he said” situation. Rarely is there a blue dress offering forensic evidence.

Those of us who were never great fans of Pell can take no delight in this decision: The tragedy of abuse is cancerous, and it affects not only the victim, not only other priests who do not abuse children, not only the entire Body of Christ, but it seems obvious to me that the perpetrator is always himself a sad and sick person, to be pitied as much as punished.

This case, like that of former Cardinal Theodore McCarrick, has left Pell’s friends reeling. Many of them could not bring themselves to believe what 12 jurors found credible. Perhaps they never will.

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CHICAGO (IL)
WLS TV

August 20, 2019

By Chuck Goudie, Christine Tressel and Ross Weidner

Amid a protracted state investigation of child sex abuse by Roman Catholic clergy, Illinois’ top law enforcement official has met with Chicago Cardinal Blase Cupich, the ABC7 I-Team has learned.

The one-hour, one-on-one discussion took place at Attorney General Kwame Raoul’s office in the State of Illinois Thompson Center about two weeks ago. The Archdiocese of Chicago and Illinois’ five other Roman Catholic dioceses have been subjects of an ongoing investigation by the state attorney general’s office for the past year.

In an exclusive interview with the I-Team on Wednesday, Attorney General Raoul said it was important for him to personally meet with the leader of the Catholic Church here-even as his staff investigators have been carrying the caseload in the rest of Illinois. Raoul told the I-Team that both his discussion with the cardinal and the state investigation are aimed at “making sure that there’s reconciliation for survivors and make sure abuse doesn’t happen anymore.”

A spokesperson for Cardinal Cupich and the Archdiocese of Chicago confirms the meeting and says that it was requested by Cardinal Cupich. We are awaiting a full statement from the Church.

The state investigation began under former attorney general Lisa Madigan. Shortly before leaving office last December, Madigan announced that the investigation found child sex accusations against at least 500 priests and clergymen in Illinois had never been made public. Madigan had opened a case here after a Pennsylvania grand jury investigation discovered more than 300 “predator priests” in a “systematic cover-up.”

When Raoul was sworn in last January and assumed the clergy sex abuse investigation, he said that it might be necessary to issue subpoenas to Catholic Church leaders in Chicago, Joliet, Rockford, Peoria, Springfield and Belleville if there wasn’t sufficient voluntary cooperation. On Tuesday the attorney general said that no subpoenas have been necessary-although information “hasn’t all come at the same speed. It’s taking prodding at some point and asking more questions.”

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ROME (ITALY)
Daily Beast

August 21, 2019

By Barbie Latza Nadeau

On Monday, the shutters of Australian Cardinal George Pell’s lavish apartment in the shadow of St. Peter’s Basilica were open and cleaners could be seen dusting the window sills. Pell had clearly hoped that he would be free to return to this upper-floor flat and to the life he once enjoyed. But on Wednesday, three Melbourne judges decided that Pell will be staying in an Australian jail after being convicted of child sexual abuse.

“By a majority of two to one, the court of appeal has dismissed Cardinal Pell’s appeal against his conviction,” Chief Justice Anne Ferguson announced.

Pell was said to have been sitting with his head bowed as the decision was announced, while cheers from outside the building could be heard as Ferguson explained the decision.

Ferguson dismissed an argument made by Pell’s defense that there was room for reasonable doubt by the jury.

“It is not enough that the jury might have had a doubt, but they must have had a doubt,” she said. “This was a compelling witness, clearly not a liar, not a fantasist and was a witness of truth.”

Last February, Pell, 78, was convicted on charges he sexually abused two choir boys in a Melbourne cathedral in the late 1990s. He was sentenced to six years in Melbourne Assessment Prison last February, and has spent the last 175 days in solitary confinement.

Prior to his sentencing, his lawyer, Robert Richter, who has since been dismissed, pleaded for a lenient sentence, calling Pell’s abuses, a “plain vanilla sexual penetration case where the child is not actively participating.” That clearly did not help his client, who denied he had committed the act.

The Vatican did not oppose Pell’s efforts to reverse the verdict.

The day before the verdict, a Vatican spokesperson pointed The Daily Beast back to its original statement on the matter. “Cardinal Pell has reiterated his innocence and has the right to defend himself to the last degree,” it said in a statement. “Waiting for final judgment, we join the Australian bishops in praying for all the victims of abuse.”

Now that Pell’s appeal has been denied, Pope Francis is in a tight corner. Vatican policy has for years centered on placing blame for the sex-abuse scandal on local dioceses and on the bishops in charge of perverted priests. But in the case of Cardinal Pell, the highest-ranking church official to be convicted, only the pope can decide what to do now. Will he defrock the cardinal who was once in his inner circle? Will he finally take him off the Vatican website, where he is still listed as head of the Holy See Secretariat for the Economy?

Apparently not. The day of the ruling, the Vatican doubled down on its support of Pell’s innocence. “While reiterating its respect for the Australian judicial system, as stated on 26 February after the first instance verdict was announced, the Holy See acknowledges the court’s decision to dismiss Cardinal Pell’s appeal,” the Vatican said in a carefully worded statement. “As the proceedings continue to develop, the Holy See recalls that the Cardinal has always maintained his innocence throughout the judicial process and that it is his right to appeal to the High Court.”

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MELBOURNE (AUSTRALIA)
Wall Street Journal

August 20, 2019

By Robb M. Stewart

Australian judges rule 2-1 to uphold conviction for assaulting two young choir boys

Cardinal George Pell, the most senior Catholic cleric ever to be jailed for child sexual abuse, has lost his appeal of his conviction.

A panel of Australian judges ruled 2-1 on Wednesday to uphold the cardinal’s conviction for assaulting two young choir boys inside the cathedral that was the center of his diocese in the late 1990s.

Three judges in the Supreme Court of Victoria, the southeastern state where the 78-year-old cleric first served as a priest and later was archbishop of Melbourne, had been deliberating for months and held an appeal hearing in June.

Cardinal Pell is widely expected to challenge the decision in the country’s top court, the High Court of Australia.

In December, a jury convicted Cardinal Pell on five counts of sexually abusing two choir boys inside a sacristy at a Melbourne cathedral in late 1996 and one of the boys in a cathedral corridor in early 1997, not long after he became archbishop of Melbourne. The former Vatican finance chief was sentenced to six years in prison earlier this year.

The main argument of the cardinal’s appeal was that the guilty verdicts were unreasonable based on the evidence. The cardinal’s lawyers also argued that mistakes were made that prevented him from getting a fair trial. The prosecution countered that the cardinal’s accuser was a compelling and believable witness, who gave testimony a jury could accept.

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MELBOURNE (AUSTRALIA)
The New York Times

August 20, 2019

By Livia Albeck-Ripka

An Australian court on Wednesday upheld the sexual abuse conviction of Cardinal George Pell, the highest-ranking Roman Catholic leader ever found guilty in a criminal court in the church’s child sex abuse crisis.

The cardinal, 78, who was once an adviser to Pope Francis, had been sentenced to six years in prison in March.

“He will continue to serve his sentence,” said Chief Justice Anne Ferguson of the Supreme Court of the state of Victoria in Melbourne, who presided over the appeals case with two other top judges.

Cardinal Pell was found guilty in December of molesting two 13-year-old choirboys after a Sunday Mass in 1996 at St. Patrick’s Cathedral in Melbourne, and groping one of them again months later. A gag order meant the verdict was not unsealed until February, after a second trial involving Cardinal Pell was canceled.

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LONDON (ENGLAND)
The Guardian

August 20, 2019

By Michael McGowan

Archbishop Mark Coleridge, the president of the Australian Catholic Bishops Conference, has released a statement on the appeal.

He says the conference believes “all Australians must be equal under the law and accept today’s judgement accordingly”.

“The bishops realise that this has been and remains a most difficult time for survivors of child sexual abuse and those who support them,” Coleridge said in the statement.

“We acknowledge the pain that those abused by clergy have experienced through the long process of the trials and appeal of Cardinal Pell. We also acknowledge that this judgement will be distressing to many people.

“We remain committed to doing everything we can to bring healing to those who have suffered greatly and to ensuring that Catholic settings are the safest possible places for all people, but especially for children and vulnerable adults.”

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

August 20, 2019

Six months ago, one of the world’s most senior Catholic officials was sentenced to six years in prison for sexually abusing children. Today, that cleric has had his appeal denied.

We are grateful for this news and hope it brings comfort to survivors of clergy abuse throughout Australia. Denying the appeal mounted by Cardinal George Pell helps send the message that no matter how powerful a person is, they are still subject to the rule of law. It is extremely rare for any church official to see time behind bars and given the crimes he has been convicted of committing, a prison sentence is clearly deserved.

The sentence imposed on Cardinal Pell – a mere six years in prison – was already light, so we are glad that the sentence was not reduced further on appeal. We are grateful to the police and prosecutors in Australia who have been involved with this case since the beginning and hope that today’s news will encourage others who may have experienced abuse at the hands of Cardinal Pell – or any priest, nun, deacon or other church official – to come forward, find help and start healing.

We also call upon all priests, nuns, prelates and other lay people in the church that have witnessed Cardinal Pell’s behavior over his career to follow Pope Francis’ new motu proprio and report any suspicions about abuse they have. And while the Pope’s law only requires internal reporting, we hope that those with information will report to law enforcement as well. Pope Francis’ new law protects whistle-blowers from punishment or retribution, so we hope that whistleblowers will come forward. Where Catholic leaders once sought to cover up abuse in a dangerously misguided attempt to protect the Church, the pope himself has now demanded the opposite.

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LAWRENCE (KS)
Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests

August 20, 2019

They ‘out’ 2 new priests accused of abuse
The clerics are not on the archdiocesan list
But other church officials say their accusers are “credible”
So group launches eastern Kansas ‘outreach drive’ to find more victims

WHAT
Holding signs and childhood photos at a sidewalk news conference, clergy sex abuse victims and their supporters will
–ask the KS archdiocese why these two clerics are not on its list,
–reveal the names of two publicly accused priests who are/were in Lawence but have received virtually no attention here, and
–beg those with information or suspicions about abuse to contact the Kansas Bureau of Investigation
They will also hand out fliers door-to-door near churches listing several other accused priests who work/live or worked/lived in Lawrence.
WHEN
Tuesday, August 20 at 10:45 a.m.
WHERE
Outside St. John the Evangelist Catholic Church, 1234 Kentucky St. (corner of E. 13th) in Lawrence (785 843 0109), where a priest accused of exploiting a vulnerable adult worked

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NASHVILLE (TN)
The Tennessean

August 20, 2019

By Anita Wadhwani

Former Nashville Catholic Bishop Edward Kmiec has been named in a sweeping lawsuit filed in New York by 22 plaintiffs alleging the Diocese of Buffalo systematically covered up sexual abuse of minors by pedophile priests.

Kmiec served as Bishop of the New York diocese between 2004 and 2012. He served as Bishop of the Diocese of Nashville between 1992 and 2004. He is now retired.

Kmiec is one of dozens of Catholic leaders and institutions named in a lawsuit filed last week in state court in Tonawanda, New York.

The lawsuit was filed under anti-racketeering laws — also known as RICO statutes — alleging a conspiracy of “harassing, threatening, extorting, and misleading victims of sexual abuse committed by priests” and of “misleading priests’ victims and the media to prevent reporting or disclosure of sexual misconduct.”

Kmiec is singled out for his role in transferring more than $90 million in assets to protect church holdings from victim claims, according to the lawsuit.

A spokeswoman for the Diocese of Buffalo did not respond to request for comment from Kmiec and the Diocese.

The plaintiffs filed anonymously. The lawsuit came on the first day of a one-time year-long window under New York state law to file civil suits alleging sexual abuse beyond the statute of limitations.

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WASHINGTON (DC)
Ms. Magazine

August 20, 2019

By Carrie N. Baker

For years, child survivors of sexual abuse have been blocked from suing their perpetrators for damages by laws requiring these lawsuits be filed within a short period of time. In New York, survivors had to file by their 21st birthdays.

But in January—after years of fierce opposition from the Catholic Church, insurance companies and the former Republican-led state Senate—the New York State Assembly passed the Child Victims Act, extending the time survivors have to file civil suits against perpetrators until they turn 55 years old. The law opens up a one-year “lookback window,” allowing survivors to file civil actions against perpetrators no matter how long ago the abuse occurred.

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NEW YORK (NY)
Staten Island Advance

August 20, 2019

By Daniel Leddy

New York’s Child Victims Act is well-intended. The sexual abuse of a child is an act of such depravity that it can inflict catastrophic, lifelong damage on an especially vulnerable class of victims. So it’s certainly reasonable that those who commit such atrocities be subject to criminal prosecution and answerable in civil proceedings for compensatory damages.

But – and it’s a huge but – precisely because the sexual abuse of a child is such a heinous act, and an allegation of its commission so damaging to the reputations of those accused, fundamental fairness requires that they be accorded a reasonable opportunity to defend themselves. And therein lies the problem with the Child Victims Act. For far from protecting the due process rights of defendants, the legislation’s dramatically lengthened statute of limitations significantly undermines them.

Its most problematic provision is the creation of a one-year window, which opened last Wednesday, during which any previously time-barred cause of action for child sex abuse can be asserted regardless of how long ago it’s alleged to have occurred. This invites not only questionable claims but cleverly contrived ones, particularly where the individuals cited as abusers are either dead or so incapacitated that they cannot interpose a defense. This, in turn, is extremely prejudicial to the institutions for which they worked or were otherwise affiliated, the real targets of suits under the Child Victims Act. Since these entities are rendered similarly defenseless, the statute effectively gives plaintiffs and their attorneys a license to plunder their treasuries.

Cakewalk to victory

Contrary to a common misconception, a plaintiff need not produce corroborating evidence of claimed abuse. Rather, he can prevail on his word alone, a highly likely outcome in the absence of anyone to challenge the plaintiff’s testimony. It’s this precise cakewalk to victory that has so many lawyers aggressively soliciting cases under the statute.

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TOPEKA (KS)
Capital Journal

August 20, 2019

David Clohessy and Larry Davis stood on a busy Topeka street corner Tuesday for a moment of silence on behalf of people who committed suicide after abused by priests.

“A lot of people who endure this horror don’t survive and end up taking their own lives dealing with the pain,” said Clohessy, representing the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests, also known as SNAP.

Both men had plenty to say, however, across the street from Topeka’s Mater Dei Catholic Church about their belief Archbishop Joseph Naumann, of the Archdiocese of Kansas City in Kansas, hadn’t been proactive enough in reaching out to victims nor in identifying alleged perpetrators involved with Catholic churches.

Evidence of a shortcoming, Davis said, was that the Kansas Bureau of Investigation launched an inquiry of claims of misconduct in four Catholic dioceses in Kansas.

“Because of the lack of proactive behavior on the part of Archbishop Naumann, for the lack of the archdiocese being totally open and truthful, the Kansas Bureau of Investigation is now investigating,” said Davis, of Olathe.

In January, Naumann released a list of 22 clerics against whom substantiated allegations of sexual abuse of a minor. The list reflected acts occurring from the 1940s to 1990s. Of the 22, served as priests of the Kansas City archdiocese. When the list was published, 11 were deceased and seven others had been withdrawn from clerical duties.

“I thank all victims who have courageously come forward with allegations in order to prevent someone else from being victimized, as well as to assist with the progress of their own healing process,” Naumann said.

The KBI’s inquiry of abuse began in February. In July, the attorney general’s office reported the FBI had opened 74 investigations in 33 counties.

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PITTSBURGH (PA)
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

August 20, 2019

By Peter Smith

A Pittsburgh man is suing the Roman Catholic Diocese of Pittsburgh and Holy Family Institute, alleging he was subjected to the “torture” of sexual abuse by two priests when he was a boy living at the Emsworth children’s home in the 1970s.

The lawsuit was filed Aug. 16 in Allegheny County and accuses two priests of sexually molesting him on multiple times.

The lawsuit identifies the alleged perpetrators as the Rev. Larry Smith and a “Father Gerdes.”

Father Smith is a retired diocesan priest. A diocesan statement said as of Tuesday morning, it had not been served with the lawsuit, but it said Father Smith would not engage in public ministry until the diocese could learn more about the allegation. Father Smith “categorically denies the allegation,” the diocese said.

The lawsuit doesn’t give a first name for Father Gerdes but claims he belonged to a religious order, the Spiritans (of the Congregation of the Holy Spirit). However, the order’s Province of the United States says it never had a priest with that or a similar name.

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AUSTRALIA
ABC Radio Melbourne

August 14, 2019

The Catholic Archbishop of Melbourne has said he would rather go to jail than report admissions of child sexual abuse made in the confessional.

A bill which would make it mandatory for priests to report suspected child abuse to authorities, including abuse revealed in the confessional, was introduced to Victoria’s Parliament on Wednesday morning.

The Catholic Church last year formally rejected the notion that clergy should be legally forced to report abuse revealed during confessions.

Interviewed on ABC Radio Melbourne on Wednesday, Archbishop Peter Comensoli said he did not see the principles of mandatory reporting and the seal of confession as being “mutually exclusive”.

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MELBOURNE (AUSTRALIA)
The Guardian

August 19, 2019

By Melissa Davey

Senior Catholic cleric has been in custody in Melbourne since being sentenced in March to six years in prison

On Wednesday the most senior Catholic cleric to be convicted of child sexual abuse, Cardinal George Pell, will find out if his appeal has succeeded and if he will be released from custody.

The 78-year-old has been in Melbourne assessment prison since being sentenced in March to six years in prison for sexually abusing two 13-year-old choirboys in 1996 when he was the archbishop of Melbourne. He was ordered to serve a non-parole period of three years and eight months.

The jurors heard Pell sexually assaulted the two boys after Sunday solemn mass at St Patrick’s Cathedral in Melbourne in the priest’s sacristy. Pell orally raped one of the boys during this incident and indecently assaulted both of them. Pell offended a second time against one of the boys one month later, when he grabbed the boy’s genitals in a church corridor, once more after Sunday solemn mass. He was convicted on four counts of an indecent act with a child under the age of 16 and one count of sexual penetration with a child under the age of 16.

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AUSTRALIA
Australian Associated Press

August 19, 2019

CARDINAL GEORGE PELL’S CAREER

JUNE 8, 1941 – Born in Ballarat, Victoria

DECEMBER 16, 1966 – Ordained a Catholic priest

1971-1972 – Assistant priest Swan Hill parish

1973-1983 – Assistant priest Ballarat East parish

1973 – Shared St Alipius presbytery with Gerald Ridsdale (later revealed as Australia’s worst pedophile priest) and Monsignor William McMahon

1973-1984 – Episcopal Vicar for Education in Diocese of Ballarat; founding member of Catholic Education Commission of Victoria

1981-1984 – Principal of Institute of Catholic Education (now merged with Australian Catholic University)

1984 – Administrator of Bungaree parish

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MELBOURNE (AUSTRALIA)
Associated Press

August 20, 2019

By Rod McGuirk

The most senior Catholic cleric found guilty of sexually abusing children will learn the outcome of his appeal on Wednesday though the verdict still may not be the final word on his convictions for molesting two choirboys in an Australian cathedral more than two decades ago.

The Victoria state Court of Appeal heard arguments from Cardinal George Pell’s lawyers and prosecutors in June. In recognition of the intense public interest, the court is taking the unusual step of livestreaming its judgment on his appeal.

The 78-year-old former Vatican finance minister would walk free if the three judges acquit him of the five convictions. They also could order a retrial, in which case Pell would be released on bail, or they could reject his appeal.

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NEW YORK (NY)
New York Post

August 16, 2019

By Reuven Fenton and Susan Edelman

A Florida man who says he was sexually abused decades ago by two Brooklyn rabbis — one of them accused serial molester Rabbi Joel Kolko — has filed suit under New York’s new Child Victims Act.

Alleged victim Baruch Sandhaus claims the rabbis “would inappropriately touch” his private parts on various occasions between 1978 and 1980, when he was a student at Yeshiva Torah Temimah in Midwood, according to papers filed Friday in Brooklyn Supreme Court.

“Kolko and [Rabbi Joel] Falk exploited their positions of power and trust … with easy access to the then [underage] plaintiff in committing heinous acts of sexual abuse,” the lawsuit contends.

Prior to the passage of the act, which went into effect Wednesday, New York’s statute of limitations resulted in the dismissal of a suit Sandhaus filed in 2006.

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