ABUSE TRACKER

IRELAND
Connacht Tribune

The Tuam babies’ investigation has been likened to the Nazi war crimes trials of the 1940s.

Junior Minister John Halligan this afternoon released a statement, in which he says old age should not diminish accountability in the Tuam mother and baby home scandal.

He’s calling on Gardai to question any surviving Bon Secours nuns who ever worked at the home, to establish whether a criminal investigation is warranted.

Minister Halligan says the Tuam discovery is ‘potentially the tip of an iceberg’.

He says as was the case with the Nazi war crimes trials, if an individual has been an accessory to a crime then they should be held accountable, regardless of how many years have passed

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TEXAS
Dallas Morning News

Sarah Mervosh, Breaking News Enterprise reporter

Updated at 4:59 pm.: Revised to include comments from Baylor University and a Title IX expert

Sexual assault victims at Baylor University have until the spring of 2018 to sue if they believe the school had lax and discriminatory policies that put them at a greater risk of being raped, a U.S. district judge ruled Tuesday.

The decision came as part of an order that allows the largest Title IX lawsuit against Baylor to go forward. Both sides will now be able to request evidence and call witnesses to give testimony out of court, a much-anticipated stage in the legal process for critics who continue to accuse Baylor of being secretive in its handling of the sexual assault scandal.

In some cases, Judge Robert Pitman decided, the two-year statute of limitations should not be measured from when an assault was reported, but from when the public first learned of Baylor’s widespread failure to properly respond to sexual assault cases last spring.

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TEXAS
New York Times

By MARC TRACY and DAN BARRY
MARCH 9, 2017

With spring in the Texas air, some Baylor University students were navigating the social challenges of another off-campus party, chatting and dancing while trying not to spill their drinks. Amid the swirl, a petite freshman named Jasmin Hernandez lost sight of her friends.

Then Tevin Elliott, a 20-year-old Baylor football player dating someone she knew, appeared. Earlier he had been pouring hard liquor for Ms. Hernandez and other underage students; now he was insisting that her friends had gone outside. When Ms. Hernandez expressed doubts, she said, he began pulling her by the wrist toward the door, telling her they had gone outside.

But the farther they strayed into the darkness, the more she argued that her friends were back at the party, and that they should return. Without a word, she later said in a lawsuit, the 6-foot-3, 250-pound linebacker picked up the 5-3 freshman and made his violent intentions clear.

Panicking, Ms. Hernandez told him that she was sorry if she gave him the wrong impression; that they should just go back to the house and forget this ever happened; that she was, in fact, gay. He acted as though he did not hear.

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UNITED STATES
Catholic League

Bill Donohue comments on accusations made on March 7 by Ireland’s Prime Minister, Enda Kenny:

The insanity over the “mass grave” story in Tuam has now reached a fever pitch. The Irish Prime Minister, Enda Kenny, says that the Bon Secours Sisters took the babies of unwed mothers and “sold them, trafficked them [and] starved them.”

That is a serious charge, and serious accusations demand serious evidence. He provided none. Kenny offered not one scintilla of evidence to back up his fantastic story. Not surprisingly, he found a kindred soul in the U.S. in Niall O’Dowd of Irish Central; he quoted his remarks with relish the next day.

Here is what Kenny said on March 7: “No nuns broke into our homes to kidnap our children. We gave them up to what we convinced ourselves was the nuns’ care.” That is all true. But then he goes on to say that the nuns sold the children, trafficked them, and starved them.

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UNITED STATES/IRELAND
IrishCentral

John Fay @AmericanIreland March 10, 2017

Editor’s Note: It’s now just one week since “significant human remains” were discovered on the land of the Bon Secours Mother and Baby Home where it’s believed that up to 796 infants are buried in a mass grave inside sewerage tanks. As Ireland begins to face the reality of the cruelty and neglect that children and young women suffered throughout the last century while imprisoned in these state and church run institutions we recall an Irish priest living in American who spoke out about the “cruelty, ignorance and neglect of their duties in high places” over 60 years ago.

Monsignor Edward Joseph Flanagan, founder of Boys Town made famous by the Spencer Tracy movie, was a lone voice in condemning Ireland’s industrial schools back in the 1940s and how orphans and those born outside marriage generally were treated. He was viciously castigated by church and government for doing so.

His treatment at the hands of clergy and politicians makes it very clear both powerful arms of the state were determined to stick to secrets and lies and cover-ups when it came to the mistreatment of youths and babies.

When he arrived back in America after a 1946 trip to Ireland he let it be known he was appalled by the abuse of children in institutions he saw. Though he mainly focused on the industrial schools which worked young children to the bone, he widely criticized the entire range of Catholic institutions that dealt so viciously with the most vulnerable of Irish children.

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SPAIN
The Local

The parish priest from the Galician town of Cuntis has apologised for his “misguided” carnival costume which saw him posing on a float as the Playboy founder along with men dressed as Playboy bunnies.

Juan Carlos Martínez, 40, provoked more than raised eyebrows when he joined the town’s carnival festivities last week and posed on a float dressed as the legendary lothario, complete with dressing gown, captain’s cap and cigar.

At his sides were two rather delectable companions: Two men decked in black leotards over stockings and a barely-there netting skirt and topped off with bunny ears over colourful wigs. Presumably they also had white cottontails pinned to their backsides.

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CANADA
Metro

By: Kristy Kirkup The Canadian Press Published on Thu Mar 09 2017

OTTAWA — Conservative MPs distanced themselves from one of their own Thursday after a Tory senator suggested there were positive aspects to Canada’s residential school system.

Caucus members, including Tory indigenous affairs critic Cathy McLeod, made it clear they do not support or agree with Sen. Lynn Beyak, appointed to the upper chamber by former prime minister Stephen Harper.

On Wednesday, Beyak told the Senate that the government-funded, church-operated schools where indigenous children endured widespread sexual and physical abuse were not all bad.

“I speak partly for the record, but mostly in memory of the kindly and well-intentioned men and women and their descendants — perhaps some of us here in this chamber — whose remarkable works, good deeds and historical tales in the residential schools go unacknowledged for the most part and are overshadowed by negative reports,” she said.

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FLORIDA
The Daily Beast

Fred Laster’s siblings told police about the last man seen with him, but nothing happened for the next 23 years. Now authorities and a mom say Ron Hyde may be more than a murderer.

KELLY WEILL
KATIE ZAVADSKI
03.10.17

A woman and her dog were the first to find the headless torso.

The duo stumbled upon the remains in a gas station dumpster in Jacksonville, Florida, on a Sunday morning in June 1994. The body’s head, legs, and hands were missing. Two bloodstained kitchen knives were wrapped in nearby plastic bags. A mattress topper, rubber gloves, bath mats, and a bloodied flannel shirt were also inside.

It was a “mannequin or something, but looks like a real person,” the dog-walker told the station mechanic, he later recalled. Another witness who had visited the gas station earlier told police that he had seen a shiny sports car backed up to the dumpster, with its trunk open.

The body was fresh, investigators found, and had been washed of blood and fingerprints, and while the lower extremities had been cut away with a knife, the male genitals were intact. Forensics experts ruled the death a homicide and said the victim was likely between 14 and 17 years old.

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IRELAND
Irish Examiner

By Elaine Loughlin
Political Reporter

The Government has come under pressure to carry out excavations at the site of Bessborough Mother and Baby Home where hundreds of infants died.

Calls have been made in the Dáil to carry out examinations at the Cork site in the wake of the revelations of mass burial chambers at the Tuam facility.

AAA-PBP TD Mick Barry said 470 infants and 10 women had died between 1934 and 1953 at Bessborough. He claimed the nuns took a “business decision” not to give each child a marked grave as it would make a bad impression on Americans visiting to adopt babies from the home.

He told the Dáil that of 180 babies born over one year, 100 died. “One in five of those who died in the 1934 to 1953 period died of marasmus, that is, severe malnutrition.”

Mr Barry gave graphic accounts of “a house of pain” where mothers in childbirth were “denied pain relief and women who suffered vaginal tearing in childbirth were refused stitching as punishment for their sins”.

During statements on the commission of inquiry into mother and baby homes he said he had been contacted by a survivor of the home who expressed his “strong opinion” that not all of the babies were buried in the “tiny” angels burial plot at Bessborough.

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IRELAND
Clare Champion

BISHOP of Killaloe Fintan Monahan has expressed “shock” and “sorrow” at the discovery of human remains at the site of the former mother and baby home in Tuam. He served as a priest in the Tuam diocese and as diocesan secretary from 2005 to 2006.

The find came at the conclusion of test excavations at the site. They were carried out at the behest of the Mother and Baby Home Commission of Investigation, which was established on February 17, 2015 and is chaired by Judge Yvonne Murphy. The commission has been asked to establish the circumstances for the entry of single women into mother and baby homes and the living conditions they experienced there. It has also been asked to examine mortality among mothers and children who lived in these institutions.

“The reports that have emerged over the past few years have made for me such sad, shocking, disappointing and sorrowful reading. The level of shock and sadness among the general population also has been widespread. We are all overwhelmed by the revelations and even a generation or two later it is impossible to comprehend the great hurt and sorrow that resulted from this system. It really is inexplicable, in the light of the gospel, that is at the heart of all our callings, irrespective of the time we live in,” Bishop Monahan told The Clare Champion.

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IRELAND
Irish Examiner

Friday, March 10, 2017 Elaine Loughlin

The Government is looking at methods of justice used in post-apartheid South Africa and after Pinochet’s dictatorship in Chile to address the mother and baby home scandal here.

Children’s Minister Katherine Zappone has confirmed she is looking at introducing a “transitional justice” system here as a way of dealing with the victims and relatives of those who were sent to institutions.

This could include a truth commission as used in South Africa from 1996, or, as suggested by Ms Zappone in the Dáil, could be based on the Museums of Memory in Argentina and Chile.

Ms Zappone also confirmed she will publish the interim report into mother and baby homes by the end of this month. It comes after numerous calls in the Dáil to make public the commission’s second interim report which has been with the minister since September.

During Dáil statements on the scandal of the Tuam mother and baby home, Ms Zappone said she acknowledged the calls for an expansion of the terms of reference to cover all institutions, agencies and individuals involved with unmarried women and their children. She promised to announce the detail of a scoping exercise to see if all institutions could be included in the inquiry in the coming weeks: “What happened in Tuam is part of a larger picture.”

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IRELAND
Mayo Advertiser

Noel Campbell

In a little under five years time, Ireland will roll out the red commemoration carpets for a year long celebration to mark the centenary of the Irish Free State. In the decades preceding the independent state, unionist politicians and their constituents vigorously, and even militantly, opposed any form of self-determination for Ireland as they believed Home Rule under a Catholic majority would mean Rome rule. The fears of those unionists were realised. The Free State, like the British state before it, inadequately supervised Catholic institutions tasked with caring for sections of Irish society and thereby put at risk the very children of the nation that independence was destined to cherish. The Free State’s successors were equally culpable of neglect as each fed its own citizens to an ultra conservative, practically unregulated, system of 250 Church-run industrial schools, reformatories, orphanages, hostels and homes from the 1920s up until the 1990s. Since the 1990s, criminal cases and inquiries have established that thousands of children were abused by hundreds of priests and several Catholic religious orders were found to have participated in or concealed child abuse.

The utterly disturbing find of 796 human remains on the grounds of the mother and baby home run by the Bon Secours Sisters in Tuam raises questions of that order of nuns and the State, which surely require answering through a Garda investigation. Questions too need to be asked in Mayo. In the 1920s, unmarried mothers and their babies were housed in the Mayo County Home in Castlebar. They were isolated from other ‘inmates’ and occupied with work for little reward. In 1926, debate at a sitting of the Poor Law Commission turned to congestion at the County Home and how the inmate numbers could be reduced. It was suggested that the 41 unmarried mothers could be removed to another institution. Men like Dr PD Daly immediately fought this suggestion as replacing the cheap labour supplied by the unmarried mothers with extra staff members would cost the ratepayers. Instead, the removal of 51 children and 12 unmarried mothers from the County Home was put forward. Management at the County Home were aware of the stern, if not hostile, reputation of some institutions. On the reporting of two troublesome unmarried mothers to a Mayo County Board of Health meeting by the matron of the County Home, the meeting decided to experiment and send one of them to the Magdalene Home in Galway to teach her discipline. Should she refuse, she was to be prosecuted.

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IRELAND
Irish Sun

By Eoghan McDermott
10th March 2017

POLITICIANS on all sides have condemned the grim discovery of an unmarked grave of children at the Tuam mother and baby home.

Enda Kenny made a speech to the Dail on Wednesday which did not pull any punches, calling the home a “chamber of horrors”.

The speech was up there with previous heavy-hitters from Enda such as his powerful speech on the Magdalene Laundries and his landmark speech on the Cloyne Report.

The latter criticised the Vatican for attempting to frustrate the inquiry into the rape of children to protect its power and reputation.

However, there have also been some concerns that what he said did not go far enough on this occasion.

Brid Smith, the People Before Profit TD, has said the Government should look again at a 2002 deal between the Church and State which gave the Church a €128million indemnity.

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IRELAND
IrishCentral

Niall O’Dowd @niallodowd March 10, 2017

Up to 800 small children and babies whose only sin was to be born to mothers out of wedlock were very likely buried in a mass grave that was once a septic tank in Tuam, Co. Galway.

The commission reporting on the Tuam babies scandal found incontrovertible evidence of large numbers of bodies there — and they were not Famine graves as some have tried to claim.

The commission confirmed to the press on Friday that they had indeed found “significant human remains,” and that the human remains, after carbon testing, dated from the era in which the mother and baby home had operated in the town from 1926 to 1961.

Tuam may be only the tip of the iceberg. Across the country such mother and baby homes, all long closed, are now under scrutiny for similar mass deaths. It is already clear Tuam was not an isolated occurrence.

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IRELAND
Irish Times

Mick Heaney

How many angels can dance on the head of the pin? Once upon a time this was the pressing question that supposedly preoccupied the finest minds of the church. Of course, things have moved on. When would-be defenders of the faith want to play hair-splitting word games these days the question is about how many infant bodies constitute a mass grave.

As the country reels, again, at revelations about the human remains discovered on the site of Tuam’s mother-and-baby home Sean Moncrieff (Newstalk, weekdays) hears from a man who seeks to put the whole business in perspective. Bill Donohue, president of the US-based Catholic League, says that the coverage of the Tuam home is, you guessed it, fake news.
The basis for this staggering assertion is the statement that the Mother and Baby Homes Commission of Investigation had uncovered “significant” quantities of remains.

Donohue insists that “significant” differs from “huge”, a metric that presumably might permit the use of the term “mass grave” in news reports. This egregious misuse of words outrages him more than the idea of dead children being tossed into the ground with no trace of dignity: “The big story, which is a lie, is that there’s no such thing as a mass grave.”

Donohue, holding forth in the blowhard manner so beloved of American right-wing talkshow hosts, offers little evidence. He dismissively “deals with” Catherine Corless, the local historian who first uncovered the scandal, asking why she says 800 children are interred on the Tuam grounds. Moncrieff replies that she uncovered the death certificates but nobody knew where they were buried. “That’s exactly my point,” Donohue says triumphantly. “She didn’t find a mass grave.”

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IRELAND
The Journal

JUNIOR MINISTER JOHN Halligan has called on the gardaí to question the surviving Bon Secour nuns who worked in the Tuam mother and baby home.

“Age should not diminish responsibility,” said the Independent Alliance TD.

Last Friday, amateur historian Catherine Corless was vindicated by the commission’s confirmation that a significant number of children’s bodies were found at the Tuam site in a structure which appears to be “related to the treatment/containment of sewerage and/or wastewater”.

In 2014, when the revelations first hit the headlines, a statement from high-profile Irish PR representative Terry Prone, on behalf of the Bon Secours order, said the “overwhelming majority of the surviving Sisters of Bon Secours in Ireland are over eighty. The handful (literally) still in active ministry are in their seventies”.

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RHODE ISLAND
Associated Press

PROVIDENCE, R.I. (AP) — A Rhode Island pastor charged with molesting a child has been removed as the head of the Providence Republican Party.

Roy D. Bolden Jr., of the Legions of Christ Ministries, was arraigned Wednesday on child molestation and sexual assault charges. Police say a 21-year-old man reported that Bolden began molesting him when he was 12 years old, and the abuse went on for years.

Rhode Island Republican Party chairman Brandon Bell says the allegations have taken him and the state party’s central committee by surprise.

The 33-year-old Bolden was elected to a four-year term as chairman of the Providence Republican City Committee in 2015.

Bell says that while Bolden is entitled to the presumption of innocence, he has been removed as chairman.

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AUSTRALIA
The Guardian (UK)

Christopher Knaus and Australian Associated Press
Friday 10 March 2017

The Uniting church has been subject to about 2,500 allegations of child sexual abuse in its 40-year history, the royal commission has heard.

The child abuse royal commission also heard that there were 1,006 alleged perpetrators of abuse within the Jehovah’s Witnesses, but the congregation did not report a single one to police.

The Jehovah’s Witnesses, the inquiry heard, were still refusing to change a second century biblical rule requiring two witnesses to prove wrongdoing.

The royal commission returned to its examination of the Uniting church and the Jehovah’s Witnesses on Friday, seeking to understand how each had reformed its handling of child protection and abuse complaints.

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AUSTRALIA
SBS

AAP

More than 2500 incidents of child sexual abuse have occurred in Uniting Church institutions in Australia, leading to $17.5 million in compensation payments to victims.

Australia’s third largest Christian denomination has apologised to victims abused over the last 40 years in the Uniting Church or in its three predecessors.

Church data released by the child sex abuse royal commission reveals there have been 2504 incidents or allegations of child sexual abuse at an institution or place of worship since the church was established in 1977.

The church has paid $17.5 million to settle 255 abuse claims, counsel assisting the commission Angus Stewart SC said on Friday.

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AUSTRALIA
Sydney Morning Herald

Rachel Browne

Uniting Church institutions, including schools and foster homes, have been the subject of more than 2500 allegations or incidents of child sexual abuse over the past 40 years, a royal commission has heard.

New analysis released by the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse shows there have been 2504 incidents, allegations or claims of paedophilia involving Uniting Church institutions since 1977.

Counsel assisting the commission Angus Stewart SC told the inquiry 255 people have made claims against the church, which has paid $17.5 million in settling child sexual abuse cases.

The inquiry heard the church has not had time to confirm the commission’s analysis of the data.

The inquiry heard 91 people who have attended the commission’s private sessions reported they were allegedly abused in Uniting Church institutions, with the majority relating to schools or out-of-home care providers.

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IRELAND
The Journal

I don’t want to see them bankrupted. They could solve this issue honourably and with dignity by handing over the keys to the properties used for educational purposes to the Irish government, to the Irish people.

[It would be] as a public token of their remorse and their sympathy with the victims and the relatives of the victims of this terrible period in Irish history.

THAT’S WHAT FORMER education minister Ruairi Quinn said today in response to a report that shows less than 14% of the total costs of the child abuse scandal has been paid by religious institutions.

The Christian Brothers and the Sisters of Mercy, meanwhile, have defended the amounts they’ve paid in compensation for child abuse and investigation costs after coming under fire because of the contents of the report by the Comptroller & Auditor General, published yesterday.

The report showed that €209 million had been paid by religious institutions for their role in institutional child abuse. Current costs to the State – including an inquiry, a survivor redress scheme and related survivor supports – add up to €1.5 billion.

But because of the fall in the value of properties used as payment to the state, as well as the rising costs of the inquiry, the religious institutions responsible aren’t paying half anymore, and the State no longer has the legal authority to change the amount because of a deal made back in 2002.

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AUSTRALIA
ABC News

By Nicole Chettle and Michelle Brown

The Uniting Church in Australia has apologised to children sexually abused in its congregations and institutions, while Jehovah’s Witness seniors have defended their two-witness rule and shunning of victims.

The statement from the president of the church’s General Assembly Stuart McMillan came during evidence to the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse.

Mr McMillan said “we are, and I am deeply sorry that we didn’t protect and care in accordance with our Christian values for those children”.

“… I want to acknowledge the impact that it’s had in the lives of those young people, and to say I’m truly sorry.”

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IRELAND
Irish Times

Ronan McGreevy

The Minister of Education has said the approach taken by religious orders to redress for people abused in religious institutions suggested the “protection of the institution had far greater authority than protection of the children”.

Richard Bruton described the €219 million contribution by the Catholic Church to the redress bill as a “far cry” from the 50 per cent share it agreed to contribute when a deal was done with the State in 2002.

Then the orders agreed to contribute €128 million as part of an estimated redress bill of €256 million.

The original figure was a gross underestimation of the actual cost which has spiralled to €1.5 billion.

Speaking on RTÉ’s Morning Ireland, Mr Bruton said it remained the Government’s belief that an “equitable share out bearing in mind the responsibility would be 50:50 and we are a far cry from that”.

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JAMAICA
The Guardian (UK)

Kate Chappell in Kingston
Friday 10 March 2017

Early one Sunday in January, a group of women arrived at a church in the rolling, green hills of rural Jamaica. They were not there to worship, but to show support for a young victim of sexual abuse: a 15-year-old girl, who had allegedly been raped by the church’s pastor a few weeks earlier.

The 14 activists entered the church and sat in silence, but angry words broke out when they were approached by a different pastor; the confrontation culminated with him being struck in the head by a tambourine.

The incident marked the beginnings of the Tambourine Army, a new organization to fight gender-based violence across the Caribbean, which this weekend will mark its arrival with a protest in Kingston. In what is believed to be the largest-ever protest against gender-based violence in the region, similar marches will be held in Barbados, Trinidad and Tobago, Antigua and Barbuda, Dominica, the Bahamas and Guyana.

“We want to change the culture we have of assigning blame and shame to survivors,” says Latoya Nugent, co-founder of the Tambourine Army. “We want to place it at the feet of perpetrators and change the current narrative.”

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INDIA
Merinews

The Asian Human Rights Commission (AHRC) expressed concern over reports that on February 27, a Christian priest in Kerala, Mr Robin Vadakkancherry, was arrested on charges of raping a minor-girl.

The incident came to light when the Childline (1098), the crisis helpline for children in distress in India was informed of the rape. The survivor got pregnant and last month, she gave birth in a Church-run hospital in Kerala.
In Focus

It has been reported that hospital staff and the nuns working at the institution tried to cover up the crime and shield the priest. It has also been reported that the accused and the Church tried to conceal details of the newborn from the authorities. The cover-up by Church authorities is apparent as the police have booked 8 people, including 5 nuns and the doctor, of the hospital where the survivor gave birth.

AHRC said that this is not the first time that the Church has been in the centre of a storm of sexual abuse and cover-up allegations. In 2015, another priest, Mr Edwin Figarez, was accused of raping a teenage girl and the priest was suspended by the diocese.

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ILLINOIS
KMOV

[with video]

By Dan Greenwald, Online News Producer

ST. CLAIR COUNTY, Ill. (KMOV.com) –
Some Illinois lawmakers are pushing to end the statute of limitations on child sex crimes.

Under current state law, sexual offenses against children must be reported within 20 years of the survivor turning 18-years-old.

One woman told News 4 the existing law allowed a priest to get away with raping her many decades ago.

“Father said I was an evil child, that he had been sent by God to save my soul. He raped me. I was only 6-years-old, had no idea what happened, had no words for it,” said victim Barbara Dorris.

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GUAM
KUAM

By Krystal Paco

Two more former altar boys have surfaced with allegations of clergy sex abuse. Michael Chargualaf and Anthony Ray C. Mantanona both allege they were sexually molested multiple times by Father Louis Brouillard who was a priest at San Isidro Church in Malojoloj.

They mark the 27th and 28th plaintiffs to file suit.

It was the mid-1970s. Mantanona was only 8 or 9 years old. Chargualaf was a little older, around 13. Both were altar boys at San Isidro Church in Malojojo. Both were forced to quit after multiple incidents of sex abuse by parish priest, Father Louis Brouillard.

Mantanona and Chargualaf filed their civil suits with the Superior Court of Guam late Thursday afternoon. Both men are represented by Attorney Anthony C. Perez.

Court filings provide graphic details to what happened behind closed doors on church grounds. For Chargualaf, the abuse started on his first day. He had arrived early for mass to meet Brouillard who walked around the rectory with an open robe, his naked body underneath. As a teen he was forced to perform oral sex and receive oral sex from the priest who would tell him “Don’t be afraid. This is OK.” and “Doesn’t that feel good?”

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GUAM
Pacific Daily News

Haidee V Eugenio , heugenio@guampdn.com March 9, 2017

Another law firm that has been working with U.S.-based attorneys Thursday filed two clergy sex abuse lawsuits in local court, one of which also names the Boy Scouts of America as a defendant, as well as with the Archdiocese of Agana.

Former altar boys Michael Chargualaf and Anthony Ray C. Mantanona are the 27th and 28th persons to file clergy sex abuse lawsuits on Guam.

The two former altar boys said in their complaints filed in the Superior Court of Guam that former island priest Louis Brouillard repeatedly sexually abused them when Brouillard was parish priest at San Isidro Church in Malojloj in the 1970s. But Brouillard wasn’t a named defendant.

Brouillard also allegedly abused Chargualaf during Boy Scouts activities. Brouillard was a scoutmaster in the Boy Scouts of America Aloha Council Chamorro District.

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GUAM
Pacific Daily News

Haidee V Eugenio , heugenio@guampdn.com
March 10, 2017

Lujan to file more lawsuits in next few weeks

U.S. District Court of Guam Magistrate Judge Joaquin V.E. Manibusan on Friday afternoon approved a joint request by attorneys for the Archdiocese of Agana and at least 25 former altar boys to consolidate all of the clergy sex abuse cases filed in federal court.

Attorney John C. Terlaje, counsel for the archdiocese, and attorney David Lujan, counsel for 25 former altar boys, also jointly asked for, and were granted, a second extension for the archdiocese to respond to the lawsuits.

The filing deadline was March 10. Manibusan approved another extension up to April 10 for the archdiocese to respond to the 25 cases filed by Lujan’s clients, and any new cases filed before April 10.

Lujan told Terlaje that he intends to file “several new civil cases in this court in the next few weeks,” the attorneys stated in their joint stipulation, approved by the judge.

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IRELAND
The Irish Catholic

by Greg Daly
March 9, 2017

Leading child protection campaigner Marie Collins has challenged claims by the head of the Vatican department responsible for dealing with allegations of clerical abuse.

Cardinal Gerhard Müller, who heads the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF), had rejected claims by Mrs Collins that members of the CDF had obstructed proposals for reform recommended by the Vatican’s child protection commission, from which Mrs Collins resigned last month.

Interviewed by the Italian newspaper Corriere della Serra, Cardinal Müller rejected suggestions that the congregation has resisted the work of the commission, saying: “One of our collaborators is part of it. I can affirm that in these last years there’s been permanent contact.”

Mrs Collins, however, told The Irish Catholic it has been almost two years since any member of the CDF has been involved with the commission. “There’s no member of the CDF on the commission,” she said, continuing, “There hasn’t been for nearly two years. There was a member who stopped attending immediately after the accountability tribunal was announced, and then officially resigned last year.”

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AUSTRALIA
Sky News

Two senior members of the Jehovah’s Witnesses in Australia will face a royal commission that found the organisation does not adequately protect children from being sexually abused.

The Jehovah’s Witnesses maintain they act on any allegation of child sex abuse, despite the child abuse royal commission finding they have not reported a single one of 1006 alleged perpetrators to police.

Its November 2016 report said the organisation wrongly relies on a two-witness rule with 2000-year-old biblical origins when handling complaints.

The commission will on Friday again hear from Jehovah’s Witness Australian branch committee member Terrence O’Brien and Rodney Spinks, who advises church elders on how to handle child sex abuse cases.

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IRELAND
RTE News

Owners of the largest Catholic institutions where children were abused while in State care have defended their contributions to the €1.5 billion bill for paying redress to survivors.

The Christian Brothers and Sisters of Mercy were responding to yesterday’s report by the State’s auditor that the eighteen Catholic entities concerned had paid about 13% of the cost and to criticism by the Minister for Education Richard Bruton.

The Minister had stated that the Church’s progress towards shouldering its promised one quarter share of the redress bill had gone into reverse.

In a statement the Christian Brothers’ leader, Brother Edmund Garvey, said the audit report’s 14 month-old figures do not take account of the congregations’ more recent €14m cash payment.

Brother Garvey also highlighted playing fields worth “well over €100m” that are almost ready to be transferred to the Edmund Rice Schools Trust.

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AUSTRALIA
Sydney Morning Herald

Rachel Browne

Three decades ago Jodi*’s family were searching for a better life for themselves and their four children, well away from the gritty inner-city high rise apartment they called home.

The family packed up their belongings and moved to rural Victoria where they planned to start anew.

Then one morning a pair of Jehovah’s Witnesses knocked on the door to spread the word of the Watchtower Bible and Tract Society. That was when Jodi’s nightmare began.

“These nice people were promising a community with no drugs, no alcohol and no crime – it sounded very appealing,” said Jodi, who asked that her name be withheld.

“They love bomb you. They sell you this vision of a perfect community. It is anything but. It’s indoctrination. It’s a cult, it really is. But they convince you it’s a religion.”

The Jehovah’s Witness church and its overarching body, the Watchtower Bible and Tract Society, came to the attention of the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Sexual Abuse with a 2015 case study hearing more than 1000 allegations of paedophilia had been made against the organisation over 60 years yet not one complaint was reported to police.

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JAMAICA
Loop

The sexual abuse case against 64-year-old Moravian pastor, Rupert Clarke, has been sent to the Circuit Court.

Reverend Clarke, with two counts of having sex with someone under the age of 16 years hanging over his head, appeared in the St Elizabeth Parish Court on Wednesday, during which the order was made.

The transfer was made after the prosecution obtained an instrument from the office of the Director of Public Prosecutions.

Clarke’s attorney sought to have the case remain in the St Elizabeth Parish Court, at least until the case file is completed, but the presiding judge denied the application.

The case will now be next mentioned on March 30 in the next session of the St Elizabeth Circuit Court.

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INDIA
Times of India

KANNUR: Fr Robin Vadakkancheril, accused of raping a minor girl, was sent to police custody for four days by the Thalassery additional district sessions court on Thursday.

Police had said the priest, who has been arrested under the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences (POCSO) Act, needed to be questioned further in the case. The case pertains to the rape and impregnation of a minor girl near Kottiyoor in Kannur.

Police suspect a conspiracy was hatched to hush up the incident with the help of authorities at Christu Raj Hospital and some members of the Wayanad Child Welfare Committee (CWC), among others. Police said the new-born baby was shifted to the Holy Infant Mary’s Foundling Home in Wayanad on February 7 and that the documents related to the age of the girl were tampered. The CWC signed the order on February 20 without any verifying the documents, police added.

Wayanad CWC chairman Thomas Joseph Therakam and member Betty Jose have been expelled from their posts and have been named as accused in the case. They had moved for anticipatory bail in Wayanad additional district sessions court but withdrew their pleas on Thursday after the court said the case was in the jurisdiction of Thalassery additional district sessions court. Sources said they were planning to move the HC. However, they have been still absconding and police said search was on to arrest them along with other accused.

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AUSTRALIA
Herald Sun

Shannon Deery, Herald Sun
March 9, 2017

CATHOLIC priest Gerald Ridsdale looks set to plead guilty to dozens of child sex charges, a court has heard.

The 82-year-old was charged with 36 child sex offences in January, and police have since served him with two additional charges.

He appeared at the Melbourne Magistrates Court via videolink today where magistrate Johanna Metcalf was told the case was close to resolving.

It means Ridsdale’s alleged victims will be spared the ordeal of giving evidence to prove their claims.

But he will almost certainly be given a discounted sentence if he enters a plea of guilty, particularly at such an early stage.

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NEW YORK
Legislative Gazette

Written by KALEB H. SMITH, assistant editor on March 9, 2017

Advocates for the Child Victims Act have once more called upon state legislators to pass reforms to the statute of limitation for survivors of childhood sexual abuse.

This week in Albany, those advocates were joined by Senator Brad Hoylman, D-Manhattan, and Assemblywoman Linda Rosenthal, D-Manhattan, in a heart-to-heart discussion with the press, where survivors recounted their experience with sexual assault.

Rosenthal is optimistic since her bill was introduced much sooner than the assembly bill last year containing similar reforms. The support of Hoylman in the Senate, as well as governor’s support, add to her positive outlook on the future of the bill.

“Now all signs are positive around us,” said Rosenthal, “the governor has stated his desire to pass this law. Certainly the senator is working very hard to get it done in the senate. I’m working very hard in the assembly, we just introduced a bill a couple weeks ago.”

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IRELAND
Irish Times

Colm Keena

An offer from the Christian Brothers to transfer land worth €127 million to the State as part of its contribution towards redress for people abused in institutions it ran was “withdrawn”, according to a report from the Comptroller and Auditor General.

The offer was made in 2009 in response to the Ryan report, which detailed decades of abuse suffered by children in institutions run by religious orders.

In total, €353 million in cash and property was offered by 18 congregations. Approximately one-third of this was to come from the Christian Brothers.

Eight of the report’s chapters were devoted to the brothers, the largest provider of residential care for boys in the State during the years concerned.

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OREGON
KVAL

EUGENE, Ore. – A Eugene priest was sentenced to three years of probation and 90 days in jail Thursday for hiring a teenage girl for sex, according to the Lane County District Attorney’s Office.

Erik Hasselman, chief deputy district attorney, said Daniel MacKay was sentenced to 30 days in jail for each of his three counts of prostitution behavior, totaling 90 days.

MacKay was found guilty on three counts of prostitution March 4.

MacKay must also participate in a program in Multnomah County to address his prostitution behavior.

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ITALIA
Rete L’Abuso

Ore di lavoro frenetico. Sotto la lente date, luoghi, protagonisti, screenshot, chat. Lo scottante dossier che accusa alcuni religiosi di aver preso parte a festini hot con minori comincia a prendere forma. Pezzi di un puzzle da mettere insieme, che tessera dopo tessera si consolida nelle due indagini parallele della Curia arcivescovile di Pozzuoli e della Procura di Napoli. Il cerchio, intorno al prete della diocesi di Pozzuoli che sarebbe coinvolto insieme ad altri religiosi di alto rango in abusi su minori, comincia a stringersi. Il dossier inoltrato ai magistrati dall’associazione Meter, da 25 anni in prima fila nella lotta alla pedofilia, contiene elementi di sicuro interesse investigativo.

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INDIA
The Hindu

He should be produced before the court on March 13

The Additional District and Sessions Court at Thalassery on Thursday granted to the police the custody of Robin Vadakkancheril, the main accused in the case of rape of a minor girl at Kottiyoor here.

Considering the plea of the police officers investigating the case, the court ordered the granting of four-day custody of Vadakkancheril to the police for questioning him. The accused should be produced before the court on March 13.

The police said the accused would be questioned to gather more details on his alleged collusion with others to cover up the incident. Vadakkancheril was the parish vicar of St. Sebastian Church, Neendunoki, at Kottiyoor in the district. After his arrest on March 27, he was removed from the post of vicar by the Mananthavady diocese.

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PENNSYLVANIA
Pocono Record

By Andrew Scott
Pocono Record Writer

Former New Jersey priest Kevin A. Gugliotta, 55, of Manahwkin, N.J., is scheduled to enter a plea Friday in Wayne County Court after being charged with having child pornography, said the Wayne County District Attorney’s Office.

Between July 9 and Aug. 29, multiple files containing child porn were uploaded to Gugliotta’s computer, an affidavit states. Charged with 20 counts of disseminating images of sexual acts involving children and 20 counts of child porn, Gugliotta as of Thursday was in Wayne County Prison in lieu of $50,000 bail, which had been reduced from $1 million bail.

After receiving a tip Aug. 9, Monroe County District Attorney’s Office Detective Brian Webbe conducted a lengthy investigation that revealed a file containing child porn had been uploaded to a computer traced to a Third Street apartment in Gouldsboro, Lehigh Township, Wayne County. Webbe then contacted Lehigh Township police and the Wayne County District Attorney’s Office.

Shortly after 9:30 a.m. Sept. 29, authorities executed a search warrant at the apartment. No one was home and there were no electronic devices there at the time, but authorities learned Gugliotta had been there several times a week.

Authorities were given Gugliotta’s phone number and tracked him to a church in Union County, N.J. Authorities contacted Gugliotta and tried getting him to return to the apartment, using a ruse so that he wouldn’t become suspicious and destroy evidence.

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AUSTRALIA
Bay 93.9

Rebecca McDonald / 10 March 2017

A former Apollo Bay priest will be back in court today on dozens of sex abuse charges. 82-year-old Gerald Ridsdale is accused of 36 offences against 11 children between the 1960s and 80s.

The former Catholic priest is expected to face the Melbourne Magistrates’ Court via video link on the charges of rape, assault and indecent assault.

The alleged offending took place in seven Victorian towns including Ocean Grove, Ballarat and Mortlake.

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OREGON
KXL

By Grant McHill

Mar 9

EUGENE, Ore. (AP) – A Eugene priest found guilty of prostitution for paying a 17-year-old girl to have sex with him has been sentenced to three months in jail.

The Register-Guard reports Daniel MacKay was given a 90-day jail sentence Thursday. The judge said he would be eligible to serve 60 of those days in an alternative program, such as community service.

MacKay is accused of paying the teen for sex acts on several occasions last summer after she posted online prostitution advertisements.

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IRELAND
Westmeath Examiner

The nuns who ran the mother and baby home in Castlepollard should be “locked up” for their role in the systemic mistreatment of thousands of women and their children, a former resident has said.

In an interview with the Westmeath Examiner yesterday, Paul Redmond, who was born at the mother and baby home in Castlepollard and is the chairperson of the Coalition of the Mother and Baby Home Survivors, said that although he knows that it won’t happen, he would “love” to see the nuns who ran the mother and baby homes imprisoned for the remainder of their years.

“I would love to see the guards kick in the doors of the convents and see them brought out in their wheelchairs in chains,” he said.

“I was one of three or four people who went to the gardaí about the high mortality rates in the homes, but there is nothing the gardaí can do.

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IRELAND
Reuters

By Estelle Shirbon | TUAM, IRELAND

Catherine Corless has been haunted all her life by childhood memories of the skinny children from the local Catholic home for unmarried mothers and their babies in the small cathedral town of Tuam in the west of Ireland.

Known locally as the home babies, the children lived in secrecy behind the dark, high walls of the home run by nuns from the Bon Secours order. Some of them attended the same school as Corless, but they were kept apart from the other children.

Once, egged on by classmates, Corless played a trick on one of the home babies, handing over what looked like a sweet but was in fact only an empty wrapper.

“I’m so sorry for that. It’s stuck me with, that memory. It was only later I thought ‘that poor child never got a sweet, they would have loved a sweet’,” Corless told Reuters in an interview at her home in the countryside outside Tuam.

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IRELAND
Irish Independent

Cormac McQuinn
March 9 2017

THE €1.5bn cost of the the child abuse inquiry and redress scheme has hugely exceeded original estimates, the Comptroller and Auditor General (C&AG) has found.

It was originally forecast that the redress scheme for survivors of institutional child abuse would cost €250m.

That spiraled to an estimated €1.25bn.

A summary of the report states that “government policy is that the congregations who ran the institutions would share equal liability of the €1.52 billion cost of redress i.e. contribute €760 million” and that “Total contributions offered to date are €406 million less than this.”

The report found that at the end of 2015 Religious congregations had only paid €192m.

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IRELAND
Irish Independent

A Dáil debate on the Tuam babies’ scandal was delayed by 10 minutes this morning after not enough TDs showed up.

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IRELAND
Today FM

WRITTEN BY: GAVAN REILLY

A Dáil debate on the discovery of human remains at the mother and baby homes in Tuam was delayed – because not enough TDs showed up.

The Dail was only able to get going at 10:10am – ten minutes late – when a 20th TD showed up and allowed business to begin.

However, after the morning prayer and the debate began, the attendance quickly reduced back to 12.

The poor attendance is partly explained by the fact that four other Oireachtas committees were meeting at the same time, which would have lowered the numbers available to be in the Dáil chamber.

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IRELAND
Irish Independent

Religious orders which ran institutions where children were abused have paid just 13% of the bill for a long-running inquiry, redress and compensation, the state’s financial watchdog has found.

The Commission to Inquire into Child Abuse, known as the Ryan inquiry, and the Redress Board cost a total of 1.5 billion euro (£1.3 billion) by the end of 2015, according to the Comptroller & Auditor General (C&AG).

In the dying days of the government in 2002 then education minister Michael Woods arranged a controversial indemnity deal with 18 religious orders that they would hand over property, cash and assets worth 128 million euro (£111 million) to cover some of the costs.

The C&AG said 21 million euro (£18 million) of this was left to be transferred to the State at the end of 2015.

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IRELAND
Shemazing

by Sarah Magliocco

A debate on the Tuam babies scandal was scheduled to kick off at 10am this morning, however the debate was delayed as not enough TDs showed up for the meeting.

Oireachtas rules state that 20 of the 158 elected TDs must be present for a debate to occur, meaning the meeting started behind schedule as the Dáil waited for others to show up.

Once the debate began, Children’s Minister Katherine Zappone issued an apology to the victims of the scandal, and told TDs she will consider including all residential Irish institutions in the current inquiry.

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IRELAND
RTE News

Minister for Children Katherine Zappone has referred in the Dáil to the 474 so-called “unclaimed infant remains” which were transferred from mother-and-baby homes to medical schools in Irish universities between 1940 and 1965.

The minister also announced that she is about to begin discussions with advocates, historians and other experts who have studied a model of inquiry used by countries like Chile and Argentina to try to come to terms with a range of large-scale past abuses.

Minister Zappone said an interim report from the commission investigating mother and baby homes will be published by the end of the month.

During a special Dáil debate on the Tuam babies, the minister acknowledged the calls made since Friday for an expansion of the terms of reference to cover all institutions, agencies and individuals that were involved with Ireland’s unmarried mothers and their children.

She said she wanted to offer solidarity and a personal apology for the wrongs that were done to those affected.

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IRELAND
TV3 – Xpose’

In today’s Loose Women, Coleen Nolan confessed she is worried her long-lost half-sister might have been born in the mother and baby home in Tuam, where the remains of up to 800 babies and toddlers were found buried in a mass grave.

As Coleen explained, she was in her late twenties when she discovered her dad had fathered a child with another woman while still married to her mum.

She never met her half-sister, who was born in Ireland.

“I always wondered why she didn’t get in touch and I thought: she could have been one of those babies,” Coleen said.

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NORTHERN IRELAND
BBC News

The leader of the Catholic Church in Ireland has backed a call by Amnesty International for an inquiry into mother-and-baby homes in Northern Ireland.

The call came after “significant human remains” were found at the site of a former home in the Republic of Ireland.

The home was run by the Bon Secours order of nuns in Tuam, County Galway.

The bodies ranged from premature babies to three year olds.

The discovery was made as part of an investigation into claims by a local historian that up to 800 babies and young children died at the home and were buried in unmarked graves.

Amnesty International has said that archaeological surveys should be carried out at all former mother-and-baby homes in Northern Ireland.

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IRELAND
BBC News

The remains of 474 infants were transferred from mother-and-baby homes to medical schools over 25 years, the Irish minister for children has said.

The minister, Katherine Zappone, revealed the figure as she addressed the Dáil (Irish parliament).
She made a statement following last week’s revelation that “significant quantities” of human remains had been found at one of the homes in Tuam.

Ms Zappone said the Tuam discovery “confirmed what we had all feared”.

The minister also paid tribute to the “tireless” County Galway historian Catherine Corless, whose personal research led to the inquiry and an excavation of site.

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INDIA
Independent (UK)

Muneeza Naqvi

A Roman Catholic diocese in southern India is considering using security cameras and other measures to curb sexual abuse by priests after a vicar was arrested on charges of raping a teenage girl, a spokesman said Thursday.

The bishop of the Mananthavady Diocese has also removed the Reverend Robin Vadakkancheril from his job as vicar of St. Sebastian church in Kottiyoor and from conducting any priestly functions, said the Reverend Nobel Parackal, a media officer for the diocese in Kerala state.

Vadakkancheril was arrested late last month after a 17-year-old girl from his parish gave birth to a baby. Investigating officer Sunil Kumar said police are searching for at least five nuns who allegedly helped the priest cover up the rape and subsequent pregnancy.

Kumar said the girl, after initially refusing to name the father of the baby, said the priest had raped her in the place where the church provided computer lessons.

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VATICAN CITY
Catholic News Service

By Carol Glatz Catholic News Service
3.9.2017

VATICAN CITY (CNS) — When a child-protection advocate resigned from a papal advisory board in early March, she did so because of growing frustration with persistent resistance and a “toxic” sense of superiority from some in the Roman Curia.

A number of church leaders on the front lines promoting child protection policies have also long noted the biggest challenge they face is a cultural one — an aversion to the unknown, playing it safe rather than speaking up, and denial and defensiveness to protect an institution over a possible victim.

Despite four years of Pope Francis’ calls to break down walls erected out of fear and ivory towers built on arrogance, Marie Collins said a kind of enclave mentality could still be found in some corners of the Curia.

While there are many people who are “open and more willing to listen and learn,” the Curia and the Vatican tend to be “very much a closed-in system where people are talking to others with the same views and not being challenged at all, and so things appear normal that are not actually normal,” said Collins, an Irish survivor of clerical sex abuse, who had served on the Pontifical Commission for the Protection of Minors since its inception in 2014.

So when anything from the outside challenges the way things have traditionally been done, “it is almost an instinct to resist it, and that is what’s so difficult,” she told Catholic News Service after her resignation.

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GUAM
The Guam Daily Post

Mindy Aguon | For The Guam Daily Post

Michael Chargualaf has held a secret for 41 years. A secret, he said, that changed the trajectory of his life forever, leading him to estranged relationships and an angry past.

When he was 13 years old, Chargualaf volunteered to become an altar boy at the San Isidro Church in Malojloj. His grandmother, Ignacia, had raised Michael and encouraged him to grow his Catholic faith by serving as an altar boy and attending Confraternity of Christian Doctrine (CCD) classes at the parish.

The first weekend he went to serve for Father Louis Brouillard, Chargualaf recalled sleeping at the back of the parish the night before to ensure he wouldn’t be late to help prepare for 6 a.m. Sunday Mass.

Chargualaf said he knocked on the rectory door and was surprised to see Father Brouillard open the door wearing a white bathrobe that hung open, showing no clothing underneath. He said Brouillard told him to come inside and find a seat. But with books and papers everywhere, Chargualaf said he was directed to the bedroom, where he sat at the foot of the bed.

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IRELAND
Leinster Express

PORTLAOISE’S PARISH PRIEST SAYS THE CHURCH IS ‘ASHAMED’ OF WHAT HAS EMERGED IN TUAM

By Conor Ganly 9 Mar 2017

A Catholic Bishop and Disocesan admistrator who oversee the majority of Laois parishes have signed up to a group statement of Irish Bishops in response to the shocking findings in Tuam and emerging revelations at other Mother and Baby homes run by the church.

While Portlaoise’s Parish priest has told parishioners the church is “ashamed” of what has emerged in Tuam, the Bishop of Kildare & Leighin Denis Nulty deferred to a joint statement from the Irish Bishops conference. Monsignor Michael Ryan, as Diocesan Administrator for Ossory is also co-signature of the statement.

In it the Bishops say the “appalling story of life, death and adoptions related to Mother and Baby Homes has shocked everyone in Ireland and beyond these shores”. They said that ‘sadly’, it is a reminder of a time when unmarried mothers were frequently judged and rejected.

“We remember in prayer the deceased who suffered so much and their loved ones who continue to experience emotional and psychological hurt,” said the statement.

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IRELAND
Irish Times

Conor Gallagher

A former priest has been convicted of orally raping a child in his parish 10 years ago.

The 63-year-old is already serving a lengthy sentence for sexually abusing a different child six years ago.

A Central Criminal Court jury on Thursday convicted him of six counts of oral rape, defilement and sexual assault in his home between 2005 and 2006.

The victim was aged between 10 and 11 at the time. The man had denied the charges.

The trial heard the priest befriended the boy before starting to invade his personal space and make sexual comments.

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IRELAND
Irish Independent

Conor Gallagher
March 9 2017

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

The 63-year-old is already serving a lengthy sentence for sexually abusing a different child six years ago.

On Thursday, a Central Criminal Court jury convicted him of six counts of oral rape, defilement and sexual assault in his home between 2005 and 2006. The victim was aged between 10 and eleven at the time. The man had denied the charges.

The trial heard the priest befriended the boy before starting to invade his personal space and make sexual comments.

This progressed to several incidents of sexual abuse. At one stage the priest told the child to go home and “Google gay porn.” The boy’s father noticed this in the family computer’s internet search history and confronted the child.

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ITALY
USA Today

Josephine McKenna, Religion News Service
March 9, 2017

ROME (RNS) — Lurid accusations of priests involved in sex orgies, porn videos and prostitution have emerged from several parishes in Italy recently, sending shock waves all the way to the Vatican and challenging the high standards Pope Francis demands of clergy.

In the southern city of Naples, for example, a priest was recently suspended from the parish of Santa Maria degli Angeli over claims he held gay orgies and used Internet sites to recruit potential partners whom he paid for sex.

The allegations concerning the Rev. Mario D’Orlando were brought to the attention of the diocese when an anonymous letter was sent to a Naples bishop. D’Orlando denied the charges when he was summoned by the city’s archbishop, Cardinal Crescenzio Sepe, but is now facing a formal inquiry conducted by local church officials.

In the northern city of Padua, a 48-year-old priest, the Rev. Andrea Contin, is facing defrocking as well as judicial proceedings amid accusations he had up to 30 lovers, some of whom he took to a swingers’ resort in France.

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UNITED STATES
Catholic League

Bill Donohue comments on a protest of Irish nuns on March 10:

The lunacy behind the Tuam “mass grave” story continues to mount. On March 10, outside the Bon Secours Hospital in Renmore, demonstrators will assemble to protest the alleged mistreatment of children by this order of nuns in the first half of the twentieth century.

People Before Profit is organizing this event. It is a Marxist-inspired band of pro-totalitarian, pro-abortion, and anti-Catholic fanatics. Unlike commentators such as Niall O’Dowd of Irish Central, who routinely make unsubstantiated accusations, I cite data. So here it is.

Marxist-Inspired Band of Totalitarians

In Ireland’s legislative elections of 2011 and 2016, one of the registered parties was the “Anti-Austerity Alliance—People Before Profit (AAA-PBP)” party. Its ideology is identified as “Trotskyism-Socialism.”

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UNITED STATES
IrishCentral

Niall O’Dowd @niallodowd March 09, 2017

Now that gay groups are accepted in the parade Donohue is a shadow of his former self.

Instead, these days Bill is railing against the Irish media and politicians of all backgrounds. That’s because Irish authorities are calling out the Catholic Church in Ireland on its disgraceful record of abuse for out-of-wedlock children.

Those children who died in massive numbers in Catholic homes (and one Protestant one too, it must be stated) were starved, used as drug guinea pigs, sold to America, and many little bodies were sold for dissection after premature death.

Nothing to see there, says Donohue, who must have worn horse-sized blinkers not to be moved by the horrific treatment of generations of young, and incredibly vulnerable, children.

The Irish mother and baby controversy may be Bill’s last chance at the headlines he so deeply covets. He calls the stories ‘fake news,’ even when the AP, Irish Prime Minister Enda Kenny and the independent Commission of Inquiry all found otherwise.

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ITALIA
Rete L’Abuso

[The Supreme Court confirmed the 5 years and 3 months prison sentence for Fr Jesus Vasquez.]

Pronuncia Cassazione, confermati i 5 anni e 3 mesi stabiliti in appello per don Jesus Vasquez

Diventa definitiva, dopo la pronuncia della Cassazione sull’inammissibilità del ricorso della difesa, la condanna a 5 anni e 3 mesi stabilita dalla Corte di appello per don Jesus Vasquez (avvocato Marcello D’Auria), ex parroco di San Nicola Manfredi, accusato di abusi sessuali ai danni di due minori. Un’accusa emersa da un’indagine avviata dalla Squadra mobile dopo le querele presentate dai genitori dei ragazzi, parti civili con gli avvocati Angelo Leone e Sergio Rando.

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ITALIA
Rete L’Abuso

[Pescara: The trial of a priest accused of child abuse has been postponed.]

Pescara: prete accusato di violenza su minore, rinviato il processo. Non ha avuto inizio il processo a carico di don Vito Canto’, l’ex parroco di Spoltore rinviato a giudizio con l’accusa di abusi sessuali a seguito dei rapporti che avrebbe avuto negli ultimi anni con un ragazzino di 15 anni.

Oggi era prevista la prima udienza davanti al Tribunale collegiale di Pescara, presieduto dal giudice Maria Michela Di Fine, ma il processo e’ stato rinviato al prossimo 8 giugno, in attesa del pronunciamento della Cassazione, previsto per il 10 aprile, sulla questione del “ne bis in idem” sollevata dal difensore del prete, l’avvocato Giuliano Milia.

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SCHWEIZ
Neue Zurcher Zeitung

[A new report from the Infosekta office in Zurich deals with sexual abuse of children in Jehovah’s Witnesses. The conclusion is that most cases do not become public. The reason for this is the isolated system of the religious community, as well as the so-called two-witness rule, whereby a second person must have been aware of the deed in addition to the victim. Furthermore, the internal jurisdiction of the Jehovah’s Witnesses deterred their victims.]

Ein neuer Bericht der Fachstelle Infosekta in Zürich befasst sich mit sexuellem Missbrauch an Kindern bei den Zeugen Jehovas. Das Fazit lautet, dass die meisten Fälle nicht publik werden. Gründe dafür sind das abgeschottete System der Religionsgemeinschaft sowie die eigene sogenannte Zwei-Zeugen-Regel, wonach neben dem Opfer eine zweite Person die Tat mitbekommen haben muss. Weiter schrecke die interne Gerichtsbarkeit der Zeugen Jehovas Betroffene ab, ihre Erlebnisse bekanntzumachen.

Das System der Gemeinschaft funktioniert weltweit gleich. Ein Komitee aus Ältesten – so werden die Geistlichen bezeichnet, welche die Versammlungen leiten – urteilt über Vergehen. Laut Betroffenen, Therapeuten und Experten, mit denen die «NZZ am Sonntag» gesprochen hat, müssen Opfer vor dem Gremium detailliert schildern, was ihnen widerfuhr (siehe Infobox). Betroffen sind in der Regel Mädchen, die Täter Männer, oft mächtig und angesehen in der Gruppe. Anzeigen bei der Polizei versuche die Gemeinschaft möglichst zu verhindern, sagen Insider. Teilweise würden Vorsitzende der Zeugen Jehovas in der jeweiligen Landeszentrale einbezogen, um aus der Ferne über Fälle zu entscheiden.

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DEUTSCHLAND
Frankfurter Allgemeine

[Diocese: No evidence of abuse. A month ago allegations against a member of the Catholic Church shook the diocese of Limburg. There are no indications of potential abuse victims in the diocese.]

Einen Monat nach Bekanntwerden von Kinderporno-Vorwürfen gegen einen Mitarbeiter hat das Bistum Limburg nach eigenen Angaben keine Hinweise auf mögliche Missbrauchsopfer in der Diözese. Es habe sich bislang auch niemand mit entsprechenden Vorwürfen gemeldet, sagte ein Bistumssprecher am Dienstag.

Der Mitarbeiter wird beschuldigt, Kinderpornografie besessen zu haben. Der Mann wurde vom Dienst freigestellt. In dem Fall arbeite man weiterhin mit der Staatsanwaltschaft zusammen, sagte der Sprecher.

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ROM
Katholisch

[Zollner: Of course there is resistance. Marie Collins, the representative of the victims, has resigned from the Pontifical Child Protection Commission. How does it go from here? Catholic.de has spoken with Jesuit Hans Zollner.]

Bei ihrer Einsetzung 2014 gehörten der päpstlichen Kinderschutzkommission zwei Opfervertreter an: der Brite Peter Saunders und die Irin Marie Collins. Bereits im Februar 2016 hatte Saunders eine “Auszeit” angekündigt, weil er unzufrieden war. Vor einer Woche ist nun auch Collins zurückgetreten. Ihre Begründung: “hartnäckiger Widerstand” in der Kurie. Der Jesuit Hans Zollner gehört der Kommission ebenfalls an. Mit ihm hat katholisch.de über Collins’ Rücktritt, die Kompetenzen des Gremiums und das erschreckende Thema Missbrauch gesprochen.

Frage: Pater Zollner, die Kinderschutzkommission sollte auch den Opfern des Missbrauchs eine Stimme geben. Mit dem Rücktritt von Marie Collins gehört nun aber kein Betroffener mehr dem Gremium an. Ist die Kommission damit gescheitert?

Zollner: Natürlich sind der Schock und die Enttäuschung über den Rücktritt von Marie groß. Ich glaube aber, dass nicht einmal sie selbst von einem Scheitern der Kommission sprechen würde. Sie hat in all ihren Interviews seit dem Rücktritt betont, dass sie eine positive Bilanz der Arbeit der Kommission zieht. Marie wird auch weiterhin mit der Kommission sowie dem Kinderschutzzentrum CCP der Universität Gregoriana zusammenarbeiten. Ich selbst würde ebenfalls nicht von einem Scheitern sprechen. In nicht einmal drei Jahren haben wir einiges bewegt, das jetzt leider durch Maries bedauernswerten Rücktritt nicht gewürdigt wird.

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SCHWEIZ
Neue Zurcher Zeitung

[The events surrounding the new book by Daniel Pittet on misuse in Catholic institutions have attracted attention all over Switzerland (NZZ 25. 2. 17). Particularly the behavior of leading persons in the bishop’s office of the diocese has caused the public to doubt church leadership.]

Hanspeter Schmitt

Die Vorgänge um das neue Buch von Daniel Pittet über seinen in katholischen Einrichtungen erlittenen Missbrauch haben schweizweit Aufsehen erregt (NZZ 25. 2. 17). Besonders das Verhalten führender Personen in der Churer Bistumsspitze frappiert die Öffentlichkeit und lässt das Vertrauen in deren Leitungskompetenz in weiten Teilen der Kirche zusehends schwinden.

Dabei hatten die Schweizer Bischofskonferenz, der zuständige Bischof Morerod und Papst Franziskus in seinem Vorwort das Erscheinen dieses erschütternden wie umsichtigen Erfahrungsberichts vor drei Wochen beispielgebend flankiert: Sichtlich bewegt wurden die Offenheit und der Mut Pittets begrüsst, weiterführende unabhängige Aufklärung und Genugtuung zugesichert und andere mögliche Opfer zu ähnlichen, für sie angemessenen Prozessen ermutigt. Morerod engagierte sich auch persönlich, indem er Pittet mehrmals traf und ihn bei der Begegnung mit seinem damaligen Peiniger begleitete.

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DEUTSCHLAND
Katholisch

[The abuse scandal in the Catholic Church is also slowly becoming the subject of theology. The academic discipline had to be asked whether theological concepts and ideas contributed to the conditions under which clerics could abuse minors and cover up the deeds, says the Freiburgian fundamentalist theologian Magnus Striet.]

Der Missbrauchsskandal in der katholischen Kirche wird langsam auch Gegenstand der Theologie. Die akademische Disziplin müsse sich befragen lassen, ob theologische Konzepte und Vorstellungen zu Bedingungen beigetragen haben, unter denen Kleriker Minderjährige missbrauchen und die Taten vertuschen konnten, sagt der Freiburger Fundamentaltheologe Magnus Striet. An der Universität Freiburg tagen am Donnerstag und Freitag erstmals Dogmatiker, Moraltheologen, Historiker, Psychiater und Kriminologen zu dem Thema. Striet berichtet im Interview über das langsame Umdenken in der Theologie.

Frage: Prof. Striet, an der Uni Freiburg stellt eine Tagung Anfragen an die Theologie angesichts von sexuellem Missbrauch gegen Minderjährige in der Kirche. Das Thema ist relativ neu auf der Agenda der Theologie. Wie kam es zur der Veranstaltung?

Striet: Wir haben schon lange Kontakt zu dem Jesuiten Hans Zollner, der für den Vatikan weltweit für Prävention zuständig ist, und besuchen ihn regelmäßig mit Studierenden, damit er uns von seiner Arbeit berichtet. Schon seit langer Zeit wird von ihm darauf hingewiesen, dass die Theologie sich des Themas Missbrauch zu wenig annimmt.

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IRELAND
The Journal

FIANNA FÁIL LEADER Micheál Martin said today he believes that property interests still retained by the Catholic Church in hospitals should be handed over to the State.

In an interview with Sean O’Rourke on RTÉ Radio 1 today, he also said that he believes all mother-and-baby homes should be investigated, describing what happened to people such as survivor PJ Haverty, who was on the show before him, as “unchristian cruelty”.

He said that what occurred: “Speaks to a very dark side of our history where we had an invasive church governing, if you like, families and the whole ethos and the entire practice and life of people like that.”

Martin said that the situation also reveals the “evils of institutionalisation”.

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NEW MEXICO
Gallup Independent

Published in the Gallup Independent, Gallup, N.M., Feb. 22, 2017

By Elizabeth Hardin-Burrola
Independent correspondent
religion@gallupindependent.com

GALLUP – After postponing six healing services for clergy sex abuse survivors in recent weeks, Bishop James S. Wall will offer two services this week at Catholic parishes in Grants and Winslow, Arizona.

The services, designed to atone for clergy sexual abuse of minors, are a requirement of the nonmonetary provisions of the Diocese of Gallup’s Chapter 11 plan of reorganization. As part of the provisions, Wall agreed to visit every Catholic school or parish where a credibly accused abuser was either accused of abuse or assigned to ministry.

Wall’s first healing service this week will be at St. Teresa of Avila Church in Grants at 6 p.m. Thursday. According to the Gallup Diocese, the Rev. Conran Runnebaum, OFM, was the only Catholic priest assigned to St. Teresa’s who has been credibly accused of sexually abusing a minor. The Franciscan friar was assigned to St. Teresa’s from 1955 to 1958.

However, at least two priests accused of sexual misconduct involving an adult victim have been assigned to St. Teresa.

On Friday, Wall will offer a healing service in Winslow, a town with two Catholic churches whose parishioners have been subjected to at least 15 known pedophile clerics. The Winslow service will be at Madre de Dios Parish at 7 p.m. Friday.

According to the Diocese of Gallup, the following credibly accused priests were assigned to Madre de Dios, a mostly Hispanic parish on Winslow’s south side:

• John Degnan (1961).
• John T. Sullivan (1961-62).
• Robert J. Kirsch (1963-64).
• Samuel Wilson (1964-65).
• Clement A. Hageman (1965-75).
• Douglas McNeill (1969-70).
• Raul Sanchez (1975-76).
• John Boland (1981-83).

At the conclusion of both healing services, Wall will be available to meet privately with any abuse survivors and their family members who would like to speak with him.

Postponed services

When diocesan officials initially released the healing services schedule, the Gallup bishop was slated to hold 36 services across the diocese over a 15-month period, with the first service being held at Sacred Heart Cathedral Nov. 19. Since then, however, Wall has postponed six services.

Suzanne Hammons, spokeswoman for the diocese, said Wall postponed five services in January because he had a “mild medical condition” that required treatment in Phoenix. A sixth service, originally scheduled for Saturday in St. Johns, Arizona, has been postponed because of a scheduling conflict with the bishop’s annual Mardi Gras fundraiser celebration in Gallup. Hammons was asked in January about the postponed services, which still have not been rescheduled.

“We don’t have a rescheduled date yet because whenever a new date is posted, survivors must be given at least 30 days’ notice so they can plan accordingly,” Hammons wrote in an email Jan. 18. “We’re consulting with the Survivors’ Committee at the moment for their input on how far in advance they’d like a new date posted. When we have the new dates, I’ll send out a press release and post the updated schedule on the website.”

Catholic communities that need rescheduled services include those in Lumberton and Farmington as well as those in Chinle, Page, Tuba City, and St. Johns, Arizona.

Abuse survivors who do not want to attend a healing service can request a private meeting with the Gallup bishop. They should contact Elizabeth Terrill, the victims assistance coordinator pro tem, 505-906-7357.

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NEW MEXICO
Gallup Independent

Published in the Gallup Independent, Gallup, N.M. March 4, 2017

By Elizabeth Hardin-Burrola
Independent correspondent
religion@gallupindependent.com

GALLUP – Diocese of Gallup officials announced rescheduled dates for six postponed healing services for survivors of clergy sexual abuse Wednesday and at the same time rescheduled two more upcoming healing services.

All eight newly rescheduled healing services are slated to take place in March 2018.

Bishop James S. Wall initially scheduled 36 healing services in Catholic parishes and schools across the Diocese of Gallup over a 15-month period as a way to fulfill a nonmonetary provision of the diocese’s Chapter 11 plan of reorganization. According to the plan, the bishop is required to visit each operating Catholic parish or school in which sexual abuse occurred or where identified abusers served.

However, diocesan officials have yet to update their published list of 31 credibly accused sex abusers, which they released in December 2014. This list should include additional names of clerics named as abusers by bankruptcy court claimants who received financial settlements as part of the plan of reorganization. An updated list of credibly accused abusers would likely add more healing services to the bishop’s schedule.

In January, the bishop canceled services in Lumberton and Farmington in New Mexico and services in Chinle, Page and Tuba City in Arizona because of Wall’s illness and medical appointments. In February Wall canceled the healing service in St. Johns, Arizona, because it had been scheduled the same evening as his annual Mardi Gras fundraising event in Gallup.

More postponements

Suzanne Hammons, spokeswoman for the Gallup Diocese, said two more healing services, slated to be held in Overgaard and Snowflake, Arizona, in July are also being pushed back to March 2018. She said these latest postponements are because of Wall’s participation in the Tekakwitha Conference, a national organization for Native American Catholics.

“Bishop Wall is the Chairman for the (United States Conference of Catholic Bishops’) subcommittee on Native American Affairs, and in that capacity he was invited to celebrate the conference’s main Mass on Friday, July 21,” Hammons wrote in an email Thursday.

The 2017 Tekakwitha Conference is scheduled for July 19-23 in Rapid City, South Dakota.

The rescheduled dates for the eight postponed healing services are as follows:

• March 1, 2018, at 6 p.m. at St. Francis of Assisi in Lumberton.
• March 2, 2018, at 6 p.m. at Sacred Heart Parish and School in Farmington.
• March 9, 2018, at 6:30 p.m. at Our Lady of Fatima in Chinle, Arizona.
• March 10, 2018, at 6:30 p.m. at Immaculate Heart of Mary in Page, Arizona.
• March 11, 2018, at 1 p.m. at St. Jude in Tuba City, Arizona.
• March 15, 2018, at 6 p.m. at St. John the Baptist in St. Johns, Arizona.
• March 16, 2018, at 6:30 p.m. at Our Lady of the Assumption in Overgaard, Arizona.
• March 17, 2018, at 6:30 p.m. at Our Lady of the Snows in Snowflake, Arizona.

For survivors of clergy sex abuse who do not want to attend the Diocese of Gallup’s healing services, Elizabeth Terrill, the victims’ assistance coordinator pro tem, is available to schedule a meeting with the bishop in a different setting. Terrill is also responsible for coordinating counseling services for abuse survivors who request it.

Terrill can be contacted at 505-906-7357.

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GEORGIA
Legacy – Savannah Morning News

Henry Bowers Groover III, O.P. – SAVANNAH – Henry Bowers Groover III, O.P., 62, passed away on January 17, 2017. He was preceded in death by his parents, Henry Bowers Groover, Jr. and Carmel Register Groover. Hank is survived by his brothers, Michael Groover (Paula) and J. Nicholas Groover (Jodi), along with two nieces and two nephews. He enjoyed fishing, crabbing, gardening and spending time with his family and friends. Funeral services were held privately. Remembrances can be made to the Old Savannah City Mission. Please sign our online guestbook at www.foxandweeks.com Savannah Morning News February 19, 2017 Please sign our Obituary Guest Book at savannahnow.com/obituaries.

Published in Savannah Morning News on Feb. 19, 2017

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IRELAND
Herald

Gavin White – 09 March 2017

More than 300 human burials may be associated with the Donnybrook Magdalene laundry, Dublin City Council’s senior archaeologist believes.

Dr Ruth Johnson has reviewed two reports in estimating how many remains might be at the site, which is now the subject of a planning application for an apartment block.

The revelation comes as the Religious Sisters of Charity said that all those who died at the laundry were accounted for and there were no unmarked graves.

One report reviewed by Dr Johnson was from the Inter-Departmental Committee (IDC), chaired by Martin McAleese.

Its findings, published in 2013, reported 167 burials associated with the laundry between 1922 and 1992.

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FLORIDA
News4Jax

JACKSONVILLE, Fla. – A cousin of Fred Laster, the 16-year-old whose dismembered remains were found 23 years ago outside a Lake City gas station, said he is not one bit surprised that Ronnie Hyde was charged with killing the boy.

“I’ve always from Day 1 blamed him,” John Kirkland said. “I never said he killed him, but I said he knew what happened to him.”

Kirkland said there were five siblings in the Laster family and that he lived next to them in Yulee. Family members told News4Jax Fred was one of six children being raised by elderly grandparents living on Social Security after their mother died of cancer and their father left the family.

“My grandma passed away brokenhearted,” Kirkland said. “She died on her deathbed saying she wanted Freddy.”

Fred Laster’s immediate family has asked for privacy, issuing a statement Wednesday saying they “have gathered together at this time to support each other as we experience the intense emotions caused by the heartbreaking loss of ‘Freddy’ and the arrest of his killer.”

Hyde, who Kirkland called Ron, was a youth pastor at the Oceanway church that the Laster family attended in the early 1990s. Kirkland said Hyde always wanted to hang out with the young boys — never the girls. He also tried to be with the boys one-on-one, never in a group.

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ILLINOIS
Belleville News-Democrat

BY BETH HUNDSDORFER
bhundsdorfer@bnd.com

St. Clair County State’s Attorney Brendan Kelly went before a Senate Committee on Tuesday to urge senators to pass legislation to eliminate the statute of limitations for felony sex crimes against children.

The bill, Senate Bill 189, passed unanimously and heads to the full Senate for consideration.

“There is no time limit for the pain and trauma endured by child victims of sex assault and there should be no time limit for our ability to reach justice for them,” Kelly told the committee, according to a press release.

Attorney General Lisa Madigan, Scott Cross, a survivor, and state Sen. Scott Bennett, the bill’s sponsor, joined Kelly to testify before the committee.

Read more here: http://www.bnd.com/news/local/article137255678.html#storylink=cpy

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WASHINGTON
KOMO

[with video]

by Lindsay Cohen
Wednesday, March 8th 2017

OLYMPIA., Wash. — For Dan Griffey, a public battle has a very personal story behind it.

Griffey, a state representative from Mason County, is sponsoring House Bill 1155, which would eliminate the statute of limitations for certain felony sex offenses, such as child rape and molestation.

“I don’t think that a monster should have a free moment from fear of prosecution,” Griffey said. “They should fear prosecution their entire life.”

Griffey’s fight is deeply personal. His wife, Dinah, survived years of sexual abuse at the hands of a relative. Part of the abuse happened when she moved to South Seattle.

“[The neighborhood] was nowhere near as scary as the man living in my home, I can tell you that much,” she said.

The abuse started at age 8 in the shower.

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AUSTRALIA
Catholic Leader

Posted by: Mark Bowling

PROTECTING children from sexual predators is uppermost in the minds of every good parent and guardian.

Even with the public spotlight on child sexual abuse, and with a raft of new legal and reporting practices in place, can we be assured of our kids’ safety?

It was at a dinner party three years ago, that Catholic mother-of-four Michelle Derrig heard about two incidents of local children abused by fellow students at school.

“I was horrified to hear that in both cases, the parents had been supervising their children at the time,” Ms Derrig, a member of the St John Bosco parish, Engadine, in Sydney’s south, said.

“It made me realise, that no matter how diligent you are as a parent, the reality is that we need to empower our children to protect themselves.

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INDIA
Outlook

After the arrest of a Kerala priest over charges of rape of a minor girl made headlines, an apparent supporter of his has invited protests and support alike from Facebook users after his post that is alleged to be pro-paedophile got viral.

According to a facebook post by Muhammed Farhad, translated in English, “all types of sexual activities are normal because you are feeling it when you do so. What is abnormal is when you restrict my sexual activity according to your interests.”

The post also mentioned Farhad’s ‘sexual attraction’ to a girl studying in 5th standard . He says he buys her a chocolate everyday to appease her and is now ‘enjoying every moment of the love she expresses for me.”

Muhammed Farhad’s facebook post is assumed to be a personal viewpoint on the arrest of catholic priest Robin Vadakumcherry in Kerala for raping and impregnating a 16 year old girl.

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IRELAND
Irish Times

Michael O’Regan

An interim report on the Tuam baby scandal is to be published by the end of the month, Minister for Children Katherine Zappone has said.

Taoiseach Enda Kenny came under strong Opposition pressure in the Dáil on Wednesday to have the report, compiled by the commission investigating the human remains on the Galway site, published.

“After decades and years of hard work, determination and unwavering commitment the truth has been laid bare for us all to see,’’ said Ms Zappone.

She told the Dáil on Thursday she would undertake “a scoping exercise’’ to examine expanding the commission’s terms of reference to cover all institutions, agencies and individuals involved with Ireland’s unmarried mothers and their children.

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INDIA
Associated Press

BY MUNEEZA NAQVI
ASSOCIATED PRESS

NEW DELHI (AP) — A Roman Catholic diocese in southern India is considering using security cameras and other measures to curb sexual abuse by priests after a vicar was arrested on charges of raping a teenage girl, a spokesman said Thursday.

The bishop of the Mananthavady Diocese has also removed the Rev. Robin Vadakkancheril from his job as vicar of St. Sebastian church in Kottiyoor and from conducting any priestly functions, said the Rev. Nobel Parackal, a media officer for the diocese in Kerala state.

Vadakkancheril was arrested late last month after a 17-year-old girl from his parish gave birth to a baby. Investigating officer Sunil Kumar said police are searching for at least five nuns who allegedly helped the priest cover up the rape and subsequent pregnancy.

Kumar said the girl, after initially refusing to name the father of the baby, said the priest had raped her in the place where the church provided computer lessons.

Kumar said the girl’s family was bitterly poor. Her child has been placed in a local orphanage and the girl is being looked after by the town’s child welfare committee, he said.

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IRELAND
Irish Times

Thursday, March 09, 2017

Prof James M Smith

Prof James M Smith says that the Church either knew what was happening in Tuam and did nothing or that its bishops never fulfilled their pastoral duty under Canon Law

The Archbishop of Tuam, Dr Michael Neary, is “horrified and saddened” by revelations confirming the presence of significant human remains, thought to be those of some 796 children, buried in an underground sewage treatment works at the former Sisters of the Bon Secours’ Children’s Home in the town.

Speaking last Sunday morning, Dr Neary reflected on a by-gone era: “This points to a time of great suffering and pain for the little ones and their mothers. I can only begin to imagine the huge emotional wrench which the mothers suffered in giving up their babies for adoption or by witnessing their death.”

Media coverage of the story in the intervening days suggests that the “time of great suffering and pain” continues unabated.

The point here is not to scapegoat one bishop. That said, it is telling that the Archdiocese has yet (at the time of going to print) to address the issue on its website, despite running a “breaking news” banner on its homepage.

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IRELAND
Irish Times

Mar 8, 2017

Kathy Sheridan

yone who enjoys ramble around old Irish cemeteries will recognise them. Fine edifices of marble and granite, rendering glory to the mortal remains of senior churchmen, trumpeting a temporal hierarchy even in death.

Meanwhile, stories of the despised unbaptised – stillborns and foetuses – denied a burial in sacred ground and destined for the loveless afterlife of limbo, lie deep in us still.

So, it is not just the disposal of foetal and infant remains in a disused waste facility that stuns the heart. It is the fact that a religious order buried even baptised children in unconsecrated ground – as it surely did, since a fifth of those identified in the death certificates were more than a year old.

Punch-drunk from stories of savagery in religious institutions, the one remaining excuse was that it was all about the twisted saving of souls. Tuam disproves that. Something else was afoot.

We know that many of the children who survived the mother and baby homes, ended up in the industrial schools, and that some of the mothers themselves ended up in the Magdalen laundries, all becoming, in effect, cogs in a vast interlocking system established by the Catholic Church.

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IRELAND
Newstalk

Simon Coveney says he’s concerned about extending the terms of the current commission of inquiry into Mother and Baby homes because it will delay the findings.

Coveney says that an extension could put off a lot of the work that’s already been done specifically in relation to the case in Tuam.

Yesterday the Taoiseach said there needs to be a period of reflection on what Ireland does as a nation in response to the scandal.

Enda Kenny said “No nuns broke into our homes to kidnap our children – we gave them up to what we convinced ourselves was that nuns care.

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IRELAND
Galway Advertiser

MARY O’CONNOR

The discovery of the remains of almost 800 children on the site of the former Bon Secours Mother and Baby Home in Tuam, over a five decade period must herald the beginning of an “honest appraisal” of what went on at all the other homes throughout the country, a local TD insisted this week.

Deputy Catherine Connolly said equally, the role that both the State and church played in the “incarceration of women and their babies” must also come under the spotlight.

“In this regard, the official reaction to Catherine Corless’ research almost two years ago does not give us much hope that we as a society and more particularly the Bon Secours Sisters have reached the point where we can both face the truth and learn from it,” stated the Galway West Independent TD.

She described the reaction of the Bon Secours Order as “simply appalling”. “Indeed, when Catherine Corless first spoke publicly of her research, the PR consultant for the Bon Secours Sisters went so far as to tell us ‘when you come here, you’ll find no mass grave, no evidence that children were ever so buried, and a local police force casting their eyes to heaven and saying ‘Yeah, a few bones were found – but this was an area where famine victims were buried. So?’

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IRELAND
Irish Times

Mark Hilliard

Catholic bishops have said the latest controversy surrounding the mother and baby home at Tuam is a reminder of “when unmarried mothers were frequently judged and rejected” in Ireland.

The Bishops’ Conference said it discussed such institutions during its three-day spring general meeting and reiterated its apology for the hurt caused by the church’s role in the system.

It also called for the proper marking of burial sites at parish level so that “the deceased and their families will be recognised with dignity and never be forgotten”.

The statement follows the continuing fallout from the controversy since the discovery of “significant” human remains at Tuam.

Minister for Housing Simon Coveney has warned that expanding the scope of the inquiry into other mother and baby homes could delay findings in relation to Tuam.

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IRELAND
Irish Times

Brendan O’Neill

There is something deeply disturbing, ghoulish even, in the media and political discussion of the Tuam mother and baby home.

No one, apart from a handful of Catholic extremists, denies that conditions in the home were grim, and that the women and children who lived and died there were gravely wronged.

But the mawkish discussion of Tuam, the transformation of it into fodder for tabloid outrage and ostentatious emoting on Twitter, is an ugly spectacle.

It seems designed not to work out what happened in the home, but to make it a symbol of evil that we decent people might contrast ourselves against.

It’s virtue signalling – an attempt to advertise one’s own moral rectitude by poring over the depravity of bygone eras.

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IRELAND
Irish Independent

Eilish O’Regan and Cormac McQuinn
March 9 2017

Catholic Bishops have called for burial sites near Mother and Baby homes to be properly marked to allow the dead and their families be recognised with dignity and not forgotten.

The call, made at the Spring General Meeting of the Irish Catholic Bishops’ Conference, puts more pressure on the investigating commission to carry out test excavations to ensure the remains of more dead babies, as discovered near the Tuam home, are properly respected.

The concern is that marked burial sites near the homes are not the only grounds where babies were placed many decades ago.

The bishops said the appalling story of life, death and adoptions related to the Mother and Baby Homes has shocked everyone in Ireland and beyond.

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IRELAND
The Irish Catholic

by Greg Daly
March 9, 2017

If we are to be horrified by what we are learning about the Tuam Mother and Baby Home, we should probably reserve our anger more for how the infant children of unmarried mothers were treated in life than in death.

The Mother and Baby Home Commission of Investigation has, as we know, conducted test excavations late last year and earlier this year by the site of the former Mother and Baby Home in Tuam, finding two large structures. One was a septic tank that had been decommissioned and filled in, the other being a long structure containing 20 chambers, at least 17 of which contained significant quantities of human remains from infants between 35 foetal weeks and two–three years, all dating from the period when the home was in operation.

Admitting to uncertainty about the purpose of the structure, the commission speculates that it had been built for the containment of sewage or waste water, adding that it does not yet know if it was ever used for this purpose.

Asking for the State authorities to take responsibility for the appropriate treatment of the remains, and stating that the Coroner has been informed, the Commission says it “is shocked by this discovery and is continuing its investigation into who was responsible for the disposal of human remains in this way”.

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IRELAND
Donegal Democrat

Declan Magee
9 Mar 2017

The investigation by the Mother and Baby Homes Commission could yet carry out similar excavations to the one at Tuam at two such homes in Donegal.

The discovery of the remains of a significant number of children at the Bon Secours Mother and Baby Home in Tuam was announced last week by the commission. The government has not ruled out such investigations at the other 17 mother and baby homes and county homes that are being investigated by the commission.

Two homes in Donegal, The Castle, Newtowncunningham, and Stranorlar County Home are being investigated by the commission as well.

The commission told the Donegal Democrat yesterday that no decision had been made on the issue.

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IRELAND
Irish Sun

By OLIVER CALLAN
9th March 2017

THE Tuam babies scandal has not only exposed horrors committed by the Catholic Church in mother and baby homes, but shows that everyone in society shared some responsibility for them.

The atrocities were carried out by a Church backed by the political and professional classes, with the acquiescence of those below them.

This week, a Taoiseach who has been a TD since 1975 expressed “shock” at learning about a scandal and cover-up that continued while he was still in the Dail.

The crime of being a woman who had sex outside marriage was enough to justify a lifetime of pain inflicted on them by an Ireland that is too often too fondly remembered.

That it happened at all is a shame on all society. That it was carried out mostly by nuns, women themselves, is almost impossible to comprehend. That we aren’t shouting from the rooftops demanding justice now is troubling.

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IRELAND
Breaking News

The line-up for this week’s Late Late show has been announced.

Joining Ryan Tubridy on the couch this week will be Tuam babies historian Catherine Corless and survivors of the Mother and Baby homes.

Catherine will be talking about why she was so determined to get to the truth and persevered despite coming under pressure from people who doubted the veracity of her claims.

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IRELAND
Daily Mail (UK)

By Estelle Shirbon

TUAM, Ireland, March 9 (Reuters) – Peter Mulryan’s little sister may lie buried among the bones of babies and toddlers found in the sewers of what was once a home for unmarried mothers in the Irish town of Tuam, but he wants to know for sure.

The announcement last week by an official inquiry that it had found “significant quantities” of remains at the site has horrified Ireland, reviving anguish over how women and children were once treated at state-backed Catholic institutions.

The number of bodies is unknown, but a trail of paper evidence suggests there could be close to 800.

For Mulryan, who was born to an unmarried mother in 1944 and spent the first four years of his life at the Tuam home before being fostered, the grim discovery brings hope that he may find out what happened to Marian, the younger sister he never knew.

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IRELAND
The Guardian

Tanya Gold

Thursday 9 March 2017

It is true, as survivors said it was. Under a small patch of grass by a playground in Tuam, County Galway, Ireland, the bodies of the children who died in the local Mother and Baby home lie in unmarked graves. The Mother and Baby homes of Ireland – the last of which closed in 1996 – were run like punishment hostels for unmarried pregnant women. Their children were taken for adoption, fostering or the horror of the industrial schools, or they died in their thousands, of malnutrition and neglect. In some cases the bodies were used for dissection in medical schools.

This was veiled until two years ago when an amateur historian, Catherine Corless, learnt that 796 children had died at Tuam between 1925 and 1961; but where, she asked, were the graves? An inquiry was established and has now partially excavated the Tuam site. (The home has been replaced with a housing estate. Hence the ghoulish – and preposterous – playground.) Remains of children aged from those prematurely born to three years old have been found; Corless, then, is vindicated.

You might say that, for survivors, stonewalled and ignored by the Irish state and Catholic church for decades, denied their birth records and medical histories – essentially, their identities – and thwarted in their attempts to find their families, this is a victory.

Enda Kenny, the Irish prime minister, has called the findings “appalling”, and the Tuam site “a chamber of horrors” and that is a major concession. Bitter, yes, but an acknowledgment of the truth, even if it took the dead to say it.

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IRELAND
The Irish Catholic

by David Quinn
March 9, 2017

It is very hard, three years after the story first broke, to write again about the Tuam mother and baby home and all the deaths that took place there in the years of its operation from 1925 to 1961. What else is left to say?

I read again what I wrote at the time for this and other newspapers and it still holds up even in light of last week’s announcement that a ‘significant’ number of infant bodies have been found on the grounds of the old home.

The announcement was made by the Children’s Minister. It spoke of two underground structures at the site of the old home, the first being the septic tank that dominated news reports three years ago.

The second structure, the one in which a ‘significant’ number of bodies has been found, is of an undetermined nature. It is thought it might have been part of a sewage system and if it was that, it is not yet known if it was ever used as such.

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IRELAND
Connacht Tribune

By Denise McNamara – March 9, 2017

When Catherine Corless arrived at the Connacht Tribune three years ago armed with her files which included the names of the 798 babies and children who had died at St Mary’s in Tuam, she exuded a quiet determination.

She wanted a proper memorial for the offspring of the unmarried mothers whom she was convinced were consigned to an old septic tank on the site of the mother and baby home run by the Bons Secours Order.

Little did she think that her quest for information on those deaths would have sparked the outcry that has since erupted.

After the Connacht Tribune published the results of her research – which led eventually to national and international coverage months afterwards – she had a steady succession of people coming to her trying to trace their family members.

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IRELAND
Midlands 103

A former resident of Sean Ross Abbey in Roscrea says religious orders and the government have a lot to answer for over the mother and baby homes scandal.

Dolores from Tullamore gave birth to a boy in 1969 and says she was given no say and just seven hours’ notice when he was adopted a couple of weeks later.

The Dáil is hearing statements today on the discovery of remains at the former home in Tuam.

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IRELAND
IrishCentral

John Spain @IrishCentral March 09, 2017

The revelation last Friday by the commission investigating the Tuam mother and baby home scandal that infant skeletons had been found in underground chambers at the site has led to horrified headlines, not just at home but around the world.

That’s not surprising. The story (not entirely accurate) that the remains of hundreds of children had been “dumped” in a “sewage pit” by the nuns who ran the home over several decades was shocking enough to get international coverage. On Friday night I saw it on the BBC, Sky News, and American and European TV channels.

Several elements gave the story a high level of interest. Although almost medieval in its horror, this had taken place in the recent past, in the four decades between the 1920s and 1960s. The unfortunate babies and children were in the home because they were illegitimate, born to unmarried young mothers. Above all, the home was run by nuns.

And it is true that the nuns have a lot to answer for. Last weekend there were calls for a criminal follow-up and prosecutions, although only two nuns who served in the Tuam home are still alive and they are in their 80s and may not have been directly involved. The Bon Secours order of nuns they belonged to who ran Tuam has shrunk to a handful of very elderly sisters.

But the idea that this scandal is all the fault of cruel and heartless nuns is a convenient way of dodging the wider truth. It wasn’t just the nuns who were to blame. It was Irish society at the time.

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