ABUSE TRACKER

IRELAND
Sunday World

By Patrick O’Connell

Bon Secours head nun Sister Marie Ryan refused to speak of the horror of the 796 Tuam babies, many believed to have been buried in a cesspit at the Mother and Baby home, when confronted by the Sunday World.

As the Sisters of the Bon Secours face calls for the order to be disbanded and its €152 million private health care empire handed over to the State, we tracked down the most senior member of the Order to her Cork home.

Asked by the Sunday World to comment on allegations in the High Court that she “as is the norm for the Bon Secours sisters – is lying through her teeth” about what levels of knowledge the order had over the fate of the Tuam babies, Sr. Ryan replied with a terse “no comment”.

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IRELAND
Connacht Tribune

By Declan Tierney – March 12, 2017

Around 80 residents in Tuam are now wondering if they are sitting on the remains of dead children that were buried in the mother and baby home in the town; and they fear that their properties could now be excavated as the next part of this horrific investigation begins.

Homeowners on Athenry Road in Tuam, whose houses were built on the site of the Tuam mother and baby home, are now concerned that they could be living over shallow graves. Some are anxious that the matter be investigated.

The houses at Athenry Road in Tuam were built around during the 1970s when the mother and baby home was long closed. The houses were constructed by Galway County Council at the time.

Following last weekend’s revelation that human remains were discovered at the Tuam home, local residents are now concerned that their properties may have been built over ‘unofficial’ graveyards.

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IRELAND
IrishCentral

Niall O’Dowd @niallodowd March 12, 2017

The parish priest came for Delia Mulryan one dark winter’s night in 1944 in the little west of Ireland parish. Delia was seven months pregnant, the baby was created out of wedlock, and the clergyman was hell bent on running the devil out of town.

As her son Peter Mulryan, then in the womb, now 73, relates it the parish priest was furious and spitting blood. ”The woman is bringing scandal to our community” he warned the petrified 17-year old’s father. “She must be removed.”

The power of the church was such that her father did not raise a protest. The priest wanted her gone now, immediately she would not be allowed to stain the good name of the parish.

Her departure couldn’t even wait for daybreak.

It was a time before many automobiles in rural Ireland and dirt roads. The priest had an old fashioned bicycle with a crossbar on it. He grabbed the shaking young girl and left the house.

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AUSTRALIA
The Independent (UK)

Jon Sharman

A senior Australian Catholic official has warned that Pope Francis may be “backsliding” in his crackdown on paedophile priests in the face of an intransigent Vatican establishment.

Francis Sullivan, who is in charge of the Catholic Church’s Truth, Justice and Healing Council, said he feared the Vatican’s “bureaucrats and courtiers [were] doing all they can to either undermine the Pope or driving an agenda” of protecting the institution, according to Australian Associated Press (AAP).

In 2014 the Pope ordered a “zero-tolerance” stance on members of the clergy who abused children. Before that the church had been criticised by the UN for the frequency with which allegedly abusive priests were moved to different areas rather than turned over to police.

Mr Sullivan also pointed to the resignation from the Vatican’s child protection commission of campaigner and abuse survivor Marie Collins, who had accused the institution of a “shameful lack of cooperation”, as evidence of a culture of self-preservation, the AAP reported.

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INDIA
The Independent (UK)

May Bulman @maybulman

The father of a girl in India who was allegedly raped by a Catholic priest falsely claimed he committed the crime daughter in order to save the religious leader from disgrace, according to reports.

Police in Kerala said the biological father of a 17-year-old victim told them he was guilty of raping her last May, but it has since emerged that this was a lie in attempt to protect the reputation of a local priest, NDTV reported.

Robin Vadakkuncheril, bishop of the Mananthavady Diocese in Kerala, was arrested at the end of February on charges of raping the teenager last year, in what has been described as the worst sex scandal in the history of Kerala’s Catholic establishment.

Following the arrest of Mr Vadakkuncheril, 48, the girl’s father told the Indian Express: “The priest betrayed our family and our faith in the Church. After my daughter delivered the baby, he wanted someone to take responsibility for the birth. How could I find someone for this job?

“Finally, I had to falsely state that I was the father of my daughter’s baby. As a believer, I also wanted to avoid the disgrace falling on the priest and the Church.”

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IRELAND
RTE News

Minister for Health Simon Harris has said Pope Francis needs to tell religious orders to pay the compensation they owe to abuse victims.

Speaking on RTÉ’s The Week in Politics, Mr Harris said that religious leaders in Ireland must also address the issue the next time they make a public statement.

The Government would now look at every legal tool at its disposal to ensure the religious orders pay more of the €1.5bn compensation bill, the minister said.

To date religious orders have contributed just 13% to the compensation fund.

This contribution is underpinned by an agreement with 18 religious orders negotiated by former Fianna Fáil minister Michael Woods in 2002.

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IRELAND
Irish Times

Ronan McGreevy

Philomena Lee has described revelations about the Tuam mother and babies as “absolutely appalling”.

Ms Lee gave birth in Sean Ross Abbey, Co Tipperary to a child who would go on to become a senior legal counsel to two American presidents.

Her son Michael Hess, who she was forced to give up for adoption in 1952, died from AIDS in 1995. He would have been 65 this year if he had lived.

He visited Sean Ross many times looking for his birth mother, but the nuns there, who knew where Ms Lee lived, refused to connect mother and son.

Her story was turned in the critically acclaimed film, Philomena, released in 2013. Judi Dench, who played her, received an Oscar nomination for the role.

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AUSTRALIA
Western Advocate

MURRAY NICHOLLS
12 Mar 2017

GREENS MLC David Shoebridge will host a public forum in Bathurst this week to support the survivors of historic sexual abuse at St Stanislaus’ College.

Holding The Church to Account will discuss ways to make amends to the victims of abuse and how to make institutions accountable for past wrongs.

Mr Shoebridge said he was hosting the forum in response to the decision by the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse not to hold a public hearing in Bathurst, despite the city’s chequered history.

“Often in a regional community it can be hard to find the space to talk about these deeply tragic and disturbing local events,” he said.

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INDIA
India Today

Posted by Ganesh Kumar Radha Udayakumar
New Delhi/Thiruvananthapuram, March 12, 2017

The father of a minor girl who was allegedly raped and impregnated by a Catholic priest in a Kerala parish, has said he lied about raping his daughter to protect her aggressor and the Church, the Indian Express reported on Saturday.

The victim, a 17-year old student in eleventh grade, gave birth to a baby last month.

Her father said he turned in the priest, 48-year old Father Robin Vaddakumchiryil, after being taken into custody and told he would be behind bars for a long time, the Indian Express report said.

He said the priest “wanted someone to take responsibility” for the baby’s birth, the report added.

Meanwhile, the girl’s mother told the Indian Express that she and her husband remain “faithfully loyal” to the Church, and their daughter “is determined to fight back by focusing on her studies.”

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COLOMBIA/NEW YORK
BishopAccountability.org

Summary of Case: Jaime H. aka James Duenas was ordained in his native Colombia in 1950. In the late 1960s he began work in the Archdiocese of New York, assisting in parishes in Manhattan, Staten Island, Tuxedo, the Bronx and North Tarrytown. Beginning in 1991 and for nearly 25 years, he was the sole priest at Nativity of Our Blessed Lady in the Bronx. Of note are several unexplained gaps in his assignment history – the Official Catholic Directory does not index him 1974-1978 or 1981-1984.

In August 2011 a 16-year-old girl reported to police that Duenas, age 87, had sexually abused her in the rectory of Nativity of Our Blessed Lady over a three-day period during the previous week. She had recently been hired to work at the parish. Duenas was arrested and charged with sexual abuse, forcible touching and endangering the welfare of a child. He pleaded guilty to the charges, but told police, “The girl was wearing short skirts” and “she didn’t mind the massage.” He was suspended from ministry.

Duenas died June 6, 2014. Later the same month his victim filed a civil lawsuit.

Ordained: 1950

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GUAM
The Guam Daily Post

Neil Pang | The Guam Daily Post Mar 12, 2017

A legal counsel for the Archdiocese of Agana intends to argue for the dismissal of the 25 child sex abuse cases currently sitting in the U.S. District Court of Guam by challenging the legality of the law which lifted the statute of limitations on civil action for child sex abuse.

Public Law 33-187, formerly Bill 326-33, was signed into law in September 2016 and opened the door for civil action against perpetrators of child sex abuse.

Court documents filed in federal court yesterday indicate that the archdiocese’s counsel, Attorney John Terlaje, will file a motion to dismiss all 25 cases and intends to challenge the legality of the law, which permitted the suits to be filed in the first place.

Former Sen. Frank Blas Jr., who co-sponsored the original legislation that lifted the statute of limitations, told The Guam Daily Post he was not concerned about the challenge and believed the law would pass muster in court.

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SCOTLAND
The Sunday Times

Mark Macaskill
March 12 2017
The Sunday Times

Dozens of victims of childhood abuse have threatened to withdraw from a Scottish inquiry amid concern they will be stripped of their anonymity if they give evidence.

At least 50 individuals who say they were sexually and physically abused as children have expressed deep misgivings after Lady Smith, a judge who is chairing the Scottish child abuse inquiry, warned that organisations or individuals accused of child abuse may be told the names of their accusers.

In Care Abuse Survivors (Incas), a charity awarded core participant status at the inquiry, said about 30 people had threatened to back out, including some who have given statements but have since refused to sign them. Wellbeing Scotland, a charity fighting for core status, said about 20 victims of childhood abuse had decided against giving evidence.

Under the terms of the inquiry, Lady Smith has discretion to grant a restriction order that would preserve an individual’s anonymity. However, she has made it clear that there is “no blanket rule” and that the inquiry is legally obliged to “be fair to everyone involved”.

Amid mounting concern over the issue, campaigners met inquiry officials last week and requested that survivors are given ample warning that their name is to be released, so they can make representations and seek a restriction order under section 19 of the Inquiries Act.

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SCOTLAND
Herald Scotland

Paul Hutcheon, Investigations Editor / @paulhutcheon

SCOTLAND’s beleaguered child abuse inquiry has suffered another setback after the Government sent out a desperate appeal for staff to work on its side of the investigation.

A leaked email reveals the Government is at “serious risk” of missing a deadline set by the inquiry and warns of a “potential loss of credibility” among stakeholders.

Scottish Labour MSP Iain Gray said: “How many crises does it take before the Scottish Government gets a grip of this?”

Established in 2015, the inquiry is examining the abuse of children in care going back decades. It is currently taking evidence from people who were abused and a report is expected by late 2019.

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NEW HAMPSHIRE
Union Leader

By DAVE SOLOMON

IN THE MAD DASH to wrap up Thursday’s marathon session of the House of Representatives, Speaker Shawn Jasper, R-Hudson, presided over a series of tabling motions that left questions about the fate of several bills, including the so-called “Pedophile Protection Act,” HB 106.

That bill, which requires corroborating evidence in sexual assault prosecutions, was widely considered dead on arrival in the House, yet was tabled.

As evening approached, the House still had 22 bills to deal with, and Republican leadership was growing concerned about keeping enough Republicans in their seats.

Democrats had already tried once to revive a bill on civil rights protections for transgender individuals, and would likely try again if enough Republicans left the chamber, and enough Democrats stayed behind.

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NORTH CAROLINA
Associated Press

BY ALEX SANZ AND MITCH WEISS
ASSOCIATED PRESS

SPINDALE, N.C. (AP) — A North Carolina district attorney says two assistant prosecutors no longer work for him amid charges they sabotaged investigations into abuse in their secretive religious sect.

District Attorney David Learner’s Friday announcement came just two days after he asked the State Bureau of Investigation to look into allegations by former Word of Faith Fellowship members against Frank Webster and Chris Back. As part of an ongoing investigation by The Associated Press, nine ex-congregants had said the men, both of them ministers of the sect, provided legal advice, helped at strategy sessions and participated in a mock trial for four congregants charged with harassing a former member.

“I cannot allow the integrity of the office to be called into question,” Learner said in a statement. “My administration is dedicated to the fair and impartial administration of criminal justice.”

The ex-congregants also said that Back and Webster, who is sect leader Jane Whaley’s son-in-law, helped disrupt a social services investigation into child abuse in 2015, and had attended meetings where Whaley warned congregants to lie to investigators about abuse incidents.

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NORTH CAROLINA
WLOS

by Frank Kracher

SPINDALE, N.C. (WLOS) —
Former members of a controversial North Carolina church gathered in Spindale on Saturday for a community meeting.

More than 100 people listened to stories of former Word of Faith Fellowship members, who consider themselves “survivors.”

They left the Rutherford County-based church because they said they’d been physically and psychologically abused.

This gathering comes after a district attorney for three counties asked the state to investigate two of his assistant prosecutors for alleged involvement in coaching defendants as part of cases against Word of Faith Fellowship. Two days after he announced the request, DA David Learner released a statement saying those two prosecutors were no longer working for him.

Those who spoke on Saturday said their parents were already members. So, as children, they had no choice to leave on their own.

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IRELAND
RTE News

The Catholic Archbishop of Tuam has called for a detailed examination of the role of the Church and the State in the running of mother and baby homes.

In a homily delivered at mass this evening, Dr Michael Neary said the Commission of Investigation must deliver clear and objective findings, no matter what the consequences for the institutions involved.

It was reported last week that “significant quantities” of human remains were discovered at the site of a former mother-and-baby home in Tuam, Co Galway.

The mother and baby home was run by the Bon Secours order from 1925 to 1961.

It is the second weekend in a row that the Archbishop has used his homily to deal with the fallout from the recent update from the Commission.

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IRELAND
Dublin Live

BY CLAIRE SCOTT
11 MAR 2017

James Fenning has little memory of the years he spent in one of Ireland’s most infamous Mother and Baby Homes, The Bethany Home in Dublin.

James says part of himself doesn’t want to recall that time in his life, and he still suffers ailments that stem from the treatment he endured there.

The home, which opened in 1921 in Rathgar, subsequently moved to the Orwell Road before closing in 1972.

Many survivors claim to have suffered severe physical abuse and neglect at the hands of those who ran the notorious institution.

Its now believed up to 247 children died in Bethany Home following research carried out by survivor and author, Derek Linster.

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IRELAND
Irish Times

Ciarán D’Arcy

A local historian whose research led to last week’s Tuam babies announcement says she believes there are “many mass graves” at former mother and baby homes throughout Ireland.

Catherine Corless said further remains of infants are likely to be found within the grounds of the Tuam home, and called on investigators to explore other sites.

“I think there are many mass graves around Ireland in the mother and baby homes. Tuam is the little bit worse, the fact that it was a sewage area,” she said.

The so-called “kitchen table historian” said that her interest in the topic began from an early age when “miserable”, raggedly-dressed children from the home attended her school.

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AUSTRALIA
news.com.au

MARCH 12, 2017

Megan Neil
Australian Associated Press

The extent of child sex abuse in the Australian Anglican Church will be laid bare as its leaders answer for what one bishop describes as a protection racket for pedophiles.

Church records on child sex abuse claims will be released as its senior leaders face the royal commission’s final Anglican hearing that begins in Sydney on Friday.

University of Sydney law professor Patrick Parkinson says there are pockets within the Anglican Church that have pretty appalling records of child abuse.

“There’s definitely pockets of real shame in the Anglican Church,” Professor Parkinson told AAP.
“What you see is an appalling history in certain parts of the Anglican Church but I don’t think it’s fair to say that that’s uniform across the Anglican Church as a whole.”

The royal commission has examined child abuse in a number of Anglican dioceses including Newcastle and Grafton, as well as a network of pedophiles in the Church of England Boys’ Society.

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IRELAND
Irish Times

Ciarán D’Arcy

Independent Alliance minister John Halligan has compared child mortality rates in mother and baby homes to Nazi concentration camps.

The Waterford TD also said religious orders found guilty of criminal neglect should have their assets seized.

The Minister of State for Training and Skills said elderly nuns who worked in the homes should be interviewed as part of expected criminal investigations to be conducted by gardaí.

“Old age should not diminish accountability for any crime or alleged crime. If you bear in mind that the child mortality rate at Bessborough in 1943 was approaching 70 per cent, sure that’s similar to concentration camps,” he said.

“Are we seriously saying that because somebody is ill or aged that we shouldn’t at least interview them? If you look at what’s happened at Belsen, Auschwitz, Dachau, even up to last year individuals who are alleged to have carried out horrendous crimes in their 80s and 90s were interviewed.”

Mr Halligan was speaking to RTÉ Radio on Saturday in the wake of confirmation last week from the Mother and Baby Homes Commission that “significant quantities” of human remains found at a mother and baby home in Tuam run by the Bon Secours Sisters belonged to young infants.

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IRELAND
Irish Independent

Maeve Sheehan
March 12 2017

The Archbishop of Tuam has called for the probe into the scandal of mother and baby homes to be widened beyond religious orders.

Archbishop Michael Neary also apologised for the role of the Catholic church “as part of that time and society” when “particular children and their mothers were not welcomed, they were not wanted and they were not loved”.

The Archbishop delivered a homily at the Cathedral of the Assumption in Tuam yesterday, near where children’s remains were discovered on the site of what was St Mary’s mother and baby home run by the Bon Secours sisters.

Speaking yesterday, he said there is “an urgent need for an enquiry to examine all aspects of life at the time, broadening the focus from one particular religious congregation, and instead addressing the roles and interrelationships between church, State, local authorities and society generally.”

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IRELAND
Breaking News

The Archbishop of Tuam says the Mother and Baby Home inquiry should look at society in general, and not just the religious order that ran the institution.

Dr Michael Neary made the call in a homily this evening in the Cathedral of the Assumption in Tuam.

Archbishop Neary said there was an understandable sense of shared anger about what had happened in Tuam, but warned that the use of what he called “highly-charged emotive language,” may be counter-productive.

Dr Neary said he would like to see the inquiry into the Mother and Baby Home look into all aspects of life at the time, not just the Bon Secours sisters who ran the institution.

He hoped it would look at the relationships between Church, State, local authorities and society generally.

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IRELAND
The Sunday Times (UK)

Justine McCarthy
March 12 2017
The Sunday Times

The Catholic archbishop of Tuam, Micheal Neary, has called for the inquiry into mother-and-baby homes to be widened beyond “one particular religious congregation” and to look at society’s stigmatisation of single mothers.

In a homily last night, Neary said confirmation by the Mother and Baby Homes Commission that “a significant number” of remains were interred in a sewerage chamber in the grounds of the Tuam home run by the Bon Secours nuns was “deeply distressing”.

Noting that compassion and mercy had been “sorely lacking” in Irish society at the time, Neary said: “It was an era when unmarried mothers — as our society at the time labelled women who were pregnant and not married — were often judged, stigmatised and ostracised by their own community and the church, and this all happened in a harsh and unforgiving climate.”

He said this dimension of social history needed to be examined to explain what happened. “Perhaps we could begin with this fundamental question: how could the culture of Irish society, which purported to be defined by Christian values, have allowed itself to behave in such a manner towards our most vulnerable?”

Neary said there was an “urgent need” for an inquiry to examine all aspects of life at the time, broadening the focus from one particular religious congregation, and addressing the inter-relationships between church, state, local authorities and society.

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ROME
Yahoo! News

Catherine MARCIANO
AFP News
March 11, 2017

Elected in 2013 with a brief to reform a scandal-hit Vatican, Pope Francis has launched numerous initiatives but, four years later, he is still struggling to deliver real change.

As he celebrates his fourth anniversary at the head of the Catholic Church on Monday, the affable Argentine continues to bask in a remarkable level of popularity around the world thanks to his popular touch, plain speaking and his humble, modest style.

But inside the Vatican Curia there is not always the same enthusiasm for a pope who has regularly lambasted the administration that runs the global church. …

The sensitive issue of clerical sex crimes illustrated this double difficulty last week when Irish abuse survivor Marie Collins resigned from the pope’s advisory panel on the issue blaming “shameful” obstruction from within the Curia.

But some Vatican insiders say depictions of a kind of civil war in the upper echelons of the Church are wide of the mark.

“We need to get rid of this cliched idea of a reforming pope on one side and a group trying to block him on the other,” said German cardinal Gerhard Ludwig Muller, the head of the department targeted by Collins’ criticism.

“This simplistic idea of a good pope and a wicked Curia is dangerous for the pontiff because it can leave him isolated,” said Gianni Valente, of the specialist review Vatican Insider.

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AUSTRALIA
news.com.au

MARCH 12, 2017

Megan Neil
Australian Associated Press

The Pope may be retreating from his crackdown on pedophile priests as Vatican bureaucrats do all they can to undermine reform efforts, a senior Australian Catholic official has warned.

The Catholic Church in Australia could end up as a “marginalised rump” unless there is real change to an institutional culture hell-bent on self-protection and self-preservation, Truth Justice and Healing Council CEO Francis Sullivan says.

Mr Sullivan, who has led the Australian church’s response to the four-year child sex abuse royal commission, points to very disturbing recent developments in Rome including reports Pope Francis is starting to go light on some pedophile priests.

“You have to seriously wonder whether this isn’t the Pope backsliding on what has been a strong and determined crackdown on offending priests and the circumstances that allowed abuse to take place,” he said.

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AUSTRALIA
Sky News

The extent of child sex abuse in the Australian Anglican Church will be laid bare as its leaders answer for what one bishop describes as a protection racket for pedophiles.

Church records on child sex abuse claims will be released as its senior leaders face the royal commission’s final Anglican hearing that begins in Sydney on Friday.

University of Sydney law professor Patrick Parkinson says there are pockets within the Anglican Church that have pretty appalling records of child abuse.

‘There’s definitely pockets of real shame in the Anglican Church,’ Professor Parkinson told AAP.

‘What you see is an appalling history in certain parts of the Anglican Church but I don’t think it’s fair to say that that’s uniform across the Anglican Church as a whole.’

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PENNSYLVANIA
Tribune-Democrat

Editorial

The Roman Catholic Diocese of Altoona-Johnstown this past week pledged to tighten guidelines for dealing with priests accused of sexual abuse, and to have an outside committee provide oversight for the welfare of children.

How tragic that the church – any church – must take steps to protect innocent children from the clutches of pedophiles disguised as men of God.

However, we concur with child victim and now advocate and businessman Shaun Dougherty of Johnstown: This is “a great first step” in the push to protect children.

But the effort announced by Bishop Mark Bartchak must be just the beginning in a parade of actions that will not only embrace potential victims in a net of safety, but also will provide comfort and justice for those who have been victimized through the years.

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IRELAND
Irish Independent

Editorial

In a State apology to the women of the Magdalene laundries in 2013, Enda Kenny said that just as the State had accepted its direct involvement, society too had its responsibility to bear. He believed that he spoke for all when he said that we had put away these women “because for too many years we put away our conscience”. People, he said, swapped personal scruples for a solid public apparatus that kept them in tune and in step with a sense of what was ‘proper behaviour’ or the ‘appropriate view’ according to a moral code that was fostered at the time, particularly in the 1930s, ’40s and ’50s. “We lived with the damaging idea that what was desirable and acceptable in the eyes of the Church and the State was the same and interchangeable,” he said.

The recent discovery of a significant number of remains at what was a mother and baby home in Tuam, Co Galway, and the grim expectation that further finds will follow at other such homes around the country, is the latest unfolding in the same story which was not unknown then, but was deeply hidden, buried if you like, in the secret chambers of the nation’s often cruel and twisted heart. We are reminded of a scene from Tom Murphy’s extraordinary play Bailegangaire. “Another story,” protests Mary when Dolly plans to explain away an “illegitimate” child: “Oh the saga will go on.”

The saga is ongoing until the full truth is known, if never quite fully reconciled. In that sense, Murphy’s play is a profound part of the national narrative, in the words of Mommo, which has become a litany of “misfortunes”, of “fields haunted by infants”, which made for grim if unspoken news then and it does now, with an essential difference in this so-called modern Ireland, which is that it must be spoken of loudly, and then louder still.

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IRELAND
Irish Independent

Jim Cusack
March 12 2017

A new programme to train gardai in interviewing child sexual abuse victims has been introduced following repeated instances of cases taking up to six years to prosecute.

Last October it was revealed that the case of an eight-year-old girl allegedly raped by a teenage boy during a party at her home was left languishing in the Garda’s system for six years before it was finally dropped.

Various failures were highlighted by a Garda Siochana Ombudsman Commission (GSOC) investigation into the case of ‘Miss A’ who was attacked at her home in July 2008.

The case was initially investigated and was “almost complete” within a month but then left for six years owing to a “systems failure'” GSOC concluded. The prosecution was then dropped.

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INDIA
The New Indian Express

By Ajay Kanth | Express News Service | Published: 12th March 2017

KOZHIKODE: A spurt in child sexual abuse cases was recorded for the period February- March 2017. “It’s an anomaly”. “Blame poor policing”. “The numbers are inflated”. This was the common refrain that echoed from the pulpit of newsrooms and through screaming headlines.

Sadly, reality lies somewhere far away. The spurt in abuse cases cannot be bracketed to a particular period or month or shrugged off as a ‘rare phenomenon’. It is unequivocally a sickening trend prevailing in Kerala right from 2013.

Ever since the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences Act (POCSO) came into being, sexual offences of all nature against children were registered under this Act. Data with police reveals the number of POCSO cases have been on the rise since 2013.

Even if we analyse the number of cases in the first quarter of each year between 2013 and 2017, we could see a steady spike in cases registered between January and March. Senior police officers said the scenario in Kerala has been really disturbing for the last couple of years and the sudden hype in the media is the fallout of a campaign unleashed by people with vested interests.

“The Kottiyoor rape incident involving a priest has triggered a chain reaction. And catching on the trend, details of other cases started hogging the media limelight.

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UNITED STATES
Crux

Catholic News Service March 11, 2017
CONTRIBUTOR

WASHINGTON, D.C. – Catholic News Service asked Father Michael Fuller, executive director of the Secretariat of Doctrine and Canonical Affairs at the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, to explain the difference between3. Why do some people suggest that not being married might be a cause for child sexual abuse? ,,,

3. Why do some people suggest that not being married might be a cause for child sexual abuse?

This is a difficult one, and must first be answered by the fact that studies conclude that there is no link between celibacy and child sexual abuse. For thousands of years, and in many different religious traditions, celibacy has been practiced and has not been a cause for child sexual abuse. In our times, people have a great difficulty in thinking anyone could live a life of celibacy (even with the countless number of people who do) and so they think that there must be a link between the two.

Our culture today is oversexualized, which has led us to think that sexual relationships are something unreasonable or unnatural to forgo, and so when there is a crisis such as child sexual abuse, people believe there is a link, when of course, there is not one. Sadly, child sexual abuse is all too common, and involves abusers from all walks of life and it is something that should never happen. One good that has come out of this crisis is the growing awareness of this terrible abuse, which is leading to better means of prevention. celibacy and chastisty, a promise and a vow.

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GHANA
GhanaWeb

The lawyer for Bishop Daniel Obinim has accused the complainant in the case in which the bishop has been charged for abusing two teenagers of being an opportunist.

At yesterday’s hearing at the Accra Circuit Court, Lawyer Raphael Poku Adusei claimed the complainant, Ms Irene Abochie-Nyahe, was seeking fame and an opportunity to advance her legal career.

He further submitted that the complainant and her organisation, known as Legal Assistance Network Ghana, wanted to ride on the back of the popularity of Bishop Obinim to attract media attention.

“Your motivation in this case is to be popular in order to advertise your services to the public. You also want to make yourself relevant in the legal profession,’’ he said.

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IRELAND
Irish Times

Pat Leahy

The agreement between the State and the country’s religious orders has been repeatedly questioned since it came to light in the months after it was agreed in 2002.

Minister for Education Richard Bruton said on Friday that “moral pressure” will be applied on the orders, in a bid to persuade them to contribute more of the cost of compensating abuse victims.

Experience, however, suggests that the prospects for translating moral pressure into hard cash are mixed at best.

Legally, the 2002 deal it is rock solid. There is no unpicking it; that much is clear.

What is much less clear is why the State agreed it in the first place.

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PENNSYLVANIA
The Tribune-Democrat

By Dave Sutor
dsutor@tribdem.com

Children – and the adults they eventually become – are obviously the individuals most directly affected when a pedophile religious leader commits a sexual assault.

But they often do not suffer alone.

Family members and friends watch their loved ones wrestle with substance abuse, post-traumatic stress disorder, depression, anti-authority anger and self-destructive inter-personal relationships – while often not even knowing the root cause of their emotional struggles.

Helping victims interact with those closest to them – in order to create stronger relationships – is part of the mission being carried out by the newly formed Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests that was founded by John Nesbella and Thomas Venditti.

“We keep talking about the victim – like me, as a victim,” said Shaun Dougherty, a SNAP supporter from Johnstown. “Well, there’s a whole circle around me that’s also affected by this. My family’s been affected by this. My friends have been affected by this. Past jobs have been affected by this. Past relationships have been affected by this.”

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NEW YORK
Road to Recovery

Discovery of “mass baby grave” behind nuns’ convent and residence for women and babies in Tuam, Galway, Ireland, demands a reassessment of the St. Patrick’s Day celebrations throughout the world, especially in New York City

The New York City St. Patrick’s Day Parade Committee has rejected a request by Road to Recovery, Inc., to enter a contingent of marchers in the March 17, 2017, parade in order to honor the deceased babies who were recently found in a mass grave in Tuam, County Galway, Ireland

Parade President and Director, Dr. John Lahey, and New York Archbishop Cardinal Timothy Dolan must honor and reverence the deceased babies of Galway and all of Ireland by asking marchers and others to demonstrate their sadness and horror with a gesture of solidarity (such as wearing black armbands) and ordering Catholic parishes and institutions to schedule memorial services

What
A gathering of abuse survivors, advocates, concerned Catholics, and the general public to memorialize and reverence the deceased babies, toddlers, and infants from the “mass grave” uncovered behind the Bon Secours sisters’ home and convent in County Galway, Ireland, and to call on St. Patrick’s Parade Committee President and Director, Dr. John Lahey, and Archbishop of New York, Cardinal Timothy Dolan to ask marchers to express their solidarity with the deceased babies and their families with an outward gesture or ritual which respects and memorializes the deceased children and their families

When
Sunday, March 12, 2017 at from 10:00 AM until Noon

Where
On the public sidewalk outside St. Patrick’s Cathedral, Fifth Avenue and East 50th Street, Manhattan, NYC, 10022

Who
Members of Road to Recovery, Inc., a non-profit charity that assists victims of sexual abuse and their families, including its co-founder and President, Robert M. Hoatson, Ph.D.; victim/survivors of clergy and religious sexual abuse; concerned Catholics and citizens

Why
The recent unearthing of what officials called “significant quantities of human remains” in a mass grave located behind the former St. Mary’s Mother and Baby Home in Tuam, County Galway, Ireland, is horrific, outrageous, and unacceptable. Further disturbing information indicated that the remains were located in a chamber that was part of or very near to a septic tank. It is believed that the remains of upwards of 8,000 babies will be uncovered in mass graves located at Catholic facilities for women and babies throughout Ireland. In light of this astounding and troubling information, clergy and religious abuse victims and their supporters will call upon leaders of the St. Patrick’s Day Parade in New York City, the largest St. Patrick’s Day parade in the world, to “tone down” the 2017 parade celebration by expressing their compassion for the victims and their families through a public gesture during the parade and recommending the scheduling of memorial services in Catholic parishes and institutions throughout the Archdiocese of New York and the United States of America.

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

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ITALIA
Il Giornale Italiano

[Taranto. Bride and priest are caught making love before her marriage to boyfriend Massimo. She had been in a relationship with the priest for two years. The shouts could be heard up to inside the church.]

Alla fine non gli è rimasto altro che confessare, queste le parole di Roberta fidanzata da 10 anni con Massimo e beccata da quest’ultimo, pochi minuti prima delle nozze, mentre faceva l’amore con il parroco che avrebbe dovuto sposarli: “Ho avuto una relazione con Padre Giuseppe (ndr: tutti i nomi che usiamo sono di fantasia, i protagonisti hanno chiesto di non divulgare le loro identità) per due anni, lui mi capisce come nessuno, io lo amo ma lui ama Dio”

La storia di Padre Giuseppe non è l’unica a scuotere il mondo della Chiesa in questo ultimo periodo. Claudia, che ha raccontato di avere avuto una relazione con un prete per ben due anni. La relazione è iniziata gradualmente. La donna aveva appena litigato con il suo futuro marito e il suo rapporto stava passando un periodo di profonda crisi. Aveva così trovato un supporto nel suo sacerdote che all’inizio la consolava con teneri abbracci. Ma questi, con il passare del tempo, sono diventati sempre più profondi e alla fine si sono trasformati in rapporti completi.

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IRELAND
Clare Champion

KILRUSH historian Rita McCarthy, who investigated the operation of the County Clare Nursery on the Cooraclare road in the town, believes it is unlikely that any babies are buried on or close to the site.

It follows revelations of the discovery of human remains at the site of the Mother and Baby Home in Tuam, County Galway.

The nursery in Kilrush is one of the mother and baby homes nationwide that is part of the Mother and Baby Home Commission of Investigation, which was established on February 17, 2015 and is chaired by Judge Yvonne Murphy. The home in Kilrush was operated by Clare County Council from 1922-1932.

Ms McCarthy told The Clare Champion that she could not yet reveal details of her contribution to the report, which is likely to be published in 2018.

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IRELAND
IrishCentral

796 babies and toddlers died in the Tuam Mother and Baby home between the years of 1925 and 1960, after horrific neglect and lack of basic care. The home was run by the Bon Secours sisters. The name Bon Secours means “Good Help,” the very opposite of what was provided.

Now we are publishing all their names, those tiny humans whose lives were not worth a piece of dirt to those charged with caring for them, or to the men who fathered and abandoned them. By naming we wish to give them a moment of recognition, no longer just a name on a death certificate.

The sentiment towards the out of wedlock kids was best summarized by a medical doctor:

“A great many people are always asking what is the good of keeping these children alive? I quite agree that it would be a great deal kinder to strangle these children at birth than to put them out to nurse.” — Doctor Ella Webb, June 18, 1924, speaking about illegitimate children in care in Ireland at the time

Elaine Byrne, a columnist with the Sunday Business Post in Ireland, discovered the quote above as she researched how up to 800 children were allowed to die by the Bon Secours sisters in Tuam, County Galway.

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GUAM
The Guam Daily Post

Mindy Aguon | For The Guam Daily Post

Two lawsuits filed in the Superior Court last week not only seek monetary damages determined during a jury trial, but a court order imposing a number of conditions on the Archdiocese of Agana and the Boy Scouts of America to prevent sexual abuse from happening.

Attorney Anthony C. Perez and off-island law firms James, Vernon & Weeks and Rosenberg McKay Hoffman represent two clients who came forward alleging they were repeatedly sexually abused by former San Isidro Catholic Church priest, Father Louis Brouillard, in the 1970s.

Anthony Ray Mantanona and Michael Chargualaf, through their attorneys, have asked for an unspecified amount of monetary damages for the gross negligence of the two entities as well as the severe and permanent injuries, emotional distress and mental anguish caused by the abuse to be determined during a jury trial.

Ensuring the protection of future children

The lawsuits also seek equitable relief asking the court to order the Archdiocese of Agana and the Boy Scouts of America to do the following:

* Post on the home page of their websites, the names of all known members of the Archdiocese and Boy Scouts of America who are identified in the complaint or are otherwise known as sexual abusers;
* Establish a toll-free number and website where anonymous abuse complaints can be made;
* Adopt a whistleblower policy concerning the method by which a report concerning abuse within the Archdiocese and Boy Scouts of America can be made;
* Make the archbishop or bishop on Guam available upon reasonable notice to have a private conference with any survivor of sexual abuse perpetrated by a priest, educational, religious or other agent of the Archdiocese;
* Send letters of apology to the plaintiff taking responsibility for the abuse; and
* Ensure any future settlement related to sexual abuse entered into by the Archdiocese and Boy Scouts of America does not contain any confidentiality provision except at the written request of the abuse victim.

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PENNSYLVANIA
Times-Tribune

BY PETER CAMERON, STAFF WRITER / PUBLISHED: MARCH 11, 2017

A New Jersey priest who kept a Wayne County apartment he called his “day off place” pleaded guilty Friday to downloading child pornography there.

The Rev. Kevin A. Gugliotta, 55, of Mahwah, New Jersey, pleaded guilty to dissemination of photos/film of child sex acts, a felony, Wayne County District Attorney Janine Edwards announced Friday.

He faces a maximum of seven years in prison. Sentencing is scheduled for June 8. The priest remains locked up in the Wayne County Correctional Facility.

Law enforcement officers arrested the priest in October. He downloaded child pornography, then uploaded files on 20 separate occasions to the website chatstep.com in the summer of 2016 from his apartment at 108 Third St., Gouldsboro, in Lehigh Twp., Edwards said.

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IRELAND
Irish Times

Colm Keena

The Christian Brothers rejected a Government proposal that playing fields associated with their schools be transferred to a trust they had established but with the proviso that they could not be sold without the State’s permission.

It emerged on Thursday that a 2009 proposal from the congregation, made in the wake of the Ryan Report on abuse in religious run institutions, had been withdrawn in 2015.

The 2009 offer was for the transfer of playing fields that had an estimated value at the time of €127 million.

The congregation’s offer was that the land be placed in a joint trust established by the State and the Edmund Rice Schools Trust (ERST), a body established in 2008 by the brothers and into which schools with a value of €400 million have been settled.

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AUSTRALIA
The Courier

Melissa Cunningham
@MeljCunningham

11 Mar 2017

Rob Walsh’s soul has been broken.

His brothers Damien and Noel Walsh, and cousin Martin Walsh were all sexually abused by Catholic Clergy.

In the years following, each of them suicided.

“The church destroyed my family unit, it broke our souls,” he says his eyes filling up with tears.

“I was once told you could break a man and you can. But how do you put that man back together?”

Noel, 19, died in a single car crash which Mr Walsh later determined by talking to police and doctors was suicide.

Martin suicided at the age of 22, shortly after finishing his carpentry apprenticeship.

Damien was 46 when he was found dead in his garage.

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ITALY
AOL

[with video]

Byline: Patrick Baldwin

Some sex scandals are popping up in the Pope’s backyard. There are claims of orgies, prostitution, and porn in some Italian parishes. This all comes out as Pope Francis is demanding higher standards for men of the cloth.

In Naples, one priest is suspended. The story is that he may have hosted orgies and hired prostitutes online.

Then in the northern city of Padua, a priest could be defrock for what looks to be his swinging lifestyle. One report says he had up to 30 lovers.

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UNITED KINGDOM
The Times

Sean O’Neil, Chief Reporter
March 11 2017
The Times

Britain’s largest public inquiry could seek access to the royal archives after hearing evidence that they hold material relevant to investigations into child abuse cover-ups.

The independent inquiry into child sexual abuse (IICSA) — which has declared that “no one, no matter how apparently powerful, will be allowed to obstruct our inquiries” — believes that the archives contain evidence about Fairbridge, a charity with high-level royal connections which was heavily involved in child migration schemes.

Thousands of children suffered harsh physical punishment and sexual assaults at remote farm schools run by Fairbridge in Western Australia, which were visited by members of the royal family.

Documents disclosed at the inquiry show that Queen Elizabeth, mother of the present Queen, intervened in 1951 in the case of a woman seeking the return of her foster daughter from Fairbridge. Missing links in the chain of correspondence are believed to be in the royal archives at Windsor.

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IRELAND
The Journal

LAST TUESDAY IN Leader’s questions, Enda Kenny said, “no nuns broke into our homes to kidnap our children. We gave them up to what we convinced ourselves was the nuns’ care”.

After numerous reports since the 90s, after the Commission to Inquire into Child Abuse, the McAleese Report, and the subsequent redress schemes, this is what the Taoiseach had to contribute around the deplorable events that are being uncovered.

The Taoiseach and various other high profile government politicians have made similar remarks in relation to the financial crisis, and the subsequent recession in Ireland, that it was our fault that we partied too hard.

Here, we have it all over again: it’s our fault that children were incarcerated in these institutions.
Revisionism of our horrible history

Not only is this statement a complete revisionism of our very recent murky history of institutionalised welfare, but it completely lets the Catholic Church and the state off the hook.

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IRELAND
Irish Examiner

Saturday, March 11, 2017

Olivia Kelleher

The true picture of what happened in Bessborough Mother and Baby Home in Cork may be difficult to hear but it needs to come out, the Bishop of Cloyne, William Crean said yesterday.

In an interview with Cork’s Red FM, Dr Crean said the story of what happened at the home should be told.

“This is part of our national story in the 20th century. It is only unfolding slowly. The truth may be very difficult. But it is best we have the truth in relation to it,” he said.

In 1922 the Sacred Heart Home in Bessborough, Co Cork, managed by the Sisters of the Sacred Hearts of Jesus and Mary, was opened. Similar homes were set up by them in Roscrea, Co Tipperary, and Castlepollard, Co Westmeath, in the 1930s.

Following the discovery of human remains in a mass grave on the grounds of the mother and baby home in Tuam, Co Galway, there have been calls for similar investigations to take place in other facilities. The Mother and Baby Homes Commission says there is no decision to carry out any excavations at Bessborough.

June Goulding, a midwife who worked at Bessborough from 1951, described conditions there in The Light in the Window.

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IRELAND
Irish Mirror

BY DARAGH SMALL
11 MAR 2017

A woman told a protest on Friday night that she could have been one of the Tuam cess pit babies.

Speaking at the Bon Secours Hospital in Galway, Bernie Kerridge, 59, said her turmoil extends far beyond last Friday when the nation learned of the extent of the tragedy.

The grim discovery of 796 infants dumped in a septic tank at the former mother and baby home in Co Galway was confirmed last week.

Born in 1957, Bernie lived at the hellhole for 11 months before her adoption and her mother was sent to the US.

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IRELAND
Irish Examiner

Saturday, March 11, 2017

By Noel Baker
Senior Reporter

Minister for Children Katherine Zappone says she will know within weeks how a proposed broadening of the Commission of Inquiry into Mother and Baby Homes will look, as she noted: “The dead do not lie.”

Her pledge to widen the scope of the terms of reference of the inquiry came as her ministerial colleague John Halligan said old age should not diminish accountability in the Tuam mother and baby home scandal, arguing that any surviving Bon Secours nuns who ever worked at the home should be questioned by gardaí.

Ms Zappone said she has seen grown men cry in her presence in recent weeks regarding revelations from the past, as she suggested a way could be found that would entitle survivors of abuse — not just those who were resident in mother and baby homes — to tell their stories.

Appearing on Today with Sean O’Rourke on RTÉ radio, she said the country is trying to come to terms with “a really dark period in our history” and she wants to explore options regarding the terms of reference.

“It will be a number of weeks, I expect,” said Ms Zappone of the likely timeframe in deciding on a model, having previously cited tribunals and commissions in South Africa, Argentina, and Chile.

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IRELAND
Irish Examiner

Saturday, March 11, 2017

By Conall Ó Fátharta
Irish Examiner Reporter

The Tuam mother and baby home should not be treated as an individual scandal, but as part of a national trafficking network that commodified people, says Conall Ó Fátharta.

“This may prove to be a scandal that dwarfs other, more recent issues with the Church and State…”

There’s that word, “scandal”, again. As a nation, we don’t tire of hearing it.

That time it was used by senior management in the HSE, in 2012, in relation to the contents of an archive of the Tuam mother and baby home, two years before the Tuam babies scandal broke. It wasn’t the first time the word was used in relation to mother and baby homes and the horrors they hold.

Seventy years earlier, the same word was used by parliamentary secretary to the then minister for local government and public health, Dr Con Ward, in relation to an 82% infant death rate at the Bessborough Mother and Baby Home. That rate had been reported to state inspectors.

Two things are instructive. Not only has the State known for decades about this issue, but it is impossible to look at Tuam, or mother and baby homes, in isolation. Yet, that is exactly how this issue is playing out.

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IRELAND
Irish Independent

Eilish O’Regan
March 11 2017

Peter Mulryan (73) discovered he had a sister only two years ago – and now his greatest wish is that she is still alive so they can make up for decades of lost time.

Mr Mulryan, from Derrymullen in Ballinasloe, Co Galway, is now ill with cancer and said he had no access to files about Marian Bridget Mulryan.

It is thanks to Catherine Corless, the Tuam historian, that he found out his sister was listed among those who had died at just nine months of age and was buried in the nearby grounds.

He has a birth record, a death certificate and the cause of death, convulsions.

But because the records are so unreliable he clings to the hope that she may have been adopted and that is why he desperately needs to see her file.

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IRELAND
Irish Independent

Shane Phelan
March 11 2017

The religious order at the centre of the Tuam babies burial scandal has been paid €43.5m over the past 10 years by the private hospital group it runs.

Accounts for Bon Secours Health System Ltd reveal the payments were made to Bon Secours Sisters Ireland in respect of the leasing of buildings and interest on loans advanced by the order.

The payments mean that, unlike many other religious orders in Ireland, the Bon Secours Sisters are in rude financial health.

However, the order has refused to say what it does with the money paid to it by the hospital group.

Its finances have come under sharp focus in recent days, with calls made in the Dáil and the Seanad for the order’s resources to be made available to survivors of the Tuam home and relatives of those who died.

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IRELAND
Irish Sun

Our columnist Rebecca also gives her guide to the IFTAs and those who took to the streets on International Women’s Day to protest the 8th Amendment

By Rebecca Barker
11th March 2017

THE empty plot belies the truth of the horrors it hides.

Situated quietly in humdrum suburbia, the former site of the Bon Secours Sisters home for unmarried mothers was officially exposed as a mass grave for babies this week.

A single plaque on the wall outside reveals the heartbreak of the local community in Tuam, horrified at the tragedies that once unfolded in their midst.

This week, the results of the excavation dig at the Galway site were finally made available by the Mother and Baby Homes Commission of Investigation — and it revealed that up to 800 babies were buried there from 1925 to 1961.

The dig report makes for uncomfortable reading. It reveals “significant quantities of human remains aged from 35 foetal weeks to three years” were discovered in what appeared to be a septic tank at the State-funded, Church-run home. Although the institution was demolished in the 1970s, it was only the tireless work of locals such as historian Catherine Corless who brought the mass grave to the attention of the world.

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IRELAND
Crux

Charles Collins March 10, 2017
EDITOR

The Vatican’s representative to Ireland, New York native Archbishop Charles Brown, is being transferred to Albania after five years of service. He is credited with repairing the relationship between the two states after the leader of the Irish government accused the Vatican of ‘dysfunction, disconnection, elitism and narcissism’ after revelations of clerical sexual abuse.

ROME – The Vatican’s representative to Ireland, Archbishop Charles Brown, is being transferred to Albania after five years of mending ties between the two states.

It’s hard to overestimate the intensity of the crisis that gripped Vatican-Ireland relations when Pope Benedict XVI appointed Brown, then an official at the Vatican’s doctrine office, to the post in 2012.

Michael Kelly, the editor of The Irish Catholic weekly newspaper, told Crux diplomatic ties at the time were “at an all-time low.”

The previous Vatican ambassador to the country, Italian Archbishop Giuseppe Leanza, had been accused by the government of not cooperating with official investigations into the clerical sexual abuse of children. In 2011, Taoiseach (Prime Minister) Enda Kenny famously told the nation’s parliament this showed the “dysfunction, disconnection, elitism and narcissism that dominate the culture of the Vatican to this day.”

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ILLINOIS
America

Judith Valente
March 09, 2017

Illinois Supreme Court Justice Anne Burke has a message for Vatican overseers of clergy sex abuse cases: make all clergy abuse oversight boards lay members only.

Mrs. Burke, who is from Chicago, was an interim chair of the National Review Board that investigated allegations of clergy sexual abuse in the United States and oversaw church compliance with reforms called for in the bishops’ Charter for the Protection of Children and Young People. Commenting on the resignation earlier this month of Marie Collins, the only clergy abuse survivor serving on the Pontifical Commission for the Protection of Minors, she said, “Why would you do something so drastic as step down? It is because you have been so frustrated.”

Ms. Collins, who is from Ireland, resigned in protest, citing a “lack of cooperation” on the part of the Roman curia. Ms. Collins reportedly was concerned that Vatican officials were not responding to letters from sex abuse victims and were blocking efforts to censure bishops who failed to respond adequately to abuse allegations.

According to Mrs. Burke, Ms. Collins’ complaints “mirror” concerns she and other members of the National Review Board raised in the early years of the abuse scandal. “The whole thing spoke to me of ‘nothing’s changed.’”

Mrs. Burke said she was not opposed to clergy serving as liaisons to sex abuse review boards, but that decision-making should rest with lay members who have the independence to investigate and issue findings and recommendations.

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NORTH CAROLINA
WFAE

[with audio]

By GREG COLLARD & THE ASSOCIATED PRESS • 13 HOURS AGO

Two prosecutors are gone from the Catawba County District Attorney’s office following allegations that they derailed criminal investigations into abuse by leaders of a church they attend.

In announcing the shakeup, District Attorney David Learner says he “cannot allow the integrity of the office to be called into question.”

The move comes after the Associated Press reported that nine former members of a church in Spindale called “Word of Faith Fellowship” said that assistant prosecutors Frank Webster and Chris Back helped derail a social services investigation into child abuse in 2015. They also said Whaley warned congregants to lie to investigators about abuse incidents.

In addition, the ex-members said that Webster and Back provided legal advice and participated in a mock trial of four church members charged with harassing a former church member. Webster is the son-in-law of Word of Faith’s leader, Jane Whaley.

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NORTH CAROLINA
Longview News-Journal

By Mitch Weiss and Jeffery Collins
March 11, 2017

A district attorney has asked the state to investigate two assistant prosecutors after an Associated Press story that quoted former congregants of a North Carolina church as saying the men derailed criminal probes into allegations of abuse by sect leaders.

David Learner said Wednesday that he wants the State Bureau of Investigation to look into the accusations against his employees, who are members of the evangelical Word of Faith Fellowship church.

The AP story, released Monday, cited nine former Word of Faith members who said Frank Webster and Chris Back provided legal advice, helped at strategy sessions and participated in a mock trial for four congregants charged with harassing a former member.

The ex-congregants also said that Back and Webster, who is sect leader Jane Whaley’s son-in-law, helped derail a social services investigation into child abuse in 2015 and attended meetings where Whaley warned congregants to lie to investigators about abuse incidents.

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NORTH CAROLINA
Associated Press

BY MITCH WEISS
ASSOCIATED PRESS

SPINDALE, N.C. (AP) — It was the most dreaded place on the Word of Faith Fellowship grounds – a one-story, four-room structure that former members of the sect say was reserved for the most brutal physical and emotional punishment.

Called the Lower Building, the former storage facility was used to house those deemed to be the worst sinners, according to Associated Press interviews with 43 former members of the evangelical church.

And it was there, tucked away in a wooded area behind the sect’s sanctuary, that the beatings were especially prolonged, violent and often focused on sexual behavior, according to many of those speaking out.

Former members recounted dozens of vicious assaults, including one in which a mentally handicapped man was repeatedly punched in his face as he begged for help. Those interviewed also recalled elementary school-age boys placed in the make-shift penitentiary with teens and adults – and felons from the church’s prison ministry.

“No one wanted to be sent to the Lower Building. No one,” said Rick Cooper, 61, who said he was held captive there for a year. “It was a prison without bars.”

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NORTH CAROLINA
Associated Press

BY MITCH WEISS
ASSOCIATED PRESS

SPINDALE, N.C. (AP) — She looks like a successful businesswoman, with her neatly coifed blonde hair, St. John business suit, flashy diamond rings and jewelry dangling from her wrist. And she has devoted followers – an entourage – that hang on her every word and carry out her orders without question.

But Jane Whaley isn’t the chief executive officer of a large corporation. Instead, she’s the 77-year-old leader of a 750-member evangelical church called Word of Faith Fellowship – one that dozens of former members say encourages congregants to violently attack family and friends to beat out imaginary devils they believe are destroying their lives.

So who is Jane Whaley?

Her father owned a plumbing repair company, and her mother was a homemaker. She had two brothers and grew up in a rural North Carolina community in the shadow of the Blue Ridge Mountains during the heart of the Jim Crow era.

After graduating from college, she taught math at a high school and met a deeply religious man from Florence, South Carolina, who would become her husband: Sam Whaley. They had one child and, in the mid-1970s, moved to Tulsa, Oklahoma, so her husband could attend a Bible school. They also traveled the world, preaching the “word of God,” friends said.

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NORTH CAROLINA
Associated Press

BY MITCH WEISS
ASSOCIATED PRESS

SPINDALE, N.C. (AP) — When it comes to relationships, marriage and sex, Word of Faith Fellowship members must follow strict and unusual rules – or risk severe punishment, former members say.

Some of the edicts:

– Congregants need permission from leader Jane Whaley and other ministers to get married, and it then can take months – or even a year – before the newlyweds are allowed to have sex.

– No one is allowed to date without permission, and most relationships and marriages are arranged by Whaley and ministers.

– On their wedding night, couples are permitted only a “godly peck on the cheek.” When they get in bed together, they must roll over and go to sleep.

– For all married couples, love-making is limited to 30 minutes, no foreplay is allowed, the lights must be turned off and only the missionary position is sanctioned.

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NORTH CAROLINA
Associated Press

BY MITCH WEISS
ASSOCIATED PRESS

SPINDALE, N.C. (AP) — Newcomers to the Word of Faith Fellowship live by a list of strict rules for daily life, which sect leader Jane Whaley says God revealed to her, former members say. They include:

– Followers are banned from celebrating birthdays and religious or secular holidays, including Christmas, Easter and the Fourth of July.

– Congregants are prohibited from watching television and movies, reading newspapers, or eating in restaurants that play music or serve alcohol.

– Men and women must swim with shirts covering their upper bodies and cannot take the extra clothing off in public – not even in their own backyards.

– Men cannot grow beards.

– Followers are not allowed to enroll in college without permission and, if permission is granted, can attend only alongside other members so their behavior can be monitored. Whaley also picks their majors, and they must work for the church or a business owned by church leaders once they leave school.

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NORTH CAROLINA
WSPA

By Brianna Smith
Published: March 8, 2017

The Burke County District Attorney has asked the North Carolina State Bureau of Investigations to investigate abuse claims and allegations listed in an Associated Press Article against a Western North Carolina church.

For 18 months, the Associated Press investigated the Word of Faith Fellowship church in Spindale, North Carolina. The reporters talked to 43 members who had left the church, who described years of mental, physical, and sexual abuse.

In a second article, the Associated Press outlined potential cover ups by two employees of the Burke County District Attorney’s Office, Chris Beck and Frank Webster. Both Back and Webster are ministers within the WFF church.

The article detailed that Back and Webster provided legal advice, helped at strategy sessions and participated in a mock trial for four congregants charged with harassing a former member.

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NORTH CAROLINA
WSPA

NEWTON, NC – Two assistant attorneys for North Carolina’s 25 District are no longer working there after an Associated Press investigation outlined potential cover ups of abuse allegations against the Word of Faith Fellowship Church in Spindale.

The news comes after District Attorney David Learner asked the North Carolina State Bureau of Investigations to investigate the allegations listed in the article.

“On Monday, March 6, The Associated Press released a story containing allegations against two Assistant District Attorneys employed by me in the 25th Judicial District. On Tuesday, March 7, I requested that the North Carolina State Bureau of Investigation (SBI) conduct a thorough and impartial investigation into The Associated Press allegations.”

The attorneys are Assistant District Attorney Frank Webster and Assistant District Attorney Chris Back.

Both men are ministers within the church, according to the Associated Press.

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UNITED KINGDOM
The Journal (Ireland)

A FORMER VICAR who abused a choir boy in the UK more than 35 years ago has been jailed for four years today, after his victim gave evidence using eye-tracking technology that turned his blinks into words.

At Bournemouth Crown Court today, 78-year-old Cyril Rowe was found guilty of three counts of indecent assault, which took place at a church in Tower Hamlets, East London, between 1979 and 1981.

The 47-year-old victim, who was only a child at the time the assaults took place, was now suffering from motor neurone disease.

His failing health meant that he could not speak or write.

Despite this, with the help of an intermediary and eye-tracking technology which monitored his blinking, the court heard descriptions from the victim on how Rowe would lock the church door, pin him down and sexually abuse him before apologising and giving him £1.

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UNITED KINGDOM
Mirror

BY ABIGAIL O’LEARY
10 MAR 2017

An ex-vicar has been jailed for sexual abuse of a choirboy after a disabled victim gave evidence using eye-tracking technology for the first time in British legal history.

Victim Michael Kelsick gave evidence to the court from a hospice by blinking when asked questions.

Sadly, Michael died of motor neurone disease in a hospice before hearing his 78-year-old abuser had been found guilty.

Cyril Rowe was sentenced to four years at Bournemouth Crown Court after being convicted of three counts of indecent assault at a Tower Hamlets church in the late 1970s.

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IRELAND
Irish Mirror

BY JAMES WARD
10 MAR 2017

Education Minister Richard Bruton said he will pile “moral pressure” on Church groups to see out their side of the child abuse redress scheme.

Figures released on Thursday showed that the 18 Catholic organisations concerned with the €1.6 billion compensation scheme for survivors have paid just 13% of the amount.

Under a 2002 deal struck by Fianna Fail, the Church and State agreed to a 50:50 shouldering of the responsibility – but so far religious groups have forked out only €209 million of an anticipated €760m.

That deal exonerated the Church from any court action being taken against them, but Minister Bruton insists they must deliver on their promises.

He said: “There is an issue here about taking responsibility. These were institutions where sexual abuse was endemic.

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IRELAND
BBC News

Irish religious orders have defended their contribution towards compensating abuse victims, after a report said millions of euros are yet to be paid.

A financial redress scheme was set up after a 2009 inquiry into the physical, emotional and sexual abuse of children in Catholic-run schools and homes.

The cost of the inquiry and redress is estimated at 1.5bn euros (£1.3bn).

Catholic orders agreed to pay almost one quarter of the bill, but an audit report said they have paid only 13%.

Two orders who promised to pay the most – the Sisters of Mercy and Christian Brothers – have fallen short by tens of millions of euros, according to the report.

But the brothers said the figures were out of date while the nuns said the audit did not take account of the fall in the value of properties they sold to meet the bill.

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NORTHERN IRELAND
The Irish News

ALLISON MORRIS
11 March, 2017

A CAMPAIGNER for victims of State and Church child abuse has said many are in “dangerously, deep despair” over the political crisis which is delaying the implementation of recommendations made in the Historical Institutional Abuse (HIA) report, published earlier this year.

The HIA investigated physical, emotional and sexual abuse between 1922 and 1995 and found systemic wrongdoing at most of the 22 homes it considered.

Margaret McGuckin, of Savia (Survivors and Victims of Institutional Abuse) said some elderly victims now regretting taking part in the lengthy inquiry, feeling they “relived the trauma” of their childhood only to be let down by the current political impasse.

Recommendations for redress, made by retired judge Sir Anthony Hart, included financial compensation of up to £100,000 that would be paid partly by the Stormont Executive and partly by the Church or organisations responsible for running the institutions named in the report.

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UNITED STATES
The Guardian (UK)

Sophia Tewa
Saturday 11 March 2017

Of his eight siblings, Michael Young was the most zealous street missionary. As a child growing up in Monterrey, Mexico, he preached up to 10 hours a day, three to four days each week. He spoke to strangers on the streets and often went door-to-door. He’d ask them, in broken Spanish, if they wished to go to heaven. If they said yes, he would pray for them. If they said no, he would ask for at least a donation to The Family International, a church formerly known as the sex cult The Children of God.

Young’s parents, devout American missionaries who moved to Mexico in 1998, told him that such work was his destiny and duty. The alternative was an afterlife spent in the slums of heaven, a place only slightly better than hell.

When he was eight years old, in 2000, Young’s family moved to Texas and started their missionary work anew in mini-malls and Walmart parking lots, handing out theological tracts about the imminent apocalypse that would soon wipe out the unbelievers.

Young says he was happy. “I was spiritual in a way that was kind of very obsessive and very determined,” he says.

But Young was unaware that his parents’ church was labelled as a sect by the FBI and hounded by child abuse allegations. In a 1974 report, The New York attorney general’s office had also called the Children of God a “cult”. The group’s practices drew investigations from the FBI and Interpol, which were on the hunt for its leader, David Berg. One anonymous informant spoke of rape, incarceration, kidnapping and incest inside the group.

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CANADA
Ottawa Sun

ANDREW DUFFY

FIRST POSTED: FRIDAY, MARCH 10, 2017

Ottawa police have laid four new charges against a retired Catholic priest in connection with alleged sexual assaults at two local churches in the 1960s.

Rev. Barry McGrory, 82, has been charged with two counts of indecent assault on a male, and two counts of gross indecency.

The incidents — two complainants are involved — are alleged to have occurred at Immaculate Heart of Mary Church on Alta Vista Drive, and St. Philip Parish in Richmond.

McGrory was first arrested in November in connection with the alleged sexual assault of a 15-year-old boy in the 1960s.
A pre-trial conference is scheduled for later this month on those charges.

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UNITED KINGDOM
Independent

Harriet Agerholm @HarrietAgerholm

A retired vicar who abused a choirboy more than 35 years ago has been jailed for four years after his victim gave evidence through eye-tracking technology that translated his blinks into words.

Cyril Ashton Rowe, 78, was convicted at Bournemouth Crown Court in February of three counts of indecent assault against the same victim between 1979 and 1981. He was sentenced at the same court to four years in prison.

His victim – who was abused between the ages of nine and 11 – died of motor neurone disease on the day the verdict was returned.

He died before he could be informed of the jury’s conclusion, although he had achieved his dying wish of giving evidence against Rowe, the Crown Prosecution service said in a statement

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ROME
Catholic Culture

March 10, 2017

A member of the Pope’s special commission on sexual abuse has indicated that it is an open question how Chuch leaders will respond to the problem.

In an interview with Katholisch.de, Father Hans Zollner said: “The question remains if those responsible in the Church will actively pursue the topic out of self-motivation, or only when scandals become public.”

The Jesuit priest was reacting to the resignation of another commission member, Marie Collins, who had complained that the group’s work has been thwarted by resistance from the Roman Curia. Father Zollner said that although he did not think the Curia in particular were opposed to the commission’s work, he did find that Church officials generally find the topic “deeply terrible and frightening.”

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IRELAND
Irish Times

Editorial

After such knowledge, what forgiveness?

It has been a harrowing week. The images that haunt us are of the bodies of hundreds of babies and toddlers buried in a dishonoured grave in the mother and baby home in Tuam, of “Grace” and other children with disabilities suffering years of abuse in a so-called foster home in the southeast, of three beautiful little children and a young mother consumed in an accidental blaze at a facility for victims of domestic violence in Dublin.

Each of these stories is distressing enough in itself. Coming at the same time, though, they are even more disturbing. For they strip away a layer of illusion with which we have comforted ourselves when confronted with dark truths about our society’s appalling treatment of vulnerable and marginalised children: that was then, this is now. We can no longer assure ourselves that all the horror is in the past and that we live in an entirely new Ireland.

In some respects, we have no right to be shocked by the Tuam story. It is, of course, appalling to think of all of those lovely human beings who did not matter enough during their short lives to be given proper care and who did not matter enough in death to be given a decent burial, even by a church that pretended to believe that every individual was equal in the sight of God and that every life was sacred. But the mother and baby homes were not a secret, and they were not isolated institutions. On the contrary, they were part of what we must acknowledge as a massive system of coercive confinement to which Irish society consigned its unwanted people, its human set-aside.

An empire of repression

The mother and baby home in Tuam was part of an empire of repression that had highly visible outposts in every major Irish town, encompassing industrial schools, Magdalene laundries and mental hospitals. The Catholic Church bears an enormous responsibility for the systematic cruelty and at times the savage violence of much of this system. It promulgated and imposed a twisted idea of sexuality that used shame as a weapon of power and used women and their children as the living exemplars of that shame. The church has never fully faced up to the consequences of this distortion. That it has contributed just €192 million of the €1.5 billion cost so far of the redress scheme for victims of institutional abuse speaks for itself.

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IRELAND
Irish Mirror

BY KATHY ARMSTRONG
10 MAR 2017

There are more children buried at mass graves at mother and baby homes nationwide, Catherine Corless claimed last night.

The historian’s meticulous research led to the discovery of the remains of up to 800 children at a septic tank at a home that was run by the Bon Secours nuns in Tuam, Co Galway.

She said: “I think there are many mass graves across Ireland at mother and baby homes.

“But I suppose Tuam felt a little bit worse, because it was in a sewage area.”

She added: “I’ve always said even one child buried unknown is wrong, very wrong.”

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IRELAND
Irish Independent

Simon Brouder
March 11 2017

There has been a call for the bodies of women formerly incarcerated in Tralee’s Magdalene laundry to be exhumed and re-interred in a public cemetery.

The Magdalene Asylum operated in Tralee from 1856 until 1910, with hundreds of young Kerry women passing through the facility in that time.

An unknown number of these women died while in the Asylum and they are buried in a single plot in a small walled off cemetery on the old Mercy Convent site in Balloonagh.

At Monday’s meeting of the Tralee Municipal District council, Cllr Toireasa Ferris called for these women to be exhumed and re-interred in a public graveyard as was the case with the boys who died while imprisoned at the CBS-run St Joseph’s Industrial School.

Cllr Ferris said re-interring the women – many of whom remain unidentified to this day – was the right thing to do.

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IRELAND
The Journal

CATHERINE CORLESS, THE local historian who helped uncover the substantial remains at the Tuam mother and baby home through her work appeared on The Late Late Show on RTÉ this evening.

She told the story about how she managed to uncover evidence about the remains of babies at the Tuam home, and how the week following the revelations has been.

She began: “I didn’t really expect such an influx of media. I kept with it, I kept answering people and talking to people. Like back in 2014, I did the same thing again. I just facilitated people. It was just something to get the story out again.

I was hoping and hoping that they would come to the truth. It’s wonderful that the truth has come out. Every scrap of research I had done said that the children were buried on the home grounds.

She talked about how she had noticed children from the home as a child, and later researched the topic in later life.

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CANADA
CBC News

By Joe Lofaro, CBC News Posted: Mar 10, 2017

Ottawa police have laid more criminal charges against a former Ottawa priest who was already facing allegations of sexual abuse involving a minor.

Police said Friday they have laid four new charges against William Barry McGrory, 83, in relation to two new male complainants. The incidents happened in the 1960s at the Immaculate Heart of Mary Church and St. Philips Church in Richmond, according to police.

McGrory was charged with two counts each of indecent assault and gross indecency, which were Criminal Code offences in place at the time.

Last November, Ottawa police laid four historical sex offences against the former priest after a man came forward with an allegation he was sexually assaulted when he was 15. At the time, McGrory was living in Toronto, but police said he used to be a priest with the Archdiocese of Ottawa.

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CANADA
Ottawa Citizen

ANDREW DUFFY, OTTAWA CITIZEN

Ottawa police have laid four new charges against a retired Catholic priest in connection with alleged sexual assaults at two local churches in the 1960s.

Rev. Barry McGrory, 82, has been charged with two counts of indecent assault on a male, and two counts of gross indecency.

The incidents involved two victims and are alleged to have occurred at Immaculate Heart of Mary Church on Alta Vista Drive, and St. Philip Parish in Richmond.

McGrory was first arrested in November and charged with two counts of gross indecency and two counts of indecent assault in connection with offences alleged to have occurred in the 1960s.

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PENNSYLVANIA
WNEP

BY DAN RATCHFORD

GOULDSBORO — A Roman Catholic priest from New Jersey pleaded guilty in Wayne County to having child pornography.

Investigators say child pornography was found last summer on a computer at a home Fr. Kevin Gugliotta was staying at in Gouldsboro.

Fr. Gugliotta, 55, is a priest in the Archdiocese of Newark. He faces seven years in prison and will have register as a sex offender.

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INDIA
The Indian Express

Written by Shaju Philip | Kottiyoor | Updated: March 11, 2017

OVER A dozen photographs of various Catholic saints adorn a weather-beaten wall of this small, three-room, tiled house on a hill at Kottiyoor in Kannur. “Children are a gift from God,’’ reads a Biblical verse scribbled over one image. This is the home of the girl who delivered a baby last month after being raped, allegedly by a priest at the local parish. Where a grieving mother laments the “disgrace” that has tainted the family. And where a heart-broken father had to falsely admit that he had raped his own daughter to “protect the priest and the Church” in what is now being described as the worst sex scandal in the history of Kerala’s Catholic establishment

Last week, police arrested Fr Robin Vadakkuncheril, 48, of Mananthavady diocese, on charges of raping the minor in his parish at St Sebastian’s Church in Kottiyoor. On Thursday, a court in Thalassery allowed police custody of the accused through the weekend.

But at this home on a hill, that’s of little consolation to the middle-aged couple and their five minor children. “The priest betrayed our family and our faith in the Church. After my daughter delivered the baby, he wanted someone to take responsibility for the birth. How could I find someone for this job? Finally, I had to falsely state that I was the father of my daughter’s baby. As a believer, I also wanted to avoid the disgrace falling on the priest and the Church,’’ says the father, a farm labourer.

“But I realised the seriousness of the crime after police arrested me as the rapist of my own daughter. They told me that I would be jailed for several years. That was when I revealed the name of the priest,’’ he says. “Robin paid the hospital bill of Rs 30,000 for the delivery and promised to do any penance for his sin. But he betrayed my daughter by trying to escape from India,” says the father, before denying allegations that the family had accepted money from the priest to hush up the rape.

The mother of the girl insists that there was little to suspect in the priest’s behaviour. “On most occasions, there would be women at the parsonage. Those women, once recruited by the priest to study abroad, used to call him ‘papa’. There had been no warning about the priest’s conduct. But unfortunately, our daughter has become a victim,’’ she says.

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IRELAND
Irish Independent

Children’s Minister Katherine Zappone has said it will be a number of weeks before her department has finished looking at what other institutions and that she hopes men come forward to testify in any investigations.

She said the shocking revelations have forced Ireland to confront a dark period of our past.
“As the poet laureate Anne Enright says ‘the dead do not lie’ and we are, all of the people in Ireland, throughout the country and internationally as well, trying to come to terms with what does this actually mean for our country,” she said.

“It’s an uncovering and a challenge for us to face, maybe in a new way, a really dark period in our history,” she said.

Ms Zappone’s department is currently undertaking a scoping exercise to extend the terms of reference of the commission to look at other settings where pregnant women and their children were sent.

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IRELAND
Connacht Tribune

Galway Bay fm newsroom – Approximately 40 people have gathered at the entrance to the Bon Secours Hospital in Renmore this evening in protest over the Tuam babies’ scandal.

The white ribbon protest is being organised by People Before Profit Galway, which claims that the institutional structure which involved the Bons Secours order, state agencies and the Catholic Church is to blame.

The event comes one week to the day that the Commission of Investigation confirmed the discovery of a significant number of babies and childrens’ remains at the Athenry road site in Tuam.

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IRELAND
Irish Times

Lorna Siggins

The decision on the future of the Tuam Mother and Baby Home burial site is “too big” for the coroner to make on his own, former Galway county mayor Peter Roche has said.

The Fine Gael councillor also says there should be no exhumation at the site. He has suggested instead that the site where up to 800 infants may be buried should be dedicated in their name, but that there should be widespread consultation with affected families and other stakeholders before any final decision is taken.

Cllr Roche told The Irish Times he believes Archbishop of Tuam Dr Michael Neary “may have been premature” in suggesting reinterment, given certain views about the role of the Catholic Church.

“It is also regrettable that the coroner has been charged as the only person who can take the next step,” Cllr Roche said. “It shouldn’t be left to him when there are so many people whose views need to be taken into account.

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IRELAND
RTE News

The Child and Family Agency Tusla has confirmed that all records it has about the mother and baby home in Tuam, Co Galway, have been given to the Commission of Investigation into Mother and Baby Homes.

Last week, the Commission confirmed that significant quantities of human remains had been found in an underground structure on the former site of the home.

The Bon Secours order operated the facility in Tuam from 1925 until 1961. When the home closed, all records relating to its operation were given to Galway County Council.

Over the last 50 years, the records have been held at various stages by the council, the Western Health Board, the Health Service Executive and most recently, Tusla.

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PENNSYLVANIA
US News

HONESDALE, Pa. (AP) — A Roman Catholic priest from New Jersey has pleaded guilty in Pennsylvania to uploading child pornography to an internet chat room.

The Rev. Kevin Gugliotta of Mahwah pleaded guilty to dissemination of child pornography. He faces up to seven years in prison when he’s sentenced June 8 in Wayne County, Pennsylvania.

District Attorney Janine Edwards said Friday that Gugliotta downloaded child pornography to a personal laptop from his second home in Gouldsboro. The 55-year-old priest then uploaded the files to a chat room on 20 separate occasions last summer. The site alerted law enforcement.

Gugliotta was parochial vicar at Holy Spirit Church in Union, New Jersey. Newark Archbishop John J. Myers removed Gugliotta from ministry.

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UNITED STATES
Frum Follies

Purim is fun. Purim is drinking. Purim has people coming and going in all sorts of places. Purim means too many kids who are not sufficiently supervised.

Purim is paradise [pardes and the English paradise are Persian words] for sex abusers. They themselves may be less inhibited while under the influence. Giving alcohol to younger boys can make them less resistant to influence and to abuse. Afterwards, the offender can claim it was silliness, not as claimed, abuse. I have heard too many stories of abuse that happened on Purim, typically involving older boys or young men with teens. Similar stories also happen other times of the year in Chabad with its ubiquitous vodka. That elixir of kiruv (outreach) knocks down boundaries and restraints.

Parents need to monitor settings where kids are, or be sure some other responsible adult is monitoring. They also need to regulate alcohol use. I am not puritanical about alcohol for under-age kids on Purim. But it becomes dangerous beyond limited quantities.

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MEXIKO
NPLA

[A Mexican priest accused of sexually abusing minors was sentenced to more than 16 years in prison.]

(Oaxaca-Stadt, 10. März 2017, npl).- Ein Geistlicher im südmexikanischen Bundesstaat Oaxaca wurde Ende Februar zu 16 Jahren und sechs Monaten Haft verurteilt. Bereits im Januar befand ihn ein Gericht für schuldig, sich sexuell an Minderjährigen vergangen zu haben. Während seiner Zeit als Gemeindepfarrer soll Gerardo Silvestre Hernández in dem indigenen Dorf Villa Alta Jungen im Alter zwischen elf und 13 Jahren in die Kirche eingeladen, betrunken gemacht und zu sexuellen Handlungen verführt haben.

Die Kinderschutzvereinigung Foni (Foro Oaxaqueño de la Niñez) geht davon aus, dass Silvestre Hernández auch in anderen Gemeinden Minderjährige sexuell missbraucht hat. Somit kann die Anzahl der Opfer weit über hundert liegen. Vom Erzbischof Oaxacas fordert Foni deshalb eine offizielle Entschuldigung und Wiedergutmachung gegenüber den Opfern. Denn in den indigenen Gemeinden Südmexikos wiegt die Tat des Geistlichen doppelt schwer. Dort gilt der Pfarrer neben dem Lehrer als die höchste moralische Autorität des Dorfes.

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DEUTSCHLAND
Main Post

Sieben Jahre lang war Professor Klaus Laubenthal der externe Missbrauchsbeauftragte der Diözese Würzburg. Nun hört der Ordinarius für Kriminologie und Strafrecht an der Juristischen Fakultät der Universität Würzburg sowie Richter am Oberlandesgericht Bamberg auf.

Klaus Laubenthal hat laut Angaben des Bistums Bischof Friedhelm Hofmann und Generalvikar Thomas Keßler am Mittwoch schriftlich mitgeteilt, dass er auf eigenen Wunsch zum 18. März seine Tätigkeit als Ansprechpartner für Opfer sexuellen Missbrauchs beendet. Gründe für seine Entscheidung habe er nicht genannt.

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DEUTSCHLAND
BR

[Klaus Laubenthal ofthe spokesman of the Diocese of Würzburg is giving up his duties. Since 2010, the jurist and professor of criminology and criminal law has taken care of the abuse allegations in the diocese.]

Auf eigenen Wunsch beendet Klaus Laubenthal seine Tätigkeit als Missbrauchsbeauftragter und Ansprechpartner für Opfer sexuellen Missbrauchs im Bistum Würzburg. Gründe für seine Entscheidung nannte Laubenthal nicht. Bischof Hofmann dankte Laubenthal für den Einsatz als Missbrauchsbeauftragter. Bis zur Ernennung eines Nachfolgers ist die stellvertretende Missbrauchsbeauftragte Dr. Claudia Gehring Ansprechpartnerin.

Experte in Sachen Sexualstrafrecht

Bundesjustizminister Heiko Maas berief Laubenthal 2015 in die neu eingesetzte “Kommission zur Reform des Sexualstrafrechts”. Das Gebiet der Sexualkriminalität gehört zu Laubenthals wissenschaftlichen Forschungsschwerpunkten. Der 62-Jährige hat ein Handbuch zu Sexualstraftaten verfasst.

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DEUTSCHLAND
Bistum Wurzburg

[The External Abuse Commissioner of the diocese of Würzburg will resign from 18 March 2017 – thanks to the bishop and the vicar general.]

Externer Missbrauchsbeauftragter der Diözese Würzburg gibt Aufgabe zum 18. März 2017 ab – Dank des Bischofs und des Generalvikars für Einsatz

Würzburg (POW) Nach sieben Jahren als Missbrauchsbeauftragter der Diözese Würzburg beendet Professor Dr. Klaus Laubenthal (62) auf eigenen Wunsch seine Tätigkeit als Missbrauchsbeauftragter zum 18. März 2017. Das teilte er Bischof Dr. Friedhelm Hofmann und Generalvikar Thomas Keßler in einem Schreiben vom 8. März 2017 mit. Der Ordinarius für Kriminologie und Strafrecht an der Juristischen Fakultät der Universität Würzburg hatte die Aufgabe des Ansprechpartners für Opfer sexuellen Missbrauchs am 19. März 2010 übernommen. Gründe für seine Entscheidung nannte Laubenthal in dem Brief nicht. Bischof Hofmann und Generalvikar Keßler danken Laubenthal für den Einsatz als Missbrauchsbeauftragter. Bis zur Ernennung eines Nachfolgers ist die stellvertretende Missbrauchsbeauftragte Dr. Claudia Gehring Ansprechpartnerin.

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IRELAND
Irish Mirror

BY PAT FLANAGAN
10 MAR 2017

The horrors of the Tuam cesspit cast a long shadow over any International Women’s Day celebrations.

And the Taoiseach added to the gloom by appearing to defend the nuns who may have dumped the bodies of up to 800 children in a disused sewer.

Enda had another one of his “we all partied” moments by claiming “no nuns broke into our homes to kidnap our children” adding “we gave them up to what we convinced ourselves was the nuns’ care, and so on”.

What Enda is saying is how could anyone possibly know when women were incarcerated in these homes their babies would end up in a septic tank or be sold to rich Yanks?

He seems to be suggesting there is some affliction affecting the Irish psyche which prevents us from seeing horrors that are taking place in plain sight.

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IRELAND
The Journal

THE ORGANISATION REPRESENTING the anatomy departments of Irish medical schools has commented on the remains of hundreds of “unclaimed infants” previously being used by the facilities for study pruposes.

Yesterday, the Minister for Children and Youth Affairs Katherine Zappone told the Dáil:

“We must accept that between 1940 and 1965 a recorded 474 so-called unclaimed infant remains were transferred from mother and baby homes to medical schools in Irish universities.”

The Anatomical Committee of the Irish Medical Schools (ACIMS) said it is “very conscious of the distress experienced by the families involved”.

In a statement to TheJournal.ie, the ACIMS said: “We have always attempted to the utmost of our ability to assist any individuals or families who have made enquiries about the transfer of family members’ remains.

“All Irish anatomy departments gave full cooperation to the government’s Commission of Investigation into Mother and Baby Homes and certain related matters since it was first established. Helplines were established and all queries thoroughly investigated.

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NEW YORK
BishopAccountability.org

Summary of Case: John C. Albino was a priest of the Archdiocese of New York, ordained in 1990. He was assigned as an assistant to parishes in Manhattan, Beacon, the Bronx, and Staten Island.

In a June 2001 lawsuit Albino was accused, along with three Carmelite priests, of sexually abusing a teenage boy during 1996-1998 at St. Simon Rock in the Bronx. The boy was working as a secretary at the parish. The priests allegedly gave the boy money in exchange for sexual favors and had him watch them perform group masturbation. They also were said to have threatened to harm the boy if he told. Albino reportedly was sent to treatment and removed from ministry. The lawsuit, which was against the Carmelite Order and St. Simon Stock parish, resulted in a settlement.

Ordained: 1990

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IRELAND
RTE News

The Taoiseach has been urged by survivors of institutional abuse to seek an immediate papal intervention to break the deadlock between Catholic religious orders and the State over the Church’s contribution to redressing the wrongs done to residents of their institutions.

The call from the advocacy group, Irish Survivors of Child Abuse, says the Catholic Church religious orders which are signatories to the 2002 Indemnity Agreement with the State have reneged on their promises to pay their fair share towards the State’s redress process.

Irish SOCA made its plea for Pope Francis to break the impasse concerning abuse in a statement this afternoon.

“Enda Kenny should travel to Rome as soon as practical and demand a comprehensive and honourable settlement of all matters connected with the child abuse scandals which implicate the servants of the Roman Catholic Church in Ireland.

“These matters have dragged on for too long.”

Accusing the religious bodies of being “entirely without honour”, SOCA says the only power on earth to which they are likely to respond is Pope Francis.

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IRELAND
Wickow News

A former Wicklow priest has been convicted of orally raping a child in his parish ten years ago.

63-year-old Denis Nolan is already serving a lengthy sentence for sexually abusing a different child six years ago while serving as parish priest in Rathnew.

Yesterday a jury found him guilty on six counts of oral rape, defilement and sexual assault in his home between 2005 and 2006, the victim was age between 10 an 11 at the time.

The trial heard Nolan had befriended the boy and starting to invade his personal space plus he made comments of a sexual nature.

Nolan had told the boy to go home and “Google gay porn” and told him it was a natural thing.

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IRELAND
Galway Independent

A white ribbon protest outside the Bon Secours Hospital in Galway is scheduled to take place this evening following the Tuam babies scandal.

People Before Profit Galway are asking people to gather outside the hospital in Renmore at 5.30pm and walk the outside walls of the hospital.

In a statement the organisation said, “The unusually high level of deaths in the Tuam Mother & Baby Home was not caused by a few bad individuals. It arose from an institutional structure that involved the Bon Secours Order, state agents and the Catholic Church.”

PBP Galway have outlined a number of demands including: that the Bon Secours Health Systems fund the creation of a memorial to their victims; that the Bon Secours order re-consider the existence of their order; produce an audit of illegal adoptions that involved a bounty payment on Irish babies; scrap the ‘Congregational Indemnity Agreement‘ with the Conference of Religious in Ireland, which was then representing 18 religious orders; and end control of primary schools by the Catholic Church.

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IRELAND
Irish Times

Midwife wrote that women giving birth at Bessborough denied pain relief and stitches

Olivia Kelleher

The true picture of what happened in the Bessborough Mother and Baby Home in Cork may be difficult to hear but it needs to come out, Bishop of Cloyne Dr William Crean has said.

Dr Crean said details of the goings on at Bessborough, in Blackrock, should be heard as “this is part of our national story”.

“It is only unfolding slowly. The truth may be very difficult. But it is best that we have the truth in relation to it,” he told Cork’s Red FM. “ Whatever is required in that regard will serve us well in the long term even though, in the shorter term, it might be difficult.”

The Sacred Heart Home in Bessborough, managed by the Sisters of the Sacred Hearts of Jesus and Mary, opened in 1922. Similar homes were established by the same order in Roscrea and Castlepollard in the 1930s.

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IRELAND
Amnesty International

Amnesty International has welcomed the support of the head of the Catholic Church in Ireland for its call for an inquiry into Mother and Baby Homes in Northern Ireland.

Eamon Martin, Archbishop of Armagh and the Primate of All Ireland, voiced his support for Amnesty’s call for an inquiry, saying many in the church and society were “ashamed” and that he now wanted to “establish the truth, the whole truth about what happened”.

Amnesty first called on the Northern Ireland Executive to set up an inquiry into the homes four years ago and repeated the call last week following the discovery of a significant quantity of human remains in a decommissioned sewage chamber at a Mother and Baby Home in Tuam, Co Galway.

Patrick Corrigan, Amnesty International’s Northern Ireland Programme Director, said:

“Amnesty welcomes the Archbishop’s support for an inquiry into Mother and Baby Homes in Northern Ireland, something that we and victims have been requesting for many years.

“It is regrettable that Northern Ireland government ministers previously failed to establish an inquiry. But following the discoveries at Tuam, a wider inquiry under way in the Republic, and now the Archbishop’s support, there is a momentum to discover the truth about what happened in such homes north of the border.

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