ABUSE TRACKER

DES MOINES (IA)
KTIV TV

June 3, 2019

Iowa Attorney General Tom Miller has asked for information on records of clergy sexual abuse from all four Catholic dioceses in Iowa.

In the letters sent to the bishops, Miller says his office met with survivors of abuse by clergy, and the survivors urged them to investigate and, quote “bring attention to the injustice they and others have suffered.” Miller’s office wants lists of all priests, deacons, or other clergy who have been deemed as “credibly accused” of sexual abuse by the dioceses. Miller’s office also wants the definition of “credibly accused,” “sexual misconduct” and “sexual abuse.” The attorney general has also requested lists of accused clergy in which the dioceses deemed the accusation “not credible.”

In addition, Miller wants notes from meetings of diocesan boards of review that were convened to consider accusations, the documentation of reports of abuse received by diocesan officials and actions taken, and copies of all settlement agreements that diocesan officials entered into with abuse survivors.

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.

MCALLEN (TX)
KVEO TV

June 3, 2019

By Joanna Guzman

Dallas Police recently executing a search warrant at the Offices of the Catholic Diocese of Dallas, after accusations of sex abuse by priests involving minors spark cover-ups by church officials of the alleged abuse.

Local 23 News spoke to Bishop Daniel Flores about the church’s effort to remain transparent with the local community, after the diocese released the names of accused clergy members earlier this year.

“Well we constantly have a board that reviews any complaint received. We have a call-in number that is 24 hours, and we have a special victim’s assistant who talks to people. It’s a constant sort of review of any complaint whether it’s credible or not credible that come in and then following up with them. Then we have an independent review board that goes over any of those complaints. They’re the ones who look at that, they’re experts in the field.”

According to Bishop Flores, none of the clergymen revealed earlier this year is in active ministry in the Diocese of Brownsville.

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DES MOINES (IA)
Iowa Catholic Conference

June 3, 2019

By Tom Chapman

The Catholic bishops of Iowa are pledging cooperation with the Iowa Attorney General’s request for information to be voluntarily provided regarding clergy sexual abuse. Please see below for the full text of the statement:

“Last week the Iowa Attorney General asked the state’s four Catholic dioceses to submit, by Aug. 1, 2019, documents related to clergy sexual abuse so that his office can provide a credible third-party review of the response made to reports.

Each diocese, in the interest of transparency and accountability, plans to comply with the Attorney General’s request. In fact, most of the information requested is already a matter of public record. Also, the efforts of each diocese to protect minors from clergy sexual abuse have for many years now been subject to an annual credible third-party review.

Our compliance is inspired by the teachings of Jesus and his Catholic Church: that it is right and good to respond to the sin and crime of clergy sexual abuse with sorrow, repentance, amendment of life, and efforts to repair the harm done.

In this regard, if there have been failures in the past, it is not for lack of trying. And after discovering when and where our efforts have fallen short, we will try again; there is no perfection this side of heaven.

It is our hope that the Attorney General will use the resources of his office to protect minors from the scourge of sexual abuse wherever it occurs, and not limit his focus just on the Catholic Church.”

The Catholic bishops of Iowa are Archbishop Michael Jackels of Dubuque; Bishop R. Walker Nickless of Sioux City; Bishop Richard Pates of Des Moines, and Bishop Thomas Zinkula of Davenport.

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ROCHESTER (NY)
Catholic Courier

June 3, 2019

By Mike Latona

For more than a quarter-century, an advisory group in the Diocese of Rochester has played a crucial role in addressing cases of alleged child sexual abuse by clergy.

The Diocesan Review Board, a confidential consultative panel, provides guidance and advice to Bishop Salvatore R. Matano in assessing sexual-abuse allegations and determining whether accused people are suitable to continue in ministry. The board also assists in updating diocesan polices related to handling and preventing sexual abuse.

The board was established by Bishop Emeritus Matthew H. Clark in 1993, nine years before the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops’ Charter for the Protection of Children and Young People made such boards mandatory for all dioceses and eparchies nationwide.

In keeping with provisions of the bishops’ 2002 charter, the current review board primarily comprises laypeople who are not employed by the diocese. These volunteer members have experience and expertise in such areas as law enforcement, child-protective services and the practices of law, psychiatry and psychology. Two priests also sit on the board.

Members of the current Diocesan Review Board are Douglas Nordquist, retired Town of Ogden police chief; James VanBrederode, current Town of Gates police chief; John McIntyre, psychiatry professor at the University of Rochester Medical Center; Robert Napier, a criminal defense lawyer; Teresa Pare, an attorney specializing in family law; Margaret Joynt, a retired child-advocacy lawyer; Jeff Munson, a clinical social worker who works with men who were sexually abused as youths; Father Daniel Condon, diocesan chancellor; and Father Kevin McKenna, rector of Sacred Heart Cathedral and diocesan chancellor from 1991-2001. Assisting the board are attorney Philip Spellane along with Deborah Housel, diocesan victim assistance coordinator.

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ROCHESTER (NY)
Democrat and Chronicle

June 3, 2019

By Maureen Maas-Feary

I didn’t go to Catholic school, though I grew up Catholic and wished I could have attended a special school and worn plaid jumpers.

Our church was the center of our small town. Attending Mass every Sunday provided a secure sense of belonging. Later, I experienced predictable teenage rebellions, complaining about going to church and rejecting religion totally.

In my mid-20s, I started needing the church. I had a joyful wedding at the same church where my parents and older sister were married. That day marked our family’s last huge family occasion. We lost my great aunts first, and then my mom, whose time came way too early. I promised her as she died that I’d have kids and bring them up Catholic. I did my best, prodding my daughters through the same rituals I’d grown up with. They even enrolled in a Catholic high school, my dream realized vicariously.

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WASHINGTON (DC)
National Catholic Register

June 3, 2019

Joan Frawley Desmond

Celebrating his 60th anniversary as a priest with fellow jubilarians in the Archdiocese of Washington, D.C., then-Cardinal Theodore McCarrick received a standing ovation after he affirmed the need for priestly holiness during a May 2018 banquet address, with his successor, Cardinal Donald Wuerl, in attendance.

Yet, by then, both U.S. prelates knew McCarrick was under investigation, following an allegation that he had sexually abused a minor more than 45 years earlier, when he was a priest in New York.

Within five weeks of the jubilee celebrations, Cardinal Timothy Dolan of New York announced that the allegation against McCarrick was “credible and substantiated,” and he was suspended from public ministry.

A second disclosure, issued on the same day by Cardinal Joseph Tobin of Newark, New Jersey, divulged secrets that had long been rumored but never publicly confirmed by Church authorities: “This Archdiocese and the Diocese of Metuchen received three allegations of sexual misconduct with adults decades ago; two of these allegations resulted in settlements.”

A year after the revelations left Catholics stunned and angry, Archbishop Wilton Gregory has succeeded Cardinal Wuerl as the archbishop of Washington, multiple seminaries are under investigation, and the Vatican has issued norms that punish bishops who engaged in sexual misconduct or abuse of power. The U.S. bishops are also poised to approve reforms that will make bishops more accountable.

But Catholics still have not received a formal accounting that explains how McCarrick was able to rise to the highest levels of the Church and communicates which Church officials knew about his harassment of seminarians but said nothing.

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.

SAGINAW (MI)
Saginaw News

June 3, 2019

By Cole Waterman

When police executed search warrants at three Catholic Diocese of Saginaw properties last year during an investigation into claims of sexual abuse of minors, documents show they seized nearly 60 items of evidence.

Among them, located in the bottom drawer of a filing cabinet at diocese headquarters, was a file labeled “victim list.”

That information is contained in search warrant paperwork detailing what police seized during the March 2018 raid. The paperwork was recently unsealed and copies were obtained by MLive and The Saginaw News.

The list of confiscated property shows investigators took 57 items during the search of three locations – former Bishop Joseph R. Cistone’s home at 32 E. Corral Drive in Saginaw Township, the Saginaw Diocese offices at 5800 Weiss St. in Saginaw Township and the rectory at Cathedral of Mary of the Assumption at 615 Hoyt St. in Saginaw.

The items included computers, flash drives, expense accounts, internal memos and boxes containing the personnel files of now-convicted Rev. Robert J. DeLand Jr., three other priests and one deacon. The police paperwork does not explain the contents of the “victim list” file seized by investigators.

The majority of evidence police seized has been turned over to the Michigan Attorney General’s Office, which is currently investigating all seven Catholic dioceses in the state on sex-abuse claims dating to the 1950s.

As part of that investigation, law enforcement in October executed search warrants on each diocese in Saginaw, Detroit, Marquette, Lansing, Kalamazoo, Gaylord, and Grand Rapids.

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WASHINGTON (DC)
Washington Post

June 3, 2019

By Sarah Stankorb

During the fall of 2017, along with the rest of the country, Jules Woodson watched the Me Too movement play out in the media. As women came forward to expose the predatory behavior they’d survived, the Colorado Springs-based flight attendant reflected on a night in 1998, when Andy Savage, the youth pastor at her local church in her hometown of The Woodlands, Tex., offered her a ride home. At some point, Woodson says, Savage passed the turn to her home and drove down a dirt road, where he reached a dead end and switched off the headlights. He unzipped his jeans and asked Woodson, then 17, to perform oral sex. A few minutes later, she says, Savage jumped from the truck, fell to his knees and told Woodson she must take what happened to the grave.

The next day, terrified and traumatized, Woodson told the church’s assistant pastor what happened; she says he asked if she’d “participated.” While Savage continued as youth pastor — even leading a True Love Waits event encouraging youth to abstain from all physical contact, not just from sex — Woodson sank into shame and a deep depression. Although she retained her faith, she eventually left the church.

Twenty years later, Woodson found Savage’s email and sent him a note with the subject line: “Do you remember?” She asked if he recalled the night he was supposed to drive her home — “and instead drove me to a deserted back road and sexually assaulted me?” She signed off with “#metoo.”

When Woodson Googled his name, along with “sex abuse in church” and “youth pastor sex abuse,” she found a blog dedicated to Christian survivor stories called the Wartburg Watch; there, she read a post about an alleged abuse coverup at a church affiliated with Savage’s current church. About a month later, Woodson submitted her own first-person account about her abuse to the Wartburg Watch and a similar Christian survivor blog called Watch Keep. When the blogs simultaneously published her story, Woodson figured that maybe a hundred people would read it — but by that afternoon, the posts had spread enough that Savage responded with a statement. On the website of the Highpoint Church in Memphis — where he worked at the time — Savage described a regretful “sexual incident with a female high school senior” 20 years prior. For his mea culpa at church that Sunday, Savage’s congregation gave him a standing ovation. Within days, Savage responded to Woodson’s email, saying, in part: “I am genuinely sorry for the pain this has caused you and I ask for your forgiveness.”

Woodson soon found herself at the center of a media storm. The hashtag #JusticeForJules bubbled up on Twitter. On a CNN commentator’s radio show, Savage described the incident as an “organic sexual moment.” The New York Times ran a news story the next week and, two months later, a video piece in which Woodson detailed her story. Eleven days after the video came out, Savage resigned from Highpoint Church, acknowledging that his “relationship” with Woodson was “not only immoral, but meets the definition of abuse of power.” The same day, Savage emailed Woodson to again apologize and to say his initial in-church statement and the church’s response were “defensive and self-serving.” (Savage did not respond to my requests for comment.)

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NEW YORK (NY)
Daily Beast

June 3, 2019

By Kelly Weill

Grand Marais is a quiet Minnesota town on the Lake Superior coast. Seth Jeffs is the brother of notorious cult leader Warren Jeffs, and the leader of his own secretive sect. The only thing separating them is a dispute over local wetlands.

Seth Jeffs was a prominent figure in the Fundamentalist Church of the Latter Day Saints, a polygamist sex cult that married off underage girls to adult men. After leader Warren Jeffs was sentenced to life in prison for crimes including raping his 12-year-old “wife,” Seth Jeffs and other FLDS members flitted from state to state establishing new religious compounds and dodging legal action. Now Seth Jeffs is build a new compound in Grand Marais, all while facing a lawsuit from a woman who says he and the FLDS subjected her to ritual sex abuse at 8 years old.

Right now, Grand Marais’ best hope to stop Jeffs is a regulation about construction in the area’s wetlands.

On May 18, approximately 100 Grand Marais residents, nearly a tenth of the town, gathered for a community meeting about their new neighbors. In December, Jeffs secured a permit to build a 5,760-square-foot structure on 40 acres of local land. (Jeffs was unreachable for comment.)

“We wouldn’t be able to tell if anything is going on there,” one local worried during the meeting, according to KARE 11.

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CINCINNATI (OH)
WCPO TV

June 3, 2019

By Paula Christian

A Franklin man accused of driving a church bus into poor neighborhoods in order to meet and sexually victimize young boys faces a jury in U.S. District Court in Cincinnati on Monday.

Jory Leedy, 49, faces three charges of taking boys as young as 9 years old on overnight trips as far away as Florida and Canada, and as close as Kings Island and Crossroads Church, in order to engage in sexual abuse. He faces a possible life sentence if convicted.

The trial before U.S. District Court Judge Timothy Black will last a week. Prosecutors will likely call witnesses from Leedy’s past to allege a pattern of abuse that goes back 20 years, according to court documents.

Leedy became a registered sex offender after a 2002 conviction for gross sexual imposition in Montgomery County involving an 11-year-old boy who he had met through Big Brothers. He served two years in prison, according to court documents.

A decade later Leedy was a volunteer bus driver for Target Dayton Ministries in 2012, transporting residents of poor neighborhoods to church, when he met two brothers, ages 7 and 8, and their mother, according to court documents.

“A few weeks after meeting the family Leedy, got permission from the mother to start taking the victims to his church, Crossroads, located in Cincinnati,” according to a search warrant affidavit from Hamilton County Sheriff’s Department Detective Donald Minnich. “The boys would be picked up every Sunday morning and then dropped off later Sunday evening. Leedy also began taking the victims on trips to the zoo, Kings Island, Reds games and other places for the day.”

Leedy bought the family a car, paid part of the family’s rent, helped the boys enroll in East Dayton Christian School and took the boys on frequent trips to Florida, North Carolina, Georgia and New Jersey, according to Minnich’s affidavit.

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PRESTONSBURG (KY)
Associated Press

June 3, 2019

A Kentucky pastor is accused of trying to set up a threesome with two underage girls.

The Courier Journal reports that 26-year-old Bobby J. Blackburn, pastor of the Elevate Church in Prestonsburg, was arrested last week and charged with using an electronic communication system to get a minor to commit a sex act. WYMT said Blackburn also owns a local Giovanni’s pizza place, which plays Christian music and puts Bible verses on receipts.

An arrest citation says Blackburn’s business employs the girls, one of whom showed officers the sexual messages from Blackburn.

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DUBLIN (IRELAND)
RTE

June 3, 2019

An independent commission set up by the French Catholic Church to look at allegations of sexual abuse by clerics began its work by launching an appeal for witness statements.

France’s Catholic bishops set up the commission last year in response to a number of scandals that shook the church in the country and also worldwide.

It now has the task to shed light on sexual abuse committed by French clerics on minors or vulnerable individuals going right back to the 1950s.

“For the first time in France, an independent institution is going to launch, over the course of a year, an appeal for witness statements about sexual abuse,” said commission president Jean-Marc Sauve.

He has promised that the commission, which is made up of 22 legal professionals, doctors, historians, sociologists and theologians, would deliver its conclusions by the end of 2020.

“It is an important action to be able to give victims psychological or legal help,” he said.

The commission opens after Pope Francis in May passed a landmark new measure to oblige those who know about sex abuse in the Catholic Church to report it to their superiors, a move that could bring countless new cases to light.

Mr Sauve expects thousands of telephone calls to a special hotline, as well as messages to an email address, with victims then offered face-to-face interviews in a later stage.

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NEW YORK (NY)
Daily News

June 2, 2019

By Ella Torres

A Roman Catholic bishop who admitted to knowing about incidents of child sexual abuse but did nothing deemed LGBTQ Pride Month “harmful for children.”

Bishop Thomas Tobin of the Roman Catholic Diocese in Providence, R.I., tweeted Saturday that Catholics should not support or attend events held for Pride Month.

“They promote a culture and encourage activities that are contrary to Catholic faith and morals,” he wrote. “They are especially harmful for children.”

In 2018, Tobin acknowledged that he “became aware of incidents of sexual abuse when they were reported to the diocese” between 1992 and 1996 in Pittsburgh when he was the auxiliary bishop of that city, according to The Providence Journal.

He said, however, that reporting the allegations was not his responsibility.

“My responsibilities as Vicar General and General Secretary of the diocese did not include clergy assignments or clergy misconduct, but rather other administrative duties such as budgets, property, diocesan staff, working with consultative groups, etc. Even as an auxiliary bishop, I was not primarily responsible for clergy issues,” he said in an email statement to the Journal.

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SAULT STE. MARIE (MI)
Associated Press

June 3, 2019

By David Eggert

Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel said Republican-backed cuts to her budget would have a “devastating” impact, limiting the office’s ability to protect consumers, prosecute sexually abusive clergy and look into wrongful convictions.

The general fund reductions proposed by the Senate and House range between 10% and 15%, or $4.2 million to $5.3 million, not including sizable cuts to what are known as restricted funds. They are seen as payback for some of the Democrat’s moves since taking office in January, like reaching a legal settlement to prohibit faith-based adoption agencies that contract with the state from discriminating against LGBT couples.

“The proposed cuts would be devastating to the residents of our state,” Nessel told The Associated Press in an interview this past week at the Detroit Regional Chamber’s Mackinac Policy Conference. “It’s very short-sighted of the Legislature to think that cutting the budget of my office is in some way going to punish me personally for any of my views that I disagree with them on. The fact is it’s going to punish their constituents, and it’s going to be harmful to all our state residents.”

She listed a number of a ways that the funding reductions would hurt, and she said lawmakers may not know that for every $1 allocated to the department, it can generate $10 or more.

The consumer protection division this year has received more than $15 million in settlements that went to the state or to defrauded victims, Nessel said. Her office has intervened to scale back utility rate increases, saving customers.

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NEW YORK (NY)
The Smart Set

June 3, 2019

By James McWilliams

The reasons to be enamored of the late poet Frank Stanford are endless. Stanford, who was born in Mississippi, lived in Memphis, and settled in western Arkansas (as much as he could ever “settle”), became a poet’s poet, a writer whose prolific output never penetrated beyond the small stable of writers and critics who wildly admired him. John Berryman, Alan Dugan, Allen Ginsberg, and Gordon Lish were fans.

Given up by his biological mother at birth (in 1948), adopted by the first single woman authorized to adopt a child in Mississippi (Dorothy Gildart), and a frequent denizen of the levee camps where his later adoptive father (Albert Franklin Stanford in 1952) worked as an engineer, Stanford merged memory and fantasy to develop an iconic style that, as he published routinely throughout the 1970s, is best grasped in his defining The Battlefield Where the Moon Says I Love You. When his editor, Michael Cuddihy, first read this manuscript, he recalled, “It was endless, shot through with brilliant passages echoing Beowulf, Dante, the Troubadours, and others.” Stanford said he started writing it when he was 13.

Perhaps inevitably, though, admiration for Stanford often began with the body. His wife said his eyes were “soft to the point of bovine;” a lover called him “handsome as the sun” (before calling him the biggest liar she’d ever met); a male acquaintance noted “his boundless physical strength.” His friend and publisher Irv Broughton called him “dark and intense.” In photos, “Frankie,” as his niece, Carrie Prycock calls him, kind of smolders. People were naturally drawn to the handsome poet from Arkansas, eager to consume a man whose “hormonal literary excesses” — that’s from the editor of his works Michael Wiegers — always seemed on the verge of flash flooding the reality he transformed.

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BERGEN (NJ)
North Jersey Record

June 3, 2019

By Steve Janoski

Two well-known brothers, living what looked like ordinary lives in their respective hometowns.

One was a proud father and Denville middle school principal who filled his Twitter feed with his students’ accomplishments. The other worked for the family’s long-running South Orange construction business by day and served on a handful of Florham Park municipal boards at night.

But Paul Iantosca, of Randolph, and Mark Iantosca, of Florham Park, apparently hid a black secret that torched their ambitions: An alleged sexual preference for underage boys. Mark, 55, is now serving a seven-year sentence in state prison for sexually abusing a teenage nephew, while Paul, 52, was charged two weeks ago with attempting to sexually abuse a former student in Denville after telling police he arranged on social media to meet the 16-year-old for sex.

Valleyview Middle School principal Paul Iantosca is accused of attempting to sexually assault a former student.
Valleyview Middle School principal Paul Iantosca is accused of attempting to sexually assault a former student. (Photo: Gene Myers/NorthJersey.com)

The arrests, separated by two years, stunned the communities in which they occurred. But experts are not surprised that two men with much to lose appeared so willing to risk it.

“We look at people who are public figures, or in positions of power or in positions of respect and say, ‘Well, how could someone with these issues get to that position?'” said Michael Donahue, a Lawrenceville attorney who represents sexual assault victims. “In reality, every person is different and there are people who have some incredibly dark sides to them.”

Professionals said that in general, childhood trauma contributes heavily to such behavior later in life, but there’s no scientific way to predict who might eventually commit a sex crime against a minor.

Paul Iantosca’s recent arrest comes at a pivotal point in New Jersey’s fight to hold accountable those accused of past sexual abuse. In February, the state’s five Catholic dioceses released the names of 188 priests and deacons credibly accused of sexually abusing childrenover decades, dating back to the 1940s. Three months later, the state passed a law giving child sex abuse victims until the age of 55 to decide whether to sue their abusers — a 35-year extension from the previous statute.

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SPRINGFIELD (MA)
WWLP TV

June 3, 2019

By Jennifer Zarate

The Springfield Diocese has come out to clear the name of a former bishop named in a sexual abuse investigation.

Last September, a victim came forward about his molestation by two now deceased priests — Reverend Edward Authier and Reverend Clarence Forand.

In a newspaper article published earlier this week, the headline read that former Bishop Chistopher Weldon was not listed as ‘credibly accused,’ despite “Diocesan Board’s finding.”

In a statement to 22News, Diocesan Review Board Chairman John Hale said the board would like to clarify “inaccurate” reporting in a May 29 article in the Berkshire Eagle.

Chairman Hale’s statement reads,

“Let me be clear, the Review Board has never found that the late Bishop Christopher Weldon, deceased since 1982, engaged in improper contact with anyone. The complaint reported on in the Eagle article involved sexual misconduct involving two now deceased priests that dates back to the early 1960s with the individual recalling it within the last few years and bringing the complaint to the Review Board in 2018.”

Mark Dupont of Catholic Communications responded, “There was never a claim from this victim of Bishop Welson sexually abusing him. As a matter of fact, the victim in this case specifically said otherwise. What the review board did find was the victim had made credible allegations against two deceased priests of the Diocese.”

Dupont told 22News, the process to determine who is named on the diocese’s online list of “credibly accused clergy” is currently under review. For example, naming those who are accused of sexually abusing a child after they are dead.

“With allegations that come 30, 40, 50 years after the fact we don’t list that clergy member’s name on the list with the understanding that they never had the opportunity to defend their good name,” Dupont explained, saying that’s why former Priest Authier was not listed as “credibly accused.”

Dupont told 22News, it was the victim who alleged that Bishop Weldon had actual knowledge of the abuse or that he should have known because he was present at a gathering where some of the abuse took place.

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AUKLAND (NEW ZEALAND)
One News Now

June 1, 2019

Chris Ledingham can still remember the first time he drove past an Auckland church where he was sexually abused as a seven-year-old Catholic schoolboy decades earlier.

“Quite a few years ago before any of this stuff came out, my younger brother wanted some help buying some carpets to take back to Taranaki,” Chris said.

“And he drove me down to Onehunga – I’d said I’d give him a hand – and we passed that presbytery, and it was like I was being stabbed in the chest with a brick with a knife on it. It really affected me.”

Yesterday, the 66-year-old returned to Our Lady of the Assumption Church for only the second time, to help launch his and his two brothers’ book telling the story of their abuse.

At least his older brother Mike will be there, too.

What Chris didn’t know for decades was that Mike had been abused too, by the same priest, and that Mike found out in the 1980s that the same thing had happened to their younger brother Gerry, all of it in the 1950s and 60s.

“It’s hard to talk about now, but we’ve got the words for it now – back then we didn’t even have the words,” Chris said.

“What do you call it? I didn’t know what the hell was going on.”

Mike said: “We didn’t know that people rooted kids, you know – I don’t know if you can put that on the radio.”

The previously-published Mike is the author of the book The Catholic Boys, helped by his sister Mary Ledingham, and put out by Rotorua’s boutique BMS Books.

The boys’ tormentor, the late Father Frank Green, used gymnastics as a way to get close to children; the New Zealand Herald has reported he was also chair of the New Zealand Gymnastic Council for several years.

Green died in the 1990s, before being held to account.

Their sister Mary Ledingham, one of the writers of the book, still hurts for her brothers.

“As a sister, I and their two other sisters and two other brothers are also angry that we did not protect them and to this day we still feel they have been cheated of their lives by those who should have known better,” she wrote.

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STONEY CREEK (ONTARIO)
Dundas Star News

June 1, 2019

Dundas resident Peter Rosser has published his first book.

Rosser, who spent 37 years in youth ministry with the Catholic Youth Organization, has written “Crimes Against Children,” which he describes as a vision of God as the ultimate conveyor of restorative justice in a thought-provoking drama.

Subtitled “Discord in the After-Life: A Bishop and an Atheist Deny Their Culpability for Abuse and War,” Rosser uses his two central characters as vehicles of his own protests against the Catholic Church’s ongoing sexual abuse scandal and the collateralization of civilians, especially children, in today’s regional wars.

A book launch party is planned for June 26, 1-3 p.m., at Dundas Museum and Archives, 139 Park St. W., Dundas. RSVP to sarahrosser@hotmail.com.

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Open Tabernacle blog

June 1, 2019

By Betty Clermont

In February 2017, posters appeared around Rome denouncing Pope Francis’ “decapitation” of the Knights of Malta. At the heart of the pope’s sacking of the Grand Master is a multi-million dollar donation. WikiLeaks provided critical information about what Vatican officials knew and when they know it.

Of course, the sexual torture of hundreds of thousands of children is the Catholic Church’s worst scandal and, of all pontiffs, Pope Francis is the worst offender from the very first days of his pontificate when he appointed already well-known pedophile-priest-protectors Cardinals George Pell and Francisco Javier Errazuriz to his Council of Cardinals, to his leaving Archbishop Joseph Wesolowski and Fr. Nicola Corradi free men even after being informed of their crimes, to his present protection of Cardinals George Pell, Luis Ladaria Ferrer, Phillipe Barbarin and Ricardo Ezzati and most recently, his “toothless,” PR mandate that priests and nuns report clerical sex abuse to bishops and not the police.

However, the January 2019 release by Wikileaks of confidential documents regarding the Sovereign Order of Malta remind us that Pope Francis is not the moral authority he claims to be in finances either.

The first report that money might be the underlying issue in the pope’s dismissal of Grand Master Fra Matthew Festing, who was “elected for life,” was published on Jan. 7, 2017 by the well-connected Vatican reporter, Edward Pentin writing for the National Catholic Register. He stated that those opposed to Festing and favored by the Pope Francis “have been involved with a very large bequest to the order made by a benefactor resident in France, worth at least 120 million Swiss Francs ($118 million).”

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CARDIFF (WALES)
WalesOnLine.com

June 1, 2019

By Liz Day

“Depravity” is a word that has been used by many of the judges dealing with sexual predators for their horrendous crimes.

Figures released last year suggested the number of registered sex offenders living in Wales was rising rapidly.

The statistics from the Ministry of Justice, Prison and Probation Service showed there were just over 4,700 registered sex offenders living in Wales at the end of March, 2018.

That represents an increase of 60% compared to eight years ago and is the equivalent of one sex offender for every 844 people aged 10 and over.

Here are some of the most shocking sexual offence cases seen in Wales:

Lostprophets singer Ian Watkins was jailed for 29 years for sexually abusing children.

He pleaded guilty in November 2013 to 13 counts of sex abuse – including the attempted rape of a baby.

A judge told him he had “plumbed new depths of depravity”, before jailing him.

He was also given an extended licence of six years, meaning a total sentence of 35 years.

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NEW YORK (NY)
Huffington Post

June 1, 2019

By Mary Papenfuss

Rhode Island Bishop Thomas Tobin admonished Catholics in an inflammatory tweet on Saturday not to support or attend any LGBTQ Pride Month commemorations in June, warning that such events promote a “culture” and “activities” that are “especially harmful for children.”

Joe Lazzerini, president of Rhode Island Pride, said in a statement to The Providence Journal that his organization “respectfully calls on Bishop Tobin to do some self-reflection, as the majority of Catholic Rhode Islanders in this state reject the idea that to be Catholic is to be complicit to intolerance, bigotry, and fear.” He pointed out that many Catholics are members of or strongly support the pride community.

Pride Month is particularly significant this year because it marks the 50th anniversary of the Stonewall Riots in Manhattan, which fueled the gay — and soon LGBTQ — rights movement.

Tobin’s particularly harsh warning stunned many, given the many revelations in recent years of the Catholic Church’s history of child sexual abuse. The U.S. Catholic Church revealed Friday that allegations of child sex abuse by clerics more than doubled to 1,455 in its latest 12-month reporting period, and that spending on victim compensation and child protection efforts topped $300 million.

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BOSTON (MA)
Suffolk Journal

June 1, 2019

By Haley Clegg

One of America’s most distinguished journalists came to Suffolk University to be presented with the Ford Hall Forum’s 2019 First Amendment Award. Martin, or ‘Marty,’ Baron was the former editor of the Boston Globe from 2001 to 2012, and is the current executive editor of the Washington Post.

“The Forum honors you for your powerful, dogged, determined and fearless defense of the First Amendment, one of the greatest constitutional rights in our country,” said Susan Spurlock, the Executive Director of the Form Hall Forum, as she presented Baron with the award.

Following the presentation, Baron sat down for a discussion about journalism with NPR’s Meghna Chakrabarti.

Baron said his passion for journalism began in his childhood home in Tampa, Florida. His parents were both immigrants, which fueled an interest in what was happening both in this country and around the world. Their media habits included reading the local newspaper, receiving their weekly Time Magazine and watching network and local news channels every evening.

Newsrooms under Baron have won a plethora of awards, including 16 Pulitzer Prizes. Six of those were earned while he was the executive editor of the Boston Globe. The Globe was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Public Service in 2003 for its investigation into clergy sex abuse in the Catholic Church.

“The day before I was to start, on that Sunday there was a column by Eileen McNamara, a regular columnist at the Globe and she talked about the case of a particular priest John Geoghan who had been accused of abusing as many as 80 kids, and at the end of the column she pointed out that the lawyer for the plaintiffs had alleged that the Cardinal himself, Cardinal Law, was aware of this abuse and yet re-assigned this particular priest from parish to parish,” said Baron in an interview with The Suffolk Journal.

“At the end of the column she said, ‘the truth may never be known,’ which is like chum to journalists. If you say the truth may never be known, well the truth should be known and we should be going after it,” said Baron.

The story of the Globe’s Spotlight team investigation into the Catholic Church was later portrayed in the Academy Award-winning film “Spotlight.” Baron has seen the film and believes it gave great insight into how journalism is actually practiced.

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SAN FRANCISCO (CA)
KQED Radio

June 1, 2019

By Polly Stryker

An Oakland-based Catholic order for the first time on Friday released its own list of clergy with credible accusations of child sex abuse.

The Franciscans of the Province of St. Barbara’s list contains 50 names involving 122 victims. Some of the accused have been previously reported by advocates or are included in court documents, but at least one has never been reported.

The majority of the abuse occurred between the 1960s and 1980s. Father David Gaa, the order’s leader, said of the 50 names on the list, 27 men have died and 19 have left the Franciscans. Some of those may have died, but Gaa says he does not track brothers who leave the order.

Of the four living credibly accused priests, three are living in California, including Dennis Duffy, whose abuse Gaa says has never been reported until now. Gaa says Duffy, Stephen Kain and Josef Prochnow are living in an elder care facility in California. Gerald Chumik is in a similar facility in Missouri.

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CHICAGO (IL)
Chicago Tribune

June 1, 2019

Meredith Colias-Pete

Months after the Rev. Stephen Muth retired at St. Mary Byzantine Catholic Church in Whiting, superiors put him on administrative leave, removing him from the priesthood.

Church leaders had concluded Muth, 69, received a “recent credible accusation of sexual misconduct involving a vulnerable adult (considered a minor under canon law),” according to a statement dated Oct. 22.

The priest denied the allegation to the Byzantine Catholic Eparchy of Parma, an Eastern rite sect based in Ohio that has churches in several Midwestern states. It is affiliated with the Roman Catholic Church. Muth worked for both after he was ordained.

“Though Father Stephen Muth denies the accusation, Bishop Milan Lach, SJ, having heard from the priest, the Review Board, and the Promoter of Justice, has found the accusation to be credible,” according to the statement.

“A finding that the accusation is credible is not an accusation of guilt,” the church’s statement read. “While on administrative leave, Father Stephen Muth is unable to function in any capacity as a priest anywhere.”

Lach was installed as bishop in June 2018.

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LONDON (ENGLAND)
The Independent

June 1, 2019

By Jacob Stolworthy

A documentary showing secret camera footage of sex abuse victims confronting the priests who molested them has sparked outrage against the Catholic Church in Poland.

Tell No One features several scenes of priests confessing to the abuse on tape and has since inspired the country to move ahead with plans to double jail terms for paedophiles.

As a consequence, those convicted could now face up to 30 years or life imprisonment.

The documentary, which is available to watch on YouTube, has been viewed more than 21 million times. It’s been hailed as “difficult” and “essential” viewing.

One harrowing scene sees a former priest seemingly attempting to justify his abusive behaviour by saying: “If there is no orgasm, there is no sin.”

The National Public Prosecutor’s Office in Poland has confirmed it’s pulled together a team of prosecutors. They will now analyse the cases presented in the documentary.

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BUFFALO (NY)
Buffalo News

June 1, 2019

By Jay Tokasz

The clergy sex abuse scandal is costing the Catholic Diocese of Buffalo more than the $17.5 million paid to childhood victims of abuse through a special compensation program.

Giving at area Catholic parishes is down since last August and is likely to result in a budget shortfall at the diocese and cuts to ministries and services, according to the Rev. Peter J. Karalus, the diocese’s chief operating officer.

“The abuse scandal has had consequences on the financial condition of the diocese beyond the cost of settling claims,” said Karalus, vicar general and moderator of the curia, in a preface to the diocese’s 2018 financial report.

Karalus also warned of “significant financial challenges” facing the diocese, including clergy abuse lawsuits allowed under the Child Victims Act.

A spokeswoman for the diocese said Friday it was too soon for the diocese to discuss bankruptcy protection.

“It is impossible to determine the impact of the cases filed under the CVA until we actually review the filings,” Kathy Spangler, the spokeswoman, said in an email response to several questions from The Buffalo News. “A number of other dioceses have sought the protection of the bankruptcy statutes but it is too early for us to make that determination.”

Under the Child Victims Act, a one-year window opens Aug. 14 for childhood victims of alleged abuse to file lawsuits that previously were barred by time limitations.

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WASHINGTON (DC)
Catholic News Service

June 1, 2019

By Cindy Wooden

Most Catholics have never heard of a “metropolitan archbishop,” even if their archbishop is one.

Designating an archdiocese as a “metropolitan see” is part of an organizational model, borrowed from the Romans, that goes back to the early days of Christianity, said Bishop Juan Ignacio Arrieta, secretary of the Pontifical Council for Legislative Texts.

The term “metropolitan” comes from the Greek words for “mother city,” and, Arrieta said, “as evangelization extended into a certain area,” the original diocese – the “mother” diocese – “became bound to the new dioceses that arose around it.”

Pope Francis’s universal law on dealing with sexual abuse allegations, Vos estis lux mundi (“You are the light of the world”) was released in early May and gives a prominent, investigative role to metropolitan bishops when one of the bishops in his province is accused of sexual abuse, possessing child pornography or covering up an abuse allegation.

At their June meeting, members of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops are scheduled to discuss specifics for implementing a “metropolitan model” of holding bishops accountable.

Francis’s new rules make such a model possible, Arrieta said, because the authority exercised by a metropolitan archbishop had faded over the centuries and had become mostly a vague, generic role of “keeping watch” over the suffragan dioceses surrounding his own.

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Patheos blog

June 1, 2019

By David Gdd

A 71-year-old pastor from Pennsylvania was just charged with multiple child exploitation offenses, including possession of child pornography, and he faces up to 170 years in prison if he’s convicted.

Jerry Zweitzig, the former pastor of Horsham Bible Church in Horsham, was charged with enticing a minor to engage in illicit sexual conduct and possession of child pornography. He faces a minimum term of 15 years if convicted, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of California.

“Child exploitation is a pervasive problem – made more so by the accessibility of the internet and digital media – that demands an aggressive response,” said U.S. Attorney McSwain. “The allegations in this case are particularly disturbing due to the defendant’s history as a spiritual leader in a position of community trust. We stand ready with our federal and local partners to identify and prosecute those who would prey upon minor children.”

McSwain is right. These types of cases are especially interesting because of the nature of religion, and the support communities have for it. People usually trust religious leaders implicitly, and that trust is often abused by predator clergymen.

It’s nice to know that, in this case, the alleged offender has been taken down. It’s actually being taken seriously, according to the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s (ICE) Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) in Philadelphia.

“Crimes against children are disgraceful and unacceptable,” said Marlon V. Miller, special agent in charge of HSI Philadelphia. “HSI will continue working with our partners to aggressively investigate cases in which child predators use the internet to further exploit children within our community, and around the world.”

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

May 31, 2019

America’s bishops have put out today yet another self-report on the church’s on-going abuse and cover up crisis. At this point, no one should trust internal church figures on this horror.

We do agree with Catholic officials on one point: abuse reports are increasing. Bishops claim that this is because a handful of dioceses are announcing victim pay out programs. We believe, however, that the reasons are more complex than one single cause.

Victims are coming forward now because of real progress by secular authorities, as lawmakers are increasingly getting rid of archaic, predator-friendly laws and at least 19 attorneys general have launched investigations. This progress has many survivors feeling hopeful.

We also believe that ongoing revelations about institutional sexual abuse cases – from the #MeToo movement in Hollywood to recent scandals at major universities like Michigan State and Ohio State – are leading more people to become informed about the realities of sexual violence, creating a more welcoming atmosphere for survivors of all kinds to come forward.

At the same time though, we also believe that victims are also speaking up because they’re dismayed by continuing recklessness and cover ups by church officials. Many are feeling disgusted.

Catholic officials continue to disingenuously stress that the offenses themselves happened years ago. But that is no indication that there is less abuse these days, it is just a reflection of a simple reality: very few have the maturity, strength and courage to promptly report being victimized by a trusted adult. Reaching that point takes decades. There always has been and will be many years between when a child is sexually violated and when they come forward later in life.

Everyone acknowledges that false child sex abuse reports are very, very rare, so we are alarmed that church officials have found only three of 26 new allegations involving current children “substantiated.” Sadly, that is eve

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NEW YORK (NY)
First Things

May 31, 2019

Phil Lawler

It is no small thing to call the pope a liar. Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò has done just that, in straightforward language. “What the Pope said about not knowing anything [about Theodore McCarrick’s misconduct] is a lie,” he told LifeSite News.

On the other hand, it is no small thing to claim that an archbishop, a veteran member of the Vatican diplomatic corps, had lied about the pope as part of a political conspiracy to undermine his authority. Such charges have been leveled against Viganò by the pope’s most stalwart public defenders and perhaps—depending on how one interprets some unusually convoluted papal utterances—by the pontiff himself.

Someone is not being forthright here. The unedifying charges and countercharges have aggravated a scandal that already plagues Catholicism, and the faithful have waited far too long for a restoration of confidence that Church leaders are telling the truth.

The conflict between Francis and Viganò became a public matter last summer, when the former papal envoy in Washington reported that the pope had been informed of, and decided to rescind, disciplinary restrictions placed on McCarrick by Pope Benedict XVI. Viganò’s testimony was vigorously contested by the pope’s allies, who said that McCarrick’s ministry had not been restricted, and/or that Francis had not been informed of the restrictions. Francis himself had refused public comment on the matter, until this week.

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LANSING (MI)
Herald Paladium

May 31, 2019

By Julie Swidwa

A Catholic priest from India has been charged with raping a then 15-year-old parishioner when he was serving as a visiting priest in Benton Harbor more than 40 years ago.

According to the Michigan Attorney General’s Office, the girl was a volunteer administrative assistant in the rectory at what was then St. John the Evangelist parish on Columbus Avenue, when the visiting priest allegedly began molesting her.

Fr. Jacob Vellian, 84, is charged with two counts of rape and faces any number of years, up to life in prison, if convicted. He is in Kerala, India, and will be extradited to Michigan to face charges in Berrien County Trial Court, according to the felony complaint.

Vellian is one of five priests who have been charged with a total of 21 counts of criminal sexual conduct following a long investigation by law enforcement from several counties in Michigan. The charges were announced last week by Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel at a news conference in Lansing.

Vellian served as a visiting priest at St. John’s in 1973 and 1974. The church is overseen by the Catholic Diocese of Kalamazoo.

According to charging documents obtained this week from the attorney general’s office, about a month after a 15-year-old female parishioner began volunteering at the rectory, Vellian allegedly began to compliment her, provide gifts, and rub her neck and shoulders.

The girl told police the conduct escalated, and on one occasion, she said he touched her breasts and told her he was praying for her and “trying to fill (her) soul with the Holy Spirit.” The molestation continued and escalated into rape, the complaint alleges.

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MELBOURNE (AUSTRALIA)
The New Daily

May 31, 2019

Victims of sexual abuse can never appeal their sentence. They have to live with the results of abuse for the rest of their lives.

Meanwhile the Catholic Church, with tens of billions of dollars in Australian assets, and tens if not hundreds of millions of dollars in annual Australian tax breaks, still has not fairly compensated victims.

This week convicted child abuser and former head of one of the largest and most wealthy banks in the world, the Vatican Bank, George Pell will appeal his sentence.

Here is a thought: In this week of Pell’s appeal, why not redirect those tax breaks to victims?

Pell has every right to be heard and justice must ensure that his conviction for abusing the two children is fair. Love or hate Pell, justice demands that he not serve time in this case for any other issue of with which he stands accused, but was not before the courts in this case.

This case is not about the larger sins of the Catholic Church, which for years turned its backs on victims and allowed abusing priests to continue their vile crimes.

This case is not about the 7 percent of clergy who, according to the Child Abuse Inquiry, engaged in sexual abuse.

This case is not about the appalling ‘Melbourne Response’ Pell set up which has seen victims under Pell’s control get about 30 percent less than victims in the rest of the country. Even then, the national average was a pitiful $49,000 under the ‘Towards Healing’ program.

This case is not about the $30 billion in assets that the Church has been estimated to own throughout the country.

This case is not about the tens or hundreds of millions of dollars the Church gets in tax breaks on land tax, shops, businesses and other activities.

This case is not about the $39 million that the Melbourne archdiocese paid for its new headquarters, right when it said paying more compensation would threaten the Church’s social programs. I didn’t realise ‘social program’ was a euphemism for ‘buying our new headquarters’.

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NEW YORK (NY)
Commonweal

May 31, 2019

By Austen Ivereigh

Because he has a weak heart and must build strength in his chest muscles, the seventy-seven-year-old Australian cardinal asks for a broom he can push around the jail’s exercise yard each day. The remaining twenty-three hours of his solitary confinement in Melbourne Assessment Prison George Pell reads and writes, when not sleeping and praying. He is not allowed to say Mass.

He tells some that his prison sentence is a retreat; to others he describes it as a martyrdom. Never exactly the contemplative sort—as archbishop of Melbourne, Pell used to tell his priests he liked to get his prayers over and done with in the morning, to leave more time for the day—the second rings more true, especially for his supporters. They say that Pell, who tells it how it is, has always been a lightning rod, and is now a scapegoat, the victim of a monstrous injustice.

The former Vatican finance chief will next week learn whether he is to serve the remainder of a non-parole minimum sentence of three years and eight months for the rape of two choirboys in Melbourne Cathedral in 1996. These are charges that he has always vigorously denied and that many find frankly incredible. They strained the credulity of the first jury at his trial last year, which was reliably rumored to be deadlocked ten to two in his favor.

But then a second jury last December went unanimously the other way, shocking a respected Jesuit human-rights lawyer who sat in on the hearing. Because he is so obviously not part of “Team Pell,” the article Fr. Frank Brennan, SJ, later wrote has colored many people’s view of the trial. His amazement that the jury could have convicted on the basis of a single complainant’s “improbable if not impossible” evidence has persuaded many that a major injustice has been committed.

That was a common view among dozens of knowledgeable Catholics I spoke with during a week of talks and lectures in Sydney and Melbourne in March. Among them was Fr. Brennan. When we shared a panel at Melbourne’s Newman College he had just emerged from his spiritual exercises to learn that, because of his article on Pell’s conviction, the city’s university had decided not to award him an honorary doctorate in divinity.

But I also met Catholics who took a different view. They weren’t concerned so much with the details of the case as with the wider principle: Hadn’t the church learned, after all this time, that victims are almost always telling the truth, that abusers brazenly lie? Some drew my attention to a cogent riposte to Brennan by a Dominican friar in Melbourne who warned against assuming that the jury had got it wrong.

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MACKINAC ISLAND (MI)
Associated Press

June 1, 2019

Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel says Republican-backed cuts to her budget would have a “devastating” impact, limiting the office’s ability to protect consumers, prosecute sexually abusive clergy and look into wrongful convictions.

The general fund reductions proposed by the Senate and House range between 10% and 15%. They are seen as payback for some of the Democrat’s moves since taking office in January, like reaching a legal settlement to prohibit faith-based adoption agencies that contract with the state from discriminating against LGBT couples.

Nessel tells The Associated Press that the proposed cuts are “short-sighted” and would hurt residents. She also is concerned that the Legislature has not allocated money to an investigation of clergy abuse.

Budget work is expected to heat up this month.

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WASHINGTON (DC)
Religion News Service

May 31, 2019

By Jack Jenkins

Breaking with a long tradition of clerical privilege, California is edging toward requiring priests and other church employees to inform authorities if they learn of a case of child sex abuse during the sacrament of confession.

On Thursday (May 31), the California State Senate passed a bill that would require priests to report child abuse if they learn about it while hearing the confession of a fellow priest or colleague. The bill — which passed overwhelmingly with a 30-4 vote, with 4 not voting at all — was amended from its original version, which would have required a priest to report abuse they learn about in any confession they hear, not just those of their fellow clerics and coworkers.

But even the altered version of the bill is sparking outrage among Catholic leaders who see it as forcing priests and other clergy either to comply with the law and violate the sacramental seal of confession or defy authorities and risk arrest.

The California Catholic Conference decried the bill in a statement, describing it as an “attack on the sanctity of the confessional” and noting that under church law, any priest who violates the seal of confession is automatically excommunicated.

In a separate interview with Religion News Service, a spokesperson for the conference argued that the narrowing of the bill only sharpens opponents’ argument that it violates religious freedom provisions and is discriminatory.

“The more you narrow it down, the more unconstitutional it gets,” the spokesperson said.

The spokesperson added that, while Catholic officials won’t prepare any legal challenges before the bill passes in California’s lower chamber, they wouldn’t rule out potential future lawsuits.

“I do find it quite shocking, because it is a blatant violation of the First Amendment,” San Francisco Archbishop Salvatore Cordileone told Relevant Radio. “The whole point of the First Amendment, and one of the foundational principles of this country, was to keep the government out of the church. Here is… the government intruding into the church’s affairs.”

Bishop Michael Barber of the Diocese of Oakland, Calif., also forbade any priests in his region from obeying the bill, which was sponsored by State Senator Jerry Hill, if it becomes law.

“(Y)our right to confess to God and have your sins forgiven in total privacy must be protected,” Barber wrote in a letter released on Tuesday.

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SACRAMENTO (CA)
ABC 10 News

May 27, 2019

By Lilia Luciano

In California, victims of childhood sexual abuse have until they are 26 years old to file lawsuit damages, a statute of limitations that Assemblywoman Lorena González hopes to extend until those victims are 40 years old.

Introduced by González, AB 218 seeks to significantly extend the statute of limitations for victims of childhood sexual abuse.

The bill is exactly the same as the one González (D-San Diego) introduced last year, which passed, but was killed when vetoed by Gov. Jerry Brown. In 2013 Brown also vetoed a Senate bill that sought to eliminate the statute of limitation altogether.

With a new Governor in the state, supporters of AB 218 are hopeful that it will pass and be signed into law by Gov. Gavin Newsom.

The timing of the bill’s passing could coincide with the recent announcement by the Sacramento Catholic Diocese that it will participate in the creation of an Independent Victim Compensation Program for survivors of sexual abuse by clergy.

The fund will be administered by the Washington D.C. based Feinberg Law Firm, which has handled similar programs in New York, Pennsylvania, and Colorado.

In the announcement, the Diocese of Sacramento stated “through their efforts, more than 1,200 victims/survivors have received compensation in New York alone.”

The Sacramento diocese released the names of 46 clergymen credibly accused of abusing 130 victims, but Joe George, the leading attorney in Sacramento representing victims of clergy abuse said about the list, “I think games were played with numbers of victims.”

He added that the Church made it seem like the “overwhelming majority of the number of victims were as a result of three or four Mexican-American and Hispanic perpetrators.”

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ROME (ITALY)
LaCroix International

May 31, 2019

By Robert Mickens

When Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò called on Pope Francis to resign last summer for allegedly covering up the sexual crimes of the former cardinal Theodore McCarrick, it was “like an earthquake for the Church.”

That’s how Monsignor Anthony Figueiredo, a former Vatican official and a longtime consultant for CBS News, described Viganò’s “testimony,” an 11-page dossier of accusations and innuendos that targeted the pope and nearly a dozen high-ranking Vatican prelates. Msgr. Figueiredo, a priest from the Archdiocese of Newark (New Jersey) who has been living in Rome since 2006, immediately defended Viganò’s credibility.

“I know him personally,” he told CBS. “I know him as a man of great integrity, honest to the core. He’s worked for three different popes, and [was] sent to a Vatican position, a diplomatic position as big as the United States, which means he’s a trusted man.

“The very bright and articulate Newark priest vouched for Viganò on Aug. 27, 2018, just one day after the former papal nuncio carefully coordinated with LifeSite News and the National Catholic Register to publish his 11 pages of accusations.

Taking Viganò’s leadNow nine months later Msgr. Figueiredo is back in the news. And how!

Following in the footsteps of his friend or acquaintance, Archbishop Viganò, the 55-year-old priest has become the latest clergyman with a public profile to blow the whistle on Church cover-up in the hierarchy.

He did so this past May 28 when he released – simultaneously through CBS and the Catholic publication, Crux – excerpts of personal correspondence with McCarrick, a man whom (you will see in a moment) he once considered a father figure and patron.

These carefully chosen excerpts reinforce claims made by Viganò and others that a number of high-ranking Church officials were aware that Benedict XVI had quietly placed restrictions on the former cardinal but they did nothing to enforce them.

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ROME (ITALY)
Crux

May 31, 2019

By Elise Harris

A troubled Peruvian lay group has received two new Vatican-appointed representatives to help oversee institutional reform as questions over the group’s identity and stability continue to hang in the air following public scandals involving high-ranking members.

Earlier this month the Vatican Congregation for Institutes of Consecrated Life and Societies of Apostolic Life named Franciscan Father Guillermo Rodríguez as delegate ad nutum Sanctae Sedis, or “at the behest of the Holy See,” to the Sodalitium Christianae Vitae (SCV) to help implement reforms, and Jesuit Father GianFranco Ghirlanda to revamp the group’s formation process.

In 2017 the SCV’s founder, Peruvian layman Luis Fernando Figari, was sanctioned by the Vatican for abuses of power, conscience and sexuality within the community.

In 2018 the Vatican congregation tapped Colombian Bishop Noel Londoño of Jerico to serve as a “commissioner” for the group, essentially taking the reins and guiding the community as they sought to implement their reform.

When the SCV held its fifth general assembly in Aparecida, Brazil in January, Londoño voiced his conviction that his role was no longer needed, and that the SCV could move forward with its own leadership guiding the reform.

During the meeting Londoño also announced that a special Vatican-appointed delegate would be named in the following months to serve as a point of reference with the Vatican to assist the SCV government in continuing to implement changes.

In their roles, Rodríguez will advise SCV leadership on key decisions while Ghirlanda will assist in the revision of the rules guiding the group’s formation process and community life, help to ensure formators are well-prepared for the task, and that new members have the support they need, and develop plans for initial and ongoing formation.

Daniel Caledron, communications representative for the SCV, told Crux that since their nomination is ad nutum Sanctae Sedis, the assignment has no timeline, and for now is “indefinite.”

However, despite the positive review from Londoño, many have voiced skepticism over the depth of the SCV’s reform, with some victims arguing that Londoño’s tenure was ineffective given the fact that he oversees a diocese in Colombia, while the SCV is headquartered in Peru, making it difficult to keep track of the SCV’s progress.

Many victims complained that during his year as commissioner, Londoño never scheduled meetings with them, including those who were former members of the organization and could have offered advice for renewal.

Victims in November 2018 met with the leadership of the Peruvian bishops’ conference and subsequently sent Pope Francis a letter, which Crux obtained, asking him to resolve the situation, saying reform efforts had been poorly handled.

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NEW ORLEANS (LA)
Times-Picayune

May 31, 2019

By Kim Chatelain

Nearly 1,500 new allegations of clerical sexual abuse in the Catholic church were brought forward over a one-year period ending June 30, 2018, a marked rise over previous years, the U.S. bishops’ conference reported Friday (May 31).

The annual report for audit year July 1, 2017 through June 30, 2018 indicates that 1,385 adults came forward with 1,455 new allegations, the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops’ Secretariat of Child and Youth Protection reported in a news release.

Based on the findings of StoneBridge Business Partners, a Rochester, New York, firm that specializes in forensic, internal and compliance audit services, the report indicated that 92 percent of the offending clergy members identified during the annual reporting period were either already dead, laicized, removed from ministry or missing. The majority of allegations concerned the period between 1960-1990, with a concentration in the 1970s, the audit found.

The report is the 16th of its kind since 2002 when the U.S. bishops’ conference approved the Charter for the Protection of Children and Young People, a formal pledge to address the problem of clergy abuse that has rocked the Catholic church over the past several decades. The charter involves programs for background checks, safe environment training, review boards enforcing zero tolerance policies and victims’ assistance efforts.

In his preface to the report, Cardinal Daniel DiNardo, president of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, wrote of his “sincere gratitude” for the courage of victims of abuse.

“Because of their bravery in coming forward, victim/survivor assistance and child protection are now core elements of the Church,” DiNardo wrote. “The Church is a far safer place today than when we launched the charter in 2002.”

The escalation in the number of allegations displayed in the most recent report was attributed to the state-wide adoption of Independent Reconciliation and Compensation Programs by the five dioceses in the state of New York.

Some Catholics call for an outside investigative entity to hold leaders accountable.

Twenty-six new allegations involving current minors were presented during the report’s window, three of which were substantiated and resulted in a priest being removed from active ministry, according to the report. Seven allegations were listed as “unsubstantiated” by the time the report’s window closed.

Three were categorized as “unable to be proven” and investigations were still in progress for six of the allegations as of June 30, 2018. For the remaining seven allegations involving minors, two were referred to a religious order, two were reported as unknown clerics, and three were not claims of sexual abuse, but were boundary violations, according to the news release.

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NEW YORK (NY)
Associated Press

May 31, 2019

Quantifying its vast sex-abuse crisis, the U.S. Roman Catholic Church said Friday that allegations of child sex abuse by clerics more than doubled in its latest 12-month reporting period, and that its spending on victim compensation and child protection surged above $300 million.

During the period from July 1, 2017, to June 30, 2018, 1,385 adults came forward with 1,455 allegations of abuse, according to the annual report of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops’ Secretariat of Child and Youth Protection. That was up from 693 allegations in the previous year. The report attributed much of the increase to a victim compensation program implemented in five dioceses in New York state.

According to the report, Catholic dioceses and religious orders spent $301.6 million during the reporting period on payments to victims, legal fees and child-protection efforts. That was up 14% from the previous year and double the amount spent in the 2014 fiscal year.

The number of allegations is likely to rise further during the current fiscal year, given that Catholic dioceses in New Jersey and Pennsylvania have started large compensation programs in the wake of a scathing Pennsylvania grand jury report released in August. The grand jury identified more than 300 priests in six of the state’s dioceses who have been credibly accused of child sexual abuse committed over many decades.

Since then, attorneys general in numerous states have set up abuse hotlines and launched investigations, and a growing number of dioceses and Catholic religious orders have released names of priests accused of abuse.

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ROME (ITALY)
Catholic News Service

May, 31, 2019

Michele Gentiloni, Henn’s attorney, said his client was taken into custody May 28 after trying to use his expired U.S. passport as identification to pick up some medicine he needed. A spokesman for the Carabinieri, the Italian police force that apprehended Henn, disputed that version of events, claiming instead that the priest had requested assistance at a city-run immigrant assistance center using a false name.

Henn was assigned by the Salvatorian order to serve at St. Mark Parish in Phoenix from 1978 to 1982. He was indicted on sexual abuse charges in 2003 and arrested in Rome in July 2005 after a request but disappeared before he could be extradited to the United States to stand trial.

“The Diocese of Phoenix is pleased to learn that authorities have located and apprehended former Salvatorian priest Joseph Henn in Italy,” said diocesan officials in a statement. “We support the efforts of the Maricopa County Attorney’s Office to extradite Henn and return him to the United States in order to face the criminal charges against him.”

Henn is identified on the Diocese of Phoenix website as a priest who has been removed from ministry due to sexual misconduct with a minor.

He was expelled from his order and removed from the priesthood in 2006 and is currently is in Rome’s Regina Coeli prison awaiting questioning, which must happen by June 3, his attorney told Catholic News Service May 31.

Fr. Jeff Wocken, U.S. provincial of the Salvatorians, confirmed to CNS that Henn had been removed from the order and the priesthood in 2006, and that he had left the Salvatorian headquarters before the extradition order could be carried out.

According to the 2004 annual report for the Maricopa County Attorney’s Office, Henn was charged with 10 counts of child molestation, one count of attempted sexual contact with a minor, one count of attempted child molestation and two counts of sexual conduct with a minor.

Henn had been accused of molesting at least three boys under the age of 15 between 1979 and 1981 when he was living and working in Phoenix.

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WASHINGTON (DC)
Catholic News Agency

May 31, 2019

The U.S. bishops’ conference has released its annual report on the protection of children. The report records an increase in the number of new allegations of clerical sexual abuse being brought forward following the launch of independent compensation programs in some states.

The annual report on Findings and Recommendations on the Implementation of the Charter for the Protection of Children and Young People was released May 31 by the USCCB’s Secretariat for Child and Youth Protection.

Writing in his preface to the report, USCCB president Cardinal Daniel DiNardo said he offered his “sincere gratitude” for the courage of victims of abuse.

“Because of their bravery in coming forward, victim and survivor assistance and child protection are now core elements of the Church.”

The report covers a year-long period ending June 30, 2018 and is the sixteenth report since the implementation of the Dallas Charter and USCCB Essential Norms in 2002.

According to the report, in new complaints lodged during the report’s annual window, 92% of offenders identified were already either dead, laicized, removed from ministry, or missing. The majority of allegations concerned the period between 1960-1990, with a concentration in the 1970s.

In total, 1,385 adults reported 1,455 new allegations between July 31, 2017 and June 30, 2018. The numbers represent a marked rise over the previous reporting period.

The report attributed the escalation to the state-wide adoption of Independent Reconciliation and Compensation Programs by the dioceses of New York. The vast majority of all new cases reported concerned historical instances of abuse.

Twenty-six new allegations involving current minors were presented during the report’s window, three of which were substantiated and resulted in a priest being removed from active ministry. Seven allegations were listed as “unsubstantiated” by the time the report’s window closed, with three more classed as “unable to be proven.”

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.

DENVER (CO)
Catholic News Agency

May 31, 2019

Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY) has said that she disputes Church teaching on the priesthood, sexuality, and abortion.

The Democratic presidential candidate made the comments while discussing her own beliefs in an interview for Iowa Public Radio’s NPR Politics Podcast on Wednesday.

Gillibrand was raised in the Church and said she still “identifies” as a Catholic, even though she attends religious services at non-Catholic churches. The senator said she disagrees with Catholic teaching on “many things,” listing abortion, LGBT issues, and the all-male priesthood as points of dissent.

“I think [the Church] is wrong on those three issues,” said Gilibrand. “And I don’t think they’re supported by the Gospel or the Bible in any way. I just–I don’t see it, and I go to two Bible studies a week. I take my faith really seriously.”

Gillibrand is an outspoken supporter of abortion rights and has a zero percent rating from the National Right to Life Committee on life issues.

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HURON (MI)
Huron Daily Tribune

May 31, 2019

By Bradley Massman

The Archdiocese of Detroit is standing by its decision to remove a priest, who now resides in the Port Austin area, from ministry three years ago.

“The Archdiocese of Detroit … is repulsed by comments attributed to him in recent media reports,” the archdiocese stated in reference to Lawrence Ventline.

Ventline is a priest who has been temporarily removed from the ministry since 2016. He is also currently facing licensing action by Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel’s office.

Earlier this week, Ventline indicated he was going to sue the AG’s office.

“A lawsuit will be filed by week’s end with the finest prosecuting attorney in MI (Michigan) to sue the Catholic axe-grinding same-gender attracted AG Nessel,” Ventline previously stated in an email to the Tribune this week.

“Ventline’s personal attacks against Attorney General Dana Nessel have no place in public discourse,”the archdiocese stated. “In addition, any threat of a lawsuit by him has absolutely no support or involvement from the Detroit archdiocese.”

As of Friday morning, the AG’s office has not received a lawsuit from Ventline, Dan Olsen, a spokesperson for the AG, told the Tribune.

Ventline lashed out at the archdiocese in response to its statement decrying his comments about Nessel.

“AoD (Archdiocese of Detroit) are hellish hypocrites losing Catholics daily who seek Jesus and the truth,” Ventline told the Tribune.

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.

ATLANTA (GA)
Journal-Constitution

May 31, 2019

By Gracie Bonds Staples

There’s a parable about a villager who one day spots a drowning baby and pulls it from a river. The next day, he sees two more and snatches them from the same swift waters. The following day, four babies are caught in the turbulent current. And then eight, then more, and more.

Deborah Richardson, executive director of the International Human Trafficking Institute, retold the story recently to make a point. It’s time, she said, we addressed the root cause of sex trafficking — demand.For far too long, our advocacy and law enforcement efforts have focused on the arrest and prosecution of traffickers, while those who were driving the market demand of exploited children were ignored.

Richardson hopes a new digital billboard campaign her agency launched May 21 will finally do the trick.Having seen those billboards, I don’t see how it couldn’t.

“The Truth in Trafficking,” which will run through June 16, is the brainchild of Legend ad agency CEO Michael Dunn.The billboards, he said, were designed to get into the predator’s mind, deconstruct his motivations and destroy his justifications. He doesn’t see his behavior as destructive but rather transactional. He has blinded himself to the truth, the horrors he creates, the irreparable damage he does to these innocent children who have absolutely no choice — and never have.

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.

BOSTON (MA)
Associated Press

May 31, 2019

A Boston woman who was one of the first people to raise the alarm about a sexually abusive Roman Catholic priest has died.

Maryetta Dussourd was 74.

She died of cancer on May 24, according to her obituary.

The Mann & Rodgers Funeral Home, which is handling arrangements, confirmed the death.

Dussourd told The Boston Globe for a 2002 story that she was stunned when she learned the Rev. John Geoghan was fondling her three sons as well as her niece’s four sons in the late 1970s.

She said she was warned by church officials to keep quiet and told not to sue. Other parishioners shunned her.

The Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests called Dussourd “a hero, plain and simple.”

Geoghan was killed in prison by another inmate in 2003.

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NEWCASTLE (AUSTRALIA)
Herald News

May 31, 2019

By Joanne McCarthy

THE sadistic Hunter Catholic priest whose crimes against children were the catalyst for a royal commission will spend longer in jail after he was convicted of sexually abusing a 59th victim.

John Sidney Denham, 76, left a young boy bleeding and sobbing after dragging him from a Taree Catholic primary school playground to a nearby presbytery and violently sexually assaulting him in the early 1980s.

Denham then silenced the terrified, traumatised boy, 11, with a warning that: “If you tell anyone, anyone at all, you’ll be taken away from your parents, your parents will be thrown out of the church, you will go to hell and maybe be taken away from your parents forever and never see them again, and there will be more trouble.”

Denham denied the crimes during a judge-alone trial in 2018 and said he had no memory of the victim.

It was “an entirely cynical basis upon which to prosecute a defence”, said District Court Judge Phillip Mahony before finding Denham guilty of four offences, including buggery, and rejecting Denham’s claim of remorse.

Denham “has not recognised the pain and suffering caused to the victim of these offences at all”, said Judge Mahony in a decision on Thursday.

He sentenced Denham to a maximum 13 years jail, with a non-parole period of seven years and six months. But because the former Hunter priest is already in jail until at least January, 2028, and the crimes against his 59th victim occurred in the same period he committed other offences, he will spend at least another 18 months in jail for the latest convictions.

His earliest possible release date is July, 2029, with his full sentence not ending until January, 2035 when Denham is 92.

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Pope’s new abuse policy takes effect Saturday

It protects Catholic whistle blowers

Reporting suspected abuse is now everyone’s responsibility

But SNAP urges employees to tell law enforcement first

They call on US Bishops to create a whistleblower “Reward Fund”

WHAT
Holding signs and childhood photos at a sidewalk news conferences, clergy abuse survivors and advocates will urge Church officials to take advantage of Pope Francis’ new whistle blower protections by coming forward to police and prosecutors with any information they have regarding cases of clergy sexual abuse. They will also encourage the formation of a Church-run “reward fund” that will benefit whistle blowers who speak out.

WHEN
Friday, May 31 in Chicago, Washington D.C., and Oakland

WHO
Several clergy sex abuse survivors and supporters who belong to a support group called SNAP, the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests (SNAPnetwork.org)

WHY
This Saturday, the Catholic Church’s first-ever world-wide abuse policy officially takes effect. Outlined by Pope Francis earlier this month, the policy says Church staff must report abuse and are guaranteed whistle blower protection when they do. SNAP wants US bishops to “widely publicize these two new rules” to ensure that employees “know about them and will act on them.”

SNAP also wants the US Catholic hierarchy to start a “whistle blowers reward fund” to give more incentive to Church workers to speak up when they see, suspect or suffer wrongdoing. The group is also appealing to current and former employees to call secular authorities first, not Church supervisors, in these cases.

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PARIS (FRANCE)
LaCroix International

May 31, 2019

The French Senate’s Information Mission on Sexual Offenses against Minors, which was created last autumn following a series of revelations of abuse in the Church, published its report on May 29. Senate president Catherine Deroche (Les Républicains) told La Croix International that silence on these issues has also prevailed in other institutions.

The Senate Information Mission on Sexual Offenses against Minors was created in October 2018 following a call by the magazine, Témoignage chrétien, to launch an independent commission of inquiry into abuse in the Catholic Church.

La Croix: After months of hearings, does the Church appear worse than other social institutions involved with young people?

Catherine Deroche: The Catholic Church has been the epicenter of the revelation movement but the phenomenon of sexual assault against minors exists in many institution, religious and secular.

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

May 31, 2019

By Lise Olsen and Sarah Smith

George Thomas Wade Jr. had been spreading the gospel as a missionary on African training farms and in bush villages for six years when his Southern Baptist supervisors learned a horrifying secret: The supposedly devout man of God was molesting his own daughter.

A supervisor met once privately with the girl, who was attending boarding school in Johannesburg, and later consulted leaders based 7,500 miles away at the Richmond, Va., headquarters of what’s now called the International Mission Board. Wade promised to stop, the supervisor said. His daughter said she was told to forgive Wade and was sworn to secrecy.

No one told Wade’s wife, also a missionary, what he had done, court records show.

His daughter was never again asked about the abuse, which continued, even after she attempted suicide at 15.

“I felt stupid for having told anything to anybody,” she later testified. “The concern was for my father. … It didn’t matter what happened to me.”

The practice of the Southern Baptist mission board — the world’s largest sponsor of Protestant missionaries — has been for years to keep misconduct reports inside the hierarchy of the organization, a Houston Chronicle investigation reveals. The board is a massive charitable organization that as of 2018 fielded more than 3,600 missionaries and “team associates” overseas and managed an annual budget of $158 million or more, nearly all tithes from members of churches that belong to the Southern Baptist Convention.

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PROVIDENCE (RI)
Providence Journal

May 30, 2019

By Katherine Gregg

On the day the House overwhelmingly approved a bill to give victims of childhood sexual abuse more time to sue, Senate leaders served notice they will not support a key feature of the bill that leaves the door ajar for suits based on recovered memories against institutions — such as the Catholic Church and the Boy Scouts — that failed to protect victims from their molesters.

“It looks like the church [has a seat] at the table over in the Senate,” fumed the lead House sponsor, Rep. Carol Hagan McEntee, on Thursday morning, on the day after the Senate Judiciary Committee posted a reworked, and conflicting, version of the bill for a vote on Thursday night.

Several of the past victims of clergy sex abuse — including McEntee’s now-66-year-old sister, Ann Hagan Webb, and Dr. Herbert “Hub” Brennan — raced to the State House in hopes of dissuading the senators from approving what they viewed as a weaker version of the bill that in Brennan’s words “is really a shadow of what needs to be done.”

“It is sacrificing the welfare of children at the altar of the Catholic Church,” Webb told reporters.

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GUAM
Pacific Daily News

May 31, 2019

By Haidee V Eugenio

Prospective buyers can make offers on the former Accion Hotel in Yona up to Aug. 8, which is the eve of a federal court hearing on the Archdiocese of Agana’s ongoing bankruptcy case.

Proceeds of the property sale will go toward paying more than 200 Guam clergy sex abuse claims against the archdiocese, which filed for reorganization bankruptcy protection in January.

The archdiocese, through Idaho-based Attorney Ford Elsaesser, agreed with creditors’ request to extend the purchase period, but told the court on Friday about the risk of losing the cash offers that are already on the table.

2 purchase offers
These are the $5.35 million from TF Investment LLC, and $5.6 million from Dr. Saied Safabakhsh, a nephrologist and owner of dialysis centers on Guam.

TF Investment’s president is Chieng Tan, who is also president of GPPC Inc., which has been a longtime contractor on Guam, Saipan and other parts of Micronesia.

Safabakhsh, known in the community as “Dr. Safa,” intends to turn the former Yona hotel into a clinic, according to real estate broker Alliance Realty LLC.

Both TF Investment and Safabakhsh made an earnest deposit of $100,000 each, and both are ready to close the deal as soon as the federal court approves the sale, Elsaesser said.

Minnesota-based Attorney Edwin Caldie, counsel for the unsecured creditors committee that includes clergy sex abuse survivors, asked the court for a 120-day or four-month period to continue to find buyers for the property for a higher price.

“We do not believe the property was robustly marketed internationally,” Caldie told the court.

The archdiocese listed the Yona property in 2018 for $7.5 million.

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Patheos blog

May 30, 2019

By Mary Pezzulo

I have, on and off, been following the case of the seminarians in the Diocese of Buffalo who were allegedly subjected to sexual harassment and faced a backlash when they went to the press.

Now, another article has come to my attention, about that same seminary and the diocese of Buffalo.

WKBW Buffalo is reporting that the diocese of Buffalo has found three priests guilty of sexual misconduct– and the bishop is returning two of them to active ministry.

Father Joseph C. Gatto was accused of “improper conduct” with adults– please note the plural, “adults” and not one adult, he allegedly made sexual advances at two different men who came to him for counseling and engaged in “sexual activity” with a seminarian– while he was rector of Christ the King seminary and temporarily suspended. He was sent for “treatment” at a facility in Toronto where the diocese has sent sexually abusive priests before. He’s now being returned to active ministry.

Father Samuel T. Giangreco, Junior, was suspended for “a complaint involving a female.” WKBW says that a source tells them that the victim of sexual harassment was a married woman of the parish. He “underwent professional evaluation and remedial measures” as well, and is being returned to ministry.

Father Michael P. Juran was accused of sexually abusing children, and these accusations were “substantiated;” he, at least, will not be allowed back into ministry. But the in the other two cases, the sexual misconduct “did not rise to the level that would require removal from active priestly ministry” in the diocese’s opinion. Those two priests were sent to therapy for a very short time– it must have been short, because Gatto was only suspended in September. And now they’ll be sent back to working with the men, women and children in the Catholic Church.

It feels almost futile to speak out at this point, but then again, I can’t very well remain silent.

Do you know what “remedial therapy” measures have been proven 100% effective to stop sexual abusers from ever abusing again?

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DALLAS (TX)
NBCDFW TV

May 29, 2019

New court records detail the records seized about alleged sexual misconduct in raids earlier this month at three Dallas Catholic Diocese locations.

The May 15 raids at the Diocese headquarters at 3725 Blackburn Street, St. Cecelia Church in Oak Cliff and a storage locker on Ledbetter Drive in Southern Dallas were authorized in a search warrant affidavit from Dallas Police Detective David Clark, signed by Judge Brandon Birmingham.

The new evidence inventory includes electronic and paper records, financial, insurance and lawsuit information. Documents concerning deceased Bishops Thomas Tschoepe and Charles Grahmann are mentioned.

The search warrant affidavit said police were seeking records concerning accusations about five former priests including Edmundo Paredes who served at St. Cecelia, but is believed to have left the country.

Attorney Sergio Aleman who has sued the Diocese on behalf of alleged victims of Paredes said some of the seized evidence concerns his case and he could not comment on specific details of the evidence.

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NAIROBI (KENYA)
Catholic News Service

May 30, 2019

By Francis Njuguna

Catholic bishops of East Africa have introduced a handbook to assist church leaders develop standards to safeguard the safety of children.

Titled “Child Safeguarding – Standards and Guidelines: A Catholic Guide for Policy Development” was introduced May 29 in the Kenyan capital May 29 by the Association of Member Episcopal Conferences in Eastern Africa, known as AMECEA.

The release followed a three-day child safety seminar May 28-30 attended by bishops, clergy, religious men and women and laypeople working in various ministries.

George Thuku, AMECEA’s child protection officer, said the handbook is expected to be used by each national bishops’ conference throughout the region as they establish their own safeguarding policies.

“Each of the national episcopal conferences should ensure that it has officially launched its national policy on the issue, child safeguarding,” Thuku said.

Father Emmanuel Chimombo, director of AMECEA’s Pastoral Department, explained that the handbook sets the minimum requirements for individual bishops’ conferences to follow.

“The document is not everything, but has a minimum standards and guidelines that the church in the region can effectively use to tackle matters pertaining to the child safeguarding and protection,” he said.

The handbook includes guidelines on funding the establishment and implementation of child protection policies.

“There should be other avenues through which the issue (of) child safeguarding and protection could equally be tackled under some of the already existing policies within the church structure,” Thuku said during the handbook’s introduction.

Afterward, the release, Archbishop Ignatius Chama of Kasama, Zambia, told Catholic News Service that the handbook builds on the discussions by the heads of the world’s bishops’ conferences during the Vatican summit on child protection in February.

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NEW YORK (NY)
Slate Magazine

May 30, 2019

By Lili Loofbourow

I started compiling a list of sexual assailants who got no prison time almost by accident. Twitter makes it easy: You stumble across a case where a man in Anchorage, Alaska, spent no time behind bars for strangling to unconsciousness a woman he masturbated on. You tweet it. Then you read about the Texas doctor who went free after assaulting a patient while she was sedated. You note similarities. Then you read about the high school girl who reported her rape immediately, to no avail—police never even spoke to the alleged attackers. You tack one story like this onto the other, you thread them, and suddenly you have a string of anecdotes that, without much system or method, seems to describe an America disinclined to punish sexual assault. It’s a list that leaves most people who read it terribly angry, including me.

But—and this is maybe the surprising thing—that anger started bugging me. Not because anger isn’t warranted, but because my list a) inflames it and b) seems to imply that the solutions are simple and obvious when they aren’t. Worse still, there’s something almost involuntary about the response: It’s hard not to rage at this collection of facts I’ve strung together. Especially if they’re taken in conjunction with the ongoing evidence of our broken criminal justice system. It’s just so easy to make comparisons: A rapist got no jail time, but a homeless man was sentenced to three to six years for attempting to buy toothpaste and food with a counterfeit $20 bill. Sit back and watch the retweets flow.

The trouble with the anger that a thread like mine provokes—which is ostensibly just pointing out the ways we fail to punish rape—is that it twists all too easily into a call for more punishment. Lists have a rhetoric. They tend asymptotically toward specific arguments, and the implication of mine gave me pause. We know what lies down that road because we’ve tried it: Stricter sentencing guidelines, for instance, always hit minorities and disadvantaged people first and hardest. If anger is an engine, the risk is always that even with good intentions it will power bad outcomes—especially when that anger feels justified by facts. My list represents a set of perfectly true facts. But it gives the impression that those facts are all you need to know about how our society deals with sexual crimes. The thread isn’t properly contextualized. It’s just a string of rage-inducing anecdotes, a random compilation of upsetting incidents that came to my attention precisely because they were scandalous. On its own, in other words, the list isn’t proof of anything.

But when it comes to sexual assault, ditching emotion and sticking to facts isn’t as easy as it sounds, for the simple reason that feelings have already clouded what we can know. Sympathy and suspicion—for suspects and victims, respectively—factor powerfully into every aspect of how law enforcement deals with sexual crimes, fogging up the numbers or erasing them altogether. When you look for facts, what you find is that the few we have are woefully insufficient. Sexual assault is massively underreported, and even when victims come forward, convictions are rare. According to RAINN, only 5 out of every 1,000 rapes committed—that’s 0.5 percent—ends in a felony conviction. The Washington Post puts the figure at 7 out of 1,000, but pretty much everyone agrees it’s under 1 percent. We usually try to make sense of this painfully low number by noting that many rapes aren’t reported, which is true, but the crime is also notoriously under-investigated.

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VIRGINIA BEACH (VA)
Christian Broadcast Network

May 30, 2019

For the first time in 30 years, membership with Southern Baptist Churches is at a record low.

New numbers from Southern Baptist Churches show that membership fell from approximately 15 million to 14.8 million in 2018. This is the first time in 30 years that it’s been below 15 million.

The denomination will hold its annual meeting in Birmingham, Alabama in two weeks where the decline will be discussed. Other talking points at the convention will be abuse, racism and women in the church.

President of the Southern Baptists’ Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission Dr. Russell Moore confirmed that membership decline has been a steady issue.

“This is a problem that is long running. It has to do with a number of things. One of those things has to do with secularization and the outside society, but more than that is the issue within the church. Both in terms of fervency for evangelism and also in terms of moral credibility,” he said, referring to recent sex abuse scandals in the church.

Southern Baptists launched a task force last year to study sexual abuse within the church. Dr. Moore said they’ve begun making successful strides in this area.

“The advisory study group has been working all year. They have really been working very hard and will be bringing a series of recommendations to the convention. This is the beginning of what really has to be year after year after year of vigilance and reform when it comes to these issues.”

Dr. Moore agreed that the SBC should take steps to actively remove churches that respond poorly to abuse disclosures. When combating racism, he talked about unity and fellowship.

“I am hoping for, at the annual meaning, continued emphasis on what Jesus has taught us on what His kingdom is to look like, which is a kingdom of people tearing down carnal divisions loving each other and also standing up for one another and bearing one another’s burdens, and so I am hoping that that will be the tenor of this year’s meeting as well.”

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.

GUAM
Pacific Daily News

May 31, 2019

By Haidee Eugenio

The Archdiocese of Agana received a second offer to buy its Yona property for $5.6 million, higher than the initial offer they received, documents filed in the federal bankruptcy court shows.

Proceeds of the sale of the former Accion Hotel will help the archdiocese pay more than 200 Guam clergy sex abuse claims.

The archdiocese listed the property in 2018 for $7.5 million.

The archdiocese in January sought bankruptcy protection to keep its churches, schools, soup kitchen and other social services open while at the same time be able to settle the abuse claims.

The archdiocese received a May 15 offer from Saied Safabakhsh to buy the former Accion Hotel.

Safabakhsh, a medical doctor who owns dialysis centers on Guam, made an earnest deposit of $100,000 for the proposed purchase.

Previously, TF Investment LLC offered to buy the same property for a revised price of $5.35 million. TF Investment’s president is Chieng Tan, who is also president of GPPC Inc., which has been a longtime contractor on Guam, Saipan and other parts of Micronesia.

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

May 30, 2019

One of the most notorious and prolific US predator priests has pled guilty today to more child sex crimes and faces sentencing soon. He worked in Chicago and St. Louis areas and elsewhere.

We are relieved that Fr. Fred Lenczycki’s brave victims won’t have to endure a trial. We remain deeply grateful to and impressed by the two St. Louis men who stuck their necks out so that others will not have to worry about Fr. Lenczycki being around children or vulnerable adults in the future. Their willingness to come forward has likely spared others from the horrific pain of sexual abuse.

For the safety of children, we hope Fr. Lenczycki gets the longest possible sentence.

And while Fr. Lenczycki has now been convicted, we hope that others who saw, suspected or suffered Fr. Lenczycki’s crimes will avoid the temptation to stay silent. Every time a survivor, witness or whistleblower finds the courage to speak up, more of the truth is revealed, and informed communities are better able to safeguard the vulnerable.

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 Abusedd by Priests

May 30, 2019

A brave, persistent Catholic mom who tried diligently to protect others from Boston’s most notorious predator priest has passed away. Seven boys in her extended family were molested by the cleric, Fr. John Geoghan.

Maryetta Dussourd is a hero, plain and simple. Long before anyone had heard the phrases ‘pedophile priests’ or ‘child molesting clerics’ or ‘church abuse crisis,’ she worked long and hard to warn others about dangerous men like Fr. Geoghan.

We extend our deepest condolences to her loved ones. We hope they take comfort in the fact that Maryetta led the kind of life she read about in the Bible and heard about in church – one of compassion, love and sacrifice and one that the rest of us can admire and try to emulate.

We are very glad Maryetta lived long enough to see attorneys general across the US investigating dioceses, see Vatican officials finally take at least minimal steps and – most important – see thousands of survivors of pedophile priests be believed as they came forward to expose their abusers, thereby making our society and her church safer for all.

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.

COLUMBUS (OH)
Columbus Dispatch

May 30, 2019

By Danae King

The Roman Catholic Diocese of Columbus has added four names to its website list of priests credibly accused of sexual abuse of minors.

The list was initially released on March 1 with 34 names on it. On March 5, the diocese added two more names.

The four names added May 23 were the late Rev. Walter H. Horan, also known as Walter Hubert Maria Horan; the Rev. Stephan L. Johnson, also known as Stephan Leslie Johnson; the late Rev. Francis M. Sweeney, also known as Francis Michael Sweeney; and the late Rev. John J. Walsh.

All are names the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests (SNAP) has previously called on the diocese to add, saying they were made public before the diocese’s original list came out.

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

ST. LOUIS (MO)
Associated Press

The man who became the first U.S. priest to be labeled sexually violent for crimes in Illinois has admitting abusing two boys in Missouri.

Fred Lenczycki pleaded guilty Wednesday to two counts of sodomy for crimes that occurred in the early 1990s, when he was serving at a parish in north St. Louis County. Church and court files show that Lenczycki admitted abusing up to 30 boys in Illinois, Missouri and California over 25 years.

Lenczycki, now 74 and living in suburban Chicago, admitted in the latest case to grabbing the genitals of one boy and trying to force the other to expose himself. The crimes occurred from 1991 to 1994.

Lenczycki was charged in February, and he is scheduled to be sentenced in August.

One of the Missouri victims, 38-year-old Ron Kanady, said Thursday that the guilty plea was vindication.”I am so relieved that justice finally didn’t give up on me,” Kanady told The Associated Press. “For all those years, people looked the other way, it felt like. And now, finally, something’s being done.”

Lenczycki was removed from the ministry in 2002, when he was charged with sexually abusing three boys in the 1980s at a church in Hinsdale, Illinois. The Illinois victims told authorities “Father Fred” repeatedly molested them, often using the pretense of swaddling them in “Baby Jesus” costumes for pageants that never took place.

He pleaded guilty in 2004 and was sentenced to five years in prison. In 2008, a year before his release, he became the first U.S. priest to be labeled sexually violent when he was committed under Illinois’ Sexually Violent Persons Commitment Act.Lenczycki’s attorney, Matthew Radefeld, declined comment.

Victims of clergy sexual abuse have demanded more accountability and transparency from the Catholic church since last year, when a Pennsylvania report detailed seven decades of child sexual abuse by more than 300 predator priests. The Vatican convened a sexual abuse summit in February to hear the testimony of several victims.In addition to the criminal cases, Lenczycki is named in several lawsuits.

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.

ULTIMO (AUSTRALIAN)
Australian Broadcasting Company

May 30, 2019

By Louise Milligan

As Australia’s five-year Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Abuse drew to a close in 2017, it felt as if the winds of change were blowing through the Catholic Church.

Five Australian bishops stood up in the commission courtroom and made a public and historic act of contrition for its terrible history of clergy abuse.

Archbishop of Sydney Anthony Fisher described the response of the church to allegations of child sex abuse as “criminally negligent”, Archbishop Mark Coleridge of Brisbane said the defence of the church made the clergy “blind to individuals” and Archbishop Denis Hart of Melbourne said, “[Archbishops] just didn’t drill down to the reality … They just sort of floated above it”.

“The way we act now is very, very different,” said Archbishop Hart, who has since retired.

Fast forward two years, in the Supreme Court of Victoria in the case of JCB v Bishop Paul Bird for the Diocese of Ballarat, and you might question that last claim.

Here were lawyers for the very same Catholic Church launching a defence which rejected some of the royal commission’s key findings in relation to one of its most notorious paedophile priests.

The many good Catholics who espouse Christian values of decency and kindness and social justice might question the expenditure of the proceeds of their collective collection plates to mount that defence.

The case refers to one Gerald Ridsdale — not just Australia’s most prolific paedophile priest, but one of the country’s worst paedophiles full stop — and the knowledge of his offending by the then-bishop of Ballarat, the now-deceased Ronald Mulkearns.

Lawyers for the church in the case minimised Mulkearns’ knowledge of Ridsdale’s prior offending in 1982, when the victim, JCB, was anally raped at the age of nine in Mortlake, a tiny town in Victoria’s western district.

Internal church documents tendered to the commission suggested every boy in one class at the Mortlake parish school, St Colman’s, was abused.

Ridsdale himself told Catholic Church insurers he “went haywire there. Altar boys, mainly”.

“Mortlake imploded over the Ridsdale saga,” Broken Rites advocate Dr Wayne Chamley told me.

“The whole family networks just started tearing themselves apart over what happened — the shocking tragedy in that town.”

In a pre-trial judgment in the JCB v Bishop Bird case before the courts now, Justice Michael McDonald alluded to the church seeking to wind back what Mulkearns knew about Ridsdale before he allowed this tragedy to occur.

“By their defence, the defendants have put in issue the extent of Mulkearns’ knowledge of Ridsdale’s inappropriate sexual behaviour with minors prior to Ridsdale’s appointment at Mortlake,” Justice McDonald wrote in the judgement.

The judge pointed out that in doing so, they contradict the church’s own submissions to the royal commission via its Truth Justice and Healing Commission.

This is an astonishing claim given that from 1993, the church’s own insurers would not indemnify for claims past 1975 because of the knowledge that the Ballarat Diocese had of Ridsdale’s offending.

This case is historic because it is the first case in Victoria since the State Government eliminated what was known as “The Ellis Defence” — the controversial precedent that the Catholic Church had no legal personality and therefore could not be sued.

It’s high stakes and the Diocese of Ballarat, just as it did before the royal commission exposed its terrible history, is strenuously defending the case.

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.

HURON (MI)
Huron Daily Tribune

May 28, 2019

By Bradley Massman

A priest who has been temporarily removed from the ministry since 2016, and currently resides in Port Austin, has indicated he wants to sue Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel.

“A lawsuit will be filed by week’s end with the finest prosecuting attorney in MI (Michigan) to sue the Catholic axe-grinding same-gender attracted AG Nessel,” Lawrence Ventline stated in an email CC’d to the Tribune on Tuesday.

Ventline, who resides in the Port Austin area, is currently facing licensing action by Nessel’s office.

Nessel, on Friday, said Ventline allegedly sexually assaulted a Michigan resident, and is still actively counseling children.

The sexual assault investigation was conducted by Oakland County Sheriff’s Office.

The Tribune contacted the Oakland County Sheriff’s Office on Friday for more information on the incident after speaking with Ventline, who continuously said his case was dismissed in Oakland.

A sergeant with the sheriff’s office told the Tribune that Ventline’s case was “still pending further investigation.”

However, on Tuesday, Oakland County Sheriff’s Lt. Dan Toth, told the Tribune that is not the case.

“If that’s an error on our part, we apologize for that,” Toth said, adding the case is closed.

“The bottom line with us is we opened up an investigation in 2016,” he added. “It was closed in early 2017, and we cannot substantiate the allegation. We can’t unsubstantiate it.”

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

PORT AUSTIN (MI)
Saginaw News

May 30, 2019

By Cole Waterman

A Catholic priest restricted from religious work by the Archdiocese of Detroit based on a sexual assault allegation said he plans to sue Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel for suspending his counseling license, a newspaper reports.

Nessel on Friday, May 24, announced she was charging five priests who once ministered throughout the state with a total of 21 counts of criminal sexual conduct. She also stated her office was suspending Lawrence M. Ventline’s license to practice as a limited-license counselor.

In a May 15 order of summary suspension, Nessel alleges Ventline sexually assaulted an 11-year-old boy during the 1989-1990 school year, when Ventline was a pastor in a parish and school within the Archdiocese of Detroit.

Kelly Rossman-McKinney, communications director for the Attorney General’s Office, told MLive/The Saginaw News Nessel could not criminally charge Ventline due to the statute of limitations running out. The case had been investigated by Oakland County Sheriff’s Office personnel.

Ventline is now 70 and lives in the Port Austin area of Huron County.

The Huron Daily Tribune reports it received a copy of an email from Ventline after Nessel’s announcement, in which he claims he will file a lawsuit to sue the “Catholic axe-grinding same-gender attracted AG Nessel.”

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

BUFFALO (NY)
Buffalo News

May 30, 2019

By Jay Tokasz

Allegations of child sexual abuse against the Rev. Michael P. Juran were substantiated by Buffalo Diocese Bishop Richard J. Malone after an investigation, and Juran will remain on administrative leave while the Vatican reviews the decision, Malone said Thursday morning.

An allegation of child sex abuse against the Rev. Robert M. Yetter was not substantiated, but Yetter will remain on administrative leave as the diocese continues to investigate allegations of adult sexual abuse by the former pastor of St. Mary Church in Swormville.

Two other priests who have been on leave since last fall due to complaints of misconduct with adults will be returned to ministry, said Malone.

A Diocesan Review Board found that improper conduct by the Rev. Joseph C. Gatto, former president-rector of Christ the King Seminary in East Aurora, and the Rev. Samuel T. Giangreco Jr., associate pastor of Our Lady of Victory Basilica, did not rise to the level that would require removal from active ministry, Malone said.

Gatto, 61, who was suspended in September, said in an interview with The News at the time that he made no sexual advances on anyone, after a television station reported that a local man had accused him of improper advances in 2000.

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.

BAKERSFIELD (CA)
The Californian

May 30, 2019

By Joseph Luiz

The founder and president of a national Catholic advocacy group vowed Wednesday to get to the bottom of the allegations made against Monsignor Craig Harrison.

Stephen G. Brady of the Roman Catholic Faithful — a group whose self-professed goal is to rid the church of clerical corruption — said he is in the process of going through his old files hoping to uncover information that could be useful in his investigation into Harrison’s alleged misconduct.

He said he also plans to work with local law enforcement and track down leads provided by alleged victims in the hopes that he will get to the bottom of the situation.

“I’m going to dig and I’m not going to stop digging,” he said at a press conference held at the Holiday Inn & Suites in Bakersfield. “One way or another, we’re going to prove Father Harrison’s innocence or guilt.”

Harrison’s attorney, Kyle Humphrey, said today’s press conference perpetuates unfounded allegations.

“These are the same unsubstantiated lies (he’s) been pushing since 2004. There’s no new information here,” he said. “He’s just raising his fists in protest.”

The conference was held after Brady provided The Californian and other news agencies letters from the early 2000s that he recovered detailing allegations that Harrison had sex with two high school students while he was a pastor in Firebaugh.

According to the documents, Harrison would also examine boys’ private parts every morning to check whether they were using drugs.

The accusations surfaced as part of an unrelated investigation conducted in 2004 by a retired FBI agent in Merced.

Brady said he feels Harrison’s family knows more than they’re letting on about the allegations, as two of the alleged incidents took place in the bedroom of one of Harrison’s adopted sons.

In the other case, in which Harrison allegedly had sex with a minor in the back of the priest’s Ford Explorer, the accuser specifically mentions being on a high school football team with Harrison’s son Herculano.

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.

SAN JOSE (CA)
Bay Area News Group

May 30, 2019

Re: “Should California force priests to report child-molestation confessions?” (Mercurynews.com, May 26)

I support the bill that would require priests to report. This bill is under fire due to the arguments surrounding religious freedom, however, this bill does not infringe on any religious rights.

The purpose of it is purely to protect children who are being abused by people who confess the act without any repercussions. The Senate passed a bill that requires that clergy will have to report sexual abuse when they hear it in confession. Before, clergy would hear confessions and were not legally responsible for reporting it.

It is important the bill passed because, similar to teachers, church clergy are community members who victims and abusers trust and come to when they need help. And since teachers are responsible to report sexual abuse, why shouldn’t church clergy?

Madeline Glynn
San Jose

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.

Patheos blog

May 30, 2019

By Libby Anne

Two stories came across my radar earlier this month. Each dealt with different aspects of what the Catholic Church is (and is not) doing on preventing child sexual abuse. The upshot is this: the Church is still dragging its heals. Preventing child sexual abuse and holding abusers accountable is simply not on the top of their priority list. Instead, they’re prioritizing things like protecting the Church from local hostility, and ensuring that penitents have access to confession and the forgiveness it brings, without having to face legal consequences for their actions.

First, there was this article:

Pope Francis issues groundbreaking law requiring priests, nuns to report sex abuse, cover-up

The law mandates that the world’s 415,000 Catholic priests and 660,000 religious sisters inform church authorities when they have “well-founded motives to believe” abuse has occurred.

This is good, right? Well, sort of. The problem is that this new regulation still does not require priests to report sexual abuse (including sexual abuse of children) to local law enforcement. No, really. Have a look:

The law doesn’t require them to report to police. The Vatican has long argued that doing so could endanger the church in places where Catholics are a persecuted minority. But it does for the first time put into universal church law that they must obey civil reporting requirements where they live, and that their obligation to report to the church in no way interferes with that.

Reporting child sexual abuse … could endanger the church? This logic seems suspect to me. Maybe don’t abuse children if you’re worried that civil authorities will be angry with you for abusing children.

The regulation says that the priests and other Catholic Church employees must obey civil reporting requirements where they’re located. Okay. However, many countries don’t have mandatory reporting laws. Additionally, it seems odd to me that one universal organization could have such different rules on something like reporting child sexual abuse. Isn’t part of the point that you can walk into any Catholic Church in the world and find the same prayers, the same rituals, the same format and structure? Why not have something universal here, as well?

Look, I’m glad that priests and nuns will now be required to report suspicions of abuse to church authorities. But I don’t for a minute trust those authorities to do the right thing with that information.

Case in point, the next article. This is an article in a Catholic newspaper. It’s written by Bishop Robert Barron of the Archdiocese of Los Angeles. Barron is upset about a bill before the legislature in California.

SB 360, a piece of proposed legislation currently making its way through the California state senate, should alarm not only every Catholic in the country, but indeed the adepts of any religion. In California, as in almost every other state, clergy members (along with a variety of other professionals, including physicians, social workers, teachers, and therapists) are mandated reporters — which is to say, they are legally required to report any case of suspected child abuse or neglect to law enforcement. However, California clergy who come by this knowledge in the context of “penitential communication” are currently exempted from the requirement. SB 360 would remove the exemption.

Oh lord. Seriously.

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.

Friendly Atheist blog

May 30, 2019

By Hemant Mehta

It’s not just Catholic priests who molest children. Catholic nuns do it too.

Trish Cahill tells NPR’s Laura Benshoff in a piece today that she was just 15 when a nun invited her to her home — and the teenager was thrilled to have that opportunity and attention. That only lasted a short while.

… during an outing to a house at the Jersey shore, Cahill said the nun gave her tea laced with intoxicants.

“She took me into the bedroom and I passed out,” said Cahill. “I was not conscious. I was not able to make a decision.” She said this was the first time the religious sister sexually assaulted her, and the start of an abusive dynamic that would last for more than a decade.

The website Bishop Accountability says there are about 100 nuns with credible allegations of abuse against them. They may be even more difficult to prosecute, though, because in addition to all the obstacles that exist for survivors of abuse from priests, women aren’t seen as abusers in general and nuns, specifically, are usually out of the media glare that now accompanies abusive priests. And if the survivors are girls, they run the risk of being shamed for taking part in a “lesbian” relationship (even though it wasn’t a relationship or consensual).

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

May 30, 2019

The Archdiocese of Washington DC has completed a review of disgraced Cardinal Theodore McCarrick’s personal correspondence and forwarded the results to Rome, according to a Catholic news source. Now we call on newly-installed DC Archbishop Wilton Gregory to immediately make this review public.

What better way to prove to his parishioners and the public that he is committed to transparency? Some of this correspondence has already been made public by Monsignor Anthony J. Figueiredo, so it should be easy for Archbishop Gregory to do the same. The Archbishop has long talked the talk of openness about abuse. Now it is time for him to walk the walk.

The sooner every person who saw, suspected or suffered wrongdoing by the former Cardinal comes forward, the closer we will be to knowing the truth about every person who ignored or hid Cardinal McCarrick’s wrongdoing. When these truths are revealed, it will help to ensure that innocent children and vulnerable adults will be safer and that future secrecy will be deterred.

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.

(PARIS) FRANCE
LaCroix International

May 30, 2019

By Céline Hoyeau

The latest alleged victim of Father Tony Anatrella, a priest and psychoanalyst who has been the subject of accusations by his former patients for more than 15 years, was a minor at the time of the events in question.

Father Anatrella was well-known in Rome as an advisor to several Vatican offices. His ecclesiastical counselor, who has consistently denied any inappropriate gesture by his client, did not respond to questions from La Croix.

Anatrella, 77, was earlier accused of having practiced “body therapy” in order to “heal” homosexuality and of having been involved in sexual abuse. On the basis of information gathered during a preliminary investigation, Archbishop Michel Aupetit of Paris had ruled that “no priestly ministry will henceforth be granted to him.”

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

ROME (ITALY)
Crux

May 30, 2019

By John L. Allen Jr.

Sometimes the fates who govern the news business have a wicked sense of timing. After a long stretch of relative quiet regarding Theodore McCarrick, the ex-cardinal who was defrocked over sexual misconduct and abuse charges, Tuesday brought not one but two major new developments.

Crux, along with CBS, published correspondence from McCarrick confirming that he was placed under Vatican restrictions in 2008, claiming that Cardinal Donald Wuerl (the Archbishop of Washington at the time) was aware of those restrictions despite his denials, and also revealing that McCarrick played a major role in backchannel diplomacy with China under Pope Francis.

Roughly an hour after our story broke, a new interview with Francis by Mexican journalist Valentina Alazraki made the rounds, in which the pontiff insisted “I knew nothing, obviously, nothing, nothing,” about accusations against McCarrick.

To be clear, the two stories do not contradict one another. While the correspondence at the heart of the Crux report clearly suggests that senior officials under Pope emeritus Benedict XVI knew about the informal restrictions and did not obstruct McCarrick from gradually returning to his activities, they do not speak to what Francis or his team knew.

However, the double whammy of these two stories coming at once does neatly illustrate two of the major questions left hanging by the McCarrick case, which in turn encapsulates the meta-narrative of the entire saga.

One of those hanging questions, obviously, is what Wuerl knew and when he knew it.

One piece of the correspondence in Tuesday’s Crux piece is an August 25, 2008, letter from McCarrick to the late Italian Archbishop Pietro Sambi, at the time the Vatican’s ambassador in the U.S., referring to an earlier letter in which the Vatican restrictions were outlined. McCarrick said he wanted to discuss some points in that letter “having shared it with my Archbishop,” meaning Wuerl.

In comments to Crux, however, a spokesman for Wuerl denied that Wuerl ever knew about the restrictions. The clear implication is that McCarrick was lying in his letter to Sambi, misrepresenting the extent to which Wuerl was informed and supportive.

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.

LONDON (ENGLAND)
The Independent

May 30, 2019

By Maya Oppenheim

Children who suffer sexual abuse are significantly less likely to report it if it is being perpetrated in a religious institution, according to a major analysis of survivors’ experiences.

A study by the Truth Project, part of the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse (IICSA), drew upon the experiences of 183 individuals who were abused as children in religious institutions, or by clergy or church staff in other settings.

Almost half said they knew of someone else being abused at the time, but more than two-thirds said they had not reported it – a figure that dropped to 54 per cent among victims in non-religious settings.

Survivors said shame and guilt had prevented them from coming forward, and called for an end to the secrecy that often surrounds religious institutions, saying it enables abusers to operate with impunity.

One survivor, Lucy*, told the inquiry that the abuse she suffered after her family became involved with the Jesus Fellowship Church – formerly known as the Jesus Army – left her with serious mental health problems she is still coping with in her forties.

She said her parents were “brainwashed” by the church, which took all her toys from her when they joined – even her comfort blanket – and made her sleep in the same room with strange adults.

“They were big, big houses with multiple rooms and they would let anyone in off the street,” she told The Independent.

“There were no safeguarding checks on anyone. Nobody was questioned. They let very vulnerable, often mentally unwell people from the streets and criminals in our environment. It meant there was never a safe space.

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

ROME (ITALY)
Crux

May 30, 2019

By Inés San Martín

After the uproar caused by his words regarding Chile’s clerical abuse scandals and the role of women in the Church, the newly appointed auxiliary bishop of Santiago apologized for his comments.

“I would like to sincerely ask for forgiveness for the pain and uncertainty my words might have caused,” Bishop-elect Carlos Irarrazaval said May 29.

The Vatican announced a week ago that Pope Francis had appointed him as an auxiliary bishop to Chile’s capital. A day later, Irarrazaval said it’s time to “look towards the future,” implying that the Church needed to put the clerical abuse crisis behind it, using the colloquialism, “stirring reheated rice is worthless.”

Chile is currently ground zero for the worldwide clerical abuse scandal. Santiago’s two living former archbishops have been subpoenaed by the local prosecutors’ office to testify on charges that they covered up cases of the abuse of minors.

But the bishop-elect had more things to say last week: In an interview with CNN Chile, he said that “since there was no woman seated at the table in the Last Supper,” women had no role in the Church. According to Irarrazaval, this was a choice Jesus made, and not “for ideological reasons.”

“Jewish culture is chauvinistic even today,” he’d said a few seconds earlier. “If you see a Jew walking down the street, the woman is 10 steps behind, but Jesus Christ breaks this dynamic; Jesus Christ speaks with women – with the adulterous woman, with the Samaritan woman – Jesus Christ allows for women to care for him. Who did he choose to announce [his] resurrection? Magdalena, a woman.”

In his apology, Irarrazaval said that he understands his comments on women and the “crisis we’re going through” were particularly painful.

“I am committed to working for the communion of the Church, knowing that in synodality we are all builders – women and men – with the richness of our differences, so that the Church becomes more welcoming and inclusive,” he wrote.

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WARSAW, POLAND
Associated Press

May 30, 2019

By Monika Scislowska

The founder and head of a Polish organization dedicated to helping victims of clerical sex abuse has resigned after allegations surfaced that he extorted money from a victim and demanded money from the producers of a documentary about clerical abuse.

The foundation “Have No Fear” said the head of its board, Marek Lisinski, resigned and that it has opened an internal audit into the allegations reported Thursday by the Gazeta Wyborcza daily.

In a post on Facebook, Lisinski denied the extortion allegation and insisted that he only borrowed money and intended to return it in December.

“The good of the survivors has always been the supreme goal for me,” Lisinski wrote.

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

ROME (ITALY)
Reuters

May 29, 2019

By Philip Pullella

Pope Francis has denied he knew about sexual misconduct by former U.S. cardinal Theodore McCarrick before the start of Church investigations that found him guilty.

McCarrick, once one of the most powerful men in the U.S. Catholic hierarchy, was expelled from the Roman Catholic priesthood in February after he was found guilty of sexual crimes against minors and adults.

“I knew nothing about McCarrick, naturally nothing,” Francis said in an interview with Mexico’s Televisa broadcaster which was published in Vatican media on Tuesday. “Otherwise, I would not have remained silent.”

Last August, Archbishop Carlo Maria Vigano issued a bombshell statement accusing a long list of current and past Vatican and Church officials in the United States of covering up for McCarrick, 88, the former archbishop of Washington, D.C.

Vigano, a former Vatican ambassador in Washington, said he told Francis shortly after his election in 2013 that McCarrick had preyed on adult seminarians for years.

Vigano claimed that Francis disregarded the information and effectively rehabilitated McCarrick, who had been quietly sanctioned by Francis predecessor, former Pope Benedict XVI, five years before Francis’ election in 2013.

Francis says he “does not remember” Vigano ever telling him.

The interview with the pope was published on the same day that Monsignor Anthony Figueiredo, McCarrick’s former priest-secretary, posted a document on the internet with excerpts of emails and letters between him and McCarrick.

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SPRINGFIELD (MA)
Berkshire Eagle

May 29, 2019

By Larry Parnass

When one of the longest-serving Western Massachusetts bishops was accused of child sexual abuse, a successor rose to his defense.

“I would hope that the names of good priests and bishops, who cannot defend themselves, are not being impugned for ulterior motives,” the Most Rev. Timothy A. McDonnell said of Christopher J. Weldon, the former bishop, said in a 2005 statement about a civil lawsuit.

“Nothing in our records … in any way would provide support for these allegations,” McDonnell said.

As of Wednesday afternoon, Weldon’s name did not appear on the diocese’s online list of “credibly accused clergy” — eight months after officials with the Springfield diocese came to a different conclusion about Weldon.

Last September, the Diocesan Review Board notified the Most Rev. Mitchell T. Rozanski that it found a Chicopee man’s story of his molestation by Weldon, more than half a century before, “compelling and credible.”

“We want to express our sincere sorrow for the pain and suffering you have endured,” the board wrote to the man, according to a letter obtained by The Eagle.

In addition to abuse by Weldon, the man told the board of molestation by two priests, the Rev. Edward Authier and the Rev. Clarence Forand.

“As we explained to you, the Board has no other authority except to notify the Bishop that we find your allegations credible,” the letter says.

The newspaper is withholding the man’s identity due to his wish to remain private.

As of Wednesday, the diocese also was not listing Authier as among “credibly accused” clergy. Forand’s name, though, is included under the category of “clergy who died after having been placed under the sanctions of the Essential Norms,” a reference to official Catholic Church policy on responding to abuse allegations.

That policy holds that “when even a single act of sexual abuse by a priest or deacon is admitted or is established after an appropriate process in accord with canon law, the offending priest or deacon will be removed permanently from the ecclesiastical ministry.”

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

May 30, 2019

We applaud lawmakers in Vermont, especially Rep. Martin LaLonde, for passing this important reform. This law amending the statute of limitations (SOL) is one of the strongest in the nation and the people of Vermont should be proud of their leadership on this issue.

With H.330 signed into law, Vermont is now the latest state to pass sweeping reform to their civil statute of limitations for cases of sexual violence. These changes come as more states around the country are amending their laws to reflect the realities of sexual violence: due to myriad factors such as the fear of being disbelieved or fear of retribution, the average age of a survivor coming forward is 52, and by the time most feel comfortable to come forward, they are barred by the statute of limitations.

Fortunately, that is no longer the case in Vermont.

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WASHINGTON (DC)
National Public Radio

May 30, 2019

By Laura Benshoff

When Trish Cahill was 15, she received an unexpected request. A nun who taught at a Catholic high school near her home in Ridgewood, NJ., called her at home and invited her to perform at an upcoming ‘hootenanny’ mass.

“This was [the] 1960s, you know. Peter, Paul and Mary and all that,” said Cahill. “I didn’t really play guitar, but a nun — a nun! — asked me to.”

Cahill grew up in an Irish Catholic family and attended parochial schools. As invitations from the nun kept coming, she said she felt flattered by the attention and her family welcomed the nun into their home.

Then, during an outing to a house at the Jersey shore, Cahill said the nun gave her tea laced with intoxicants.

“She took me into the bedroom and I passed out,” said Cahill. “I was not conscious. I was not able to make a decision.” She said this was the first time the religious sister sexually assaulted her, and the start of an abusive dynamic that would last for more than a decade.

Similar sexual abuse allegations against Catholic clergy have been in the public eye for decades. In spite of this, victims of sexual misconduct by nuns, such as Cahill, say their claims have been swept aside in the larger reckoning around sexual abuse by male Catholic leaders.

That’s in part because church leadership has historically treated misconduct by diocesan priests as separate from accusations against members of religious orders, both male and female. Survivors also say the lack of awareness that nuns commit sexual abuse can make it harder to come forward.

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SAN FRANCISCO (CA)
Bay Area News Group

May 29, 2019

In the May 26 East Bay Times front-page article, “State vs. Church: Senators want confessions of child abuse reported; clergy assert religious freedom,” readers learn that the California Senate resoundingly approved a bill that forces clergy who hear the confessions of child sexual abusers from another priest must report it.

The Senate bill will protect children from sexual abusers. However, the California Catholic Conference opposes the Senate bill and thinks it will dangerously weaken religious freedom.

Steven Pehanich, spokesman for the California Catholic Conference, doesn’t agree with the bill. He states it’s a slippery slope for priests to disclose a confession of sexually abusing a child.

No one wants the seal of confession to be used to protect child abusers. Are we really going to use the “confessional” and religious freedom as an excuse to hide sexual abuse of our precious children? Hopefully, we are better than that.

Jody Benkly
Walnut Creek

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DALLAS (TX)
Morning News

May 29, 2019

By Cassandra Jaramillo

During their raid on the Dallas Catholic Diocese offices earlier this month, police said they seized previous settlement agreements, files on former bishops and records from the diocesan review board, which looked into allegations of sexual abuse by priests.

Court records — first reported by WFAA-TV (Channel 8) and obtained Wednesday by The Dallas Morning News — detailed the numerous records police now have as they continue their investigation. Police are required to return an inventory of seized items to the judge who signed the search-warrant affidavit.

Police officials declined comment Wednesday, but have previously called the raid “wholly appropriate.” A detective wrote in a search warrant affidavit that during his investigation, he uncovered new allegations against five priests and that the diocese had stonewalled or handed over incomplete records for months.

The diocese, which has been shaken by allegations of sexual abuse for more than two decades, was critical of the raid. Bishop Edward Burns called the police action “unnecessary” and said church officials were cooperative despite the search warrant affidavit that said otherwise.

Annette Gonzales Taylor, a spokeswoman for the Catholic Diocese, said on Wednesday that church officials stand by their previous statements. She said Burns had given police “all of the files” regarding the five priests with allegations.

“We were aware of that they came in and took all of our records. We were not surprised by the inventory,” Gonzales Taylor said.

According to the search warrant return, Dallas police obtained insurance claims, terminated employee records, meeting notes, personnel movement letters and review board documents. Police also seized documents related to Bishop Charles Grahmann and Thomas Tschoepe, who previously led the diocese amid several sexual abuse scandals. Both are now dead.

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WASHINGTON (DC)
National Review

By Delcan Leary

May 29, 2019

John of Nepomuk is a name not often heard these days; Wenceslaus IV, even more so. John was a Bohemian priest of the 14th century. As the story goes, he was the confessor to the queen, Wenceslaus’s wife. When John refused to reveal information divulged to him during the sacrament of confession, the king had him drowned in the river Vltava. John considered his religious obligation — the seal of the confessional, an absolute duty of confidentiality between priest and penitent — inviolable, no matter the objections of the secular authority or the punishments threatened.

Nearly 600 years later, at the height of the Cristero War in Mexico — a Catholic uprising against a militant secularist state — another priest, Mateo Correa Magallanes, was arrested while delivering communion to a woman who was unable to travel to Mass. At his captors’ request, Father Magallanes heard the confessions of a number of other prisoners. When General Eulogio Ortiz, commander of the unit that was holding him, demanded that Magallanes reveal what had been told to him in confession, the priest refused. He was shot the next morning.

The seal of the confessional is an ancient tradition of the Catholic Church. Father Pius Pietrzyk, O.P., a lawyer of both U.S. and canon law, has outlined the nature of the seal and the importance of protecting it. It has been enshrined in the law of the Church at least since the Fourth Lateran Council of 1215 and in practice is even older than that — as old, in fact, as the sacrament itself. For about as long as the sacrament and its seal have existed, there has been a history of secular authorities demanding its violation. To my knowledge, none has ever succeeded.

Nevertheless, they persist. Last week, the California senate passed S.B. 360, requiring priests to violate the seal of the confessional whenever the confession pertains to sexual abuse committed by another priest or employee of the Church. The motivation is understandable — the protection of children is of paramount concern, and an area where the Church has notoriously failed time and time again. But the proposal is, for one thing, unlikely to do any good to this end, even if priests comply; responding to the passage of similar laws in Australia, the Australian Conference of Catholic Bishops observed that “perpetrators of this terrible sin very rarely seek out confession, and if mandatory reporting of confessions were required, they would certainly not confess.” This is not a practical solution to the very real problem at hand. It is a blatant attempt to assert the authority of the secular state over the Church, and a clear violation of the right to religious liberty.

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ROME (ITALY)
Catholic News Agency

May 29, 2019

By Allyson Escobar

The Vatican’s communications office has released a full transcript of Pope Francis’ interview with Televisa Mexican journalist Valentina Alazraki that revealed the pope’s more complete comments about what he knew about Theodore McCarrick, the former cardinal and archbishop of Washington, D.C., who is the highest-ranking Church clergy member in modern times to be defrocked.

Originally, the Vatican released a partial transcript of the interview in which Pope Francis denied knowing anything about McCarrick’s alleged sexual misconduct. The partial transcript left out the part of the interview in which Pope Francis said “he does not remember” what was told to him about McCarrick, according to the Associated Press.

The distinction is important because last August Archbishop Carlo Maria Vigano, a former Vatican ambassador to the U.S., published documents that said Pope Francis knew about Church-imposed sanctions on then-Cardinal McCarrick, but made him a trusted aide anyway.

The Vatican press office didn’t comment on the distinction.

McCarrick, 88, was dismissed from the priesthood in February after a Church investigation confirmed his abuse of both minors and adults. McCarrick has denied that abuse.

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BALLARAT (AUSTRALIA)
The Courier

May 29, 2019

By Andrew Thomson

IN a landmark case for survivors, Catholic Church lawyers have refused to acknowledge that former Bishop of Ballarat Ronald Mulkearns knew pedophile priest Gerald Ridsdale was a repeat offender.

A Ballarat diocese victim of Ridsdale is pursuing civil damages through the Victorian Supreme Court from current Bishop of Ballarat Paul Bird, on behalf of the diocese, and is currently involved in a highly adversarial court process as the church’s lawyers play tactical hardball.

The record for court judgement is about $1.25 million, although confidential settlements are understood to have reached $1.5 million.

No Catholic church abuse case has ever gone to judgement in civil court and payouts have been confidential.

The Ridsdale victim was just nine years old when he was raped in a confession box at Mortlake in April 1982.

He said today that it was a tragedy that his life, and the lives of so many other victims, had been ruined by the inaction of Bishop Mulkearns.

“I just wish that the abuse had never happened to anyone,” he said.

Victims are now extremely keen to test their cases in court.

They also want to go to court as a symbolic gesture to represent the many victims who have taken their own lives over the past 30 years.

The church’s representatives previously acknowledged during the Royal commission into Institutional Abuse that for Bishop Mulkearns to appoint Ridsdale to other parishes, after becoming aware that Ridsdale had offended while at Inglewood in 1975 and in the absence of any clearance from a psychologist or psychiatrist, was “inexcusably wrong”.

The church acknowledges there was a one-off incident involving Ridsdale at Inglewood, but denies it was ever known he had a propensity for offending.

An affidavit filed in the Supreme Court by Dr Christine Atmore, of Judy Courtin Legal, claimed former Bishop of Ballarat James O’Collins was informed in about 1963 that Ridsdale had abused a boy in North Ballarat.

The church admitted during the Royal commission that Bishop O’Collins informed Ridsdale there had been a complaint at that time, Ridsdale admitted he molested a boy and the bishop warned him if it happened again he would no longer be able to serve as a priest.

In the current court case, the church denies any knowledge of Ridsdale’s repeat offending before he went to Mortlake in the early 1980s.

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TOLEDO (OH)
The Blade

May 24, 2019

By Jay Skebba

When Patrick Murtha first came to Rossford Schools in search of a job, he told school board members that he was “looking for a change.”

It was 2004, and fresh off a stint in southern Ohio working as the Athens City Schools athletic director, Mr. Murtha said he wanted to move to another small town. Hence how he ended up before the school board in nondescript Rossford — a northwest Ohio community few outside the Toledo area could find on a map.

What he didn’t tell the school board, according to a recent investigation conducted by a district administrator, is that he was departing his former job after running into trouble for inappropriately touching members of the Athens school community.

Now Mr. Murtha again finds himself without a job, and again finds himself under scrutiny for acting inappropriately with young people he came into contact with because of his role as a school administrator and assistant principal.

Fifteen years after he was hired, school officials are under fire over how they’ve handled Mr. Murtha’s dismissal, and how he came to work in the district in the first place.

While the district’s report puts the onus on Mr. Murtha for self-reporting his own disciplinary problems, it’s unclear what steps Rossford Schools leaders independently took at the time to check on Mr. Murtha’s past transgressions because, as Superintendent Dan Creps noted in a letter to district families this week, none of the current board members were in place in 2004.

Board members and Mr. Creps largely refused to discuss with The Blade Mr. Murtha’s employment or their investigation until a board meeting Wednesday. All five board members and Mr. Creps admitted mistakes were made in handling the fallout, and offered apologies.

It’s not clear if district leaders went to the police once accusations by at least three Rossford students surfaced about Mr. Murtha’s conduct.

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BUFFALO (NY)
WBFO Radio

May 29, 2019

By Michael Mroziak

A former priest who now leads an agency advocating for victims of sexual abuse is criticizing the system by which the Roman Catholic Diocese of Buffalo processed and compensated abuse cases.

The Diocese of Buffalo, on Tuesday, released the final results of its Independent Reconciliation and Compensation Program, which was introduced in March 2018 to address claims of childhood sexual abuse carried out by clergy. The diocese reports paying out an esatimated $17.6 million to date, awarding 127 people an average of $160,000. The compensation per person ranged from $2,000 to $650,000.

In all, 262 claims were filed.

“No one who reported their abuse after March 1, 2018 has been allowed to be part of this program,” said Robert Hoatson, founder and leader of the group Road to Recovery. “And according to reports, 135 cases, claims, have been rejected by the two judges who are running this program.”

Those judges are retired State Supreme Court Justices Jerome Gorski and Barbara Howe.

WBFO forwarded a message to the Diocese of Buffalo, asking for an official statement on its own behalf but as of Wednesday afternoon no reply was received.

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BOSTON (MA)
Mann & Rodgrs Funeral Home

May 29, 2019

DUSSOURD, MARYETTA (BOLAND) of Jamaica Plain, Lost her battle to cancer on May 24TH. She was a very involved activist in the community with the warmest of hearts. She leaves behind her elder brother Jack Boland and her 7 children Ralph, Daniel, Edward, Margaret, Marietta, Christopher and Alicia Dussourd. Also survived by her beloved 13 grand children.

Funeral Services from the Mann & Rodgers Funeral Home, 44 Perkins St. JAMAICA PLAIN. Visiting Hours will be Monday, June 3rd from 5-8pm.

Relatives and friends invited. In honor of Maryetta please wear a touch of yellow, as it was her favorite color and one of her last requests.

Interment will be private.

Guestbook@mannandrodgers.com

In lieu of flowers please donate in her name to www.childhelp.org, a non profit charity to help victims of child abuse or to the Jimmy Fund at www.jimmyfund.org

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ROME (ITALY)
LifeSiteNews

May 28, 2019

For what appears to be the first time, Pope Francis has openly denied that he knew anything of former Cardinal Theodore McCarrick’s immoral activities, directly contradicting Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò’s account of their conversation on the subject.

“I didn’t know anything … nothing, nothing,” Pope Francis said in a new interview published on Tuesday in Vatican News.

In response, the former apostolic nuncio to the United States has directly accused Pope Francis of lying.

In comments to LifeSite following the release of the interview, Archbishop Viganò said: “What the Pope said about not knowing anything is a lie. […] He pretends not to remember what I told him about McCarrick, and he pretends that it wasn’t him who asked me about McCarrick in the first place.”

Both interviews coincide with the release of a leaked correspondence between Pope Francis, Vatican Secretary of State Cardinal Pietro Parolin, and then-Cardinal Theodore McCarrick, confirming that restrictions were placed on McCarrick by the Vatican in 2008, and that the former cardinal (who has now been laicized over charges of sexual abuse) travelled extensively during the Francis pontificate, playing a key diplomatic role in establishing the controversial Vatican accord with Communist China.

The new interview
In the May 28 interview with Mexican journalist Valentina Alazraki, Pope Francis sought to explain why he has never openly denied Archbishop Vigano’s original testimony, while issuing a denial seemingly for the first time.

Readers will recall that news of the former US nuncio’s testimony broke last August 25, while Pope Francis was attending the World Meeting Families in Dublin. One day later, during an inflight press conference on his return to Rome, the Pope sidestepped questions about the explosive allegations that he knew of former Cardinal Theodore McCarrick’s abuse.

“Read the [Viganò] statement carefully yourselves and make your own judgment. I am not going to say a word about this,” the Pope told journalists aboard the papal plane (see video here).

“You all have sufficient journalistic ability to draw conclusions,” he said.

“It is an act of trust,” the Holy Father added. “When a little time goes by, and you have drawn conclusions, perhaps I will speak about it, but I would like your professional maturity to do this work. It will do you all good, really.”

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ROME (ITALY)
Crux

May 28, 2019

Correspondence obtained by Crux from an ex-aide to Theodore McCarrick, the former cardinal laicized over charges of sexual misconduct and abuse, confirms that restrictions on McCarrick were imposed by the Vatican in 2008. McCarrick also claims that Cardinal Donald Wuerl, then the Archbishop of Washington, was aware of them and involved in conversations about their implementation.

Though the details of those restrictions have never been made public, the correspondence shows McCarrick promising not to travel without express Vatican permission and to resign from all roles at the Vatican and within the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB), while contesting an instruction to stop coming to Rome.

In one letter, McCarrick suggests the Vatican wanted to “avoid publicity” and thus kept the restrictions confidential.

The correspondence also shows that despite the restrictions, McCarrick gradually resumed traveling and playing prominent diplomatic roles under both Popes Benedict XVI and, to a greater extent, Francis, including talks with China that may have helped shape a controversial 2018 deal between Rome and Beijing over the appointment of bishops.

McCarrick’s activities were not carried on in secret, as he regularly wrote to Pope Francis between 2013 and 2017 to brief him on his trips and activities.

In the correspondence, McCarrick denies any sexual misconduct.

“I have never had sexual relations with anyone,” he wrote, but he does admit to “an unfortunate lack of judgment” in sharing his bed with seminarians in their twenties and thirties.

“As the problems of sexual abuse began to surface, I realized this was imprudent and stupid and it stopped,” he wrote in a 2008 letter to a senior Vatican official.

From an examination of the correspondence, which involves emails and private letters from McCarrick over the period 2008-2017, it appears that senior Church officials, including the Vatican’s Secretary of State under Pope Benedict XVI, the head of the Congregation for Bishops, and the pope’s ambassador in the U.S., were aware of the informal restrictions, and whatever their response may have been as McCarrick resumed his activities, it did not prevent him from doing so.

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ROME (ITALY)
CBS NEWS

May 29, 2019

By Anna Matranga and Seth Doane

The former secretary to defrocked American Cardinal Theodore McCarrick has released excerpts from private and confidential correspondence among top Vatican leaders which reveal details of restrictions placed on McCarrick by the Holy See following allegations of sexual misconduct. The communications reveal the extent to which the restrictions were known among senior church leaders – and particularly by his successor Cardinal Donald Wuerl – but not enforced.

That lack of enforcement meant McCarrick, the former Archbishop of Washington D.C., was allowed to continue traveling on behalf of the Holy See despite limitations implemented as part of the church punishment.

The personal letters and emails include correspondence between McCarrick and other senior church figures, including cardinals, the Vatican’s Secretary of State and Pope Francis.

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

May 29, 2019

We are grateful to Chicago police for moving quickly to arrest Pastor Jeffery Parks. Now we call on administrators at Good Shephard Church in Chicago to reach out to their parishioners and urge anyone else who may have information on this case to come forward and make a report to police.

It is notable that the young girls in this case were able to identify their abuse following a discussion on inappropriate touching with their mother. While conversations about sexual abuse can be challenging, research and this anecdotal example show that these conversations are critical to protecting children and ending abuse.

Boys and girls are safest when parents and the public are vigilant. We hope that other parents around the country will also have this conversation with their own children, and that other adults who work with children will take the time to learn about the warning signs for child sexual abuse.

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