ABUSE TRACKER

COLUMBUS (OH)
The Associated Press

July 26, 2018

By John Seewer and Kantele Franko

Looking back, many of the men now realize the medical exams were more than just weird and uncomfortable. Some still aren’t sure what to call it, uncertain whether it meets the definition of sexual abuse.

Among the more than 100 former male athletes and students at Ohio State University who have told investigators accounts of sexual misconduct by a now-dead team doctor, close to a dozen have publicly shared their stories of being groped and fondled decades ago.

The investigation into Richard Strauss involves his work with athletes from at least 14 sports, and at a student health center and his medical clinic. Strauss killed himself in 2005.

Many of the accusers, most now in their 40s and 50s, are just starting to acknowledge and confront what they experienced.

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SAN JOSE (CA)
California News Wire Services

July 24, 2018

The attorney of his appeal said the former Stanford swimmer engaged in “sexual outercourse” that did not involve the intent to commit rape.

The attorney for a former Stanford University swimmer convicted of sexual assaulting a female student in 2016 argued this morning in an appeal of the jury’s verdict that it should be overturned because of a lack of evidence. Brock Turner was convicted of assault with intent to commit rape, sexual penetration of an intoxicated person with a foreign object and sexual penetration of an unconscious person with a foreign object in March 2016.

Turner was sentenced to six months in jail and was released after three months for good behavior.

Attorney Eric Multhaup said of his appeal that Turner had only engaged in “sexual outercourse” that did not involve the intent to commit rape. Turner was not present in the courtroom during the appeal.

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SAN FRANCISCO (CA)
ELLE

July 25, 2018

By Madison Feller

Back in March 2016, Brock Turner was sentenced to six months in jail after being found guilty of sexually assaulting an unconscious, partially-clothed woman during his time at Stanford University. He ended up only serving three months, and in December 2017, it was announced he would be appealing his conviction, one that required him to register as a sex offender.

Originally, Turner was convicted of sexual assault of an unconscious person, sexual assault of an intoxicated person, and sexual assault with intent to commit rape, according to the New York Times. Now, on Tuesday, Turner’s lawyer told an appellate court Turner actually wanted “outercourse” with his victim, which his lawyer described as fully-clothed sexual contact, not to be confused with intercourse, consensual or otherwise. According to Mercury News, he argued that Turner had his clothes on when he was found thrusting himself on top of his victim.

The goal is to get justices to overturn Turner’s attempted rape charge, but the Mercury News reports that the justices “appeared skeptical” and Justice Franklin D. Elia said, “I absolutely don’t understand what you are talking about,” in reference to Turner’s lawyer. Assistant Attorney General Alisha Carlile also said his lawyer presented a “far-fetched version of events.” The panel now has 90 days to issue a ruling.

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SAN FRANCISCO (CA)
The Guardian

July 25, 2018

By Sam Levin

Experts condemn ‘breathtaking’ claim about attack on unconscious woman, calling it hurtful to sexual violence survivors

A lawyer for Brock Turner, the former Stanford student convicted of sexually assaulting an unconscious woman, argued in court during an appeal hearing that his client was seeking “outercourse” with his victim.

The attorney’s appeal of the high-profile case, which led to international outrage after Turner received a lenient sentence in 2016, advanced in a California court this week, with an unusual legal claim that experts said was shocking and hurtful to survivors of sexual violence.

Turner was originally convicted of assault with intent to commit rape of an intoxicated woman and penetration of an unconscious person after passersby spotted him thrusting on top of a motionless woman outside of a fraternity house in 2015. But his lawyer Eric Multhaup argued in court Tuesday that his client was not attempting rape, but was seeking “outercourse”, which he said was sexual contact while clothed and a “version of safe sex” , the Mercury News reported.

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MORRISTOWN (NJ)
NJ Advance Media for NJ.com

July 25, 2018

By Justin Zaremba

Delbarton School and St. Mary’s Abbey, for the first time, has publicly acknowledged the accusations of 30 individuals who have alleged abuse by 13 past or current priests and monks there, and one retired lay faculty member, over the course of three decades.

Abbot Richard Cronin and Delbarton Headmaster Michael Tidd also offered an apology “to anyone who has suffered sexual abuse or harassment because of the actions of a St. Mary’s Abbey monk or Delbarton School employee,” in a July 20 letter to the community.

According to the letter, abbey officials notified the Morris County Prosecutor’s Office as each allegation emerged, but criminal charges were filed in only one case. The Morris County Prosecutor’s Office declined to discuss its investigations.

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AUSTRALIA
Australian Broadcasting Corporation

July 26, 2018

By Josh Robertson

Former One Nation adviser Sean Black has been sentenced to five years’ jail for raping and assaulting his former wife, but his sentence will be suspended after two years and three months.

Earlier this month Black was convicted of raping his former wife Tanya in a bathroom in 2007, pushing her down stairs and crushing her hand in a door.

Black, who did not give evidence, was acquitted on a separate count of assault.

In sentencing, Judge Glen Cash said it was clear Black was willing to use violence to dominate his relationship.

“The victim of the offences was not only your wife but the mother of your children,” Judge Cash said.

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VATICAN CITY
Reuters

July 25, 2018

By Philip Pullella

A leading Roman Catholic cardinal and key adviser to Pope Francis called on Tuesday for the Vatican to “swiftly and decisively” adopt strict policies for cases of sexual abuse involving bishops and top clergy.

Cardinal Sean O’Malley of Boston issued the appeal with the Church in the United States still reeling from allegations that another cardinal was involved in abuse of minors and sexual improprieties with adult seminarians years ago.

O’Malley said he was “deeply troubled” by the case of Cardinal Theodore McCarrick and that it and others “raise up the fact that when charges are brought regarding a bishop or a cardinal, a major gap still exists in the Church’s policies on sexual conduct and sexual abuse”.

His forceful statement also comes as the Vatican has been hit by a major scandal that has engulfed the Church in Chile.

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UNITED KINGDOM
Church Times

July 23, 2018

By Hattie Williams

PETER BALL found the “perfect cover” for his sex-offending in the Church of England, and the “perfect accomplices” in fellow bishops who turned a blind eye to his actions, the Independent Inquiry into Child Sex Abuse (IICSA) has heard.

The details of the abuse carried out against vulnerable adults by Mr Ball, the disgraced former Bishop of Gloucester, during his ministry were heard on Monday at the start of a week-long hearing being conducted by IICSA, as part of its investigation into the extent to which the Anglican Church failed to protect children from child sex abuse.

The first hearing, in March, used the diocese of Chichester as a case study (News, 9 March). This week is to focus on the repeated failures of the police, Crown Prosecution Service, and the Church to identify, prevent, and prosecute abuse carried out by Ball over several decades, the lead counsel to the Anglican investigation, Fiona Scolding QC explained.

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KANSAS CITY (MO)
National Catholic Reporter

July 25, 2018

By NCR Editorial Staff

It is time for an apostolic visitation to US church about clergy abuse

A particularly heart-freezing detail emerges in a 60-year-old man’s account of how he was abused as a boy by then-Fr. Theodore McCarrick.

As described in a July 19 story in The New York Times: “The connection between Father McCarrick and James’s family was deep.” James’ uncle had been McCarrick’s best friend in high school, and the young priest grew up with the family sharing meals and free time with the family. That intimacy was reinforced sacramentally. “James,” the Times records, “was baptized by Father McCarrick on June 15, 1958, two weeks after he was ordained as a priest.”

“It was explained to us how Jimmy was special to Father McCarrick, because of that very special thing that happened, that he was his first baptism,” the man’s sister told the Times. James had told Karen and his other siblings of the abuse only days before. James had kept silent for some 40 years.

To fully grasp the sense of betrayal ordinary Catholics feel toward their hierarchy, you must fully grasp the horror of this detail: James was abused by the man who baptized him. The man who stood in persona Christi at the baptismal font, at the family dining table, around the backyard family pool, abused a child of God.

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KANSAS CITY (MO)
National Catholic Reporter

July 25, 2018

By Joshua J. McElwee

Several prominent Irish clergy sexual abuse survivors are calling on Pope Francis to use his upcoming visit to their country at the end of August to admit to the Vatican’s role for decades in helping cover-up abuse cases on the island.

Noting that the pontiff publicly decried a “culture of abuse and cover-up” in the Chilean Catholic Church in a letter to the people of that country in May, the Irish survivors say they are owed a similar admission about how the church sought to silence them and fellow victims.

“It would be very right if he said the same sort of things here in Ireland, because the situation in Ireland was no different than the situation in Chile,” said Marie Collins, an Irish survivor and former member of Francis’ clergy abuse commission.

“I think it’s an opportunity with the pope coming to Ireland to be open and very clear in … saying something about it, because that really hasn’t happened,” Collins said in a July NCR interview.

Mark Vincent Healy, an Irish survivor who took part in Francis’ first meeting with abuse victims at the Vatican in 2014, said simply: “I think the same questions that were asked in Chile with regards to the church there would be something of the similar scrutiny that needs to be asked of the church here.”

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AUSTRALIA
9news/AAP

July 30, 2018

Adelaide Archbishop Philip Wilson has formally resigned after he was convicted of concealing child abuse in May.

The outgoing Archbishop says he hopes his shock decision, which has been accepted by the Pope, will be a “catalyst to heal pain and distress”.

In May, Wilson became the most senior Catholic cleric to be convicted of not disclosing to police abuse by priest James Fletcher in the Hunter region of NSW in the 1970s.

He immediately launched an appeal against his conviction after he was handed 12 months detention earlier this month.

Calls for his resignation came thick and fast but Wilson insisted he would not step aside until his legal options were exhausted.

One of Fletcher’s victims, Peter Gogarty, wrote to the pope earlier this month calling for Wilson to be sacked.

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PHOENIX (AZ)
The Nation

July 27, 2018

By Ari Honarvar

Separated from her mother by Trump’s zero-tolerance policy, the child was forced to sign a statement confirming that she understood it was her responsibility to stay away from her abuser.

According to immigrant-rights advocates, a 6-year-old girl separated from her mother under the Trump administration’s “zero-tolerance” immigration policy was sexually abused while at an Arizona detention facility run by Southwest Key Programs. The child was then made to sign a form acknowledging that she was told to maintain her distance from her alleged abuser, who is an older child being held at the same detention facility.

The girl, who is only identified by the initials D.L., and her mother had been fleeing gang violence in their native Guatemala. According to the family, the pair entered the United States at a point of entry in El Paso, Texas, on May 24, where they presented Border Patrol authorities with paperwork claiming that they had “credible fear” that returning to Guatemala would result in harm. On May 26, government officials separated D.L. from her mother and sent her to Casa Glendale, a shelter outside of Phoenix operated by Southwest Key Programs. It was there that the alleged abuse occurred.

Before D.L. was taken away, her mother provided authorities with the phone number of D.L.’s father, an undocumented immigrant living in California. On June 11, D.L.’s father received a phone call from Southwest Key explaining that a boy had fondled his daughter and other girls. According to family spokesperson Mark Lane, D.L.’s father was told not to worry, because Southwest Key was changing some of its protocols and such abuse would not happen again. (Lane was connected with D.L.’s family through Families Belong Together, a coalition of civil-rights groups formed in response to the recent border crackdown.) Lane says that D.L.’s father asked to speak with a social worker, but, despite promises from the facility, he never heard from one.

A Southwest Key Programs document obtained by The Nation confirms that D.L. was reported to have been sexually abused on June 4, 2018. On June 12, one day after D.L.’s father was contacted, the 6-year-old girl was presented with the form stating that, as part of the facility’s intervention protocol, she had been instructed to “maintain my distance from the other youth involved” and had been provided “psychoeducation,” described in the document as “reporting abuse” and “good touch bad touch.” The form, posted below, shows D.L’s “signature”—a single letter “D,” next to the characterization of her as “tender age”—which supposedly confirms that D.L understands “that it is my responsibility to follow the safety plan” reviewed with her.

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NEW YORK (NY)
CNN

July 29, 2018

By Brian Stelter

Ronan Farrow’s incredible run of reporting proves that good work is its own calling card.
Case in point: Some of the sources for his newest story, about Les Moonves and the culture at CBS, “began coming to me immediately after the Harvey Weinstein story,” Farrow says.

Farrow spent much of 2017 investigating Weinstein’s alleged abuse of women. His reporting was originally for NBC News, where he was being underutilized. After many months, the network essentially told him to take the story elsewhere, so he did — and The New Yorker ended up with his scoop.

Farrow’s investigation came out last October, just a few days after The New York Times published its OWN reporting about Weinstein. He has continued writing for The New Yorker ever since, turning out impactful stories, such as his recent look inside CBS.

One of the Moonves accusers, Illeana Douglas, “called me, in fact, the day after that first Harvey Weinstein story I wrote and told me her story, and we’ve been carefully investigating since,” Farrow said on CNN’s “Reliable Sources” on Sunday.

And if the past is any indication, he isn’t finished investigating yet.

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NEW YORK (NY)
The New Yorker

August 6 & 13, 2018 Issue

By Ronan Farrow

Six women accuse the C.E.O. of harassment and intimidation, and dozens more describe abuse at his company.

For more than twenty years, Leslie Moonves has been one of the most powerful media executives in America. As the chairman and C.E.O. of CBS Corporation, he oversees shows ranging from “60 Minutes” to “The Big Bang Theory.” His portfolio includes the premium cable channel Showtime, the publishing house Simon & Schuster, and a streaming service, CBS All Access. Moonves, who is sixty-eight, has a reputation for canny hiring and project selection. The Wall Street Journal recently called him a “TV programming wizard”; the Hollywood Reporter dubbed him a “Wall Street Hero.” In the tumultuous field of network television, he has enjoyed rare longevity as a leader. Last year, according to filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission, he earned nearly seventy million dollars, making him one of the highest-paid corporate executives in the world.

In recent months, Moonves has become a prominent voice in Hollywood’s #MeToo movement. In December, he helped found the Commission on Eliminating Sexual Harassment and Advancing Equality in the Workplace, which is chaired by Anita Hill. “It’s a watershed moment,” Moonves said at a conference in November. “I think it’s important that a company’s culture will not allow for this. And that’s the thing that’s far-reaching. There’s a lot we’re learning. There’s a lot we didn’t know.”

But Moonves’s private actions belie his public statements. Six women who had professional dealings with him told me that, between the nineteen-eighties and the late aughts, Moonves sexually harassed them. Four described forcible touching or kissing during business meetings, in what they said appeared to be a practiced routine. Two told me that Moonves physically intimidated them or threatened to derail their careers. All said that he became cold or hostile after they rejected his advances, and that they believed their careers suffered as a result. “What happened to me was a sexual assault, and then I was fired for not participating,” the actress and writer Illeana Douglas told me. All the women said they still feared that speaking out would lead to retaliation from Moonves, who is known in the industry for his ability to make or break careers. “He has gotten away with it for decades,” the writer Janet Jones, who alleges that she had to shove Moonves off her after he forcibly kissed her at a work meeting, told me. “And it’s just not O.K.”

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UNITED STATES
ABC News

July 28, 2018

By Morgan Winsor, Joshua Hoyos, Julia Jacobo, and Tom Llamas

The reporter who broke the New Yorker story about CBS executive Les Moonves allegedly engaging in sexual misconduct described the women in his exposé as being “terrified” and “intimidated.”

Ronan Farrow appeared on “Good Morning America” on Saturday to discuss the shocking allegations of sexual misconduct laid out against Moonves.

“We’re really careful not to draw inferences that are speculative at all, but these are stories one after another of varying degrees of severity up to and including cases in which women say they were pinned down and struggled to escape,” Farrow told ABC News’ Dan Harris. “These are stories that happened during business meetings, which I believe was particularly devastating for these women that expected to be taken seriously.”

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UNITED STATES
The Huffington Post

July 30, 2018

By Carla Baranauckas

Yet women still shoulder too much of the burden when it comes to abuse in the workplace, she says.

When Anita Hill testified in Clarence Thomas’ confirmation hearings for the U.S. Supreme Court 27 years ago and accused him of sexual harassment, she was vilified for coming forward. Since then, however, Hill says the public’s attitude about sexual harassment in the workplace has changed.

“Oh, there’s been a tremendous amount of change,” Hill told John Oliver on Sunday’s broadcast of “Last Week Tonight.” “There’s been a change in public attitude. And there’s been a change in the amount of information that we have about sexual harassment. And there’s certainly more awareness after the #metoo movement.”

Hill, a professor at Brandeis University, said people were long aware of sexual harassment, but there was no consensus about how it should be handled.

“So far much of the approaches we’ve had is to put all of the burden on women,” Hill said. “One of the questions I get that just sort of sticks out with me is, ‘How do we raise our daughter to make sure that she doesn’t set herself up to be a victim of sexual harassment?’ These are the kinds of things that we’re thinking. If we fix her, then she won’t encounter this problem. In reality, she is not the problem.”

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AUSTRALIA
Vanguard

July 30, 2018

Pope Francis has accepted the resignation of Philip Wilson, an Australian archbishop convicted in May of concealing abuse by a notorious paedophile priest in the 1970s, the Vatican said Monday.

Earlier this month Wilson, 67, was sentenced to a year in detention after becoming one of the highest-ranking church officials to be convicted on the charge.

“The Holy Father Francis accepted the resignation of the pastoral government of the Archdiocese of Adelaide (Australia), presented by S.E. Mons. Philip Edward Wilson,” the Vatican said in a statement.

His resignation comes less than a fortnight after Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull asked the pope to sack Wilson, who was found guilty in an Australian court of failing to report allegations against paedophile priest Jim Fletcher.

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VATICAN CITY
The Telegraph

July 28, 2018

By Ben Riley-Smith

One of America’s most prominent Catholic cardinals has resigned after an allegation was made that he sexually abused a teenage boy almost 50 years ago.

Theodore McCarrick, the former archbishop of Washington, wrote to the Vatican offering his resignation on Friday, which was accepted by Pope Francis.

A statement from the Vatican issued on Saturday read: “Yesterday evening the Holy Father received the letter in which Cardinal Theodore McCarrick, Archbishop Emeritus of Washington (USA), presented his resignation as a member of the College of Cardinals.

“Pope Francis accepted his resignation from the cardinalate and has ordered his suspension from the exercise of any public ministry, together with the obligation to remain in a house yet to be indicated to him, for a life of prayer and penance until the accusations made against him are examined in a regular canonical trial.”

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RIVERSIDE (CA)
The Associated Press

July 29, 2018

Authorities say a Southern California youth pastor has been arrested on suspicion of sexually assaulting children over nearly two decades.

The Press-Enterprise reports Malo Victor Monteiro was arrested Friday in Riverside County, east of Los Angeles. The 45-year-old could face charges including intent to commit rape, mayhem or sodomy, lewd and lascivious acts on a child and sexual penetration by force. It wasn’t immediately known if he has an attorney.

The sheriff’s department says deputies were alerted in June to alleged lewd acts by Monteiro. Officials say detectives determined that several juveniles were allegedly sexually assaulted between 1999 and 2017.

The name of the church where Monteiro worked was not disclosed.

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VATICAN CITY
The Associated Press

July 30, 2018

By Nicole Winfield

Pope Francis on Monday accepted the resignation of an Australian archbishop convicted in criminal court of covering up the sexual abuse of children by a priest, taking action after coming under mounting pressure from ordinary Catholics, priests and even the Australian prime minister.

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It was the second major announcement of a sex abuse-related resignation in as many days, after Francis’ dramatic sanctioning this weekend of a U.S. cardinal, suggesting he is keen to clean house before he heads to Dublin next month for a big Catholic family rally. The sex abuse scandal is likely to dominate the trip given Ireland’s devastating history with predator priests and the bishops who covered for them.

In Australia, Adelaide Archbishop Philip Wilson was convicted in May of failing to report to police the repeated abuse of two altar boys by a pedophile priest in the Hunter Valley region north of Sydney during the 1970s. He became the highest-ranking Catholic cleric ever convicted in a criminal court of abuse cover-up.

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VATICAN CITY
The Associated Press

July 28, 2018

The Latest on the sex abuse allegations surrounding U.S. prelate Theodore McCarrick (all times local):

5:20 p.m.

The Texas prelate who heads the U.S. bishops’ conference is thanking Pope Francis for accepting Cardinal Theodore McCarrick’s resignation amid a sex abuse scandal.

Cardinal Daniel N. DiNardo said in a statement Saturday: “I thank the Holy Father for his leadership in taking this important step.”

The Vatican said Francis had received McCarrick’s offer to leave the College of Cardinals on Friday.

DiNardo, archbishop of Galveston-Houston and president of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, noted that Francis also ordered the former Washington D.C. archbishop to “observe a life of prayer and penance in seclusion” until a church trial is held.

DiNardo said Francis was prioritizing “the need for protection and care for all our people” and aware of how “failures in this area affect the life of the church in the United States.”

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ULTIMO (AUSTRALIA)
ABC

July 30, 2018

Pope Francis has accepted the resignation of Adelaide Archbishop Philip Wilson — the most senior Catholic in the world to be convicted of concealing child sex abuse.

There had been intense pressure on Philip Wilson to officially step down from the role, with Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull and other political leaders among those calling for his resignation.

In May, Wilson was found guilty of covering up the abuse of children between 2004 and 2006 at the hands of paedophile priest Jim Fletcher in the 1970s.

Fletcher died in prison in 2006.

In a statement, the Australian Catholic Bishops Conference said Wilson had “decided that his conviction means he can no longer continue as Archbishop because to do so would continue to cause pain and distress to many, especially to survivors and also in the Archdiocese of Adelaide”.

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DENVER (CO)
Crux

July 30, 2018

By Christopher White

New York – Following Pope Francis’s historic decision to accept the resignation of Cardinal Theodore McCarrick from the College of Cardinals, both fellow bishops in the United States as well as survivors and advocates say it’s a step forward but there’s still a great distance to be traveled until the pledge of “zero tolerance” is fulfilled.

“The somber announcement from the Vatican this morning will impact the Catholic community of the Archdiocese of Newark with particular force,” said Cardinal Joseph Tobin of Newark in a statement on Saturday.

Tobin – who now holds the post McCarrick held from 1986 to 2001 – went on to add that “this latest news is a necessary step for the Church to hold itself accountable for sexual abuse and harassment perpetrated by its ministers, no matter their rank. I ask my brothers and sisters to pray for all who may have been harmed by the former Cardinal, and to pray for him as well.”

Cardinal Donald Wuerl of Washington, who succeeded McCarrick in 2006, spoke to WTOP, a local D.C. radio show, on Saturday, where he called the decision a “big step forward in trying to act quickly, decisively,” though he acknowledged that the “procedure isn’t concluded yet.”

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DENVER (CO)
Crux

July 29, 2018

By Father Jeffrey F. Kirby

… Regrettably, a priest’s negligence of his own discipleship, doesn’t end merely in the realm of omission. If a man is consecrated for service, and his whole life is to be directed to this end, and yet he ignores this fundamental mission, then his soul is thrown into disarray. His internal measure is off. The structure of his soul and the inner dynamics of his affections are confused and left unfulfilled.

In such a weary and confused state, the soul of such a lost priest begins to desperately look for something beyond its mission. Tragically, in a fallen world, this wayward search never ends well.

If humility is not nurtured, pride dominates. If selflessness does not become a way of life, self-absorption takes over. If love, which is to be patient and kind, is not victorious, anger and envy seek to justify themselves. The parallels are disastrous and they continuously and rapidly descend into appalling darkness, lacking any sense of goodness or self-regulation.

In such a bleak existence, the priest’s appearance, the task of “playing the role,” becomes the only rule of his life and becomes a manipulative means for deception and disguise.

While such backsliding is possible for any priest, it takes on a particularly gross expression in sexual predators who are welcomed and protected within the ranks of Catholic priests. In such shadows, the priesthood is redefined beyond comprehension by sick men, who should never have been ordained or promoted in the Church.

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DUBAI (UNITED ARAB EMIRATES)
Gulf News

July 29, 2018

By Akhel Mathew

Following the nun’s accusation, a number of other nuns and even a few priests have raised allegations against the bishop

Thiruvananthapuram, Kerala – The troubles of Kerala’s Catholic Church multiplied over the weekend with a priest caught on tape attempting to influence a nun to withdraw the ongoing case pertaining to sexual abuse by the Jalandhar bishop, Franco Mulakkal.

A nun at the church’s convent in Kuravilangad in Kottayam district had accused the bishop of sexually abusing her as many as 13 times. Bishop Mulakkal has denied the allegation and police are yet to question the bishop.

Following the nun’s accusation, a number of other nuns and even a few priests raised allegations against the bishop and the manner in which such complaints are swept under the carpet by the church authorities.

In the latest twist to the case, a Catholic priest, James Aerthayil has been caught on tape speaking to one of the nuns supporting the victim, asking her to withdraw the case against the bishop.

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MECHANICSVILLE (PA)
PennLive

July 28, 2018

By Ivey DeJesus

Rep. Mark Rozzi, the de facto advocate for victims of child sex abuse in Pennsylvania, is blasting an order issued Friday by the state’s highest court directing the Commonwealth to release a partial report on a long-awaited grand jury investigation on clergy sex abuse.

“Justice delayed is justice denied … again,” said Rozzi, a Berks County Democrat who, at the age of 13, was molested by a priest.

“While the justices ponder what ‘process-related remedial measure can be taken now,’ how ’bout the Church save us all a lot of grief and voluntarily present their bad actors to the public?”

The Pennsylvania Supreme Court on Friday ordered the Office of Attorney General to release to the public large portions of the report on the grand jury investigation. The report – the findings of an 18-month-long investigation into clergy sex abuse across six of the state’s eight Catholic dioceses – identifies more than 300 predator priests.

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LONDON (ENGLAND)
The Guardian

July 26, 2018

By Catherine Pepinster

The pontiff’s efforts to deal with the crisis have stalled. He must act decisively or many more Catholics will lose their faith

There is a recent photo of Pope Francis doing the rounds on social media that shows him walking alone, without security people or a private secretary, across a Vatican courtyard. In the early days of his pontificate, it would have been seen as Francis breaking through the stuffy conventions of the Vatican: being his own man. Five years on, it is instead viewed as symbolic of Francis’s loneliness. Here is a man struggling to find allies or support from the Catholic faithful in his stalled efforts to reform the church and failing attempts to tackle the abuse crisis.

That crisis now threatens to engulf his papacy and do lasting damage to Francis’s own reputation. The scandal has grown from being, as the church once claimed, about a few bad apples, to a global disaster, revealing not only cover-ups by bishops of priests’ behaviour but accusations against archbishops and cardinals, the princes of the church. So bad is the situation that it has edged ever closer to the pope himself, with two of the members of his C9 group of cardinal advisers now tainted by abuse scandals. (It should be noted that the C9 members involved dispute the claims.)

In recent days the Catholic church has also been rocked by accusations against one of the most respected cardinals of recent times, the retired archbishop of Washington DC, Theodore McCarrick. The Vatican has ordered him to cease public ministry. McCarrick, 88, was a confidant of presidents and popes, including Francis.

The scandals now lead to routine expressions of sorrow from the Vatican and other Catholic outposts. But this is not enough. Victims, Catholic laity, and indeed innocent clerics viewed as possible miscreants by a cynical public need action to be taken to at last root out the abusers, work out the causes and enact reforms.

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WASHINGTON (DC)
Washington Post

July 27, 2018

By Michelle Boorstein

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/acts-of-faith/wp/2018/07/27/pennsylvania-supreme-court-oks-release-of-900-page-grand-jury-report-about-catholic-clergy-sex-abuse/

The Pennsylvania Supreme Court ruled Friday that a landmark 900-page grand jury report about child sex abuse by Catholic clergy should be released as soon as Aug. 8 — but with some of the 300 predators’ names temporarily redacted.

A court battle has been underway for weeks over questions of fairness and transparency, with prosecutors and abuse advocates saying the results of an 18-month investigation must be released for justice to be done. Ten news organizations, including the Morning Call in Allentown, Pa., and The Washington Post, joined in a brief urging the release of the grand jury report.

But people named in the report said that they have not had adequate opportunity to protect their reputations and could be severely harmed as a result.

The grand jury report comes after several other explosive ones in Pennsylvania targeting institutional sex abuse — in other Catholic dioceses and at Pennsylvania State, among other places — and is expected to be “sobering” and “rather graphic,” Erie Bishop Lawrence Persico said this month.

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IRELAND
The Sunday Times

July 29, 2018

By Justine McCarthy

Finian McGrath, the cabinet’s super-junior minister, has written to the minister for finance asking him to allocate €15m in the October budget to people who were sexually abused in day schools but are disqualified from the state’s redress scheme.

The letter to Paschal Donohoe came after the Independent Alliance minister criticised the government’s opposition to a Fianna Fail motion in the Dail at a July 10 cabinet meeting. It proposed extending eligibility for the scheme to applicants whose attackers had been convicted in the courts. The motion was passed, with 84 votes in favour and 44 against.

McGrath said in his letter that victims who had been deemed ineligible for the ex-gratia payments scheme, administered by the State Claims Agency, were owed a debt by the state for helping to remove child abusers from schools by assisting with their prosecutions.

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GREATER NOIDA, UTTAR PRADESH (INDIA)
The Hindu

July 28, 2018

Case registered; hunt launched to arrest the accused

A woman was allegedly raped by the head priest inside a temple premises in a Greater Noida village, police said on Saturday.

The incident took place in Dhoom Manikpur village in the Badalpur police station area on July 9, they said.

According to the police complaint, the victim visited the temple with a woman relative, following which the priest called her into his room and raped her.

Greater Noida Deputy Superintendent of Police Avaneesh Kumar said a case was registered against the accused, identified as Swami Kanhaiya Nand, who absconded after the incident.

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UNITED STATES
National Catholic Register

July 26, 2018

EDITORIAL: We pray that the moral ambivalence that permitted and nurtured Cardinal Theodore McCarrick’s rise will be condemned and that Pope Francis, in concert with the U.S. bishops, will begin a much-needed purification of the Church.

Amid increasing allegations of sexual abuse against the disgraced U.S. Cardinal Theodore McCarrick, Cardinal Sean O’Malley of Boston, the Church’s most respected advocate for victims of clergy sexual abuse of minors, broke the episcopal silence and pledged that Pope Francis would take decisive action against Cardinal McCarrick and other prelates facing similar allegations

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NEW DELHI (INDIA)
The Hindu

July 27, 2018

The Supreme Court on Thursday called for records of the investigation carried out by the Crime Branch in the case of alleged rape and molestation charges against four priests in the Malankara Orthodox Syrian Church rape case. A Bench of Justice A.K. Sikri and Justice Ashok Bhushan granted protection from arrest to two of the accused — Father Jaise K. George and Father Sony Varghese — till August 6, the next date of hearing.

Both the accused had approached the top court after their anticipatory bail pleas were turned down by the Kerala High Court.

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NEW DELHI (INDIA)
Indian Express

July 27, 2018

By Liz Mathew

The National Commission for Women (NCW), submitting a report on the two sex scandals in churches in Kerala, has recommended the government should abolish confessions in churches as “they come in the way of security and safety of women.”

The National Commission for Women (NCW), submitting a report on the two sex scandals in churches in Kerala, has recommended that the government should intervene to abolish the practice of confession in churches as “they come in the way of security and safety of women.”

NCW chairperson Rekha Sharma said the commission has sought a probe by a central agency into the two scandals that surfaced last month: one involving four priests of the Malankara Orthodox Syrian Church and the second one accusing the Bishop of Jalandhar, Franco Mulakkal, of rape.

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ENGLAND
The Guardian

July 20, 2018

By Harriet Sherwood

Prince told inquiry he was deceived by Peter Ball, who called him a ‘loyal friend’

Prince Charles maintained contact with a former bishop who was later jailed for abusing young men and occasionally gave him money because he was deceived over the man’s crimes, he has told the independent inquiry into child sexual abuse.

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ENGLAND
The Guardian

July 28, 2018

By Harriet Sherwood

Child abuse inquiry hears prince told Peter Ball in 1995: ‘I wish I could do more’

Prince Charles told Peter Ball “monstrous wrongs” had been done to the disgraced bishop and that he wished he could do more to help, the independent inquiry into child sexual abuse has heard.

The comments came in a letter sent by the Prince of Wales to Ball in February 1995, two years after the former bishop of Gloucester accepted a police caution for gross indecency and resigned his position in the church.

The prince also told the inquiry in a six-page statement that he had been deceived over a long period of time “about the true nature” of Ball’s activities, but denied that he had sought to influence the outcome of police investigations. He said he was unsure whether he was told about Ball’s caution until 2009.

In 2015, Ball was convicted of sexual offences against 18 young men and sentenced to 32 months in prison. An independent inquiry last year found that senior figures in the Church of England had engaged in collusion and cover-up over the case.

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NEW JERSEY
New Jersey Law Journal

July 27, 2018

By Michael Booth

A New Jersey appeals court has awarded a partial victory to an attorney being sued by an order of the Catholic Church for allegedly breaching the terms of a decades-old settlement agreement entered into by a parochial school student by holding a media conference.

The Appellate Division said attorney Gregory Gianforcaro owed no duty of care to the Order of St. Benedict of New Jersey, a nonclient, and thus a motion to add a legal malpractice claim to the suit was rightly denied.

St. Benedict operates the Delbarton School in Morristown.

“Gianforcaro’s representation was limited to litigating [the former student’s] claims against OSBNJ, not to negotiating the settlement agreement,” Appellate Division Judges Marie Simonelli and Michael Haas said in the July 27 per curiam decision. “Gianforcaro is OSBNJ’s adversary attorney in this litigation, and thus, OSBNJ had no reason to rely on his actions as an attorney.”

The panel added, “In the absence of Gianforcaro’s independent duty of care to OSBNJ, a non-client, the proposed legal malpractice claim was unsustainable as a matter of law and would not have survived a motion to dismiss.”

But the panel reversed the dismissal of contract-based claims, saying the order could proceed with claims alleging breach of contract and breach of duty of good faith and fair dealing.

The dispute involves a 1988 settlement, which contained a confidentiality agreement, between the Order and a student, identified only as W.W., who alleged that he was sexually abused by one of his teachers at Delbarton.

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ALABAMA
AL.com

July 28, 2018

By Abbey Crain

The Southern Baptist Convention, under new president, J.D. Greear, launched a “study group” that will focus on sexual harassment and abuse in the church.

The announcement came one month after Paige Patterson was fired as president of the Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, a subgroup of SBC, for brushing off rape allegations presented to him and then denying it to the SBC.

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PENNSYLVANIA
PennLive.com

July 28, 2018

By Ivey DeJesus

Over the course of an 18-month-long statewide investigation into predatory Catholic priests in Pennsylvania, victims of clergy sex abuse have bemoaned concerns and fears that church officials would silence their voices as they fought to have their stories of abuse made public.

On Friday, victims embraced a significant victory towards that goal.

The Pennsylvania Supreme Court gave the Commonwealth an non-negotiable deadline by which to release the findings of an 18-month-long investigation into clergy sex abuse.

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FORT WORTH (TX)
Catholic Diocese of Fort Worth

July 28, 2018

By Bishop Michael Olson

Letter to the Faithful of Fort Worth Regarding Former Cardinal McCarrick and the Protection of Minors and the Vulnerable in the Diocese of Fort Worth

Dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ,

Ministry in the Church is a grace from God that carries with it sober responsibility. Ministry is not a right to be claimed by anyone as an entitlement; rather, it involves a covenantual trust established through our Baptism as members of the Church established by Christ.

We see in the scandalous crimes and sins alleged to have been committed by now former Cardinal McCarrick, the violation of that trust and the grave damage caused to the lives and health of his purported victims. This scandal and pain are compounded by the horrific fact that reportedly one of his victims was hist first baptism after his priestly ordination.

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UNITED STATES
New York Magazine

July 27, 2018

By Andrew Sullivan

[Note: Sullivan’s piece on McCarrick begins nearly halfway down the page, right after his piece on Trump.]

**

The Cardinal Abuser

How surprised am I about the all too credible allegations of sexual harassment and abuse at the hands of Cardinal McCarrick, the latest Catholic prelate to be exposed in what seems like an endless cycle? The truth is — as someone who long attended Mass under McCarrick’s direct auspices, in the Cathedral of Saint Matthew in D.C. — not very. Every now and again, his name might pop up and some insidery, gay Catholic friends would roll their eyes, and switch the genders on him. He was obviously gay, I gleaned from this. I assumed that he had made some kind of discreet arrangement to stay sane as a celibate. A secret boyfriend, perhaps? A devoted companion? Since he never railed against homosexuality from the pulpit, I felt no need to inquire much further. And I always found queeny church gossip to be unseemly. These gay priests and hierarchs were obviously in pain, it seemed to me, or in denial, or so f*cked up sexually and emotionally that the most appropriate response was pity and mercy rather than censoriousness and contempt.

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UNITED STATES
Slate.com

July 26, 2018

By Ruth Graham

And here’s why the scandal isn’t going away.

The former archbishop of Washington was abruptly removed from public ministry last month after an investigation by the Archdiocese of New York found credible an accusation that Theodore McCarrick had sexually assaulted a 16-year-old altar boy in the early 1970s. McCarrick, who retired more than a decade ago, released a statement saying, “I have absolutely no recollection of this reported abuse, and believe in my innocence.” But, he wrote, he accepted the decision that he no longer practice public ministry. McCarrick is the highest-ranking American Catholic leader to be removed from office due to an accusation of child sexual abuse.

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HARRISBURG (PA)
The Sharon Herald

July 29, 2018

By Melissa Klaric

The names of “300 predator priests” and their “abhorrent actions” will be revealed in August when a report detailing widespread child sex abuse within the Catholic church is released.

The state Supreme Court on Friday announced that an “interim” version of the grand jury’s report investigating six Pennsylvania Catholic dioceses, including Erie, will be released no later than Aug. 14.

Redacted from the report will be the 14 names of people petitioning the court on constitutionality issues.

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YONA (GUAM)
Pacific Daily News

July 28, 2018

By Kevin Tano

More than hundreds of interested buyers packed the parking lot and crowded the halls of the former Accion Hotel hoping to find bargain deals at its cash and carry sale Saturday.

The hotel was also the site subject to protest and lawsuit, and used as a Redemptoris Mater Seminary for the Neocatechumenal Way.

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YONA (GUAM)
Pacific Daily News

July 28, 2018

By Kevin Tano

A former seminary building was packed with hundreds of shoppers Saturday after the Archdiocese of Agana, which owns the property, announced they were selling everything inside and using part of the proceeds to fund potential settlements for Guam clergy sex abuse victims.

Approximately 350 people were camped outside the former Accion Hotel at 5 a.m. Saturday. That was three hours before the sale even began, Leonard Stohr, deacon for Our Lady of Lourdes Catholic Church in Yigo, told the Pacific Daily News.

“This is pandemonium, everywhere I look (there’s) people,” Stohr said.

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VATICAN CITY
Associated Press

July 28, 2018

The Latest on the sex abuse allegations surrounding U.S. prelate Theodore McCarrick (all times local):

1:30 p.m.

A Virginia man who says he was sexually abused for decades by Theodore McCarrick said Saturday that he’s pleased by news that Pope Francis accepted the cardinal’s resignation.

The man, who agreed to be identified only by his first name, James, said the abuse began when he was just 11 years old and continued into adulthood. He tells The Associated Press that he hopes McCarrick’s resignation would help other victims “become free.”

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VATICAN CITY
The Week

July 28, 2018

[Related article: Vatican meets #MeToo: Nuns denounce their abuse by priests, by Nicole Winfield and Rodney Muhumuza, Associated Press, July 28, 2018]

The Catholic Church has a “global and pervasive” problem with the sexual abuse of nuns by priests and other male clergy, The Associated Press alleged in a lengthy investigative report published Saturday. The true prevalence of the abuse is unknown, as abuse reports are often kept quiet:

“Some nuns are now finding their voices, buoyed by the #MeToo movement and the growing recognition that adults can be victims of sexual abuse when there is an imbalance of power in a relationship. The sisters are going public in part because of years of inaction by church leaders, even after major studies on the problem in Africa were reported to the Vatican in the 1990s. […]

“The extent of the abuse of nuns is unclear, at least outside the Vatican. Victims are reluctant to report the abuse because of well-founded fears they won’t be believed, experts told the AP. Church leaders are reluctant to acknowledge that some priests and bishops simply ignore their vows of celibacy, knowing that their secrets will be kept. [AP]”

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UNITED STATES
BBC News

June 28, 2018

Pope Francis has accepted the resignation of a prominent US cardinal accused of sexually assaulting a teenager nearly 50 years ago.

Theodore McCarrick, 88, a former Archbishop of Washington, must also carry out “penance and prayer” pending a canonical trial, the Vatican said.

Last month US Church officials said the allegations were credible.

Mr McCarrick has said he has “no recollection” of the alleged abuse. Further allegations have since emerged.

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UNITED STATES
NBC-TV Nightly News

July 28, 2018

[VIDEO]

McCarrick’s resignation comes after sexual abuse allegations dating back to the 1970s came to light. He is the first American Cardinal ever to resign.

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NEW YORK (NY)
New York Times

July 28, 2018

By Elisabetta Povoledo and Sharon Otterman

[See this story on the front page.]

Rome – Pope Francis has accepted the resignation of Cardinal Theodore E. McCarrick, the former archbishop of Washington, from the College of Cardinals, ordering him to a “life of prayer and penance” after allegations that the cardinal sexually abused minors and adult seminarians over the course of decades, the Vatican announced on Saturday.

Acting swiftly to contain a widening sex abuse scandal at the highest levels of the Roman Catholic Church, the pope officially suspended the cardinal from the exercise of any public ministry after receiving his resignation letter Friday evening. Pope Francis also demanded in a statement that the prelate remain in seclusion “until the accusations made against him are examined in a regular canonical trial.”

Cardinal McCarrick appears to be the first cardinal in history to step down from the College of Cardinals because of sexual abuse allegations. While he remains a priest pending the outcome of a Vatican trial, he has been stripped of his highest honor and will no longer be called upon to advise the pope and travel on his behalf.

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VATICAN CITY
Associated Press

July 28, 2018

By Frances D’Emilio

In a move seen as unprecedented, Pope Francis has effectively stripped U.S. prelate Theodore McCarrick of his cardinal’s title following allegations of sexual abuse, including one involving an 11-year-old boy. The Vatican announced Saturday that Francis ordered McCarrick to conduct a “life of prayer and penance” before a church trial is held.

Breaking with past practice, Francis decided to act swiftly on the resignation offered by the emeritus archbishop of Washington, D.C., even before the accusations are investigated by church officials. McCarrick was previously one of the highest, most visible Catholic church officials in the United States and was heavily involved in the church’s yearslong response to allegations of priestly abuse there.

Francis received McCarrick’s letter offering to resign from the College of Cardinals on Friday evening, after a spate of allegations that the 88-year-old prelate had for years sexually abused boys and had sexual misconduct with adult seminarians.

The pope then ordered McCarrick’s “suspension from the exercise of any public ministry, together with the obligation to remain in a house yet to be indicated to him, for a life of prayer and penance until the accusations made against him are examined in a regular canonical trial,” the Vatican said.

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VATICAN CITY
Reuters

July 28, 2018

By Philip Pullella

Pope Francis on Saturday accepted the resignation of Cardinal Theodore McCarrick, one of the U.S. Catholic Church’s most prominent figures, who has been at the center of a widening sexual abuse scandal.

McCarrick, 88, the former archbishop of Washington, D.C., is the first cardinal in living memory to lose his red hat and title. Other cardinals who have been disciplined in sexual abuse scandals kept their membership in the College of Cardinals and their honorific “your eminence”.

The allegations against McCarrick, which first surfaced publicly last month, came with Francis facing an image crisis on a second front, in Chile, where a growing abuse scandal has enveloped the Church.

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WASHINGTON (DC)
Washington Post

July 28, 2018

By Julie Zauzmer and Chico Harlan

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/acts-of-faith/wp/2018/07/28/cardinal-theodore-mccarrick-facing-sexual-abuse-reports-resigns-from-the-college-of-cardinals/?utm_term=.87d93b9a5ba7

Cardinal Theodore McCarrick, the former archbishop of Washington and longtime globe-trotting diplomat of the Catholic Church, resigned his position as a cardinal, the Vatican announced Saturday.

McCarrick, 88, was found by the church in June to be credibly accused of sexually abusing a teenager nearly 50 years ago. Since then, additional reports of sexual abuse and harassment by the cardinal, over a span of decades, have been reported. The victims include one then-minor and three adults, who were young priests or seminarians when McCarrick allegedly abused them.

Pope Francis ordered McCarrick to remain in seclusion, and in prayer, until a church trial considers further sanctions.

McCarrick is the highest ranked U.S. Catholic clergy member to ever be removed from ministry due to sexual abuse allegations, and the first cardinal to fully resign his position since 1927.

Cardinal Keith O’Brien, from Scotland, renounced the rights and privileges of his position after a string of accusations in 2013 about sexual misconduct. But he did not officially depart the College of Cardinals, and Pope Francis only accepted O’Brien’s resignation two years after the allegations came out.

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ROME (ITALY)
ANSA

July 27, 2018

Under house arrest, blames girl for initiating

Prato, Italy – A priest arrested for alleged sexual abuse of a 10-year-old girl attempted to justify himself by saying that he thought “she was 14 or 15”.

The priest, Paolo Glaentzer, 70, made this claim during a July 24 interrogation.

He admitted that he had engaged in similar behavior with the girl “at least three other times” but blamed the girl for initiating it. He was caught in the act by two neighbors and then arrested by the Carabinieri police and has been placed under house arrest in Bagni di Lucca.

The preliminary investigative judge said that the man had shown obstinacy in continuing such “deviant and illicit modes of behavior”.

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PHILADELPHIA (PA)
Associated Press via U.S. News and World Report

July 26, 2018

By Claudia Lauer

https://www.usnews.com/news/best-states/pennsylvania/articles/2018-07-26/pennsylvania-attorney-general-appeals-to-pope-in-abuse-probe

Attorneys representing some of the petitioners arguing against releasing a Pennsylvania grand jury report on alleged child sexual abuse in the Catholic church say the state attorney general’s plea to Pope Francis is “stunning and highly unusual.”

Pennsylvania’s top prosecutor claimed in a letter to Pope Francis that at least two leaders of the Catholic Church are trying to block the release of a grand jury report alleging child sexual abuse in six of the state’s dioceses before asking him to intervene.

Attorney General Josh Shapiro sent a letter to Pope Francis on Wednesday saying anonymous petitioners had filed court actions to stop the release of the report that details the abuse and cover-ups by church officials. He urged the Roman Catholic Church’s top official to reach out to Pennsylvania’s Catholic leaders and urge them to withdraw their objections.

Shapiro wrote that he appreciated the pope meeting with survivors of sexual abuse when he visited the Philadelphia area in September 2015, and the remorse he expressed.

“Sadly, some of the clergy leading the church in Pennsylvania have failed to heed your words,” he wrote. “Credible reports indicate that at least two leaders of the Catholic Church in Pennsylvania — while not directly challenging the release of this report in court — are behind these efforts to silence the victims and avoid accountability.”

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PHILADELPHIA (PA)
The Inquirer

July 27, 2018

By Angela Couloumbis & Liz Navratil

Harrisburg – The Pennsylvania Supreme Court on Friday ordered the release of a redacted copy of a highly anticipated grand jury report on clergy sexual abuse, one the court said identifies more than 300 “predator priests” but would conceal the names of a handful of clergy members who contend it is inaccurate or unfairly maligns their reputations.

The order by the seven-member high court provided a temporary victory for about two dozen current and former clergy members who have waged a furious legal fight to prevent their names from being publicly disclosed. The high court’s decision will allow them to remain unidentified for weeks, if not months, while the justices weigh their arguments.

Some critics said that even a slight delay in publicly identifying any of the accused priests could enable them to escape criticism because public interest will wane.

In their 31-page order, the justices agreed that the case — and complaints by clergy implicated in the investigation — raises due-process issues. In doing so, they signaled frustration with both the Attorney General’s Office, which led the two-year inquiry, as well as Judge Norman A. Krumenacker III, who supervised the grand jury’s work and has said the full, unredacted report should be made public.

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KANSAS CITY (MO)
National Catholic Reporter

July 28, 2018

By Joshua J. McElwee and Heidi Schlumpf

Retired Washington Archbishop Theodore McCarrick has renounced his position in the College of Cardinals, leaving the global Catholic Church’s most symbolic and powerful group in the wake of revelations that he sexually harassed or abused several young men during his meteoric rise to become one of the U.S. church’s most senior prelates.

The move, announced in a press release from the U.S. bishops July 28, is without precedence since the founding of the American church with the creation of the diocese of Baltimore in 1789. While several U.S. cardinals have come under scrutiny in recent decades for their handling of abuse cases, none prior had set aside their red cardinalatial robes.

Global precedents are also difficult to find, with the last cardinal to fully renounce his position being French theologian Fr. Louis Billot over a political disagreement with Pope Pius XI in 1927.

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VATICAN CITY
Associated Press

July 27, 2018

By Nicole Winfield and Rodney Muhumuza

The nun no longer goes to confession regularly, after an Italian priest forced himself on her while she was at her most vulnerable: recounting her sins to him in a university classroom nearly 20 years ago.

At the time, the sister only told her provincial superior and her spiritual director, silenced by the Catholic Church’s culture of secrecy, her vows of obedience and her own fear, repulsion and shame.

“It opened a great wound inside of me,” she told the Associated Press. “I pretended it didn’t happen.”

After decades of silence, the nun is one of a handful worldwide to come forward recently on an issue that the Catholic Church has yet to come to terms with: The sexual abuse of religious sisters by priests and bishops. An AP examination has found that cases have emerged in Europe, Africa, South America and Asia, demonstrating that the problem is global and pervasive, thanks to the universal tradition of sisters’ second-class status in the Catholic Church and their ingrained subservience to the men who run it.

Some nuns are now finding their voices, buoyed by the #MeToo movement and the growing recognition that adults can be victims of sexual abuse when there is an imbalance of power in a relationship. The sisters are going public in part because of years of inaction by church leaders, even after major studies on the problem in Africa were reported to the Vatican in the 1990s.

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WASHINGTON (DC)
U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops

July 28, 2018

Pope Francis has accepted the resignation of Cardinal Theodore McCarrick, Archbishop Emeritus of Washington, from the College of Cardinals.

Pope Francis has also imposed on Cardinal McCarrick suspension ad divinis and directs him to observe a life of prayer and penance in seclusion until the completion of the canonical process.

The statement of this resignation and these stipulations was publicized in Rome on July 28, 2018.

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VATICAN CITY
Vatican Press Office

[Press release: McCarrick’s resignation from the College of Cardinals accepted; Pope Francis orders him to live a life of prayer and penance]

July 28, 2018

Nella serata di ieri è pervenuta al Santo Padre la lettera con la quale il Cardinale Theodore McCarrick, Arcivescovo emerito di Washington (U.S.A.), ha presentato la rinuncia da membro del Collegio Cardinalizio.

Papa Francesco ne ha accettato le dimissioni da Cardinale ed ha disposto la sua sospensione dall’esercizio di qualsiasi ministero pubblico, insieme all’obbligo di rimanere in una casa che gli verrà indicata, per una vita di preghiera e di penitenza, fino a quando le accuse che gli vengono rivolte siano chiarite dal regolare processo canonico.

* * *

Yesterday evening the Holy Father received the letter in which Cardinal Theodore McCarrick, Archbishop Emeritus of Washington (U.S.A.), presented his resignation as a member of the College of Cardinals.

Pope Francis accepted his resignation from the cardinalate and has ordered his suspension from the exercise of any public ministry, together with the obligation to remain in a house yet to be indicated to him, for a life of prayer and penance until the accusations made against him are examined in a regular canonical trial.

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MECHANICSVILLE (PA)
PennLive

July 27, 2018

By Ivey DeJesus

[See the Supreme Court opinion.]

The Pennsylvania Supreme Court has ruled that large portions of a grand jury report into clergy sex abuse in six Catholic dioceses in Pennsylvania will be released to the public.

In an order issued Friday afternoon, the court states that an interim report on the findings of the 40th Statewide Grand Jury investigation will be released in August. The interim report, with redactions, will be released by Aug. 14, according to the order written by Chief Justice Thomas Saylor.

The court found that report could be released to the public without compromising the rights of petitioners who have challenged the report. Dozens of priests have challenged the release of the report and said it would violate their rights to due process. The court conceded sufficient measures should be taken to protect their identities and called for a redacted version of the report.

The order also indicates the scope of the grand jury’s investigation of clergy sex abuse. More than 300 people identified by name are alleged to have committed criminal or morally reprehensible conduct in the grand jury report, the court’s opinion states.

The grand jury report describes more than 300 clergymen as “predator priests,” according to the court opinion released Friday.

State Attorney General Josh Shapiro called the court’s order authorizing the release of the report a “victory” for victims. Shapiro has been fighting to have the report released since the state’s highest court sealed it amidst legal challenges.

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EAST LANSING (MI)
The Associated Press

July 27, 2018

Michigan State University has halted payments from a $10 million fund it set up for counseling services for victims of now-imprisoned former sports doctor Larry Nassar amid concerns about possible fraudulent claims.

The Lansing State Journal reports the school stopped making payments Wednesday after the Healing Assistance Fund administrator’s flagged the issue. MSU spokeswoman Emily Guerrant says stopping payments will allow an investigation into the issue.

Guerrant says the fund had distributed more than $1.1 million as of June 30.

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UNITED STATES
Vulture

July 26, 2018

By Anne Victoria Clark

Chloe Dykstra has spoken out for the first time since her ex-boyfriend Chris Hardwick was reinstated by AMC as the host of Talking Dead. The network had launched an investigation of him after Dykstra penned an essay, which did not mention Hardwick by name, detailing her claims of alleged emotional and sexual abuse in their relationship. In a statement posted to Twitter, Dykstra says that she did not participate in AMC’s investigation of Hardwick and states she simply wishes to move on with her life. Read her full statement below:

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NEW YORK (NY)
National Review

July 26, 2018

By Michael Brendan Dougherty

Leading churchmen are denying the undeniable.

A few cardinals have roused themselves to respond to the month-old press disclosures that Cardinal Theodore McCarrick is a pederast, whereas before he was merely well known as a serial sexual harasser. Their response is depressing in the extreme and should make any Catholic or person of good will wish for their immediate, tearful confessions of fault, and their resignations of high ecclesial office.

Before mainstream media outlets finally reported on his lewd and criminal behavior, McCarrick was the face of the American episcopacy’s response to the sex-abuse crisis in 2002. His lewd behavior with seminarians was an open secret among priests and informed laity. Expert witnesses in priest-abuse cases, such as Richard Sipe, had long ago publicized what they knew of the behavior of “Uncle Ted.” A concerned group of laity and clerics pleaded their case against him in Rome before his elevation to the College of Cardinals. Churchmen across the country who didn’t call him “Uncle Ted” with affection or disgust had another nickname related to his proclivities: “Blanche.”

American bishops now facing questions about what they knew and when have had to choose between looking clueless or complicit. So far, they are choosing the former. They are not, however, very persuasive in presenting themselves as ignorant of the rumors.

So let’s review what these churchmen have said and ask some questions about their responses to these “revelations.”

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JOHNSTOWN (PA)
Tribune-Democrat

July 27, 2018

By Dave Sutor

http://www.tribdem.com/news/read-the-letter-attorney-general-writes-to-pope-francis-seeks/article_33a12d24-9118-11e8-9381-537ef72c8396.html

Pennsylvania Attorney General Josh Shapiro has appealed to the highest level of the Catholic Church in his attempt to get the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania to allow the release of an almost 900-page grand jury report that is believed to contain details about years of clergy sexual abuse and cover-up within six of the commonwealth’s dioceses.

Shapiro’s office prepared a letter to the Vatican after conducting interviews and research into the Allentown, Scranton, Erie, Pittsburgh, Greensburg and Harrisburg dioceses in a proceeding overseen by Cambria County President Judge Norman Krumenacker III.

Officials in the dioceses have publicly supported its release.

However, in June, the high court stopped the report’s release after “many individuals” mentioned in the document raised concerns about possible damage to their reputations if the findings become public.

On Wednesday, Shapiro sent a letter to Pope Francis in which he wrote: “Credible reports indicate that at least two leaders of the Catholic Church in Pennsylvania – while not directly challenging the release of this report in court – are behind these efforts to silence the victims and avoid accountability.”

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DENVER (CO)
Crux

July 27, 2018

By Charles Collins

Dublin, Ireland – A month before Pope Francis touches down on his first visit to Ireland, Dublin Archbishop Diarmuid Martin says the entire nation – religious or not – is interested in what the pontiff has to say.

“The tickets were booked out within days. The big problem – both in Dublin and in Knock – there is no room to take in more people, and more people want to come,” Martin told Crux.

The pope will travel to the country Aug. 25-26 for the final two days of the week-long World Meeting of Families.

Francis will be coming to a very different Ireland than the one that last welcomed a pope in 1979, when millions came to see John Paul II.

The clerical abuse scandal has greatly damaged the reputation of the Church: Not only have same-sex marriage and abortion been legalized, but recent surveys show about half of Irish people under the age of 30 don’t even identify as Catholic.

Martin said young people were “horrified” by the scandal, and one of the challenges for the Church in the future is to learn to re-engage them.

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DENVER (CO)
Catholic News Agency via Crux

July 27, 2018

Talca, Chile – Former nuns of the Congregation of the Good Samaritan in Chile reported a series of sexual abuses committed by priests visiting the community, which belongs to the Diocese of Talca and is dedicated to caring for the sick.

The new accusations come amid a growing sexual abuse scandal rocking the Church in Chile that led Pope Francis to summon the bishops to the Vatican in May to address the crisis, their resignation en masse, and the pope accepting some of the resignations.

Currently this diocese in Southern Chile has as apostolic administrator Bishop Galo Fernandez Villaseca, after Francis accepted the resignation of the local bishop, Horacio Valenzuela.

In a report broadcast July 24 by Televisión Nacional de Chile, five former nuns said that there was sexual abuse and the abuse of authority inside the congregation. They added that they were mistreated when they reported the incidents to the superior.

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KANSAS CITY (MO)
National Catholic Reporter

July 27, 2018

By Peter Feuerherd

Avenel, N.J. – News that charges of sexual abuse of minors and seminarians have been lodged against Cardinal Theodore McCarrick shocked some this summer.

But Mark Crawford was not among them.

Crawford, because of his contacts among priests and church workers, had heard the buzz about the cardinal’s alleged sexual interest in seminarians for years, although he had no direct knowledge. But he did know one thing: Crawford himself had suffered long-term abuse from a priest in the Archdiocese of Newark, had gone to McCarrick when the cardinal led the archdiocese, and was promised that something would be done.

And his abuser was soon returned to ministry.

Crawford described McCarrick’s demeanor at their 1997 meeting as cold and aloof. The then-archbishop said it was his first meeting ever with a victim of sex abuse by clergy. During the meeting, McCarrick told Crawford that his abuser, Fr. Kenneth Martin, would never have access to children again.

“I knew he was compromised when nothing changed,” Crawford told NCR during an interview from his house here. Instead, Crawford watched from afar as his abuser was sent away. But about two years later Crawford picked up a copy of the Advocate, the archdiocesan newspaper, to discover a photo of Martin and McCarrick together at a Christmas party for children at St. James Hospital in Newark where Martin had been assigned as chaplain.

“They never told me anything,” he said about the archdiocese’s subsequent placement of Martin.

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KANSAS CITY (MO)
National Catholic Reporter

July 27, 2018

By Michael Sean Winters

Catholic conservatives have finally decided to take the clergy sex abuse crisis seriously. Why? Because their longtime nemesis Cardinal Theodore McCarrick has been accused of unspeakable crimes and because they think they can use this crisis to attack Pope Francis. It is deplorable.

At Catholic News Agency, their new editor J.D. Flynn penned an essay that gives the right-wing game away. Flynn made some fine points. I agree that it was wrong for the bishops in 2002 not to include themselves within the strictures of the Dallas Charter for Child Protection. And he is correct to note that we have not yet learned, and we deserve to know, to whom Bishop Paul Bootkoski of Metuchen and Archbishop John Myers of Newark shared the information that they were making settlements with seminarians, who were not minors, but who had alleged sexual misconduct by McCarrick.

But, then Flynn tries to spread the blame around. “Cardinal Joseph Tobin succeeded Myers in Newark in 2017, and Bishop James Checchio succeeded Bootkoski in Metuchen the year before,” Flynn notes. “Cardinal Donald Wuerl succeeded McCarrick directly in Washington in 2006. Did those men have awareness of McCarrick’s alleged penchant for young seminarians?”

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TORONTO (ONTARIO, CANADA)
LifeSiteNews / Campaign Life Coalition

July 25, 2018

By Lisa Bourne

Brazil, Indiana – The Catholic Church is a building on fire in need of faithful laity and priests who will help save her, Father John Hollowell preached in his Mass homily this past Sunday.

Hollowell, a priest for the Archdiocese of Indianapolis, was among those recognizing the correlation between the first reading in the July 22 Ordinary Form’s Mass scripture and the church’s still unfolding sex abuse scandal.

“Woe to the shepherds who mislead and scatter the flock of my pasture,” Father Hollowell recited from the first line of Jeremiah 23:1-6 to open his message. He returned to that quote a number of times throughout his homily.

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LONDON (ENGLAND)
The Economist

July 28, 2018

Allegations of a cover-up have further tarnished its image

Santiago – In most of the world, Pope Francis is revered as a liberal reformer. Just across the Andes from his native Argentina, however, his image has taken a blow in the wake of a sexual-abuse scandal that could rival the gravity of those revealed in the United States and Ireland in the 2000s. On July 12th Óscar Muñoz, the former chancellor of the Archdiocese of Santiago, Chile’s capital, was arrested on charges of abusing seven children since 2002. Father Muñoz, who had confessed his guilt to church officials in one case in January, was in charge of maintaining archives of clerical-abuse investigations and took testimony from victims in other cases. He was not an isolated bad apple: Chile’s national prosecutor’s office announced this week that it is investigating 36 accusations of sexual abuse by clergy and church employees. It also summoned the country’s highest-ranking Catholic official, Cardinal Ricardo Ezzati, to testify as a defendant in the alleged cover-up of sex crimes. In five cases, church leaders are suspected of having concealed crimes or obstructed justice.

Francis’s initial response to the allegations that had arisen in Chile bore unwelcome similarity to the handling of such cases under his predecessors. In 2015 he gave a bishopric to Juan Barros, a priest who had been accused of concealing the crimes of Fernando Karadima—a well-connected priest whom the church found guilty of paedophilia in 2011, seven years after receiving its first complaint against him. Bishop Barros has denied any wrongdoing. On a visit to Chile in January, Francis caused outrage by dismissing the claims against Bishop Barros as “calumnies”.

The pope soon recognised his error. After commissioning a 2,300-page report into Bishop Barros, he summoned all 34 of Chile’s acting and retired bishops to Rome to address charges of “grave negligence” in handling investigations and even destroying evidence. All of them tendered their resignations, and Francis has accepted five, including Bishop Barros’s. In a public mea culpa, Francis called on Chileans to create spaces in which “a critical and questioning attitude is not confused with betrayal.”

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NEW YORK (NY)
HuffPost

July 26, 2018

By Carol Kuruvilla

The Order of St. Benedict of New Jersey is facing sexual abuse allegations from 30 people.

Thirteen Benedictine monks and one lay teacher associated with a New Jersey religious order have been accused of sexually abusing people in cases that go back decades, leaders of the group admitted in a letter.

The heads of Morristown’s St. Mary’s Abbey and the Delbarton School, which is run by the abbey’s monks, said that 30 people have come forward with accusations of assaults from 1968 to 1999.

It was an attempt at transparency by the abbey’s Abbot Richard Cronin and the school’s headmaster, Michael Tidd, who is also a member of the order. The letter, posted to the school’s website, is the first acknowledgment of the broad scope of the problem by the Order of St. Benedict of New Jersey at its all-boys Catholic prep school, according to NJ Advance Media.

The accusations have sparked at least 15 lawsuits since 2012 ― eight of which have been settled, with the remainder pending.

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NEW YORK (NY)
America Magazine

July 25, 2018

By Michael J. O’Loughlin

Father Desmond Rossi says he first met Cardinal Theodore McCarrick when he was a seminarian in Newark in 1986. He says that he had heard rumors that then-Archbishop McCarrick cultivated inappropriate relationships with young men, murmurings that appeared to be confirmed following a visit by the archbishop to the Immaculate Conception Seminary at Seton Hall University.

Father Rossi says that unwanted touching and harassment from the archbishop, along with an alleged sexual assault by two seminarians, left him shaken and prompted him to transfer to a different diocese before he was ordained. Years later, he says, those experiences contributed to a deep depression that required a years-long leave from active ministry.

A priest in active ministry in the Diocese of Albany today, Father Rossi says he recently shared his story with his bishop, who supports his decision to speak out, and with his parish.

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MORRISTOWN (NJ)
NorthJersey.com

July 27, 2018

By Mike Kelly

[Includes 13 photos.]

https://www.northjersey.com/story/news/columnists/mike-kelly/2018/07/27/delbarton-admission-sex-abuse-claims-enough-stop-questions/838256002/

As you drive along the road that winds through the 400 acres of the elite Delbarton School, an all-boys Roman Catholic academy on the outskirts of Morristown, it’s hard to imagine anything bad happening in such a serene place.

You first pass a quiet pond. Then a series of poles adorned with banners bearing the words “Brotherhood,” “Faith,” “Tradition,” “Spirit” and “Service.” Then, beyond lush fields, thick groves of oaks and maples and a smattering of statues of saints, you reach an elegant granite building that exudes stability, protection, safety.

That stately image suffered a major blow this week.

In a stunning letter, running nearly 1,800 words and addressed to the school’s high-powered alumni, deep-pocketed donors and the parents of nearly 600 current students, Delbarton officials admitted that there are allegations that its seemingly peaceful campus and monastery had been home to 13 monks who sexually abused 30 boys over three decades, ending in 1999.

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UNITED STATES
National Public Radio

July 25, 2018

By Alexandra Starr

Starting next month, Sarah Hirshland will officially take over as CEO of the U.S. Olympic Committee. One of the big issues she will have to deal with is ongoing sexual abuse scandals.

In recent months, athletes have come forward in sports like swimming, gymnastics, diving and taekwondo with allegations of sexual abuse or assault. Many athletes don’t go public until years after the alleged assaults take place. They stay silent in part because of the taboo around sexual abuse. In some cases, young people can’t identify what has happened to them as a crime.

But a major reason athletes stay silent is fear that publicly criticizing sport governing organizations could derail their athletic career.

Keith Sanderson, a three-time Olympian in shooting, made that point in an interview with KOAA television in Colorado Springs last February. The interview came just a few weeks after more than 100 girls and women testified in a Michigan courtroom about how the former USA Gymnastics team doctor, Larry Nassar, had abused them.

In the KOAA interview, Sanderson pointed out that there is one route to the Olympics, and that is through the U.S. Olympic Committee. “There’s no competition there,” he said. “They have a total monopoly on who the Olympians are.” To voice public criticism could potentially jeopardize their standing in their sport.

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UNITED STATES
The Associated Press

July 24, 2018

Senators questioned the sincerity of reforms at the U.S. Olympic Committee, USA Gymnastics and Michigan State University in the wake of sex-abuse scandals — using legal papers, emails and accounts of conversations to portray organizations that still don’t fully grasp the pain they inflicted.

At a hearing Tuesday in Washington, Democratic Sen. Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut criticized leaders of the USOC and USA Gymnastics for court filings this month that seek to absolve the federations of legal responsibility for Larry Nassar’s sex-abuse crimes.

Meanwhile, Democratic Sen. Maggie Hassan of New Hampshire and others blistered Michigan State’s interim president, John Engler, for insensitive emails and comments he made during negotiations that produced a $500 million settlement with sex-abuse victims who attended the school.

“I think you have some repair work to do here today, to put it mildly,” Hassan said, prompting applause from the 80 or so victims who attended the hearing.

Nassar, a longtime sports doctor at Michigan State who also volunteered as the team physician for USA Gymnastics, is serving decades in prison for child pornography and other crimes after hundreds of women said he sexually abused them under the guise of medical care.

Last Friday, the USOC filed a motion to be removed as a defendant in lawsuits filed by gold-medal gymnasts Aly Raisman, Jordyn Wieber and McKayla Maroney, arguing that it had no legal responsibility for Nassar’s actions.

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UNITED STATES
Yahoo Entertainment

July 25, 2018

By Raechal Leone Shewfelt

Chris Hardwick’s return to AMC’s Talking Dead was not happy news for Kathy Griffin.

The comedian was blunt in her response to the announcement that Hardwick will once again host the Walking Dead and Fear the Walking Dead aftershow, beginning Aug. 12.

FUCK THIS!!! https://t.co/updOxg7YLS

— Kathy Griffin (@kathygriffin) July 25, 2018

Hardwick was suspended a month ago, after his former girlfriend, actress Chloe Dykstra, accused him of emotional and physical abuse in a detailed essay. The season premiere of his show, Talking With Chris Hardwick, was yanked from the AMC schedule, his name was pulled off the Nerdist website that he founded, and he withdrew from panel discussions at last week’s San Diego Comic-Con.

However, the network has now cleared him after an investigation: “Following a comprehensive assessment by AMC, working with Ivy Kagan Bierman of the firm Loeb & Loeb, who has considerable experience in this area, Chris Hardwick will return to AMC as the host of Talking Dead and Talking with Chris Hardwick. We take these matters very seriously and given the information available to us after a very careful review, including interviews with numerous individuals, we believe returning Chris to work is the appropriate step.”

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COLUMBUS (OH)
The Associated Press

July 24, 2018

By Andrew Welsh-Huggins

A former Ohio State University diving club coach began pressuring a female diver for sex within weeks after meeting her when she was 16, the former diver said Tuesday in an interview.

Former diver Estee Pryor said she had no experience with men when the 27-year-old coach approached her and began complimenting her.

The coach was “telling me I was the most honest, and mature, and kind girl he’s ever met,” Pryor said in an interview with NBC’s Megyn Kelly. The relationship with former coach Will Bohonyi became sexual within a week, Pryor said.

Pryor said she was raised to respect men and never challenge them.

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WILMINGTON (DE)
Delaware News Journal

July 25, 2018

By Xerxes Wilson

John A. Sarro, a former priest with the Catholic Diocese of Wilmington indicted earlier this year on charges that he raped a pre-teen girl decades ago, has died.

Sarro died Monday, six months before a scheduled trial in New Castle County Superior Court. A spokesman for the Wilmington Diocese confirmed his death Wednesday.

He was accused of fondling and raping a girl who court documents indicated was younger than 16 years old between 1991 and 1994 when the abuse is said to have occurred. He was a pastor at St. Helena Parish in Bellefonte at the time.

Sarro was 76 when he was indicted on charges of first-degree unlawful sexual intercourse and second-degree unlawful sexual contact in January. The crimes listed in his indictment were the law when the abuse is said to have occurred and were the precursors to Delaware’s current rape statute.

He pleaded not guilty in February. With his death, those charges will be dropped, said Carl Kanefsky, Department of Justice spokesman.

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WASHINGTON (DC)
Washington Post

July 24, 2018

By Michelle Boorstein

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/acts-of-faith/wp/2018/07/24/the-catholic-church-has-a-major-gap-when-accused-sex-abusers-are-high-ranking-cleric-says-top-u-s-cardinal/

The Catholic archbishop of Boston, one of the country’s most prominent Catholic clerics and Pope Francis’s chief adviser on child sex abuse, said Tuesday that while the church now has a strong policy and procedures regarding abuse by priests, “a major gap” exists when the accused is a bishop or cardinal — the highest positions in the church — and that it must be corrected.

“Failure to take these actions will threaten and endanger the already weakened moral authority of the Church and can destroy the trust required for the Church to minister to Catholics and have a meaningful role in the wider civil society. In this moment there is no greater imperative for the Church than to hold itself accountable to address these matters,” Cardinal Sean O’Malley wrote.

O’Malley released the statement as the church reels from the suspension a month ago of Cardinal Theodore McCarrick, a popular former D.C. archbishop who served as a global diplomat for the Vatican. The Vatican says McCarrick has been credibly accused of groping an altar boy decades ago in St. Patrick’s Cathedral, and allegations have surfaced that McCarrick sexually harassed and groped several seminarians and a young priest, and abused a family friend starting when the boy was 11.

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BOSTON (MA)
The Pilot

July 24, 2018

By Cardinal Sean O’Malley

For the past several days, articles in the national media have reported accusations of Cardinal Theodore McCarrick’s sexual improprieties with several adults and his criminal violations of the sexual abuse of minors. These alleged actions, when committed by any person, are morally unacceptable and incompatible with the role of a priest, bishop or cardinal.

I am deeply troubled by these reports that have traumatized many Catholics and members of the wider community. In one case involving a minor the Archdiocese of New York, after investigation, has found the accusation to be credible and substantiated. While another accusation concerning a minor is yet to be investigated, the reports are devastating for the victims, their families and for the Church itself. Each new report of clerical abuse at any level creates doubt in the minds of many that we are effectively addressing this catastrophe in the Church.

These cases and others require more than apologies. They raise up the fact that when charges are brought regarding a bishop or a cardinal, a major gap still exists in the Church’s policies on sexual conduct and sexual abuse. While the Church in the United States has adopted a zero tolerance policy regarding the sexual abuse of minors by priests we must have clearer procedures for cases involving bishops. Transparent and consistent protocols are needed to provide justice for the victims and to adequately respond to the legitimate indignation of the community. The Church needs a strong and comprehensive policy to address bishops’ violations of the vows of celibacy in cases of the criminal abuse of minors and in cases involving adults.

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NEW YORK (NY)
First Things

July 24, 2018

By Philip Lawler

What did the American bishops know, and when did they know it? This is the question everyone is asking in the wake of public revelations that Cardinal Theodore McCarrick had, for years, preyed on seminarians who visited his beach house. It is a reasonable question, a necessary question. I hope that someday soon, a few brave bishops will begin asking it, too—and giving the restive Catholic faithful some answers.

But it is not the most important question. For anyone exploring the corruption of the Catholic hierarchy, the question of how Cardinal McCarrick avoided exposure and prosecution, though important, is less critical than the question of how his rise through the ecclesiastical ranks continued, even while rumors about homosexual activities swirled around him. Why was McCarrick named archbishop of Washington, and given a cardinal’s red hat? Why was he allowed to promote his proteges, to serve special diplomatic assignments for the Vatican, to influence the selection of bishops and even of a Roman Pontiff, after his beach-house antics had become a matter of common knowledge?

The more obvious question, the what-did-they-know-and-when question, admits of an easy, albeit unsatisfactory answer. McCarrick’s colleagues can say, more or less honestly, that they had heard reports about his approaches to seminarians, but did not know whether the reports were true. The question allows for an epistemological dodge: Other bishops did not really know, in the sense that they had no definitive proof. So they had an excuse for their failure to take action—or so they thought.

Reporters, likewise, had heard the stories about McCarrick but had no proof. Rod Dreher and Julia Duin have written about their fruitless searches for a witness who would go on the record. Without personal testimony, they had only hearsay evidence. I experienced the same frustration.

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DENVER (CO)
Catholic News Agency

July 24, 2018

By Carl Bunderson

Washington D.C. – Cardinal Theodore McCarrick is reported to have lived alongside a Maryland house of formation for members of a religious order whose founder has faced Vatican charges of sexual misconduct.

St. John Baptist de la Salle is located in Chillum, Md., adjacent to Washington, D.C. The parish is staffed by the Institute of the Incarnate Word (IVE), and the property serves as the headquarters of the community’s Province of the Immaculate Conception.

The Institute of the Incarnate Word was founded in 1984 in Argentina by Fr. Carlos Miguel Buela. In 2016, the Vatican affirmed the veracity of allegations that Buela engaged in sexual improprieties with adult seminarians of his community.

Buela, who retired in 2010, was forbidden by the Vatican from contact with members of the IVE, and from appearing in public.

In addition to the church building, the Maryland property includes two additional buildings, one of which is Ven. Fulton Sheen Seminary. The seminary forms men aspiring to be priests of the IVE, and opened in 1998. According to its website, the seminary currently houses 41 men in formation.

The third building, perhaps where the cardinal stayed, was not visible in a Google Street View Image dated July 2009, but had been constructed by May 2012.

Sources told CNA that Cardinal McCarrick lived with the IVE community at St. John Baptist de la Salle during his retirement, after residing for a period at the Redemptoris Mater Seminary of the Archdiocese of Washington.

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NEW YORK (NY)
New York Times

July 25, 2018

By Ross Douthat

The Catholic Church needs an inquest into what the pederast cardinal’s colleagues knew, and when.

One of the best things that the bishops of the American Catholic Church did during the great wave of sex abuse revelations 16 years ago — and yes, there’s a low bar for “best” — was to establish a National Review Board, staffed by prominent layman, with the authority to commission an independent report on what exactly had happened in the church.

The result was a careful analysis by the John Jay College of Criminal Justice that detailed the patterns of priestly sex abuse in American Catholicism between 1950 and 2002: How many, how often, what kind of abuse, what strategy of predation, how many victims, which sex, what age, how the priest’s superiors responded (or didn’t), how often the courts were involved, what scale of settlements were paid, and so on through a wealth of grim statistical detail.

Then attached to that data was a larger discussion from the Review Board’s members, which managed to be reasonably evenhanded about subjects (priestly celibacy and homosexuality, above all) that lend themselves to culture-war hysteria both inside and outside the church. Thanks to the members’ labors, any journalist or historian interested in assessing the problem of priestly sex abuse dispassionately, and anyone seeking the truth about a lurid and polarizing story, can turn to a sober and detailed accounting — one that that the church itself commissioned.

Now, unfortunately, it needs to happen again. But what needs to be commissioned this time, by Pope Francis himself if the American bishops can’t or won’t, isn’t a synthetic overview of a systemic problem. Rather, the church needs an inquest, a special prosecutor — you can even call it an inquisition if you want — into the very specific question of who knew what and when about the crimes of Cardinal Theodore McCarrick, and why exactly they were silent.

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PITTSBURGH (PA)
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

July 26, 2018

By Liz Navratil and Angela Couloumbis

[The article includes a PDF of Shapiro’s letter to Pope Francis.]

Harrisburg – Amid a still-boiling legal battle over a secret grand jury report into clergy sex abuse across Pennsylvania, Attorney General Josh Shapiro has appealed to Pope Francis to step in and persuade opponents to drop their bid to block the report’s release.

In a letter sent this week, Mr. Shapiro petitioned the pontiff to “direct church leaders to follow the path you charted … and abandon their destructive efforts to silence the survivors.”

Mr. Shapiro’s request to the worldwide leader of the Catholic church — in effect the boss for most everyone expected to be assailed by the grand jury — comes as the state Supreme Court weighs arguments on whether it should block the release of the report or, in some form, let it become public. The delays, put in place while the state Supreme Court considers legal issues surrounding the report, have left some victims fretting that their voices will ultimately be silenced once again.

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PITTSBURGH (PA)
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

July 26, 2018

By Peter Smith

[This article appeared on the front page of the Post-Gazette.]

http://www.post-gazette.com/news/faith-religion/2018/07/26/Catholic-priest-sexual-abuse-grand-jury-Pennsylvania-McCarrick-Buffalo-Saginaw-Australia-Chile/stories/201807230174

Michael Whalen returned last year to his childhood Catholic parish in Western New York to unload a decades-old burden on his conscience.

He handed the priest $131, he told Buffalo-area media. That had been his share as a kid decades ago, when he and friends had split the proceeds from a stolen parish collection plate.

But as Mr. Whalen spoke to the current priest, he also revealed a far darker burden: that he had been sexually abused by his childhood priest, the Rev. Norbert Orsolits.

After that conversation, and more discussion with the local diocese, Mr. Whalen publicly identified his abuser this February.

A Buffalo News reporter sought comment from Father Orsolits — who candidly admitted to molesting “probably dozens” of boys before quietly retiring in 2003.

That unleashed months of revelations about the history of sexually abusive priests in the Diocese of Buffalo, and criticisms of the bishops who kept them in ministry.

Pennsylvania may be preoccupied with its own Supreme Court drama — drawing in batteries of legal, legislative and clerical players — over whether the public can see a mammoth grand-jury report into sexual abuse in Pittsburgh’s and five other Catholic dioceses. The report remains sealed pending challenges from some of those named in it.

But scandals are flaring up in Catholic dioceses throughout the Mid-Atlantic and Great Lakes regions, and in countries ranging from Chile to France to Australia to the upper ranks of the Vatican. Pope Francis himself, after initial defensiveness, is now removing bishops in Chile and lamenting a “culture of abuse and cover-up.”

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BOSTON (MA)
Boston Globe

July 25, 2018

By Michael Levenson

https://www.bostonglobe.com/metro/2018/07/25/priest-who-alerted-church-officials-abuse-allegations-against-washington-prelate-wants-investigation-into-how-they-responded/gBlC7m2CWHJZaqsVUu9fMO/story.html

A priest who wrote to Cardinal Sean P. O’Malley in 2015 about sexual abuse allegations involving Cardinal Theodore McCarrick said Wednesday there should be an investigation into who in the church hierarchy knew of the Washington prelate’s alleged abuse and why no one in power spoke out about it earlier.

“The vast majority of the bishops knew this — they gossip, too, you know, just like everybody else,” the Rev. Boniface Ramsey, pastor of St. Joseph’s Church Yorkville in New York City, said in an interview. “But there was no mechanism for handling something like this.”

Ramsey wrote to O’Malley after he saw McCarrick at the funeral of Cardinal Edward Egan of New York. Ramsey said he was angry because, decades earlier, he had tried to warn church officials that McCarrick was abusing seminarians when McCarrick was archbishop of Newark, but he felt that his complaints were brushed aside.

In his letter to O’Malley — who leads a Vatican advisory panel on clergy abuse — Ramsey raised the issue again, only to receive a reply from O’Malley’s priest secretary, the Rev. Robert Kickham, advising him that the panel handles policy, not individual cases.

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CHIPPEWA FALLS (WI)
Associated Press via The Chippewa Herald

July 25, 2018

By Scott Bauer

Madison, Wis. – Republican Gov. Scott Walker joined the growing bipartisan call Wednesday for Democratic candidate Matt Flynn to drop out of the race for governor because of his past legal work defending the Milwaukee Archdiocese against priest abuse lawsuits.

Flynn remained defiant.

Walker, in a tweet, said Flynn’s “actions disqualify him from serving.” He called for the other seven Democratic candidates to join with him in agreement. Walker tweeted the message minutes after the Wisconsin Republican Party made the same plea to the Democratic candidates.

All of the other Democratic candidates, except political activist Mike McCabe, have pledged to support whoever wins the Aug. 14 Democratic primary.

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MORRISTOWN (NJ)
Delbarton School

July 20, 2018

By Abbot Richard Cronin OSB and Headmaster Fr. Michael Tidd OSB

Dear Members of the St. Mary’s Abbey and Delbarton School Community,

In recent weeks, several news stories have appeared regarding litigation alleging sexual abuse by monks of St. Mary’s Abbey. We write to you today because we believe it is important to address these issues with you directly and forthrightly.

Specifically, we want you to know how St. Mary’s Abbey and Delbarton School have responded to these allegations of abuse, the status of litigation on these matters, and what we are doing today to ensure a safe and healthy environment for all members of our community.

Above all, we want you to understand that protecting the well-being of the students of Delbarton and all those to whom we minister is our highest and most important priority. To that end, we have implemented the best practices summarized below and in the attached appendix to protect our students and all others whom we serve.

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WOODLAND PARK (BERGEN COUNTY, NJ)
The Record (and NorthJersey.com)

July 25, 2018

By Abbott Koloff

Thirteen monks from St. Mary’s Abbey, which runs the Delbarton School in Morris Township, have been accused of sexually abusing 30 people over the past three decades, according to a letter to alumni and other members of the school community.

Those who have come forward include former Delbarton students, the twin sons of a former Delbarton employee, a parishioner at St. James Church in Basking Ridge and former students of St. Elizabeth of Hungary School in Linden, which was staffed by the abbey, according to the letter.

“We take these accusations very seriously, and we profoundly regret and apologize to anyone who has suffered sexual abuse or harassment because of a St. Mary’s Abbey monk or a Delbarton employee,” the letter, sent on Friday, said.

It was signed by Abbot Richard Cronin, the head of St. Mary’s Abbey of the Benedictine Order, and Father Michael Tidd, headmaster of the Delbarton School.

More: Former Delbarton teacher admits he had sex with 50 boys; school settles 5 sex abuse suits

More: READ: Letter from Delbarton leaders on sex abuse allegations

The letter refers to news stories that appeared in “recent weeks” about “litigation involving sexual abuse by monks of St. Mary’s Abbey. We write to you today because we believe it is important to address these issues with you directly and forthrightly.”

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MORRISTOWN (NJ)
Associated Press via Crux

July 26, 2018

Leaders of a Catholic order in New Jersey said in a letter posted on its website that 30 people have come forward alleging sexual abuse by the monks or lay faculty associated with a private school.

In a joint letter written to the community on July 20, the head of St. Mary’s Abbey and the Delbarton School headmaster said the order had settled eight lawsuits with alleged victims, while seven others were pending.

The abuse allegedly took place while many of the victims were students at Delbarton School in Morristown, which is managed by the Order of St. Benedict of New Jersey. Other reports were made by a parishioner of St. James Church in Basking Ridge and former students of St. Elizabeth of Hungary School in Linden as well as by the sons of a former Delbarton School employee.

The letter said the reported assaults happened between 1968 and 1999 and involved 13 monks and one lay teacher.

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DENVER (CO)
Catholic News Agency

July 24, 2018

By Ed Condon

Erie, Pa. – Bishop Lawrence Persico of Erie has warned Catholics that the results of a Pennsylvania grand jury investigation into sexual abuse of minors will make for disturbing reading. The release of the 800-page report has been delayed by order of the state’s supreme court.

“It certainly is going to be sobering,” said Bishop Persico to news outlet Penn Live.

“The report is rather graphic, and it will be very detailed on what has occurred,” he added.

The report is the result of a two-year investigation by state authorities into the handling of clerical sexual abuse in the five Pennsylvania dioceses – Altoona-Johnstown, Erie, Greensburg, Harrisburg, Philadelphia, and Pittsburgh. The dioceses were served with wide ranging subpoenas and turned over decades’ worth of files concerning the handling of abuse allegations by Church authorities.

A former diocesan official in Pennsylvania, who was involved in developing responses to the subpoena, told CNA that complying with the court order took considerable time and effort.

“It covered everything we had, it was very broadly drawn. We handed over years’ and years’ worth of files.”

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SYDNEY (AUSTRALIA)
Australian Broadcasting Corporation

July 26, 2018

By Joanna Woodburn

The New South Wales Government is being asked to honour the police investigators who brought to justice the paedophile priests, brothers and dorm masters who abused students at Bathurst’s St Stanislaus College in the state’s Central West region.

At least 160 students at St Stanislaus College — a Catholic boys’ boarding school — were abused by priests and staff between the 1970s and 1990s.

Terry Jones, a former student of the college has written to state MP Paul Toole to ask for the Chifley Police District to be recognised for helping to bring the perpetrators to justice.

“The police worked in Bathurst under the most extreme circumstances and they came up with 161 victims and 400 offences in the one school.”

“We’ve got to put them on a pedestal,” Mr Jones said.

Former priest, Brian Joseph Spillane, is one of the staff who worked at the St Stanislaus College who is serving jail time for abusing students at the school.

Strict non-publication orders, which were placed on his numerous cases in 2013, were lifted in 2016.

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SYDNEY (AUSTRALIA)
The Australian

July 26, 2018

By John Ferguson

https://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/nation/victoria-police-chief-graham-ashton-backed-priests-rights-on-sex-abuse-confessions/news-story/c067c64954ee7f45666efc52ff8c8b67

Melbourne – Victoria police chief Graham Ashton backed the right of priests to retain the seal of the confessional over mandatory reporting of child sex offending in explosive answers to the inquiry that sparked the national abuse royal commission.

Mr Ashton submitted that police would support priests being able to keep confessional discussions secret, declaring that the force had not identified the rite of the confessional as a barrier to reporting sex abuse allegations. Mr Ashton outlined Victoria Police’s position to the Victorian parliamentary inquiry into the handling of child abuse by ­religious and other organisations in 2012.

Police said yesterday the issue over the church’s canon law and mandatory reporting was a matter for the Victorian government.

The Victorian government has not yet outlined its final position on matters relating to the seal of the confessional, but has indicated it favours a consistent national response.

The police force said in 2012 that the seal could remain, providing measures were in place to ­encourage the protection of ­children.

Mr Ashton was then a deputy commissioner of police in charge of specialist operations and his position is detailed in a document obtained by The Australian that backed the so-called Irish model on confession and child ­protection.

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BUFFALO (NY)
Buffalo News

July 25, 2018

By Jay Tokasz

The former head of the Buffalo area’s largest AIDS prevention organization is being accused of molesting three brothers from a South Buffalo family when he was a Catholic priest in the 1970s.

West Seneca resident and author P.A. Kane wrote a first-person essay accusing Ronald Silverio of being the young parish priest who molested him when he was a parishioner of Holy Family Church in South Buffalo.

In separate interviews with The News, Kane’s siblings, Peter and a younger brother who asked not to be identified by name, said that Silverio also molested them.

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BUFFALO (NY)
The Public

July 17, 2018

By P. A. Kane

The breach

I can’t remember if my younger brother and I found it strange or if we resisted his request that we sleep in separate beds, in separate rooms. What I do remember, what is burned in my psychic apparatus for all eternity, is him coming into the darkened room where I was pretending to be asleep, sidling up next to me on the sofa bed, and breathing on me. Hot, excited breath that filled me with a paralyzing terror as he pulled down my sweatpants and scrutinized my 12-year-old body by the thin light of a flashlight before gently touching and stroking my genitals.

In that bed, in those interminable minutes under the heat of his wheezing breath and that little flashlight, so alone and afraid, part of me died. Murdered by a priest who had infiltrated our family and played out his repressed sexual desires on innocent boys who thought he was their friend, who thought he treated them well because they were special, who thought he visited their house because his family was special. It was all a ruse.

The setup

We were playing in the street—a game called running bases that simulated a baseball rundown—and hardly noticed him as he walked by and up to the steps to our front door. After a moment he was let in, and my brother and I looked quizzically at each other. We called time on running bases to find out who had just entered our house.

Inside, our dad was in his spot at the end of the couch. Sitting in the chair opposite him, dressed in shirt sleeves and slacks and being served a drink by my mom, was Father Silverio, the new, young parish priest who had baptized my baby sister several weeks earlier at Holy Family Church in South Buffalo.

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BUFFALO (NY)
Buffalo News

July 24, 2018

Victims of childhood sexual abuse involving Catholic clergyman often say they want, above all else, acknowledgement of the crimes against them. That’s why it must be especially frustrating for two Western New York men featured in Sunday’s Buffalo News when the Diocese of Buffalo refuses to take responsibility for abuse the two suffered as boys at the hands of priests working in the diocese.

The diocese says it is not responsible for the actions of priests who are accused of raping the two men, Gary Astridge and Robert Swierat, because the priests were members of religious orders, and not ordained by the diocese. This surely is a technicality that seems contrary to the spirit of the diocese’s Independent Reconciliation and Compensation Program, which was set up in March to give financial compensation to victims of priest sex abuse. The policy cannot be that some victims are less equal than others.

Astridge attended the old Cardinal Dougherty High School in Buffalo. He says he was molested as a boy by a priest who taught at the school but belonged to a religious order based in California.

Swierat says in the early 1970s he was abused for two years in the rectory of St. Mary’s High School in Lancaster. The accused priest, the Rev. Loren Nys, a St. Mary’s teacher at the time, belonged to the Society of the Divine Savior Salvatorians, based in Milwaukee, Wis.

Astridge applied for compensation from the IRCP and was told by the diocese to contact the order in California instead. Swierat has been advised by the diocese not to even apply.

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MILWAUKEE (WI)
Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

July 24, 2018

By Patrick Marley and Mary Spicuzza

Survivors of childhood sexual abuse by priests angrily rejected claims Tuesday from Democratic candidate for governor Matt Flynn that people trying to push him out of the race are part of a “victimology elite.”

Peter Isely, the former Midwest director for the Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests, scoffed at the idea that elites were the ones trying to get Flynn out of the race because of his work as a lawyer for the Milwaukee Archdiocese.

“That’s quite an elite group of people,” Isely said as he pointed to photographs of children who were sexually abused by priests.

“I can tell you right now, because I’m one of them. Being raped and sexually assaulted as a child — that’s no elite group that anyone, anyone’s ever going to want to belong to.”

Isely made his comments at a Milwaukee news conference a day after Flynn — one of eight Democrats hoping to take on GOP Gov. Scott Walker — held a 45-minute conference call with reporters to defend his work for the archdiocese. At times, Flynn drifted from talking about that work to complain about those who opposed him.

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PROVIDENCE (RI)
Providence Journal

July 25, 2018

[The obituary does not mention that Demers was accused of sexually assaulting children in Providence and Haiti. It does not include his work in Haiti in its summary of his career history.]

85, a retired priest of the Diocese of Providence, died on Saturday, July 21, 2018.

Born in Woonsocket, he was a son of the late Eugene and Beatrice (Jarret) Demers, he attended St. Ann School and Mt. St. Charles Academy, both in Woonsocket.

In preparation for the priesthood, he studied at Our Lady of Providence Seminary in Warwick and at St. Mary Seminary in Baltimore, Maryland. He was ordained a priest on May 31, 1958 in the Cathedral of SS. Peter and Paul in Providence by Bishop Russell J. McVinney.

After a summer assignment at St. Francis of Assisi Parish in Wakefield, he served as Assistant Pastor at St. John the Evangelist Parish in Slatersville from 1958-1959 and at St. Vincent de Paul Parish in Coventry from 1959-1965. He then became Chaplain at Our Lady of Fatima Hospital in North Providence from 1965-1973 and also served as Chaplain at the Adult Correctional Institution in Cranston from 1971-1976.

In 1976 he was appointed Pastor of St. Joseph Parish in Providence and served there until 1990 when he became Assistant Pastor at St. Martha Parish in East Providence, serving for nearly 12 years. He retired from active ministry in March 2004.

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KERALA (INDIA)
The News Minute

July 25, 2018

Father Job Mathew was granted bail on Wednesday, while Father Johnson V Mathew secured bail on Monday.

The Kerala High Court on Wednesday granted bail to Father Job Mathew, one of the four priests accused in a rape case of a woman parishioner, attached to the Malankara Orthodox Church.

Earlier on Monday, another priest, Johnson V Mathew, an accused in the same case had secured bail.

The court asked Job Mathew on Wednesday to surrender his passport, just as it had asked Johnson V. Mathew.

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AUCKLAND (NEW ZEALAND)
NewsTalk ZB

July 25, 2018

By Mick Hall

A prominent Catholic priest and theologian has been exposed as a self-confessed paedophile, who was quietly placed on a sex offenders programme by the church and is suspected of having abused dozens of children for decades.

The Herald can reveal Father Michael Shirres, who had lectured in Māori theology at the University of Auckland and wrote several books on Māori spirituality, confessed to sexually abusing a young girl and is suspected of abusing many other victims.

The Catholic church has confirmed it received five complaints against Shirres and placed him in a programme for sex offenders. Another victim says a therapist told her Shirres admitted to abusing dozens of children.

Shirres was a revered figure within Māori communities in the Far North, where he had visited regularly as a guest speaker since 1973. The priest died of motor neuron disease in October 1997, aged 68.

Among his victims was Annie Hill, 56, a former art teacher at Pompallier College in Whangarei, who received a written apology from the priest for sexually abusing her.

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