ABUSE TRACKER

RHODE ISLAND
Boston Globe

By Kevin Cullen GLOBE COLUMNIST AUGUST 02, 2016

Pope Francis made a powerful statement last week without saying a word. His silent visit to Auschwitz allowed the stilled voices of all those murdered there to be heard.

The pope’s respectful silence showed that moral authority does not have to be shouted, that sometimes it’s what you don’t say that speaks louder.

The pope has gone some way toward restoring some of the moral authority of a church that was severely eroded by generations of covering up the sexual abuse of young people by priests. His success has been rooted as much in how he says things as what he says.

“Who am I to judge?” he says, and for someone who is deemed infallible on matters of his faith he has managed to maintain the tenets of Catholic teaching without coming off like a self-righteous, judgmental know-it-all.

And then there’s the bishop of Providence.

Every once in a while, Bishop Tom Tobin comes up with an ecclesiastical dope slap, a bracing reminder that not all of the hierarchy agree with the pope’s distaste for judgmental finger-wagging.

Years ago, Tobin decreed that Patrick Kennedy, then a Rhode Island congressman, should be denied Communion because Kennedy supported abortion rights.

When Nelson Mandela died, Tobin denounced Mandela’s “shameful promotion of abortion” in South Africa.

Last week, the good bishop took to his Facebook page to take a slap at Tim Kaine, the Democratic vice presidential nominee.

“Tim Kaine has been widely identified as a Roman Catholic. It is also reported that he publicly supports ‘freedom of choice’ for abortion, same-sex marriage, gay adoptions, and the ordination of women as priests,” Tobin wrote. “All of these positions are clearly contrary to well-established Catholic teachings; all of them have been opposed by Pope Francis as well. Senator Kaine has said, ‘My faith is central to everything I do.’ But apparently, and unfortunately, his faith isn’t central to his public, political life.”

And apparently, and unfortunately, as he sits in judgment of others, Bishop Tobin’s obsession with following Catholic teaching didn’t apply to the cases of Helen McGonigle and Jeff Thomas. Tobin’s response in those cases was not pastoral, it was dryly legalistic. It was not in keeping with the well-established Catholic teachings of humility and compassion.

A month before Tobin called Kaine out, Tobin’s lawyers succeeded in getting lawsuits against him by McGonigle and Thomas thrown out. The Rhode Island Supreme Court upheld a lower court ruling that agreed with the bishop’s lawyers that McGonigle and Thomas didn’t file their suits in time.

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IRELAND
Irish Independent

Sarah MacDonald
PUBLISHED
02/08/2016

A former trainee priest who alleges he was harassed by a member of staff while studying at the national seminary in Maynooth is to meet members of the Garda sexual assault unit over the coming days to file a formal complaint against the priest.

The man, who wishes to remain anonymous for now, told the Irish Independent that the priest concerned was meant to be his “spiritual father” who would help him to “discern if God was calling” him to serve in the priesthood, and also to “act as a support and guide in living a chaste and celibate life”.

Instead, he alleges that the priest placed his hand on him inappropriately on a number of occasions, and that he asked him very intimate questions concerning his sexuality during meetings. This, he said, was not part of the priest’s remit.

He also told salacious jokes during the meetings.

“I am now, thank God, a happily married man. My faith was severely shaken after my experience in Maynooth, and I suffered from severe depression for a long time,” he recounted.

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AUSTRALIA
SBS

AAP

A mother has told an inquiry she informed the local bishop that an Anglican priest and a youth worker who were fostering children had booked a “sex tour” in Europe, but she never heard from the Church again.

Susan Aslin, who has four boys, said in the late 1970s she became concerned that Anglican youth worker James (Jim) Brown was preying on one of her sons.

Ms Aslin was giving evidence on Tuesday at a child sex abuse royal commission hearing into how the Anglican Diocese of Newcastle responded to repeated allegations of child sex abuse against a number of its clergy and lay workers over three decades.

In 2011 Brown pleaded guilty to 27 charges of child sexual abuse of boys and was sentenced to 20 years in jail with a non-parole period of 12 years.

The commission has heard Brown was closely associated with senior priest Peter Rushton who headed a pedophile ring in the Hunter region of NSW.

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AUSTRALIA
The Australian

DAN BOX
Crime reporterSydney
@DanBox10

The Anglican Church in Newcastle, NSW, is “harbouring” a large number of active child abusers and has a history of violent abuse dating back decades and involving some of the city’s most influential people, a royal commission has heard.

The commission, whose public hearing opened this morning, has heard evidence that church officials provided boys to be raped and were allegedly protected by senior figures in the diocese.

Several abusive priests went to the same training college and subsequently occupied powerful positions in and around the city’s cathedral, including being appointed to church bodies established to respond to allegations of abuse.

“Records concerning professional standards matters in the diocese have been improperly altered or destroyed by members of the diocese,” counsel assisting the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse, Naomi Sharp said.

The diocese’s Professional Standards Director, Michael Elliott, is expected to tell the commission “of his belief that the Diocese is harbouring a large number of active offenders with little or no accountability in place,” Ms Sharp said.

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AUSTRALIA
The Guardian

Australian Associated Press
Tuesday 2 August 2016

Paul Gray broke down in the witness stand at a royal commission hearing when he told how he was repeatedly raped by a gang of men at a boys’ home run by the Anglican church in the New South Wales Hunter Valley.

Gray wept as he recalled on Tuesday how his godfather, Father Peter Rushton, who was a priest at Cessnock, had anally raped him when he was just 10.

In the mid-1960s Rushton began taking Gray to St Alban’s Home for Boys where he was locked in a room and a number of men would rape or have oral sex with him, the royal commission into institutional responses to child sexual abuse was told.

Gray told how Rushton would cut his back with a knife and smear the blood on his body, “symbolic of the blood of Christ”.

He was taken to St Alban’s regularly by Rushton for 18 months. He recalled how once a number of boys were made to lie on beds and six or eight men would choose a boy and take him to a separate room.

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AUSTRALIA
Daily Mail

By AUSTRALIAN ASSOCIATED PRESS AND CAMERON PHELPS FOR DAILY MAIL AUSTRALIA

An Anglican home for boys in the Hunter region of NSW was used by a paedophile ring headed by a senior clergyman to access and sexually abuse children.

On Tuesday the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse opened a two-week hearing into what the Anglican Diocese of Newcastle did to stop priest Peter Rushton and a pedophile network of clergy and laypeople who preyed on children for decades.

Victim Paul Gray gave evidence and said he was taken to St Albans School for Boys in the Hunter Valley in the 1960s, where there was a locked room called the ‘f***ing room’ where boys would be forced to have group oral and anal sex with adult men.

Mr Gray broke down in the witness stand when he told how he was repeatedly raped by a gang of men at the boys home.

Mr Gray wept as he recalled how his godfather Father Peter Rushton, who was a priest at Cessnock, had anally raped him when he was just 10.

In the mid-1960s Rushton began taking Mr Gray to St Alban’s Boys Home where he was locked in a room and a number of men would rape or have oral sex with him, the commission was told.

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AUSTRALIA
ABC News

By Dan Cox

An Anglican Church abuse survivor has told a royal commission’s hearings in Newcastle his back was cut while he was raped to symbolise Christ’s blood.

Abuse within the Anglican Diocese of Newcastle is being examined by the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse.

Public hearings in the city are expected to go for two weeks and will focus on the experiences of survivors of child sexual abuse, as well as potential paedophile networks.

It will look at the past and present systems, policies and practices within the Newcastle diocese for responding to allegations of child sexual abuse.

Counsel assisting the commission Naomi Sharp said the hearings would also investigate St John’s College at Morpeth.

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AUSTRALIA
Newcastle Herald

JOANNE MCCARTHY
2 Aug 2016

HE was the man who brought Newcastle together in 1989 after an earthquake killed 13 people and severely damaged the Anglican Christchurch Cathedral.

He was the senior Newcastle cleric with a prominent role on the Anglican Church’s sexual abuse working group in 2003 that developed national professional standards.

But the 13th Anglican Dean of Newcastle, Graeme Lawrence, was also in a “gang of three” protecting a notorious Hunter paedophile priest, and led a Griffith group of offenders to the Hunter who were later defrocked after child sex allegations, the royal commission has heard.

Over the next two weeks the commission will hear evidence Mr Lawrence’s power and influence protected child sex offenders for several decades, but did not end with his defrocking in 2012.

“It is anticipated there will be evidence that Lawrence had, and continues to have, considerable influence in the diocese,” counsel assisting Naomi Sharp told the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse sitting in Newcastle on Tuesday.

That influence includes an allegation he has continued to preach at Adamstown parish despite the defrocking.

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AUSTRALIA
Newcastle Herald

IAN KIRKWOOD
2 Aug 2016

MORE than 30 years of child sexual abuse and cover-ups by clergy and lay members of various Anglican parishes have been laid bare on the opening day of the royal commission’s two-week hearing into the Anglican diocese of Newcastle.

In her opening address, counsel assisting the commission Naomi Sharp outlined in forensic detail the allegations against various well-known church figures – some dead, one in jail and others thrown out of the church.

Some of the abuse took place at St Alban’s Home for Boys at Cessnock, which was run by the church.

A number of the clerics involved had all studied together at St John’s Theological College at Morpeth. Some went on to hold senior positions in a clique of power that centred on the city’s Christ Church Cathedral. And as Ms Sharp recounted, these same men were even made members of committees or other church bodies charged with overseeing the response to the child sexual abuse scandal when it finally arose to public controversy.

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AUSTRALIA
Sydney Morning Herald

Ian Kirkwood

More than 30 years of child sexual abuse by clergy and lay members of various Anglican parishes have been laid bare on the opening day of the royal commission’s two-week hearing into the Anglican diocese of Newcastle.

In her opening address, counsel assisting the commission Naomi Sharp outlined allegations against various church figures – some of them dead, others alive and still fighting to stay out of jail.

Some of the abuse took place at St Alban’s Home for Boys at Cessnock, which was run by the church.

A number of the clerics involved had all studied together at St John’s Theological College at Morpeth. Some went on to hold senior positions in a clique of power that centred on the city’s Christ Church Cathedral. And as Ms Sharp recounted, these same men were even made members of committees or other church bodies charged with overseeing the response to the child sexual abuse scandal when it finally arose to public controversy.

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AUSTRALIA
Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse

live stream

The Royal Commission is holding a public hearing in Newcastle from Tuesday, 2 August 2016 commencing at 10:00am AEST.

The public hearing will inquire into the experiences of survivors of child sexual abuse perpetrated by clergy and lay people involved in or associated with the Anglican Diocese of Newcastle.

Location
The hearing will be held at Newcastle Courthouse, 343 Hunter Street, Newcastle.

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AUSTRALIA
Newcastle Herald

Joanne McCarthy and Dominica Sanda
2 Aug 2016

Tuesday, August 2

Opening address

10.45AM

Peter Rushton named. Born in 1940, completed diploma in theology at Morpeth college in 1963. Ordained as a priest in 1964. Met survivor Paul Gray in Cessnock at that time.

10.35AM

Counsel assisting Naomi Sharp opens her address.

Newcastle diocese established in 1847, stretching from the Central Coast to the Manning and Paterson areas in the north, and the Hunter region.

“This is the sixth public hearing that relates to the Anglican Church,”
– Ms Sharp.

Newcastle Anglican diocese is largely Anglo Catholic in theology, explains why many of the priests in the diocese refer to themselves as Father rather than Reverend.

Newcastle Bishops Ian Shevill (1973-77), Bishop Alfred Holland (1978-1992), Bishop Roger Herft (1992-2005), Bishop Brian Farran (2005-2012) and current Bishop Greg Thompson (2012 to the present.)

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LOUISIANA
The Advocate

BY JOE GYAN JR. | JGYAN@THEADVOCATE.COM AUG 1, 2016

A young woman who claims she was just 14 when she told a Baton Rouge-area Catholic priest that a longtime church parishioner was sexually abusing her, but that the priest did nothing to stop or report the alleged abuse, can tell a jury what she allegedly told the priest in a confession, a divided state appeals court ruled.

But the dissenting member of the three-judge 1st Circuit Court of Appeal panel warned that allowing Rebecca Mayeux to mention the confessions will “place an undue burden” on the Rev. Jeff Bayhi’s “right to the free exercise of his religion and violates the constitutional command of separation of church and state.”

The appellate court, in its Friday decision, backed state District Judge Mike Caldwell, who also stated in his February ruling that Mayeux’s attorneys won’t be allowed to argue to an East Baton Rouge Parish jury that Bayhi was mandated to report her allegations to the authorities.

Caldwell declared unconstitutional a provision of the Louisiana Children’s Code that requires clergy to report allegations of wrongdoing, even if learned in the privacy of the confessional.

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PENNSYLVANIA
PhillyVoice

BY RALPH CIPRIANO
PhillyVoice Contributor

At a bail hearing set for Tuesday morning, Msgr. William J. Lynn is expected to walk out of court as a free man.

The next move in the legal odyssey will be up to Philadelphia District Attorney Seth Williams.

Four years ago, it was Williams who successfully oversaw the prosecution of Lynn. The monsignor, who served as the Archdiocese of Philadelphia’s secretary for clergy from 1992 to 2004, was convicted by a jury in 2012 on one count of endangering the welfare of a child. The trial judge, M. Teresa Sarmina, subsequently sentenced Lynn to three to six years in prison.

The act of child endangerment involved the transfer of the Rev. Edward V. Avery, a priest with a prior accusation of sex abuse, to a new parish, without any notice to parishioners. Avery subsequently pleaded guilty to deviate sexual intercourse with a former 10-year-old altar boy dubbed “Billy Doe.”

It was a “historic” prosecution, the district attorney proclaimed. Lynn became the first Catholic administrator in the country to be sent to jail in the church’s ongoing sex abuse scandal, not for touching anybody, but for failing to adequately supervise an abusive priest.

But last December, the state Superior Court overturned Lynn’s conviction, and ordered a new trial on the grounds that the trial judge had let in too much prejudicial evidence against the church. Williams appealed to the state Supreme Court. Last week, the state’s highest court denied the district attorney’s petition, clearing the way for Lynn’s freedom.

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FRANKREICH
Katholisch

Die französische Staatsanwaltschaft hat die Ermittlungen gegen Lyons Kardinal Philippe Barbarin eingestellt. Das berichten französische Medien am Montag. Es habe keine Hinweise auf mögliche Straftaten gegeben, hieß es.

Der Anwalt Barbarins, Andre Soulier, begrüßte die Entscheidung laut dem Fernsehsender France Info, betonte jedoch zugleich, diese komme nicht überraschend. Es gehe nun nicht darum, zu triumphieren oder Revanche zu fordern, sondern allein um die Feststellung, dass Barbarin und seine Mitarbeiter keine Fehler gemacht hätten. Der Kardinal sei in Gedanken stets bei den Opfern, so Soulier.

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AUSTRALIA
Canberra Times

Christopher Knaus

The passage of time will no longer be a barrier for ACT survivors of child sexual abuse to sue institutions like the Catholic church for justice.

The ACT government will introduce a bill on Tuesday to scrap time limits that prevent survivors from lodging civil claims too long after their abuse has occurred.

Such time limits have been criticised as “clearly inappropriate” for abuse victims, and fail to recognise the terrible psychological toll the crimes take.

The current statute of limitations is six years, which begins when the young person turns 18.

That limit would, for example, prevent more victims of Marist Brother John William Chute – who abused boys repeatedly at Marist College Canberra in the 1970s and 1980s – from now coming forward with a civil claim, unless they could adequately justify the delay.

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AUSTRALIA
7 News

Annette Blackwell – AAP on August 2, 2016

The first of two major inquiries into child sex abuse by clergy and workers from Australia’s main Christian churches starts in Newcastle, NSW on Tuesday.

The Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse will spend two weeks investigating what senior Anglican clergy did to stop priest Peter Rushton and a pedophile network of clergy and church workers who operated in the Diocese of Newcastle for decades.

Rushton died in 2007 without ever being convicted.

There were believed to be up to 30 child sex abusers in the network, among them James Michael Brown who was jailed in 2012 for multiple offences against 20 boys while he was a youth worker.

Brown and Rushton were board members of the Anglican Church’s St Alban’s Boys Home at Aberdare, Cessnock.

In 2010 the Anglican Church named Rushton as a pedophile who organised boys to be abused by others.

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NEW YORK
New York Daily News

KENNETH LOVETT
NEW YORK DAILY NEWS
Updated: Monday, July 25, 2016

ALBANY — An upstate investor who has targeted Senate Republicans for not passing a measure making it easier for child sex abuse victims to seek justice hasn’t forgotten about the Assembly Democratic inaction on the issue this year.

Gary Greenberg, a child sex abuse survivor who has created a political action committee called Fighting For Children, has endorsed Rochester Democrat Rachel Barnhart, a long-time news anchor who is running a primary against three-term incumbent Harry Bronson.

“This endorsement is the only one I will be making in the Assembly,” he said. “The Assembly failed to take a vote on the Child Victims Act. Shame on them.”

Greenberg through his PAC will make a maximum $4,400 donation to Barnhart’s campaign.

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NEW YORK
New York Daily News

KENNETH LOVETT
DAILY NEWS ALBANY BUREAU CHIEF
Monday, August 1, 2016

ALBANY – The Democrat who won disgraced state Senate GOP Majority Leader Dean Skelos’ Long Island seat has the backing of a political action committee pushing for enactment of the Child Victims Act.

The Fighting for Children PAC, created by upstate investor and child sex abuse survivor Gary Greenberg, has endorsed Sen. Todd Kaminsky’s reelection. Kaminsky, a former federal prosecutor, won the seat in a special election in April.

“Todd’s work as a long time advocate for children’s issues and rights has allowed him to see firsthand the devastating impacts of child sex abuse,” Greenberg said.

Different versions of the Child Victims Act would either extend the time that child sex abuse victims can bring legal cases, or eliminate the time limit for doing so. The Senate Republicans blocked the measures from coming to a vote before the 2016 legislative session ended in June.

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FRANCE
Catholic Herald (UK)

AP

nsufficient evidence means that Cardinal Philippe Barbarin will not be prosecuted

A French prosecutor has thrown out the case of a prominent cardinal who was under investigation for alleged failure to report suspected paedophilia by a priest under his watch.

Lyon prosecutor Marc Cimamonti told The Associated Press on Monday that there wasn’t sufficient evidence against Cardinal Philippe Barbarin and the statute of limitations had expired for some of the allegations.

Barbarin had been questioned in June by investigators in the case of Rev. Bernard Preynat, a priest charged with sexual aggression and rape of a minor and accused of abusing boy scouts in the 1980s. Fr Preynat was removed from parish work in August 2015.

Barbarin said he was convinced Fr Preynat had reformed by 2007-2008 when they met. However, in April this year Barbarin admitted that “some mistakes” had been made in the management and nomination of certain priests.

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AFGHANISTAN
Independent (UK)

Siobhan Fenton @siobhanfenton

An Afghan cleric has defended his marriage to a six-year-old girl, saying she was a “religious offering” to him.

Mohammad Karim, who is believed to be in his sixties, was arrested after marrying the girl. He has told officials that he had been given the girl as a “religious offering” by her parents, Agence France-Presse reports.

However, her parents reportedly claim she was abducted without their consent from the Herat province.

He is being held by authorities in the central Ghor province, while investigations are underway.

Head of the Women Affairs Department in Ghor, Masoom Anwari, said: “This girl does not speak, but only repeats one thing: ‘I am afraid of this man’.”

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AFGHANISTAN
The Freethinker

Afghan Muslim cleric Mohammad Karim has been arrested after marrying a six-year-old girl.

According to this report, Karim – thought to be in his sixties – defended the marriage, saying she was a “religious offering” to him.

However, her parents claim she was abducted without their consent from the Herat province.

He is being held by authorities in the central Ghor province, while investigations are underway.

Head of the Women Affairs Department in Ghor, Masoom Anwari, said:
This girl does not speak, but only repeats one thing: ‘I am afraid of this man’.

The legal age for marriage in Afghanistan is 16 for women and 18 for men. However, child marriages continue to be common, particularly in rural areas.

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FRANCE
France 24

A French prosecutor on Monday dismissed a probe into allegations that Cardinal Philippe Barbarin covered up the sexual abuse of boy scouts, in a case that threatened to derail the career of France’s most prominent clergyman.

Barbarin, the archbishop of Lyon since 2002 and France’s highest-ranking Catholic prelate, had been accused of failing to remove a priest from his diocese when he became aware the man had sexually abused young boys 25 years ago.

The cardinal has said he learned in 2007 that the priest, Bernard Preynat, had been accused of sexually abusing scouts in the past.

Preynat was only charged in January after a victim who was allegedly abused in the 1980s realised in 2015 that the priest was still in service. Several other victims have also come forward.

Barbarin has said that when he learned of the priest’s past he immediately called a meeting with him and when he asked Preynat if he had committed further abuses since 1991 the priest swore he had not.

“You can reproach me for having believed him… but covering up means knowing and letting it happen,” Barbarin said, adding he had “absolutely never” done that.

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NEW YORK
Times Union

By Matthew Hamilton on August 1, 2016

Gotta catch ’em all — unless you’re a sex offender.

Gov. Andrew Cuomo on Monday directed the state Department of Corrections and Community Supervision to restrict sex offenders on parole from playing the popular Pokemon Go and similar games. Cuomo also sent a letter to game developer Niantic requesting the company’s help in barring sex offenders from playing the game.

DOCCS has imposed a new condition of sex offenders’ parole that prohibits them from downloading and engaging in any internet enabled gaming activities. The new regulation applies to nearly 3,000 Level 1, 2 and 3 sex offenders currently on parole, Cuomo’s office said.

Cuomo also directed the state Division of Criminal Justice Services to provide Niantic with the most up-to-date sex offender registry information and to contact Apple and Google to notify them of public safety concerns and to work with them to enhance user safety.

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GUAM
Pacific News Center

[with video]

Haidee V Eugenio, Pacific Daily News
August 2, 2016

Expert: Apuron is a ‘serial child molester’

Another former altar boy told senators Monday morning that a priest and two other church members sexually abused him in the 1950s.

He is the fifth person since May to publicly accuse Guam clergy of sexual assault. Three former Agat altar boys since May have accused Archbishop Anthony Apuron of sexually abusing them in the 1970s, when he was parish priest. The mother of a dead former altar boy also has accused Apuron of molesting her son in the 1970s.

Leo B. Tudela, now 73, said he was sexually abused on three separate occasions by three people, including a priest, connected to the Archdiocese of Agana when he came to Guam in 1956.

Tudela testified during a public hearing on a bill that would lift the statute of limitations on civil lawsuits against those who sexually abuse children.

“I have cried on many occasions since then and continue to have memory flashbacks of the horrible things that happened to me,” said Tudela, who broke down several times as he narrated his ordeal. “I feel cheated and molested by people who were supposed to be my protector, comforter and God’s guardian angels.”

The sexual abuse happened after Tudela, who lived in Saipan, was invited to come to Guam to attend Catholic school, he said. He was 13 years old.

He was born and raised in Saipan in the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands, and served as an altar boy at Mount Carmel Church in Chalan Kanoa, starting in 1954. Two other boys from Saipan and Tinian were invited to Guam at the time, he said.

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GUAM
Pacific Daily News

A deadline shouldn’t be imposed on justice.

Lawmakers should pass Bill 326-33, which would lift the 2-year civil statute of limitations in child sex abuse cases.

By removing the time restriction for suing child sex abusers, Sen. Frank Blas Jr.’s bill would give victims a better chance to seek justice. Blas recently revised the bill to strengthen it.

During a public hearing on the bill, three former altar boys who accused Archbishop Anthony Apuron of sexual abuse in the 1970s testified in support of the legislation. A man also testified and accused Apuron of raping his brother, a former altar boy.

When the hearing resumed Monday, a man came forward with other clergy sex abuse allegations.

As Guam and other jurisdictions address clergy sex abuse allegations, they are looking at reforms for child sexual abuse laws.

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GUAM
Senate Hearings on SOL Reform

[This testimony was given on August 1, 2016, in support of Guam Bill 326-33. A video of Tudela’s testimony is available here; scroll down to the second video and advance the video to 19:34. Tudela was introduced by Mr. Anthony B. San Nicolas, former Postmaster General of Guam; his remarks begin at 19:34. The video contains other testimony as well.]

While I was staying at the Capuchin Fathers Monastery [St. Fidelis Friary] in Agana Heights, one night in the early morning hours, I was awakened by someone touching my private area (penis) and massaging it. I was shocked, very frightened, scared and shaking to have a big shadow of a man sitting next to me. I started to cry as I could not believe what was going on. This was in the monastery of God and how could this be happening to me. He told me “it is okay, I am Brother Mariano.” I told him to please leave me alone but he continued to do what was doing. Finally, he got up and left the room. I took my blanket and covered my face and my whole body. I was crying and shaking. It was a night I would never forget. The next day, I told Brother Ferdinand Pangelinan what happened to me and soon after that, we were moved to Sinajana Catholic Church Rectory, to stay there.

While I was at the Sinajana Rectory [of St. Jude Thaddaeus parish], I met Father Louis Brouillard [at the time, Diocesan Chaplain of the Boy Scouts]. I believe he was teaching at St. Jude Catholic School and assisting Father Kieran [Hickey, OFM Cap, Superior Regular of the Diocese of Agana]. Father Louis invited me to come to Santa Teresita Church in Mangilao and help him as an Altar Boy and to clean the rectory. While I was staying there, I was told to join the Boy Scouts as part of my duty, along with the other three Altar Boys staying at the rectory.

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FRANCE
BBC News

Prosecutors in France have dropped an investigation into allegations that the Roman Catholic archbishop of Lyon failed to act against a priest accused of child sexual abuse.

Cardinal Philippe Barbarin was questioned by police in June over the case of Father Bernard Preynat, who is alleged to have abused boy scouts.

The French Catholic church has been accused of covering up abuse.

Cardinal Barbarin denied any wrongdoing but earlier admitted making mistakes.

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FRANCE
Daily Star

Agence France Presse

LYON: A French prosecutor on Monday dismissed a probe into allegations that Cardinal Philippe Barbarin covered up the sexual abuse of Scouts, in a case which shook the country’s Catholic Church.

Barbarin, the archbishop of Lyon in central France since 2002, had been accused of failing to remove a priest from his diocese when he became aware the man had sexually abused young boys 25 years ago.

At the end of a preliminary investigation in March, the prosecutor Marc Cimamonti had said the accusation that Barbarin had covered up the abuse had not been proven.

Barbarin has said he learnt in 2007 that the priest, Bernard Preynat, had been accused of sexually abusing Scouts in the past.

Preynat was only charged in January after a victim who was allegedly abused in the 1980s realised in 2015 that the priest was still in service. Several other victims have also come forward.

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FRANCE
Le Monde

Le procureur de Lyon a rendu sa décision, lundi 1er août, dans l’affaire dite « Barbarin » en classant sans suite l’enquête préliminaire ouverte en février pour « non-dénonciation » d’agressions sexuelles sur mineurs.

Au terme d’une enquête préliminaire ordonnée en mars, le procureur Marc Cimamonti a estimé que les infractions visées n’étaient pas constituées.

Période couverte par la prescription

Des victimes du père Bernard Preynat, mis en examen pour des agressions sexuelles commises il y a plus de vingt-cinq ans, reprochaient, en particulier au cardinal Barbarin, de ne pas avoir dénoncé les agissements du religieux à la justice et de l’avoir laissé en poste trop longtemps, jusqu’en août 2015, dans une paroisse où il était au contact d’enfants.

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FRANCE
France Soir

L’enquête pour “non-dénonciation” d’agressions sexuelles sur mineurs et “non-assistance à personne en danger”, dans laquelle le cardinal Philippe Barbarin a été mis en cause, a été classée sans suite, a indiqué ce lundi 1er à l’AFP le procureur de la République de Lyon. Des victimes du père Bernard Preynat, mis en examen fin janvier pour des agressions sexuelles commises sur des scouts lyonnais il y a plus de 25 ans, reprochaient en particulier au cardinal de ne pas avoir dénoncé les agissements du religieux à la justice et de l’avoir laissé en poste trop longtemps, jusqu’en août 2015, dans une paroisse où il était au contact d’enfants.

Au terme d’une enquête préliminaire ordonnée en mars, le procureur Marc Cimamonti a estimé que les infractions visées n’étaient pas constituées, notamment celle particulièrement sensible de la “non-dénonciation”. Plusieurs plaintes visant Mgr Barbarin, une des personnalités les plus influentes de l’Église catholique en France, et d’autres membres de l’Église avaient été déposées par des victimes du père Preynat, mis en examen pour des faits commis entre 1986 et 1991.

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FRANCE
The Local

A French prosecutor dismissed on Monday a probe into allegations that Cardinal Philippe Barbarin covered up the sexual abuse of scouts, in a case which shook the country’s Catholic Church.

Barbarin, the archbishop of Lyon in central France since 2002, had been accused of failing to remove a priest from his diocese when he became aware the man had sexually abused young boys 25 years ago.

Barbarin has said he learned in 2007 that the priest, Bernard Preynat, had been accused of sexually abusing Scouts in the past.

Preynat was only charged in January after a victim who was allegedly abused in the 1980s realised in 2015 that the priest was still in service.

Several other victims have also come forward.

Barbarin has said that when he learned of the priest’s past he immediately called a meeting with him and when he asked Preynat if he had committed further abuses since 1991 the priest swore he had not.

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IRELAND
The Register

A group of Irish trainee priests are being packed off to Roma, after claims some fathers-in-training at their existing berth in the Emerald Isle had developed a predilection for gay hookup site Grindr.

Catholic archbishop of Dublin Diarmuid Martin, has reportedly pulled the diocese’s three trainees from St Partick’s College, Maynooth, citing “strange goings on” and a worrying “atmosphere” at the venerable seminary, The Irish Times reports.

“There seems to an atmosphere of strange goings-on there, it seems like a quarrelsome place with anonymous letters being sent around,” the archbish said obliquely. The three will instead continue their training at the Irish College in Rome.

The Irish Independent went into more detail, reporting that there had been accusations of “inappropriate” behaviour at Maynooth, with some seminarians apparently using Grindr.

The Irish Independent added that at least one other bishop is considering withdrawing his trainees from the Kildare college, which has 60 seminarians in all.

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IRELAND
Irish Mirror

BY BARRY ARNOLD

The three students will be sent to the Irish college in Rome in the autumn

Archbishop Diarmuid Martin will not be sending trainee priests to study at Maynooth’s national seminary the autumn.

The students for Dublin will instead be sent to the Irish college in Rome.

The move comes after it was reported seminarians at Maynooth had been using Grindr, a gay dating app, until recently.

Dublin Live reports that the Archbishop has denied that his decision is linked to the scandal, stating “I have my own reasons for doing this”.

But he added that he had made his decision “some months ago”.

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IRELAND
Irish Independent

Sarah McDonald
PUBLISHED
01/08/2016

Pope Francis surprised the Irish Church when he announced the resignation of two Irish bishops.

Bishop Martin Drennan of Galway and Kilmacduagh and Bishop Seamus Freeman of Ossory both cited health concerns as their reason for stepping down three years early. The announcements were made last Friday.

While Bishop Drennan’s decision to retire appears to have been unexpected, there had been mounting disquiet in the diocese of Ossory over Bishop Freeman’s leadership in the face of a financial crisis linked to the spiralling costs of a renovation programme at St Mary’s Cathedral in Kilkenny.

Disagreements and concerns over the management of the project had caused some members of the diocesan finance committee to resign last year.
Last January, Bishop Freeman instigated a listening process within the diocese in a bid to allow all sides to be heard.

However, the process is believed to have exacerbated tensions, with some clergy voicing strong criticism of Bishop Freeman’s stewardship.

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IRELAND
Irish Independent

Sarah MacDonald
PUBLISHED
01/08/2016

The country’s largest Catholic diocese has confirmed it will not be sending any of its trainee priests to study at the national seminary in Maynooth this autumn.

Amid reports of a crisis at the Co Kildare seminary, Archbishop Diarmuid Martin of Dublin has now opted to send his student priests to the Irish College in Rome.

The seminary is headed up by Dubliner Monsignor Ciaran O’Carroll, who has worked closely with Dr Martin in the past.

Three trainee priests from the archdiocese of Dublin will move to the Rome this autumn to further their studies and training.

The seminarians are all at various stages in their training.

There are roughly 60 resident seminarians studying at Maynooth.

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IRELAND
Dublin Live

1 AUG 2016

BY BARRY ARNOLD

Three students will instead be sent to the Irish college in Rome

Archbishop of Dublin Diarmuid Martin will be sending trainee priests to study at the National Seminary in Maynooth this Autumn.

Instead, three students will be sent to the Irish college in Rome, reports the Irish Independent.

The decision comes after it was reported that some seminarians have, until recently, been using the gay dating app Grindr.

The Archbishop has denied that his decision is linked to the scandal, stating “I have my own reasons for doing this”.

But he added that he had made his decision “some months ago”.

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IRELAND
Clare FM

1 August, 2016

The Archbishop of Dublin has denied that a rumoured gay sub culture at the National Seminary is the reason he’s not sending his trainee priests there.

According to the Irish Independent the three student priests will study at the Irish college in Rome instead.

It comes after the scandal in May where it was revealed that some seminarians in Maynooth had been using a gay dating app.

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IRELAND
98 FM

The Archdiocese of Dublin won’t be sending its trainee priests to the National Seminary in Maynooth.

It’s been confirmed the three students will instead be sent to the Irish college in Rome, the Irish Independent reports.

Suggestions had been made that a gay subculture exists at the Maynooth seminary, after it was revealed in May that some student priests had been using a gay dating app.

Dublin’s Archbishop Diarmuid Martin has denied that his decision is linked to the scandal.

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IRELAND
Sunday World

The country’s largest Catholic diocese has confirmed it will not be sending any of its trainee priests to study at the national seminary in Maynooth this autumn.

Amid reports of a crisis at the Co Kildare seminary, Archbishop Diarmuid Martin of Dublin has now opted to send his student priests to the Irish College in Rome.

The seminary is headed up by Dubliner Monsignor Ciaran O’Carroll, who has worked closely with Dr Martin in the past.

Three trainee priests from the archdiocese of Dublin will move to the Rome this autumn to further their studies and training.

The seminarians are all at various stages in their training.

There are roughly 60 resident seminarians studying at Maynooth.

Archbishop Martin is a trustee of Maynooth along with the three other catholic archbishops in the Irish Church and a number of bishops.

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IRELAND/ROME
Irish Times

Paddy Agnew

The Catholic Archbishop of Dublin Diarmuid Martin has decided to cease sending trainee priests from the diocese to St Patrick’s College, Maynooth because of a worrying “atmosphere” at the national seminary.

Asked about the decision of the Dublin archdiocese to send its three seminary students next autumn to the Irish Pontifical College in Rome rather than to Maynooth, Dr Martin told The Irish Times: “I wasn’t happy with Maynooth…

“There seems to an atmosphere of strange goings-on there, it seems like a quarrelsome place with anonymous letters being sent around.

“I don’t think this is a good place for students,” he said. “However, when I informed the president of Maynooth of my decision, I did add ‘at least for the moment’.”

The Archbishop’s decision to send his students to Rome comes after anonymous letters were circulated in clerical circles about student activities in Maynooth, including an allegation that some seminarians had used a dating app.

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NEW JERSEY
Star-Ledger

Archbishop John Myers finally turned 75 Tuesday, the mandatory retirement age for bishops, and announced he intends to step down.

Blessed are we to be rid of this man. During his 15-year tenure as New Jersey’s highest-ranking Catholic, he protected pedophile priests and used church funds to expand an already large weekend house into an opulent retirement mansion.

He urged his flock to vote based on two issues — abortion and gay marriage — at the threat of being denied Holy Communion.

He refused to meet with any of the thousands of parishioners protesting his extravagance, who said the money would be better spent feeding the hungry or housing the homeless; or to answer questions from the press.

And now, in an exit interview with the Bergen Record, he is giving the Pope lessons on how to handle the media. Priceless.

The Catholic Church does tremendous good in this state. It’s not just the schools, the hospitals, the food pantries, and all the charity that helps hold communities together and bind its wounds. It is also a spiritual home that gives so many people meaning and solace. Myers will soon be just a bad memory.

But we hope Pope Francis replaces Myers quickly with someone more in line with his message of change. Could you ever imagine the “people’s pope” building himself a house with six bedrooms, indoor and outdoor swimming pools, three fireplaces, a three-car garage, an elevator and a hot tub?

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GUAM
KUAM

[with copy of Mr. Tudela’s full statement]

Updated: Jul 31, 2016

By Jason Salas

Another person has come forward, alleging members of Guam’s Catholic clergy of sexual molestation. Born in 1943, Leo Tudela, originally from Saipan, openly wept before the community as he detailed a series of traumatic events involving clergy after he came to Guam to attend Catholic school in the summer of 1956. Tudela testified at a continued public hearing at the Guam Legislature over a substitute version of Bill 326, which seeks to lift the statute of limitations for cases involving child sex abuse. Last week, Archbishop Anthony Apuron’s accusers testified at a similar public hearing for the bill.

While strongly urging passage of the legislation, Tudela shared his very personal and painful recollection of a series of events that happened to him when he was 13 years old. Now 73, he tearfully detailed how on three occasions, he was molested and forced to perform sexual acts upon himself.

Tudela began by describing how he came to Guam in the summer of 1956 to attend Catholic school, residing at the monastery in Agana Heights. One night, he recalled, he awoke to discover a man touching his penis, who Tudela said identified himself as “Brother Mariano”. He also detailed that while later staying in the rectory, one night he felt someone massaging his penis, who he identified as “Father Luis”.

Additionally, he said that while in the Boy Scouts, he was also told by a scout leader to remove his pants and masturbate. Tudela explained that altar boys were required to join the Boy Scouts – if they refused to perform lascivious acts, they would be forced to work duties around the campgrounds.

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GUAM
KUAM

Updated: Aug 01, 2016

By Krystal Paco

Dozens of picketers continued their Sunday ritual outside the Hagatna Cathedral holding signs directed towards Guam’s interim Archbishop Savio Hon Tai Fai, telling him to stop collecting money for the Redemptoris Mater Seminary as well as messages to defrock Archbishop Anthony Apuron. Archbishop Hon was appointed by the Vatican to serve the Archdiocese of Agana as an apostolic administrator while Apuron has been placed on leave.

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National Catholic Register

ABOARD THE PAPAL PLANE — During his flight from Krakow to Rome on Sunday, Pope Francis gave a press conference to the journalists assembled aboard the papal plane. He reflected on the World Youth Day gathering in the Polish city, and the recent attempted coup in Turkey.

He also addressed abuse accusations against Cardinal Pell, the crisis in Venezuela, Islam and violence, and Panama – which will host the next World Youth Day.

Below is the full text of the July 31 press conference, translated by Catholic News Agency: …

Father Lombardi: Now we give the word to Frances D’Emilio, who is a colleague from the Associated Press, the large English-language agency

Frances D’Emilio, AP: Good evening. My question is a question that many are asking in these days because it has come to light in Australia that the Australian police would be investigating new accusations against Cardinal Pell, and that this time the accusations involve the abuse of minors that are very different from the previous accusations. So, the question that I ask which many others ask is: according to you, what would be the right thing for Cardinal Pell to do, given his serious situation and in such an important position and the confidence that he enjoys from you?

Pope Francis: Thank you. The first information that arrived was confusing. It was news from 40 years back that not even the police made a case about at first. It was a confusing thing. Then, all the rest of the accusations were sent to justice. Right now, they are in the hands of justice. And one mustn’t judge before justice judges, eh. If I were to say a judgement in favor of or against Cardinal Pell, it wouldn’t be good because I [would] judge before. It’s true that there there is doubt and there’s that clear principal of the law: in dubio pro reo (Editor’s note: the phrase is a Latin expression meaning in favor of the alleged guilty party), no? But, we must wait for justice and not make a first judgement ourselves, a media trial, or … because this doesn’t help. The judgement of gossip and then, one can…we don’t know what the result will be but be attentive to what justice decides. Once justice speaks, I will speak. Thank you.

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International Business Times

By Lara Rebello
August 1, 2016

Pope Francis has stated that he will not take a position in the case against cardinal George Pell and will allow justice to take its course regarding allegations that the Australian priest sexually abused children.

Speaking to reporters aboard the papal airplane, the Pope said that while waiting for the court to pass its judgement, it was important that there was no trial by media regarding Pell, who is the Vatican finance chief.

“We must avoid a media verdict, a verdict based on gossip,” he said during the flight back from Poland on 31 July. “It’s in the hands of the justice system and one cannot judge before the justice system.

“Justice has to take its course and justice by the media or justice by rumour does not help. After the justice system speaks, I will speak,” he said in response to a question, adding that he had his “doubts” regarding the case.

Victoria state police commissioner Graham Ashton had confirmed last week that the authorities were investigating Pell regarding complaints he molested children while still a young priest. The 75-year-old priest had earlier been accused of mishandling cases of abusive clergy when he was archbishop of Melbourne and later Sydney. He has denied all charges while criticising the Australian Broadcasting Corporation for mounting a smear campaign against him. He said that they had “no licence to destroy the reputation of innocent people”.

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MISSOURI
TheMediaReport

David Pierre

After years of haranguing the Catholic Church over its alleged “lack of transparency” in its handling of abuse cases, David Clohessy, the national director of the lawyer-funded hate group SNAP, is again not only defying a federal judge’s orders to hand over important documents in the case of a falsely accused priest, but he is also now orchestrating a fraudulent media campaign about it.

As we have reported before, Rev. Xiu Hui “Joseph” Jiang has filed a federal lawsuit against his accusers, SNAP, and members of the St. Louis police department for publicly and wrongfully accusing him of being a child molester.

After SNAP openly defied two court orders directing them to turn over important documents in its possession, Fr. Jiang’s lawyers are now asking the court to sanction SNAP for its contumacious refusal to obey the court’s discovery orders.

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UNITED KINGDOM
IOL

Arthur Martin and Rachel Watson

London – More than 30 million images of child sex abuse have been discovered and over 500 young victims have been identified by a major police operation.

Police in Scotland have charged 77 people with crimes against children, including the rape of some as young as three.

Other charges relate to sharing indecent images of children, grooming for sexual purposes, sexual extortion and indecent communication with children.

In one case, a computer with ten million images depicting child abuse was found. Police said it would take four full-time officers six months just to view the images uncovered.

Of the 523 victims and potential victims, 122 have been referred to child protection services.

The crackdown, called Operation Lattise, involved 134 separate investigations, carried out between June 6 and July 15. The victims were identified after the homes of 83 people were searched and 547 computers and other devices were seized.

Assistant Chief Constable Malcolm Graham of Police Scotland said some of the material involved abuse of babies. He described the online grooming of children and sharing of indecent images as a “national threat”.

Almost 400 charges have been brought so far – but police expect this figure to rise as they identify more suspects. Of those arrested, six are already registered sex offenders and four were in “positions of trust”. One suspect was found to be communicating with more than 110 children. …

Meanwhile, police probing an alleged sex abuse cover-up by Church of England leaders have interviewed Australian victims.

Former archbishop of York Lord David Hope of Thornes, 76, is being investigated for possible misconduct in public office over his handling of complaints of abuse by a fellow clergyman.

The late Rev Robert Waddington was suspected of having raped pupils at a north Queensland boarding school in the 1960s before allegedly abusing choir boys as the Dean of Manchester.

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GUAM
KUAM

[with video]

Updated: Aug 01, 2016

By Krystal Paco

A public hearing for a substitute version of Bill 326 turned into the tearful testimony of one alleged victim of child sex abuse by multiple members of the church. While Archbishop Anthony Apuron has had four alleged victims come forward and accuse him of molestation, three others of the Archdiocese of Agana stand accused as of today.

Not once, but three times 73-year-old Leo Tudela alleges he fell victim to child sex abuse in the church. In support of a substitute version of Bill 326, which lifts the statute of limitations for such cases, he detailed three painful and personal memories as a young altar boy leaving his home in Saipan to live in Guam to attend Catholic school. The year was 1956.

“While I was staying at the Capuchin Fathers Monastery in Agana Heights, one night in the early morning hours, I was awakened by someone touching my private area, my penis, and massaging and masturbating me,” he recalled, tearing up repeatedly. “He told me, ‘It’s okay. I’m Brother Mariano.’ I told him to please leave me alone, but he continued to do what he was doing.”

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GUAM
KUAM

Updated: Aug 01, 2016

By Krystal Paco

Longtime social worker and licensed mental health counselor Vincent Pereda testified in support of Bill 326. He also gave examples of the punishment that Archbishop Anthony Apuron would have faced if convicted of rape or molestation in today’s justice system.

He explained, “Had he been reported when he committed these criminal acts back in the 70s when he was a parish priest, he would today by current law be charged with 1st and 2nd degree criminal sexual conduct as 1st degree felonies, which are the most serious level of sexual conduct offenses. If convicted for these crimes, he would be facing a minimum of 15 years to life.”

Pereda was a member of the Archdiocesan Review Board, the group tasked with investigating sex abuse allegations in the church. Earlier this year, Pereda resigned from his position on the board because he recognized flaws in the policy that enabled the archbishop to make all the decisions, even if he was the accused perpetrator.

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AUSTRALIA
Newcastle Herald

JOANNE MCCARTHY
1 Aug 2016

EIGHT Anglican bishops and archbishops, including six current or past bishops of Newcastle, will give evidence during a royal commission public hearing from Tuesday into child sexual abuse in the Hunter region.

Former Newcastle Bishops Alfred Holland and Richard Appleby will give evidence in the first few days of the hearing after survivors Phillip D’Ammond and Paul Gray give evidence on Tuesday about being sexually abused as children.

The hearing will start with allegations about the late Anglican priest Peter Rushton, and sexual abuse of children at St Alban’s Children’s Home at Cessnock.

The list of 30 witnesses includes former Bishops of Newcastle Roger Herft and Brian Farran, former trustee and member of Newcastle Diocesan Council Keith Allen, former diocese registrar Peter Mitchell, former diocesan solicitor Robert Caddies, and former chancellor Paul Rosser, QC.

The witness list does not include former Anglican Dean of Newcastle Graeme Lawrence, despite the defrocked clergyman being named by the royal commission as a subject of inquiry into how the diocese responded to child sex allegations against him.

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AUSTRALIA
Newcastle Herald

IT has been a long time coming.

The Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse will open its 42nd case study at Newcastle Courthouse at 10am on Tuesday. For two weeks it is expected to hear evidence about how Newcastle Anglican diocese has dealt with child sex allegations over decades.

More significantly, it will hear evidence from individuals within the diocese, including senior clergy, about what they did, or didn’t do, when allegations were raised by children, and when those children turned to the church for support years later as adults.

There will be shocks, and evidence of cruel and callous treatment by people purporting to be followers of Jesus Christ. There will be grief for victims of child sexual abuse who have not survived to see this day, and grief from survivors for lives they would have lived – but for abuse that darkened their childhoods.

There will be anger. Since the first royal commission public hearing in September 2013, into dreadful systemic failures in Scouts, Hunter Aboriginal Services and the Department of Community Services that allowed Steven Larkins to sexually abuse children for years, there has been anger and outrage, and rightly so.

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ROME
Religion News Service

By Josephine McKenna

ROME (RNS) Pope Francis says he will not address sexual abuse allegations against the Vatican’s finance minister, Cardinal George Pell, until Australian judicial authorities complete their investigation.

In a press conference on the papal flight returning from World Youth Day in Poland late Sunday, the pontiff said the allegations against Pell “are in the hands of the justice system” and the cardinal should not be judged “before the justice system judges.”

“If I were to make a judgment in favor or against Cardinal Pell that would not be good because I would be making a judgment first,” said the pope.

Pell, an Australian cardinal who as the Holy See’s finance chief is third in the Vatican hierarchy after Pope Francis and Secretary of State Pietro Parolin. He is the most senior figure in the Catholic Church to be accused of sexually abusing minors.

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SRI LANKA
Hiru News

An army official has been sexually abused by a Buddhist priest, after they started to communicate after meeting on Facebook. The 25-year-old Buddhist priest was arrested.

The army official is attached to Kanagarayankulam Army Camp in Vavuniya.

The priest has asked the army official to visit his Viharaya and had sexually abused him.

When the official fell ill at the camp he was forwarded for a medical checkup where it was found that he was sexually abused.

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AUSTRALIA
SBS

Survivors of child sexual abuse by clergy have said they’re saddened by the Pope’s lack of “compassion”. The Pope has said Cardinal George Pell should not face a trial by media, and says there are “doubts” over the allegations of abuse made against him.

By Sarah Abo
1 AUG 2016

In Poland for a Catholic Youth festival, the Pope addressed a range of issues afflicting the world: he prayed for war-torn Syria and urged young people not to become couch potatoes.

And as he returned to Rome, aboard the papal plane, Pope Francis was asked about the accusations made against Cardinal George Pell.

“The first news we received on this was confused,” he told reporters during the brief press conference.

“It was news from 40 years ago and even the police had not considered this case at the beginning because the information was confused.”

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Christian Today

James Macintyre 01 August 2016

Pope Francis has said that people should withhold judgement and not “gossip” about Cardinal George Pell, who has been accused of sexually abusing children in Australia during the 1970s.

Cardinal Pell has called for an investigation into Australia’s Victoria police and claimed he is the victim of a “scandalous smear campaign” after allegations against him emerged of historic sexual abuse towards children.

The comments from the Pope – who appointed Pell as head of the Vatican’s secretariat for the economy in 2014 -came as he was flying back from Poland after World Youth Day.

He said that no-one should judge Pell before justice has taken its course.

“The first information that arrived was confusing,” Pope Francis told journalists. “It was news from 40 years back that not even the police made a case about at first. It was a confusing thing. Then, all the rest of the accusations were sent to justice. Right now, they are in the hands of justice. And one mustn’t judge before justice judges, eh? If I were to say a judgement in favour of or against Cardinal Pell, it wouldn’t be good because I [would] judge before…we must wait for justice and not make a first judgement ourselves, a media trial…because this doesn’t help. The judgement of gossip and then, one can…we don’t know what the result will be but be attentive to what justice decides. Once justice speaks, I will speak.”

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AUSTRALIA
Herald Sun

Shannon Deery, Herald Sun

POPE Francis has confirmed he will take no action against Cardinal George Pell while an ongoing police investigation into alleged child sex offences continues.

Breaking his silence on explosive allegations levelled at the Cardinal last week, Pope Francis said he would only act at the conclusion of the criminal investigation.

“One must not judge before the justice system judges,” the pope said.

“If I were to make a judgment in favour or against Cardinal Pell that would not be good because I would be making a judgment first.

“There is doubt and there is that clear principle of law: in doubt, pro reo,” he said, a Latin term meaning a defendant cannot be convicted if there are doubts about their guilt.

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AUSTRALIA
The Australian

Pope Francis says he won’t address child molestation allegations against Cardinal George Pell until a police investigation has concluded.

The pope told reporters on a plane returning from World Youth Day in Krakow that the accusations against Cardinal Pell, Francis’ top financial adviser, ‘‘are in the hands of justice.”

He said that the Cardinal deserved the benefit of the doubt, adding that ‘‘once justice has its say, I will speak. “

Cardinal Pell last week urged a criminal investigation into the ABC and rogue Victorian police whom he alleges may be involved in a “conspiracy to pervert the course of justice”, amid new claims the Cardinal molested two boys as a priest in the late 1970s.

The ABC’s 7.30 had reported the claims that Victorian police were investigating multiple allegations of child sex abuse by the cardinal dating back to the 1970s. Two former St Alipius students, Lyndon Monument and Damian Dignan, told the program that Cardinal Pell would abuse boys at the Eureka swimming pool in Ballarat.

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AUSTRALIA
ABC News (Australia)

Pope Francis says there are “doubts” over the case being made against Vatican finance chief George Pell, Australia’s most senior Roman Catholic, for alleged child abuse.

“There are doubts. ‘In dubio pro reo’,” he said, using a Latin expression meaning that a defendant may not be convicted by the court when doubts about his or her guilt remain.

“We must avoid a media verdict, a verdict based on gossip,” he told journalists aboard the papal plane during the return trip from Poland, where he had headlined a Catholic youth festival.

The ABC’s 7.30 program aired the details of the sexual abuse allegations against Cardinal Pell last week.

Victoria Police has confirmed it has been investigating a number of complaints for more than a year, but has not sought to interview the Cardinal, who currently serves as the Vatican’s treasurer, reporting directly to the Pope.

Cardinal Pell has vehemently denied the allegations, accusing the ABC of mounting a smear campaign against him and saying the broadcaster had “no licence to destroy the reputation of innocent people”.

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7 News

Pope Francis says he will wait until Australian justice takes its course before taking a position on Cardinal George Pell, who is under investigation in his homeland over sexual abuse allegations.

But the pope, speaking to reporters aboard the plane returning to Rome form Poland on Sunday, said Pell, now the Vatican’s powerful economy minister, should not undergo a trial by the media or by rumour.

Victoria state Police Commissioner Graham Ashton said on a Melbourne radio station program on Thursday that Victoria police had been investigating allegations against Pell for more than a year.

“It’s in the hands of the justice system and one cannot judge before the justice system,” the pope said in answer to a question.

“Justice has to take its course …and justice by the media or justice by rumour does not help. After the justice system speaks, I will speak,” he said.

He said Pell had a right to the benefit of the doubt like all those accused.

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Catholic News Agency

Aboard the papal plane, Jul 31, 2016 / 03:30 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- In response to news that Australian authorities are investigating multiple allegations of child abuse leveled against Cardinal George Pell, Pope Francis cautioned against gossip and making judgements before all the facts are known.

“We must wait for justice and not make a first judgement ourselves, a media trial … because this doesn’t help,” Pope Francis said July 31 during his in-flight press conference from Krakow to Rome. “The judgement of gossip and then, one can… We don’t know what the result will be; but be attentive to what justice decides. Once justice speaks, I will speak.”

The Pope was asked about Cardinal Pell, whom he appointed prefect of the Vatican’s Secretariat for the Economy in 2014, by the AP’s Frances D’Emilio. He began his response by noting that “the first information that arrived was confusing. It was news from 40 years back that not even the police made a case about at first. It was a confusing thing.”

Pope Francis then said that the accusation have been “sent to justice” and are now in the hands of justice. “And one mustn’t judge before justice judges, eh?”

“If I were to say a judgement in favor of or against Cardinal Pell, it wouldn’t be good because I (would) judge before. It’s true that there there is doubt, and there’s that clear principal of the law: in dubio pro reo.”

The Pope referred to the legal principle that a party who is accused of a crime is presumed innocent until proven guilty, which has been a foundation of law since at least the first Christian millenium.

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National Catholic Reporter

Joshua J. McElwee | Jul. 31, 2016

ABOARD THE PAPAL PLANE TO ROME
Pope Francis has asked the press to withhold judgment on reports that senior Vatican official Cardinal George Pell had inappropriate sexual contact with minors in the past, saying allegations against the prelate are still being investigated by Australian authorities.

In a short press conference aboard the papal flight back from Poland Sunday, the pontiff said the allegations against Pell “are in the hands of the justice system and one must not judge before the justice system judges.”

“If I were to make a judgment in favor or against Cardinal Pell that would not be good because I would be making a judgment first,” said the pope, responding to a question about what actions he may consider taking against the church official.

“There is doubt and there is that clear principle of law: in doubt, pro reo,” said Francis, referring to the Latin term for the concept that a defendant cannot be convicted if doubts about his guilt remain.

“We must wait for the justice system and not make a premature judgment, [or] a judgment in the media, because this does not help,” said the pope.

“Stay attentive to what the justice system decides,” he continued. “Once the justice system speaks, I will speak.”

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Channel News Asia

ABOARD THE PAPAL PLANE: Pope Francis said on Sunday that he will wait until Australian justice takes its course before taking a position on Cardinal George Pell, who is under investigation in his homeland over sexual abuse allegations.

But the pope, speaking to reporters aboard the plane returning to Rome form Poland, said Pell, now the Vatican’s powerful economy minister, should not undergo a trial by the media or by rumour.

Victoria state Police Commissioner Graham Ashton said on a Melbourne radio station programme on Thursday that Victoria police had been investigating allegations against Pell for more than a year.

“It’s in the hands of the justice system and one cannot judge before the justice system,” the pope said in answer to a question.

“Justice has to take its course …and justice by the media or justice by rumour does not help. After the justice system speaks, I will speak,” he said.

He said Pell had a right to the benefit of the doubt like all those accused.

Victims groups have called on the pope to sack Pell, the highest-ranking Vatican official to be accused of sexual abuse, or for him to resign.

Pell is seen as a test case for the pope because he has vowed zero tolerance for sexual abuse in the Church has said he would sack bishops found guilty of committing abuse or covering it up.

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New York Times

By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
JULY 31, 2016

KRAKOW, Poland — The Latest on the pope’s visit to Poland (all times local):

11:30 p.m.

Pope Francis says he won’t address child molestation allegations against a top Vatican Cardinal who is one of his most-trusted aides until justice officials in Australia have made a determination.

The pope told reporters on the plane Sunday returning from World Youth Day in Krakow that the accusations against Cardinal George Pell, Francis’ top financial adviser, “are in the hands of justice.”

He said that the accused deserved the benefit of the doubt, adding that “once justice has its say, I will speak. ”

Pell, who has long been dogged by allegations of mishandling cases of abusive clergy when he was archbishop of Melbourne and later Sydney, more recently has been accused of child abuse himself when he was a young priest. Two men, now in their 40s, said he touched them inappropriately under the guise of play at a swimming pool during the late 1970s, according to Australian media who reported the men have given statements to Victoria police.

Pell, 74, has denied any inappropriate behavior.

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GUAM
Guam Daily Post

Neil Pang | Post News Staff

Despite the press conference held by Archbishop Savio Hon Tai Fai, apostolic administrator of the Archdiocese of Agana, on Wednesday, July 27, protests have continued outside the Dulce Nombre de Maria Cathedral-Basilica.

Yesterday, July 31, a group of about 75 people continued their protest against the Catholic Church calling for, among other things, the defrocking of Archbishop Anthony Apuron.

Members of the protests belonged to the Concerned Catholics of Guam (CCOG), the Laity Forward Movement (LFM) and Silent no More – the three major organizations that have been calling on church officials to act on their concerns.

‘Rather disingenuous’

Vanjie Lujan, secretary of CCOG, stated that in his address, Hon failed to address their concerns in a “real material way” and said that while she appreciates Hon’s retraction of comments made by Apuron and the archdiocese, he failed to mention the Redemptoris Mater Seminary (RMS). Further, Vanjie said she and others want the church to be more transparent with the use of funds raised through the Archdiocese Annual Appeal.

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GUAM
Guam Daily Post

Robert Q. Tupaz | Post News Staff

This morning the committee on public safety and the judiciary is to resume a public hearing on Bill 326-33 which seeks to eliminate the statute of limitations for civil claims involving sexually abused children. Tomorrow, the committee will hear the nomination of a magistrate hoped to help with the caseload at the Superior Court of Guam.

Before the nomination hearing of Benjamin Sison to the post of magistrate on Tuesday, the committee will continue its hearing from last Thursday during which 13 people provided testimony in support of Bill 326. In testimony provided, each speaker asked lawmakers to pass the bill and to pass it quickly so that victims can bring their abusers to justice and to prevent abusers from hiding behind institutions that may protect them.

Included among those who testified in support of Bill 326 were Walter Denton, Roy Quintanilla and Roland Sondia, who were joined by John “Champ” Quinata, the brother of the late Joseph “Sonny” Quinata. Denton, Quintanilla, Sondia and Sonny Quinata are all alleged child sex abuse victims of Archbishop Anthony Apuron, when they were altar servers at Our Lady of Mt. Carmel Church in Agat in the 1970s.

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AUSTRALIA
The Courier

Olivia Shying
@oliviashying

31 Jul 2016

THE first Vatican representative to meet with clergy abuse survivors on Ballarat soil has vowed to do all humanly possible to help move the city forward from its “evil” past.

President of the commission for child protection of the Gregorian University Father Hans Zollner vowed to continue to work with survivors deeply affected by the scourge of abuses.

His words comes days after alleged victims of Cardinal George Pell claimed he groped their genitals in the 1970s.

Father Zollner personally backed Cardinal Pell’s March vow to work publicly to assist survivors to make the city a leading healing centre for victims impacted by the Catholic Church’s scourge of sexual abuse at the hands of clergy.

Father Zollner said Cardinal Pell’s pledge had been personal – not one officially backed by the Vatican, making it unclear if this vow would go ahead without the Cardinal.

He said research into the links between abuse, suicide and poor mental health must be done to help heal this community’s deep wounds.

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AUSTRALIA
Daily Telegraph

Miranda Devine

Just when you think the demonisation of Cardinal George Pell can’t get any worse, it does. And with every allegation, as flimsy and contagious as they are, comes the damaging insinuation that where there’s smoke there’s fire.

The fanfare around ABC’s 7.30 program last week would make you think Pell has been accused of the most heinous crimes, that he is the master paedophile sitting atop the global paedophile ring that is the Catholic Church.

Some people believe this sick fantasy, or have convinced themselves it is vaguely plausible. Others don’t care about the injustice because they hate Pell, who is that most unloved creature of our times, a conservative Catholic, implacably wedded to Church teachings and unwilling, like his more fashionable brother priests, to accommodate the great causes du jour, same sex marriage, abortion and euthanasia.

Victoria Police has been examining the three-decade old allegations for at least 18 months, without attempting to interview Pell, who offered to be interviewed after allegations leaked in February, on the eve of Pell’s testimony to the child abuse royal commission.

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AUSTRALIA
Newcastle Herald

JOANNE MCCARTHY
31 Jul 2016

FOUR years ago the suicide of Belmont North child sexual abuse victim John Pirona was the catalyst for a royal commission.

On Tuesday the first of back-to-back Hunter public hearings into the Anglican and Catholic churches starts – the 42nd and 43rd hearings of the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse.

It has held more than 5500 private sessions with survivors, taken more than 31,000 calls and received more than 18,000 letters and emails. It has referred more than 1600 matters to authorities including the police, leading to prosecutions and investigations across Australia.

The royal commission has funded 24 research projects relating to institutional child sexual abuse in Australia, including how juries assess information during trials, the response of specialist police investigation units to child sexual abuse, the use of evidence during child sex trials, sentencing issues, mandatory reporting laws and specialist prosecution units and courts.

The royal commission has recommended a national redress scheme for abuse survivors that is estimated to cost more than $4 billion, with institutions contributing the bulk of the money.

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AUSTRALIA
Newcastle Herald

JOANNE MCCARTHY
31 Jul 2016

MEN and women involved with Newcastle Anglican diocese’s St Alban’s Children’s Home knew children were being sexually abused, the royal commission will hear.

A public hearing starting on Tuesday is expected to hear evidence that a woman walked into a room more than once where a child was being sexually abused by men, but turned and left the room.

The extent of sexual abuse of children by two men – priest Peter Rushton and youth worker James Brown – is expected to be revealed, along with knowledge within the diocese of that offending.

Former Church of England Boys Brigade members have made statements to police about sexual abuse while on camps. One former member told police about a “f…ing room” at the boys home where Rushton took him and molested him.

The public hearing will be told of child sex allegations about Rushton and others made directly to bishops and senior clergy, but not acted on.

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AUSTRALIA
Herald Sun

Andrew Bolt, Herald Sun
July 31, 2016

TWO explosive ABC reports last week proved this biased state broadcaster is now a public menace.

First, the ABC falsely presented the restraint by detention staff of a violent youth as the torture of a near-innocent boy.

Next, it presented Australia’s top Catholic, Cardinal George Pell, as a sexual predator of children, based on the highly unreliable memories of people recalling ambiguous events more than 30 years old.

The consequences have been devastating.

In a knee-jerk response to the first report, Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull called a royal commission into the Northern Territory’s juvenile justice system.

Activists are already exploiting this to turn attention from the deadly dysfunction of Aboriginal society — the most urgent problem — to the inflammatory excuse of white cruelty to black children.

In response to the second report, Pell’s church is being vilified just as it prepares to speak against the planned vote on same-sex marriage — the ABC’s great crusade.

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LOUISIANA
The Advertiser

Ken Stickney, kstickney@theadvertiser.com July 30, 2016

BREAUX BRIDGE — A local Catholic priest, charged with 500 counts of possession of child pornography this week, sent word to his parish that he is sorry for his actions and for the pain and embarrassment he caused his church and diocese.

The Most Rev. J. Douglas Deshotel, bishop of Lafayette, passed along those regrets from the Rev. F. David Broussard, placed on leave at St. Bernard Roman Catholic Church, during Dehotel’s brief homily at the 4 p.m. Saturday Mass at that downtown church. About 300 parishioners, virtually a full house, pressed into the parish hall where Mass was offered. The church building itself is closed for remodeling.

Deshotel, named Lafayette’s bishop in February, will preside over all St. Bernard’s Masses this weekend.

The bishop told parishioners he “had a visit” with Broussard this week — the priest was charged with having pornographic images of children on his personal computer and booked at St. Martin Parish Jail on Tuesday — and asked if Broussard wanted to tell his parishioners anything. That, Deshotel said, was when Broussard expressed his sorrow and offered his apology.

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UNITED KINGDOM
Telegraph

Robert Mendick, chief reporter Ebba Brunnstrom
30 JULY 2016

A disgraced bishop jailed for a string of sex offences has been given public funding for a legal team at the Government’s child sex abuse inquiry, The Telegraph can disclose.

The decision to pay for lawyers, costing taxpayers up to £200 an hour, to defend the reputation of Peter Ball, the former Bishop of Gloucester and of Lewes, has outraged his victims.

Ball is the first convicted sex offender to be granted taxpayer funds, setting a precedent that could pave the way for dozens of paedophiles to get the same deal.

He received the legal funding because he “may be subject to explicit criticism by the inquiry”.

The Independent Inquiry into Child Sex Abuse, the largest in British legal history, will run into the next decade at a potential cost of hundreds of millions of pounds.

Ball, 84, was sentenced last October to 32 months in jail after pleading guilty to indecent assault and misconduct in a public office over the grooming of young men for sex. He has been called a “sadistic sexual predator”. One of his victims later committed suicide.

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KANSAS
The Freethinker

A court heard this week that Odalis Sharp, above – a mother of ten from Topeka, Kansas – severely abused her children by beating them, screaming at them and calling them names.

According to this report, the court ruled this week that a number of her children should remain in the custody of the Kansas Department for Children and Families after three of them described the abuse they had suffered at the hands of Sharp.

The deranged woman first came to media attention when she and her family sang for a bunch of armed nuts who occupied the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge in Oregon earlier this year.

The children told the Shawnee County District Court judge how their their siblings would scream in the pain when their mother tried “beat the fire” out of them and fill their mouths with liquid soap.

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GUAM
Pacific Daily News

Haidee V Eugenio, Pacific Daily News July 30, 2016

Guam is on its way to becoming the first U.S. territory to allow victims of child sex abuse to sue their perpetrator at any time, without restriction, on retroactive cases.

As of Friday, there was no opposition to a bill that would remove time restrictions for suing child sex abusers. A public hearing on the bill is scheduled to resume Monday.

“We cannot continue to expect the church to fix itself in this regard,” Chalan Pago resident Gerard Taitano told senators on Thursday. “We must hold child sex abusers and their enablers accountable for their actions. Serious moral, legal and ethical questions arise whenever a prosecutor cannot adequately indict child sex predators or their enablers.”

Other U.S. jurisdictions are considering expanding or eliminating statutes of limitations on rape and child sex abuse, because of high-profile sex abuse allegations, including those involving members of the Catholic church.

In Guam’s case, the recent allegations involve the archbishop, the highest leader of the local Catholic church. The alleged sex abuses, according to his accusers, happened when Apuron was still parish priest at the Our Lady of Mount Carmel Catholic Church in Agat during the 1970s.

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UNITED KINGDOM
Guardian

Despite public inquiries over the last two decades, such as the Waterhouse inquiry and the Utting report into child abuse in care homes, the institutions of government have failed to deliver justice for survivors or tackle child abuse. And official inquiries have repeatedly absolved central government and the establishment from guilt. Yet there is still no indication of when the £18m Goddard child abuse inquiry will hear evidence regarding high-level abuse and coverups at Westminster.

The inquiry’s truth project began this week but, sadly, the testimonies given to it by survivors will have no direct legal consequences and will only be used as ballast to the final inquiry report; a form of window dressing that may leave many survivors not only bound to secrecy about their testimony but also deeply distressed.

In announcing the initial inquiry two years ago, the then home secretary, Theresa May, declared its remit was to look into institutional responses to all child sex abuse allegations, whatever the circumstances. With estimates of the number of child abuse survivors stretching into the millions, many thought this was a clear signal the government would try to bury the Westminster scandals by casting the net too wide.

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UNITED KINGDOM
Stuff (New Zealand)

KATIE KENNY
July 30 2016

A New Zealand judge is on her way to becoming Britain’s highest paid civil servant according to estimates of her pay and perks.

Dame Lowell Goddard, a former New Zealand High Court judge, is leading the Government’s Independent Inquiry into Child Sex Abuse (IICSA).

The IICSA was announced in July 2014 by then-British Prime Minister David Cameron. It was set up to address a number of previously covered-up cases of child abuse in hospitals, care homes, churches, and schools.

The Telegraph reported the 67-year-old could receive more than £5 million [NZ$9m] in pay and perks.

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UNITED KINGDOM
Telegraph

Robert Mendick, chief reporter
29 JULY 2016

Dame Lowell Goddard, the New Zealand judge heading the Government’s child sex abuse inquiry, could receive more than £5 million in pay and perks amid fears hearings will drag on for a decade, The Telegraph can disclose.

Dame Justice Goddard’s remuneration package, which includes numerous free flights home and a £110,000 a year rental allowance, has catapulted her to the top of the public servants’ paylist.

Campaigners described the flight and accommodation allowances as “highly questionable”.

The judge earns a basic salary of £360,000 a year. But that is topped up with the rental allowance, an additional £12,000 a year for utilities bills and a car and driver for official business – all paid for by the Home Office.

The four free return business class flights to New Zealand every year for her and her husband is a further perk reckoned to be worth £40,000 annually. Business class return flights to new Zealand typically cost £5,000.

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ALASKA
KTOO

By Hannah Colton, KDLG
July 27, 2016

The attempted sexual assault case against a Dillingham parish priest has been dismissed by the prosecution.

A grand jury in Anchorage did not return an indictment on the felony charge this week, and the prosecutor dismissed both charges against Father Michael Nicolai.

Nicholai, originally from Kwethluck, has served several years as the priest at the St. Seraphim of Sarov Church in Dillingham, carrying much respect from his parishioners and church leadership.

Dillingham Police were called to the parish home early July 16 with an allegation of domestic violence. Based on an investigation, police charged Nicholai with attempted second-degree sexual assault and fourth-degree assault. Both charges have now been dropped.

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UNITED STATES
The Open Tabernacle: Here Comes Everybody

Posted on July 30, 2016 by Betty Clermont

From the barbarity in Croatia during World War II, there is a direct historical link to the atrocities committed in Argentina’s Dirty War, and certainty of the Catholic Church’s collusion. It’s time for Pope Francis to open his secret archives and make amends.

Jasenovac in Croatia was the third largest World War II concentration camp in Europe by number of victims. It was operated by the Catholic and Nazi-allied Ustasha government. Wartime Croatia has been called “one great slaughterhouse.”

The prisoners – mostly Serbs, Jews and Roma

had their throats cut with specially designed knives, or they were killed with axes, mallets and hammers; they were also shot, or they were hung from trees or light poles. Some were burned alive in hot furnaces, boiled in cauldrons, or drowned in the River Sava.

Here the most varied forms of torture were used. Finger and toe nails were pulled out with metal instruments, eyes were dug out with specially constructed hooks, people were blinded by having needles stuck in their eyes, flesh was cut and then salted. People were also flayed, had their noses, ears and tongues cut off with wire cutters, and had awls stuck in their hearts. Daughters were raped in front of their mothers; sons were tortured in front of their fathers.

Said plainly, in the concentration camps at Jasenovac and Stara Gradiska, the Ustasha surpassed all that even the sickest mind could imagine and do in terms of the brutal way people were murdered. …

More than 74,316 children were killed. During the Second World War, the only place where there were special camps for children was Croatia. …

Estimates of the total numbers of men, women and children killed there range from 300,000 to 700,000.

“700,000 in a total population of a few million, proportionally, would be as if one-third of the US population had been exterminated by a Catholic militia.”

For the Ustasha (Ustase, Ustaša), “relations with the Vatican were as important as relations with Germany because Vatican recognition was the key to widespread Croat support.” (Phayer, The Catholic Church and the Holocaust, 1930–1965 (2000) p. 32)

Ante Pavelic, the “Butcher of the Balkans,” had already been convicted in France for planning the 1934 assassination of King Alexander of Yugoslavia and French Foreign Minister Louis Barthou when he was received in a private audience by Pope Pius XII in May 1941 shortly after becoming dictator of Croatia. “After receiving the papal blessing, Pavelic and his Ustasha lieutenants unleashed an unspeakable genocide in their new country. But Pius XII refused to cut his ties with Catholic Croatia and in 1943 once again imparted the papal blessing on Pavelic, who by that time was a genocidal killer.” (Phayer, Pius XII, The Holocaust, and the Cold War (2008) p. 219)

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WYOMING
K2

By Tom Morton July 29, 2016

The largest church in Casper admits it hired a janitor, knowing he was convicted of third-degree sexual assault, who later assaulted a teenage girl.

But Highland Park Community Church, 5725 Highland Drive, said the court should dismiss the lawsuit filed by a woman who was sexually assaulted by James Jaure at the church four years ago because it “did not breach any duty owed to the Plaintiff” and other reasons, according to its response filed this week by its attorneys Ryan Schwartz and Amy Iberlin of the Casper firm Williams, Porter, Day, & Neville.

The church also asked for a jury trial.

The woman, who was 15 at the time of the assault, has been “irreparably injured and suffered damages” through loss of enjoyment of life, loss of income and earning capacity, emotional and psychological distress, social problems, and medical and counseling expenses, according to her complaint filed June 30 by her attorneys Michael Shickich of Casper and Emily Rankin of the Spence Law Firm in Jackson.

She also seeks punitive damages to deter corporations such as the church from tolerating such behavior in the future.

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LOUISIANA
The Advertiser

Dominick Cross, dcross@theadvertiser.com July 29, 2016

Although Louisiana is one of at least 38 states that does not have a Reporting Child Pornography law on the books, if a computer technician finds child porn while repairing a computer, it is unlawful not to report it to authorities.

So far, Utah, Arkansas, Illinois, Missouri, New Jersey, North Carolina, Oklahoma, South Carolina, and South Dakota do have such a law; Oregon and Florida have taken a look at doing so.

Still, it was a complaint alerting the Louisiana State Police Bureau of Investigations’ Special Victims Unit that a computer under repair allegedly had child porn images on it that led to the arrest Wednesday of the Rev. Felix David Broussard, pastor of St. Bernard Roman Catholic Church in Breaux Bridge.

Following an investigation, Broussard was placed under arrest and booked into the St. Martin Parish jail for violating Louisiana Revised Statute 14:81.1 – Pornography involving juveniles (500 counts).

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LOUISIANA
The Advertiser

In the wake of child pornography charges lodged against a Breaux Bridge parish priest this week, the Diocese of Lafayette has expressed its commitment to transparency in such cases.

Monsignor Curtis Mallet, vicar general, said Bishop J. Douglas Deshotel wants his flock to know he and church leaders take seriously accusations, that parishioners at St. Bernard Catholic Church and the diocese should know their spiritual shepherd is following state law and Pope Francis’ mandates, expressed in June, when it comes to crimes against vulnerable children.

That marks a step forward for this diocese, historically tight-lipped about its priests and credible accusations of sex crimes involving children.

The arrest of the Rev. F. David Broussard, St. Bernard’s pastor, represents an accusation; he has been charged, not convicted and should be considered innocent until proven guilty. Broussard was charged with 500 counts of possession of child pornography after that many images were found on his personal computer.

In a Wednesday news conference — a news conference in itself marked diocesan progress toward openness — Deshotel said the diocese cooperated with state investigators; State Police confirmed Friday that investigation remains “open.” Broussard is on leave.

In the U.S., acknowledgement of both widespread sex abuse and church cover-ups began to rise some three decades ago in Louisiana, including within the Lafayette diocese. Two years ago, court records connected to a Minnesota lawsuit revealed the names of at least 10 local priests credibly accused in child molestation cases.

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AUSTRALIA
The Age

[with video]

Neelima Choahan, Timna Jacks

Parents at a Catholic primary school in Mentone are agitating to have a portrait of Cardinal George Pell removed from their school hall after allegations of sexual abuse emerged against the priest recently.

On Wednesday night, ABC’s 7.30 aired detailed allegations made by former students of St Alipius primary school in Ballarat, who alleged Cardinal Pell would play with them in the swimming pool and molest them by touching their genitals under water.

Cardinal Pell has rejected the accusations, which are being investigated by Victoria Police.

Parents at St Patrick’s Parish Primary school say they have been asking for the painting to be taken down for “years”, but the new allegations have brought matters to a head.

All four of Claire Bilos’ children have been at the school in the last 12 years. Her daughter Renee is currently in grade 6, and Ashleigh is in grade 3.

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AUSTRALIA
news.com.au

Debra Killalea
news.com.au
@DebKillalea

WHEN Joan Isaacs told her parish priest she was being sexually abused, he advised the then teenager to “find a man her own age”.

Aged just 15 and full of shame and fear, the young Joan bravely revealed the months of grooming and sexual abuse she experienced at the hands of local priest Francis Edward Derriman.

But despite reporting it, nothing happened, then there was silence — and lots of it.

What began as a fight for justice turned into a 40-year battle for the truth after endless stonewalling from the Catholic Church.

It would take a Royal Commission, years of therapy as well as the love and support from her family before she could even begin to heal.

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AUSTRALIA
Sunday Herald Sun

Miranda Devine, Sunday Herald Sun

JUST when you think the demonisation of Cardinal George Pell can’t get any worse, it does. And with every allegation, as flimsy and contagious as they are, comes the damaging insinuation that where there’s smoke there’s fire.

The fanfare around ABC’s 7.30 program last week would make you think Pell has been accused of the most heinous crimes, that he is the master paedophile sitting atop the global paedophile ring that is the Catholic Church.

Some people believe this sick fantasy, or have convinced themselves it is vaguely plausible.

Others don’t care about the injustice because they hate Pell, who is that most unloved creature of our times, a conservative Catholic, implacably wedded to Church teachings and unwilling, like his more fashionable brother priests, to accommodate the great causes du jour: same-sex marriage, abortion and euthanasia.

Victoria Police has been examining the three-decade-old allegations for at least 18 months, without attempting to interview Pell, who offered to be interviewed after allegations leaked in February, on the eve of Pell’s testimony to the child abuse royal commission.

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ALASKA
Bristol Bay Times

July 29th Dave Bendinger, KDLG

A Russian Orthodox priest has been suspended from his duties after allegations of domestic violence and attempted sexual assault.

Dillingham Police have charged Michael Nicolai with attempted sexual assault.

Nicolai is the priest at Saint Seraphim of Sarov, Dillingham’s Russian Orthodox church. He has been suspended from his duties.

Police responded to the parish home behind the church early on July 16 after a woman reported that she had been assaulted, said Dillingham Police chief Dan Pasquariello. He was taken to jail that day, and released on bail on July 18.

“The officers responded to a report of a domestic disturbance,” he said. “They went there, they interviewed all parties involved, they made an arrest. The information they gathered, after conferring with the district attorney, led them to charge Father Nicholai with attempted sexual assault and a physical assault.”

The investigation revealed that Father Michael had been drinking that night, and the victim said he had been viewing pornography, which led to arguments and eventually an assault. Officers found ripped clothing and undergarments which corroborated the victim’s initial description of the nature of the assault.

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LOUISIANA
WBRZ

BATON ROUGE – A win for the Roman Catholic Church for the Diocese of Baton Rouge today in a legal case that centered around a church doctrine prohibiting a priest from revealing what is said inside a confessional.

A state appeals court affirmed that Father Jeff Bayhi does not have to reveal any conversation between him and a woman who claims she was sexually abused by a now deceased parishioner.

Rebecca Mayeux claimed in a lawsuit against the Church that she told Bayhi about the alleged behavior in 2008 and that those statements between the two should be included during any trial proceedings. Mayeux was 14 at the time.

However, attorneys for Mayeux say the court ruling today allows her to testify what was said in the confessional.

The ongoing court case has been the subject of a series of reports by the News 2 Investigative Unit.

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LOUISIANA
Louisiana Record

Dawn Geske Jul. 29, 2016

BATON ROUGE, La. — The lawsuit against a television station by a priest over an inaccurate graphic that aired, labeling him as child molester, has been dismissed.

The case was dismissed by a District Judge Wilson Fields against WBRZ-TV. The priest, Rev. Jeff Bayhi, filed the case in regards to a graphic that was aired saying that he abused a parishioner at the age of 14. The graphic also stated that Bayhi died during the time of the investigation.

The graphic aired inaccurately and was corrected at the end of the news broadcast. The 14-year-old girl was abused, but not by Bayhi. She did relay this information to Bayhi during a confessional, which Bayhi is sworn to secrecy from reporting through his priest commandments

Through the lawsuit Bayhi was looking to receive compensation as well as hold the news station accountable for its actions. The station aired the graphic as part of a news story that focused on secrecy of the confessional and allegations of sexual abuse by a now deceased parishioner George Charlet Jr. The graphic didn’t include Bayhi’s name.

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ISRAEL
JTA

(JTA) — A rabbi who was extradited back to Israel from South Africa was indicted for several sexual assaults, including of a teenage girl.

Rabbi Eliezer Berland, 79, was arrested in April in Johannesburg and extradited to Israel earlier this month prior to his indictment at the Jerusalem Magistrate’s Court Friday, Army Radio reported.

Berland, who has denied the allegations against him, is accused of sexually assaulting a 16-year-old girl. Prosecutors said he abused his status within the girl’s community. He is also accused of trying to engage in sexual acts with four women who came to him seeking his advice and help, the radio station reported.

Berland, founder of the Shuvu Bonim religious seminary in Israel, fled to South Africa for a year before he was extradited to Israel earlier this month. He was arrested in April in Johannesburg.

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AUSTRALIA
The Australian

FRANK BRENNAN
The Australian July 30, 2016

Wednesday night’s 7.30 program on ABC television carried allegations against Cardinal George Pell that, if true, are devastating: life-ruining for victims such as Damian Dignan and Lyndon Monument; confronting for all citizens committed to the wellbeing of children; and earth-shattering for Catholics who still have faith in their church. The ABC report is also troubling for those of us concerned about due process and the rule of law.

With the benefit of hindsight, we can all say it would have been better if onlookers such as Les Tyack in the Torquay Surf Club — claiming to have credible evidence of unseemly behaviour by an adult such as Pell towards children — went to the police promptly rather than waiting 30 years. As it was put on 7.30, “One summer day, (Tyack) says he witnessed a strange incident, so strange it later compelled him to go to police.” The incident is alleged to have occurred in the mid-1980s.

Pell has been the focus of attention during the long-running Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse. He was grilled publicly for days on end about what he knew about abuse committed by others when he was a priest in Ballarat and when he was auxiliary bishop in Melbourne.

The commission has been so focused on Pell that it decided to make the abuse by Peter Searson its primary focus when investigating abuse by Melbourne priests. This was not because Searson was the worst abuser but because he worked in the region of the archdiocese where Pell had supervision as auxiliary bishop.

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AUSTRALIA
The Australian

JOHN FERGUSON
Victorian EditorMelbourne
@fergusonjw

One of Australia’s most respected Catholics has lashed out at Victoria Police’s handling of the George Pell sex abuse alle­gations, reigniting a long-running feud about the way the force has treated the church.

Father Frank Brennan has warned that “police obfuscation’’ and “media titillation’’ has the potential to undermine the child sex abuse royal commission and to inflict further damage on victims.

Father Brennan has also ­lamented that a key “witness’’ to allegedly sexual behaviour by Cardinal Pell towards children took nearly 30 years to report the matter to police,

In an article published in today’s The Weekend Australian, Father Brennan has warned that if Cardinal Pell were found to be an abuser, he should be ousted from the Vatican.

“Make no mistake, if Pell is a child abuser, I want him out of the Vatican and out of the way of children,’’ he says. “But if he’s not, I want the Victoria Police to come clean and get back to routine policing, rather than media titillation, for the wellbeing of all of us.’’

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ISRAEL
Jerusalem Post

Rabbi Eliezer Berland was indicted by the Jerusalem District Attorney, Friday morning at the Jerusalem Magistrate’s Court for sexual assault.

The charges included assault against minor and using his position as a service and educational worker to assault others.

The induction came after a three year manhunt for the rabbi.

His followers demonstrated outside the court house in support Berland.

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ISRAEL
Arutz Sheva

Ido Ben Porat, 29/07/16

The Jerusalem District Attorney’s office today (Friday) filed an indictment in the city’s Magistrate Court against Rabbi Eliezer Berland on charges of indecent acts without consent, indecent acts towards a minor by exploiting a disciplinary and educational relationship, and aggravated assault.

In the indictment, Rabbi Berland is named as having served as the Rabbi and leader of the “Shuvu Banim” community and Yeshiva in Jerusalem, many of whose members were concentrated near his residences in Jerusalem and Beitar Ilit.

As part of the obligations associated with his position, he held meetings for purposes of religious and spiritual guidance and instruction with male and female members of his community, and others, in his house and other places.

The indictment states that Rabbi Berland took advantage of these meetings and his status on numerous occasions to commit sexual acts – without consent and while exploiting a disciplinary and educational relationship – with women and female minors.

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UNITED STATES
New York Times

By GERALD POSNER
JULY 29, 2016

On Friday, Pope Francis is to become the third Roman Catholic pope to visit Auschwitz. John Paul II was the first Polish pope in the church’s 2,000-year history. Auschwitz is less than an hour from where he was born, and his 1979 visit was poignant. Every bit as dramatic was the 2006 visit by the German-born Benedict XVI who had at 14 been a member of the Hitler Youth.

But Francis’ visit could be the most significant ever if he uses the symbolic backdrop to break with the policies of six predecessors over 70 years and order the release of the Vatican’s sealed Holocaust-era archives.

The debate over the church’s secret wartime files is not new. The Vatican is the only country in Europe that refuses to open all of its World War II archives to independent historians and researchers. The issue is more than simply an academic debate over the appropriate rules for public disclosure of historically significant documents. The church’s files are thought to contain important information about the Holocaust in Nazi-occupied Eastern Europe. The Vatican had eyes and ears in the killing fields: tens of thousands of parish priests who sent letters and reports to their bishops, who in turn forwarded them to the secretary of state in Vatican City. One of the monsignors in charge of reviewing those thousands of reports was Giovanni Battista Montini, later Pope Paul VI.

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MINNESOTA
Minnesota Public Radio

Peter Cox Jul 29, 2016

A U.S. Bankruptcy Court judge has rejected a request to consolidate the assets of the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis, a blow to clergy sexual abuse victims who have filed claims in the court as creditors.

Creditors had argued that the archdiocese had taken steps to hide and shield assets including changing corporate documents, painting over cemetery signs, removing references to the archdiocese on the Catholic Cemeteries’ website, and creating new foundations to divert revenue.

In his decision, Judge Robert J. Kressel said creditors had failed to provide sufficient facts to support the motion to consolidate.

“There is no doubt that the Catholic Church is hierarchical in its organization and authoritarian in doctrinal matters,” Kressel wrote. “But those characteristics are insufficient for a court to ignore its corporate legal structure. The typical substantive consolidation is reserved for situations where the finances of two or more debtors are so confusingly intertwined that it is impossible to separate them.”

Jeff Anderson, an attorney representing the creditors group, said the amount available without assets from parishes, schools and other entities is substantially smaller.

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UNITED KINGDOM
Church Times

by Gavin Drake

Posted: 29 Jul 2016

THE Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse (IICSA) has begun a “rapid evidence assessment” as part of its investigation into the Anglican Churches in England and Wales, the Inquiry’s Counsel, Ben Emmerson QC, said this week.

Mr Emmerson made his com­ments on Wednesday at the Royal Courts of Justice in the Strand, Lon­don, where Justice Lowell Goddard was holding a series of preliminary hearings into the Inquiry’s different strands.

He revealed that the Inquiry’s research team was sifting through information and evidence from 114 different sources. Among them was the Archbishops’ Council of the Church of England, which had sup­plied over 7000 items of evidence relating to the diocese of Chichester and the case of Bishop Peter Ball, which are being used as case studies by the Inquiry.

”Initial analysis of the evidence so far received is well under way,” Mr Emmerson said. This would lead to “additional requests for informa­tion” being made.

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AUSTRALIA
news.com.au

A 73-year-old former Catholic Marist Brother has been accused of indecently assaulting a boy when he was teaching at a WA primary school more than 30 years ago.

Police say the arrest by Rockingham detectives comes after an extensive investigation into the alleged offending against the boy, who was aged 10 at the time of the first incident in 1982.

The man has been charged with two counts of indecent treatment of a child under 14 years of age and is due to appear in the Perth Magistrates Court later on Friday.

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AUSTRALIA
Border Mail

Melissa Cunningham
@MeljCunningham

29 Jul 2016

Jesuit priest and human rights lawyer Frank Brennan has called for Victoria Police to travel to Rome immediately to interview Ballarat’s Cardinal George Pell over allegations of child sexual abuse.

In an opinion piece for public affairs publication Eureka Street the outspoken priest said the whole saga wreaked of injustice and incompetent policing. He also called for the Victorian Government to take resolute action and demand Victoria Police chief commissioner Graham Ashton get to the bottom of the leaks.

It followed two alleged victims coming forward who say Australia’s most senior Catholic cleric groped their genitals in the 1970s. Another says he saw the priest expose himself to young boys.

Damian Dignan and Lyndon Monument disclosed their alleged abuse on ABC’s 7.30 Report this week. Cardinal Pell has maintained his innocence and released a robust rebuttal, accusing Victoria Police and the ABC of conspiring to pervert the course of justice.

“If Damian Dignan, Lyndon Monument and George Pell are to receive justice Graham Ashton should commission his SANO Taskforce to travel to Rome immediately,” Father Brennan said. “More police obfuscation and media titillation merely risks undermining the standing and outcomes of the present royal commission and further unnecessary suffering for victims seeking justice and closure.”

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AUSTRALIA
Herald Sun

Shannon Deery, Herald Sun
July 29, 2016

CARDINAL George Pell will not be asked to stand down from his powerful Vatican post while a police investigation into alleged child sex offences continues, church insiders say.

But the cardinal could be forced to step aside if the alleged abuse is reported to the church’s internal Towards Healing scheme.

There have been calls for the cardinal, who works closely with Pope Francis as the Vatican’s finance chief, to stand down this week following explosive allegations he fondled two boys while swimming with them in the 1970s.

Cardinal Pell has emphatically denied the allegations.

Victoria Police has not ruled out laying charges as a result of the investigation but are awaiting advice from the Office of Public Prosecutions.

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