ABUSE TRACKER

DENVER (CO)
Fox 31

February 5, 2018

By Joe St. George

DENVER — The Prairie Middle School case involving school administrators being accused of not reporting child abuse to police took center stage at the state Capitol on Monday.

The issue is the belief the case against the administrators soon might be dropped because of the statute of limitations.

It’s currently 18 months and the incident involving reporting at Prairie Middle School happened in 2014.

State Sen. Rhonda Fields is bringing a bill that would extend the statute of limitations from 18 months to five years.

Originally, Fields introduced a bill to extend it until discovery by police, but her amended bill capped it at five years.

“Right now in some scenarios they are not reporting it, they are sweeping it under the rug and allowing someone who molests kids or someone who rapes kids to go on,” Fields said.

After a lengthy debate featuring victims of abuse, the attorney of the victims at Prairie Middle School and other advocates, GOP members decided to wait on a vote until more information could be gathered.

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CHILE
La Tercera

February 5, 2018

[See March 3, 2015 letter from Juan Carlos Cruz to Pope Francis discussed in La carta al Papa Francisco en que Juan Carlos Cruz denunciaba al obispo Barros en 2015, by Carlos Reyes and Sebastián Rivas, La Tercera, February 5, 2018. The letter was first reported in AP Exclusive: Despite denial, Pope got abuse victim’s letter, by Nicole Winfield and Eva Vergara, Associated Press, February 5, 2018.]

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EAST LANSING (MI)
CNN

February 5, 2018

Before he was sentenced to 40 to 125 years in prison on Monday, Larry Nassar apologized to the court.

“The visions of your testimonies will forever be present in my thoughts,” the 54-year-old disgraced former doctor said about the victim impact statements. The statements ended a remarkable three weeks of court hearings that dramatically personalized the pain and suffering the he caused for years.

The sentence in Eaton County court is the third sentence in three months for Nassar, the once-renowned doctor for USA Gymnastics and Michigan State University who sexually abused young girls for more than two decades.

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SANTIAGO (CHILE)
La Tercera

>>The letter to Pope Francisco in which Juan Carlos Cruz denounced Bishop Barros in 2015

February 5, 2018

By Carlos Reyes and Sebastián Rivas

“Santo Padre, me animé a escribirle esta carta porque estoy cansado de pelear, llorar y sufrir”. Así comienza una carta fechada el 3 de marzo de 2015 y cuyo remitente es Juan Carlos Cruz, uno de los denunciantes de los abusos cometidos por el sacerdote Fernando Karadima.

El destinatario era el Papa Francisco, que por esos días recibía críticas tras designar a Juan Barros, uno de los sacerdotes cercanos a Karadima, como obispo de Osorno.

El motivo de la carta -y de su envío directo al Pontífice-, según explica Cruz en el mismo texto, era que exactamente un mes antes había enviado una misiva al nuncio apostólico en Chile, Ivo Scapolo, en que hacía denuncias contra Barros de sus años junto a Karadima.

“En enero se conoció la designación de Juan Barros Madrid como obispo de Osorno. Santo Padre, para mí y muchísima gente fue un verdadero shock que se hiciese ese nombramiento. Sabiendo todo lo que se sabe. Inmediatamente escribí una denuncia formal al nuncio Ivo Scapolo, a quien hemos tratado de ver y jamás ha tenido la cortesía de recibirnos”, asegura Cruz.

[Google Translation: “Holy Father, I decided to write this letter because I am tired of fighting, crying and suffering.” Thus begins a letter dated March 3, 2015 and whose sender is Juan Carlos Cruz, one of the complainants of the abuses committed by the priest Fernando Karadima.

The recipient was Pope Francis, who in those days received criticism after designating Juan Barros, one of the priests close to Karadima, as bishop of Osorno.

The reason for the letter -and its direct delivery to the Pontiff-, as Cruz explains in the same text, was that exactly one month before he had sent a letter to the apostolic nuncio in Chile, Ivo Scapolo, in which he made denunciations against Barros de los years together with Karadima.

“In January the appointment of Juan Barros Madrid as bishop of Osorno was known. Holy Father, for me and a lot of people it was a real shock to make that appointment. Knowing everything that is known. Immediately I wrote a formal complaint to the nuncio Ivo Scapolo, whom we have tried to see and has never had the courtesy to receive us, “says Cruz.]

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VATICAN CITY
The Associated Press

January 31, 2018

By Nicole Winfield 

Just how well informed is Pope Francis about the goings-on in his 1.2-billion strong Catholic Church?

That question is making the rounds after the pope seemed completely unaware of the details of a Chilean sex abuse scandal, a failing that soured his recent trip there and forced him to do an about-face. It also came up after his abrupt, no-explanation dismissal of a respected Vatican bank manager.

And it rose to the fore when he was accused by a cardinal of not realizing that his own diplomats were “selling out” the underground Catholic Church in China for the sake of political expediency.

Some Vatican observers now wonder if Francis is getting enough of the high-quality briefings one needs to be a world leader, or whether Francis is relying more on his own instincts and informants who slip him unofficial information on the side.

In his five years as pope, Francis has created an informal, parallel information structure that often rubs up against official Vatican channels. That includes a papal kitchen cabinet of nine cardinal advisers who meet every three months at the Vatican and have the pope’s ear, plus the regular briefings he receives from top Vatican brass.

The Vatican this week issued a remarkable defense of Francis’ information flow and his grasp of the delicate China dossier. The Holy See press office insisted that Francis followed the China negotiations closely, was being “faithfully” briefed by his advisers and was in complete agreement with his secretary of state on the topic.

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VATICAN CITY
Papal flight

January 15-22, 2018 (Sunday, January 21, 2018)

PRESS CONFERENCE ON THE RETURN FLIGHT FROM LIMA TO ROME

[Multimedia]

Greg Burke:

Holy Father, thank you. Thank you for the time you are giving us this evening, after a long and intense trip, which at times has been a little hot and humid. It has been a fruitful trip, during which you have touched people’s hearts, the holy and faithful People of God, with a message of peace and hope. You also confronted the challenges facing the Church in Chile and the Church in Peru, as well as those of the two societies, with particular attention to human dignity and the indigenous people of Amazonia. Thank you for the opportunity to accompany you so closely. Now we would like to examine a little more the themes of your visit.

Pope Francis:

Good evening. Thank you for your work. It has been a trip… I do not know how you say this is Italian, but in Spanish it is “pasteurizado”, like the process used for milk: it goes from cold to hot, and then hot to cold. We have gone from the South of Chile, cold, that beautiful landscape, to the desert, then to the forest of Maldonado, then to Trujillo, the sea, and then to Lima. We have experienced every temperature and climate. It has been demanding. Thank you very much. And now, your questions.

Greg Burke:

To begin, we have questions from Peru and from Chile. First we have Armando Cancianga.

Pope Francis:

I ask all of you to begin with questions regarding the trip. When we finish your questions, if there is anything else to be said about the trip I will bring it up. Then I will take other questions, if there are any.

Armando Canchanya Alaya [Rpp of Peru]:

Holy Father… I want to thank you for allowing us to join you on this trip… On the outbound flight you said that you did not know Peru well, and during these days you have had the opportunity to visit three cities… I wanted to ask you about this visit where the people came to see you and even said affectionately: “Panchito, do not go”… What does the Holy Father take away from this trip, from Peru?

Pope Francis:

I take away the impression of a people of believers, a people that is experiencing many difficulties and has experienced them throughout their history. But it was the faith that impressed me… Not only the faith in Trujillo where popular piety is abundant and strong, but the faith in the streets… You saw what the streets were like… And not only in Lima where you saw it clearly, but also in Trujillo. The same in Puerto Maldonado. I thought the ceremony would take place in a place like this, a square filled with people, but wherever I went, the streets were also filled with people… a people who came out to express their joy and their faith. It is true, as I said today at midday, that you are a land of saints; you are the Latin American people who have the most saints. And important saints too: Turibius, Rose, Martin, Juan. I think there is deep faith in this land.

I am leaving Peru with an impression of joy, faith, hope, renewed energy, and, above all, many young people. Once again I saw what I witnessed in the Philippines and Colombia. As I passed by, mothers and fathers held up their children, and this speaks of the future and of hope because no one brings children into the world unless they have hope. I only ask that you care for all this richness, not only that found in Churches and museums, though works of art are wonderful, and not only that born of your history of holiness and the sufferings which have greatly enriched you, but also the richness that I experienced in these days.

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ATLANTA (GA)
How Stuff Works

February 2, 2018

By Diana Brown

In October 1992, Irish singer-songwriter Sinead O’Connor tore up a picture of Pope John Paul II on “Saturday Night Live,” sparking a huge public outcry and backlash against the artist. O’Connor said she did it to protest the widespread child abuse perpetrated by the Catholic Church. Since then, these claims against the church have been proven accurate, with numerous scandals coming to light — as well as chilling proof of coverups and payoffs.

So how could this happen? And what could possibly have led to such extensive behavior among so many high-ranking bishops, cardinals and leaders within the Catholic Church? That’s what Stuff They Don’t Want You To Know investigate in Catholics, Children and Conspiracy: The Epidemic of Abuse. Hosts Matt Frederick, Ben Bowlin and Noel Brown take a look at the history of the Roman Catholic Church, the many allegations laid at its doorstep and what might have been the cause of such horrific behavior in this episode of the podcast.

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UNITED STATES
The Huffington Post

February 3, 2018

By Sara Boboltz

The now-convicted doctor Larry Nassar continued to practice for over a year after serious accusations arose.

At least 27 girls and women said disgraced USA Gymnastics doctor Larry Nassar sexually assaulted them while he was under FBI investigation for similar behavior, according to a new Saturday report from The New York Times.

Nassar first came under FBI suspicion in July 2015 after the agency received complaints from three top-tier female athletes, including two Olympic gymnasts. He was permitted to continue practicing medicine until September 2016, when the Indianapolis Star published damning accusations against him.

The sluggish pace of the FBI investigation ― split between agents in three cities ― allowed Nassar’s abuse to continue unnecessarily, the Times suggested. In a statement, the FBI responded, saying its investigation “transcended jurisdictions,” pointing to bureaucratic inefficiency as a possible explanation for the slow pace. (Bureaus in Indiana, Michigan and Texas were involved in the case.)

The list of young women accusing the now-convicted doctor of sexual abuse currently stands at 265. Nassar was sentenced to up to 175 years in prison on seven counts of first-degree criminal sexual conduct in January, and he is currently awaiting sentencing on another three counts.

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CHARLOTTE (MI)
The Huffington Post

February 5, 2018

By Alanna Vagianos

He’s already been sentenced to 40 to 175 years on other abuse charges.

Former USA Gymnastics and Michigan State University team doctor Larry Nassar on Monday was sentenced to 40 to 125 years in prison for sexually abusing young athletes under the guise of medical treatment.

Nassar, 54, was sentenced in a Charlotte, Michigan, courtroom on three counts of criminal sexual conduct in the first degree, adding to long prison terms he already faces for additional sex crimes.

“I am not convinced that you truly understand that what you did was wrong and the devastating impact that you have had on the victims, their families and friends,” Judge Janice Cunningham told Nassar in court before handing down the punishment. “Clearly you are in denial. You don’t get it. And I do not believe that there is a likelihood that you could be reformed.”

Nassar read a statement in court before he was sentenced.

“The words expressed by everyone that has spoken, including the parents, have impacted me to my inner-most core,” he said. “With that being said, I understand and acknowledge that it pales in comparison to the pain and trauma and emotions that you all feel. It’s impossible to convey the depth and breadth of how sorry I am to each and everyone involved.”

Assistant Attorney General Angela Povilaitis, in her closing argument, reminded the judge how far-reaching Nassar’s abuse was.

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BOISE (ID)
KIVI TV

February 3, 2018

By Michael Sevren

BOISE, Idaho – A wave of shock is hitting the Roman Catholic Diocese of Boise after the former priest of Saint Mary’s Church and school, 72-year-old Thomas Faucher, faces several charges for child sex crimes.

“What’s on the hearts of minds of the people at Saint Mary’s first and foremost are the victims of these types of crimes,” said Deacon Gene Fadness, a spokesmen for the Roman Catholic Diocese of Boise.

Fadness says they were not aware of the allegations until Friday and will cooperate fully with law enforcement in their investigation.

According to the Idaho Attorney General’s office, the investigation into Father Faucher began with a tip from the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children. On Friday police searched his Boise home and took him into custody. The retired priest now faces one count of Possession of a Controlled Substance and ten counts of Sexual Exploitation of a Child.

Details of the alleged sex crimes are unclear; the charges could apply to everything from possession of sexually exploitative material to making them. The diocese is now worried there may potentially be victims in the Treasure Valley.

“We have, to date, no knowledge of that,” said Fadness. “If there are people who are victims or who know victims we would want them to come forward.”

The diocese says Father Faucher retired three years ago citing health issues and hasn’t held any pastoral assignments since. Because of the seriousness of the allegations, Faucher will be unable to minister in the Diocese of Boise in any way.

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COLUMBIA (SC)
WACH FOX 57

February 2, 2018

By Michelle Zhu

A well-known Columbia church is at the center of a sex abuse lawsuit. The 7,000-member First Baptist Church reaching a settlement and apologizing to the victim in that case. The apology comes nearly four months after the victim’s parents filed suit against the church. They claim the child, who was 11 at the time, suffered injury and severe emotional distress.

The victim, who is referred to as Joel Doe in the lawsuit, is now 17 years old. The Suit says Andrew McCraw, who was a youth group leader at the church, inappropriately touched the victim and sent him sexually-charged text messages. According to the victim’s attorney, the family will be paid $300,000 and the church will accept responsibility for the incident. They’ve promised reforms to church policies.

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EAST LANSING (MI)
Christian Today

February 5, 2018

By David Robertson

Rachael Denhollander is my new heroine. I’m not sure I’ve ever seen anything quite as brave, compelling, articulate and gospel centered as her testimony in the Larry Nassar trial. But it’s what I read later in an interview the former gymnast gave to Christianity Today in the US that really got to me. She said: ‘Church is one of the least safe places to acknowledge abuse because the way it is counselled is, more often than not, damaging to the victim. There is an abhorrent lack of knowledge for the damage and devastation that sexual assault brings.’

Denhollander talks about how she lost her church for speaking out against sexual abuse. This is absolutely horrific. Why would churches find it so difficult to deal with cases of sexual abuse? Is it because of the ignorance of what real sexual abuse is? A lack of expertise in being able to determine what has actually happened? Or inadequate child protection policies in churches?

Ignorance is one thing. But cover-up is another. Often this is done from what may be considered good motives – a desire to protect the reputation of the church and organisation and also a desire to protect the reputation of the gospel of Christ. This attempt to ‘protect’ the gospel is bound to fail, not least because the gospel does not need our protection – and certainly not when it involves cover-up and lies.

This is where poor theology really lets us down. If we believe what the Bible actually says about human nature being depraved, why should we be surprised when we find evidence of that?

As Denhollander (who is herself an excellent theologian) points out: ‘Jesus Christ does not need your protection, he needs your obedience.’ It’s an obedience that requires us to seek justice, speak the truth and offer the ‘tough love’ of the gospel, even if this means upsetting some within the church or the organisation.

Christian organisations, often based around the personality, gifts and charisma of one leader, are particularly prone to being defensive about that leader. After all if his reputation is destroyed, so is the organisation. It’s not so with the church, unless we happen to have fallen into the trap of thinking that the church belongs to our particular leader.

But it’s here that too many churches have abandoned something that would really help them in dealing with this issue, a key foundational principle of the New Testament church – church discipline. This is not about the powerful lording it over the weak. It is about the weak being offered the protection of the church. If we are a biblical church we recognise that even the great leaders (like David, Moses and Peter) can fall. We are not concerned about preserving the reputation of our own local leaders because we recognise only one absolute Shepherd, Jesus Christ – and we accept what he says about all under shepherds being fallible. Rachael Denhollander should have found safety, security and justice within the local church. Instead she experienced what can only be described as further abuse.

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WILMINGTON (DE)
The Associated Press

February 1, 2018

Delaware has for the first time brought criminal child molestation charges against a Catholic priest.

A grand jury on Monday indicted 76-year-old John A. Sarro in the rape of a child more than 25 years ago. He’s charged with first-degree unlawful sexual intercourse and second-degree unlawful sexual contact. He’s accused of having oral sex with a girl younger than 16 in the 1990s.

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BROOKLYN HEIGHTS (NY)
Christian Post

February 2, 2018

By Leonardo Blair

At the Historic Plymouth Church in Brooklyn Heights, New York, the legacy of Henry Ward Beecher, the church’s first pastor who died more than 120 years ago, is prominently displayed in monuments celebrating his life.

On a cold Saturday morning this winter, a guide could be heard telling tourists at the church about his great work as an abolitionist.

Buried in lot 18495, section 123 at the nearby Greenwood Cemetery about a mile away from where Beecher is interred with his wife, Eunice, is a less prominently displayed part of his legacy.

There are no signs announcing her presence, but cemetery records show that along with three other family members surnamed Tilton, one surnamed Pelton and another surnamed Morse, Elizabeth Tilton, a former parishioner of Beecher’s, is also buried here.

Cemetery staff could not confirm if Elizabeth’s remains were below a white gravestone marked “GRANDMOTHER” in section 123 but confirmed she was “definitely there,” according to their records. She died blind and alone on April 14, 1897.

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NEW YORK (NY)
The New York Times

February 3, 2018

By Maureen Dowd

The actress is finally ready to talk about Harvey Weinstein.

Yes, Uma Thurman is mad.

She has been raped. She has been sexually assaulted. She has been mangled in hot steel. She has been betrayed and gaslighted by those she trusted.

And we’re not talking about her role as the blood-spattered bride in “Kill Bill.” We’re talking about a world that is just as cutthroat, amoral, vindictive and misogynistic as any Quentin Tarantino hellscape.

We’re talking about Hollywood, where even an avenging angel has a hard time getting respect, much less bloody satisfaction.

Playing foxy Mia Wallace in 1994’s “Pulp Fiction” and ferocious Beatrix Kiddo in “Kill Bill,” Volumes 1 (2003) and 2 (2004), Thurman was the lissome goddess in the creation myth of Harvey Weinstein and Quentin Tarantino. The Miramax troika was the ultimate in indie cool. A spellbound Tarantino often described his auteur-muse relationship with Thurman — who helped him conceive the idea of the bloody bride — as an Alfred Hitchcock-Ingrid Bergman legend. (With a foot fetish thrown in.) But beneath the glistening Oscar gold, there was a dark undercurrent that twisted the triangle.

“Pulp Fiction” made Weinstein rich and respected, and Thurman says he introduced her to President Barack Obama at a fund-raiser as the reason he had his house.

“The complicated feeling I have about Harvey is how bad I feel about all the women that were attacked after I was,” she told me one recent night, looking anguished in her elegant apartment in River House on Manhattan’s East Side, as she vaped tobacco, sipped white wine and fed empty pizza boxes into the fireplace.

“I am one of the reasons that a young girl would walk into his room alone, the way I did. Quentin used Harvey as the executive producer of ‘Kill Bill,’ a movie that symbolizes female empowerment. And all these lambs walked into slaughter because they were convinced nobody rises to such a position who would do something illegal to you, but they do.”

Thurman stresses that Creative Artists Agency, her former agency, was connected to Weinstein’s predatory behavior. It has since issued a public apology. “I stand as both a person who was subjected to it and a person who was then also part of the cloud cover, so that’s a super weird split to have,” she says.

She talks mordantly about “the power from ‘Pulp,’” and reminds me that it’s in the Library of Congress, part of the American narrative.

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CHARLOTTE (NC)
WBTV

February 5, 2018

By Bria Bell

Domestic violence continues to be a hot button issue in the Charlotte area and nearly half of the homicides for in 2018 are domestic related in some way.

With that disturbing trend in mind, two local churches have come together to raise awareness and try to put an end to violent relationships.

Pastors for both The Park Church and Meyers Park United Methodist wanted parishioners to know and understand the signs of abuse.

They say too often we talk about the end result of domestic violence, but not too much about the signs leading up to it.

Love was the topic that started Sunday’s important conversation on domestic abuse. By the end, pastors Claude Alexander and James Howell asked every worshiper to join them on a quest to end domestic abuse.

The churches believe these types of conversations are good to have as refreshers and offered resources to those who may need help. Both pastors say it’s time to pay attention and understand what real love is and not to confuse abuse as such.

“We want to rise above [abuse], we want to be holier than that,” Pastor Howell said. “We want to treat each other always like royalty, like we’re so good to each other – always encouraging each other, always seeing the light in the other person.”

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NEW YORK (NY)
The New York Times

February 3, 2018

By Nicholas Kristof

Four years ago, when Woody Allen was given a lifetime achievement award by the Golden Globes, Dylan Farrow curled up in a ball on her bed, crying hysterically. Then she wrote an open letter for my blog (nobody else seemed to want to publish it) describing how, when she was 7 years old, Allen allegedly sexually assaulted her.

“That he got away with what he did to me haunted me as I grew up,” she wrote. “I was terrified of being touched by men. I developed an eating disorder. I began cutting myself. That torment was made worse by Hollywood.”

We now know that Hollywood was hiding many such secrets, and was quite uninterested in accountability for powerful bullies. After she bared her soul, Dylan was met with much “vitriol and disbelief,” as she put it.

“There were days when I thought, ‘I’ve made a terrible mistake, I should never have opened my mouth,’” Dylan told me the other day.

But in the last few months, the #MeToo movement has changed that. “I am so sorry, Dylan,” Mira Sorvino wrote. Ellen Page declared, “I did a Woody Allen movie and it is the biggest regret of my career.” Actors are donating earnings from Woody Allen movies to sexual assault organizations, and Amazon is said to be considering canceling its distribution of his movies.

All this has been “incredibly healing,” Dylan said.

Frank Maco, the Connecticut prosecutor who oversaw the case in the 1990s, told me that he watched Dylan recently on “CBS This Morning” and was impressed by how the little girl had grown up to be “strong and determined.” He reiterated what he had said at the time: that he had probable cause to bring a criminal case against Allen (who was Dylan’s adoptive father) but couldn’t justify putting a fragile child through a brutal trial.

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NEW YORK (NY)
The New York Times

February 4, 2018

By Catharine A. MacKinnon

The #MeToo movement is accomplishing what sexual harassment law to date has not.

This mass mobilization against sexual abuse, through an unprecedented wave of speaking out in conventional and social media, is eroding the two biggest barriers to ending sexual harassment in law and in life: the disbelief and trivializing dehumanization of its victims.

Sexual harassment law — the first law to conceive sexual violation in inequality terms — created the preconditions for this moment. Yet denial by abusers and devaluing of accusers could still be reasonably counted on by perpetrators to shield their actions.

Many survivors realistically judged reporting pointless. Complaints were routinely passed off with some version of “she wasn’t credible” or “she wanted it.” I kept track of this in cases of campus sexual abuse over decades; it typically took three to four women testifying that they had been violated by the same man in the same way to even begin to make a dent in his denial. That made a woman, for credibility purposes, one-fourth of a person.

Even when she was believed, nothing he did to her mattered as much as what would be done to him if his actions against her were taken seriously. His value outweighed her sexualized worthlessness. His career, reputation, mental and emotional serenity and assets counted. Hers didn’t. In some ways, it was even worse to be believed and not have what he did matter. It meant she didn’t matter.

These dynamics of inequality have preserved the system in which the more power a man has, the more sexual access he can get away with compelling.

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NEW YORK (NY)
National Catholic Reporter

February 5, 2018

By Kristen Whitney Daniels

NEW YORK — In recent years, the movie industry hasn’t shied away from Catholicism — mostly seen through the lens of the sex abuse scandal. However, a new film seeks to expand the discussion on injustices both within the Catholic Church and society in general.

“Created Equal” — directed by Bill Duke and based on the novel by Roger A. Brown — begins with attorney Thomas “Tommy” Reilly (Aaron Tveit) being unwillingly assigned a pro-bono case for Sr. Alejandra “Allie” Batista (Edy Ganem).

When they meet for the first-time, Reilly apologizes to Batista for the abuse he presumes she’s endured, since the case seeks to sue the Catholic Church. After a few awkward seconds Batista explains that she isn’t suing the Archdiocese of New Orleans because of abuse, she’s suing the church so she can enter a Catholic seminary and fulfill her call of becoming a priest.

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COLUMBIA (SC)
WIS TV

February 2, 2018

By Emily Smith

Columbia’s First Baptist Church has settled a child sex-abuse lawsuit that allegedly involved a church volunteer and a young church member.

The church and its minister, Wendell Estep, issued an apology to the victim, who is now 17 years old, and have agreed to pay the family $300,000 to settle the lawsuit.

In the civil suit filed in October 2017, a minor referred to as Joel Doe and his parents, Jane and John Doe, sued the church, Estep, youth assistant mentor and small group leader Andrew McCraw, and church student minister Phillip Turner.

The suit states youth leader McCraw had inappropriate communications with the minor including sexual text messages, dinners, and sleepovers where nobody else was present. The abuse reportedly started when the minor was 11 years old and part of a youth group led by McCraw.

The suit also alleges that the church officials knew about the abuse and failed to report it.

“First Baptist has accepted responsibility for this even though we had strong policies in place and performed a background check on the volunteer which revealed no issues. What we did not have at the time was a policy specifically forbidding texting between an adult and a student without copying another adult. Such a policy, if followed, could have prevented these messages.” First Baptist Church spokesman Bryan Barnes said in a written statement.

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TSHWANE (SOUTH AFRICA)
Pretoria News

February 5, 2018

By Goitsemang Tlhabye

‘WE ARE hurt that the need to keep up pretences and look holy became more important than acting in a Christ-like manner. The church did not stop, it did not listen, it did not care.” This was part of the memorandum handed in by protesting Methodist young people during a convention at the Voortrekker Monument in Pretoria yesterday.
The group, joined by members of the EFF, was angry about the alleged sex scandal that rocked the Methodist City Mission in Pretoria last week. The youths came from as far as Limpopo, Bloemfontein and Free State. They wore black outfits.

The shocking revelations of sexual abuse at the church came to light on January 28 after a video of young women protesting during a service went viral. The alleged sexual abuse took place last year.

The memorandum also stated that the youths were concerned and deeply hurt by the mothers who called the alleged victims “loose” and were the first to accuse them of throwing themselves at “fathers”.

“They are the first ones to say ‘these young kids like things’. Our mothers stand on the side of the creepy uncle and insist we deal with this as a family matter,” read the memorandum.

In it, the youths also requested church leaders to treat cases of that nature with sensitivity and for those implicated to be recalled from any position of leadership.

It also called for the perpetrator, protectors and the church to search within their hearts and apologise unreservedly for their actions and delays of justice.

“Ultimately, we want our churches to be safe spaces, for us to be able to come to church without the fear that we will be victims of inappropriate advances. Let our churches be spaces where children, women and the marginalised find a voice,” the youths added.

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

VATICAN CITY
The Tablet

February 5, 2018

By Christopher Lamb

Pope Francis’ handling of clerical sexual abuse is once again coming under scrutiny following news that he was handed a letter from a Chilean abuse victim which detailed the survivor’s ordeal and that a future bishop witnessed it.

The news of a letter, reported by the Associated Press, contradicts the Pope’s insistence that victims of Fr Fernando Karadima had not come forward to complain about a cover-up by Bishop Juan Barros, who Francis appointed to lead the Diocese of Osorno in 2015.

“You, in all good will, tell me that there are victims, but I haven’t seen any, because they haven’t come forward,” Francis told journalists on the plane returning to Rome at the end of his six-day Latin America trip at the end of last month. He also said on the plane: “No one has come forward. They haven’t provided any evidence for a judgment. This is all a bit vague. It’s something that can’t be accepted.”

But members of the papal child protection commission say they presented an eight-page letter written by Juan Carlos Cruz to Cardinal Sean O’Malley in April 2015. The cardinal is Francis’ top adviser on abuse. In the letter, Cruz makes detailed claims of the kissing and fondling that Karadima subjected him to, which he stressed Barros was a witness to. The intention was for the cardinal to then hand the letter to Francis.

“Cardinal O’Malley called me after the Pope’s visit here in Philadelphia and he told me, among other things, that he had given the letter to the Pope — in his hands,” he told Associated Press on Sunday.

Francis has been heavily criticised for both his appointment – and continued defence – of Bishop Barros, who himself has offered to resign from his position on two occasions. During his visit to Chile, the Pope upset victims by telling reporters in Santiago that until he was presented with “proof” that Barros covered up the claims agains the bishop were “calumny.” And while he later apologised for these remarks on the plane back to Rome, Francis reiterated that evidence had not been presented to him.

In his letter – written in the Pope’s native Spanish – Cruz reveals that Barros himself would be kissed and fondled by his mentor, Karadima, who was found guilty by a Vatican court in 2011 and ordered to live a life of prayer and penance. The abusive priest was a highly influential figure in church circles in Chile.

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VATICAN CITY
The Associated Press

February 5, 2018

By Nicole Winfield and Eva Vergara

VATICAN CITY (AP) — Pope Francis received a victim’s letter in 2015 that graphically detailed how a priest sexually abused him and how other Chilean clergy ignored it, contradicting the pope’s recent insistence that no victims had come forward to denounce the cover-up, the letter’s author and members of Francis’ own sex- abuse commission have told The Associated Press.

The fact that Francis received the eight-page letter, obtained by the AP, challenges his insistence that he has “zero tolerance” for sex abuse and cover-ups. It also calls into question his stated empathy with abuse survivors, compounding the most serious crisis of his five-year papacy.

The scandal exploded last month when Francis’ trip to South America was marred by protests over his vigorous defense of Bishop Juan Barros, who is accused by victims of covering up the abuse by the Rev. Fernando Karadima. During the trip, Francis callously dismissed accusations against Barros as “slander,” seemingly unaware that victims had placed him at the scene of Karadima’s crimes.

On the plane home, confronted by an AP reporter, the pope said: “You, in all good will, tell me that there are victims, but I haven’t seen any, because they haven’t come forward.”

But members of the pope’s Commission for the Protection of Minors say that in April 2015, they sent a delegation to Rome specifically to hand-deliver a letter to the pope about Barros. The letter from Juan Carlos Cruz detailed the abuse, kissing and fondling he says he suffered at Karadima’s hands, which he said Barros and others witnessed and ignored.

Four members of the commission met with Francis’ top abuse adviser, Cardinal Sean O’Malley, explained their objections to Francis’ recent appointment of Barros as a bishop in southern Chile, and gave him the letter to deliver to Francis.

“When we gave him (O’Malley) the letter for the pope, he assured us he would give it to the pope and speak of the concerns,” then-commission member Marie Collins told the AP. “And at a later date, he assured us that that had been done.”

Cruz, who now lives and works in Philadelphia, heard the same later that year.

“Cardinal O’Malley called me after the pope’s visit here in Philadelphia and he told me, among other things, that he had given the letter to the pope — in his hands,” he said in an interview at his home Sunday.

Neither the Vatican nor O’Malley responded to multiple requests for comment.

While the 2015 summit of Francis’ commission was known and publicized at the time, the contents of Cruz’s letter — and a photograph of Collins handing it to O’Malley — were not disclosed by members. Cruz provided the letter, and Collins provided the photo, after reading an AP story that reported Francis had claimed to have never heard from any Karadima victims about Barros’ behavior.

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

NEW ZEALAND
TVNZ

February 5, 2018

The head of an Irish support group for the children of Catholic priests says there are several in New Zealand – and the church has acknowledged it.

Vincent Doyle of Coping International has appealed to New Zealand’s Catholic Bishops to address the issue of supposedly-celibate priests fathering children, and then leaving those children to be cared for by their mothers.

Mr Doyle claims that six New Zealanders have joined his support group.

A spokesperson for NZ Catholic Bishops has confirmed to 1 NEWS that “there is a small number of people here, whose father is a priest”.

The spokesperson also said that their organisation is “aware that New Zealand civic society has good guidelines around a child’s right to know his or her natural parents”.

“For our Bishops, what is important is that the rights and sensitivities of the child and the mother are respected.

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BATON ROUGE (LA)
The Advocate

February 3, 2018

By Gordon Russell

The Diocese of Baton Rouge has determined that an abuse allegation it received against a Gonzales parish priest could not be substantiated.

Father Eric Gyan, pastor of St. Theresa of Avila Parish, “continues to serve as a priest in good standing and of good reputation,” the diocese said in a news release issued Saturday evening.

The abuse was alleged to have occurred in 1996, when Gyan was pastor of St. John the Baptist Parish in Brusly. The victim, now 31, reported the matter to the diocese in November. The woman had told The Advocate that Gyan forced her to perform sex acts on him on multiple occasions when she was 10 and attended the church in Brusly. She said the abuse occurred in the confessional.

The woman made a separate complaint around the same time with the Diocese of Biloxi involving a priest at a church on the Gulf Coast that she attended during the 1990s. The status of that complaint — which church officials confirmed in December was under investigation — could not be determined Saturday.

Diocese of Baton Rouge officials acknowledged they were investigating the complaint in December after The Advocate, which had been contacted by the victim, inquired about the case. Parishioners were also informed about the abuse allegation at that time by Gyan himself, who read a statement during Mass.

Church officials said the allegation was the first and only complaint of abuse they had ever received about Gyan, who was ordained as a priest more than three decades ago. Gyan strongly denied the allegations and “consistently cooperated” in the investigation, they said.

The investigation included “extensive interviews, a public appeal for information, and consultations with experts,” the diocese said.

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TEGUCIGALPA (HONDURAS)
El Nuevo Diario

>> Honduran Public Prosecutor investigates priest accused of child abuse. The Honduran press has published audios in which the priest admits having committed lustful acts against minors.

January 11, 2018

La prensa de Honduras ha publicado audios en los cuales el sacerdote admite haber cometido actos lujuriosos contra menores.

El Ministerio Público de Honduras investiga al sacerdote Germán Flores por presuntos abusos de al menos cuatro jóvenes hondureñas cuando eran niñas, una de ellas recién fallecida a causa de un cáncer, informó hoy una fuente oficial.

Hasta ahora dos personas que habrían sido ultrajadas por el religioso cuando eran niñas han declarado ante fiscales del Ministerio Público contra Flores, quien estaría siendo citado “en las próximas horas”, dijo a periodistas el portavoz del organismo defensor de los hondureños, Yuri Mora.

Lea: Ratifican prisión preventiva a sacerdote dominicano que mató adolescente
Añadió que se espera la comparecencia de otras dos personas que estarían declarando contra Flores.

Una de las menores que habría sido abusada por Flores fue Maryory Melisa Almendárez, quien falleció a finales de 2017 a causa de un cáncer de mama, denunció su hermana, Isis Almendárez.

Según Isis Almendárez, su hermana, quien sabía que estaba próxima a morir, le confesó a pocos días de su deceso que Flores abusó de ella cuando tenía ocho años, en la comunidad de El Maguelar, departamento oriental de El Paraíso.

Añadió que Flores era persona de confianza en su familia y que con frecuencia les visitaba, pero que luego su hermana, cuando estaba próxima a celebrar la primera comunión, comenzó a rechazar al sacerdote, sin explicar razones.

[Google Translation: The Public Prosecutor of Honduras is investigating the priest Germán Flores for alleged abuses of at least four young Hondurans when they were girls, one of them recently deceased due to cancer, an official source reported today.

So far two people who would have been insulted by the religious when they were girls have testified before Prosecutors of the Public Ministry against Flores, who would be cited “in the next few hours,” spokesman of the Honduran defense agency, Yuri Mora, told reporters.

He added that the appearance of two other people who would be testifying against Flores is expected.

One of the minors who would have been abused by Flores was Maryory Melisa Almendárez, who died at the end of 2017 because of breast cancer, denounced her sister, Isis Almendárez.

According to Isis Almendárez, her sister, who knew she was about to die, confessed a few days after her death that Flores abused her when she was eight years old, in the community of El Maguelar, eastern department of El Paraíso.

He added that Flores was a person of trust in his family and that he frequently visited them, but later his sister, when she was about to celebrate the first communion, began to reject the priest , without explaining reasons.]

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>> Peru: Priest Accused of Rape in Preventive Prison

February 3, 2018

El titular del Tercer Juzgado de Investigación Preparatoria de Tarapoto, Ángel Gonzales Yovera, ordenó cinco meses de prisión preventiva para el sacerdote Cristian Alejandría Ágreda (58) capellán de la Tercera Brigada de Fuerzas Especiales base Morales (San Martín) del Ejército del Perú.

El magistrado dispuso la medida a solicitud del Ministerio Público que investiga a Alejandría Ágreda por el presunto delito de violación sexual en agravio de una menor, cuya identidad se guarda en reserva.

El sacerdote capellán fue internado para 5 meses de manera preventiva en el primer penal de Santo Toribio de Mogrovejo Tarapoto, sindicado de ultrajar sexualmente a una menor de edad.

Fue el mismo sacerdote al conocer que tenía orden de captura, se puso a disposición de los agentes de la Policía Nacional del Perú, de la división de investigación criminal pidiendo seria investigación para aclarar el cas.

[Google Translation: The head of the Third Preparatory Investigation Court of Tarapoto , Ángel Gonzales Yovera, ordered five months of preventive detention for the priest Cristian Alejandría Ágreda (58) chaplain of the Third Brigade of Special Forces based Morales ( San Martín ) of the Army of Peru.

The magistrate ordered the measure at the request of the Public Prosecutor’s Office investigating Alejandría Ágreda for the alleged crime of rape against a minor, whose identity is kept in reserve.

The chaplain priest was interned for 5 months in a preventive manner in the first prison of Santo Toribio de Mogrovejo Tarapoto, accused of sexually abusing a minor.

It was the priest himself, upon learning that he had an arrest warrant, he placed himself at the disposal of the agents of the National Police of Peru , of the criminal investigation division, asking for serious investigation to clarify the case.]

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PERU
Panamericana Televisión S.A

>> San Martín: Preventive Prison Ordered for Priest Accused of Rape

February 2, 2018

Un juez de Tarapoto ordenó cinco meses de prisión preventiva para el cura Cristian Alejandría Ágreda (58) capellán de la Tercera Brigada de Fuerzas Especiales base Morales (San Martín) del Ejército del Perú.

El magistrado dispuso la medida a solicitud de la Fiscalía que investiga al sacerdote Alejandría Ágreda por el presunto delito de violación sexual en agravio de una menor, cuya identidad se guarda en reserva.

Fue el mismo sacerdote al conocer que tenía orden de captura, quien se puso a disposición de las autoridades, informa la agencia Andina. Fue internado en el penal de Santo Toribio de Mogrovejo Tarapoto, San Martín.

El Ministerio Público con el apoyo de la Policía Nacional se encargará de las investigaciones para determinar el grado de responsabilidad del religioso. La prisión preventiva culmina en junio 2018.

[Google Translation: A judge from Tarapoto ordered five months of preventive detention for the priest Cristian Alejandría Ágreda (58) chaplain of the Third Brigade of Special Forces based Morales (San Martín) of the Army of Peru.

The magistrate ordered the measure at the request of the Prosecutor’s Office that investigates the priest Alejandría Ágreda for the alleged crime of rape against a minor whose identity is kept in reserve.

It was the same priest to know that he had an arrest warrant, who was put at the disposal of the authorities, reports the agency Andina. He was admitted to the Santo Toribio de Mogrovejo prison in Tarapoto , San Martín.

The Public Ministry with the support of the National Police will be responsible for the investigations to determine the degree of responsibility of the religious. The preventive prison ends in June 2018.]

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BOISE (ID)
Idaho Statesman

February 3, 2018

By Michael Katz and David Staats

It is still not clear what the precise charges are against a retired St. Mary’s Catholic Church priest who was arrested Friday by the Idaho Internet Crimes Against Children Unit.

A news release from the Idaho Attorney General’s Office said W. Thomas Faucher, 72, of Boise, was arrested for alleged sexual exploitation of a child, but it’s not known whether that means one count or several. And the law he’s charged under includes a range of crimes, from possessing or sharing “sexually exploitative material” to actually being involved in creating such materials.

Scott Graf, spokesman for the AG’s office, said Friday night and again Saturday that he could not comment further.

Faucher was taken to the Ada County Jail on Friday after authorities obtained a warrant to search his residence. A tip from the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children sparked the investigation, the Idaho Attorney General’s Office said in an after-hours news release.

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NEW YORK
The Albany (NY) Times Union via the Laredo (TX) Morning News

By Chris Churchill

February 4, 2018

When Jason Gough was eight, he was sexually abused by an aunt. Last winter, the TV meteorologist went public with his story.

Gough didn’t know it, but the decision would change the trajectory of his life. Most notably, it would lead him to leave his longtime job at WNYT.

“I’ve decided I can be of more help outside the walls of Channel 13,” said Gough, who is 47 and lives in Delmar.

By “be of more help,” Gough partly means do more to combat sexual abuse of children. Most immediately, he is joining the effort to get the Child Victims Act passed by the Legislature.

Ah, the Child Victims Act. The legislation debated for more than a decade.

The bill would extend the criminal and civil statute of limitations for child sexual abuse cases, presumably encouraging more victims to come forward. New York now requires most child sex-abuse victims to sue by the age of 23.

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

BATON ROUGE (LA)
The Advocate

February 3, 2018

By Gordon Russell

The Diocese of Baton Rouge has determined that an abuse allegation it received against a Gonzales parish priest could not be substantiated.

Father Eric Gyan, pastor of St. Theresa of Avila Parish, “continues to serve as a priest in good standing and of good reputation,” the diocese said in a news release issued Saturday evening.

The abuse was alleged to have occurred in 1996, when Gyan was pastor of St. John the Baptist Parish in Brusly. The victim, now 31, reported the matter to the diocese in November. The woman had told The Advocate that Gyan forced her to perform sex acts on him on multiple occasions when she was 10 and attended the church in Brusly. She said the abuse occurred in the confessional.

The woman made a separate complaint around the same time with the Diocese of Biloxi involving a priest at a church on the Gulf Coast that she attended during the 1990s. The status of that complaint — which church officials confirmed in December was under investigation — could not be determined Saturday

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BALTIMORE (MD)
The New York Jewish Week

February 2, 2018

Hannah Dreyfus

Asks for $75 million, claiming defamation; open letters criticize, support school’s handling of allegations.

In the wake of The Jewish Week’s report on allegations that a former teacher at a Baltimore Jewish day school abused three young boys when he was a counselor at a Maryland summer camp in 2015, the rabbi has filed a lawsuit against his accusers.

On Tuesday, Rabbi Shmuel Krawatsky filed the suit in Maryland federal court against the parents of his accusers and Chaim Levin, a sexual abuse activist and blogger, for defamation, invasion of privacy and intentional infliction of emotional distress.

Rabbi Krawatsky and his wife are asking for $75 million in compensatory and punitive damages — $15 million per defendant. They say the rabbi’s accusers engaged in an effort to “damage Rabbi K and destroy his reputation and ability to earn a living” by publicly alleging that he sexually abused their sons, charges that he denies.

Attorney Jonathan Little, who represents the families, said the lawsuit is a “thinly veiled attempt to intimidate our clients.”

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UNITED STATES
Christianity Today

February 2, 2018

By Jen Zamzow

The Andy Savage case should lead us to question the way many churches are handling the issue.

Many observers were troubled when Andy Savage, a pastor at Highpoint Church in Memphis, received a standing ovation from his congregation for his admission of a “sexual incident” with a 17-year-old high-school student when he was a youth leader at Woodlands Parkway Baptist Church in Texas. They have reason to be troubled.

Though the congregation was probably unaware that the woman involved described the “incident” as an assault, at least one pastor at Woodlands and the leaders of Highpoint were aware. The alleged victim claimed that Larry Cotton, an associate pastor of Woodlands at the time, urged her to stay quiet about what happened. And only after the alleged victim made the case public did Highpoint’s pastor Chris Conlee admit that the information was not new to him or to the church leadership. Conlee went on to support Savage and his continued ministry at Highpoint Church.

Unfortunately, it is not uncommon for churches and religious organizations to try to handle sexual assault allegations internally. Bob Jones University, Sovereign Grace Ministries, the Association of Baptists for World Evangelism, and the Institute in Basic Life Principles have all come under fire in recent years for not adequately addressing sexual abuse within their communities. Some of these organizations have been accused of blaming the victims—even those who were children at the time of abuse—and pressuring them to forgive their abusers rather than report them.

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UNITED STATES
Patheos.com (blog)

February 3, 2018

By Sarahbeth Caplin

Christianity Today is not exactly known for its progressive stance on, well, anything. However, I was pleasantly surprised to read Jen Zamzow insist that churches shouldn’t handle cases of sexual abuse “internally”; that is, have the offending staff member sent on sabbatical without ever notifying the police, as was the case with pastor Andy Savage who assaulted a teenage girl decades ago (but whose story went public only recently). Savage’s church, as we know, is far from the only one to do this, and the practice not only further traumatizes victims but puts other congregants in danger

Zamzow rightly points out that while it’s easy to assume the worst of strangers, many of us are hesitant to do so of people in our inner circles. And this is something more Christians need to come to terms with.

“We’re all familiar with our tendency to evaluate our own moral failings more leniently than the moral failings of others. When someone else does something wrong, we condemn; when we do something wrong, we rationalize.

“The problem is, this bias doesn’t stop at ourselves.

…

“There might be an even greater danger of rationalization when it comes to judging church leaders than non-religious leaders. Church leaders are not only working for us; they are working for God. Precisely because working for God’s kingdom is a noble goal, it can lead us to justify any sins committed by those who have made it their career. Indeed, this is one of the ways people often try to rationalize keeping leaders accused of sexual abuse in power.

“This is a precarious road, however. Many terrible injustices have been rationalized in the name of “God’s kingdom.” Power without accountability is dangerous.”

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NEWCASTLE (ENGLAND)
Daily Mail

February 3, 2018

By Mark Duell

– James Leigh had already sent intimate picture to ‘boy’ before arranging meeting

– Said he liked ‘sweaty teen lads’ to Grindr profile he believed was of a 14-year-old

– But 30-year-old learner clergyman was confronted by Guardians of the North

– Leigh has pleaded guilty to attempting to meet a child after sexual grooming

This is the moment a trainee priest was snared by paedophile hunters as he tried to meet an underage schoolboy for sex – before being jailed for a year.

James Leigh had already sent an intimate picture and boasted that he liked ‘sweaty teen lads’ to a Grindr profile he believed belonged to a 14-year-old virgin.

But when he turned up to meet ‘the boy’ at a quiet leisure centre car park after dark, the 30-year-old learner clergyman was confronted by Guardians of the North.

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

NEWCASTLE (ENGLAND)
Newcastle Chronicle

February 3, 2018

By Rob Kennedy

James Leigh was living with a priest in Newcastle when he told a decoy profile on Grindr he liked ‘sweaty teen lads’ and arranged a meeting for sex

A trainee priest is behind bars after sending a picture of his genitals to what he thought was a 14-year-old boy, telling him he liked “sweaty teen lads” and turning up hoping to meet him for sex.

James Leigh was living with a Catholic priest in Newcastle as he trained to become a man of the cloth himself when he fell into illegal temptation online.

A court heard he made contact with a profile on Grindr which purported to be that of a 14-year-old boy but had in fact been set up by paedophile hunters.

Despite being told of the age of the fake boy, Leigh sent a message saying “Looking for young teen meet now”.

He then engaged in explicit chat, suggested sexual activity and arranged a meeting at Gateshead Leisure Centre.

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

ROCKVILLE CENTRE (NY)
Newsday

February 3, 2018

By Bart Jones

The Diocese of Rockville Centre’s spiritual leader, back to his New York roots, is racking up visits to parishes and intent on getting more people in the pews.

Bishop John Barres, who took over the Diocese of Rockville Centre a year ago with a reputation as an energetic one-man whirlwind, has by one measure more than lived up to the billing: He has visited 81 out of 134 parishes and dozens of Catholic schools from Elmont to the East End.

Marking his one-year anniversary as leader of Long Island’s 1.5 million Catholics, Barres said in an interview that he is launching a major effort to boost church attendance and vocations in the eighth-largest diocese or archdiocese in the nation.

The bishop, who touched on a variety of issues, also said he will not declare Rockville Centre a “sanctuary diocese” for immigrants who are in the United States illegally and may seek safe haven from deportation in churches.

Over the months, he has made ministering to Latino Catholics a primary focus, and last spring he attended the funeral of an Ecuadorean teenager who federal prosecutors said was slain by MS-13 gang members. He said he believes Catholic schools and parishes will play a key role in helping stem more gang violence.

The bishop also said he does not believe the diocese needs to open its books on past clergy sexual-abuse cases, as some who say they were victimized have demanded.

Barres, 57, who grew up in Larchmont, said he has realized that after some 35 years away from the state, he is at heart a native New Yorker. Those roots helped him slip easily into his role here soon after arriving from the Diocese of Allentown in Pennsylvania.

“I realized, deep down, I’m a New Yorker,” he said, laughing. “This is where I grew up. I am really comfortable here . . . I can get to the point quicker, can be a little more aggressive. We can move a little faster.”

The former Princeton University basketball player starts his days at 4:30 a.m. and continues well into the night. In addition to hitting nearly two-thirds of the parishes in the diocese, he has spoken at the United Nations, hosted a cardinal from El Salvador, and been presented with an honorary St. John’s University basketball jersey, emblazoned with his name, at center court at Madison Square Garden.

He has impressed many Catholics with his warmth, “people skills” and willingness to spend time speaking with them.

Before Masses, he roams the pews for up to half-an-hour chatting with parishioners, and he tries to arrange his schedule so he can be the last one to leave afterward, allowing for more time to talk to people individually. He has made a point of reaching out to young people, going to all 10 Catholic high schools and 16 of 47 Catholic elementary schools in the diocese.

“He’s a lovely man. He’s very friendly, warm,” said Sharon Swift, who as principal of Our Lady of Providence Regional Catholic School in Central Islip hosted Barres for a visit on Wednesday.

She marveled at how Barres, at a Mass last year at St. John of God parish where the school is located, memorized the names of some of the students within minutes, met their parents in another section of the church, and then came back to the students — remembering their names and connecting them with their parents.

For all of the goodwill that Barres has generated as a fresh and — for a bishop of a major diocese — relatively young presence, he faces challenges and some critiques.

Immigrant advocates want to see him match his supportive rhetoric with what they say could be more far-reaching actions. Survivors of clergy sex abuse want the books opened so that the full truth of the diocese’s role in the scandal can be publicly known.

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UNITED KINGDOM
The Catholic Herald

February 2, 2018

By Ed Condon

The Pope has shown he is serious about reforming the Curia, so why has so little actually happened?

Whether it is to do with curial reform in Rome, Vatican diplomacy in China, or allegations of sexual abuse in Chile, Pope Francis seems to be fighting fires on all fronts. How did it come to this?

Five years into his pontificate, it was certainly not meant to be this way – Pope Francis began with a mandate for reform and showed himself to be serious about it by thinking big and bold.

In terms of Vatican reform, he set up the C9 Council to look at how the Holy See operates, both in the Vatican and in relation to the global Church. He established the Council for Economic Affairs, the Prefecture for the Economy and the office of the Auditor General to bring some accountability to the curial finances and the Vatican Bank. Smaller Vatican departments were overhauled or joined together, and a new department for Laity, Family and Life was formed.

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BOISE (ID)
KIFI-TV/KIDK-TV

Attorney General Lawrence Wasden has announced investigators with his Idaho Internet Crimes Against Children (ICAC) Unit arrested a Boise man Friday, February 2, for alleged Sexual Exploitation of a Child.

72-year-old W. Thomas Faucher was being transported to the Ada County Jail following his arrest. Investigators had obtained a search warrant for Faucher’s Boise residence and executed the warrant Friday afternoon. The investigation began with a tip from the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children.

The Ada County Prosecutor’s Office assisted the ICAC Unit.

Anyone with information regarding the exploitation of children is encouraged to contact local police, the Attorney General’s ICAC Unit at 208-334-4527, or the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children at 1-800-843-5678.

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BOISE (ID)
Idaho Statesman

February 3, 2018

By Michael Katz and David Staats

A retired priest at St. Mary’s Catholic Church in Boise was arrested Friday by the Idaho Internet Crimes Against Children Unit for alleged sexual exploitation of a child.

W. Thomas Faucher, 72, was taken to the Ada County Jail after authorities obtained a warrant to search his Boise residence. A tip from the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children sparked the investigation, the Idaho Attorney General’s Office said in an after-hours news release.

Faucher’s exact charges were unclear Friday night. The law he’s charged under includes a range of crimes, from possessing or sharing “sexually exploitative material” to actually being involved in creating such materials. Scott Graf, spokesman for the AG’s office, declined to provide clarification.

Gene Fadness, communications director for the Roman Catholic Diocese of Boise, told the Statesman that Faucher had not been an active priest for the past three years.

“Because of Father Faucher’s retirement three years ago, he has not held any pastoral assignments since that time,” the diocese said in a statement. “Because of the seriousness of the allegations, Faucher will be unable to minister in the Diocese of Boise in any way. The diocese will cooperate fully with law enforcement officials in their investigation.”

Faucher (pronounced foh-SHAY) grew up in Boise and attended St. Mary’s as a child. He was ordained on June 4, 1971, in Boise, and became pastor of the church at the corner of 26th and State streets in 2002.

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DOVER (DE)
Associated Press

February 1, 2018

Delaware prosecutors for the first time have brought criminal child molestation charges against a Catholic priest.

An indictment issued by a grand jury Monday charges 76-year-old John A. Sarro with first-degree unlawful sexual intercourse and second-degree unlawful sexual contact.

The charges involve a girl who was under the age of 16. Sarro is accused of fondling her sometime between September 1991 and August 1992 by touching her breasts. Prosecutors allege he later had oral sex with the girl between July 1993 and July 1994.

Sarro was one of several priests, both living and dead, about whom the Catholic Diocese of Wilmington disclosed in 2006 that it had received admitted, corroborated or otherwise substantiated allegations of sexual abuse.

In 2011, after seeking bankruptcy protection amid widespread allegations of child sex abuse by priests, the diocese agreed to pay more than $70 million in a settlement with nearly 150 alleged victims of sexual abuse.

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KANSAS CITY (MO)
National Catholic Reporter

February 2, 2018

In an online editorial Jan. 23, NCR took Pope Francis to task for the pain he caused survivors of sexual abuse by clergy. Twice and very publicly, he dismissed the testimony of abuse victims and charging them with “calumny” against a bishop he had installed in a diocese in southern Chile over the advice of other Chilean prelates and over the loud, ardent protests of Chilean lay Catholics.

Francis dismissed out of hand testimony that Chilean Bishop Juan Barros Madrid of Orsono had for years ignored or covered up evidence that his mentor Fr. Fernando Karadima was abusing young men. Despite at least three survivors’ public accounts to the contrary, Francis insisted — in harsh, judgmental language — that he had seen no evidence against Barros.

We recognized in this an all-too-familiar script: Discredit the survivors’ testimony, support the cleric in question, and bank on public attention moving on to something else. We said in that editorial: Francis’ “remarks are at the least shameful. At the most, they suggest that Francis now could be complicit in the cover-up.” We continued:

History has shown that the great number of survivors were telling the truth. Any reform that has happened in the church is due to their courageous resolve. The hierarchy was caught in its lies and humbled, but not before unknown numbers of believers were driven out of the Catholic Church. The scandal has cost the church moral authority, credibility and billions of dollars.

In recent years, we had thought chastened church leaders had begun to correct mistakes of the past. We were wrong. The supreme pontiff apparently has not learned this lesson.

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NEW ZEALAND
NZ Catholic

February 2, 2018

By Michael Otto

Whatever shape the new Government’s promised independent inquiry into historical claims of abuse of children in state care takes, the past actions of churches, including the Catholic Church, will come under scrutiny.

That was the forecast in December of Bill Kilgallon, who heads the Catholic Church’s National Office for Professional Standards in this country.

A Royal Commission into historical state care abuse has since been been launched by the Government. It was announced that there is to be an independent inquiry into historical claims of abuse of children in state care.

This is with a view to learning lessons to ensure policy is changed to minimise the risk of this happening in the future.

Mr Kilgallon, who is also a member of the Pontifical Commission for the Protection of Minors, was one of the people being consulted by Government officials as the scope and limits of the inquiry were being drawn up.

He told NZ Catholic that if it is decided that the inquiry stays with looking at state care, “that will obviously also involve all those children in state care who were placed in establishments run by churches and other organisations, or placed in foster care by Catholic Social Services”.

“So even at its narrowest remit, that will involve a considerable amount of work from the Church in responding to that section — so all the orphanages, children’s homes, specialist establishments, the laundries that were run at one time.

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PHOENIX (AZ)
Phoenix New Times

February 1, 2018

By Joseph Flaherty

A Maricopa County Superior Court judge has ruled that a lawsuit can move forward against the Phoenix Diocese for an alleged cover-up of sexual abuse within the clergy.

The victim’s attorney, Robert E. Pastor of law firm Montoya, Lucero, and Pastor, said on Thursday that the ruling is a welcome step. His client will have the opportunity to seek justice for the sexual abuse he suffered as a child, Pastor said.

The civil suit is against the Diocese of Phoenix, the Salvatorian Order, and St. Mark’s Catholic Parish. Kerstin LeMaire of Maricopa County Superior Court denied the defendants’ motion to dismiss the lawsuit.

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NEW HAVEN (CT)
Fox News

February 1, 2018

Sororities at Yale University are now giving members the ability to “flag” names of people who allegedly make them feel uncomfortable, with the frat “blacklist” emerging amid the fallout from accusations of sexual misconduct by a fraternity whose legacies include both former Bush presidents.

The new measures by sororities Kappa Alpha Theta and Pi Beta Phi include giving out surveys to members before social events to include names of people they feel uncomfortable seeing there, the Yale Daily News reported.

“There is a general sentiment of disappointment regarding sexual safety on college campuses, and Theta is working to improve the safety of its members and all Yale students,” sorority chapter president Miranda Duster told the newspaper.

Duster said the list of people, including those who are “flagged,” is only available to Theta members and only for use at private chapter events. Those who are put on the list are barred from attending events hosted by the sorority.

The action by the sororities comes in the wake of sexual assault allegations against two brothers from the Delta Kappa Epsilon fraternity, which were reported by the Yale Daily News and Business Insider.

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BELLEFONTE (DE)
WTXF

February 1, 2018

A terrible first in the state of Delaware has occurred. A former Catholic priest faces charges of raping a child.

The big stone church known as Saint Helena Parish dominates the neighborhood in the tiny Delaware community of Bellefonte.

Mass is heard daily here and social events are held. However, there is sorrow and anger over 76-year-old John Sarro in the community.

“Anytime you mess with a minor, you get what you deserve. He’s an animal as far as I’m concerned,” said Bob Cannon.

Sarro was priest at Saint Helena in the 1990’s.

According to a New Castle County Grand Jury indictment, he had “sexual intercourse” with a girl under 16 in the early ‘90’s.

Sarro was also charged with “touching the teenager’s breasts.”

Despite a long history of sexual abuse claims made against priests here, Sarro is the first to be criminally charged.

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EAST LANSING (MI)
Baptist News

February 1, 2018

By Bob Allen

The first woman to go public with allegations of sexual abuse by Larry Nassar, the former sports medicine doctor at Michigan State University, says the laudatory public reaction to her story would have been different if it had happened at church.

Rachael Denhollander, star witness in the sentencing phase of the former USA Gymnastics director’s trial for criminal sexual misconduct, gained widespread attention in national and Christian media when she invoked her faith in her impact statement.

“I pray you experience the soul-crushing weight of guilt so you may someday experience true repentance and true forgiveness from God, which you need far more than forgiveness from me — though I extend that to you as well,” she said to her abuser.

But Denhollander, whose husband has a master of divinity degree from Southern Baptist Theological Seminary and is currently enrolled in doctoral studies there, said advocating for other victims of sexual assault within the religious community once caused her to leave her church during a different scandal involving an evangelical megachurch.

Denhollander, the last of more than 150 survivors providing impact statements in the highly publicized case against Nassar, says church “is one of the least safe places to acknowledge abuse.”

“That’s a hard thing to say, because I am a very conservative evangelical, but that is the truth,” Denhollander said in an interview with Christianity Today. “There are very, very few who have ever found true help in the church.”

Denhollander said she and her husband left a church in Louisville, Ky., that was “directly involved in restoring” C.J. Mahaney, the former president of Sovereign Grace Ministries accused of covering up sex abuse in a class action lawsuit dismissed due to statute of limitations in 2014.

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COLUMBIA (SC)
The State

February 1, 2018

By John Monk

Columbia’s First Baptist Church and its longtime minister, Wendell Estep, are apologizing to a child who was sexually abused by a former church volunteer and have agreed to settle a lawsuit brought by the youth and his parents for $300,000.

The apology and $300,000 payout are laid out in an eight-page settlement agreement. In the settlement, the landmark downtown church accepts responsibility for the abuse and pledges to reform its child-safety practices.

“We want to offer an apology for the inappropriate and unacceptable conduct this young man endured and express regret for what we failed to do to prevent it,” says part of a statement, which will be read to the congregation after a Sunday church service.

“We are sorry that this young man was wronged and that our policies and procedures, as well as our enforcement of those policies and procedures, were insufficient to protect him,” the statement says. “No student should have to experience what this young man endured.”

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WILMINGTON (DE)
The Independent

February 2, 2018

By Tom Embury-Dennis

‘I can’t recall all the circumstances, but it was simply a misunderstanding’ says John A Sarro

A Catholic priest charged with child rape has claimed that it was “simply a misunderstanding” and that it “happened by accident”.

John A Sarro was charged by a grand jury earlier this week in Delaware, the first time the US state has brought criminal molestation charges against a Catholic priest.

The 76-year-old is accused of first-degree unlawful sexual intercourse and second-degree unlawful sexual contact.

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UNITED STATES
The Open Tabernacle

February 1, 2018

By Betty Clermont

The UN Committee Against Torture “found that the widespread sexual violence within the Catholic Church amounted to torture and cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment” in May 2014. The members “ordered the Vatican to hand over files containing details of clerical sexual abuse allegations to police forces around the world … to use its authority over the Roman Catholic Church worldwide to ensure all allegations of clerical abuse are passed on to the secular authorities and to impose ‘meaningful sanctions’ on any Church officials who fail to do so.”

Pope Francis has refused to put any of these measures in place. Children around the world are now in even more danger because the powerful U.S. media has put the world on notice that the one man who can make real change need not do so. Not only is the pope not accountable, but also his “representative and their aides” around the world.

The UN Committee on the Rights of the Child (CRC) found child sexual offenders employed by the Church were still in contact with children, Church officials were not cooperating with law enforcement authorities, the pope’s representatives and their aides were not monitoring the behavior of those under their “effective control” and that there was no accountability for hierarchs.

Pope Francis’ formal response to the CRC was to claim that his government, the Holy See, was only responsible for the 31 children resident in the Vatican City State “despite the fact that the Holy See decides whether thousands of clerics [the Vatican received 3,420 credible allegations of sexual abuse of minors between 2004 and 2014] from all over the world” are guilty of sexually abusing children, noted Kieran Tapsell, a retired civil lawyer and an author on canon law.

The pope is under zero pressure from the U.S. media to warn the public or notify civil authorities when a priest is found guilty.

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UNITED STATES
The Jewish Press

February 1, 2018

By Dr. Michael J. Salamon

Larry Nassar, the former doctor for the female Olympic gymnastics team, received a sentence of 40 to 175 years for sexual abuse. At sentencing, Judge Rosemarie Aquilina said she was effectively signing his death warrant.

While it is not exactly clear how many young female athletes he molested, the judge forced him to sit through seven days of statements by 156 of his victims. At one point during the victims’ statements Nassar asked to be exempted from hearing them. The judge denied the request.

At his sentencing, Nassar made a brief statement that suggested he was remorseful. He said, “There are no words to describe the depth and breadth of how sorry I am for what has occurred. An acceptable apology to all of you is impossible to convey. I will carry your words with me for the rest of my days.”

Judge Aquilina said she did not believe his apology. For good reason – it was not an apology. It was a more like a disavowal of responsibility.

There is so much that can and should be learned from this harrowing case that must be studied and applied within our community.

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BALTIMORE (MD)
The Baltimore Sun

January 31, 2018

By Alison Knezevich

A rabbi who was fired from Beth Tfiloh school in Pikesville amid abuse allegations has sued the parents of his accusers, as well as an activist in New York.

Rabbi Steven Krawatsky and his wife, Shira, filed the lawsuit Tuesday in U.S. District Court in Maryland. Krawatsky, who also goes by the first name Shmuel, taught for nearly 15 years at Beth Tfiloh, a private Jewish school.

In 2015 and 2016, Krawatsky was accused of sexual abuse at Camp Shoresh in Frederick County, where he worked as a counselor for 15 years, he says in the lawsuit.

Krawatsky, 40, denies the accusations. The Frederick County Sheriff’s Office investigated and prosecutors did not bring charges.

Several weeks ago, the New York Jewish Week published a report detailing the allegations. After the report was published, Beth Tfiloh terminated Krawatsky. He had taught Judaic studies at the school.

In the lawsuit, Krawatsky and his wife allege that those who have accused him engaged in an effort to “damage Rabbi K and destroy his reputation and ability to earn a living.” The lawsuit’s claims include defamation, invasion of privacy and intentional infliction of emotional distress.

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NEW YORK (NY)
The Jerusalem Post

January 30, 2018

By Tamara Zieve

American businessman Daniel Sunray completed a six-year sentence for sexual abuse of six children between 1998 and 1999.

A US-based Jewish advocacy group working to combat child sex abuse within the Orthodox community is in a legal battle with a convicted pedophile about whom the group warned the local community.

In June 2016, the Jewish Community Watch, known for its “wall of shame,” shared information about the release of American businessman Daniel Sunray from an Israeli prison, where he had completed a six-year sentence for sexual abuse of six children between 1998 and 1999.

In April 2017, the group alerted the Jewish community in New York City that Sunray had moved there.

“We shared this information to warn the community about a man who poses a potentially serious risk to children,” the group said in a press release sent to The Jerusalem Post this week.

A few months ago, the group received a notice summoning its leaders to appear in front of Rabbi Yisroel Arye Knopfler’s Badatz Beit Din (rabbinical court) of Lakewood, New Jersey. According to the note, Sunray was suing Jewish Community Watch for Lashon Hara (derogatory or harmful speech).

“We are being sued for warning the community that a convicted sex offender, with a history of grooming children in shuls and offering children rides, had anonymously moved into their area,” said Meyer Seewald, founder and director of Jewish Community Watch.

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BRONX (NY)
The Bronx Chronicle

January 27, 2018

By David Greene

Banished priest and accused child molester Father Richard Gorman died Tuesday, January 23, at Jacobi Hospital in the Bronx. He was 63.

Archdiocese of New York spokesman Joseph Zwilling confirmed Thursday morning, “It is true that he passed away, yes.”

Zwilling continued, “I really don’t have very much in the way of details, other than he passed away two nights ago at Jacobi Hospital.”

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NEW YORK (NY)
The New York Post

February 1, 2018

By Gabrielle Fonrouge

The defense attorney for disgraced USA Gymnastics doctor Larry Nassar said she doesn’t believe that her client could have sexually assaulted all 256 of his accusers.

“There’s a huge part of me that doesn’t believe every one of those girls was victimized by him,” Shannon Smith said in an interview with WWJ News during a morning broadcast.

She later clarified that she’s not denying he’s guilty of assaulting some women but believes the number that has come forward is “really extreme.”

“There was no way there could have been so much,” she said.

“Larry would have to have been doing this all day, every day with no one catching on. This is a guy who put child pornography in a trash can. He’s not a savvy guy.”

She went on to say she believes many of Nassar’s former patients received legitimate medical treatments from the doctor, who used his hands to manipulate sensitive areas of their bodies.

“I think Larry Nassar comes off as a really great person. There is no doubt he did a lot of good for a lot of his patients,” Smith said.

She believes the attention Nassar’s case received is what’s causing former patients to come forward with feelings they’d been assaulted too.

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TALLAHASSEE (FL)
Miami Herald

February 1, 2018

By Elizabeth Koh

For most of her life, the people around Sherry Johnson pushed her to stay silent.

When she was raped for the first time at age 8 by the bishop of her church, Johnson’s mother accused her of lying, she said. When her mother’s husband and a church deacon also began to rape her, she stayed silent out of fear.

When she became pregnant at age 10 by the deacon, she was taken out of school, forced to marry him and had five more children with him before she was able to obtain a divorce.

For decades, Johnson, 58, remained voiceless about her past, cycling through two more abusive relationships. But in 2012, spurred by a desire to make sure what happened to her would not happen to any other child, she began to push lawmakers in Florida to close the loophole that allowed her marriage to be recognized by the law.

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NEW YORK
Road to Recovery

Road to Recovery, Inc. – P.O. Box 279, Livingston, NJ 07039 – 862-368-2800

Newark Archdiocese places children, teenagers, and vulnerable adults at risk by not requiring its parishes and schools to comply with the Charter for the Protection of Children and Young People regarding child safety training

It is outrageous that 53 parishes and 13 schools have not fulfilled its 2017 obligation to keep children safe by conducting and verifying training for adults who work with children

Cardinal Joseph Tobin, since he arrived in Newark over one year ago, has largely ignored the critical work of child protection and healing by not mandating that parishes and schools make child protection a priority and by now litigating clergy sexual abuse cases

What

A press conference and demonstration protesting the lack of attention paid to child protection and healing by Cardinal Joseph Tobin and the Archdiocese of Newark demonstrated by the 53 parishes and 13 schools that have yet to document their child protection training and by the litigation undertaken by Cardinal Tobin of childhood sexual abuse claims, leaving children at risk of sexual abuse and victim/survivors of clergy sexual abuse with the inability to heal in a timely manner.

When

Friday, February 2, 2018 from 10:30 until Noon (Press conference at 11:30 am)

Where

On the public sidewalk across from the headquarters of the Archdiocese of Newark at 171 Clifton Avenue, Newark, New Jersey 07104

Who

Members of Road to Recovery, Inc., including victim/survivors of clergy from the Archdiocese of Newark, New Jersey and their advocates, led by Road to Recovery, Inc. co-founder and President, Robert M. Hoatson, Ph.D.

Why

A recent Star Ledger report highlighted the lack of seriousness of the Archdiocese of Newark in protecting children in its parishes, schools, and institutions. 53 parishes and 13 schools, in 2017, have not reported that they have conducted training in child protection as required by the Charter for the Protection of Children and Young People of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops. This is not surprising since Cardinal Joseph Tobin, who became the Archbishop of Newark approximately one year ago, has not treated victim/survivors of clergy sexual abuse in the Newark Archdiocese with fairness, and he has chosen litigation over settlements, causing sexual abuse victim/survivors of Newark Archdiocesan clergy to feel re-victimized and re-traumatized. Demonstrators will call on Cardinal Joseph Tobin to make clergy sexual abuse training a priority by requiring all Archdiocesan institutions to conduct proper and thorough training, treating sexual abuse victim/survivors with fairness and justice, and settling cases of clergy sexual abuse in a timely, just, and fair manner.

Contacts

Robert M. Hoatson, Ph.D., Road to Recovery, Inc., 862-368-2800 roberthoatson@gmail.com

Attorney Mitchell Garabedian, Boston, MA – 617-523-6250 – mgarabedian@garabedianlaw.com

(portrayed in the 2016 Academy Award- winning Best Picture, “Spotlight”)

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NEWARK (NJ)
NJ Advance Media for NJ.com

February 1, 2018

By Erin Banco

More than six dozen parishes and schools in the Archdiocese of Newark may be out of compliance with a policy meant to protect children from sexual abuse, documents obtained by NJ Advance Media show.

Sixteen years ago, after the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops passed the historic Dallas charter meant to address the allegations of sexual misconduct in the church, dioceses across the U.S. were required to implement background checks and training for all staffers and volunteers working with children.

As part of that policy and in order to sustain accountability, parishes and schools were required to submit annual reports to the diocese listing the workers who had completed the screening and training and those who had not.

Documents obtained by NJ Advance Media show that in the Newark archdiocese, 24 percent of the parishes in 2017 did not submit a compliance report. That means 53 parishes could be fielding teachers, volunteers and other workers who may not have passed a background check, said an employee within the archdiocese.

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ROME
CRUX

February 1, 2018

By Inés San Martín

ROME – Catholics from Chile welcomed Pope Francis’s decision to send a representative to the country to look into the case of Bishop Juan Barros, accused by victims of clerical sexual abuse of covering up the crimes of pedophile priest Fernando Karadima, who the Vatican found guilty of abusing minors in 2011.

Barros himself has been quoted saying he welcomes “with faith and joy” whatever the pontiff decides.

Chilean Cardinal Ricardo Ezzati also welcomed Francis’s decision to send Archbishop Charles J. Scicluna of Malta to listen to those who’ve “manifested their will to make known elements they possess.”

Ezzati called the move “opportune,” and believed that it will lead to a “more complete process.”

“We’re very happy with the decision and I think it is very opportune […] he comes, as the pope said, to look for the elements that the people want to offer to him for a more complete process,” said the prelate, Archbishop of Santiago, in a statement made available by Biobiochile.

Barros, who together with three other bishops has been accused by the victims of Karadima of covering up for the abuse committed by him, was not in his diocese when the news was announced by the Vatican’s press office on Tuesday.

However, through a statement released by his diocese, Osorno, the bishop said that he “welcomes with faith and joy everything the pope decides,” and asked “God for the truth to shine, and invoking especially to the Holy Virgin Mary that everyone reaches peace.”

Later that same day, diocesan spokesperson, Jaime Coiro, told reporters that Scicluna’s mission to Chile “demonstrates” that during the pope’s recent visit to Chile he had “an attitude of true listening and closeness to the reality and challenges of Chilean society and of the Church.”

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GUAM
Pacific Daily News

February 1, 2018

By Haidee V. Eugenio

Alleged victims of clergy sexual abuse have asked a federal judge to extend the time to serve legal documents to four defendants in their lawsuits, including the Capuchin Franciscans and the Congregation of Holy Cross, both in Italy.

Six of the plaintiffs said they also need time to find someone to translate the documents from English to Italian.

Former Catholic school teacher Ray Caluag, who is in the Philippines, and former priest Joe R. San Agustin, also known as Andrew San Agustin, who is believed to be on Guam, also have not been served copies of the lawsuits, according to the plaintiffs.

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UNITED STATES
Yahoo Lifestyle

January 30, 2018

By Elena Sheppard

“Do I make you uncomfortable?” Rose McGowan asks in voiceover, as we are met with an extreme close-up on her face while she rubs what looks like powder onto her high cheekbones. “Good.”

This question and answer comes within the first 30 seconds of McGowan’s five-part series, Citizen Rose, which premieres Tuesday night on E!. Making her audience uncomfortable is clearly important to McGowan, who instantly seeks to dispel the version of her you likely know — “the version that was sold to you,” she calls it. She’s here to set the record straight — the record being the story that she has long hinted at, and finally publicly told in 2017, of being raped by Harvey Weinstein. “The monster” as she calls him in the series, never once saying his name.

McGowan is a divisive figure, and always has been. She was sold to the American public as a “bad girl,” a sex symbol, all big eyes and pouty lips. But that version is not who she is. “It’s been really hard having the mind of an artist but being in a town that sells you as just a commodity,” she says. In Citizen Rose, we are again given a constructed version of McGowan, but it’s a construction of her own making; and in that, particularly in this moment and in this narrative, there is extreme power.

Since coming forward with her Weinstein rape allegations, McGowan has been combination powder keg and necessary rocket fuel for the #MeToo movement, garnering supporters as much as she repels them. She has championed women’s empowerment and simultaneously called out resistance efforts like the black dresses worn at the Golden Globes, as well as feuding with Meryl Streep. She is not here to make people feel comfortable or good; she is here to tell the truth — her truth. “Let me tell you how enraged I am,” she says in Citizen Rose, “Not just for me, but for anyone who’s been disbelieved.”

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WASHINGTON (DC)
Sojourners

January 31, 2018

By Beth Moore

The choirs of outcries from Hollywood over the Harvey Weinstein scandal and those echoing globe-wide over the atrocities of USA Gymnastics team doctor Larry Nassar against children drop a question of epic proportions into the lap of the church:

Why are we who preach and teach “the truth will set you free” largely bound by silence regarding sexual assault and abuse?

Rachael Denhollander’s courtroom testimony, masterfully articulating both the grace and justice of Jesus Christ, made her identification as a Christian beautifully clear. We were immensely proud to be her sisters and brothers and to stand with her in the public square.

Then came the irony of discovering that her advocacy for sexual assault victims had cost Rachael her church. What’s more, most of us suspect her congregation wouldn’t have been the only one. What are we to do with this disparity? Why would followers of Jesus be among the least vocal and the slowest to respond when Christ, whom we are called to imitate, was a relentless defender of the powerless, misused, victimized, and abused? In specific regard to children, why do we – activists in numerous other streams of concern – choose reserve about wrongs for which Jesus reserved a titanic threat?

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MARTINSBURG (WV)
The Journal

February 1, 2018

By Kelsie LeRose

MARTINSBURG–Testimony continued Wednesday from Sandra Lee Jensen during the civil case alleging members of the Mormon Church covered up sexual abuse by the son of church leaders.

Sandra Lee Jensen first took the stand Tuesday as a witness for the plaintiffs. She is the mother of Christopher Michael Jensen – who is serving 35 to 75 years in prison for sexually abusing two minors at the ages of 4 and 3.

The lawsuit against the Corporation of the President of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints; Corporation of the Presiding Bishop of the Church of Jesus Chris of Latter-day Saints; Sandra Lee and Chris Jensen; Don Fishel and Steven Grow, who have held lay church clergy positions; and one unnamed defendant was filed in 2013 by six families.

The suit accused the church and its leaders of actively covering up the abuse and assisting Michael Jensen in committing further acts by enabling him to babysit for and live with other church families with young children.

Carl Kravitz, an attorney for the plaintiffs, began questioning Wednesday by referencing a family’s complaint of Michael Jensen’s treatment of their then 4-year-old son.

The victim’s mother had called Sandra Lee Jensen to her house in reference to the allegations, Kravitz said. However, she testified she believed she was going over to help with Relief Society President duties.

Those duties include assisting in the needs of the members within the local congregation and communities.

During the meeting, Kravitz said, the victim’s mother used the word sex offender and Michael Jensen in the same sentence. Kravitz asked Sandra Lee Jensen if she questioned why she said that.

“I did not,” she replied. She continued by saying she wanted to get an explanation from her son.

Sandra Lee testified that Michael Jensen told her the victim had walked in on him while he was using the bathroom, but he went about his business.

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NEW ZEALAND
Radio NZ

February 1, 2018

By Aaron Smale

Opinion – I don’t often write this: the government has got it right.

The announcement that there will be a Royal Commission of Inquiry into abuse suffered by wards of the state is a massive step in the right direction. It comes after years – nay – decades of denial, obfuscation, and outright vicious treatment of survivors who have summoned the courage to confront the state.

This approach, sustained by successive governments and generations of bureaucrats, has added further layers of victimisation on people who have already been subjected to abuse that warrants comparison with Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo.

Furthermore, these experiences happened to them when they were children.

Finally, the state that carried out these injustices will be in the dock and subjected to scrutiny and judgement it has dodged by using its own powers.

Although Prime Minister Ardern has always supported an inquiry, even before it was a high profile topic, there was a real risk that she would pull her punches and only called for a lower level inquiry.

She admitted in the announcement that she was inclined to take this path. If she had taken this option it would have compromised its credibility from the start and would have gained little support from survivors.

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UNITED KINGDOM
Daily Mail

January 31, 2018

By Richard Spillett

– Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse (IICSA) started new phase today
– It has begun looking at alleged abuse in schools, churches and children’s homes
– Attention today turned to claims senior figures in Westminster abused children

The son of the late Lord Janner has slammed an inquiry examining allegations of paedophilia in Westminster as a ‘stain on British justice’.

The Independent Inquiry in Child Sexual Abuse (IICSA) has so far examined alleged abuse in the church, in children’s homes and in private schools.

Today, it began examining claims that MPs and civil servants may have been involved in or turned a blind eye to sex attacks on children.

But the hearing was advised that any issues relating to the late Lord Janner should be referred to the separate strand specifically focusing on the Labour peer.

His family want core participant status in the strand of the inquiry which began today.

They are upset to be denied while that status has been given to Esther Baker, who is accused of making unsubstantiated rape claims against former Liberal Democrat MP John Hemming.

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SYDNEY (AUSTRALIA)
The Sydney Morning Herald

February 1, 2018

A teenage boy has told a jury that a Russian Orthodox priest forced him to drink alcohol before climbing on top of him in bed at his Sydney church flat.

Stanislav Vakhabov, also known as Father Christopher, 35, has pleaded not guilty to detaining the then 14-year-old for his own sexual gratification, giving him intoxicating substances to make it easier to have unlawful sexual activity and four counts of indecent assault.

The boy said in a recorded police interview played to the jury at the District Court on Thursday that Vakhabov also tried to take his shirt off, kissed him on the mouth and told him cuddling was a sign of friendship.

Vakhabov invited a 14-year-old overseas boy to come to Australia before sexually molesting him and locking him in his Sydney church flat, a jury has been told.

The boy’s deeply religious mother agreed he could holiday in Australia in 2014 because of Stanislav Vakhabov’s position in the church, the prosecutor told the District Court on Wednesday at the start of his trial.

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GRIFFITH (NSW, AUSTRALIA)
The Area News

February 1, 2018

By Oliver Jacques

The Catholic Church has rightly copped a battering from media for turning a blind eye to child sexual abuse over several decades.

But the question must surely be asked, why are state governments getting let off the hook?

Contrary to popular belief, most Australia children who were sexually assaulted in an institution were not abused by Catholic clergy or laypeople.

According to the child abuse royal commission, many thousands of children were also abused in state government-run orphanages, foster care and educational facilities.

In many cases, responsible governments and bureaucrats failed to take action against the perpetrators, or offer help to the victims.

And while reports of sexual assault in the Church are now rare, abuse appears to still be rampant in foster care.

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ST. PETERSBURG (FL)
Tampa Bay Times

January 31, 2018

By Colleen Wright

Brianna Holzerland said she stands by her allegations that she was subjected to inappropriate behavior and sexual abuse nearly a decade ago by former Tampa Bay Rays physician Michael Reilly.

Holzerland, 26, said it happened while she worked as a teenager at the doctor’s office. Reilly, who has denied the allegations, was fired by the Rays on Tuesday after executives saw the 10-minute YouTube video she posted online.

She released this statement Wednesday to the Tampa Bay Times:

“I stand with the facts stated in my original video which took several years for me to verbalize. As I stated in my video if I can help one person that may be in a position that I was in several years ago then that is enough.”

The video led St. Petersburg police to launch an investigation. Reilly also resigned from a similar medical position at St. Petersburg Catholic High School.

In a statement made through his attorney, Reilly has denied the allegations and said he was engaged in a consensual relationship with her when she was an adult.

In the video, Holzerland said that she was 16 when she started working at Reilly’s office and that he would “put his hand on my hand,” and “put his hand on my shoulder and lightly rub my back.”

She said she quit “shortly after I noticed he was touching me in exam rooms.” She said Reilly invited her to return to work eight months later and “the same thing started happening, and this time it did progress.”

Eventually she said she became “numb” to being touched inappropriately as it “progressively got worse and worse.” The doctor tried to get her alone, she said, and would “shut the door and try and kiss me.” She said her experiences left her suffering from anxiety attacks and dealing with other issues.

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NEWARK (NJ)
NJ Advance Media for NJ.com

February 1, 2018

By Erin Banco

More than six dozen parishes and schools in the Archdiocese of Newark may be out of compliance with a policy meant to protect children from sexual abuse, documents obtained by NJ Advance Media show.

Sixteen years ago, after the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops passed the historic Dallas charter meant to address the allegations of sexual misconduct in the church, dioceses across the U.S. were required to implement background checks and training for all staffers and volunteers working with children.

As part of that policy and in order to sustain accountability, parishes and schools were required to submit annual reports to the diocese listing the workers who had completed the screening and training and those who had not.

Documents obtained by NJ Advance Media show that in the Newark archdiocese, 24 percent of the parishes in 2017 did not submit a compliance report. That means 53 parishes could be fielding teachers, volunteers and other workers who may not have passed a background check, said an employee within the archdiocese.

However, it is unclear if all or some of the parishes and 13 schools included in the 2017 documents simply failed to file the paperwork in time or actually did not conduct the background screenings.

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ENGLAND
Catholic Herald

January 31, 2018

By Fr. Alexander Lucie-Smith

In every parish in the world priests will find gaining people’s trust that little bit more difficult thanks to the Barros case

The news that the Vatican has dispatched the Archbishop of Malta to Chile to deal with the case of Bishop Juan Barros of Osorno is astonishing. It represents a complete volte-face on the part of the authorities in Rome.

Until very recently, no less a person than Pope Francis himself was telling us that there was no Barros case, and that the whole affair was the work of “leftists”, and that any accusations against Barros were calumny. Now, as the Italians love to say, cambia la melodia – the mood music has changed: it seems that new facts have come to light and there is something to be investigated after all.

Archbishop Scicluna of Malta is one of the few men high up in the Church hierarchy who has some credibility when it comes to dealing with child abuse. The fact that he is being sent means the Vatican recognises the Barros case as important, indeed urgent; one could see this as, in fact, a sign of panic after a long period of denial and indolence. Let us remember that Barros was made Bishop of Osorno back in March 2015. Since then protests have not let up. Yet it has taken three years for the Vatican to realise that it has a serious problem in Osorno.

And how serious! Barros was a bishop (of the Chilean armed forces) before the Osorno appointment. Osorno is a tiny diocese of 22 parishes, 800 miles from Santiago, and perhaps they thought that it was a good place to bury an embarrassing prelate. If that were so, it was a terrible miscalculation, and reveals that whoever was behind the Osorno appointment simply does not realise how toxic child abuse is for the Catholic Church. But they do now, or should do, given that the Osorno saga has not gone away, much as they might have hoped it to.

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WASHINGTON (DC)
The Washington Post

Originally published January 4, 2018

By Richard Morgan

His 56-box archive is filled with misogynist and lecherous musings.

Woody Allen is wrapping up a new movie. Just kidding: He doesn’t make new movies. What he’s editing now, “A Rainy Day in New York,” about a college-age love triangle, could, like any of his movies, instead be titled “A Woman Gets Objectified by a Man.” This, in his view, is the pinnacle of art, its truest calling and highest purpose. Especially when it involves young women who are compelled to lackluster men merely by the gravity of the men’s obsession.

I know this because I’ve seen his whole career up close — going through all of his drafts and scribblings, his psychological and physical cutting-room floor that exists in the 56-box, 57-year personal archives he has been curating since 1980 at Princeton University (which he did not attend). According to the staff at Firestone Library’s rare-books wing, I’m the first person to read Allen’s collection — the Woody Papers — from cover to cover, and from the very beginning to the very end, Allen drips with repetitious misogyny. Allen, who has been nominated for 24 Oscars, never needed ideas besides the lecherous man and his beautiful conquest — a concept around which he has made films about Paris, Rome, Barcelona, Manhattan, journalism, time travel, communist revolution, murder, writing novels, Thanksgiving dinner, Hollywood and many other things — because that one idea bore so much fruit for his career.

Allen’s archive is a garden of earthly deletes — decades of notes and stories and sketches that the prolific filmmaker exiled, for whatever reason, to the shadowlands in between whole-hearted commitment and half-hearted possession. His screenplays are often Freudian, and they generally feature him (or some avatar for him) sticking almost religiously to a formula: A relationship on the brink of failure is thrown into chaos by the introduction of a compelling outsider, almost always a young woman. Sometimes, this produces a gem, such as “Match Point.” Often it does not. Ellen Page, featured in 2012’s “To Rome With Love,” called working with Allen “the biggest regret of my career.” (I first began reading the archive at the behest of Amazon, for a project that was abandoned. Amazon’s chief executive, Jeff Bezos, also owns The Washington Post.)

Allen’s work is flatly boorish. Running through all of the boxes is an insistent, vivid obsession with young women and girls: There’s the “wealthy, educated, respected” male character in one short story (“By Destiny Denied: Incident at Entwhistle’s”) who lives with a 21-year-old “Indian” woman. First, Allen’s revisions reduce her to 18, then double down, literally, and turn her into two 18-year-olds. There’s the 16-year-old in an unmade television pitch described as “a flashy sexy blonde in a flaming red low cut evening gown with a long slit up the side.” There’s the 17-year-old girl in another short story, “Consider Kaplan,” whose 53-year-old neighbor falls in love with her as the two share a silent, one-floor-long elevator ride in their Park Avenue co-op. There’s the female college student in “Rainy Day” who “should not be 20 or 21, sounds more like 18 — or even 17 — but 18 seems better.” That script includes a male college student but gives no description of his age. Another of Allen’s male characters, in a draft of a 1977 New Yorker story called “The Kugelmass Episode,” is a 45-year-old fascinated by “coeds” at City College of New York. In the margin next to this character’s dialogue, Allen wrote, then crossed out, “c’est moi” — it’s me.

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NEW YORK (NY)
The New York Times

January 31, 2018

By A. O. Scott

On the morning of the Oscar nominations, I was chatting with a stranger about movies, as one does. The conversation turned to Woody Allen. “My son has seen all his movies, and he thinks he’s innocent,” she said. “I’ve seen all his movies, and I think he’s guilty,” I said. There was not much else to say.

There is a lot more to say. The words we chose weren’t quite the right ones. Innocence and guilt are legal (and also metaphysical) standards, but when we talk about the behavior of artists and our feelings about them, we are inevitably dealing with much messier, murkier, subjective issues. It’s not just a matter of whether you believe Dylan Farrow’s accusation of sexual abuse — reiterated a few weeks ago in a television interview — or the denial from her father, Mr. Allen. It’s also a matter of who deserves the benefit of the doubt.

The charge that Mr. Allen molested Dylan Farrow surfaced in 1992, in the wake of his breakup with Mia Farrow. That rupture was caused by Mia Farrow’s discovery that Mr. Allen was sexually involved with Soon-Yi Previn, who was her adopted daughter, though not Mr. Allen’s. His defenders (including his and Mia Farrow’s adopted son Moses) suggest that the allegation of abuse was the invention of a spurned woman lashing out against the man who had humiliated her.

The severity of that accusation, and Mr. Allen’s steadfast denial of it, had the curious effect of neutralizing what might otherwise have been a reputation-destroying scandal. “The heart wants what it wants,” he famously said, and what his 56-year-old heart desired was a 21-year-old woman he had known since she was a child. He married her, kept making movies, and the whole business faded into tabloid memory.

I remember the debating points vividly, which is to say I remember invoking them in arguments with friends at the time. Ms. Previn was not a minor. Mr. Allen and her mother had never lived together. He was not Soon-Yi’s father, or even her stepfather, even if he was the father of her half-siblings. And besides, Mr. Allen’s love life was personal, and therefore irrelevant. What mattered was the work.

For more than two decades, Mr. Allen’s credibility as an artist was undiminished. The reception of his movies fluctuated, but critics (myself included) often enough found reason to hail a return to form after a fallow period. He won awards, and actors clamored for the chance to appear in his films. Only now has that started to change.

******

There was a lot more going on, too. The imagination goes where it will. A recent Washington Post article dug deep into the archive of Mr. Allen’s unpublished writings and found ample signs of his preoccupation with very young women, something moviegoers have been aware of since “Manhattan.”

Part of the job of a critic — meaning anyone with a serious interest in movies, professional or otherwise — is judgment, and no judgment is ever without a moral dimension. Nor is it ever without a personal interest. What I find most ethically troubling about Mr. Allen’s work at present is the extent to which I and so many of my colleagues have ignored or minimized its uglier aspects. A sensibility that seemed sweet, skeptical and self-scrutinizing may have been cruel, cynical and self-justifying all along.

There is a powerful and understandable urge, as a consequence of the long-overdue recognition of the pervasiveness of sexual abuse, to expunge the perpetrators, to turn away from their work and scrub it from the canon. It’s never quite so simple. Mr. Allen’s films and writings are a part of the common artistic record, which is another way of saying that they inform the memories and experiences of a great many people. I don’t mean this as a defense, but an acknowledgment of betrayal and shame.

As I said, there is much more to say. Reassessment is part of the ordinary work of culture, and in an extraordinary time, the work is especially vital and especially challenging. I will not blame you if you want to stop watching Woody Allen’s movies. But I also think that some of us have to start all over again.

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AUSTIN (TX)
Associated Press

January 30, 2018

AUSTIN, Texas – Texas Gov. Greg Abbott ordered a criminal investigation Tuesday into claims that former doctor Larry Nassar abused some of his victims at a Texas ranch that was the training ground for U.S. women’s gymnastics.

Abbott ordered the Texas Rangers, the state’s top criminal investigations unit, to look into the Karolyi Ranch. It hosted training camps for more than a decade until earlier this year. The Walker County Sheriff’s Office is already investigating.

Several gymnasts have said Nassar abused them at the ranch. Nassar was sentenced to 40 to 175 years in prison last week. More than 150 women and girls have said he had molested them under the guise of medical treatment.

Abbott called the allegations “gut-wrenching.” He ordered the state investigation because the claims involve multiple jurisdictions and states.

“Those athletes, as well as all Texans, deserve to know that no stone is left unturned to ensure that the allegations are thoroughly vetted and the perpetrators and enablers of any such misconduct are brought to justice. The people of Texas demand, and the victims deserve, nothing less,” Abbott said.

The ranch is owned by former national team coordinators Bela and Martha Karolyi. USA Gymnastics cut ties with the ranch earlier this month, a few days after Olympic champion Simone Biles and said she dreaded the thought of having to return there to train. Other gymnasts have also said they were abused at the ranch.

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WASHINGTON (DC)
The Washington Post

January 31, 2018

By Petula Dvorak

The vile online conversations — about their co-workers’ bodies, their sex lives, their abilities as first responders — made national news almost two years ago.

Since then, Fairfax County firefighters and paramedics have had sensitivity training and seminars. The fire department even appointed a special director to deal with the rampant sexism and sexual harassment there. Nationally, others hoped that Fairfax firefighter Nicole Mittendorff’s 2016 suicide would be the “fire bell in the night” to help put an end to it.

The response?

A penis-shaped water bottle.

And instead of getting rid of it, as the Fairfax County firefighters were asked to do, they decorated it with testicles made out of duct tape.

How disgusting is that in our era of #MeToo and #TimesUp?

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EAST LANSING (MI)
CNN

February 1, 2018

By Jean Casarez, Emanuella Grinberg, Sonia Moghe and Linh Tran

Amanda Thomashow was hopeful as she left a meeting with Michigan State University officials in 2014 about Larry Nassar.

She had shared with them one of the most intimate, painful experiences of her life, and she felt like they had listened. They took notes and expressed disgust, she said, as she described how the renowned sports doctor touched her in ways that made her uncomfortable during an exam.
Thomashow was the first woman to file an official Title IX complaint against Nassar accusing him of violating the school’s sexual harassment policy.

In an investigative report prepared in response to her complaint, the school’s Title IX coordinator called Nassar’s methods a “liability” that exposed patients to unnecessary trauma. But that’s not what the school told Thomashow.

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UNITED STATES
Yahoo Lifestyle

January 30, 2018

By Elena Sheppard

“You’ve got a beautiful body,” a male photographer says while snapping photographs of a female model. “Dance baby. Touch yourself … slide your hand down your pants.” The model looks visibly uncomfortable, but she complies. The photographer is clearly in charge; the photographer is clearly the one with the power. As the audience, all we see is him and her. Him: sitting on the floor snapping photographs, calling out orders; her: standing in front of him, clearly ill at ease but doing what he says. As she touches herself, the photographer instructs her, “I want to see the pleasure on your face … I have a hard-on right now, can you see it?”

As the shot pans out we see that the room doesn’t contain solely the photographer and the model; instead it is a room filled with people watching the photo shoot, people who we have to assume are executives and assistants, makeup artists and lighting designers. They all watch, still, expressionless. After a few more seemingly eternal seconds filled with the snap of the camera and the photographer’s lewd comments, he finally announces “I’ve got it.” The mass of people behind him begin mingling, seemingly satisfied; the photographer gets up and heads toward the crowd, and the model stands alone and uncomfortable. The words “#ThatsHarassment” appear on the screen.

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EAST LANSING (MI)
CNN

January 30, 2018

By Eric Levenson

(CNN)The legal reckoning with Larry Nassar’s years of sexual abuse isn’t over.

Nassar, the longtime former team doctor for USA Gymnastics and faculty member at Michigan State University, will return to court Wednesday morning for sentencing in Eaton County, Michigan, where he has pleaded guilty to three counts of criminal sexual conduct.

The Michigan attorney general’s office said 57 victims are expected to speak out in court about Nassar’s abuse, according to Eaton County Court Administrator Beryl Frenger.

The court has already set aside three days for victim impact statements, and the hearing is expected to go into next week to give each victim time to speak, Frenger said.

The sentencing in Eaton County is likely to be similar to the remarkable victim impact statements in nearby Ingham County over the past two weeks.

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UNITED STATES
Daily Mail

January 31, 2018

By Jennifer Smith

– Biles appeared on NBC to give interviews to both Hoda Kotb and Megyn Kelly
– She cried as she spoke to Kotb on Today and said she was ‘very happy’ with Nassar’s 175-year sentencing
– To Kelly, the 20-year-old told how he stole her trust by sexually abusing her
– Biles bemoaned how she has still not been given an apology from either USA Gymnastics or the US Olympics Committee
– Aly Raisman, her fellow Olympic gold medalist and teammate, has described their silence as ‘disgusting’
– Despite the ordeal, Biles is back in the gym preparing for the 2020 Olympics
– Nassar will face more victims in a separate Michigan courtroom for another case on Wednesday

Simone Biles cried as she spoke about pedophile Dr. Larry Nassar on Wednesday morning during a tour of Today.

The 20-year-old spoke first to Hoda Kotb and reduced her to tears as she lamented how Nassar, who has been sentenced to 175 years in jail and counting for his abhorrent abuse of countless girls, assaulted her.

‘It’s very hard for someone to go through what I’ve gone through recently and it’s very hard to talk about,’ Biles, a five-time Olympic medalist, said.

She praised Judge Rosemarie Aquilina who sentenced to Nassar to 175 years imprisonment last week after a lengthy and highly publicized sentencing phase, reiterating her earlier comment that she was her ‘hero’.

‘The judge is my hero because she gave it to him straight and didn’t let him get any power over any of the girls and letting the girls speak was very powerful,’ she said.

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VATICAN CITY
The Telegraph India

January 31, 2018

Vatican City: Pope Francis is sending the Catholic Church’s top investigator into sexual abuse by clergy to Chile to probe a bishop accused of covering up crimes against minors, in a remarkable turnaround only days after the pope defended him.

A Vatican statement on Tuesday said new information had emerged about Bishop Juan Barros and that Archbishop Charles Scicluna of Malta would go to “listen to those who want to submit elements in their possession”.

The statement, which gave no details, was a stunning U-turn for the pope, who on January 21 told reporters aboard his plane returning from Latin America he was sure Barros was innocent and that the Vatican had received no concrete evidence against him. It was Scicluna who doggedly uncovered evidence of sexual abuse that led to the removal of the late Mexican priest Marcial Maciel, founder of the Legionaries of Christ, in 2005.

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ISRAEL
Times of Israel

By Dr. Michael Salamon

January 31, 2018

Can an entire town come together to protect a childhood sexual abuser – actually protect the abuser – not the child?

This question may seem foolish or rhetorical at best but one look at some recent events tends to highlight the extent to which some communities go to protect the abusers in their midst.
Rachael Denhollander, the first to come forward and accuse Dr. Larry Nassar of abuse while he allegedly cared for gymnasts, swimmers and Olympic athletes over many years had to, in her words, build an army to take on this abuser and his supporters.

Ultimately, over 150 women athletes, many of them Olympians, confronted Nassar in court. Denhollander was not believed initially. It took some time, Olympic effort and commitment to bring him to justice but the persistence paid off.

The bravery that Denhollander and her “army” displayed caused the United States Olympic Committee to force the entire U.S. Gymnastics Committee to resign, and the President of Michigan State University to step down. A special prosecutor has been appointed to look into the possibility that the sports departments at University of Michigan had been covering for Nassar and also for several accusations against their football and basketball teams.

This is not an unheard of situation. There have been other cases where communities protect abusers at the expense of children who are victims. Recall the Jerry Sandusky Penn State scandal. Sandusky, the assistant Football coach, was known to have been abusing young boys for years. He was even reported to his Head coach, Joe Paterno and University administration but for years the entire community at Penn State looked away or worse, rationalized that he was a charitable fellow; after all, he organized and ran The Second Mile charity organization. Still for at least 15 years he was sexually abusing young boys using his football connections and his charity to groom and abuse. He has some protectors still even though he is in jail.

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SOUTH AFRICA
IOL News

January 30, 2018

By Khanyisile Ngcobo

Johannesburg – The Pretoria City Mission Methodist Church on Tuesday confirmed it was investigating events relating to a sexual harassment protest held at the church on Monday.

This comes after videos emerged on social media showing a group of women disrupting what appears to be a service by walking up to the pulpit with placards in hand.

The small group of women are seen standing in front of the pulpit in protest and at one point, church leaders appear to try and stop them and in the end, get into an argument with a few of them.

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TSHWANE (SOUTH AFRICA)
Pretoria East Rekord

January 31, 2018

By Thato Mahlangu

“We are disturbed and saddened by what gave rise to such action.”

A Pretoria church could be facing sexual abuse claims.

A steward from the Central Methodist Church in Pretoria has been accused by a group of young women of sexual harassment.

The aggrieved group took to the church’s altar to stage a silent protest, disrupting last Sunday’s church service.

The group of women could be seen in a video doing the rounds on social media, staging a silent protest followed by an altercation with some of the church leaders.

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TSHWANE (SOUTH AFRICA)
BellaNaija.com

January 31, 2018

A video showing 2 young women in Wesley Methodist Church in Tshwane, South Africa, disrupting church service to protest alleged sexual abuse is trending on social media.

In the video posted by @AthiGeleba, 2 young women are seen standing before the church holding up sheets of paper.

One of the women is seen arguing while elders speak to her.

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MARTINSBURG (WV)
The Journal

January 31, 2018

By Kelsie LeRose

MARTINSBURG — The civil case alleging members of the Mormon Church had covered up sexual abuse by the son of church leaders continued its second full week Tuesday with Sandra Lee Jensen taking the stand as a witness for the plaintiffs.

Sandra Lee Jensen is the mother of the Christopher Michael Jensen–who is serving 35 to 75 years in prison for sexually abusing two minors at the ages of 4 and 3.

The lawsuit, filed in 2013, accuses the church and its leaders of actively covering up the abuse and assisting Michael Jensen in committing further acts by enabling him to babysit for and live with other church families with young children.

Nine families are involved in the lawsuit against the church, Jensen’s parents Chris and Sandra Lee Jensen, and church officials Steven Grow and Don Fishel.

Michael Jensen was initially accused of sexual abuse in 2004 in Provo, Utah, where he was arrested at his middle school and charged with two felony counts of sexual abuse for allegedly pinning two 12-and 13-year-old females against a wall and fondling them inappropriately without consent. A plea agreement was reached in the case, which resulted in the charges being reduced to two misdemeanor counts of lewdness.

In 2007, Jensen was accused of fondling a 14-year-old girl outside of a movie theater in Martinsburg. According to court records, Jensen’s mother allegedly knew about the theater incident and asked the girl if she was OK and if there was “a problem.” No criminal charges were filed.

The victim testified in court last week that she did not consent during the incident, according to Carl Kravitz, an attorney for the plaintiffs.

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ENGLAND
The Tablet

January 30, 2018

By Megan Cornwell

Among several themes to be explored is what impact ‘clericalism’ had on child sexual abuse investigations

The Independent Inquiry into Child Sex Abuse has outlined the areas it will be focusing on with regards to the Church of England. Public hearings into the Church will begin in March.

The hearings will focus on the Diocese of Chichester, where several clergymen were found to have abused young boys. The inquiry will also look at the disgraced former Bishop of Gloucester, Peter Ball, who was imprisoned in 2015 after admitting the abuse of 18 young men over a period of 15 years. It will then examine how well the Church’s current safeguarding practices are working, Fiona Scolding QC, the lead lawyer for the Anglican strand of the inquiry, explained today at a preliminary hearing in Southwark.

Scolding said that among the areas under investigation by the panel was the question: “How far does the Church’s attitude towards same-sex relationships, sexual orientation and gender contribute to difficulties with cultural change necessary to promote effective safeguarding?” Another question will be to what extent to which the culture within the Church “inhibited the proper investigation, exposure and prevention of child sexual abuse”.

The hearing into Bishop Ball will cover a number of topics, Scolding said. These will include why the Church failed to take steps during the 1990s to refer further information to police, whether the culture of the Church had an impact on the investigation at the time, why the Crown Prosecution Service decided to give Ball a caution rather than prosecute him and what was known about Ball’s case during an archiepiscopal visitation that took place 2011/12. Scolding also said the inquiry would review “why Peter Ball was granted an informal permission to officiate, even given his offending…”.

The hearing for Chichester Diocese will focus on the findings of past investigations and the steps taken by the Church of England to implement recommendations. It will look at the values and behaviour of the Church and whether they “inhibited or continue to inhibit the investigation, exposure and prevention of child sexual abuse”, and whether the response to victims was appropriate.

However, the inquiry will not be investigating the case of the late Bishop George Bell, former Bishop of Chichester, who was posthumously accused of assaulting a young girl in the 1940s and 1950s. In December a separate inquiry criticised the Church’s “deficient” handling of the allegations made against him, after several proponents of Bell spoke out in his defence. Scolding said the hearings will not consider “the truth or substance of the allegations made concerning Bishop George Bell”.

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NEW YORK (NY)
The Guardian

January 31, 2018

By Kieran Tapsell

Pope Francis says there’s no leniency for clergy accused of child sex abuse. It’s not true

On his return flight from Lima to Rome in January, Pope Francis claimed, as he has so often before, that he has zero tolerance for clergy who sexually abuse children: “I continue with the policy of zero tolerance initiated by Benedict XVI, and in five years I have not signed a single request for leniency. If the appeal court confirms the decision of the lower court, the only other avenue is to ask the pope for leniency. In my time as pope, I have received some 25 requests, and have signed none of them.”

On hearing Francis’s claims, an ordinary person might believe that the Catholic church insists on dismissing priests who sexually abuse children – but that is not what usually happens.

There are three ways under canon law by which a priest can be dismissed: 1) by a canonical court, with the priest having the right of appeal to the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF), which is the Vatican department in charge of child sexual abuse allegations against clergy; 2) a bishop can ask the CDF to dismiss a priest directly; 3) the CDF can refer the matter to the pope with a request that he dismiss the priest.

Francis’s claim that he has never exercised leniency after a canonical trial and appeal may well be true, but it is not true where he has been requested by the CDF to dismiss a priest, and it is not true of the CDF when it exercises its own powers.

In 2010, the Holy See issued a guide to understanding CDF procedures for sexual abuse allegations. Where the accused has admitted his crimes, the guide says that the CDF can require him to “live a life of prayer and penance”, with restrictions on his public ministry.

In cases under the third procedure, Francis has granted leniency by refusing to accept CDF dismissal recommendations for some of the worst offenders, and instead, required them to live a “life of prayer and penance” with restrictions on their public ministry.

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ENGLAND
Christian Today

January 31, 2018

A public inquiry into sex abuse in the Church of England will focus on the institution’s culture of secrecy.

The Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse (IICSA), chaired by Professor Alexis Jay, will focus on how the Diocese of Chichester handled sex abuse allegations and its failure to protect survivors.

Fiona Scolding QC, the lead lawyer for the Anglican strand of the inquiry, said the inquiry would not focus on the late Bishop George Bell, former Bishop of Chichester, who was posthumously accused of assaulting a young girl in the 1940s and 1950s. However it will focus on the former Bishop of Gloucester, Peter Ball, who was imprisoned in 2015 after admitting he abused 18 young men over 15 years.

In a preliminary hearing on Tuesday, according to The Tablet, Scolding said the investigation would also ask: ‘How far does the Church’s attitude towards same-sex relationships, sexual orientation and gender contribute to difficulties with cultural change necessary to promote effective safeguarding?’

The public inquiry on the Diocese of Chichester will begin on March 5 and the hearing on Peter Ball on July 23.

The Church’s lead on safeguarding, the Bishop of Bath and Wells, Peter Hancock, said: ‘IICSA has announced today further details of the investigation into the Anglican Church in England and Wales, focusing on the Chichester case study, with the first public hearing in March.

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BELLEVILLE (IL)
The Associated Press via WLS-AM

January 31, 2018

A Catholic priest who was arrested in southern Illinois on child pornography charges is now free on bond.

The Belleville News-Democrat reports the sister of the Rev. Gerald R. Hechenberger posted his bond over the weekend after a judge reduced bail from $2 million to $250,000.

Hechenberger was arrested Jan. 9 after detectives found images and videos of child pornography and drug paraphernalia at Holy Childhood Church and school in Mascoutah where Hechenberger is associate pastor.

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ROME
National Catholic Reporter

January 30, 2018

by Carol Glatz

ROME — Failure and disappointment in the Catholic Church’s response to abuse should be an impetus to reassess, refocus and rededicate oneself to improving and expanding efforts in healing and prevention, said a researcher at Rome’s Center for Child Protection.

For example, “Pope Francis’ infelicitous words — experienced as a ‘slap’ by those who have suffered abuse — during his recent visit to Chile” raises the question, “is there hope for real change in the church?” wrote Sara Boehk, a member of the center’s research team. Her article appeared on the center’s blog — childprotection.unigre.it — Jan. 26.

The center, which is part of the Pontifical Gregorian University, provides training, formation and educational resources in the field of safeguarding minors. Its president is Jesuit Fr. Hans Zollner, who had been a member of the Pontifical Commission for the Protection of Minors.

Boehk’s commentary — titled “Is there hope for real change in the church?” — was published after Pope Francis’ visit to Chile, where he told reporters that he would not take action against a Chilean bishop unless accusations that he covered up abuse could be supported with proof; otherwise, he said, any claims Bishop Juan Barros of Osorno knew or witnessed abuses committed by his former mentor amounted to “calumny.” The pope later apologized, saying he only realized later that his words erroneously implied that victims’ accusations are credible only with concrete evidence.

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VATICAN CITY
Associated Press

January 31.2018

VATICAN CITY (AP) — After coming under excoriating public criticism, Pope Francis decided Tuesday to send the Vatican’s most respected sex crimes expert to Chile to investigate a bishop accused by victims of covering up for the country’s most notorious pedophile priest.

The Vatican said Maltese Archbishop Charles Scicluna would travel to Chile “to listen to those who have expressed the desire to provide elements” about the case of Bishop Juan Barros.

The move marks the first known time the Vatican has launched a full-blown investigation into allegations of sex abuse cover-up, and it comes after Francis was harshly criticized by the media, survivors of abuse, his fellow Jesuits and some of his top advisers for his unwavering defense of Barros.

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WILMINGTON (DE)
The News Journal

January 31, 2018

By Xerxes Wilson

In what appears to be a first, Delaware is prosecuting a former Catholic priest for “sexual intercourse” with a child more than 25 years ago.

John A. Sarro, 76, a former priest with the Catholic Diocese of Wilmington, was indicted this week by a New Castle County grand jury on charges of first-degree unlawful sexual intercourse and second-degree unlawful sexual contact, according to court records.

Sarro was a priest in Bear and Bellefonte through much of the ’80s and ’90s. He was identified by diocese officials in 2006 as one of 20 local priests with “admitted, corroborated or otherwise substantiated” allegations of sexual abuse of minors against them.

But the conduct that landed Sarro in that group is said to be separate from the current charge.

His Monday indictment accuses him in the early 1990s of having “sexual intercourse” with a girl under the age of 16. Those crimes would have taken place when Sarro’s was serving at St. Helena Parish in Bellefonte, though specifics of his relationship with the alleged victim, or her identity, are not detailed in court documents.

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CHILE
National Public Radio

January 30, 2018

By Sylvia Poggioli

When Pope Francis visited Chile earlier this month, he lashed out at victims of sexual abuse and accused them of “calumny” regarding a bishop who is suspected of covering up abuse they endured by a pedophile priest.

The pope said there was “not a shred of evidence” against Chilean Bishop Juan Barros. “The day they bring me proof against Bishop Barros,” he said, “I’ll speak.”

Now the pope is sending a top envoy on a mission to Chile to look into survivors’ claims.

A Vatican statement said Maltese Bishop Charles Scicluna, the Church’s most respected sex crimes expert, will “listen to those who have expressed the desire to provide elements” about the case of Barros. It said new information had emerged.

The pope’s remarks in Chile had highlighted some Vatican-watchers’ concerns about his commitment to combating sexual abuse by members of the Catholic clergy — an issue that has undermined the Catholic Church’s moral authority in much of the world.

There were high expectations in 2014 when the pope created the Pontifical Commission for the Protection of Minors, headed by Cardinal Sean O’Malley.

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ADRIAN (MI)
Daily Telegram News

January 30, 2018

By David Panian

ADRIAN — A long-time Adrian College choir director who has been dogged by allegations he had a sexual relationship with a student when he was a high school teacher in the 1980s has resigned from the college.

Adrian College said Tuesday that Thomas Hodgman has resigned.

“The college will make no further comment regarding this matter,” Frank Hribar, vice president for enrollment and student affairs, said in an email.

Hodgman did not immediately return a call from The Daily Telegram seeking comment.

For years, the woman who claims Hodgman abused her when she was a 15-year-old student at a Catholic high school in Southern California has tried to get the college to cut ties with Hodgman.

“The college didn’t want students to know what Hodgman did to me,” Joelle Casteix said Tuesday in an email. “When students found out, (current college President) Jeffrey Docking, (former college President) Stanley Caine, and Hodgman himself did everything in their power to discredit me. Even when the courts said that I was in the right. Even when I had documents to prove every word I said was true.”

Casteix sued Hodgman, the Diocese of Orange, California, and Mater Dei High School in 2003. The lawsuit, which was grouped with others regarding sexual abuse by priests, was settled in 2005. The file in her case was supposed to have been sealed but became public for a short time and was made available to some media outlets. Casteix has since posted what she says are those documents on her website.

“After the college finally conceded that what I said was true, Docking and Hodgman still thought that things could be ‘business as usual,’ ” Casteix wrote in her email. “They thought that Hodgman could go on tour with high school students. They believed that the public, the student body and that Carnegie Hall would turn a blind eye. They believed that the world was as callous as they were.”

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EAST LANSING (MI)
Forbes

January 29, 2018

By Jerry Barca

The victims kept mentioning the same regret.

These were victims of sexual abuse at the hands of Catholic priests. I had spoken to them during my newspaper reporting days when the scandal became national news in 2002. I spoke to more victims years later as part of background research for another project.

Damage had been done to them, their innocence stripped away as hammer strikes of abuse pounded into their self worth. Of course any and everybody wished it never happened. The victims had another wish, too. If they couldn’t change the fact that they had been abused, they wish they would’ve gone straight to the police, instead of the Church. They would’ve reported the abuse to legal authorities, not the institution.

That lesson has to be reiterated after what has gone on at Michigan State. Larry Nassar, a team doctor at Michigan State and with USA Gymnastics, was sentenced to 40 to 175 years in prison after more than 160 women and girls made statements in court that he had abused them during the last 20 years. Days after Nassar’s sentencing, ESPN’s Outside the Lines reported that Michigan State mishandled sexual assault complaints. The investigative report “found a pattern of widespread denial, inaction and information suppression of such allegations by officials ranging from campus police to the Spartan athletic department.”

To make it clear, to shout it from the rooftops into a megaphone: Victims that come forward must go to the police. And in Michigan State’s case not the campus police. You have to find a law enforcement agency willing to hear the claim for what it is: an allegation of criminal behavior.

There is still cultural tone-deafness with regard to these issues. Even at Michigan State, as the Nassar situation played out in court, university staffers undergoing training for the school’s relationship violence and sexual misconduct policy dropped comments such as “snitches get stitches” with regard to reporting incidents.

Don’t think it’s just at Michigan State either. Too often institutions, be it churches, schools, community groups, or athletic programs, respond to victims by looking out for its own self-preservation. Victims need an independent investigation. Institutions respond with: how can we make this go away quickly and quietly.

Institutions sell this idea to the victim and the victim’s family. They present the line of thinking that handling this quietly is in the victim’s self interest. They will talk about how the process of reporting the incident publicly will re-traumatize the victim. Then they’ll ask questions like “Do you really want to do this?”

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SCOTLAND
The Herald

January 30, 2018

An abuse survivor is suing a Catholic Church sect and a local authority after he was assaulted by a monk at a residential school.

Michael Murphy, known as Brother Benedict or Brother Ben, abused children in the 1970s and 1980s when he worked at St Joseph’s School in Tranent, East Lothian.

He was jailed for seven years in April 2016 at the High Court in Edinburgh after being found guilty of physically and sexually abusing eight boys.

The physical abuse he carried out included habitual and sustained physical punishment as well as the administration of electric shocks, the Crown Office said at the conclusion of the case.

The anonymous survivor, now in his 50s, is suing East Lothian Council and De La Salle Brothers and is seeking damages estimated at a six-figure sum for the pain caused by the former schoolmaster.

He said Brother Benedict “ruined not just my childhood but my adult life”.

He added: “He abused his position while working alongside the Council and the Church to fulfil his own sick desires.

“I hope now to be able to find the means to help me rebuild my life.”

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SCOTLAND
Daily Record

January 30, 2018

By Sarah Vesty

An abuse survivor is seeking a six-figure sum in damages from De Dalle Brothers and the council.

An abuse survivor is suing a Catholic sect and a council after being beaten and assaulted by a notorious monk.

Brother Benedict – real name Michael Murphy – subjected eight schoolboys to a string of attacks at St Joseph’s List D School in Tranent, East Lothian, during the 70s.

He electrocuted pupils, locked them in cupboards, beat them with canes and sexually assaulted them.

Murphy, part of the De La Salle Brothers, was jailed for seven years in 2016 after being found guilty on 15 charges at the High Court in Edinburgh.

One of his victims is now seeking a six-figure sum in damages from East Lothian Council and the De La Salle Brothers.

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AURORA (CO)
9 News

January 29, 2018

By Ryan Haarer

Educators, along with a list of other professionals, are required by law to report child abuse allegations to police. But the statute of limitations for failure to report ends 18 months after the fact.

Prosecutors may face challenges in convicting three Cherry Creek School District administrators who failed to report an alleged sexual assault of a student in 2013.

They never called police after they heard that teacher Brian Vasquez, 34, was allegedly having a sexual relationship with a 14-year-old student. It wasn’t until 2017 that Aurora Police arrested Vasquez for a total of five sexual assault claims.

These educators, along with a list of other professionals, are required by law to report child abuse allegations to police. But the statute of limitations for failure to report ends 18 months after the fact.

“When it’s not reported, what happens, it emboldens that adult who is harming a child to continue that behavior,” said State Senator Rhonda Fields, D-Aurora.

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LONDON (ENGLAND)
Christian Today

January 29, 2018

By Rev’d Canon Anna Norman-Walker

This is a blog post by the Revd Canon Anna Norman-Walker, rector of St Leonard’s, Streatham. It first appeared on ViaMedia.News and is reproduced with permission.

In Greek mythology Pandora is created by Zeus and given as a wedding gift to the brother of his enemy Prometheus along with a jar containing the many evils of the world. Pandora opens the jar and on realising what she had done she tries to close it in haste; the anguish of the moment is captured in a painting by FS Church in which the young bride kneels helplessly on the box – as one might an over filled suitcase – in an effort to contain the escaping forces of evil.

Over the past few weeks the call has gone out for the church to address the issue of spiritual abuse. This was triggered in part by a recent report carried out by Bournemouth University on behalf of the churches Child Protection Advisory Service (CCPAS) in which 62 per cent of respondents to the study’s research survey believed they had been subject to spiritual abuse. Within a few days of the report’s release, news broke of the Oxford priest Revd Timothy Davis’ suspension from duties for the spiritual abuse of a teenager he had been mentoring following an investigation under the Clergy Discipline Measure.

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MEMPHIS (TN)
WREG Memphis News Channel 3

January 29, 2018

By Stacy Jacobson

MEMPHIS, Tenn. — Protesters held up a smattering of signs in an attempt to push forward what they called “Justice for Jules” outside Highpoint Church Monday.

“It’s time to stop being so concerned about the abuser and be more concerned about the abused,” said Kenny Stubblefield, a survivor of church sexual abuse and local activist.

It’s been three weeks since Jules Woodson wrote a narrative of her encounter with Pastor Andy Savage 20 years ago at their Texas church. She said the current Highpoint pastor was then her youth pastor. She said he offered her a ride home and forced her to perform oral sex.

“I was in shock. I didn’t understand what was happening,” Woodson said in an interview with CBS News.

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LONDON (ENGLAND)
Christian Today

January 30, 2018

By Harry Farley

A priest barred from ministry after being accused of abusing colleagues and making malicious allegations against his superiors is to speak at the Church of England’s headquarters in London on Thursday.

Jules Gomes, formerly a priest at St Mary’s on the Harbour on the Isle of Man, is an outspoken defender of George Bell, a former Bishop of Chichester who has been accused of historical sex abuse. He will address a group of Bell’s supporters in Church House, Westminster, on February 1.

Church House is the building used as the CofE’s main London base. The National Church Institutions (NCIs) which govern the Church’s daily running, do not own the building nor control its bookings and the CofE appeared to distance itself from the event.

A Church of England spokesperson said: ‘We are aware of an event due to take place at Church House Conference Centre Limited, in Westminster, on Feb 1 at which we understand Jules Gomes, a former Church of England parish priest prohibited from ministry for 10 years by a Bishop’s Disciplinary Tribunal, has been invited to speak.

‘The National Church Institutions are tenants at Church House. Church House Conference Centre Limited, who manage bookings from clients and operate the conference spaces, is an independent conference centre located at Church House.’

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