ABUSE TRACKER

WORCESTER (MA)
ChurchMilitant

January 29, 2018

By David Nussman

Now-laicized former priest abused a teenage male in 1985

WORCESTER, Mass. (ChurchMilitant.com) – Pope Francis has now defrocked a Massachusetts priest who was accused of sexually abusing a teenage male.

Peter Inzerillo was a priest in the diocese of Worcester. He has now been laicized at his own request, according to an announcement the diocese made on Thursday. The diocese stated, “As a result of the laicization, he may not function in any capacity as a priest or be referred to as a priest or as ‘Father’ in writing such as in event announcements or obituaries.”

Inzerillo sexually abused a 19-year-old male in 1985. He was not criminally charged. But in 1999, he was named in a sex-abuse lawsuit against the diocese of Worcester. The suit ended in the diocese’s largest-ever priest sex abuse settlement of about $300,000. Inzerillo was removed from public ministry in 2002 and has remained without public faculties ever since.

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FRANCE
Yahoo Lifestyle

January 29, 2018

By Alexandra Mondalek

There are almost as many online guides to achieving that mysterious French-dame coolness as there are people in France: There’s the French girl’s guide to winter beauty, the French girl’s guide to eating, the French girl’s guide to bangs, the French girl’s guide to Halloween, and even the French girl’s guide to hating French girl guides, just for starters.

But in this moment of reckoning for sexual assaulters, there is no French girl’s guide to the movement known as #MeToo (with the exception of this New Yorker spoof). There is a French hashtag equivalent — #BalanceTonPorc or “expose your pig” — but beyond that, it’s complicated.

That’s ultimately because many French women disagree about the validity of the movement itself, and whether its American counterpart is even contextually relevant to French culture.

On one side, there are French women like Sandra Muller, a journalist who coined the hashtag #BalanceTonPorc in mid-October 2017, just before American actress Alyssa Milano tweeted #MeToo. Muller — whose sexual harasser is suing her for defamation, despite admitting to what she’d accused him of — has created a GoFundMe for her own legal expenses, and also plans to create a victim relief fund, similar to the Legal Defense Fund the #TimesUp organizers in the U.S. started, she tells Yahoo Lifestyle.

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VATICAN CITY
Associated Press

January 30, 2018

By Nicole Winfield

VATICAN CITY — Pope Francis is sending 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 Tuesday that Maltese Bishop 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 Barros controversy dominated Francis’ just-ended trip to Chile and exposed Francis’ blind spot as far as clerical sex abuse is concerned. Even one of his closest advisers, Cardinal Sean O’Malley, publicly rebuked him for his treatment of victims and tried to set him straight.

Barros was a protege of the Rev. Fernando Karadima, a charismatic and politically powerful priest who was sanctioned by the Vatican for sexually abusing minors in 2011. His victims testified to Chilean prosecutors that Barros and other priests in the El Bosque community saw Karadima kissing youngsters and were aware of his perversions, but did nothing.

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CHILE
National Catholic Reporter

January 30, 2018

By Dennis Coday

Pope Francis is sending Archbishop Charles Scicluna of Malta to Chile to take testimony about Bishop Juan de la Cruz Barros Madrid of Osorno, Chile, who is accused of covering up allegations of abuse by a Chilean priest who was found guilty of abuse.

The Vatican announced Scicluna’s trip to Chile in a statement this morning.

Scicluna was in charge of sexual abuse cases in the Congregation of the Doctrine of Faith from 2002 until 2010. Francis appointed him to lead a commission in the doctrinal congregation to hear appeals of priests accused of sexual abuse.

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CHILE
Times of Malta

January 30, 2018

Pope Francis sends Malta’s top cleric on special mission

Archbishop Charles Scicluna has been dispatched to Chile by Pope Francis to look into allegations against a bishop accused of covering up clergy crimes against minors there, the Vatican said on Tuesday.

A statement said Archbishop Scicluna was being dispatched after “new information” had emerged about Bishop Juan Barros of the Chilean city of Osorno.

Archbishop Scicluna is the Vatican’s top investigator on child abuse, having previously served as Promoter of Justice in the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith under the then-Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger.

He doggedly uncovered evidence of sexual abuse against the late founder of the conservative religious order the Legionaries of Christ during the papacy of Benedict XVI, and has a formidable reputation within the Church.

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VATICAN CITY
Reuters

January 30, 2018

By Philip Pullella

VATICAN CITY (Reuters) – Pope Francis is sending the Church’s top investigator on sexual abuse to Chile to look into allegations against a bishop accused of covering up clergy crimes against minors there, the Vatican said on Tuesday.

A statement said the envoy, Archbishop Charles Scicluna of Malta, was being dispatched after “new information” had emerged about Bishop Juan Barros of the Chilean city of Osorno.

Controversy over Barros, whom the pope has repeatedly defended, dominated Francis’s recent trip to the South American country.

It was a remarkable turnaround for the pope, who just last week told reporters aboard the plane returning from Latin America that he was sure Barros was innocent and that the Vatican had received no concrete evidence against him.

Barros has been accused of protecting his former mentor, the Rev. Fernando Karadima, who was found guilty in a Vatican investigation in 2011 of abusing teenage boys over many years. Karadima denies the allegations, and Barros said he was unaware of any wrongdoing.

Scicluna doggedly uncovered evidence of sexual abuse against the late founder of the conservative religious order the Legionaries of Christ during the papacy of Benedict XVI and has a formidable reputation within the Church.

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DENVER (CO)
The Denver Channel

January 29, 2018

By Robert Garrison

DENVER — Legislation that would reform a mandatory system of reporting child abuse in Colorado is not getting support from the Catholic Church.

Senate Bill 18-058 would extend the statute of limitations in cases where a person is required by law to report child abuse but fails to do so.

Currently, the statute of limitations for failing to report child abuse or neglect in Colorado is 18 months, which could result in dropped charges in the recent indictment against three Cherry Creek school leaders accused of hiding allegations made by a specific student in 2013.

The measure, sponsored by state lawmakers Rhonda Fields (D-Aurora) and Terri Carver (R-Colorado Springs), comes on the heels of the Cherry Creek case and indefinitely extends the period of time mandatory reporters could be prosecuted for not contacting authorities in child abuse cases.

A mandatory reporter is someone in a specific occupation that must report suspected child abuse. In Colorado, 40 categories of professions are covered under the law, including all public and private school employees.

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EAST LANSING (MI)
CNN

January 29, 2018

By Mercedes Leguizamon and Saeed Ahmed

(CNN)The boulder is known simply as “The Rock” and it’s a fixture on the campus of Michigan State University.

It’s a constantly changing billboard. Students leave everything from birthday greetings to political messages, one layer of paint at a time.

Since late last week, when doctor Larry Nassar was sentenced to 175 years for sexually abusing girls and young women for decades, the Rock has sported a powerful new look.

Students painted the boulder white, along with the words “THANK YOU” in teal, and a heart.

They also hand-painted the names of more than 150 women who accused Nassar of abusing them.

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EAST LANSING (MI)
Detroit Free Press

January 29, 2018

By Gina Kaufman and Jim Schaefer

Just days after Sue Carter resigned her position as chair of Michigan State University’s Athletic Council, in protest over the institution’s handling of its sexual abuse scandal, a former student has filed a complaint claiming Carter drew her into an inappropriate relationship more than two decades ago.

Ellen Fedon-Keyt, now a Dearborn psychologist, e-mailed the members of the athletic council on Saturday saying she was about 19 years old and an undergraduate student at Wayne State University when Carter, who was at one time her professor, befriended her and manipulated her into a sexual relationship that felt “wrong and distorted.” Fedon-Keyt said this occurred around the time her father was killed in a plane crash — a period when shewas vulnerable.

Two members of the MSU Athletic Council — professor Martin Crimp and secretary Scott Westerman, executive director of the Alumni Association — confirmed over the weekend to the Free Press that the complaint was forwarded to the university’s Office of Institutional Equity. Fedon-Keyt, who spoke to the Free Press and agreed to let her name be published, said Monday an investigator from the office already has requested an interview with her.

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ASIA/PAKISTAN
Agenzia Fides

January 25, 2018

Lahore (Agenzia Fides) – “Pakistan has finally broken a taboo, at least for now. This comes after the denunciation of sexual abuse, violence, rape and murder against thousands of minors. Here there is a culture of silence and shame which are deeply rooted”, says to Agenzia Fides Fr. Mushtaq Anjum, a Pakistani Camillian missionary. “However – continues the priest – the recent case of young Zenaib Ansari, a girl from Kasur, in Punjab, has literally shocked the country. And in civil society, processions and demonstrations have multiplied to demand justice and to put an end to impunity”.

Many famous Pakistani women took part in this campaign against child abuse, and shared their stories on social media using the hashtag #justiceforZainab. The other hashtag #MeToo raised the veil on many other cases of violence: actress Nadia Jamil revealed to have suffered sexual abuse for the first time when she was four years old. “I was told not to talk about it out of respect for the honor of my family, but now I am not ashamed for myself or for my children. I am a proud, strong, loving, survivor”, said Jamil. Maheen Khan, a Pakistani high fashion designer, said she was abused by the mullah who came to teach her the Qur’an: “I froze in fear day after day”.
Frieha Altaf, actress and model, wrote that she was sexually abused by the family cook from the tender age of 6 and added that “the only shame in these cases is keeping silent”.

Fr. Mushtaq explains to Agenzia Fides: “Pakistani society protects honor at the expense of justice. Shame and humiliation prevent people from exposing themselves and denouncing these inhuman illnesses”.

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MASCOUTAH (IL)
Belleville News-Democrat

January 29, 2018

By Dana Rieck

The sister of a Mascoutah priest accused of possessing child pornography posted his $25,000 bond Friday after a judge significantly reduced the man’s $2 million bail last week.

The Rev. Gerald Hechenberger, associate pastor of Holy Childhood Church in Mascoutah, was booked into jail Jan. 9 on 16 charges of child pornography and one charge of possession of methamphetamine.

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CHILE
Associated Press

January 26, 2018

By Nicole Winfield

ABOARD THE PAPAL PLANE — Pope Francis apologized for insisting that victims of pedophile priests show “proof” to be believed, saying he realized it was a “slap in the face” to victims that he never intended.

But he doubled down on defending a Chilean bishop accused by victims of covering up for the country’s most notorious pedophile priest, and he repeated that anyone who makes such accusations without providing evidence is guilty of slander.

Francis issued the partial mea culpa in an airborne press conference late Sunday as he returned home from Chile and Peru, where the clergy abuse scandal and his own comments plunged the Chilean church into renewed crisis and revived questions about whether Francis “gets it” about abuse.

Francis insisted that to date no one had provided him with evidence that Bishop Juan Barros was complicit in keeping quiet about the perversions of the Rev. Fernando Karadima, the charismatic Chilean priest who was sanctioned by the Vatican in 2011 for molesting and fondling minors in his Santiago parish.

Flying home from the most contested trip of his papacy, Francis said Barros would remain bishop of Osorno, Chile as long as there’s no evidence implicating him in the cover-up.

“I can’t condemn him because I don’t have evidence,” Francis said. “But I’m also convinced that he’s innocent.”

Karadima was removed from ministry and sentenced by the Vatican in 2011 to a lifetime of penance and prayer based on the testimony of his victims, who said they were all molested by him in the swank parish he headed in the El Bosque area of Santiago. A Chilean judge also found the victims to be credible, saying that while she had to drop criminal charges against Karadima because too much time had passed, proof of his crimes wasn’t lacking.

Three of the victims testified before Chilean prosecutors and others have also said publicly for years that Barros, one of Karadima’s proteges, witnessed the abuse and did nothing to stop it.

Barros denies the accusations.

“The best thing is for those who believe this to bring the evidence forward,” Francis said. “In this moment I don’t think it’s this way, because I don’t have it, but I have an open heart to receive them.”

Juan Carlos Cruz, the most vocal of the accusers against Karadima and Barros who testified in court about the cover-up, responded with a statement to The Associated Press: “If he wanted evidence, why didn’t he reach out to us when we were willing to reaffirm the testimony that not only us, but so many witnesses, have been providing for more than 15 years?”

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MELBOURNE (AUSTRALIA)
Herald Sun

January 28, 2018

By Keith Moor

TWO senior Catholics joined forces to try to save paedophile priest Finian Egan from deportation to Ireland.

Egan, 83, convicted of raping a child and molesting two other young girls, was freed last month after serving half of an eight-year jail term.

But a 2016 decision by then immigration minister Peter Dutton to cancel Egan’s Australian citizenship was recently overturned by Administrative Appeals Tribunal deputy president Justice Janine Stevenson, who ruled that “the correct and preferable decision” was to allow Egan to retain his citizenship.

Mr Dutton, now the Home Affairs Minister, is lodging a Federal Court appeal against that ruling.

Justice Stevenson said Egan had been offered support by Bishop Peter Comensoli and Father Vincent Casey, and this church support and supervision of Egan and “consequently, the existence of mechanisms for the protection of children” had been “a significant consideration” in her decision.

One of Egan’s victims, Kellie Roche, told the Herald Sun on Sunday she was outraged the church had stepped in to try to stop Egan’s deportation.

“The Catholic Church in Australia has a very good record of covering up the activities of paedophile priests but a very poor record of protecting children from them. So why would you have any faith in it being able to stop Egan offending again?” she said.

“He should be deported so no more Australian children are in danger from him.”

In a submission to the AAT, Bishop Comensoli wrote that the risk of reoffending increased when a person was isolated, and that if Egan were returned to Ireland “he would be very isolated”.

“I can retain some supervisory control over his whereabouts and living circum-stances. However if (he) were returned to Ireland, the diocese (of Broken Bay, in NSW) would not be able to supervise him in any way,” he wrote.

Fr Casey, who described Egan as his “friend and mentor”, wrote in his submission that he believed “children would be safer” if Egan were allowed to remain in Australia.

“Here he would be living in a secure location decided by the bishop … under the bishop’s supervision and with people around him who know him and his story. In Ireland he would be anonymous, isolated, sick, and with no supervision.”

Mr Dutton told the Herald Sun his decision to cancel Egan’s citizenship had been the right thing to do.

“Our first responsibility is to protect children,” he said.

“Sexually brutalising a child is the most heinous act a person of trust can commit.”

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GRIFFITH (NSW, AUSTRALIA)
The Area News

January 29, 2018

By Farrah Tomazin

On a winter evening in 2016, dozens of churchgoers gathered at a local primary school in the NSW Riverina to bid farewell to the town’s most-senior religious figure.

Gerard Hanna had been the bishop of Wagga for 14 years, a servant of God who led a diocese of 66,000 Catholics in 31 parishes.

But here, in the refurbished sports stadium at Henschke Primary School, Bishop Hanna was set to step down sooner than expected, citing “continuous ill health” as the reason for his early retirement.

It was about two weeks before he was due to give evidence at the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse.

As the tributes flowed, few in the room would have known that this church leader was harbouring a secret.

Decades earlier, while working as the administrator of a parish in Tamworth East, Hanna had been embroiled in a cover-up involving John Joseph Farrell – the notorious paedophile now serving a maximum 29-year jail term for a decade-long reign of abuse against children. At least two of those victims ended up taking their own lives.

Hanna accepted the priest into his parish after he was kicked out of another, used church money to help pay for his legal defence, and turned a blind eye to what Farrell was: a dangerous predator.

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UNITED STATES
TIME Magazine

January 26, 2018

By Samantha Cooney

Rachael Denhollander, the first woman to publicly accuse disgraced USA Gymnastics team doctor Larry Nassar of sexual abuse, said that coming forward with her allegations cost her friends, her church and “every shred of privacy.”

In a New York Times op-ed published on Jan. 26, Denhollander wrote that “absolutely nothing could have prepared me for the pain of being the first to go public with my accusations.” The Indianapolis Star first reported allegations against Nassar made by Denhollander and an unnamed woman in September 2016. Denhollander, a former club gymnast, said that she began seeing Nassar when she was 15 after sustaining a back injury.

Since the story was published, over 150 women — including Olympians Aly Raisman, Simone Biles and McKayla Maroney — have said they were also abused by Nassar. On Jan. 24, Nassar was sentenced to between 40 and 175 years in prison.

In her op-ed, Denhollander, now an attorney, detailed how difficult it was to come forward. She said she sometimes avoided grocery stores so her children wouldn’t have to see her allegations on newspapers and was asked questions “about things no one should know when I least wanted to talk.”

“Yet all of it served as a reminder: These were the very cultural dynamics that had allowed Larry Nassar to remain in power,” she wrote. “I knew that the farthest I could run from my abuser, and the people that let him prey on children for decades, was to choose the opposite of what that man, and his enablers, had become. To choose to find and speak the truth, no matter what it cost.”

In order to protect other women, Denhollander said we need to hold institutions that enable abusers accountable and support and encourage victims to speak out.

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SEYMOUR (IN)
Seymour Tribune

January 29, 2018

A 12-week study for adult women who are survivors of childhood sexual abuse is being offered by Central Christian Church in Seymour.

The program from Survivors of Abuse Restored is entitled “Shelter from the Storm: Hope for Survivors of Sexual Abuse.”

There will be open sessions the next few Thursdays to allow women to come check the group out, ask questions and learn about a topic that relates to what they are going through.

Women who would benefit from this support group are asked to contact Robin Everhart at 812-521-1122 or robin@centralseymour.org for meeting times, location and details.

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ALBUQUERQUE (NM)
Albuquerque Journal

January 28, 2018

By Katy Barnitz

ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. — In lawsuits filed this month against the Archdiocese of Santa Fe, four more men allege that they were sexually abused as children by priests in New Mexico.
The suits, filed in state District Court in Albuquerque, name two priests as perpetrators: Sabine Griego and the late Wilfred Bombardier.

Both men were included on a list released by Archbishop John C. Wester of clergy who have been credibly accused of child sexual abuse. Griego, who was removed from the priesthood in 2005, still lives in northern New Mexico. He could not be reached for comment.

Celine Radigan, spokeswoman for the archdiocese, said she could not comment on pending lawsuits. But she said the archdiocese prays “for all who have been victims of the sad reality of sexual abuse.”

The complaints are the latest of approximately 74 lawsuits filed by attorneys Brad Hall and Levi Monagle in recent years. Monagle said roughly two-thirds of those lawsuits have been settled.

Three of the latest group of plaintiffs were abused as altar boys, while the fourth was abused while he was being recruited to serve as an altar boy, according to the lawsuits.

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WORCESTER (MA)
Telegram & Gazette

January 27, 2018

By Dianne Williamson

For 25 years, Peter Inzerillo has been quietly directing a community chorale of “high-quality music” in Leominster. In the mid-’90s, however, he was singing a different tune.

Back then, as the Rev. Peter, he was busy denying claims that he sexually abused a 19-year-old teen who had turned to him for help after being abused by another priest. Those denials would ring false, however, when in 1999 the diocese paid Inzerillo’s accuser $300,000, one of the largest settlements reached by the Diocese of Worcester, which then promptly reassigned the disgraced priest to another parish.

When I learned last week that Peter Inzerillo had finally been defrocked, more than two decades after his alleged acts opened a window to the church’s systemic failure to shield children from abuse, I was flooded by memories of a church that for decades had covered up the grave crimes committed by its priests. I was also filled with admiration for the brave people who confronted the church years before it was acceptable to do so, years before The Boston Globe’s Spotlight series blew the scandal wide open, back when victims were at the mercy of strident church lawyers and doubtful, defensive Catholics.

One of those victims was Ed Gagne, a soft-spoken Spencer man who aspired to the priesthood himself when he met Peter Inzerillo, then the diocese’s vocational director. He told the priest he had been abused six years earlier by another priest, and Inzerillo offered to counsel him.

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KANSAS CITY (MO)
National Catholic Reporter

January 25, 2018

By Thomas Reese

The overwhelming consensus in the media is that Pope Francis has a blind spot when it comes to sexual abuse.

He may be on the side of refugees, migrants, the sick, the poor, the indigenous and other marginalized peoples, but he just doesn’t get it when it comes to victims of abuse.

The evidence for this assertion is the pope’s unwavering support for Juan Barros, whom he appointed bishop of Osorno, Chile, despite accusations from victims that he witnessed and covered up abuse by the Fr. Fernando Karadima, the charismatic priest who in 2011 was found guilty by the Vatican of abusing minors in his upscale Santiago parish.

In a leaked letter to the Chilean bishops, Francis defended his January 2015 appointment of Barros to Osorno. Francis acknowledged that the Vatican was so concerned about the crisis in Chile that it planned to ask Barros, who was the bishop for the military, and two other bishops to resign and take a sabbatical. Despite these concerns, Francis appointed Barros anyway.

Francis’ defense of Barros has been excessive, accusing his detractors of calumny and being leftist agitators. He said he would not believe the accusations until he was given proof.

Cardinal Sean O’Malley publicly corrected the pope’s words:

“It is understandable that Pope Francis’ statements yesterday in Santiago, Chile, were a source of great pain for survivors of sexual abuse by clergy or any other perpetrator. Words that convey the message “if you cannot prove your claims then you will not be believed” abandon those who have suffered reprehensible criminal violations of their human dignity and relegate survivors to discredited exile.”

Francis accepted O’Malley’s criticism and apologized for saying the victims need to show “proof” to be believed. But he continued to say that anyone who made accusations against the bishop without providing evidence was guilty of slander.

“I can’t condemn him because I don’t have evidence,” Francis said. “But I’m also convinced that he’s innocent.”

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UNITED STATES
The Boston Globe

January 29, 2018

By Margery Eagan

HERE’S A SAFE BET: Even if a day arrives when the Catholic Church is pure, none of us will live to see it. So maybe Catholics should stop looking for saints among its leaders.

On Jan. 18, Francis took a sledgehammer to millions who’d misplaced saintly hope in him. He went to Chile and called priestly sex abuse survivors liars.

What happened?

This was the Francis who ditched the papal apartment, rode around in a tiny Fiat, kissed prisoners’ feet, focused on the poor, refugees, the planet, forgiveness, mercy — not the typical Catholic focus on anything to do with sex.

Wowed, we talked of “The Francis Effect.” Jaded Catholics returned to Mass, risking uninspired preaching because, well, Francis inspired. Plus, to paraphrase Hebrews, there is ever that yearning to find proof of things unseen.

There had long been signs that Francis didn’t really “get” the sex abuse mess. But nothing confirmed it like Chile, when he said he needed proof that Bishop Juan Barros had covered up crimes. Otherwise, multiple survivors’ claims were “calumny.”

For Americans, the timing was ghastly: in the midst of the #MeToo moment and of 156 gymnasts detailing in court gross abuse by a trusted physician. At least one was only six when her horror began. So was the little boy whom priest Paul Shanley, protected by Cardinal Bernard Law, repeatedly plucked from Sunday school to take to a bathroom and then rape.

So we are back to the dark days, asking, again, how to remain a Catholic?

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UNITED STATES
Toledo Blade

January 29, 2018

Revelation upon revelation of sexual abuse of minors by Catholic priests, and cover ups by bishops, has crippled faith in the Catholic Church over the last two decades. Since the start of his tenure in 2013, Pope Francis has labored to address this great sin, this stain upon the Roman Catholic church, and restore faith in the institution.

But on on a recent trip to Chile, the Pope lost both focus and credibility. He said that he was “pained and ashamed” by the conduct of priests who sexually abused children in the country. And yet, the Pope refused to meet with victims of these crimes and even accused victims of slandering a bishop who allegedly turned a blind eye to the behavior of Chile’s most infamous abuser.

After his comments drew sharp criticism from around the globe, the Pope issued an apology. But even his apology was couched in a defense of the bishop.

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UNITED STATES
Daily Gazette (Schenectady NY)

January 27, 2018

By Sara Foss

Case is disgustingly similar to pedophilia scandals that rocked Catholic Church, Penn State

I didn’t make any New Year’s resolutions this year.

For whatever reason, Jan. 1 came and went without a lot of introspection on my part — without any real consideration of my goals and hopes for the next 12 months.

Of course, it’s possible to make a resolution at any time of year, and that’s what I found myself doing last week while reading one horrifying story after another about Larry Nassar, the former team doctor for USA Gymnastics and sports medicine physician at Michigan State University.

Nassar, we now know, sexually abused more than 150 young athletes in his care.

That’s appalling, but what really gets my blood boiling are the ongoing revelations about all the people who turned a blind eye to Nassar’s predatory behavior.

If not for powerful enablers, it’s unlikely Nassar’s regime of terror would have lasted so long. Unfortunately, too many people decided protecting the institutions they served was more important than responding to credible complaints of abuse from powerless girls.

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UNITED STATES
Concord Monitor (NH)

January 28, 2018

By Katy Burns

In the end it’s all about the power of the press. Or, literally, the power of the presses. They’ve been the stars of two recent critically acclaimed newspaper movies. Along with, of course, the wonderful First Amendment.

One of the final – and triumphant – moments in The Post, the current Stephen Spielberg film dramatizing the 1971 publication by the Washington Post of the Pentagon Papers, is when the newspaper’s history-making exposé is set in hot type and the powerful stories-high presses rumble to life.

A similar scene was a climactic high point at the end of Spotlight, the 2015 movie celebrating the Boston Globe’s revelatory 2003 series chronicling the clerical sexual abuse of children presided over by the Boston Roman Catholic archdiocese.

In both films, bundles of freshly printed newspapers are swiftly loaded onto trucks and delivered throughout the respective cities. In both films, truth triumphed over those who would stifle it.

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NEW ZEALAND
The Press [Wellington, New Zealand]

January 29, 2018

The Catholic Church in New Zealand and abuse survivors are upset the goverment may not be expanding an inquiry into abuse of children in state care to include faith-based institutions.

It is disappointing that a government inquiry into past abuse of children will be limited to those cases which originated in state care. An opportunity to address systemic abuse in non-government institutions, and particularly religious organisations, is likely to be lost.

The inquiry is one of the Government’s pledges for its first 100 days in office and will be announced shortly. However, Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern has already said that inquiries will begin with “the harm that we (the State) had direct responsibility for”.

Victims’ groups have called on the Government to follow Australia’s example and include non-governmental organisations such as churches, charities, community groups and sports clubs in the inquiry. For now, at least, the Government appears to be ruling this out.

Ardern has said that the independent chair of the inquiry will have a remit to investigate beyond state institutions, but suggested this would happen when a child had been placed with other organisations as a result of decisions made in state care.

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.

CHILE
The Daily Caller

January 27, 2018

By Joshua Gill

A Chilean court declared Friday that a former bishop who had a homosexual relationship with an altar boy was innocent of committing sexual abuse.

The appeals court concluded that there was no evidence that Rev. Marco Antonio Ordenes Fernandez, formerly the bishop of Iquique, abused his eventual lover when the boy was underage, according to the Associated Press. Ordenes admitted to committing an “imprudent act” with the boy, and Pope Benedict XVI accepted his resignation from the position of bishop in 2012.

Rodrigo Pino, Ordenes’ lover, alleged that the then-bishop forced him into sexual acts when he was 15 and served as an altar boy, but that he and Ordenes later developed a consensual relationship. Ordenes, in contrast, asserted that he met the boy in 1999 when he was 17 and that while did engage in a homosexual relationship, the boy was no longer underage at that point.

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NEW YORK (NY)
New York Daily News

January 28, 2018

By Jacqueline Cutler

Tina Alexis Allen was good at keeping secrets.

The older brothers who molested her, starting when she was 9? She wouldn’t tell. The teacher who took over a couple of years later? Something else to keep locked away.

Perhaps it was a family trait. After all, no one kept secrets better than her father —until he started sharing them with her.

Allen earned an MBA in marketing and worked in fashion until opting for a career in acting. She appeared on television in “Outsiders” and films such as “Moving Mountains,” and starred in her own one-woman stage show, “Secrets of a Holy Father.”

Her book “Hiding Out: A Memoir of Drugs, Deception, and Double Lives” hits stores Feb. 22, exposing the long-hidden tale of a tumultuous youth in which her desperately damaged family life turned ever darker.

Allen grew up in Chevy Chase, Md., the youngest of 13 children born to a conservative Catholic family. She was a great athlete, earning a gold medal for basketball in the U.S. Youth Games at age 12.

It seemed like an idyllic suburban childhood as her travel agent father peddled pilgrimages to the Holy Land.

Yet as an 11-year-old Catholic schoolgirl, she had her first liaison — with a teacher. For three years, she and the female teacher 15 years her senior “were having sex on Saturdays while the rest of Chevy Chase was pruning azalea bushes around their stately homes or attending Georgetown Prep lacrosse games.”

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JAIPUR (INDIA)
Financial Express

January 28, 2018

By Smitha Verma

“At a time when power regimes have become hostile to the media and when a vast section of the public which consumes media has become sceptical of it, the onus comes on news organisations to tell the truth,” feels Pulitzer-prize winning journalist Michael Rezendes, who, as part of The Boston Globe’s ‘Spotlight’ team, uncovered sexual abuse in the Roman Catholic church. The story also inspired the Oscar-winning film Spotlight.

In Jaipur for the ongoing literature festival, he urged big media organisations to spend money and resources on investigative journalism, saying they can “take risks and defend themselves”.

“Big media houses have a special responsibility, which is questioning the government, large corporations and all other organisations that play an important role in society,” he told FE in an interview.

Commenting on US President Donald Trump’s stance against the media, he said, “Trump has inspired investigative reporters all over America to do their best work. He has picked up a fight of his life. But my concern is when his peers in other parts of the world, like Turkey or Cambodia, feel it’s an open season and start putting journalists in jail or shutting media houses. Trump’s anti-media effect is having a more pernicious effect overseas.”

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FORT WAYNE (IN)
The Journal Gazette

January 28, 2018

By Rosa Salter Rodriguez

‘More susceptible’ to fraud

A new study of the finances of America’s Roman Catholic dioceses finds that, when it comes to openness, the Diocese of Fort Wayne-South Bend lands in the bottom half of the ecclesiastical units.

The ranking, the study’s authors say, should be “certainly cause for concern” by people in the pews, according to “Measuring and Ranking Diocesan Online Financial Transparency” done by Voice of the Faithful, a laity-led church reform group.

“Absent clear and accessible financial reports … the donated funds are more susceptible to fraudulent diversions,” the study concludes. “Every Catholic shares in the responsibility to ensure that funds donated for church work actually go toward those purposes.”

But a spokeswoman for the local diocese said the study’s concerns may be misplaced because of steps the diocese takes to provide financial information to members.

Conducted last summer and published last month, the study comes at a time when the handling of finances by churches is under increased scrutiny from those within and outside sanctuary walls.

Prompting concern are reports of embezzlement and lavish lifestyles by leaders and changing expectations about openness from church members, according to The Church Transparency Project website at www.churchtransparency.org.

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SCOTLAND
The Sunday Herald

January 27, 2018

By Peter Swindon

A controversial Catholic priest has claimed the vow of celibacy is one of the causes of clerical child abuse and called on the church to repeal the ancient law.

Father Tony Flannery will deliver a lecture at the University of Edinburgh next month entitled “Celibacy, sexuality and the crisis in the priesthood” when he will also demand the ordination of women.

The Catholic Church forbids women from joining the priesthood and men who are ordained must promise not to have sex, a rule which Flannery claims is deterring young men.

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UNITED STATES
National Catholic Reporter

January 23, 2018

by Ken Briggs

Pope Francis is suddenly in the midst of a crisis that could damage his papacy irreparably. It swirls around his handling of an issue millions of his admirers believed he was especially equipped to resolve — clergy sex abuse. His personal touch, marked by modesty, candor, compassion, social justice and humor raised hopes that he could stanch the scandalous bleeding. Such optimism arguably became decisive in his election to the papacy.

But that potential is being questioned by his testy reactions this past week to criticism that Bishop Juan Barros, a Chilean bishop he appointed in 2015, had covered up many sexual crimes by a high-profile priest, Fr. Fernando Karadima, a close associate of Barros’. The Vatican found Karadima guilty in 2011.

Francis’ open, charming demeanor faded as he angrily chided critics, including those claiming to have been victims of the priest, who contend Barros buried evidence.

Francis bluntly dismissed that charge as hollow “slander.”

“It is calumny,” he snapped. “Is that clear?” Denying any evidence against the bishop, he added, “The day they bring me proof against Bishop Barros, I will speak.”

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McALLEN (TX)
48 Hours – CBS News

January 27, 2018

Produced by Lourdes Aguiar, Josh Gaynor and Ruth Chenetz

[Includes links to videos]

After 57 years, a former priest is on trial for murdering a young woman who had gone to him for confession — did the church conspire with authorities to cover it up?

It was April 1960 in McAllen, Texas, when Irene Garza, 25, told her family she was going to church for confession. She never returned. Five days later, her body was found dumped in a canal. Police say she was beaten, sexually assaulted and suffocated. Investigators kept turning to one person – Father John Feit, then 27, who admitted hearing Garza’s last confession in the church rectory. Investigators grew more suspicious when they learned that three weeks before Irene’s murder, another young woman had been attacked in a nearby church. That woman later identified Feit as her attacker.

Feit would eventually plead no contest to aggravated assault in that case and was fined $500, but the investigation in the Irene Garza murder eventually stopped and the case went cold. For decades, rumors swirled that there had been a conspiracy between the authorities and the Church to cover up the crime. The case was reopened in 2002 when the McAllen Police Department asked the Texas Rangers’ cold case unit to re-examine the murder. The investigation took a turn when a former monk, Dale Tacheny, told police that back in 1963 when he was counseling novice monks at a monastery, Feit had admitted to killing a young woman on Easter weekend. Another priest also came forward saying Feit had made a similar admission to him as well. Yet the former district attorney at the time, Rene Guerra, didn’t find the new witnesses credible and the case would go nowhere. Irene Garza’s family felt they had been denied justice again. In 2014, when confronted by “48Hours” about the allegations, Feit told “48 Hours” correspondent Richard Schlesinger he didn’t kill Garza and did not know who did.

Shortly after “The Last Confession” –“48 Hours”‘ first broadcast on the case — aired 2014, a new district attorney was elected who promised to look into the case. On Feb. 9, 2016, Feit was arrested in Scottsdale, Ariz. and charged with murder.

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UNITED STATES
The New York Times

January 27, 2018

By Frank Bruni

When Judge Rosemarie Aquilina handed down her sentence on Larry Nassar last week, she spoke to and of him as a kind of monster we rarely see. She was wrong.

I know this because I remember Penn State, where an assistant football coach named Jerry Sandusky worked his way through boy after boy across year after year.

I know this because I haven’t forgotten what happened in the Boy Scouts of America decades ago.

And I know this from the extensive time that I once spent studying and even interviewing men who, like Nassar, were serial child molesters, except that none of them had the lofty title — “Dr.” — that he did.

No, they had loftier ones.

The honorific “Rev.” came before their written names. People addressed them as “Father.” They were Roman Catholic priests.

In researching and publishing a book about them, I learned a great deal about child sexual abuse — enough to recognize that as horrifying as Nassar’s violation of young female athletes was, he and his crime spree weren’t anomalous. They snugly fit a pattern. And taking full and proper note of that is the best way — the only way — to protect children from the other Nassars out there.

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CHILE
Santiago Times

January 27, 2018

A Chilean appeals court has ratified the dismissal of sex crime charges against a former Roman Catholic bishop, a week after Pope Francis visited the Latin American nation.

The court ruled Friday there wasn’t enough evidence against the Rev. Marco Antonio Ordenes Fernandez, who resigned as bishop of Iquique in 2012 while under Vatican investigation.

Pope Benedict XVI accepted the resignation of Ordenes as the church investigated the allegations against him.

He was accused of abusing an altar boy and acknowledged “an imprudent act,” but said the youth was 17 when they met and that their relationship began when the man was no longer underage.

His accuser said the abuse began when he was 15. He said at first it was forced, but they later became lovers.

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UNITED STATES
World Religion News

By Corey Barnett

January 27, 2018

The recent news that Casey Affleck has withdrawn as an Academy Awards presenter over accusations that he has engaged in sexual violence is yet another example of the power of #metoo movement. The movement has been called a “silence breaker” and was awarded the 2017 TIME Magazine Person of the Year.

As we see the changes the campaign has brought to the entertainment and business industry we should be looking to religion as the next social institute that needs to reflect and modify their stance in order to espouse the morality that is dictated in their theology.

The Catholic Church began to take measures in 2002 as a reaction to the global scandals that were occurring because of widespread abuse and subsequent cover-up of perpetrators. Dialogue and openness were promoted, including the creation of the “Charter for the Protection of Children and Young People” to give clear guidelines to parishes and officials.

Yet that is not enough. Pope Francis recently visited South America, where he did not speak out about the appointment of a bishop who had close ties to a famous abuser. He also implied that the accusers could be lying before a large-scale backlash possibility caused him to change his stance and ask for forgiveness.

But the Catholic Church needs to be more consistent. There are two levels of the potential of abuse in the Catholic Church. First, is the well-documented history of abuse, mostly toward younger people, that have been conducted by priests and church officials. Instead of asking forgiveness, the Catholic Church should be excommunicating anyone that has been found to be guilty of sexual abuse. This sends a clear message. Abusing the body made in God’s image is like an abuse on God Himself and will not be tolerated.

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UNITED STATES
Christian Post

January 26, 2018

By Leonardo Blair

The Southern Baptist Convention has been added as a defendant in a lawsuit alleging that former Texas state judge and lawmaker Paul Pressler sexually abused a former Bible study student he hired as a home office assistant for decades, starting when he was just 14 years old.

The 15-million member organization was added to the lawsuit on Jan. 12 after it was initially filed in a Texas court on Oct. 18, according to the Tennessean.

Gareld D. Rollins Jr., the plaintiff who is now in his 50s, accuses the SBC and seven other defendants, including Pressler and his wife, Nancy, of fraudulently misrepresenting to the public “that Pressler was a Godlike, sexually safe, moral, and great person of the earth who, as a magistrate, worked God’s wisdom and thus would not be sexually dangerous to minors.”

The lawsuit also names the Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, its president, Paige Patterson, and Houston’s First Baptist Church as defendants, alleging they are liable for their professional, personal or denominational connections with Pressler.

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AUSTRALIA
The Age

January 28, 2018

By Farrah Tomazin

On a Winter evening in 2016, dozens of churchgoers gathered at a local primary school in the NSW Riverina to bid farewell to the town’s most-senior religious figure.

Gerard Hanna had been the bishop of Wagga Wagga for 14 years, a servant of God who led a diocese of 66,000 Catholics in 31 parishes.

But here, in the refurbished sports stadium at Henschke Primary School, Bishop Hanna was set to step down sooner than expected, citing “continuous ill health” as the reason for his early retirement.

It was about two weeks before he was due to give evidence at the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse.

As the tributes flowed, few in the room would have known that this church leader was harbouring a secret.

Decades earlier, while working as the administrator of a parish in Tamworth East, Hanna had been embroiled in a cover-up involving John Joseph Farrell – the notorious paedophile now serving a maximum 29-year jail term for a decade-long reign of abuse against children. At least two of those victims ended up taking their own lives.

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UNITED STATES
National Catholic Register

January 26, 2018

EDITORIAL: What is needed is a sensitive, transparent and systematic response to credible allegations.

Pope Francis’ pledge to protect the Church from sexual predators and hold negligent bishops accountable rightly earned him praise early in his pontificate. He inherited a foundation of reforms first crafted under Pope Benedict XVI, including the Church’s stern zero-tolerance policy against abusers, clear legal processes for handling abuse cases, and a powerful willingness to meet with victims around the world.

But recent events suggest that Francis is on a steep learning curve in furthering these efforts. Victims’ advocates have been alarmed by his failure to secure his own reform initiatives, including a proposed tribunal for bishops accused of abuse or negligence that was scrapped in 2017. Critics have also pointed to the Pope’s decision to intervene in some high-profile cases and his inconsistent response to Church leaders accused of covering up abuse.

In January, public scrutiny of the Pope’s handling of abuse cases came to a head during his apostolic visit to Chile. On the eve of his arrival, a 2015 papal letter to the Chilean bishops’ conference was leaked to the media.

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WORCESTER (MA)
Fitchburg (MA) Sentinel & Enterprise

January 27, 2018

A former priest who served Catholic Churches in Fitchburg and Leominster in the late 1990s and early 2000s and accused of sexually abusing a teenager in 1993 has been laicized, or defrocked, according to the diocese.

It was announced by diocese Bishop Robert J. McManus that Peter J. Inzerillo had been defrocked on Thursday at his request.

Inzerillo, according to the diocese, was “dispensed” from the clerical state by Pope Francis and as a result he cannot function in any capacity as a priest or be referred to as a priest or as a “Father” in writing in any announcements or obituaries.

“It is my fervent prayer that Christ may bring healing and hope to anyone who has been abused by a priest or by anyone in the Catholic Church,” said Bishop McManus.

Inzerillo, now 74, was vocational director for the diocese until 1994 — beginning in 1983 — when a decade-old allegation made by Spencer man led to the diocese temporarily suspending him from his duties as priest.

The Spencer man, who was 19-years-old at the time, said Inzerillo took advantage of him and abused him in the mid-1990s when he was a 13-year-old altar boy and filed a lawsuit in 1999 that was settled out of court for $300,000.

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ROME (ITALY)
Crux

January 24, 2018

By Claire Giangravè

Pope Francis faced no small amount of blowback in Chile last week over a sexual abuse controversy that boils down to whom you chose to believe – victims of a pedophile priest accusing a bishop of knowing about the abuse and covering it up, or the bishop himself, who’s vigorously denied those charges.

The pope made it as clear as possible that he believes the bishop, which has, in turn, infuriated the accusers and sparked wide commentary around the world.

Now there’s another “Who do you believe?” dilemma waiting for him in his own back yard, in the Southern Italian region of Sicily, as another high-profile sexual abuse case heads to trial.

The drama pivots on the charismatic lay leader of the Catholic Culture and Environment Association (ACCA), Piero Alfio Capuana – called ‘Archangel’ by the group’s members – who was arrested in early August of last year for the sexual abuse of at least six underage girls and possibly more over the span of 25 years.

The group is listed as a ‘civil association’ and has up to 5,000 followers, who still meet in the little-known municipality of Aci Bonacorsi, located inside the Diocese of Acireale on the Italian island of Sicily.

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UNITED STATES
The Copper Era (Greenlee County AZ)

January 23, 2018

We’re big, big fans of Pope Francis.

We love the fact that the pope condemns those who would turn away the poor and those in need in order to bolster profits, saying such an act is not Christian.

He’s been critical of the actions of the church, saying the church, in recent years, wasn’t following the teachings of Christ, specifically Christ’s commandments to love one another without caveat (yes, that means having respect for the LGBTQ community).

He has eschewed much of the glitz that goes along with the job of pontiff, opting to live in plain, almost barren quarters.

In other words, he doesn’t just talk the talk, he walks the walk. And that’s why we like him.

He was on his home continent of South America last week and, once again, did something we really like — he apologized for the child abuse scandal that rocked the church in the ‘90s and 2000s.

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UNITED STATES
The New York Times

January 26, 2018

By Rachel Denhollander

On Jan. 16, women and girls from across the country began congregating in a courtroom in Lansing, Mich. Some of us were athletes; some of us were not. Some of us were white; some of us were black. Some of us were married; some of us were still in high school. Many of us had never met.

But we shared one core, unifying experience: sexual assault at the hands of Larry Nassar. And we had one core, unifying goal: facing our abuser and confronting the culture that allowed him to prey on us without fear or punishment.

It felt surreal at first — finally putting names and faces to the numbered “Jane Doe” designations I had wanted for so long to protect. But the pain we shared knit us together instantly. We knew what to do when someone began to weep or shake in court, because each of us had cried those tears before. We knew what to say when a grieving survivor expressed guilt or doubt, because we had experienced that same shame.

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UNITED STATES
Newsday

January 27, 2018

By the Editorial Board

The voices of the women abused for two decades by Larry Nassar should force all of us to ask and answer: At what price success? At what cost silence?

The latest chapter in the nation’s overdue examination of the abusive power and control men exercise over women came to a conclusion in a Michigan courtroom last week when former U.S. women’s gymnastics team doctor Larry Nassar was sentenced to 40 to 175 years in prison.

The repudiation of his repulsive behavior followed harrowing accounts by more than 150 girls and women who were sexually abused by Nassar. But putting Nassar away for the rest of his life, however satisfying, does not solve this festering problem.

It’s not just Nassar, it’s not just gymnastics, and it’s not just sports.

Sexual abuse scandals have shaken the arts, the media, government, business, the Catholic Church and the Boy Scouts. But the problem in sports is particularly instructive.

Nearly 300 coaches and officials associated with the organizations that govern Olympic sports have been publicly accused of sex crimes since the early 1980s. More than 175 individuals have been convicted. More cases have likely gone unreported.

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VATICAN CITY
Crux

January 27, 2018

A writer for a Rome-based center with close Vatican ties said Saturday that Pope Francis’s “infelicitous” words on the Church’s sexual abuse scandals in Chile amounted to a “failure,” by “inflicting an unintended wound” on victims, and may raise the hard question, “Is there hope for real change in the Church?”

“As hard as it is to acknowledge, it seems inevitable that those from whom we expect more will sometimes fail us,” wrote Sara Boehk, a member of the research team at the Centre for Child Protection, located at Rome’s Jesuit-run Gregorian University.

“In the face of disheartening news, how can we move forward?” she asked in a brief post on the centre’s web site. “How can we work for institutional change?”

Her answer was that in failure lies opportunity.

“Failure is also an opportunity to reassess where we are in our safeguarding efforts, to re-focus our energies, and to recommit to our goals,” Boehk wrote. “The alternative is to abandon hope and give up.”

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UNITED STATES
HuffPost

January 27, 2018

By Neil J. Young

The congregation at Highpoint Church gave pastor Andy Savage a standing ovation after he confessed to a “sexual incident” with a member of the church where he worked in 1998.

On a Sunday morning earlier this month, Andy Savage, a pastor on staff at an evangelical megachurch in Memphis, confessed to the congregation that back in 1998, as a 21-year-old man, he had been involved in a “sexual incident” with a 17-year-old young woman. Savage had met the teenager when he was in college and serving as an intern at a Baptist church near Houston. After offering her a ride home from a youth group event at church one evening, Savage parked his car in the dark woods near her home and sexually assaulted her.

Given our current #MeToo moment and also the usually strong prohibitions evangelicals hold against unwed sexual activity, Savage might have feared harsh judgment for his admission that Sunday morning. Instead, the congregation at Highpoint Church gave their pastor a long standing ovation.

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CANADA
The Globe and Mail

January 27, 2018

By Michael Coren

Columnist and broadcaster Michael Coren’s most recent book is Epiphany: A Christian’s Change of Heart & Mind Over Same-Sex Marriage.

We are living in the age of the Teflon Pope. Francis has many positive qualities and has said and done wonderful things, but he also has caused pain and concern more times than we might think. Yet on each occasion, he seems to escape almost unscathed. Whereas media loathed Benedict, they positively adore his successor. But now, perhaps, he has gone too far.

Francis was in Chile last week, where the clergy sex-abuse crisis has – as in so many places – ripped through the nation’s religious sensibilities. It’s made worse, however, due to still-open wounds concerning the Pinochet dictatorship and the part played in those dark days by the extraordinarily powerful Roman Catholic Church. The general view is that the church didn’t do enough to oppose the dictatorship and that some clerics were positively supportive.

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BILLINGS (MT)
Billings Gazette

January 27, 2018

By Rob Rogers

[See also: Lawsuit: More of a Montana Catholic diocese’s assets should be on the table for abuse victims, Billings Gazette, December 20, 2017]

The attorneys representing the Montana victims of sex abuse by Catholic priests say more money exists for settlements after the Great Falls-Billings Diocese declared Chapter 11 bankruptcy last March.

In December, the victims group alleged that $70 million in Catholic real estate assets and an additional $16 million in funds transferred out of the Great Falls-Billings Diocese should be considered fair game for victims’ settlements.

In a move to streamline the complaints, the judge overseeing the case ordered the victims group to separate out the two claims. The judge will now make one ruling on the whether the $70 million is available and a separate ruling on whether the $16 million is also fair game.

In a recent supplemental filing, attorneys for the victims group made their argument for the $16 million.

In their claim, the attorneys argue the diocese transferred more than $16 million in assets from its deposit and loan fund to an entity known as the Capital Assets Support Corp. The attorneys alleged in their court filing that the funds transfer was an attempt by the diocese to “hinder, delay or defraud” its creditor

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DAKOTA COUNTY (MN)
KMSP-TV (Fox 9)

January 24, 2018

A Catholic priest has pleaded guilty to criminal sexual conduct for an incident involving a Mendota Heights woman in the summer of 2010.

According to the charges, the woman came forward in 2016 to report she had sexual contact with Jacob Andrew Bertrand during a private mass held at her home in Mendota Heights. After the act, he told her they had “fulfilled the second holiest sacrifice next to Jesus and Mary on Calvary.”

Bertrand is currently on leave from the Roman Catholic Diocese of San Diego, California.

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MINNESOTA
St. Paul Pioneer Press

January 24, 2018

By S. M. Chavey

A San Diego priest has admitted to sexual misconduct while celebrating a private Mass eight years ago in a woman’s Mendota Heights home.

He is an ordained Catholic priest currently on a leave of absence from the Roman Catholic Diocese of San Diego, according to the Dakota County attorney’s office.

Jacob Andrew Bertrand, 35, pleaded guilty Monday to one charge of third-degree criminal sexual conduct. The second count was dismissed as part of the plea agreement.

In the summer of 2010, Bertrand “wore his stole, and had candles burning,” and the victim “straddled Bertrand while he performed the Sacrifice of the Mass,” according to the revised criminal complaint.

The two had previously kissed and Bertrand had “mystically proposed” to her, according to the criminal complaint.

The woman reported the conduct to Catholic Church officials in 2012 and 2014, and Bertrand was charged in 2016.

Clergy members can be charged with third-degree criminal sexual conduct for having sex with persons they’re not married to while being asked for or providing religious spiritual advice, even if the sex is consensual, according to Minnesota law.

His sentencing has been set for May.

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ST. PAUL (MN)
Minneapolis Star Tribune

January 24, 2018

By Jean Hopfensperger

He is removed from ministry pending inquiry.

A Carver priest has been removed from ministry following allegations of misconduct, the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis said Wednesday.

The Rev. Thomas Joseph, parochial administrator at the Church of St. Nicholas in Carver, will be removed from ministry pending the outcome of a police investigation.

The archdiocese said it was contacted by an adult who alleged that Joseph had engaged in inappropriate conduct. It reported the claim to law enforcement.

No details of the alleged victim or misconduct were provided.

Joseph issued a statement on the archdiocese’s website, expressing “surprise and dismay” at the allegations.

“While I am prepared to cooperate with this investigation to clear my good name and the name of the Church, I wish to emphasize my innocence,” he wrote.

The move comes a day after a Catholic priest pleaded guilty to criminal sexual conduct in Dakota County. The Rev. Jacob Andrew Bertrand, from California, pleaded guilty to criminal sexual contact with a young woman while saying mass in the basement of her parents’ home in 2010.

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ST. PAUL (MN)
Archdiocese of St. Paul & Minneapolis

January 23, 2018

From Archbishop Bernard A. Hebda

The Archdiocese’s Office of Ministerial Standards and Safe Environment was contacted by an adult alleging inappropriate conduct on the part of Father Thomas Joseph, Parochial Administrator of the Church of Saint Nicholas in Carver. Following our protocols, that Office immediately contacted law enforcement. Director Tim O’Malley provided them with the information we received, offered our assistance and described our procedures for handling such matters, including our commitment to not taking any action that would interfere with their investigation. We indicated to them that it was our policy that clergy under criminal investigation are removed from ministry for the duration of the investigation.

Yesterday, the investigating law enforcement agency notified us that our removal of Father Joseph from ministry would not interfere with an investigation they have begun of an allegation against Father Joseph of criminal conduct involving an adult. With that clarification, Father Joseph was removed temporarily from ministry, pending the outcome of the criminal investigation.

Father’s removal from ministry should not be considered an indication or presumption of guilt.

Anyone with additional information regarding this matter is encouraged to contact their local law enforcement agency.

Father Thomas Joseph requested that, with this announcement, I include a statement that he has issued:

Dear Brothers and Sisters,

I wish to express my surprise and dismay at these allegations. It is paramount that we as Catholics come together in God’s Light to seek the truth. I believe in our system of justice and I understand the need to fully investigate any accusations. While I am prepared to cooperate with this investigation to clear my good name and the name of the Church, I wish to emphasize my innocence. I ask all of you to pray for me and be assured of my prayers for you.

In Christ Jesus

Father Thomas Joseph

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BELLEVILLE(IL)
Belleville News-Democrat

January 26, 2018

By Dana Rieck

A Mascoutah priest accused of possessing child pornography remained in jail Friday afternoon, even after a St. Clair County judge significantly reduced the man’s $2 million bail.

The Rev. Gerald Hechenberger, associate pastor of Holy Childhood Church and school in Mascoutah, now could be released on bond if he posts $25,000.

Hechenberger was booked into jail Jan. 9 on 16 charges of child pornography and one charge of possession of methamphetamine.

He appeared before Judge Randall Kelley with his attorney, James A. Gomeric of Belleville, on Wednesday, where court records indicate his bail was lowered to $250,000. That means Hechenberger would need to post 10 percent in cash — $25,000 — to be released from jail.

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WINTHROP (MA)
Legacy.com

BUTLER, Rev. William L. Of West Palm Beach, Florida and Dennis, Mass., formerly of Winthrop, passed away unexpectedly and suddenly while on a vacation cruise in the Caribbean, December 17th, 2017.

Fr. Butler was born in Boston on October 29th, 1934 to his beloved Parents, Edward I. and Margaret (Peggie) Lindsey Butler. He was the oldest of four siblings, a late brother Edward F. (Buddy) of P.E. lsland, Canada two surviving Sisters, Helen E. Gibbs of Salem N.H. and Linda M. McGeorge and partner Richard Perrier of Winthrop.

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UNITED STATES
The Guardian

January 26, 2018

By Michael Dolce

Survivors reported Nassar’s abuse to coaches, trainers, parents, therapists, a training facility owner, and even law enforcement officials – but all in vain

It is tragically ironic that in the same month we applauded the courageous young survivors confronting Larry Nassar in court for his horrific abuse, we also celebrated the wisdom and legacy of the Rev Dr Martin Luther King, Jr. One of King’s great lessons was that justice can be hindered by “the appalling silence of the good people”.

Indeed, so many survivors of Larry Nassar’s atrocious acts asked one question time and time again: why was he not stopped sooner by the good people who had reason to know of his crimes?

Gymnast Larissa Boyce, runner Christine Achenbach and softball player Tiffany Lopez all recounted their complaints to otherwise “good” people at Michigan State University about Nassar between 1997 and 2000, many years before his relentless abuse of children was stopped.

[Play Video 2:14: Judge tells Larry Nassar ‘I just signed your death warrant’]

They and many other survivors reported Nassar’s abuse for many years to coaches, trainers, parents, therapists, a training facility owner and even law enforcement officials – but all in vain. Common among the complaints of these survivors is that they were not believed and were silenced, while Nassar continued to attack child after child after child. These survivors’ stories are all too common – in cases that make the news and those that do not.

I have represented child sex abuse victims as a lawyer for many years and in virtually every case the survivor takes a huge risk in speaking up at all. I repeatedly see child sex abuse survivors, just like most adult sex crime victims, disbelieved by numerous people – especially those who were in positions of power to stop the abuse in the first place.

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CHILE
Agence France Presse

January 10, 2018

US-based organization Bishop Accountability published a database naming nearly 80 priests and clergymen on Wednesday who have been accused of sexually abusing minors.

[Link to video]

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WORCESTER (MA)
MassLive.com

January 26, 2018

By Phil Demers

At his own request, Peter J. Inzerillo, a Worcester priest accused of sex abuse, has been defrocked by the Vatican and Pope Francis, according to the Roman Catholic Diocese of Worcester.

“It is my fervent prayer that Christ may bring healing and hope to anyone who has been abused by a priest or by anyone in the Catholic Church,” Bishop Robert McManus, the leader of Worcester’s Roman Catholic diocese, said in a statement on the development released this week.

Added the statement, “As a result of the laicization, (Inzerillo) may not function in any capacity as a priest or be referred to as a priest or as “Father” in writing such as in event announcements or obituaries.”

Now 74 and ordained in 1970, Inzerillo formerly served as headmaster of St. Peter-Marian High School in Worcester from 1979 to 1985, also coaching hockey there and at St. Bernard’s Central Catholic High School in Fitchburg during the time.

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UNITED STATES
Seattle Times

January 26, 2018

By Mary Dispenza

It’s time, Pope Francis, to stand up for survivors, take their stories to heart and take the right action.

In scripture we find the lines, “If someone slaps you on the right cheek, turn to them the other cheek also.” Survivors of clerical sex abuse are tired of turning the other cheek — tired of lies and promises, especially by popes, who through the ages have formed commission after commission, held conference after conference, issued report after report, and made promise after promise.

Church leadership has repeatedly sought forgiveness for what Pope Francis recently described as the “irreparable damage” caused by priests. In the midst of Francis’ tears and apologies, the systemic evil of clergy sex abuse remains alive and largely undercover within the ranks of the Catholic Church.

Pope Francis is no different from popes who came before him. When it comes to his brother priests, Francis protects them at the cost of heaping pain and shame upon victims as was the case last week when he visited Chile. Francis did not receive a completely warm welcome there. Nor did he deserve one.

In 2015, Pope Francis appointed Chilean Bishop Juan Barros to head the diocese of Osorno in southern Chile. The pope knew that Barros had been accused of covering up the crimes of Father Fernando Karadima, a former Santiago priest accused of raping and molesting children.

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UNITED STATES
America

January 22, 2018

By Gerard O’Connell

In an hour-long press conference on the plane from Lima to Rome, Jan. 21, Pope Francis asked pardon from the victims of sexual abuse by priests or religious for his use of words that offended them in his remarks about Bishop Juan Barros of Osorno, Chile. But he also reaffirmed his support for Bishop Barros, saying he has not received any evidence against him.

On Thursday Jan. 18, the pope told reporters on a plane flight in Chile, “The day they bring me proof against the bishop, then I will speak. There is not a single proof against him. This is calumny! Is that clear?” Francis stated.

Responding to a question from a Chilean journalist today, Pope Francis spoke of “what the abused feel” regarding his remark.

“I must ask pardon [from them] because the word ‘proof’ has hurt many of the abused, and [what] I meant to ask for was ‘evidence.’ I ask forgiveness. It’s a hurt [caused] without wishing it,” Pope Francis said.

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CARVER (MN)
Chaska Herald

January 24, 2018

By Alex Chhith

The Rev. Thomas Joseph has been removed from St. Nicholas Catholic Church amid an allegation by an adult of inappropriate conduct, according to a statement from the leader of the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis.

Joseph, who has served at the Carver church for nearly a decade, was due to leave the congregation on Feb. 1 to serve at the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis Tribunal Office. After that, the Rev. William Deziel, pastor of Guardian Angels Catholic Church in Chaska, and the Rev. Edison Galarza, new parochial vicar, will serve both Carver and Chaska churches, according to a letter from Archbishop Bernard Hebda.

The change prompted outcry from many parishioners at St. Nicholas, who asked the archdiocese to extend Joseph’s time to ensure a smooth transition. Many were upset with the lack of notice given to parishioners and questioned the hasty transition. The story ran in the Jan. 18 edition of the Chaska Herald and the archdiocese declined to comment on it.

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ST. PAUL (MN)
Pioneer Press

January 25, 2018

By Nick Woltman

A west metro priest is under criminal investigation after he was accused of “inappropriate conduct” with an adult, according to the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis.

The Rev. Thomas Joseph, parochial administrator of the Church of St. Nicholas in Carver, has been suspended by the archdiocese for the duration of the investigation, Archbishop Bernard Hebda wrote in a Tuesday news release.

Joseph is being investigated by the Carver County Sheriff’s Office following an allegation of criminal sexual misconduct. A woman alleges Joseph had sexual contact with her several times over the span of 2½ years, according to the sheriff’s office.

Hebda cautioned that Joseph’s removal from ministry does not indicate a presumption of guilt, and he urged anyone with additional information about the matter to contact law enforcement officials.

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CARVER (MN)
Associated Press via KAALtv.com

January 25, 2018

The Carver County Sheriff’s Office is investigating an allegation of criminal sexual misconduct against a priest in Carver.

Rev. Thomas Joseph said in a statement that he was surprised by the allegation and is prepared to fully cooperate with the investigation because he is innocent of the accusations.

The sheriff’s department says an adult female alleges Joseph had sexual contact with her several times over the course of 2½ years.

The Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis says Joseph has been removed from the ministry at Saint Nicholas while the allegation is investigated. The archdiocese says Joseph’s removal should not be considered an indication of guilt.

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UNITED STATES
Miami Herald

January 26, 2018

The most enduring image from the 1996 Olympics in Atlanta was gymnast Kerri Strug’s courageous second vault and perfect landing on a badly sprained ankle that sealed the all-around gold medal for Team USA.

As she was carried off the floor, she was turned over to the tender mercies of team doctor Larry Nassar, helping cement his fame as a healer. On Wednesday, Nassar, 54, was sentenced to up to 175 years in prison on multiple counts of sexual assault involving young women he treated.

During seven days of victim-impact hearings in a Lansing, Mich., courtroom, 156 women testified that Nassar had abused them under the guise of providing medical care either as a team doctor for USA Gymnastics or at Michigan State University, where he was a faculty member. He also faces a 60-year federal sentence on child pornography charges.

As inspiring as it was to see so many young women bravely tell their stories, it is deeply troubling that, once again, institutions charged with protecting young people failed them instead.

As with the Catholic church’s ongoing clerical abuse scandals and the 2011 Jerry Sandusky pedophilia scandal at Penn State University, institutions looked the other way when confronted with the awful truth. Too much money was at stake. Reputations had to be protected at all costs.

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UNITED STATES
The New York Times

January 25, 2018

By Mitch Smith and Anemona Hartocollis

Michigan State University was propelled on Thursday to the center of the sexual abuse scandal involving Dr. Lawrence G. Nassar, as state and federal agencies mounted investigations demanding to know what the college knew of his behavior and when.

Neither the sentencing of Dr. Nassar on Wednesday to 40 to 175 years in prison, nor the resignation of the university president a few hours later, quelled the furor. Education Secretary Betsy DeVos said on Thursday that her department would investigate Michigan State’s role, while state legislators asked that the university provide unredacted records of its investigations of Dr. Nassar and threatened to issue subpoenas if the school did not swiftly comply.

At the same time, the state attorney general was preparing his own review of the university, a United States senator asked for congressional hearings, and the speaker of the Michigan House called for the resignations of the university’s trustees, who are elected by voters.

“This is one of the biggest scandals in the history of our state,” said the speaker, Tom Leonard, a Republican, who has asked House lawyers to review options for removing trustees if they did not quit. “We are dealing with a Big Ten university. We are dealing with a monster who was a serial child molester and rapist who may have violated more victims than any other rapist in the history of our state.”

The repercussions were not limited to Michigan State. The head of the United States Olympic Committee, Scott Blackmun, wrote an email to U.S.A. Gymnastics, threatening to decertify the federation if its entire board did not resign by next Wednesday. Several board members, including the chairman, Paul Parilla, have already resigned.

Responding to Mr. Blackmun late Thursday, U.S.A. Gymnastics, the sport’s governing body, said it “completely embraces the requirements” outlined in the letter. The organization’s unsigned reply said U.S.A. Gymnastics would “work with the U.S.O.C. to accomplish change for the betterment of our organization, our athletes and our clubs.”

At Michigan State, university officials are already facing the prospect of legal judgments and fees from lawsuits filed by dozens of victims. At Penn State, where a former football coach was found to be a serial child molester, those costs have reached nearly a quarter of a billion dollars.

The lawsuits and the legislative inquiries center on what Michigan State knew about Dr. Nassar’s behavior during the two decades he worked there. Several victims have alleged that they had told Michigan State employees, as far back as the late 1990s, about being molested under the guise of treatment.

In 2014, after a complaint from a patient, the university conducted an internal investigation that cleared him, after which he continued to prey on more patients. On Thursday, ESPN reported that Michigan State had neglected to tell federal authorities, who were investigating the college’s handling of other sexual misconduct complaints, about the 2014 case until the accusations against Dr. Nassar became widely known in 2016.

**

Some of his patients said they complained to Michigan State employees, including the women’s gymnastics coach at the time, Kathie Klages, in the late 1990s, according to court papers, but were met with disbelief. A lawyer for Ms. Klages has not commented on the allegations.

In 2014, a recent graduate filed a complaint against Dr. Nassar under Title IX, the federal law governing sexual harassment and assault on campus. She said that she had sought out Dr. Nassar for hip pain, and that he molested her and became sexually aroused until she removed his hands from her body, according to court papers in the civil cases filed against him.

But after consulting with other medical professionals, including Dr. Nassar’s colleagues, the university’s investigation concluded that his treatment had been “medically appropriate,” the court papers said.

The abuse continued until 2016, when Rachael Denhollander, a former gymnast, told her story to The Indianapolis Star, and a police investigation soon began.

On Thursday, ESPN reported that Michigan State had failed to turn over its file on Dr. Nassar in 2014, when the Education Department was investigating unrelated complaints about the way the university had handled sexual assault and harassment cases. The university began turning over records in late 2016, ESPN reported, saying that the failure had been an oversight.

On Thursday, the education secretary said her agency would review Michigan State’s handling of the complaints against Dr. Nassar. “What happened at Michigan State is abhorrent,” Ms. DeVos said. “Students must be safe and protected on our nation’s campuses. The department is investigating this matter and will hold M.S.U. accountable for any violations of federal law.”

But in a December letter to Mr. Schuette, the Michigan attorney general, the university’s lawyer, Patrick Fitzgerald, said he believed that evidence would show that no Michigan State official believed that Dr. Nassar committed sexual abuse before the newspaper reports in 2016. The university is also arguing that it cannot be held liable because of Michigan’s sovereign immunity law, which protects state agencies from lawsuits in most circumstances and “protects the state’s citizens by safeguarding its fiscal stability,” the school said in a court filing.

John Manly, a lawyer for some of the women in the civil cases, said the university’s response to the lawsuits reminded him of the way the Roman Catholic Church had responded to allegations of child sex abuse by priests. “It’s a page right out of the bishops’ playbooks,” he said.

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DALLAS (TX)
Dallas News

January 25, 2018

By Sara Coello, Contributing Writer

After nearly five years of praise from both Catholic and secular voices for championing causes from environmental responsibility to hospitality for refugees, Pope Francis has taken what some critics see as the first major misstep of his papacy.

After a recent visit to Chile, the pope criticized accusers of Chilean Bishop Juan Barros of committing “calumny” for claiming that Barros covered up years of sexual abuse committed by a superior. The pope’s comment came as a surprise to many who saw him as an advocate for increased attention to social justice, particularly in the global South.

Pope Francis apologized for his language, but maintained his position amid roars of criticism.

Two leading Catholic journalists took to the stage at Dallas’s Moody Performance Hall Wednesday evening and called the pope’s recent comments a departure from his pattern of emphasizing merciful interpretation of the Catholic canon.

New York Times columnist Ross Douthat and Crux contributing editor Austen Ivereigh have followed Francis throughout his papacy, reporting on his political impact and on more general shifts in Catholic culture.

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NEW YORK
The Journal News

January 26, 2018

New York private school administrators should follow the same reporting rules as public school administrators when it comes to reports of abuse. Shockingly, they are not mandated, under current state law, to alert authorities to reports of child abuse in the educational setting, nor to report a worker’s resignation after such accusations.

State legislators are poised to vote on a bill that would align private school reporting rules with what’s expected of public school leaders. Passage of this legislation should have happened years ago.

Public schools have been mandated since 2000 to report suspicions of sex abuse by any staff, faculty or volunteer in the school environment, whether in a classroom, on a field trip or bus, or during extra-curricular activities. But private school administrators don’t fall under such regulations. It was a mistake then, and it’s a mistake now.

The legislation (A5371/S4342) has gained wide support.The New York State Catholic Conference has said it supports the legislation, which aligns with changes the American bishops made years ago in the wake of abuse reports. Agudath Israel, an umbrella organization for Orthodox Jewry, has remained publicly mum on the bill.

[CHILD VICTIMS ACT: Senate blocks access for New Yorkers abused as kids]

This is a separate issue from the Child Victims Act, which would extend the statute of limitations for both civil and criminal charges in reporting child sex abuse. That bill has been sentenced to death-by-committee year after year in the Senate; advocates report that Senate Majority Leader John Flanagan continues to ignore their requests to meet and discuss the legislation. It’s time for compassion and justice to prevail. The legislation should finally be passed as part of the upcoming state budget process, at the very latest.

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WORCESTER (MA)
Worcester Telegram & Gazette

January 25, 2018

By Mark Sullivan

A Catholic priest named in one of the Worcester Diocese’s largest sex-abuse settlements has been laicized, or defrocked, the diocese announced Thursday.

Peter J. Inzerillo, at his own request, was “dispensed from the clerical state” by Pope Francis, the diocese said. As a result, Mr. Inzerillo “may not function in any capacity as a priest or be referred to as a priest or as ‘Father.’ ”

The former Rev. Inzerillo was headmaster at St. Peter-Marian High School in Worcester from 1979 to 1985 and coached hockey there and at St. Bernard’s in Fitchburg.

He was vocations director for the Worcester Diocese in 1985 when he allegedly sexually assaulted a 19-year-old from Spencer who was considering entering the seminary.

The younger man, Edward Gagne, said he disclosed during counseling sessions with the vocations director that he had been abused before, as a 13-year-old altar boy, by another priest – and he alleged that Rev. Inzerillo then abused him in turn.

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NORTHER IRELAND
The Irish Times

January 25, 2018

By Patsy McGarry

[See the website of the Inquiry into Historical Institutional Abuse and the Report of the Historical Institutional Abuse Inquiry, which was published January 20, 2017.]

No action on abuse inquiry recommendations for victims until new executive set up

The largest Catholic diocese in Northern Ireland has described it as “deeply regrettable” that stalemate at Stormont has prevented implementation of recommendations by the Historical Institutional Abuse Inquiry (HIAI).

Following an investigation into the sexual, physical and emotional abuse, neglect and unacceptable practices imposed on children in 22 Catholic, Protestant and state run homes and institutions in Northern Ireland between 1922 and 1995, a 2,300-page 12-volume report was published a year ago this month.

It recommended that a public apology be made to those who had been in the homes and institutions as children and that they be paid compensation.

In a statement Down and Connor diocese said it “unequivocally accepts” the HIAI recommendations in respect of those care institutions that were under its sole and/or joint management but that, a year on from the report’s publication, it was “deeply regrettable” these “haven’t been implemented due to the vacuum created by the current political impasse in Northern Ireland.”

It said “the legacy of abuse is compounded by the lack of a solution and compromise at the level of politics” and that “sadly, over the past year, some former residents of these homes have died and others have continued to suffer as they await support.”

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UNITED STATES
Religion News Service via National Catholic Reporter

January 25, 2018

By Thomas Reese

The overwhelming consensus in the media is that Pope Francis has a blind spot when it comes to sexual abuse.

He may be on the side of refugees, migrants, the sick, the poor, the indigenous and other marginalized peoples, but he just doesn’t get it when it comes to victims of abuse.

The evidence for this assertion is the pope’s unwavering support for Juan Barros, whom he appointed bishop of Osorno, Chile, despite accusations from victims that he witnessed and covered up abuse by the Fr. Fernando Karadima, the charismatic priest who in 2011 was found guilty by the Vatican of abusing minors in his upscale Santiago parish.

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VATICAN CITY
Associated Press via The Republic [Columbus IN]

January 25, 2018

By Nicole Winfield

The Vatican’s upcoming conference on families in Ireland will feature a seminar on child protection, after the church’s sex abuse scandal devastated the credibility of the Catholic Church in the country.

Pope Francis’ top adviser on protecting children from pedophiles, Cardinal Sean O’Malley, will head the seminar and survivors are expected to participate, said Cardinal Kevin Farrell, head of the Vatican’s laity and family office.

He told a Vatican press conference that details would be announced later this month.

Francis is widely expected to travel to Dublin to attend the final days of the Aug. 21-26 World Meeting of Families, where the sex abuse scandal is likely to play out given the scale of abuse and cover-up in the country.

The Vatican refused to cooperate with three Irish government-ordered investigations from 2005 to 2009 which documented the rapes, molestations and other abuse suffered by thousands of Irish children by priests in their parishes and by nuns and brothers in boarding schools and orphanages.

Irish bishops did not report a single case to police until 1996 after victims began to sue the church.

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UNITED STATES
National Public Radio

January 24, 2018

By Tom Gjelten

[Includes link to audio]

The #MeToo movement, having exposed alleged sexual misconduct from Hollywood to Capitol Hill and in board rooms and news rooms, has now reached into evangelical Christian circles, raising questions unique to that faith culture.

Christians focus deeply on a narrative of sin and redemption, but that theme can complicate how church leaders respond to sexual misconduct within their own ranks. Heartfelt confessions and a celebration of divine forgiveness may not be enough.

That challenge was made clear for some evangelicals earlier this month when a young Tennessee pastor, Andy Savage, stood before his congregation and emotionally confessed to what he called “a sexual incident” in 1998 with a 17-year-old girl, Jules Woodson.

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UNITED STATES
Bangor Daily News

January 24, 2018

By Matthew Gagnon

I’d like to think I’d be different, though I hope I never find out.

I think virtually everyone in this country likes to think they would be different, too.

Yet it seems, despite that desire and belief in our own good intentions, truly horrendous things continue to happen in this country that were made possible by the complicit silence or cover up of people. People who at one point in their life thought to themselves, “if I was in that situation, I never would have let that happen.”

We are quick to judge our own nobility. When we learn that a woman was the victim of domestic abuse, people often declare that they would never let themselves or their children stay in a situation like that. Others tell themselves that if they knew, or even suspected, that someone they knew was being abused, they would say something and ensure that the abuse stopped.

When many of us – particularly everyday Catholics like myself – learned of the systematic abuse of children by clergy in the Catholic Church, and the subsequent cover up that protected the sexual predators who perpetrated the abuse, we were horrified. Not only by the abuse, but by the adults who knew that children were being victimized and did nothing, instead remaining silent and shuffling abusers to new locations where they could prey on others.

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ST. PAUL (MN)
Minnesota Public Radio

January 24, 2018

By Martin Moylan

A plan to try once again to resolve the bankruptcy of the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis through mediation has hit a snag with the resignation of Arthur Boylan, the retired federal judge who was slated to lead mediation efforts.

Boylan stepped aside Tuesday, a day after scheduling a series of mediation sessions for early next month. His resignation letter did not provide an explanation for his decision and he did not respond to a request for comment.

Last month, U.S. District Court judge Robert Kressel ordered all parties into mediation after rejecting competing reorganization proposals.

The judge urged the archdiocese, abuse victims, parishes, insurance companies and their lawyers to “put aside their desire to win, and decide to put together a resolution that is fair to all of the people involved.”

Kressel said victims must forego any desire for retribution and the church must “put aside its desire to minimize pain, realizing that the personal pain its employees inflicted upon victims is inevitably going to result in financial pain being suffered by a new generation of parishioners and employees.”

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UNITED STATES
The Register (UK-based online publication)

January 24, 2018

By Shaun Nichols

Easy with those exclusives and unfortunate facts, hacks

Take it easy with those hard-hitting exclusives and investigations, said the Pope this week, lumping inconvenient quality journalism with fake news and clickbait.

We can’t think why the head of a church mired in decades of globe-spanning child abuse scandals would have a problem with hacks doing their job and getting straight to the point.

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BOSTON (MA)
WBZ-TV Boston (CBS)

January 25, 2018

By Jon Keller

Before the horrendous saga of the USA Gymnastics doctor who molested dozens of women and girls begins to fade from the public eye, let’s take a moment to consider an important lesson the sordid case of Larry Nassar teaches us – we need our institutions to protect us and to prioritize that protection over all other considerations.

In the Nassar case, multiple victims have charged that officials with Michigan State University, USA Gymnastics, and the U.S. Olympic Committee, which all had authority over Nassar, brushed off the victims and their families when they complained about this sexual predator.

And at Nassar’s sentencing Wednesday, the judge made it clear she hopes they will also have to face justice.

“There has to be a massive investigation as to why there was inaction, why there was violence. Justice requires more than what I can do on this bench,” said Judge Rosemarie Aquilina.

This brought back bad memories of the way our politicians so often fail us by hiding the truth from us, the way the Catholic Church blamed the victims and protected the perpetrators of the priest sex abuse scandal, the way government watchdogs are too often leashed, or turned into lapdogs for the abusers of power instead of warriors for their victims.

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UNITED STATES
HuffPost

January 23, 2018

By Carol Kuruvilla

But the pope didn’t waver in his support for a controversial Chilean bishop accused of covering up abuse.

Pope Francis partially apologized for last week’s brusque attack on victims of sex abuse by the clergy ― but he continued supporting a controversial Chilean bishop accused of protecting an abusive priest.

On board a papal flight from Peru to Rome late Sunday, the pontiff acknowledged to journalists that his demand to see “proof” that Bishop Juan Barros Madrid had been complicit in the abuse of minors could have hit victims like a “slap in the face.” He said he realized that his words on Thursday implied that victims’ accusations of sexual abuse are only credible with concrete evidence.

“To hear that the pope says to their face, ‘Bring me a letter with proof,’ is a slap in the face” that he didn’t intend, Francis said, according to The Associated Press.

Although he apologized for asking for “proof,” he suggested the testimony of victims against Barros is still not enough.

“I can’t condemn [Barros] because I don’t have evidence. But I’m also convinced that he’s innocent,” the pope said, according to AP.

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UNITED STATES
TIME magazine

January 25, 2018

By Alice Park

One of the many women sexually abused by disgraced USA Gymnastics team doctor Larry Nassar recalled feeling like a “shell of a child,” as three of Nassar’s victims took to the airwaves Thursday morning a day after he was sentenced to up to 175 years in prison.

“I was a shell of a child, I thought I had no way out,” elite gymnast Mattie Larson said on the Today show, appearing alongside Kyle Stephens and Rachel Denhollander, who were also sexually abused by Nassar.

More than 150 women delivered statements at Nassar’s sentencing hearing, detailing years of abuse that began for some when they were as young as six years old. Nassar’s victims spanned gymnasts in Michigan, where he was on the faculty at Michigan State University before he was fired in 2016, a family friend, as well as Olympians Aly Raisman and Jordyn Wieber. Raisman and Wieber’s Olympic teammates Gabby Douglas and McKayla Maroney also said they were abused by Nassar.

“To watch all of these women who are able to come forward and speak the truth about the abuse that happened to them, and are able to put the shame and blame back where it belongs, is an incredibly powerful thing to witness,” Denhollander, the first woman to publicly reveal she was a victim of sexual assault by Nassar, said Thursday on the Today show. But while she first reported Nassar’s conduct to the people he worked for including USA Gymnastics and Michigan State University in 2004, she noted that other people had also reported him starting in the late 1990s. “The vast majority [of abuse]… did not have to happen,” Denhollander said.

Larson described intentionally hurting herself in order to avoid the national training camp where she knew Nassar would be, hitting her head against a tub the night before she was scheduled to leave for the camp.

The women echoed criticisms heard all week against the institutions that continued to support Nassar — USA Gymnastics, Michigan State University, and Twistars Gymnastics, where Nassar also worked as doctor. But it wasn’t until the publicly aired statements by the survivors that in recent days, that the board leadership of USA Gymnastics resigned, and MSU’s president resigned.

While Nassar abused gymnasts and athletes under the guise of medical treatment, with Kyle Stephens, whose parents were friends with Nassar, it was simply abuse. Only six years old when Nassar began exposing himself, masturbating and abusing her in his basement, Stephens said she did not realize she was abused until several years later, when she saw coverage of the sexual abuse scandal in the Catholic Church.

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UNITED STATES
PBS Newshour

January 23, 2018

[Includes video]

Pope Francis came under fire during a trip to Chile for defending a bishop accused of directly witnessing and covering up sexual abuse by another church figure, dating back to the 1980s. While the pope apologized for his wording, he stands by the bishop. Lisa Desjardins talks with Anne Barrett Doyle of BishopAccountability.org about what the pontiff’s words mean to victims and other Catholics.

Judy Woodruff:

The pope just concluded a trip to Chile this weekend, aimed at healing some of the after-effects of sexual abuse committed there.

But his remarks during that trip, and on his return from it, about the role of a bishop in a scandal there have raised questions.

Lisa Desjardins looks at the pope’s pledges to change the church’s actions and attitude.

Lisa Desjardins:

The cases in Chile date back to the 1980s and a well-connected priest found to be a pedophile, the Reverend Fernando Karadima.

Both the Vatican and a Chilean judge concluded those accusations were credible. The church defrocked him.

Why this matters now? Karadima was a longtime mentor to a current bishop, Juan Barros Madrid. He is accused of covering up and witnessing the abuse.

While in Chile to apologize for abuse by other priests, Pope Francis defended this bishop, saying there is not one shred of evidence against him.

That set off a firestorm. The pope apologized for his wording yesterday, but he also stood by the bishop.

Anne Barrett Doyle is the co-director of the watchdog group and web site BishopAccountability.org. And she joins me now.

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HONOLULU (HAWAII)
Hawaii News Now

January 25, 2018

By Lynn Kawano

Hawaii lawmakers want to give more abuse victims the chance to come forward and file civil lawsuits, no matter how much time has passed.

Bills introduced in both the House and Senate failed last session, but a national movement to expose abusers and the high profile case against Kamehameha Schools could add momentum for the legislation.

Representative Linda Ichiyama and Senator Maile Shimabukuro introduced companion bills which would extend the window for lawsuits despite the statute of limitations.

“What we’re learning from data and research about trauma and what happens to a person’s brain when they undergo trauma is that they’re not ready to bring suits until much later,” says Ichiyama, “I think we need to adjust policies to reflect that research now that we know.”

More than a hundred victims came forward between 2012 and 2016, a four-year window that was opened for old sex abuse cases. Most of the cases involved catholic church priests and a psychiatrist who molested boys while they attended Kamehameha Schools.

Shimabukuro says national movements like the “#MeToo” campaign have also highlighted the need for victims to stand up and expose abusers.

“Less and less people are having shame for something that happened to them that wasn’t their fault,” says Shimabukuro.

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AUSTRALIA
The Advertiser

January 25, 2018

By Miles Kemp

Some of the state’s worst paedophiles would be compensated for themselves being victims when they were children under a radical scheme proposed by the Victims of Crime Commissioner.

In his submission to legislation dealing with the fallout from the Royal Commission into child abuse in institutions, commissioner Michael O’Connell says their plight as abused children cannot be ignored.

“Redress is not about their crime (as an adult) but rather about their victimisation as children,’’ Mr O’Connell states in a submission he provided to The Advertiser.

“The redress scheme cannot be truly just, fair and equitable if some kinds of victims are ineligible.

“All (child) victims should count, including those who later became offenders.

“No child should ever experience that which inquiry after inquiry, victim story after victim story, have revealed happened”.

The controversial statements will reignite what the federal and state governments last year described as the “agonising” decision to exclude those victims who had gone on to abuse others.

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ROME (ITALY)
Crux

January 25, 2018

By John L. Allen Jr.

News Analysis

Pope Francis just concluded the 22nd international trip of his papacy, to Chile and Peru, and it says something about the media honeymoon he’s enjoyed up to now that it’s really the first such trip about which pundits and commentators could have a meaningful debate over whether it was a success or a failure.

It may also say something about the wisdom of Jesus’ saying, “A prophet is not without honor except in his native place, and among his own kin and in his own house,” that Francis’s first could-be flop came in South America. (I make the distinction here between South America and Latin America because the dynamics are often different in Central America.)

On the pope’s trip, controversy centered around Francis’s response to the clerical sexual abuse scandals in the Catholic Church, and specifically, his handling of the case of a bishop in Chile who’s been accused by victims of that country’s most notorious pedophile priest of knowing about their abuse and covering it up.

In a nutshell, Francis apologized to victims for the enormous wrongs they’ve suffered, and also reiterated his commitment to a “zero tolerance” policy. He met privately with victims, in order to hear their stories and to share their pain.

At the same time, he did not yield an inch on the case of Bishop Juan Barros, one of four Chilean prelates accused of being in on the cover-up. There’s been pressure on Francis to remove Barros ever since he named him to a small southern Chilean diocese in 2015, but the pope made crystal-clear that’s not going to happen.

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BOSTON (MA)
The Boston Globe

January 25, 2018

By Yvonne Abraham

Because nobody who currently runs the world of elite gymnastics can be trusted. Nobody in that world would protect Larry Nassar’s victims from his horrific sexual abuse. The days of testimony in a Michigan courtroom, which culminated in the doctor’s sentencing Wednesday, have laid bare the utter and cataclysmic failures of officials at USA Gymnastics, at Michigan State, and elsewhere, to keep the children in their care from harm.

Time and again, victims were doubted, their allegations ignored. Winning was everything.

“Your abuse started 30 years ago,” said Needham native and gold medalist Aly Raisman, testifying at the sentencing hearing on Friday. “If over these many years just one adult listened and had the courage and character to act . . . I and so many others would have never, ever met you.”

We have lived this story before. It has been 16 years since the Globe and others exposed the rampant, decades-long plague of sexual abuse in the Catholic Church. And yet here we are, as if none of it — nor any of the ensuing sexual scandals in other hallowed institutions — ever happened.

For decades, with the help of officials who required gymnasts to submit to his treatment, Nassar preyed on defenseless girls made more vulnerable by their dreams of winning gold medals in a sport that demanded perfection, and absolute compliance. So far, 150 women have come forward to say he molested them.

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UNITED STATES
National Catholic Reporter

January 24, 2018

By Heidi Schlumpf and Maria Benevento

Despite repeated accusations by Pope Francis that survivors of clergy sex abuse in Chile are guilty of “slander” and “calumny,” Juan Carlos Cruz is still speaking out about the abuse he suffered at the hands of a Chilean priest — and about the cover-up by church leaders there.

During his visit to Chile last week and on the papal plane Jan. 21, Pope Francis defended Bishop Juan Barros Madrid of Osorno, Chile, insisting there is no evidence the prelate ignored or covered up sexual abuse by Fr. Fernando Karadima.

But Cruz told NCR Jan. 23 that he and other survivors testified — in criminal, civil and church proceedings — that while “the bigger abuse was behind closed doors,” Barros was in the room when Karadima touched the genitals and put his tongue in the mouth of Cruz and other victims.

“That’s what Barros saw,” said Cruz, who now lives in Wilmington, Delaware. “I don’t know if I should have taken a photograph for more evidence. What other evidence than our testimony, and that of so many others, do they need?”

He believes it is impossible that Barros and others did not see the abuse. “They were standing by me when things happened,” Cruz said. “If they want to say they saw nothing, that is an absolute lie.”

Cruz and other victims of Karadima have testified in court and in letters sent to church officials that Barros and other church officials — including bishops Andrés Arteaga, an auxiliary in Santiago, Tomislav Koljatic of Linares, Chile, and Horacio Valenzuela of Talca, Chile — knew of the abuse and covered it up.

The Chilean bishops have consistently denied witnessing any abuse by Karadima or participating in a cover up. Barros and Valenzuela denied the accusations most recently in an interview with Cruxnow.com, in a story published Jan. 17.

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VATICAN CITY (ITALY)
Catholic News Service via CatholicPhilly.com

January 24, 2018

[Includes link to related video]

Pope Francis said he told the bishops and priests of Chile to be uncompromising when it comes to protecting minors from sexual abuse and to trust that God will purify and renew his church during this time of trial.

Problems and conflicts must never be swept under the rug, he also said, because they can be resolved only through openness and dialogue.

At his weekly general audience Jan. 24 in St. Peter’s Square, the pope told an estimated 15,000 pilgrims and visitors about his Jan. 15-21 visit to Chile and Peru.

Thanking leaders, organizers and volunteers for all their hard work and generosity in contributing to a trip where “everything went well,” the pope also recognized the presence of protesters.

The protests made the theme of his visit to Chile, “I Give You My Peace,” even more relevant and timely, he said, as these words Jesus spoke to his disciples explain how he is the one and only source of peace for those who trust in him.

Some of the more “intense” moments of the trip, he said, were meetings with Chile’s priests, religious and bishops.

Those encounters were made “even more fruitful by the shared suffering over some of the wounds that afflict the church” there, he said. The pope had earlier asked forgiveness from those who were sexually abused by priests, but stood firm with his decision in 2015 to give a diocese to Bishop Juan Barros, who was accused of turning a blind eye to the abuse perpetrated by Father Fernando Karadima, his former mentor.

During his general audience at the Vatican, the pope said he emphasized to his brother bishops and priests that they must “reject every compromise with the sexual abuse of minors and, at the same time, trust in God, who through this difficult trial, purifies and renews his ministers.”

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ROME (ITALY)
The New York Times

January 24, 2018

By Jason Horowitz

The serpent in the Garden of Eden hissed the first fake news to Eve and it all went downhill from there, Pope Francis writes in a major document about the phenomenon of fake news released on Wednesday.

“We need to unmask what could be called the ‘snake-tactics’ used by those who disguise themselves in order to strike at any time and place,” the pope writes in a message ahead of what the church has designated as its World Day of Social Communications, in May.

Arguing that the “crafty” serpent’s effective disinformation campaign to get Eve to eat from the tree of knowledge “began the tragic history of human sin,” he adds, “I would like to contribute to our shared commitment to stemming the spread of fake news.”

Pope Francis has worn many hats since his election in 2013 — Vatican reformer; global advocate for refugees, the poor, and world peace; and, more recently, defender of bishops accused of covering up for pedophile priests.

But in a varyingly sophisticated, spiritual and questionable analysis of the fake news epidemic, the 81-year-old pontiff tried on the cap of contemporary media critic to address an issue that has wreaked havoc and undermined democracies from the United States to Europe and beyond.

In doing so, he offered a largely cleareyed assessment of the problem, its social impact, and the responsibility of social media giants and journalists. And he called on news consumers to break out of their comfortable echo chambers and cushy news feeds by seeking out different points of view.

But at times the pope also conflated fake news, which is politically or economically motivated disinformation, with an incremental and sensational style of journalism he dislikes — a muddying of the waters that many democracy advocates have worried is corrosive to a free press and to the ideal of an informed populace.

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EDINBURGH (SCOTLAND)
BBC News

January 24, 2018

A nun in charge of a Catholic order has offered her “deepest and most sincere apologies” to anyone who may have been abused at Smyllum Park orphanage.

Sister Ellen Flynn said “horrifying” accounts of abuse at the Lanark care home were “totally against” everything the order stood for.

She was giving evidence at the Scottish Child Abuse Inquiry in Edinburgh.

The inquiry has already heard weeks of evidence about the institution, which was shut in 1981.

One former resident, who was a child at the orphanage in the 1960s, has told the inquiry there was a “culture of evil among religious orders” at that time.

Record keeping

Sister Flynn – who broke down in tears during her testimony – said that her heart was with the survivors, as she vowed the order would engage with them and the probe to “put right what wrongs are found”.

The pledge came as she and another witness admitted a variety of historical failures had taken place at the home, including “weak” governance and record-keeping.

Dozens of former residents have testified that they received beatings and were mistreated at the home, run by the Daughters of Charity of St Vincent de Paul.

Sister Ellen, who is the current head of the order, said: “For those who are in distress, for those whom we have hurt in any way, our deepest and most sincere apologies.

“If we can do something about it, let us know.”

She and another nun, Sister Eileen Glancy – who also gave evidence – told the hearing that they wished to amend a previous apology because they now realised that there was “more than a possibility that some abuse had occurred” at Smyllum.

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EUROPE
Political Critique

January 24, 2018

By Agata Diduszko-Zyglewska

Interview with Peter Saunders, the chief of The National Association for People Abused in Childhood (Great Britain) and a suspended member of the Pontifical Commission for the Protection of Minors and Vulnerable People that was created by Pope Francis.

Agata Diduszko-Zyglewska: You are a survivor of sexual abuse in childhood. Could you tell me what was your story?

Peter Saunders: Yes, I am from London. I was born in a place called Wimbledon in south-west London. I was the youngest of five children born into a good Catholic family, as we were called. The first time I was sexually assaulted it was at my Catholic primary school as a very small child by a head teacher. Many years later when I disclosed the abuse I found out that he had abused many children, but we hadn’t known about each other. Going back nearly 50 years, I remember how the head teacher suddenly disappeared from school. I found out, many years later, that some children had been able to tell to their parents what was happening. So the parents went to the bishop and that man… was sent to another school. A regular, normal pattern for Catholic institutions. Also very early in my life, at 7-8 years of age, I was sexually abused by a member of my family, which lasted until I was 14 years of age. When I went to my secondary school I was also sexually assaulted by two Jesuit priests. One of whom was a head teacher, who was a layman, and the other was a retired priest who lived on the school premises.

Concerning the head teacher’s involvement in the abuse in both schools, I suppose there must have been many more children harmed over the years.

Yes, when I got a lot of publicity three years ago, after meeting the Pope and after being appointed to the pontifical commission. People who I had not seen for a long time and some people I had never met, from my schools, emailed me to say that they had been abused by some of the same priests. Moreover, it turns out that one of my brothers who had been to the school six years before me had been abused by the retired priest too.

Didn’t any adult from your family know about it?

Nobody knew nobody said anything. I remained silent for the next 22-23 years.

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UNITED STATES
National Catholic Reporter

January 24, 2018

By Michael Sean Winters Vatican

Reading Pope Francis’ comments at the press conference on the flight back to Rome, regarding clergy sex abuse and the allegations against Bishop Juan Barros Madrid, and rereading them again and again, I confess I cannot make heads or tails out of them.

Pope Francis said at one point: “The word ‘proof’ was not the best, I would rather say ‘evidence.’ In Barros’ case, I have studied and restudied, there is no evidence to condemn him. And if I condemned without evidence or moral certainty, I would commit a crime of bad judgment.”

Related: Francis again cries ‘calumny’ defending bishop accused of abuse cover-up
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Later, in response to a follow-up question, the pope said, “I must apologize for what the abused feel. The word ‘proof’ has hurt many of them. They say: Do I have to go look for a certification? I apologize to them if I hurt them without realizing it, I didn’t mean to. And it causes me so much pain, because I meet them: in Chile two meetings are known to the public, the others have not been disclosed. In every trip, there is always a chance to meet the victims, the meeting of Philadelphia went public, but not the other cases. To hear that the Pope tells them: ‘bring me a letter with proof, is a slap’ I realize that my expression didn’t come out very well, and I understand, as Peter writes in one of his letters, that the fire has risen. That’s what I can honestly say.”

When asked about the remarkable statement from Cardinal Sean O’Malley, in which the cardinal bluntly spoke of the hurt caused by the pope’s earlier comments on this case, Francis said: “O’ Malley said that the Pope has always used ‘zero tolerance’… Then there is that ‘bad choice of words,’ I spoke of calumny, to say of someone who says something with pertinacity without having evidence. If I say: you stole, and you have not stolen, then I am libeling, because I have no evidence. It was an unfortunate expression. But I have not heard any victim of Barros. They did not come, they did not show themselves, they did not give evidence in court. It’s all in the air. It is true that Barros was in Karadima’s group of young people. But let us be clear: if you accuse someone without evidence with pertinacity, that is calumny. However, if a person arrives and gives me evidence, I will be the first to listen to them. O’ Malley’s statement was very right, and I have thanked him. He spoke about the pain of victims in general.”

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UNITED STATES
New York Review of Books

January 24, 2018

By Ariel Dorfman

There were certain words that Chileans were hoping that Pope Francis would say during his three-day visit to our country last week. They were hoping he would denounce the sexual abuse committed by members of the Catholic clergy, and particularly the offenses perpetrated by a corrupt and malevolent priest named Fernando Karadima. They were also waiting for Francis to condemn the hierarchs in the Catholic Church who had silenced and humiliated the victims and helped to cover up Karadima’s crimes. Above all, my compatriots wanted the pope to publicly chide Bishop Juan Barros, who had been Karadima’s protégé and, according to reports (denied by Barros), had witnessed his mentor’s pedophilia. The issue of Barros mattered symbolically because the pope himself, in 2015, had appointed this collaborator of Karadima’s as the bishop of Osorno, a city in southern Chile, in spite of angry complaints from the congregation.

In an op-ed I wrote for The New York Times that appeared just before the papal visit, I argued that, for Chileans, the way in which Francis handled this case would be a critical test of whether he could restore the prestige of the disgraced local Church, so wounded by these scandals, to the noble place it had held in public sympathy for decades because of its brave opposition to the military dictatorship of General Augusto Pinochet (1973–1990). Pope Francis failed that test.

He did express “shame and pain” at the abuse of minors by members of the clergy, and he did hold a brief meeting with some of the victims—though not with any of those who had been mistreated by Karadima, or with anyone who has blamed Barros for his connivance. But Barros was flagrantly present at three ceremonies over which the pope officiated in Chile during the visit, and on one occasion, the pontiff embraced the bishop and kissed him on the cheek in a display of affection and support.

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ORLANDO (FL)
WKMG News 6

January 22, 2018

By Mike DeForest

Uncomfortable discussing a sensitive matter with her family, a teenage girl made an appointment with a priest to reveal a dark secret she had been carrying for years, according to prosecutors.

While taking part in the Catholic Church’s Sacrament of Reconciliation, commonly known as confession, prosecutors claim the girl disclosed to Rev. Vincenzo Ronchi that a relative had sexually abused her on several occasions beginning when she was 7 years old.

During that November 2014 confession, the girl reportedly urged the priest to keep their conversation private because she did not want her family or authorities to know about the molestation, court records state.

Two years later, however, the girl reported the sexual abuse to law enforcement officials.

As Loren Tim Burton now awaits trial on charges of sexual battery and child molestation, prosecutors say they need the priest’s testimony to put the defendant in prison for the rest of his life.

“As in the vast majority of child sexual abuses cases, there were no witnesses to the abuse,” prosecutors wrote in court papers. “The only evidence the State has to corroborate the victim’s testimony at trial is her ‘outcry’ statement (to Ronchi).”

The alleged victim, now an adult, has signed a waiver granting Ronchi permission to testify about their confidential conversation, court records show. But attorneys representing the clergy member are fighting to keep the priest off the witness stand, arguing that he is forbidden from disclosing anything discussed during confession.

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SANTIAGO (CHILE)
La Tercera

>>>The causes where Juan Barros appears

January 19, 2018

By S. Rodríguez y S. Vedoya

En las investigaciones civiles y canónica sobre el caso Karadima se menciona a l obispo de Osorno, pero no existe ninguna causa específica en su contra.

“Ni en el juicio civil ni en el canónico hubo ninguna prueba. Eso es lo mínimo que cualquier ciudadano puede esperar de la justicia. Si me van a condenar de algo, pruébenlo y que la justicia lo considere válido. Eso, hasta el día de hoy, no ha existido en el caso del obispo Barros. El Papa exigió para un hermano obispo lo que exigimos para todos”, señaló Héctor Vargas, jefe de la diócesis de Temuco.

La opinión del prelado apunta directamente al centro del llamado “tema Barros”: si más allá de declaraciones, rumores, aprensiones, trascendidos y opi- niones existe alguna prueba e investigación concreta respecto del cuestionado obispo y su eventual encubrimiento de las conductas de Karadima. Los denunciantes aseguran que sí hay, en los expedientes ya conocidos sobre Karadima.

Respecto del ex párroco, condenado canónicamente de por vida por abusos sexuales, existen tres investigaciones formales. Una es la eclesiástica, que concluyó con su sanción, en 2011.

Otra fue la indagatoria penal, a cargo de la ministra en visita Jéssica González, que en noviembre de 2011 acreditó la existencia de abusos, pero que estaban prescritos.

En aquel fallo se menciona a Barros dos veces. Una es en el testimonio del religioso Juan Debesa, quien dijo que el ahora obispo apoyó que lo apartaran de los sacerdotes de El Bosque. “Un sábado en la noche estaban Karadima y los entonces seminaristas Andrés Arteaga, Juan Barros y otro que no recuerda, y se le reprochó su conducta por reunirse con personas que ellos no aprobaban”, se indica en el fallo.

La segunda mención está relacionada con la intención y gestiones que hizo Juan Carlos Cruz para ingresar al seminario y que no habrían sido apoyadas por Karadima. “Tampoco supo (el ex párroco) que el actual obispo Barros hubiese enviado al seminario una carta sobre el tema”, se sostiene.

En la indagatoria civil, en tanto, cuyo fallo fue dado a conocer el 16 de marzo de 2017, el ministro de fuero Juan Muñoz Pardo rechazó la demanda presentada por las víctimas del ex párroco de El Bosque, Juan Carlos Cruz, José Andrés Murillo y James Hamilton, en contra del arzobispo de Santiago.

En este documento, fundamentalmente en las declaraciones de los denunciantes, se menciona en múltiples ocasiones al obispo Juan Barros. Y cuando se le pregunta a Karadima su vínculo con el prelado, el sacerdote dijo que “él era de la Acción Católica e iba a verme a la parroquia y yo fui a verlo a Iquique. Una amistad muy sincera; él me consiguió un viaje a Francia, con el obispo de Louvre, para mis 50 años de sacerdocio”.

A la inversa, cuando se le consulta a Barros sobre la conducta de Karadima, el obispo de Osorno respondió que “yo no presencié los hechos, pero sí la sentencia de la Congregación de la Doctrina de la Fe los tuvo por efectivos y adhiero a eso (…)”.

Respecto de la situación de Barros, la especialista en Derecho Canónico de la U. de los Andes, Anastasía Assimakópulos, explicó que “en el sacramento del orden sagrado en el grado de obispo, el único que puede nombrar, trasladar, remover o aceptar una renuncia es el Papa”.

[Google Translation: In civil and canonical investigations on the Karadima case the Bishop of Osorno is mentioned, but there is no specific cause against him.

“Neither in the civil nor in the canonical trial was there any proof. That is the minimum that any citizen can expect from justice. If you are going to condemn me, prove it and that justice considers it valid. That, to this day, has not existed in the case of Bishop Barros. The Pope demanded for a brother bishop what we demand for all, “said Hector Vargas, head of the Diocese of Temuco.

The prelate’s opinion points directly to the center of the so-called “Barros theme”: if beyond declarations, rumors, apprehensions, transcendence and opinions, there is some concrete evidence and investigation regarding the questioned bishop and his eventual concealment of Karadima’s behavior. The complainants assure that there are, in the already known files on Karadima.

Regarding the former parish priest, canonically sentenced for life for sexual abuse, there are three formal investigations. One is the ecclesiastical, which concluded with its sanction, in 2011.

Another one was the criminal investigation, in charge of the minister in visit Jéssica González, who in November of 2011 credited the existence of abuses, but that they were prescribed.

In that ruling, Barros is mentioned twice. One is in the testimony of the religious Juan Debesa, who said that the now bishop supported to be separated from the priests of El Bosque. “One Saturday night were Karadima and the then seminarians Andrés Arteaga, Juan Barros and another who does not remember, and he was reproached for his behavior for meeting people they did not approve,” the ruling says.

The second mention is related to the intention and efforts made by Juan Carlos Cruz to enter the seminar and that would not have been supported by Karadima. “Nor did he know (the former parish priest) that the current Bishop Barros had sent a letter to the seminary on the subject,” he maintains.

In the civil investigation, meanwhile, whose ruling was released on March 16, 2017, the minister of jurisdiction Juan Muñoz Pardo rejected the lawsuit filed by the victims of the former pastor of El Bosque, Juan Carlos Cruz, José Andrés Murillo and James Hamilton, against the archbishop of Santiago.

In this document, fundamentally in the statements of the complainants, Bishop Juan Barros is mentioned on multiple occasions. And when Karadima was asked about his link with the prelate, the priest said that “he was from Catholic Action and he was going to see me at the parish and I went to see him in Iquique. A very sincere friendship; he got me a trip to France, with the Bishop of Louvre, for my 50 years of priesthood. ”

Conversely, when Barros was consulted about Karadima’s behavior, the bishop of Osorno replied that “I did not witness the events, but the sentence of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith took them to be effective and I adhere to that (…) “.

Regarding the situation of Barros, the specialist in Canon Law of the U. de los Andes, Anastasia Assimakopoulos, explained that “in the sacrament of sacred order in the degree of bishop, the only one who can name, transfer, remove or accept a renunciation is the Pope.”]

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SANTIAGO (CHILE)
La Tercera

>>>Lack of resources prevented a lawsuit against Barros

January 23, 2018

By Paula Yévenes and Camila Mardones

Abogado de las víctimas de Karadima dijo que por esto optaron por demandar civilmente a la Iglesia.

Las últimas declaraciones del Papa Francisco en el avión de regreso al Vaticano provocaron diversas reacciones. En la instancia, acompañado por los medios de comunicación, el Pontífice pidió perdón por sus dichos en su último día en Chile, donde respaldó la permanencia del obispo Juan Barros en la diócesis de Osorno y aseguró en esa ocasión que no se ha presentado ninguna “prueba” en su contra (ver nota páginas 2-3).

Pese a que los cuestionamientos al obispo comenzaron en 2015, a la fecha no se ha presentado ninguna acción legal en su contra a partir de las acusaciones que lo vinculan con el ex párroco de El Bosque Fernando Karadima.

Respecto de esta situación, el abogado de las víctimas de Karadima, Juan Pablo Hermosilla, explicó que todos los antecedentes respecto de lo que ocurría en la parroquia de El Bosque están a disposición del Vaticano. “El solo hecho de que Barros haya sido tan cercano a Karadima es un antecedente que habla por sí solo”, expresó.

Además, dijo que no se tomaron acciones en contra de Barros, ni de otros sacerdotes cercanos al ex párroco, porque “no teníamos los recursos para querellarnos en contra de todos ellos. Por eso, preferimos englobar todo en una sola acción, que fue la demanda civil contra la Iglesia”.

Y señaló que para sus defendidos todo el proceso ha significado un gran desgaste emocional. “Se está poniendo el peso del Vaticano a tres víctimas que han hecho un esfuerzo gigantesco. Es una falta de respeto, es una hipocresía”.

Reacciones divididas

Para algunos, la acción del Pontífice representó un gran gesto de humildad. Mientras que para otros, está lejos de ser suficiente para reparar el daño.

En cuanto a la frase donde el Pontífice sostiene que no puede destituir al prelado, porque estaría faltando a la presunción de inocencia, Juan Carlos Claret, vocero de la agrupación de Laicos de Osorno, manifestó que “el Papa no ha comprendido que su labor no es ser un tribunal, sino que un líder espiritual”. Y añadió que “ahora sabemos que él termina asumiendo la exclusiva responsabilidad sobre el nombramiento y permanencia de Juan Barros (…). Eso demuestra un acto de irresponsabilidad inhumano y cruel, porque prefirió sacrificar toda una diócesis y someter al propio Juan Barros a una situación que atañe contra su dignidad”.

Sin embargo, para el mundo católico la acción de Francisco “es una expresión de cercanía hacia las víctimas de abuso y un signo de humildad de un pastor que no tiene dificultad en reconocer que unas palabras suyas han herido a personas que ya han sufrido”. Así lo definió Jaime Coiro, secretario general de la Conferencia Episcopal. Y destacó que los dichos del Pontífice dejan la puerta abierta para presentar más evidencias, “Lo ha dicho el mismo Papa: tiene abierto su corazón a recibir cualquier antecedente que pueda surgir”.

[Google Translation: Lawyer for the victims of Karadima said that this is why they opted to sue the Church civilly.

The latest statements by Pope Francis on the plane back to the Vatican provoked various reactions. In the instance, accompanied by the media, the Pontiff apologized for his remarks on his last day in Chile, where he supported the stay of Bishop Juan Barros in the diocese of Osorno and assured on that occasion that no has been presented. test “against you (see note pages 2-3).

Although the questioning of the bishop began in 2015, to date no legal action has been filed against him based on the accusations linking him to the former pastor of El Bosque, Fernando Karadima.

Regarding this situation, the lawyer of the victims of Karadima, Juan Pablo Hermosilla, explained that all the information regarding what happened in the parish of El Bosque are available to the Vatican. “The mere fact that Barros has been so close to Karadima is an antecedent that speaks for itself,” he said.

In addition, he said that no action was taken against Barros, or other priests close to the former pastor, because “we did not have the resources to complain against all of them. Therefore, we prefer to include everything in a single action, which was the civil suit against the Church. ”
And he pointed out that for his defendants the whole process has meant a great emotional strain. “The Vatican’s weight is being placed on three victims who have made a gigantic effort. It’s a lack of respect, it’s hypocrisy. ”

Split reactions

For some, the action of the Pontiff represented a great gesture of humility. While for others, it is far from enough to repair the damage.

Regarding the sentence where the Pontiff maintains that he can not dismiss the prelate, because he would be missing the presumption of innocence, Juan Carlos Claret, spokesman of the Lajos de Osorno group, said that “the Pope has not understood that his work is not is to be a court, but a spiritual leader. ” He added that “now we know that he ends up assuming the exclusive responsibility for the appointment and permanence of Juan Barros (…). This demonstrates an act of inhuman and cruel irresponsibility, because he preferred to sacrifice an entire diocese and subject Juan Barros himself to a situation that concerns his dignity.”

However, for the Catholic world, Francisco’s action “is an expression of closeness towards victims of abuse and a sign of humility of a pastor who has no difficulty in recognizing that some of his words have hurt people who have already suffered.” This was defined by Jaime Coiro, general secretary of the Episcopal Conference. And he stressed that the Pontiff’s sayings leave the door open to present more evidence, “The Pope himself has said: he has opened his heart to receive any antecedent that may arise.”]

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SANTIAGO (CHILE)
La Nación

>>>Jesuits Confirm Sentence Against Priest Who Would Have Abused Viñuela

January 23, 2018

En 2012 se comenzó una investigación en contra del sacerdote, donde se determinó su culpabilidad, sin embargo, esto no se hizo público por petición de uno de los denunciantes.

A raíz de la denuncia de acoso sexual efectuada por el animador de MEGA, José Miguel Viñuela, contra un sacerdote jesuita, la Compañía de Jesús emitió un comunicado asegurando que el agresor, identificado como Jaime Guzmán Astaburuaga, fue condenado por la orden religiosa en el año 2012.

En el texto, se indicó que el delegado provincial de la congregación, Arturo Vigneaux, se reunió con el rostro televisivo para que informara lo sucedido y se invitó a las personas a entregar antecedentes contra el sacerdote.

[Google Translation: In 2012 an investigation was started against the priest, where his guilt was determined, however, this was not made public at the request of one of the complainants.

Following the complaint of sexual harassment carried out by the MEGA animator, José Miguel Viñuela , against a Jesuit priest , the Society of Jesus issued a statement assuring that the aggressor, identified as Jaime Guzmán Astaburuaga, was condemned by the religious order in the year 2012.

In the text, it was indicated that the provincial delegate of the congregation, Arturo Vigneaux, met with the television face to report what happened and people were invited to give background against the priest.

In addition, the Jesuits reported that in 2012 an investigation was carried out that “determined the culpability of Guzmán , who, at present, is serving the sentence imposed. This includes the prohibition of contact with minors and the restriction to publicly exercise the priestly ministry , “adding that this situation” was not made public by express request of one of the complainants.”

“We reiterate our commitment to act with the utmost diligence, collaborating with the competent civil and ecclesiastical institutions, by virtue of the care and transparency with the victims of abuse,” they remarked.]

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DETROIT (MI)
ClickOnDetroit.com

January 23, 2018

Lansing, Mich. – The sentencing for former sports physician Larry Nassar will continue Tuesday morning in Lansing. Watch it live here.

View statements from previous days:

• Day 1

• Day 2

• Day 3

• Day 4

• Day 5

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SAN JOSE (CA)
Make Pres Safe

January 22, 2018

[Note: Includes a petition, a timeline, and links to sources.]

Help Stop Decades of Sexual Misconduct at Presentation High School

The decisions by past and present Presentation High School administrators to ignore the laws designed to protect students from predators have resulted in the molestation and abuse of young girls entrusted to their care. Throughout the years, numerous teachers quit the school in protest, and suspected predators seemed immune to consequences even though administrators knew they were the target of sexual abuse complaints. Even today, PHS administrators refuse to accept responsibility for their actions or apologize to victims.

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SANTIAGO (CHILE)
Cooperativa

>>>Bishop Barros must resign

January 23, 2018

By Sergio Bitar

Finalizada la visita del Papa en Chile ¿cuál es el diagnóstico que hará la iglesia chilena?, ¿qué conclusiones extraerá el Vaticano? Aunque no parece aconsejable intervenir en los temas internos de la iglesia, la visita del Papa la trasciende. Es un tema público.

Pensé y pienso que esta visita era una oportunidad para que los progresistas escucharan sus planteamientos sociales y políticos. Los pensamientos predicados por el Papa inspiran a muchas personas que comparten los valores de inclusión social y solidaridad, sustentabilidad ambiental, participación ciudadana y diversidad cultural.

Resultó decepcionante que esos planteamientos fueran casi silenciados por un manejo tan poco inteligente. Reapareció nuevamente una iglesia chilena que pone en primer plano los temas sexuales en lugar de los temas culturales, sociales y políticos.

[Google Translation: After the Pope’s visit to Chile, what is the diagnosis of the Chilean church? What conclusions will the Vatican draw? Although it does not seem advisable to intervene in the internal issues of the church, the Pope’s visit transcends it. It is a public issue.

I thought and I think that this visit was an opportunity for the progressives to listen to their social and political proposals. The thoughts preached by the Pope inspire many people who share the values ​​of social inclusion and solidarity, environmental sustainability, citizen participation and cultural diversity.

It was disappointing that these approaches were almost silenced by such an unintelligent management. A Chilean church reappeared that puts sexual issues in the foreground instead of cultural, social and political issues.

The behavior of Bishop Barros, questioned by members of the church, also receives the disapproval of the laity. Barros boasted of the support of the Curia and this hurt the feeling of thousands of Chileans.

Nor was the Pope’s stiff affirmation so supportive. One wonders who are the advisors that lead him to express himself in that way. The image of many brave priests and nuns, true shepherds, who deserve the respect of all, was damaged.

Undoubtedly there is a serious distancing of a part of the leadership of the Catholic Church and the feeling of Chilean citizenship. The same thing happens to political parties.

The difference is that, in the case of parties, it is spoken directly, sometimes the feeling of the majority is collected and the resignation of those who cause such damage is requested.

The Church is not immune to the obsolescence of certain ideas and behaviors, in a rapidly changing world, where people are more empowered, are more educated and aware, seek to be heard and establish a less vertical, closer relationship.

Pope Francis is making a great effort and has shown leadership to renew. His recognition of the error that meant asking for “proofs” is a gesture of humility.

But that is not enough if each national church is not updated and in our case, the Chilean Church.

If before there was a small group of questioners from Bishop Barros today there is a feeling of generalized disapproval, which will not leave him alone while he maintains that task. When performing public projection functions, it is not proceeded like a court of justice that fails after years, based on evidence. The general consequences are measured in society and in institutions. B ien har ed the bishop to resign to overcome this impasse.

I add to these words the strongest condemnation of criminals who burn churches. It is unacceptable and these facts can not go unnoticed, however intense the controversy that arose after the papal visit.]

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WASHINGTON (DC)
Washington Post

January 23, 2018

By Rick Noack

It was supposed to be an apology tour, but Pope Francis’s Chile visit drew unexpected ire last week after the head of the Catholic Church came to the support of Juan Barros, a bishop accused of covering up sexual abuse committed by a priest named Fernando Karadima. The remarks came at the end of a visit that was intended to ease tensions between the church and Karadima’s victims.

On Monday, the pope apologized for previous remarks in which he had demanded evidence from Barros’s accusers, now saying that his words must have come across as a “slap in the face” of victims.

Despite his self-criticism, the pope stood by Barros and also warned accusers that they may be found guilty of slander if they continued to make public statements without being able to provide evidence.

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GLASGOW (SCOTLAND)
BBC

January 23, 2018

Leon Carberry spoke to BBC Scotland via Skype after giving evidence to the inquiry
A retired police officer has called for the Catholic Church to be held responsible for the sexual and physical abuse he suffered at a Lanarkshire orphanage during the 1950s.

Leon Carberry said he was regularly beaten and humiliated by a nun at the Smyllum Park home in Lanark.

He also claimed that a man who worked there made him perform a sex act.

Mr Carberrry said nuns lied to him about his brother’s death and he still does not know where he is buried.

The former policeman, who has waived his right to anonymity, was giving evidence to the Scottish Child Abuse Inquiry via video link from Australia.

His brother David died aged four while living at Smyllum in 1955.

In an interview with BBC Scotland after giving evidence, Mr Carberry said physical abuse was administered either by using straps, a hairbrush or a stick during exercise periods.

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LONDON (ENGLAND)
The Telegraph

January 22, 2018

Pope Francis apologised for comments he made about victims of paedophile clergy during his trip to South America, but repeated his defence of a bishop accused of protecting a predatory priest.

The Pope issued the partial mea culpa on board the plane that flew him back to Rome after a grueling week-long trip to Chile and Peru.

During his visit to Chile, he had insisted that there was no evidence that Bishop Juan Barros was complicit in keeping quiet about the sexual abuse carried out by a priest, the Rev. Fernando Karadima.

The Pope sharply told journalists: “The day I see proof against Bishop Barros, then I will talk. There is not a single piece of evidence against him. It is all slander. Is that clear?”

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BIRMINGHAM (AL)
AL.com

January 22, 2018

By Greg Garrison

A former EWTN priest and TV personality found not guilty of child sexual abuse in 2016 has been granted custody of his 9-year-old son.

David Stone, 57, hosted a talk show for youth from 2001-2007 on EWTN. While working at EWTN he fathered a child with an EWTN employee, Christina Presnell. The child was born in 2008.

Stone, formerly known as Father Francis Mary Stone when he hosted the TV show “Life on the Rock,” was suspended from his religious order and placed on long-term leave of absence at EWTN after it became known he had fathered the child. Presnell was fired from EWTN.

After the child spent a weekend visitation with Stone in 2012, the child complained to his mother that his father hurt him, according to testimony by Presnell. Presnell then refused to allow the next scheduled visitation.

Stone was arrested in 2013 and charged with sexual abuse of a minor under 12. Stone testified and his attorneys argued that false allegations were being used to gain advantage in a custody dispute between Stone and Presnell.

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