ABUSE TRACKER

IRELAND
Irish Times

Patsy McGarry

It has been said of some senior civil servants, in Ireland as elsewhere, that they believe governments are elected to carry out their will. Such Sir Humphrey-like attitudes are not confined to civil societies.

They also exist at the Vatican where, inevitably, similar senior bureaucrats go one better. They believe the pope has been chosen by God to carry out their will.

Should a pope resist, though they prefer to think him misled, they will show him the way. He may propose, but they dispose. Or nothing happens.

And trying to get them to admit any of this would be every bit as futile as expecting the Sisters of Bons Secours to comment on confirmation that the remains of many hundreds of infants are to be found in Tuam at the Mother and Baby Home they once managed there.

A perfect example of Rome’s bureaucrats at work is how the Vatican’s commission for the protection of minors has been treated by some in the Curia, particularly at the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF).

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PENNSYLVANIA
Reading Eagle

By Liam Migdail-Smith
HARRISBURG, PA.

Last legislative session, state Rep. Mark Rozzi began his push to give victims of childhood sexual abuse a chance to confront their abusers in court with what he saw as a compromise plan.

The Muhlenberg Township Democrat said he’d hoped a limited approach would make it easier to win over skeptics. But state senators nonetheless gutted the bill of the piece victims and their advocates most wanted: an avenue for victims to sue their abusers and organizations that shielded them even if the window to do so has already closed.

So as Rozzi reboots the effort this year, he’s starting with the proposal victims most want to see. His bill would end time limits for victims to sue or press criminal charges going forward and open a two-year window for those abused in the past to file lawsuits regardless of when they were assaulted.

Now, victims have until age 30 for lawsuits and age 50 to bring criminal cases.

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AUSTRALIA
ABC News

By Tom Joyner

The Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse has come a long way since it first began hearings in April 2013.

Since then, it’s made almost 2,000 referrals to authorities, held more than 6,500 private sessions, and handled almost 40,000 phone calls.

But with so much ground to cover, where is it up to now and what’s left to go?

Why are we having a royal commission?

The child abuse royal commission was first announced in November 2012 by the Gillard government following calls that year for a national inquiry into how the Catholic Church handled allegations of abuse.

What is a royal commission?

The announcement was triggered by explosive allegations on Lateline from a former priest and a senior NSW police officer that the Catholic Church was covering up claims of abuse.

It was also prompted by reports of clerical abuse in the Newcastle and Hunter Valley regions by journalist Joanne McCarthy in the Newcastle Herald.

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CITTA’ DEL VATICANO
Corriere della Sera

Il prefetto del Sant’Uffizio, cardinale Gerhard Ludwig Müller, replica alle accuse di Marie Collins: sono pronto a incontrarla

di Gian Guido Vecchi

CITTÀ DEL VATICANO «Non posso capire che si parli di mancanza di collaborazione». Il cardinale Gerhard Ludwig Müller, teologo, curatore dell’opera omnia di Ratzinger, è dal 2012 prefetto della Congregazione per la Dottrina della Fede. È la prima volta che parla da quando Marie Collins, vittima di un prete pedofilo quando aveva 13 anni, si è dimessa dalla Pontificia commissione per la protezione dei minori denunciando «una mancanza di collaborazione vergognosa» della Curia e in particolare della sua Congregazione. È qui, nel palazzo dell’ex Sant’Uffizio, che vengono processati i sacerdoti accusati di pedofilia. Il cardinale è un uomo imponente, dal tono asciutto.

Eminenza, ha avuto occasione di parlare con Marie Collins prima delle dimissioni? «Non ho avuto mai prima l’occasione di incontrarla. Ma naturalmente sono pronto, nulla lo impedisce».

Ci sono state resistenze in Curia e nel suo dicastero? «Penso si dovrebbe mettere fine a questo cliché, l’idea che ci sia da un lato il Papa che vuole la riforma e dall’altro un gruppo di resistenti che vorrebbero bloccarla. Fa parte della nostra fede cattolica e dell’ethos del lavoro della Curia romana di sostenere la missione universale del Papa, a lui affidata da Gesù Cristo».

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VATICAN CITY
National Catholic Reporter

Joshua J. McElwee | Mar. 6, 2017

VATICAN CITY

The head of the Vatican’s doctrinal congregation has defended his office’s apparent refusal to reply to letters from victims of clergy sexual abuse, a decision which led the only abuse survivor on the pontifical commission about the matter to resign her post.

Cardinal Gerhard Muller, prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, says in a new interview it is “a misunderstanding” to think that his office “could deal with all the dioceses and religious orders in the world.”

“It is good that personal contact with victims be done by pastors in their area,” Muller said in an interview Sunday with Italy’s Corriere della Sera newspaper. “When a letter arrives, we always ask the bishop that he might take pastoral care of the victim, clarifying to him or her that the Congregation will do all that is possible to give justice.”

Having the Vatican congregation respond to the letters, the cardinal states, “would not respect the legitimate principle of diocesan autonomy and subsidiarity.”

Muller was speaking four days after Marie Collins, an Irish abuse survivor, resigned her post on Pope Francis’ Pontifical Commission for the Protection of Minors. In a statement for NCR March 1, Collins explained she was resigning due to frustration with Vatican officials’ reluctance to cooperate with the commission’s work to protect children and care for survivors.

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GUAM
Guam Daily Post

PICKET LINE: More than 40 people walked the picket line for the defrocking of Archbishop Anthony Apuron again Sunday morning. The Concerned Catholics of Guam and the Laity Forward Movement are both seeking the removal of Apuron and held their 33th picket in front of the Dulce Nombre de Maria Cathedral-Basilica, Sunday, March 3. David Castro/The Guam Daily Post

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INDIA
Outlook

A Kerala priest’s arrest for rape spills out tales about the laity being exploited in ways more than sexual

MINU ITTYIPE

The Church did provide him with the customary accommodation for work and rest, but the vicar went on to use the parsonage for deeds inhuman. Fr Robin Vadakkumchery alle­gedly raped a minor girl under his parish in north Kerala and further exploited the victim’s poverty by reportedly forcing her father to own up the pregnancy. The 48-year-old priest was arrested three weeks after he fathered a child, leading to his suspension from performing the holy sacraments, including mass. But then, this isn’t the first time the cle­rgy sensed the dark acts of the man in white robes.

First, on how Vadakkumchery is said to have brushed the serial cruelty under the carpet. He is claimed to have paid the dirt-poor family in a rugged belt of Kannur district Rs 10 lakh to conceal the real criminal, having persuaded the expe­ctant teenager to tell the police that the rapist was her parent. Not knowing the gravity of the situation, the father of the 16-year-old said he was the one who committed the crime and that the family was not interested in pursuing the case. Only when the police moved to arrest him did the girl spill the beans and reveal the identity: Vadakk­umchery, who, ironically, used to speak against child abuse.

Earlier in February, the cops were alerted by a rights NGO, Childline India Foundation, after the minor gave birth to a boy in Christuraj hospital off hilly Koothuparamba. Twenty days since the delivery came the arrest of Vadakkum­chery, who was the vicar of the St Sebastian’s church in Neendunoki off Kottiyoor along the Western Ghats bordering Karnataka. While the newborn was shifted to an orphanage in Vythiri (the entrance to neighbouring Wayanad district), the accused priest is said to have attempted to flee India. He reportedly sought to fly to Canada when the police nabbed him on February 28 at Thrissur district’s Puthukad, 35 km north of the international airport at Kochi.

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IRELAND
Newstalk

In a statement released this afternoon, People Before Profit have called for the Bon Secours sisters to make a full and unreserved apology to the victims of Tuam.

They have also called for them to open up all their files on the Mother and Baby Homes for public scrutiny.

Bríd Smith from the People Before People Profit Alliance said “The case of the Tuam babies is one of the most sickening and disturbing stories of our time.

“At the very least there is a case of deliberate neglect of children born outside marriage which led to death by malnutrition.

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IRELAND
The Irish Sun

By GARY MENEELY
5th March 2017

A large number of human remains — aged up to three years — were discovered at the site, a former institution where unmarried women were sent to give birth.

The home, run by the Bon Secours Sisters in Tuam, Co Galway, was demolished in the 1970s to make way for a local authority housing estate.

In a statement last night, gardai told the Irish Sun: “An Garda Siochana is liaising with the Coroner on this matter.”

Speaking yesterday, Housing Minister Simon Coveney said that Garda involvement in the probe could not be ruled out. Mr Coveney declared there was also significant responsibility on the State.

Mr Coveney said: “When you look at the way in which children’s bodies were discarded . . . 17 of the 20 chambers had remains in them, it’s hard to see that there wouldn’t be garda involvement.

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INDIA
Times of India

TNN | Updated: Mar 5, 2017

Kannur: A day after Wayanad Child Welfare Committee (CWC) chairman Fr Thomas Joseph Therakam was removed from his post for his alleged role in a conspiracy to hush up a minor’s rape by a priest and her subsequent delivery, church authorities suspended him as the spokesperson of Manathavady diocese.

A statement issued by bishop Jose Porunnedam of Mananthavady diocese on Sunday said the decision was taken in the backdrop of the government’s move to sack Therakam.

The bishop, who had earlier apologized to the survivor and her family said the diocese will stand by the survivor. The statement also said steps would be taken to avoid such incidents in future.

Meanwhile, the foundling home which is part of the Holy Infant Mary’s Girls Home at Vythiri in Wayand alleged that the CWC has been making baseless charges against it. In an official statement issued by the administrator, the foundling home said its officials had informed about the newborn baby the very next day it was brought to the orphanage.

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AUSTRALIA
Shepparton News

by BARCLAY WHITE MARCH 06, 2017

Bishop Leslie Tomlinson, it is time to go.

That is the message that two prominent critics of the Catholic Church have for the Bishop of Sandhurst Diocese after the revelations of the high rates of alleged sexual abuse by priests within the district.

Catherine Dooley from Tatura is a lifelong Catholic but in recent years has become a prominent critic of the church over what she believed was the mismanagement and lack of accountability within its structure.

Along with former Catholic priest Frank Purcell, they led a campaign urging Pope Francis to sack George Pell due to how he handled the sexual abuse crisis that engulfed the Catholic Church.

With the release of figures last month from the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse that revealed that Sandhurst Diocese had the second-highest rate of alleged sexual offences in the country, Ms Dooley and Mr Purcell believe local change was needed.

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IRELAND
Irish Mirror

BY JAMES FOGARTY

5 MAR 2017

The granddaughter of a woman buried in a mass grave believes there could be dozens more bodies buried there.

The shock allegations come as prayers were said across the country yesterday for the almost 800 babies discovered in a septic tank in Tuam, Co Galway.

Angela Collins, who was originally called Angelina before she was re-named by nuns, is buried in a Magdalene Laundry grave at St Finbarr’s cemetery in Togher, Co Cork.

Her family have been fighting to have their beloved grandmother to be exhumed.

They allege there could be many more than the officially recorded 72 women buried at the mass grave.

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IRELAND
Independent Catholic News (UK)

March 5, 2017

Archbishop Michael Neary, Archbishop of Tuam, focused on the discovery of children’s remains buried at the former Mother and Bay Home in Galway, during his homily for the First Sunday of Lent today. He said: “I am horrified and saddened to hear, through the Commission’s interim statement of 3 March 2017, that quite a large quantity of human remains were discovered on this site… This points to a time of great suffering and pain for the little ones and their mothers…This points to a time of great suffering and pain for the little ones and their mothers.”

The full homily text follows:

Each year, on the First Sunday of Lent, the Church puts before us, in the Gospel passages She has chosen for us, the accounts of Jesus being tempted in the wilderness. We are invited to enter into these scriptural texts and to acknowledge how they mirror what is going on in our own lives, and to avail of the opportunity to be changed for the better and transformed by them during the forty days of Lent.

This is true of the texts before us this year too, but I am sure you will understand if I do not reflect with you on the Gospel we have just heard proclaimed but, rather, if I speak for a moment on the news which emerged from the Mother and Baby Homes Commission of Investigation on Friday morning.

I was greatly shocked, as we all were, to learn of the extent of the numbers of children buried in the graveyard at the Mother and Baby Home in Tuam. I was made aware of the magnitude of this situation by media reporting and historical research. I am horrified and saddened to hear, through the Commission’s interim statement of 3 March 2017, that quite a large quantity of human remains were discovered on this site which, on analysis, matches the timescale of the Tuam Mother and Baby Home. This points to a time of great suffering and pain for the little ones and their mothers. Albeit not unexpected, I was very upset as I read the Commission’s findings made public on Friday, 3 March 2017.

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IRELAND
Irish Times

Ronan McGreevy

A Catholic bishop has told the Citizens’ Assembly that the revelations from Tuam made us “hang our heads in shame”.

Bishop of Limerick Dr Brendan Leahy said he was as surprised as anybody else by the news that the remains of hundreds of babies and young children were found behind a septic tank on grounds once owned by the Bon Secours Sisters.

During the questions and answer session at the assembly, a citizen from Tuam asked Bishop Leahy, who was representing the Irish Bishops’ Conference, how they could square their concern for the unborn with what happened in Tuam between 1926 and 1961.

She said: “How does the Church expect us to go along with this given the horrific track record that the religious orders has when dealing with the most vulnerable as you call them, the voiceless weak in our society historically. And specifically, in light of the discovery of the recent discoveries of the 780 babies thrown into septic tanks in Tuam?”

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INDIA
Times of India

TNN | Updated: Mar 5, 2017

Kozhikode: Senior Congress leader and former Union minister A K Antony has come down heavily on the priest who is accused of raping and impregnating a 16-year-old girl at Peravoor in Kannur. Talking to reporters here on Sunday, Antony termed the act of Fr Robin Vadakkancheril as a hideous crime and demanded strict action against the priest.

“It is a shame to say that such a person is a priest. The accused do not deserve any mercy and should not be given any consideration of a priest,” he said.

Religious or political background of the persons accused in such heinous crimes should never be considered while taking action, Antony responded when asked about the priest’s arrest.

“The police should take all steps to prove the crime and ensure punishment to the accused so that a clear message is sent across the society,” said Antony adding that Kerala should no more be called ‘God’s own Country’.

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INDIA
The Indian Express

By: PTI | Kannur (kerala) | Published:March 5, 2017

Police today intensified the search to trace seven absconding accused, including five nuns and a doctor, who are on the run since the arrest of a Catholic priest accused of raping a minor girl. The five nuns and the gynaecologist of the church-run hospital, where the 16-year-old girl delivered a boy, continued to evade the arms of the law.

The search conducted for the second day on Sunday failed to yield any result, investigating officer Sunilkumar told PTI.

A helper, Thangamma, is among the accused absconding, he said.

Police had yesterday said eight persons had been booked for their alleged role in hiding facts related to the case relating to the rape and subsequent delivery of the baby by the 11th standard student on February 7.

They were booked under non-bailable sections of POCSO Act and Juvenile Justice Act.
Fr Robin alias Mathew Vadakkancheril, who was the vicar of the local church at Kottiyoor in Kannur district and the prime accused in the case, was arrested on February 28.

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INDIA
The News Minute

The convenient excuse that the church hands out each time such an assault comes out in the open is this – “Not all priests are like that.”

Dhanya Rajendran

Sunday, March 05, 2017

I believe in God. In those low-points of my career or in my personal life, for one fleeting moment I look up to God and pray that everything gets alright. I believe in prayer.

But no amount of religiosity, spirituality or faith in God can get anyone to defend or justify an act as sickening and predatory as a Christian priest getting a 16-year-old girl pregnant, and then covering it up. And yet, this is exactly what the Church in Kerala is doing. Worse, many connected with the priest directly or indirectly are openly blaming the child.

Here are those reprehensible lines from Sunday Shalom, a magazine supported by the Catholic Sabha in Kerala, which would get anyone to seethe in anger.

“Here, the girl is above the age of 15. Let me tell you this, as I consider you like my daughter – you are also at fault. Before the Lord, it is you who will have to answer first. Daughter, why did you forget who a priest is? He has a human body and has temptations. He may have forgotten his position for a few seconds, my child who has taken the Holy Communion, why didn’t you stop or correct him?”

The girl the article blames is the 16-year-old who recently delivered a child at a hospital in Kannur. After an attempt to cover-up by the girl’s family, the priest who had allegedly raped her and impregnated her was arrested.

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NEW YORK
Associated Press

BY DAVID KLEPPER
ASSOCIATED PRESS

ALBANY, N.Y. (AP) — New York legislation to relax one of the nation’s most restrictive statutes of limitations on child molestation victims continues to stall under pressure from the Roman Catholic Church and other opponents.

The bill has circled the drain in Albany for a decade, but victims and advocates are optimistic this year because they’ve gained a key supporter, Democratic Gov. Andrew Cuomo. The fate of the Child Victims Act could rest with Senate Leader John Flanagan, a Long Island Republican, who supporters say has refused to meet to discuss the bill.

“They are denying us our day in court,” said Bridie Farrell, 35, a former competitive speed skater and a leading advocate for the bill.

Four years ago Farrell publicly accused a former teammate and mentor of repeatedly abusing her when he was 33 and she was 15 – too long ago to file charges or a civil suit. “They are protecting the institutions of the abusers.”

Currently, under New York law, victims of child sexual abuse have until age 23 to bring either criminal charges or file a lawsuit against their alleged abusers. It’s one of the tightest statutes of limitations in the country, a distinction that advocates say puts New York in the company of states like Georgia, Mississippi, Alabama and Michigan.

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IRELAND
Connacht Tribune

[The Chieftains with Joni Mitchell – The Magdalene Laundries via YouTube]

Galway Bay fm newsroom – Up to one hundred people attended a special event at Bohermore Cemetery this afternoon to remember the women of Galway’s Magdalene Laundries.

The ‘Flowers for Magdalenes’ event is now in its 6th year, and sees flowers laid on the graves of the women who once lived and worked in the laundries.

There were emotional scenes as a number of those in attendance shared their personal stories at today’s event.

They included women who were themselves ‘Magalene Women’, women who worked alongside them, and those whose relatives worked at the laundry.

One eldery man recalled how his mother died there, while a sister he never met disappeared from the Tuam Mother and Baby Home.

Today’s event also included a recital of the names of the former Magdalene women buried in Bohermore.

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IRELAND
RTE News

The Justice For Magdalenes Research group has said that a huge amount of work needs to be done to identify where all of the women who died in Magdalene laundries are buried.

Co-founder Clare McGettrick said at least 1,600 women died in these institutions but it is still not known where many are buried.

She was speaking at Glasnevin Cemetery today, one of several locations where flowers were laid on Magdalene graves.

Events were also held in Cork, Galway, Limerick, Waterford and New Ross.

Survivors, as well as children of women who died in Magdalene laundries, spoke at today’s events.

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IRELAND
Bilgrimage

William D. Lindsey

When Catherine Corless’s research suggesting that there was a mass grave at a home for unwed mothers and their children at Tuam in County Galway, Ireland, first began to be circulated, the blowback from some apologists in the Catholic institution was enormous. It took real grit and determination for her to keep investigating this story in the face of claims she was lying, that she was out to get the church, that she had exaggerated her findings and what they meant, and on and on.

As Ireland’s commissioner for children Katherine Zappone has now confirmed, Corless was right all along. She’s a hero.

Catherine Corless sums up her findings about the Tuam home and its mass grave in an interview with Tom Sykes:

The fact that the deaths were reported and that death certificates were issued for the children who were never buried – and let us not forget that prohibiting the decent burial of a human is and always has been a terrible crime in Ireland – is an indication of the incredible arrogance of the nuns. But it is also evidence that there must have been a wide circle of people in authority and the church who knew full well what was going on. Multiple children’s bodies a year were disappearing, unaccounted for, and no questions were asked.

“They were a law unto themselves,” says Corless, “They were surrounded by those eight foot high walls. Nobody – literally nobody – was allowed in; they were met at the gate and hardly any outsiders were brought in. They didn’t employ any locals as such -maybe they might bring somebody in for maintenance, for fixing the roof or a chimney–but otherwise the women who gave birth there and who were waiting to give birth, they were the ones that did all the work.” . . .
Corless believes that financial motivation was the primary motivation behind the illegal burials.

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UNITED STATES
Esquire

Charles Pierce

In other news from the Motherland, it long had been suspected that babies were killed and disposed of at what always is mistakenly called an “orphanage” in Tuam, County Galway. A remarkable woman named Catherine Corless, a local historian, was struck by the fact that the local registry had recorded 800 death certificates from the facility but only listed two actual burials. Corless ferociously pursued the investigation and she was finally (and tragically) proven correct this week. From The Guardian:

A mass grave containing the remains of babies and children has been discovered at a former Catholic care home in Ireland where it has been alleged up to 800 died, government-appointed investigators said on Friday. Excavations at the site of the former Bon Secours Mother and Baby Home in Tuam, County Galway, have uncovered an underground structure divided into 20 chambers containing “significant quantities of human remains”, the judge-led mother and baby homes commission said. The commission said DNA analysis of selected remains revealed ages of the deceased ranged from 35 weeks to three years old. It found that the dead had been mostly buried in the 1950s, when the facility was one of more than a dozen in Ireland offering shelter to orphans, unmarried mothers and their children. The Tuam home closed in 1961. The home, run by the Bon Secours Sisters, a Catholic religious order of nuns, received unmarried pregnant women to give birth. The women were separated from their children, who remained elsewhere in the home, raised by nuns, until they could be adopted.

This is a very mild description of what really went on, as Limerick historian Liam Hogan has been explaining on his essential stream on the electric Twitter machine. The children were separated from their mothers, who often got shuffled into the infamous Magdalene Laundries. The children then were put up for adoption. Hogan has links to Irish newspapers going back years describing the repressive, sex-hysterical Catholic theocratic impulse behind facilities like the one in Tuam. Some of the clips describe a bureaucracy of death only a couple of steps beyond that of Buchenwald.

God damn the people who did this, and whoever in the Church enabled it. And a bit of a hymn for the departed, most of whom never really had a prayer.

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AUSTRALIA
Canberra Times

Michael Gorey

The leader of nearly 160,000 Catholics in the Canberra region sees light among the darkness of child sexual abuse revelations and hopes to heal and console.

Archbishop Christopher Prowse, who recently appeared before the Royal Commission and last week faced calls to resign, likened himself to biblical figure Job in the ash heap and conceded he had needed emotional support to deal with the unfolding tragedy.

In a wide-ranging interview with The Canberra Times, Archbishop Prowse said he hoped the church in future would be known more for its good works than the shame of abuse.

“Communities are largely traumatised by it,” he said.

“I know many of my priests find it very, very painful. The vast majority of priests are heroic, dedicated and holy men.

“One paedophile priest is one too many, but there have been too many Judases in our midst and it’s really affected us all.”

Archbishop Prowse said it would be his lenten pilgrimage to engage with victims of abuse and their families.

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IRELAND
Association of Catholic Priests

The latest revelations about the burial of babies in the former Mother and Baby home in Tuam, though widely predicted, provoke a sense of both sadness and shame. Sadness, that the very precious, elemental relationship between mothers and their children could be so disrespected by institutions of Church and State in Ireland; and shame because as priests we are part of an institution that has played a central role in this sorry saga.

It will be argued, with some cause, that the Catholic Church was not totally to blame, as the whole culture of Ireland during that period made it acceptable for pregnant unmarried girls to be treated so shamefully. But the Church, because of its dominant position in the Ireland of the time, must take a large degree of responsibility for what happened. Also, we must acknowledge that individual priests in parishes, through the advice they gave to parents of unmarried pregnant women, and in some cases through public condemnation from pulpits, helped to limit to Mother and Baby homes the options available to parents.

The recent Tuam revelations, coinciding with the attitudes of Vatican officials which led to the resignation of Marie Collins from the Vatican Commission on Clerical Sex Abuse, serve to underline our conviction that Catholic sexual teaching and the attitudes that can underpin it need urgent renewal. There is still a long way to go before women are treated with equal respect and dignity in the Catholic Church.

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IRELAND
Galway Bay FM

Galway Bay fm newsroom – The Association of Catholic Priests has issued a statement on the discovery of infant remains at the former site of the Tuam Mother and Baby Home.

It says the revelation, though widely predicted, provokes a sense of sadness and shame that the precious relationship between mother and child could be so disrespected by institutions of church and state.

The statement adds the culture of Ireland during the period concerned made it acceptable for pregnant, unmarried girls to be treated so shamefully.

It reads that it will be argued, with some cause, that the Catholic Church was not entirely to blame – but continues to say that the church must take a large degree of responsbility given it’s dominant position at the time.

The statement concludes that there is still a long way to go before women are treated with equal respect and dignity in the Catholic Church.

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AUSTRALIA
The Australian

CHRISSIE FOSTER
The Australian
March 6, 2017

My husband and I just spent the past three weeks in Sydney at the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse. The hearing, Case Study 50, was the final examination into the Catholic Church and its failure to protect children from pedophile clergy.

We listened to church leaders explaining what they have done in response to child abuse by clerics over the past 4½ years of exposure in the royal commission hearings and the public exposure over decades.

When heads of provincial orders, bishops and archbishops were questioned by counsel assisting Gail Furness about the new systems they were putting in place, gaping holes appeared in these and their attitudes.

They had not enacted, or even thought about, implementing many of the suggested safety measures, nor had they considered any form of internal analysis to gather insight for change.

It was galling to hear from the archbishops in particular. We were disheartened and wondered if anything had changed. We were hearing once again the horrific Catholic clergy excuse for the atrocities that scar their history.

Their unique, weak and repetitive justification for the cover-up of the extensive rape and sexual assault by clergy was offered three times by Hobart’s Archbishop Julian Porteous during his evidence. “Nobody understood the seriousness of the effects of sexual abuse on children… ,” he said.

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IRELAND
The Sunday Times

John Mooney
March 5 2017
The Sunday Times

A DNA database is expected to be established to record the remains of the young children whose bodies were found in underground chambers on the site of a former home for unmarried mothers in Tuam, Co Galway.

Discussions are under way involving the government, Galway county council, gardai and representatives of a commission investigating alleged abuses at religious-run mother and baby homes about what action should now be taken.

The focus is on how to identify the remains, how to remove the bodies from the site, and whether it will be possible to establish causes of death. No decision has been reached on where the bodies will be reinterred.

The remains of an unknown number of children, ranging in age between 35 foetal weeks and three years old, were discovered in recent weeks by the commission, which last week said there were “significant quantities of human remains” in 17 of 20 underground chambers.

Gardai do not believe there is any prospect of pursuing criminal charges against anyone associated with the order of the Bon Secours Sisters, the Catholic order of nuns that ran the home.

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IRELAND
Irish Mirror

BY JAMES WARD
5 MAR 2017

A woman raised in a Church-run institution has spoken of how the Tuam scandal brought memories of her horrific childhood flooding back.

Maz Nolan, 63, told the Irish Sunday Mirror she had to speak out after news broke of the 800 babies buried at the Galway Mother and Baby Home.

She revealed her heartbreaking story of abuse at the hands of cruel nuns and the scars that she bears to this day.

She remembers being beaten by one of the Sisters of Nazareth when she couldn’t do her math homework.

Maz said: “She actually had a branch of a tree that she had carved all the twigs off it. I was hit on the knuckles with it, that was my first experience of cruelty.

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IRELAND
The Journal

[with video]

PATRICK JOSEPH HAVERTY spent the first five and a half years of his life in Tuam mother and baby home.

Sitting in local historian Catherine Corless’s house, Haverty tells TheJournal.ie that the formal recognition that “a significant number” of children’s remains have been discovered in sewage containers at the old mother and baby home site is “bittersweet”.

For years, survivors like Haverty have been telling their story, but until three years ago, it had fallen on deaf ears, something he says has to change now.

Haverty was born in the Tuam home in 1951.

“My mother had to leave (the mother and baby home) after 12 months and she knocked on the door for five and a half years trying to take me out, but the nuns wouldn’t allow it, so eventually I was fostered out to a good family.”

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IRELAND
Irish Times

Lorna Siggins Tuam, Co Galway

Archbishop of Tuam Dr Michael Neary has said he is “horrified and saddened” to have learned of the large number of children buried in the “graveyard” at the former Bon Secours mother and baby home in the town.

Speaking at 10.30am Mass on Sunday in Tuam Cathedral, Dr Neary said his continued priority was to seek a “dignified re-interment” of the remains of children in consecrated ground – in cooperation with the families of the deceased.

The archdiocese would also continue to co-operate with the Commission of Investigation into Mother and Baby Homes, he said,although not directly involved in running the institution, which closed in 1961.

The commission’s work, “though difficult to read and comprehend” was “another necessary step on the path to the truth”, he said.

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IRELAND
Irish Independent

Denise Calnan and Shane Phelan
March 5 2017

Minister Simon Coveney said there is a “significant responsibility” on the State following the discovery of the mass grave of babies in Tuam, Co Galway.

The Minister for Housing, Planning and Local Government also said garda involvement in the investigation into the remains at the site of the former mother and baby home cannot be ruled out.

Speaking on RTE Radio One’s Marian Finucane Show, Minister Coveney said it was “difficult to see” why gardaí would not be involved.

“I mean you look at the way in which children’s bodies were literally discarded in the way what they were,” he said.

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INDIA
Sun Daily

NEW DELHI: Five nuns and a doctor are on the run in India after being accused of concealing the birth of a baby to a teenager who alleges that a priest raped her, police said Sunday.

Arrest warrants have been issued for the six and for two hospital staff. They are accused of concealing the 16-year-old’s delivery from authorities and hiding the baby in a Catholic orphanage at Kunnur in the southern state of Kerala.

“They deliberately hid the incident from officials,” Prajish Thottathil, a senior police officer, told AFP, adding some of the accused likely also knew about the alleged assault.

Three of the accused work at a private hospital while the rest were associated with the orphanage where the baby was left.

The accused priest Robin Vadakkumchery was arrested last week after the victim gave birth in February, prompting an investigation.

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UNITED KINGDOM
New York Times

By CEYLAN YEGINSU
MARCH 4, 2017

YORK, England — Having disclosed his “sin” of masturbation, Mark Stibbe, age 17, was ordered to strip naked and lean over a wooden chair in the garden shed of a lavish Hampshire mansion on the southern coast of England.

Then came the first blow from a cane, its impact so ferocious that it sent the boy into a state of paralysis that lasted through at least 30 more strokes that left him collapsed on the floor, blood oozing down his legs.

“I remember being so appalled by how vicious the first lash was that I couldn’t scream,” Mr. Stibbe, now 56 and an acclaimed Christian author, recalled on a recent afternoon in his Yorkshire home. “You’re in this tiny shed full of canes with this man. I felt utterly powerless.”

Until that day in the late 1970s, the man he says beat him, John Smyth, was known to Mr. Stibbe and his friends as a charismatic lawyer and influential evangelical Christian leader who regularly attended the Christian forum of their nearby boarding school, Winchester College, the oldest in Britain. Now, Mr. Smyth, 75 and keeping a low profile in South Africa, stands at the center of a widening scandal of sadistic abuse of dozens of boys over three decades that has ensnared the leader of the Anglican Church, the Most Rev. Justin Welby, archbishop of Canterbury, though only peripherally.

The accusations against Mr. Smyth, which were first reported in February as part of a Channel 4 news investigation, are the latest in a string of large-scale child abuse and sex scandals that have embroiled British institutions in recent months, exposing a long history of denial and cover-ups.

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IRELAND
Laois Nationalist

SUNDAY, MARCH 05, 2017

The Justice Minister says it’s ‘inevitable’ that Gardaí will be involved in the investigation into the discovery of infant remains in County Galway.

It follows confirmation on Friday that a “significant” number of infants and children were buried at a former mother and baby home in Tuam.

Frances Fitzgerald also told today’s Sunday Independent that inquiries at other former homes around the country are also likely.

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INDIA
Business Standard

The Kerala police are on the lookout for five nuns and two others who were involved in an alleged rape case of a 17-year-old girl by a Catholic priest, authorities said on Saturday.

The suspects comprise a doctor and an administrator of a hospital where the victim gave birth to a baby boy.

Speaking to IANS, Sunil Kumar the investigating officer in the case, said they will arrest all the accused.

“In all there are eight accused and the main suspect is 49-year-old Robin Vadakkanchery, a parish vicar near Kannur. He has already been arrested,” said Kumar.

The case surfaced with the arrest of the priest earlier this week who was caught on his way to the Kochi airport to fly out of the country.

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INDIA
One India

Written by: Anusha Ravi Published: Saturday, March 4, 2017

If not for an anonymous intimation to the child helpline, a Catholic priest in Kerala would have gotten away with raping and impregnating a 16-year-old minor. There are allegations that there was an attempt at the systematic cover up. Father Robin Vadakkumchery, 48, vicar of St Sebastian’s church in Kottiyoor accused of raping the minor was finally arrested while he attempting to flee to Canada.

It is alleged that Vadakkumchery had managed to silence the church-run hospital where the minor delivered an infant after being raped by the pastor. Further the allegation is that he had tried to cover up the crime by shifting them to an orphanage.

The child helpline was tipped off about the minor after she delivered a child, and filed a complaint with the police which marred the cover up plan.

After making arrangements with the hospital and the church-run orphanage, the priest is alleged to have pressurised the victim’s parents to take the blame upon themselves. While the police refused to file a complaint against the priest, the victim, more shockingly, accused her father of raping her.

What came as a shocker to the investigating authorities was the victim’s father accepting his daughter’s allegations. The victim opened up about the actual accused only after multiple rounds of questioning by the police. Inconsistencies in her statement led the police to believe that the victim as well as her parents were trying to conceal the facts.

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INDIA
The New Indian Express

KANNUR: A day after the police implicated seven people as accused for trying to cover up the incident where a 16-year-old girl delivered a baby after she was allegedly impregnated by a Catholic priest in Kottiyoor, some of the nuns involved in the case were found absconding.

The investigating officers, who visited the hospital where the child was delivered and the orphanage in Wayanad to where the child was shifted, found huge discrepancies.

The police have registered cases under POCSO Act and Juvenile Justice Act against six women including five nuns and a doctor.

The accused persons are Sr Ancy Mathew, Christu Raj Hospital administrator, Sr Tessy Joseph, gynaecologist, Hyderali, pediatrician , Sr Ophelia and Lis Maria of Holy Infant Mary orphanage, Wayanad, Sr Anitta of Kristudasi Convent, Iritty and Thankamma of Kottiyoor, who helped the priest.

Fr Robin Vadakkumchery, former vicar of St Sebastian’s Church, Kottiyoor who was arrested while trying to escape to Canada on February 27, has been remanded in judicial custody. Meanwhile, police had sent a report against Fr Thomas Joseph Therakam Child Welfare Commission (CWC) Wayanad district and Dr Betty, a member, pointing out their lapses in reporting the case.

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INDIA
India.com

Kozhikode (Ker), Mar 5 (PTI) Former Union minister A K Antony today slammed the priest accused of raping a minor girl in Kannur district of Kerala, stating that he was a “shame to the community and does not deserve any mercy.” “He has done a heinous crime and does not deserve any mercy
.
He is a shame to the community and should not be given any consideration of a priest,” he told reporters here when asked about the arrest of Fr Robin Vadakkancheril.

“One should not see the political or religious background of the accused in such cases,” he said.

Fr Robin alias Mathew Vadakkancheril was arrested on February 28 after a complaint was lodged by the victim’s mother with Childline, a helpline for children, alleging that he had “sexually exploited” her 16-year-old daughter last year.

He was also removed from office by church authorities.

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IRELAND
The Journal

THE JUSTICE FOR Magdalenes Research (JFMR) group has called on members of the public to lay flowers at the graves of Magdalene women today.

Events to mark the sixth annual Flowers for Magdalenes commemoration will take place at various locations around the country where Magdalene Laundries operated.

JFMR noted there are at least 1,663 former Magdalene women buried in cemeteries in Ireland, many of whom are in unmarked graves.

In a statement the group said: “This year’s Flowers for Magdalenes events hold particular significance as new property developments are planned on three former Magdalene Laundry sites at Donnybrook, Sean McDermott Street and Sunday’s Well.”

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IRELAND
Christian Science Monitor

David Iaconangelo
Staff | @diaconangelo

MARCH 4, 2017 —Government investigators in Ireland said on Friday they had uncovered the remains of babies and children buried in a network of 20 underground chambers at a former Catholic orphanage, appearing to confirm long-held suspicions of mass burials at the church-run facility during the 1950s.

Three months of excavations had already turned up “significant quantities of human remains” of children between 35 weeks and 3 years old at the site, said the judge-led Mothers and Babies Commission.

Ireland’s Minister for Children and Youth Affairs, Katherine Zappone, called the findings “sad and disturbing.” She said a proper burial and other memorials would be offered to any surviving relatives of the children.

“We will honor their memory and make sure that we take the right actions now to treat their remains appropriately,” Ms. Zappone said.

The shocking discovery ties into a larger movement that has sought to reckon with past abuses committed at Catholic orphanages and schools, in the decades following a growing secularization – and economic renaissance – in Irish society.

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IRELAND
The Daily Beast

The dogged effort of a determined historian in a small Irish town uncovered one of the greatest tragedies in modern Irish history.

Tom Sykes

DUBLIN—On Friday morning, the Irish government’s minister for children made a shocking announcement.

Katherine Zappone stood in front of a hastily convened news conference in Dublin and confirmed a horrific, longstanding rumor that the bodies of several hundred babies and children had been illegally disposed of by an order of nuns in a sewage system hidden underneath a so-called ‘mother and baby’ home operated by the Bon Secours congregation of nuns – the name is French for “good help” and their motto is “Good Help to Those in Need”.

“Up to now we had rumors. Now we have confirmation that the remains are there, and that they date back to the time of the mother-and-baby home, which operated in Tuam from 1925 to 1961,” Minister Zappone said, her voice at times seeming to break with emotion.

The minister’s statement came after a specially appointed commission published the results of test excavation at the site in Tuam, Co Galway, a patch of waste ground adjacent to a housing estate which was built after ‘the Home’, as it was known locally, was demolished.

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INDIA
Kaumudi

MANATHAVADY: In the Kottiyoor case related to the sexual abuse of a minor girl by former Vicar Father Robin Wadakkanchery, Manathavady diocese head Bishop Jose Porunnedam has apologised to the victim and her family.

He says it is impossible to digest the he fact that that the sentinel of believers himself has committed the atrocity. He has made this point clear in the letter sent by the bishop to the parish, directing the church to remove the Vicar from his post.

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GUAM
Guam Daily Post

Neil Pang | The Guam Daily Post

As the church continues in its effort to educate clergy, Catholic school personnel, all church employees and volunteers on the newly adopted Charter for the Protection of Children and Young People, news from the Vatican may cast a pall on recent strides made by the leadership of the Archdiocese of Agana.

According to the Associated Press, Pope Francis has reduced sanctions against some pedophile priests in an effort to apply his vision of a merciful church, even to those guilty of abusing minors under their care.

Vatican spokesman Greg Burke told the AP that Francis’ philosophy of mercy applied to “even those who are guilty of heinous crimes.”

Just as Coadjutor Archbishop Michael Byrnes told media during a press conference in February, punishment for priests found guilty of abusing minors always includes being removed from public ministry, but those priests are not necessarily defrocked.

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INDIA
Kaumudi

KOZHIKODE: Priest Fr Robin arrested in the Kottiyoor sexual abuse case should not be given the consideration of a priest, said senior congress leader A K Antony. He should be treated like a criminal, he said.

Antony said, “What the priest did was a heinous crime. Severe punishment should be given for this outrageous crime. Those attacking women should be punished severely. Such incidents will not recur again only if the guilty are punished. Nothing will happen only if a case is registered in sexual abuse cases. Punishment should be ensured. The state where attacks on women are on the rise should no longer be called God’s Own Country.”

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INDIA
Gulf News

Thiruvananthapuram: Six nuns and a priest in Kerala who are likely to be arrested in connection with the case pertaining to another priest abusing and impregnating a school girl, are believed to be on the run. Five of the nuns have been named as accused in the case.

Police on Sunday refrained from pushing ahead with the arrests, but reports indicate that the accused are missing from their workplaces.

The schoolgirl victim had given birth to a baby boy in early February and following an anonymous call to Child Line, the first accused, a Catholic priest attached to the Mananthavady diocese, Robin Vadakkumcherry, 48, was arrested.

Police believe there was an elaborate attempt to cover up the matter with the school girl being admitted to a Church-run hospital for delivery and the new-born taken to an orphanage run by nuns a day after birth.

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INDIA
The New Indian Express

KOCHI: The Mananthavady diocese has apologised to parishioners of St Sebastian’s Church, Kottiyoor, where Fr Robin Vadakkumchery, who allegedly impregnated a minor girl, was serving as a priest. Fr Robin was arrested last week on charges of raping the 16-year-old girl.

The diocese authorities said it was not an official apology, but an expression of grief by the bishop to the parishioners who were shocked by the incident.

“The letter containing the bishop’s message was read out at the church when the new parish priest took charge,” said diocese spokesperson Fr Thomas Joseph Therakam.

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ROME
The Guardian

Catherine Pepinster
Saturday 4 March 2017

When Pope Francis was elected nearly four years ago, on 13 March 2013, he was escorted – like every pope before him – from the Sistine Chapel to the Room of Tears. It is the place where a new pope pauses for a moment – and no doubt many of them do shed a few tears, thinking of the momentous responsibility upon their shoulders – before stepping out on to the balcony of St Peter’s to greet the world as the new leader of the Roman Catholic church.

When Francis, known until then as Jorge Bergoglio, archbishop of Buenos Aires, first appeared that night, he appeared remarkably sanguine, joking that the cardinals had gone to the ends of the Earth to choose the next pope. If he’d had any inkling of what these last four years would be like, he would surely have wept in that Room of Tears.

While hugely popular across the globe with Catholics and non-Catholics alike, Francis has struggled against fierce opposition from the Vatican establishment to haul the Roman Catholic church into the 21st century, fought to reform its government, tried to persuade cardinals to revise their thinking on the divorced and remarried, and been openly opposed by rebel prelates.

Last week marked the start of Lent, one of the most important periods of the church’s calendar, a time when Catholics fast, give alms and reflect on humanity’s sinfulness in the run-up to their commemoration of the crucifixion and of Easter. It is usually marked by quiet prayerfulness, and on Sunday the pope, along with members of the Roman Curia, will leave Rome to begin a five-day retreat. He will leave a Vatican beset by tension, turmoil and rebellion. There are even rumours that growing numbers of Vatican hands think he should quit.

On Ash Wednesday, the first day of Lent, came a big blow, in effect caused by the pope’s enemies: Marie Collins, the last abuse survivor on his commission into child abuse in the church, quit, frustrated at the lack of progress and what she calls “shameful lack of cooperation” from the officials most concerned with cases of abuse, highlighting the intransigence of the Roman Curia, or governing body, in the Vatican – the body Pope Francis wants to reform.

With Collins gone from the Commission for the Protection of Minors, set up by the pope to investigate the worldwide scandal of sexual abuse by priests and religious brothers, and the other victim representative, the Briton Peter Saunders, on indefinite leave of absence, the commission has lost a certain integrity.

When she stepped down, Collins complained that the commission had been starved of resources, progress was slow and there was “cultural resistance” to its work in the Vatican.

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UNITED KINGDOM
The Times

Sean O’Neill, Chief Reporter
March 4 2017
The Times

A blacklist of institutions in Australia unfit to house British child migrants was torn up by the government under pressure from one of the royal family’s favourite charities, documents submitted to a public inquiry reveal.

The Fairbridge Society, which is now part of the Prince’s Trust, ran isolated farm schools at which children suffered physical and sexual abuse and threatened ministers with “a first-class row” if they tried to curb child migration to the colonies in the 1950s.

The government backed down and allowed Fairbridge, which was financially supported by the royals, received regular royal visits and had the Queen’s uncle, the Duke of Gloucester, as its president, to send hundreds more children to Australia.

The story of how the charity used its privileged position to lobby ministers is chronicled in papers disclosed to the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse (IICSA), which is examining the treatment of child migrants in the postwar period. …

Elderly men and women have told how they were abused at state and religious orphanages in Britain before being selected for migration or volunteering to go to Australia to escape.

Many were from poor families struggling after the war or were children whose unmarried mothers had no income to care for them. They were handed over to councils, religious orders and seemingly respectable charities. Thousands were sent abroad without their parents ever being informed.

One man, who asked for anonymity, said that he had been beaten and abused by Catholic nuns and priests in Britain before he was sent to Australia aged 12 in 1953 and suffered further abuse at the hands of the Christian Brothers. He said: “I’m 75 now but I think about these things every day. The beatings were pretty horrific and for me it will never go away.”

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VATICAN CITY
news.va

(Vatican Radio) A communiqué released on Saturday by the Vatican’s Secretariat for the Economy provides a synopsis of the Annual Accounts of the Holy See, Vatican City State and Related Entities for 2015.

Please find the full text of the communiqué below:

The Holy See recorded a deficit of Euros 12.4 million in 2015. The main sources of income for 2015, in addition to investments, include the contributions made pursuant to Canon 1271 of the Code of Canon Law (Euros 24 million) and the contribution from the Institute of Works of Religion (Euros 50 million). As in previous years, the most significant expense for the Holy See is the cost of personnel. The Governatorato of the Vatican City State indicates a surplus of Euros 59.9 million for 2015, largely due to continued revenue from the cultural activities, especially those linked to the Museums. The 2015 Annual Accounts represent the first set of financial information prepared following the Vatican Financial Management Policies (VFMP), approved by Pope Francis on 24 October 2014, which are based on International Public Sector Accounting Standards (IPSAS). The Secretariat for the Economy informed the Council for the Economy that the journey towards a full implementation of the VFMP is firmly underway and highlighted that, however, a few more years will be necessary for this process to be completed and a full audit to be performed.

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VATICAN CITY
Associated Press

VATICAN CITY (AP) — The Vatican has issued new figures showing it narrowed its deficit by half in 2015 to 12.4 million euros ($13 million).

That compares with a deficit of 25.6 million euros in 2014. The Vatican released the figures for 2015 on Saturday but didn’t include fuller details as it has in previous years, citing a transition in its financial accounting system that also delayed disclosure of the 2015 figures.

The Vatican also reported 24 million euros in contributions from Roman Catholic dioceses, up from 21 million a year earlier, and 50 million euros from the Vatican bank, the same as the previous year.

The Vatican city-state, which includes the post office, museums and other activities, posted a surplus of 59.9 million euros, down 6 percent from the year before. The Vatican didn’t offer details like how much the museum earned or personnel costs.

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IRELAND
RTE News

Groups campaigning for generations of unmarried mothers and their children have said the State must ensure that all human remains buried in unmarked graves at institutions are identified.

It follows confirmation yesterday by the Mother and Baby Homes Commission of Investigation that significant quantities of human remains have been discovered at the site of a children’s burial ground in Tuam in Co Galway.

Minister for Children and Youth Affairs Katherine Zappone has said the first concern must be to respect the dignity and the memory of the children.

She also said that Galway County Council would engage with local residents and those affected to decide what happens to the remains.

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IRELAND
Galway Bay FM

Galway Bay fm newsroom – The Children’s Minister is being accused of ignoring some of the survivors of mother and baby homes.

It follows the revelation yesterday that the remains of a “significant” number of young children and babies have been found at the site of the former home in Tuam.

Minister Katherine Zappone says the discovery was not unexpected, but was still deeply disturbing and must be appropriately responded to.

Paul Redmond – Chairperson of the Coalition of Mother and Baby home Survivors – says this case is just the tip of the iceberg.

He alleges that since Minister Zappone’s appointment, she has ignored the group and ‘will have nothing to do with us’.

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IRELAND
Irish Independent

Shane Phelan and Kevin Doyle
March 4 2017

A religious order which ran a mother and baby home has failed to issue an apology after a commission of investigation discovered what are believed to be the remains of hundreds of children in underground chambers at the property.

The Bon Secours Sisters said it couldn’t comment on the find, which Children’s Minister Katherine Zappone described as “disturbing”.

Significant quantities of human remains were discovered at the site of the former St Mary’s Mother and Baby Home, an institution where unmarried pregnant women were sent to give birth, in Tuam, Co Galway.

The find has vindicated the painstaking research of amateur historian Catherine Corless, whose work helped lead to the setting up of the Mother and Baby Homes Commission.

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IRELAND
Daily Mail

By Fionn Hargreaves For Mailonline and Alison O’reilly For The Daily Mail

Historian Catherine Corless, 62, revealed that when she started to research into the deaths of almost 800 children at the Bon Secours Mother and Baby Home, Tuam, she was told to ‘just leave them there’

The historian who spearheaded the campaign to discover the fate of 800 children who died at a former Catholic home for unmarried mothers and their children in Ireland was told ‘just leave them there’.

Catherine Corless, 62, discovered there were 798 death certificates for children at the Bon Secours Mother and Baby Home in Tuam, County Galway, but only one burial certificate.

But when she started researching in 2014, she was told that it wasn’t worth uncovering as it happened a long time ago.

She told the Irish Mirror: ‘The county council knew at the time that there were remains there, the guards knew it, the religious [orders] knew it and it was just all nicely covered in and forgotten about.

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INDIA
The Times of India

Mar 4, 2017

Kannur: A conspiracy was hatched to hush up the rape of a minor girl by Robin Vadakkancheril alias Mathew Vadakkancheril, a 48-year-old priest in Kottiyoor, police has said. The authorities of the hospital where the girl delivered the baby, and also the orphanage in Wayanad which took the baby under its care without informing the Child Welfare Committee (CWC), made serious lapses, they said.

Though cases have been registered under Protection of Children from Sexual Offences (POCSO) Act against eight people including five nuns — one of them a gynecologist in the hospital where the girl delivered — they are all absconding, said Iritty DSP Prajesh Thottathil.
Police said cases have been registered against a pediatrician, Dr Hyderali, and the administrator of the hospital, Ancy Mathew, a nun. The others are Thankamma, a female employee of St Sebastian Church, Neendunoki, near Kottiyoor and nuns Liz Maria, Anita and Ophelia, who handles the orphanage in Mananthawady.

“We have concrete evidence on efforts made to hush up the case. There were serious lapses on the part of Christu Raj Hospital in Koothuparamba, where the girl delivered. The newborn was taken away from the mother and shifted to the Holy Infant Foundling Home, part of the HIM orphanage at Vythiri in Wayanad in violation of rules,” said the DSP.

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INDIA
India.com

By Shubhang Chauhan | Updated: March 5, 2017

Kerala, March 4: On Saturday, Kerala police booked 8 for hiding the alleged rape of a 16-year old by a church priest. Later, the 16-year-old gave birth to a boy and the baby was later shifted to an orphanage. The eight booked include 5 nuns and 2 doctors too.

The accused priest, Father Robin Vadakkumcherry was nabbed last month on February 27, he was trying to leave India. All the eight will be charged under Protection of Children from Sexual Offences (POCSO). All the 8 accused have been booked under non-bailable sections of POSCO act.They have also been booked under Juvenile Justice Act. Kannur SP Shiv Vikram was quoted by Hindustan Times saying,” we are looking at all aspects.” The SP also assured of arresting the accused one’s very soon.

Police while conducting their inquiry found that an alleged attempt was made to hide the complete incident. The hospital where the victim delivered the baby denied that they were aware of rape but as per the investigation of police, two doctors and few people of the hospital knew about it.

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INDIA
Deccan Herald

Mar 05, 2017

As more reports pointing at the Catholic priest’s rape of a minor girl in Kerala’s Kannur district emerged on Saturday, the police are working towards arresting several others for covering up the incident.

Six people working with a hospital and an orphanage, besides a parish assistant, are on the police radar for their role in the cover up, sources said. Five of the accused are nuns.

On February 28, the police arrested Father Robin Vadakkancheril (48), vicar at St Sebastian Church in Kottiyoor under the Diocese of Mananthavady, for the rape of the 17-year-old girl.

Administrators at the Christuraj Hospital in Koothuparamba in Kannur and the Holy Infant Mary Convent in Vythiri, Wayanad, have been accused of concealing information about the minor girl delivering a baby and the child’s subsequent admission to the convent, run by nuns.

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ITALIA
Rete L’Abuso

Che cosa pretende un credente da un sacerdote della sua Chiesa? A nessuno qualche anno addietro sarebbe venuto in mente di dire: «Che non commetta crimini». Si tratta di una cosa talmente scontata che a precisarla ti saresti sentito un po’ pazzo e un po’ blasfemo, comunque irrispettoso della tua Chiesa. Oggi, se sei cattolico, lo devi precisare. Oggi, se si cattolico, devi gridare a gran voce che non vuoi che un sacerdote della tua Chiesa abusi sessualmente di minori, tra i crimini, probabilmente il più viscido, il più disonorante, il più oltraggioso. Laceri un’anima per sempre. Ti servi del corpo di un bambino per il piacere di un istante che se non fossi depravato non riusciresti nemmeno a provare.

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INDIA
The Times of India

Kochi: In a sign that ecclesiastical authorities are finally ready to admit the magnitude of the problem, Cardinal George Mar Alencherry, head of the Syro Malabar church, said on Saturday that the church unequivocally condemns clergy members involved in sexual abuse and child molestation cases and will under no circumstance protect the accused.

Referring to the Kottiyoor incident, where a 16-yr-old girl gave birth to a child last month following a relationship with the local parish priest, Cardinal Alencherry said, “The incident cannot be tolerated. It is highly condemnable. The church will not protect such offenders”.

Pointing out that the accused should be punished under the law of the land, Cardinal Alencherry said, “The church and the entire community of believers should be cautious in avoiding such incidents in the future”. The cardinal was speaking after a prayer meeting for Father Tom Uzhunalil, who was abducted in Yemen by suspected Islamic State militants exactly a year ago.

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GUAM
The Guam Daily Post

Neil Pang | The Guam Daily Post

The Boy Scouts of America banned from the scouting movement a priest accused of pedophilia who faces multiple sex-abuse cases in Guam, according to the head of the organization’s Aloha Council.

The council, which has jurisdiction over the Boys Scouts’ Guam chapter, was commenting on recent court cases filed in federal court against Louis Brouillard, a former Guam priest and former Boy Scouts troop master.

Fifteen claims of sexual abuse of children filed recently allege that Brouillard, while on Guam, used his position in the local Boy Scouts chapter to prey on young boys in the 1970s.

“The behavior included in these allegations is abhorrent and runs counter to everything for which the Boy Scouts of America stands,” said Jeff Sulzbach, chief executive officer of the Boy Scouts of America Aloha Council. “Upon learning of these reports, we took immediate action to preclude this individual from any further participation in the scouting program.”

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IRELAND
Irish Independent

Sasha Brady
March 4 2017

Rosemary Adaser spoke about the abuse she suffered growing up mixed-race in Ireland’s mother-and-baby homes and industrial schools.

Ms Adaser was born to an Irish mother, who worked as a telephonist at Dublin’s Rotunda Hospital, and a black Ghanaian father, who worked as a doctor there. Shortly after her birth, her mother was forced to place her in St Clare’s Convent in Stamullen, Co Meath.

In 1958, when she was just 18-months-old, Ms Adaser was admitted to a mother-and-baby home on the Navan Road in Dublin. When she was six-years-old, she was transferred to St Joseph’s industrial school in Kilkenny where she suffered systematic abuse.

Speaking on Friday night’s The Late Late Show, Ms Adaser gave a harrowing account of her time in industrial care.

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IRELAND
Her

BY GILLIAN FITZPATRICK

Joseph Ward was aged just seven months when he died in 1928. Mary Teresa Drury was a year old when she died in 1931.

In 1937, Mary Kate Cahill was two weeks old when she died. In 1943, a baby died a day after being born – and is known now simply as Baby McNamara.

Vincent Keogh was five months (1947); Patrick Hardiman was six months (1952); Imelda Halloran was two years old (1954); Gerard Connaughton was 11 months (1956), and Dolores Conneely was seven months (1959).

These names – as detailed today by TheJournal.ie – make up a mere handful of the 796 babies who died at the Bon Secours Tuam Mothers And Babies home from the 1920s to the 1960s.

Close-to 800 tiny, beautiful children who lived short lives, died and were buried without dignity or respect.

They were for decades silent, nameless victims – muted by a society that bowed down to Catholic autonomy, and never insisted on State accountability.

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IRELAND
Irish Mirror

BY JAMES FOGARTY
4 MAR 2017

Infants and children that died in the Tuam Mother and Baby horror home were thrown out “like garbage”, a survivor of the institution told the Sunday Mirror.

JP Rodgers was born in the home in 1947 and at just one years old he was separated from his mother Bridie, who was sent to the Magdalene Laundry in Galway city.

He said : “There were hundreds of children at the home. To my eyes as a little child, it was like a rabid colony.

“Everyone was suffering from something. I would spend hours standing on my own in the middle of that institution because I was terrified, because I didn’t know who to trust.

And I was sick for months and months on end. But I survived that and I recovered.”

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IRELAND
Irish Times

Diarmaid Ferriter

In his marvellously acerbic memoir Against The Tide, published in 1986, former minister for health Dr Noël Browne describes an encounter with the Catholic Bishop of Galway Dr Michael Browne in 1951 when the minister was attempting to win support for his Mother and Child scheme: “He handed me a silver casket in which lay his impeccable hand-made cigarettes. ‘These cigarettes,’ he intoned, ‘I had to have made in Bond Street.’ Then he offered me a glass of champagne. ‘I always like champagne in the afternoon,’ he informed me in his rich round voice. My feeling of awe was mixed with a sense of astonishment that this worldly sybarite considered himself to be a follower of the humble Nazarene.”

Browne subsequently had an audience with Cardinal John D’Alton of Armagh, whom he described as “a pleasant, withdrawn, scholarly looking man. Our conversation was stilted and formal”. In relation to a query about the justification for the Catholic hierarchy’s opposition to Browne’s health scheme given the use by Catholics in Northern Ireland of the National Health Service, D’Alton was disdainful: “We are prepared neither to apologise, nor to explain.”

I was reminded of Browne’s encounters when thinking about the recent death of Cardinal Desmond Connell and the news this week that clerical child abuse victim Marie Collins has resigned from the Commission for the Protection of Minors due to her frustration with some officials in the Roman Curia and a Vatican department that would not commit to acknowledging letters from victims of abuse.

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IRELAND
The Journal

ROSEMARY ADASER, A survivor of mother and baby homes has spoken of her time in the institutions.

Adaser last night spoke of her time as a child and mother in the homes. In 1958 she was taken to a home in Dublin aged just 18 months. 15 years later she became pregnant and was sent to a home in Meath. There, her child was taken away from her.

Speaking to Ryan Tubridy on the day that investigators for the Mother and Baby Homes Commission of Inquiry confirmed both that they had uncovered “a significant number” of children’s remains at the Bon Secours Mother and Baby Home in Tuam – and that they dated back to the era during which the home was operational, Adaser outlined life in the institutions.

What I have clear memories of are an older woman. She’d strip me and put her gardening gloves on, go to the garden, cut a rose bush off, pick the roses off and whip me. That was a very frequent occurrence.

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IRELAND
Connacht Tribune

A group representing survivors of ‘Mother and Baby’ homes has described the Tuam case as ‘just the tip of the iceberg’ – and says the worst is yet to come.

It follows yesterday’s revelation that the remains of a “significant” number of young children and babies have been found at the site of the former home at the Athenry Road.

The Commission of Investigation examining the issue says the shocking discovery was made in 17 of 20 underground chambers intended to be used as part of a sewage system.

Children’s Minister Katherine Zappone says the discovery is not unexpected, but is deeply disturbing and must be appropriately responded to – however, she says no decision has been made yet on how to proceed from here.

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INDIA
The News Minute

Bishop of Mananthavady Archdiocese, Jose Porunnedom has apologised to the family of the survivor, who was allegedly raped and impregnated by Kottoyoor Parish vicar Fr. Robin Vadakkancheril.

In a letter written by the Bishop, appointing a new Vicar to the parish, he says that the incident has caused shame and spiritual loss to the diocese. He also said that he can understand the pain of other church representatives at Kottiyoor parish, who are struggling to come to terms with this situation and are not knowing how to react. He also urged the parish representatives like nuns, committee members and other priests to stay strong in their faith.

Addressing the victim and the family, the Bishop said what happened is unacceptable.

“Here the person who had to guard his followers himself has assaulted them. How will I console the daughter who was victimised and her parents? Dear ones I remember you in my prayers, I join my tears with yours and I understand your pain. I can only say this to you – Sorry,” the Bishop’s letter says.

He also concludes the letter by offering blessings of mother Mary to the victim’s family.

However, the reaction of other Catholic institutions like its mouthpiece Sunday Shalom and Kerala Catholic Bishops’ Council’s (KCBC), to the issue has been apathetic.

In an article, Sunday Shalom even went to the extent of criticising the victim. The article quoted a social media comment and said that it was very true in the case.

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TEXAS
Beeville Bee-Picayune

Gary Kent Mar 3, 2017

BEEVILLE —A former priest in a week-long trial on a charge of aggravated sexual assault learned late Friday that a seven-woman, five-man jury was not able to come up with a unanimous verdict.

Minutes after receiving a note from jurors after more than nine hours of deliberation, District Judge Starr Bauer called the jury back into the courtroom and declared a mistrial.

Bauer told the jurors, “You all worked extremely hard for your $40.”

The defendant, defrocked Catholic priest Stephen Dougherty, was met by family members and friends immediately after Bauer sent the jury home.

Testimony in the trial had started Tuesday morning in Bauer’s courtroom with Assistant District Attorney Terry Breen and San Antonio defense attorney John Penckney III calling witnesses.

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NORTHERN IRELAND
Derry Now

Bishop of Derry, Donal McKeown, has said that many people are ‘crying silent screams’ because of sexual abuse.

Bishop McKeown led a service at St Eugene’s Cathedral in Derry last night as part of the Catholic Church’s Worldwide Day of Prayer for survivors and victims of sexual abuse.

Speaking during his homily, Bishop McKeown described a famous painting by the Norwegian artist Edward Munch, called The Scream.

“Painted with broad bands of garish colour and highly simplified forms, its portrayal of a person screaming silently reduces the figure to an almost hollow cloak in the throes of an emotional crisis,” he said.

“Some people who have experienced abuse in their lives suggest that this picture is one they can identify with.

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INDIA
Financial Express

It is shocking how a Catholic priest, who held high positions within the Church and used to coordinate with the media on several occasions, has now been caught by the police for raping a minor girl.

The latest development in this is as follows:

Kerala police have now brought eight people including 5 nuns under its scanner for their involvement in Father Robin Vadakkumchery’s case where he admitted to raping a sixteen-year-old girl, who had given birth to a baby few weeks ago. The involvement of five nuns – Sisters Tessy Jose, Ancy Mathew, Aneesa, Lissy Maria and Ophilia have been charged with non-bailable offenses under Protection on Children from Sexual Offences Act and their role in trying to protect the accused and cover up the crime of rape are to be probed further by Kerala police.

A case has also been filed against the management of Christuraj Hospital in Koothuparamba where the minor girl had given birth. According to local TV reports, hospital officials may be arrested as they are supposed to inform the police in cases like this within 24 hours and in this case, they did not do so.

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INDIA
The News Minute

In a major development, the Kerala police have booked seven more persons under POCSO, including five nuns, in the rape of a minor girl allegedly by a priest. These seven people have been booked for allegedly helping Father Robin Vadakkumchery cover up the rape, and the resultant pregnancy of the 16-year-old.

Police sources have told TNM that Thankamma Nelliyani, who aided the survivor during her pregnancy and childbirth has been named as Accused no. 2. Dr Tessy Jose, a nun and gynaecologist at Christu Raj Hospital Thokkilangadi, who delivered the survivor’s child, is Accused no. 3 in the case. Dr Hyderali and Sr Ancy Mathew, the hospital administrator, are Accused No. 4 and 5.

Liz Maria, a nun from a convent in Thonichal who helped the priest hide the crime, Sr Aneesha, a nun at an orphanage where the infant want taken to, and Sr Ophilia, the Supernatant of the Orphanage are Accused No. 6, 7 and 8.

All the accused will be charged under POCSO, so they will not be able to get bail, police sources told TNM. All the accused will be arrested soon, the police said.

The main accused in the case, Fr Robin, is on remand in Kannur Sub Jail.

Father Robin, who was posted at the Church run by Catholic Diocese of Mananthavady (Wayanad) in Kannur district almost two-and-a-half years ago, also served as the manager of a school attached to the church. The survivor, Asha*, was a student at the school.

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INDIA
Hindustan Times

Ramesh Babu
Thiruvananthapuram

Kerala Police on Saturday booked eight persons, including five nuns, for allegedly covering up the rape of a 16-year-old girl by a church priest. The girl later gave birth to a baby boy in a hospital and the child was shifted to an orphanage controlled by the church.

The main accused, Father Robin Vadakkumcherry, vicar of the St Sebastian church in Kottiyoor, was arrested on February 27 while planning to flee the country.

All the accused, including two doctors and five nuns, will be charged under POCSO (Protection of Children from Sexual Offences).

“We are investigating all angles. All accused will be arrested soon,” Kannur superintendent of police Shiv Vikram told Hindustan Times.

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INDIA
Gulf News

Published: March 4, 2017

Akhel Mathew, Correspondent

Thiruvananthapuram: In a serious blow to the image of the Catholic Church in Kerala, as many as five nuns are among the eight accused in the case pertaining to a priest who charged with sexually abusing and impregnating a 16-year-old school student at Kottiyoor in Kannur district.

The girl gave birth to a baby boy in early February. It has now come to light that the priest, Robin Vadakkumcherry, 48, and his accomplices tried to cover up the matter. The schoolgirl was admitted to a church-run hospital for delivery and the new-born was taken away to an orphanage run by nuns a day after birth.

The nuns who stand accused include two who are doctors, Tessy Jose and Ancy Mathew, who work with the Christu Raja hospital at Thokkilangadi where the schoolgirl delivered the baby.

The other accused nuns, Aneeta, Ophelia and Lissy Maria, are attached to the orphanage that took charge of the baby.

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LOUISIANA
KSLA

[with video]

By Jeff Ferrell, Reporter

STONEWALL, LA (KSLA) –
An ArkLaTex youth pastor and North DeSoto High School student have been arrested and charged with pornography involving juveniles, according to the Desoto Parish Sheriff’s Office.

Detective Adam Ewing says they arrested 25-year-old Zachary Almarode on Thursday night along with 18-year-old Lauren Maschino.

Ewing says the arrests came as the result of a tip from a”concerned subject” about possible inappropriate contact on school property between a youth minister and a student. Investigators determined that the contact did not take place on school property, but child pornography was allegedly found on cellular devices belong to both Almarode and Maschino.

Almarode works as a youth pastor at Salem Baptist Church in Stonewall and was approaching his third anniversary on the job. Pastor Dr. Mike Hawkins confirmed Friday morning that Almarode was terminated from that position after word of the arrest.

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AUSTRALIA
ABC News

By Bianca Gurra

A Tasmanian Christian school has declared it believes sexual abuse took place at the school more than 25 years ago, despite police ruling they can not take the matters further.

In March 2015, a former student at the Calvin Christian School south of Hobart made an accusation against a male teacher at the school.

The teacher left the school soon after the incident in the 1980s, and he is now believed to be overseas.

Christian Schools Tasmania (CST), the association that operates the school, released a statement saying it had spoken to abuse victims in relation to incidents alleged to have taken place in the 1980s and 90s.

In the statement, CST said their claims were accepted, and the Police and the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse were notified as soon as the issues had come to light.

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IRELAND
New Ross Standard

David Looby
March 4 2017

This Sunday marks 50 years since the closure of the Good Shepherd’s Magdalene Laundry in New Ross and to remember the victims of the laundry the fourth annual Flowers for Magdalenes memorial ceremony takes place at 2 p.m. at St Stephen’s cemetery, Irishtown.

Flowers for Magdalenes is a family event and children are welcome to attend. The laundry was located in the Irishtown on the site where the Mercy Convent now stands. It was one of the ten laundries in Ireland and closed its doors in 1967. With the demolition of St Aidan’s Industrial School in December 2015 the communal grave at St Stephen’s cemetery remains the only focal point for Magdalene survivors and their families.

Last year’s intergenerational gathering attracted a large crowd and saw young children, teenagers and older members of the New Ross community gather together respectfully to commemorate the Magdalene women through poetry, song, reflection and the laying of flowers. A musical composition entitled ‘The Emasculated Magdalened Innocence’, penned and performed by local musician Michael Fottrell completed the homage.

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IRELAND
Irish Mirror

BY PAT FLANAGAN
4 MAR 2017

The history books are all wrong. Ireland after the Brits left was never a republic – it was a priest-ridden theocracy which treated woman and children as scum.

How else can you explain the secret burial of hundreds of babies by demonic nuns in a disused septic tank?

The land of saints and scholars was really a Catholic North Korea which had concentration camps for children born outside wedlock and their mothers.

Like the regime of the Kim’s in Korea there was no escape except in death and even then the innocent little ones were dumped in a cesspit instead of being given a Christian burial.

A few years ago Ireland went bust but the revelation that up to 800 children and babies were dumped in a septic tank proved this has always been a morally bankrupt nation.

While it was depraved nuns who did the dirty work, it must never be forgotten that these children were supposed to be in the care of the Irish State.

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UNITED KINGDOM
Catholic Herald

by Fr Alexander Lucie-Smith
posted Thursday, 2 Mar 2017

The Pope’s commission has failed to deliver. Marie Collins’s resignation is just the latest example

Marie Collins has resigned from the Pope’s Commission for the Protection of Minors, and her explanation makes damning reading. While some commentators have been pessimistic, others take the view that this is by no means a major piece of news, and is not a sign of trouble for the Pope. John Allen goes so far as to think it may be a blessing in disguise. Austen Ivereigh insists that the resignation is not a sign that the Commission is not working.

We have been here before. Marie Collins is not the first abuse survivor to leave the Commission. Last year Peter Saunders left the Commission on “leave of absence”, and has been discouraged from returning. Some two years ago, John Allen himself pointed out:

It’s not clear if Francis fully grasped this at the time, but when he named survivors to that group, he was handing them significant control over his reputation. If Collins and Saunders were ever to walk out, saying they’d lost confidence or feeling that they’d been exploited for a PR exercise, it would have a vast media echo.

That judgment, from just under two years ago, is surely the right one. The credibility of the Commission depended on its ability to get things done; and the confidence that it would get things done rested largely on the fact that Peter Saunders and Marie Collins were among its members. Now Saunders and Collins have walked, and the reason in both cases is the same: the Commission was not bearing fruit. It was all talk, no action.

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MASSACHUSETTS
WBUR

[with audio]

March 02, 2017

By Bob Oakes

The only survivor of clergy sexual abuse on the Vatican commission looking into the abuse crisis has quit. Marie Collins, of Ireland, stepped down on Wednesday saying the commission’s work was met with resistance from some higher-ups in the Vatican. The commission is led by Boston Cardinal Sean O’Malley.

Boston College professor Thomas Groome joined Morning Edition to discuss what this resignation means for the investigation into clergy sex abuse.

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VATICAN CITY
Vatican Radio

[with audio]

(Vatican Radio) Survivors of sexual abuse by priests have reacted with concern to the news that Irish abuse survivor Marie Collins has resigned as a member of the Pontifical Commission for the Protection of Minors.

In an interview with Vatican Radio on Wednesday, Collins spoke of her frustration at the lack of cooperation from other offices of the Roman Curia with the Commission, set up by Pope Francis in 2014.

Another founding member of the Commission, Jesuit Father Hans Zollner, said on Thursday that despite her resignation, the group would continue its crucial work of promoting a culture of child protection throughout the Church worldwide.

Fr Hans, who also heads the Gregorian University’s Centre for Child Protection, spoke to Vatican Radio’s Alessandro Gisotti..

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AUSTRALIA/NORTHERN IRELAND
9 News

AAP

The families of Australian child sex abuse victims who die while waiting for compensation should receive three-quarters of their redress payments as recommended by a Northern Ireland inquiry, a victims’ advocate says.

Care Leavers Australasia Network CEO Leonie Sheedy says secondary victims should be entitled to compensation, despite Australia’s child sex abuse royal commission rejecting the idea.

Ms Sheedy backed Northern Ireland’s Historical Institutional Abuse Inquiry’s recommendation that where victims die before their redress claim has been dealt with, families should be entitled to 75 per cent of the compensation that would have been paid.

‘That’s what should be happening in Australia,” Ms Sheedy told AAP.

“There are secondary victims from this abuse. They’ve been hurt and traumatised by living with people who have been abused in Australia’s orphanages and they’ve suffered a different level of trauma.”

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INDIA
The New Indian Express

KOCHI: In a major development in the case related to the rape of a 16-year-old girl, in which a catholic priest in Kannur, the prime accused, has been arrested, the police may book 11 more persons including five nuns under the POCSO (Protection of Children from Sexual Offences) Act.

According to sources, Police is likely to record the arrest of two women on Saturday. The needle of suspicion is also turning against the Child Welfare Committee in Wayanad in northern Kerala where the crime took place.

An anonymous letter received by Childline, the helpline for children, has brought to light a major cover up in the rape of a minor girl by the priest. She delivered a baby nearly a month ago, and attempts were made, allegedly, by nuns to hush it up, instead of reporting the crime of rape.

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IRELAND
Breaking News

Update – 10.15pm: Groups representing the families of babies who died in mother-and-baby homes were not informed that remains have been found at one site.

Today’s media coverage was the first time that many relatives were officially told there were remains at the site in Tuam.

Anna Corrigan’s two brothers were born in the home – but a death certificate was only ever issued for one of them.

She says the Commission is being used to stop a formal investigation into her brother’s disappearance

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IRELAND
CBC News

[with audio]

A man who was born in a former Catholic home for orphans and unwed mothers in Ireland where a mass child grave has been discovered is demanding an apology from church and the government.

P.J. Haverty was born at the state-sanctioned and church-run Bon Secours Mother and Baby Home in Tuam, Galway County, in 1951. He lived there until he was 6 1/2 years old, at which point he was put into foster care against his mother’s will, he said.

“They call it a home, but I call it a prison, ’cause that’s what it was, it was a prison,” Haverty told As It Happens guest host Helen Mann. “There was no love, no nothing.”

A judge-led government commission announced Friday the discovery of an underground structure at the site of the home containing “significant quantities of human remains.”

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IRELAND
Irish Examiner

Saturday, March 04, 2017

Conall Ó Fátharta and Fiachra Ó Cionnaith

Excavations at other mother and baby homes are being demanded after the discovery of “significant quantities” of infant remains at Tuam.

The Mother and Baby Homes Commission announced its findings after the completion of a test excavation of the site which made global headlines after research by local historian Catherine Corless revealed 796 children died in the home run by the Bon Secours Sisters from 1925-1961.

Following test excavations in November/December 2016 and in January/February this year, two large structures were found. One appears to be “a large sewage containment system or septic tank” that had been decommissioned and filled with rubble and debris and covered with top soil.

The second structure is long and divided into 20 chambers. The commission has not yet determined what the purpose of this structure was but it “appears to be related to the treatment/containment of sewage and/or waste water”. It has not yet determined if it was ever used for this purpose.

In the second structure, “significant quantities of human remains” have been discovered in at least 17 of the 20 underground chambers. The dead babies’ ages range from approximately 35 foetal weeks to two to three years.

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IRELAND
Irish Examiner

Saturday, March 04, 2017

By Conall Ó Fátharta
Irish Examiner Reporter

The crucial point to note here is that despite all the hand-wringing by politicians, and the repeated utterances of that word “shocking” — the State was well aware of issues around infant deaths and Tuam long before Ms Corless’ work became global news, writes Conal Ó’Fartharta

“Shocking” was the word used by the Mother and Baby Homes Commission and Children’s Minister Katherine Zappone in reacting to the discovery of “significant quantities” of human remains at Tuam.

It’s a word that crops up again and again in relation to the story of Ireland’s mother and baby home system.

That very word was used in an unpublished internal HSE report in 2012 to describe the “wholly epidemic” levels of child death in Cork’s Bessborough Mother and Baby Home — 472 infants and 10 women in a 19-year period.

Two government departments were aware of this information — but an inquiry wasn’t launched for almost another two years.

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IRELAND
Irish Times

Lorna Siggins

They were known as the “home babies”, and Kevin O’Dwyer says he can still hear the clatter of their hobnail boots on the way to primary school.

O’Dwyer, a retired school principal and longtime resident of Tuam, was reared on the old Athenry road close to the Bon Secours institution.

“We’d hear the boots on the road in the morning,” he says.

”They were always kept back so they wouldn’t arrive at school the same time as the rest of us. That also meant they got a slap for being late – every single day.”

“They had to wear uniforms when the rest of us didn’t, they were put into separate lines, they had a separate area in the playground, and we never even got to know their names,” he says.

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IRELAND
Irish Times

Elaine Edwards, Fiach Kelly

Women who were in mother-and-baby homes as recently as the early 1990s have called for investigations into at least two other sites where children were buried after the remains of “several hundred” infants were found at a former home in Tuam.

Gardaí confirmed they were liaising with the coroner’s office in Galway after the Mother and Baby Homes Commission of Investigation said excavations had uncovered “significant quantities” of foetal remains, as well as those of children aged up to three years.

The commission, chaired by Judge Yvonne Murphy, said it was shocked at the discovery.

The remains were contained in at least 17 of 20 underground chambers in what appeared to be a sewage-related structure. It is understood the initial investigation confirmed several hundred bodies located there.

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IRELAND
Irish Independent

Declan Rooney, Shane Phelan and Kevin Doyle
March 4 2017

Residents fear that the mass grave in Tuam may stretch beyond the mother and baby home and below local houses.

An information meeting for the residents of the Tobar Jarlath and Dublin Road estates in Tuam was called at short notice yesterday by Galway County Council.

But only three residents attended the meeting with local elected representatives and council staff.

According to Cllr Peter Roche, short notice was the reason for the lower-than-expected turnout.
Cllr Roche confirmed that there were concerns locally that the site might be bigger than first thought and could actually stretch into some private residences.

The Tuam Mother and Baby Home closed in 1961 and a few years later the Dublin Road and Tobar Jarlath estates were constructed on and beside the site.

“The residents for the best part chose not to attend the meeting. There was a lot of fear, a lot of emotion and for one reason or another they chose to be briefed at home. And that’s perfectly acceptable,” Cllr Roche said.

“They [the residents] weren’t angry, but they are deeply traumatised, because the suspicions they had for many, many years were confirmed.”

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IRELAND
Irish Independent

Ryan Nugent
March 4 2017

A woman who grew up in the Tuam Mother and Baby Home has admitted she is “lucky” to be alive – following the discovery of human remains at an excavation site in the area.

Significant discoveries were made by the Mother and Baby Homes Commission of children between the ages 35 foetal weeks to 2-3 years.

A woman – known as Breda and who grew up in the home – has admitted her shock at yesterday’s revelations.

Speaking to RTÉ’s ‘Liveline’, Breda, who was there for most of the 1950s, said she found the news “so upsetting”.

Identity

She said that she had been one of the lucky ones and has her foster mother to thank for it.
In recent years she has been in contact with her birth mother along with a number of her extended relations.

“I have met my birth mother, but we don’t get on too well. I met her lots of times and I’m in touch with her,” Breda said.

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IRELAND
Irish Independent

Catherine Corless
March 4 2017

When I started out on my research into the Tuam Mother and Baby Home, for the local ‘Historical Journal’, I had envisaged that this was to be just a simple story outlining the history of the home and perhaps getting a story or two on those who were born there.

I had no idea at the time what a storm would emerge as a result of my research into this home.
I revealed my shocking findings locally at first to the religious and those in authority.

But as time went on I became dismayed that there was not much interest in what I was saying.
I had disclosed that I had found the deaths of 798 babies and young children in the Tuam home during the years of its existence – 1925-1961 – and worse, I could not find any details of where they were buried. No one seemed to know.

The only piece of concern and empathy came from a few residents who lived in the new estate that was built on the home grounds, near the burial area, who, in 1974 took it upon themselves to care for this area, after the boys found skeletons in the tank.

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IRELAND
The Journal

THE REMAINS OF infants and toddlers lay for decades at the site at the Bon Secours Mother and Baby Home in Tuam, unmarked, unvisited, unknown.

Investigators for the Mother and Baby Homes Commission of Inquiry yesterday confirmed both that they had uncovered “a significant number” of those children’s remains – and that they dated back to the era during which the home was operational.

Very few pictures from the home exist but thanks to the tireless work of historian Catherine Corless, we do have the names of 796 children who died there between 1925 and 1960.

The infant mortality rate at the home was double that of even other mother and baby homes around the country at the time. Young children in the Tuam home succumbed to deaths from afflictions as heartbreakingly banal as the flu and, although only in a small number of cases, ear infections.

The most common causes of death were “debility from birth” (25%), 15% from “respiratory diseases”, 10% each from influenza and the measles, 8% born too premature to survive, 6% from whooping cough and in smaller numbers of epilepsy/convulsions, gastroenteritis, meningitis, congenital heart disease and congenital syphilis, skin diseases, chicken pox and one per cent – 10 children – of malnutrition.

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IRELAND
New York Times

By SINEAD O’SHEA MARCH 3, 2017

DUBLIN — The local historian had been telling the authorities for years that dead infants might have been buried in an old sewage system on the grounds of a former home for unmarried mothers and their children in the west of Ireland.

Little attention was paid to her claims at first, but the questions eventually led to the establishment of a state-financed investigation. And on Friday, the investigators said that the remains of babies, small children and fetuses had been found where she said they would.

The discovery, in the County Galway town of Tuam, was announced on the website of the Commission of Investigation into Mother and Baby Homes. “The commission is shocked by this discovery and is continuing its investigation into who was responsible for the disposal of human remains in this way,” the agency said in a statement.

From 1925 to 1961, the St. Mary’s home was run by the Sisters of Bon Secours, a Roman Catholic order, but was financed by the Irish government. Tests showed that most of the remains were “likely to date from the 1950s,” according to the statement, which added that further examinations were being conducted.

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MASSACHUSETTS
The Foxboro Reporter

By Bera Dunau The Foxboro Reporter Mar 2, 2017

The Foxboro Child Sexual Abuse Awareness Committee is hitting the books

At its February meeting, the committee discussed the input it received on Jan. 23 from Massachusetts State Rep. Theodore Speliotis, D-Danvers on its effort to expand the definition of a mandatory reporter for child abuse and neglect in Foxboro. Speliotis is the House Third Reading Committee Chairman, and he expressed a preference for expanding the definition statewide, as opposed to just in Foxboro.

“He alluded that they (the legislature) don’t like to do that, because it confuses people,” said Foxboro Child Sexual Abuse Awareness Committee Chair Bob Correia.

Two bills have been submitted in the legislature, one which would expand the definition statewide and another that is a home rule petition that would just do so in Foxboro.

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JAMAICA
Loop

The application to have the sex cases of two Moravian clergymen transferred to Kingston from Manchester was again postponed Thursday.

The matter is now rescheduled for May 24 in the Manchester Circuit Court. The postponement this time is due to the prosecution asking for time to peruse documents disclosed on it by the defence.

The prosecution is to ask for the case against Rev Paul Gardner and Pastor Jermaine Gibson to be transferred to the Home Circuit Court for trial.

Gardner and Gibson were arrested Monday, January 23 and charged with carnal abuse in relation to the reported incident that occurred in 2002 and 2004.

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MINNESOTA
The Journal

MAR 4, 2017

KEVIN SWEENEY
Editor
ksweeney@nujournal.com

NEW ULM — The Diocese of New Ulm is filing for Chapter 11 reorganization as it seeks to settle the lawsuits filed against it as a result of clerical sex abuse of children.

The Minnesota Child Victims Act lifted the statute of limitations for victims of child sex abuse, setting up a three-year period when victims of past sexual abuse could seek damages. That period ended last May, and the Diocese of New Ulm and some of its parishes are facing 101 lawsuits.

The Diocese is the third in the state to seek protection under U.S. bankruptcy laws for its sexual abuse lawsuits. The Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis, and the Duluth Diocese are the other two. The diocese is filing its petition with the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the District of Minnesota.

Bishop John LeVoir, head of the New Ulm Diocese, said Friday the diocese is seeking reorganization to assure that all claimants will be fairly compensated with the assets the diocese has available. If the diocese tried to handle each case separately it would exhaust its resources after the first few cases, leaving nothing for the rest of the victims.

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INDIA
One India

Written by: Vicky Nanjappa Updated: Saturday, March 4, 2017

The case of Kerala priest Robin Vadakkumchery who was finally caught after the victim became pregnant reminds me of the movie Spotlight. In that movie it is shown how the Boston Archdiocese was aware of instances of sexual abuse by priests. It also shows how influence was wielded on the police, media as well the judiciary to hush up the matter.

In Kerala, the public anger is clear against the Catholic Church after allegations of the shielding the pastor accused of raping a minor girl cropped up. It was a call that was made to a helpline which led to the tracing of the new-born child to a church-run orphanage.

Allegations of a cover up cropped up during the course of the investigation. It was found that the pastor had convinced the father of the victim to take the blame.

The Kerala police must probe further into this case. The victim gave birth at a hospital and then the baby was sent to an orphanage. Who were the persons who abetted this cover up? It was all hush-hush until that anonymous call was made by a Good Samaritan to the government child helpline.

The police say that in such cases, the victims go directly to the higher ups in the church. “They should come to the police station instead. The problem is that they fear social stigma, and hence seek recourse in the church itself. There are also several cases where the victims have remained quiet about it and suffer in silence. This should change and if victims and their parents go to the police, then the problem could be sorted out,” a police officer says.

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CANADA
Global News

By Gloria Henriquez

The release of a Montreal priest accused of sexually assaulting children has prompted swift backlash.

56-year-old Brian Boucher is facing several charges related to the sexual abuse of children.

He was released on bail on Thursday with several conditions, including staying away from minors.

The Committee of Victims of Priests says the fact that Boucher was transferred from church to church was a sign something was wrong.

The group’s members believe it’s time for an investigation into the upper echelons of Quebec’s Catholic Church.

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GUAM
Pacific Daily News

Haidee V Eugenio , heugenio@guampdn.com March 4, 2017

Canon lawyer Jennifer Haselberger said she does not wish to say anything critical of the victims or their attorneys, but thinks it was a mistake not to participate in the Vatican canonical trial process.

Haselberger is one of two canon lawyers, as well as a longtime Catholic church blogger, who weighed in on the Vatican’s ongoing investigation on Archbishop Anthony S. Apuron. Apuron is accused of sexual abusing altar boys in the 1970s.

On advice from their lawyer David Lujan, former altar boys accusing Apuron of sexual abuse did not meet with the Vatican team when it traveled to Guam in mid-February, because Lujan was not allowed to be present.

The Vatican tribunal led by Cardinal Raymond Leo Burke came to hear from witnesses as part of the Apuron investigation.

“Without the evidence provided by the victims, it is possible that the tribunal will not have enough upon which to base an affirmative decision,” Haselberger told Pacific Daily News. “And yes, the tribunal may consider that their refusal to participate reflects negatively on their claims.”

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GUAM
Associated Press

BY GRACE GARCES BORDALLO
ASSOCIATED PRESS

HAGATNA, Guam (AP) — The leader of Guam’s Catholic Church believes financial settlements could be a good solution for the archdiocese, which is facing $115 million in civil lawsuits alleging child sexual abuse at the hands of priests.

Archbishop Michael Byrnes told The Associated Press Friday that settling with the alleged victims would be a “real promising option,” but he did not elaborate.

In 2016, the Rev. Louis Brouillard told the AP that he molested about 20 boys while he was a priest in Guam over a 30-year period, starting in the 1940s.

Byrnes said the 95-year-old Brouillard is the main figure in the 23 lawsuits, and that the church will pay for some of the priest’s legal fees.

“We’re not paying the legal defense of the accused,” Byrnes said. “In the specific case of Father Brouillard, we are going to pay for a lawyer for his deposition.”

Byrnes says the archdiocese has revamped its sexual abuse policies and will have greater financial transparency, adding that the archdiocese would like to avoid bankruptcy.

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