ABUSE TRACKER

AUSTRALIA
Courier-Mail

THERE is no place for statutory time limits in a society that prioritises child safety. Existing Queensland legislation that requires victims of child abuse to begin legal action against institutions by the age of 21 or be ruled ineligible for compensation is offensive and must be changed.

To date, institutions — be they churches, schools or orphanages — have invoked the statute of limitations “defence” either in direct response to being sued or in preliminary negotiations with victims to dissuade them from taking action.

Institutions that have known that an employee, such as a priest, teacher or counsellor, has sexually assaulted children have protected the perpetrator by refusing to report them to police, by relocating them, or deliberately destroying evidence.

The Anglican Diocese of Brisbane (under archbishop Hollingworth and then archbishop Aspinall) and Brisbane Grammar School (under chairman Howard Stack) both used the time limits defence in relation to pedophile Kevin Lynch. Lynch abused boys at Brisbane Grammar School in the 1970s and ’80s, and at St Paul’s School in the 1990s. He committed suicide in 1997 after being charged by police with indecent dealing with a boy at St Paul’s.

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CANADA
CBC News

By Simon Gardner, CBC News Posted: May 08, 2016

Mike Fitzgerald is a 60-year-old truck driver who grew up on a farm near Bancroft, Ont.

It’s with some trepidation that I ask him if we can meet at the Notre-Dame Cathedral Basilica, a grand Catholic church located in Ottawa’s ByWard Market. He readily agrees, but when I meet him and his wife Marla on the steps of the cathedral he admits to feeling uncomfortable.

“The good father destroyed my faith in the Catholic Church forever,” he explains.

When I hear about what happened to Fitzgerald when he was a teenager in the early 1970s, his bitterness comes as no surprise.

Fitzgerald grew up in a devout Catholic family. There was even talk of him becoming a priest.

He was musical, and when he turned 17 he agreed to help the parish priest, Father Henry Maloney, form a choir.

Because his family’s farm was about 35 kilometres from Our Lady of Mercy Church in Bancroft, it was decided Fitzgerald would move into a room in the church rectory.

He says he and his family had no idea he was about to fall into the clutches of a child molester. …

Though unable to forgive, these days Fitzgerald seems more at peace.

He credits much of his recovery to an unlikely saviour: a grandmother of 11 who maintains a website from her home in Fitzroy Harbour, a community on the outskirts of Ottawa.

People who meet Sylvia MacEachern are typically struck by her intensity, her deep outrage at the plight of abuse victims — and her unshakable devotion to the Catholic faith..

For years MacEachern has been a familiar face at trials and investigations into church abuse scandals. As a result, she’s amassed a huge collection of files, transcripts and other documents.

Sylvia’s Site, as she calls it, is a WordPress-based blog and database launched in 2010.

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ISRAEL
Jerusalem Post

The allegations were reported by Channel 2 on Sunday night.

The renowned Greek-Orthodox Christian priest Father Gabriel Naddaf who has led a public campaign for Christian Arab IDF enlistment, is facing allegations that he has attempted to seek sexual favors from youths with whom he came into contact.

The allegations were reported by Channel 2 on Sunday night, and also included claims that Naddaf, together with a Palestinian associate, helped arrange entry visas for Palestinians into Israel for illicit business purposes and sexual favors.

Naddaf denied the allegations, saying that “criminal elements in the community” had tried to frame him, and gained access to his Facebook accounts and cell phone to incriminate him by corresponding in his name.

In 2012, Naddaf established the Israeli Christians Recruitment Forum – Christian Empowerment Council to encourage Christian integration into Israeli society and increase Christian enlistment to the IDF.

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ISRAEL
Times of Israel

BY TAMAR PILEGGI May 8, 2016

An Israeli Greek Orthodox priest who heads a initiative aimed at integrating Israeli Christian Arabs into the Israel Defense Forces, was accused of sexually harassing young people who sought his help, a TV report said Sunday.

Channel 2 aired recordings and transcripts of conversations allegedly between Father Gabriel Naddaf and a series of unidentified young men — including both Israeli soldiers and Palestinians — in which the priest appeared to promise to help them in exchange for sexual favors.

None of the young men has lodged official complaints with authorities, the report noted.

Naddaf, who has been named as one of the ceremonial torch lighters at the state’s Independence Day ceremony in Jerusalem next week, firmly denied the allegations against him, and questioned the timing of the report’s publication.

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UNITED KINGDOM
Liverpool Echo

BY JANET TANSLEY

Chris who was abused by John Creagh says he wants to give courage and hope to other victims of abuse

A victim of a paedophile priest who pleaded guilty to abusing three boys has spoken about his ordeal in the hope it will stop others suffering in silence.

Chris Ryder, from Wigan, has waived his right to anonymity to talk openly about ho he suffered at the hands John Michael Creagh, jailed for four years at Liverpool Crown Court last week after admitting five counts of indecent assault while he was working as a scout leader.

Chris, 53, from Wigan, said: “I am speaking out to give courage and hope to others, not to sit and suffer, alone and in pain. Not to be ashamed.

“What Creagh did to me affected me drastically. It ruined my life.

“Only by speaking up can we keep evil men like him off the streets.”

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UNITED STATES
Boston.com

By Nik DeCosta-Klipa

At least 67 of New England’s elite, private schools have faced allegations of sexual abuse or harassment at the hands of its employees since 1991, and many of the incidents were ignored or covered up, according to a Spotlight report on the front page of Sunday’s Boston Globe.

The incidents involved more than 200 students since the early 1990s, according to the Globe. At least 37 staff members have either been fired or resigned, and nearly two dozen have been convicted or pleaded guilty to charges related to child sex abuse.

The Spotlight team also found 11 cases in which allegedly abusive school employees proceeded to find work at other institutions.

In one example, St. George’s School, at least three staffers accused of misconduct have left the Middletown, Rhode Island boarding school to work at other schools, where they were subsequently accused of additional misconduct involving children.

As the Globe reported in December, Anne Scott, a former St. George’s student, was pressured into signing a gag order about her alleged rape by the school’s then-67-year-old athletic trainer. Lawyers now say nearly 50 other St. George’s students have come forward with credible allegations of sexual abuse by the school’s employees.

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PENNSYLVANIA
Philly.com

by Maria Panaritis, Staff Writer

Rep. Thomas Caltagirone was disgusted. The veteran Democrat from Reading had been one of the Catholic Church’s staunchest political allies for years, but by March he had hit a breaking point.

A state grand jury had exposed clergy sex abuse in the Altoona-Johnstown Diocese and a bishop who used an internal payment chart to dole out money, correlating to the degree of the victim’s abuse. This, after Jerry Sandusky and two damning grand jury reports in a decade about predator priests in Philadelphia.

Then came another grand jury bombshell from Attorney General Kathleen G. Kane: Leaders in the Franciscan order had allegedly enabled a friar to abuse scores of children at a Catholic high school in Johnstown and remain free to roam as recently as January 2013.

“Enough is enough,” Caltagirone told his colleagues the day Kane announced charges. “We need to enact new laws that will send the strongest message possible: If you commit heinous crimes against children, if you cover up for pedophiles, if you lurk in the shadows waiting for time to run out, we are coming for you.”

His proclamation marked an unexpected shift from a key legislator long resistant to changing the law. It helped persuade others to pass a House bill that for the first time would let victims abused decades ago sue their attackers and institutions that supervised them.

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FLORIDA
Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests

For immediate release: Sunday, May 8, 2016

Statement by David Clohessy of St. Louis, Director of SNAP, the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests (314 566 9790, 314 645 5915 home, davidgclohessy@gmail.com)

A serial predator priest who was found guilty of abuse by a Minnesota jury has quietly moved to Florida where he at least once visited a St. Petersburg area parish.

[Herald-Tribune]

This is an outrage. It shows that despite decades of pledges and promises, Catholic bishops continue to do be secretive and reckless about their thousands of child molesting clerics.

St. Pete Bishop Robert Lynch (727-344-1611, communicate@dosp.org) and Minnesota Archbishop Bernard Hebda should aggressively reach out to anyone who may have been hurt by Fr. Kapoun. They should use church bulletins, parish websites and pulpit announcements to beg those with information or suspicions about Fr. Kapoun to call police. We believe he can be prosecuted, convicted and jailed, which will safeguard kids and prevent horrific devastation to young lives.

And we believe that Catholic officials in both cities have a duty to make this happen.

Hebda should insist that Fr. Kapoun immediately move to a remote, secure, independent treatment center so kids can be safer. Or Hebda should end all financial support for this dangerous predator.

Lynch should insist that warnings about Fr. Kapoun be read aloud at every mass in the diocese for a month. He should also demote everyone at Holy Cross Catholic Church in Palmetto who played a role in letting this repeat sex offender cleric come to that parish or who kept it secret.

No matter what church officials do or don’t do, we urge every single person who saw, suspected or suffered child sex crimes and cover ups in Catholic churches or institutions to protect kids by calling police, get help by calling therapists, expose wrongdoers by calling law enforcement, get justice by calling attorneys, and be comforted by calling support groups like ours. This is how kids will be safer, adults will recover, criminals will be prosecuted, cover ups will be deterred and the truth will surface.

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FLORIDA/MINNESOTA
Herald-Tribune

[Rev. Robert Kapoun – assignment record – BishopAccountability.org]

Commentary

PALMETTO — He was known as the Polka Padre, and parishioners across the state of Minnesota couldn’t get enough of his accordion during church services. He was so popular he even put out an album and had his own billboard.

But there was more to Father Robert Kapoun than most people knew, a much darker side, a side that if you read through the allegations in hundreds of pages of court documents is abhorrent.

By 1995, at least six men claimed Kapoun sexually assaulted them between 1966 and ‘81 when they were boys. Kapoun admitted to three and reportedly there was a “substantial’’ settlement in at least one of the cases in 1990.

Furthermore, the Archdiocese of Minneapolis and St. Paul was aware of the abuse allegations as early as 1973, and yet Kapoun remained a priest until he was allowed to retire in 1996, a year after a jury awarded a former altar boy $1 million in what was the biggest trial involving the clergy in state history.

Now, if you look on the website of Holy Cross Catholic Church in Palmetto an interesting name appears under the title “visiting priests who we shall always cherish.’’ It’s Kapoun’s. His name shows up in very small type and if “Polka Padre” wasn’t in parentheses it would never even catch your eye.

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ISRAEL/AUSTRALIA
Mercury

May 8, 2016

AAP

The Jerusalem District Court has ruled to suspend all legal proceedings against an alleged pedophile and ex-principal of a religious Jewish girl’s school in Melbourne.

The move further delays a call for Malka Leifer’s extradition to Victoria where she would face prosecution for 74 sexual abuse offences against girls at the school she headed.

Leifer failed to appear in the Jerusalem District Court for the eighth time in two years, after her legal team have persistently argued she is unfit to stand trial due to her psychiatric state.

Leifer’s defence headed by Yehuda Fried has argued she suffers panic attacks and bouts of depression as each court hearing approaches.

A psychiatrist’s report presented to the court in April said that she suffered a psychotic episode ahead of a scheduled hearing in April and had to be hospitalised for two days.

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RHODE ISLAND
Providence Journal

By Linda Borg
Journal Staff Writer

Posted May. 7, 2016

MIDDLETOWN, R.I. — As part of its alumni weekend, St. George’s School lit a candle and offered a few minutes of silence amid widespread allegations of sexual abuse at the private Episcopal boarding school.

Headmaster Eric Peterson had planned to hold a healing event during the reunion but it was canceled after survivors threatened to picket. Survivors contended that it was too soon to hold a healing ceremony, especially one led by Peterson, who they say failed to report several cases of abuse.

One of the survivors, Katie Wales Lovkay, Class of 1980, said she attended last year’s reunion, where she met with Peterson to discuss what had happened to her as a student. She said that the school’s former athletic trainer had taken nude pictures of her and then showed them to male classmates.

“Peterson led me to believe that he didn’t know anything,” she said by phone on Saturday. “He had tears in his eyes. Months later, I found out he lied to my face. I really believed he would do something.”

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CONNECTICUT
Forward

Josh Nathan-Kazis
May 7, 2016

A politically connected Orthodox rabbi has been accused in a federal lawsuit of molesting a student at his New Haven Jewish boarding school.

In a civil complaint filed in federal court in Connecticut on May 3, Eliyahu Mirlis, a former student at the Yeshiva New Haven, accused Rabbi Daniel Greer, 75, the school’s founder and principal, of repeatedly molesting him over the course of three years while Mirlis was a student at the school.

Greer is a former member of the New Haven Board of Police Commissioners and a prominent, if controversial, figure in the city. Fundraising dinners for his yeshiva were regular stops for Connecticut public officials, including a current U.S. Senator, New Haven’s former mayor, its police chief, and New York City police commissioner Bill Bratton.

Connecticut’s governor even visited Greer’s kitchen table in 2012.

No criminal charges have been filed against Greer. His alleged victim, now 28, claims that Greer raped and abused him “dozens and dozens of times,” both at the school, at motels, and at properties owned by the school. Mirlis was 15 when the alleged abuse began and 17 when it ended.

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IOWA
Des Moines Register

Lee Rood, lrood@dmreg.com May 7, 2016

First of two parts

SPENCER, Ia. — Alex Jacobsen felt anxious and mentally exhausted. Sweat flushed his face.

The thin 26-year-old hadn’t slept well for days. He wanted to rest and get away from the handful of other participants in the faith-based treatment program.

Jacobsen tried to relax on a couch on the third floor of the Dream Center in downtown Spencer. But the feelings of agitation and hopelessness persisted. He got up and wandered into a hallway, where he spotted a box cutter sitting on a cart.

At first, Jacobsen drew the blade across his neck, careful not to break the skin. But then, he told The Des Moines Register during an interview last month, he began to press harder — slicing his neck and throat again and again.

Minutes later, a Dream Center pastor found Jacobsen lying on the floor of a nearby men’s restroom. He pressed a towel to the young man’s throat to slow the bleeding until paramedics arrived. They got there just in time: Five minutes more and he would have died, they said.

This is the story of a troubled and suicidal young man who agreed 10 days earlier, over his family’s objections, to abruptly stop taking the medications his doctors prescribed and skip an evaluation for outpatient treatment at University of Iowa Hospitals. At the urging of his pastors, he says, he would entrust his recovery to them and to God.

It also is a story about Iowa’s scattershot mental health system, and whether those who offer faith-based treatment programs should be subject to state standards and oversight if they are enrolling people such as Jacobsen and others with mental illnesses.

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UNITED STATES
Boston Globe

More than 200 victims. At least 90 legal claims. At least 67 private schools in New England. This is the story of hundreds of students sexually abused by staffers, and emerging from decades of silence today.

This story was reported by Spotlight team reporters Jenn Abelson, Bella English, Jonathan Saltzman, and Todd Wallack, with editors Scott Allen and Amanda Katz.

Steven Starr reached into the back of his hallway closet and fished out the old camera, a gift nearly 50 years ago from the man he says molested him.

“It’s like a talisman or a grim reminder,’’ he said, holding the dusty Minolta Autocord in his Los Angeles apartment. Not that he could ever forget what he alleges happened to him when he was 11 at the Fessenden School.

In 1968, he was a lonely sixth-grader from Long Island when he met James Dallmann, a Harvard graduate who taught geography at the all-boys private school in West Newton and was an avid photographer.

Dallmann took Starr under his wing. He made the boy his apprentice and encouraged him to visit the teacher’s bedroom in their dorm at Moore Hall after lights out to learn how to use his makeshift darkroom. The teacher photographed Starr and delighted the boy by giving him the twin-lens Minolta.

Then one night, Starr said, Dallmann served him a mix of Tang and vodka, got him to pose naked for pictures on a bed, and performed oral sex on him. This is our secret, Dallmann told Starr, who said the abuse went on for about a year.

For nearly half a century, Starr kept his feelings of betrayal and humiliation inside, sharing his story only with therapists and a few confidants.

But now he is among a growing number of former students at New England private schools who are breaking their silence about sexual abuse by staffers. They are emboldened by a cascade of recent revelations about cases — many of them decades old — that were often ignored or covered up when first reported, and that school administrators still struggle to handle appropriately today.

This video interview with sexual abuse survivor Steven Starr contains content that some viewers may find disturbing. Viewer discretion is advised.

So far this year, at least eight New England private schools have launched or disclosed sexual misconduct investigations. At least five of the probes — at St. George’s School in Rhode Island, Taft School in Connecticut, Phillips Exeter Academy in New Hampshire, Thayer Academy in Braintree, and Concord Academy in Concord — have led to staff members being placed on administrative leave or fired.

The troubles go way beyond those institutions. At least 67 private schools in New England have faced accusations since 1991 that staffers sexually abused or harassed more than 200 students, the Spotlight Team found through an examination of court cases, as well as interviews with alumni, relatives, school officials, and attorneys. …

The Globe also found 11 cases in which private school employees who were accused of sexual misconduct went on to work at other schools — an echo of the Catholic church scandal in which abusive priests were often moved to other parishes. At St. George’s School alone, at least three staff members accused of misconduct have gone on to jobs where they faced subsequent sexual misconduct allegations involving children, including one teacher accused in a lawsuit of abusing a teenager in Hawaii.

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UNITED STATES
Seth H. Langston

Posted on May 7, 2016

One of the most important lessons taught by the movie “Spotlight” was the critical role that the media can and must play in exposing the scope of the Catholic Church’s child sex abuse scandal. The crucial step that media should take is to seek to open all of the “sealed files” that have arisen out of priest sex abuse litigation.

It is a basic tenet of our judicial system, that our legal system should be open to all and subject to the scrutiny of society. That is why trials are open to the public. The only way that people will trust the process is through transparency. The validity of any Court decision can only be fairly judged when we know what evidence that the Court based its opinion on.

Despite our society’s commitment to open courts, many of the documents that would shed the most light on Catholic sex abuse, remain hidden and inaccessible to the public. At the request of the Catholic Church, Courts have frequently “sealed” those portions of the sex abuse litigation files that contain the Church’s own documents that reveal the scope of priest sex abuse scandal.

Unfortunately, this is precisely what occurred in the most recent lawsuit that we filed against the Roman Catholic Diocese of Charlotte. These cases involved allegations of child sexual abuse by Father Richard Farwell and Father Joseph Kelleher, as well as claims that the Charlotte Diocese transferred child abusing priests, destroyed documents and acted in other ways to protect child abusing priests. . Every piece of paper produced by the Diocese to us was stamped “confidential.” The Court then ordered that all of those documents had be protected from the public view as well as all of the evidence that we filed to support our allegations of misconduct, also had to be filed under seal. This included the Plaintiff’s Brief in Opposition to the Diocese’ Motion for Summary Judgment. This brief contained a detailed and extensive analysis of the Church’s “confidential” documents, as well as other evidence that we had obtained from other sources.

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ESPANA
El Diario

Sofía Pérez Mendoza

El Colegio Mayor Universitario Barberán y Collán, adscrito a la Universidad Complutense de Madrid y sostenido con fondos del Ministerio de Defensa, obliga a sus 196 estudiantes a asistir a la conferencia de un sacerdote y teólogo “especializado en el campo relativo al demonio, exorcismos, posesiones e infierno”.

El centro está empapelado de carteles que anuncian la charla “El mal”, programada para este jueves por la tarde. La actividad corre a cargo de José Antonio Fortea Cucurull, religioso de la diócesis de Alcalá de Henares y autor –entre otros títulos– de Summa dæmoniaca, un tratado sobre demonología que incluye un manual sobre exorcismos .

“El demonio no tiene cuernos ni un color, es una entidad incorporal que todas las religiones estamos de acuerdo en que vaga por el mundo. Existe”, explicaba el sacerdote, que sostiene que “el conocimiento del mal nos lleva al bien”, en una entrevista reciente en Antena 3. Fortea ha impartido conferencias en varios países y ha aparecido en programas de televisión.

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SPAIN
Mirror

BY ELLE GRIFFITHS

Students at the University College of Barberan and Collan in Spain will take a seminar called ‘The Evil’ with an expert priest

A University in Spain will force its students to attend a course on ‘exorcisms’.

The University College of Barberan and Collan has made attedance at the lecture, called “The Evil”, compulsory for its 196 students.

The bizarre course will be led by Roman Catholic priest José Antonio Fortea Cucurull, believed to be an expert on the controversial practice.

It will cover fields “related to the devil, exorcisms and being possessed and hell”, it was reported newspaper El Diario.

Father Cucurull has previously written a ‘manual’ on exorcism.

But the priest made headlines in 2010 when he defended the Vatican after the Pope’s chief exorcist claimed the child sex abuse scandals rocking the Church were evidence of the Devil’s presence there.

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MINNESOTA
WTOP

By STEVE KARNOWSKI
May 7, 2016

MINNEAPOLIS (AP) — It’s been nearly three years since Minnesota opened a path for lawsuits by victims of long-ago childhood sexual abuse.

In that time, more than 800 people have brought abuse claims against churches, the Boy Scouts, schools and a children’s theater company. Previously unknown offenders have been exposed. Two Roman Catholic dioceses have filed bankruptcy. Lists of credibly accused priests and thousands of documents have been released. And the heightened scrutiny played a part in the downfall of two bishops.

Minnesota’s window, which closes this month, was strongly opposed by the Catholic Church and other institutions that are now fighting to block similar exemptions to the statutes of limitations in Pennsylvania and New York, citing the effects in Minnesota and other states. The Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis filed for bankruptcy protection last year, and the Duluth diocese followed after a jury found it responsible for $4.8 million of an $8.1 million jury award to just one man.

“This law has been one of the most transformative and far-reaching laws that have ever been passed — to not only protect kids in the community but to give survivors who have been hurt a voice and a chance to recover some power,” said attorney Jeff Anderson, who has filed the vast majority of the new cases in Minnesota.

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NEW YORK
Fios 1

[with video]

Two members of the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests, also referred to as SNAP, stood in front of the Diocese of Rockville Centre on Friday to call on Bishop Murphy and New York State to take several steps to protect sexual abuse victims.

This comes on the heels of a second case alleging sexual abuse is brought against St. Francis of Assisi Church and the Roman Catholic Diocese of Rockville Centre.

The first case involves a female victim that was allegedly raped by Father Gregory Yacyshyn at the age of 8, just a few weeks before her First Communion. That case is still being litigated.

The second case was recently brought by a man who alleges that at the age of five he was sexually abused by Father Yacyshyn at St. Francis of Assisi as well.

“…Father Greg be removed immediately, he is a danger to children,” said Gail Howard of SNAP. “That the names of credibly accused priests for the diocese of Rockville be posted on their website, and that legislators move forward in removing the statute of limitations in New York.”

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CANADA
The Observer

By Barbara Simpson, Sarnia Observer
Saturday, May 7, 2016

Inside a small-town confessional, Derek Trepanier said he was handed a secret he’d keep with him for close to 20 years.

That secret would quietly eat away at him, rob him of a chance to become a teacher, and poison his sleep with nightmares.

But for the life of him, Trepanier said he just couldn’t put his finger on what that secret exactly was until his son David was born in 2012.

“When my child was born, we had a conversation about sending him to church or Catholic school, and I was dead set against it,” the now 34-year-old Sarnia man recalled. “I was so intense with it and (my partner) Lori kept asking me, ‘What’s going on? I need to know what’s happening.’”

And that’s when he said the memories started to slowly flood back – months of sexual abuse and exploitation at the hands of Father Gary Roy during his time at St. Joseph’s parish and the former Father Gerald Labelle Catholic School in Corunna.

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VATICAN CITY
Crux

By John L. Allen Jr.
Editor May 7, 2016

Over almost twenty years on the Vatican beat, here’s one iron-clad certainty I’ve reached: A lot of stories that get covered around the world as “Vatican” news actually have much more to do with Italy and its foibles, rather than anything specifically related to the Holy See.

Of course, given the profound way Catholicism has shaped the culture of Italy, to say that some scandal or questionable move is actually more Italian than Vatican doesn’t quite get the Church off the hook, but it’s still a distinction worth making.

A recent court decision in Italy illustrates the point as well as anything else.

In a nutshell, Italy’s highest court ruled on Tuesday that the theft of roughly $4.70 worth of sausage and cheese by a homeless man in 2011 didn’t constitute a crime, because the culprit in this case, a Ukrainian national named Roman Ostriakov, was driven by hunger to commit the deed. …

An editorial in one of Italy’s biggest dailies raised the utterly reasonable question of whether, in a country where the estimated cost of corruption every year is $60 billion, this is really the best use of the legal system’s time and energy.

So, what’s the connection to the Vatican?

Well, the Vatican has its own dubious trial currently underway – the “Vatileaks 2.0 trial,” in which three former members of a papal commission on finances and two journalists are charged with conspiring to leak and publish secret documents from that commission.

The case reaches back to last November, when the two journalists published books based in part on the leaked documents. Since then, Vatican prosecutors and judges have poured countless hours into collecting testimony, hiring technical experts to reconstruct chains of social media exchanges, ruling on motions, staging painstaking court hearings, and so on.

Naturally, the whole thing has become a media sensation, and it raises questions on at least two different levels.

First, it seems abundantly clear that the main effects of this trial so far have been:

* To give a new lease on life to the books published by the journalists (which weren’t selling especially well before, anywhere outside Italy).

* To supply an otherwise implausible media platform to the defendants, prominently including Italian PR consultant Francesca Chaouqui, who seems to have something of a martyr complex.

Because it’s blindingly obvious that the journalists, at least, will never spend a minute behind bars in a Vatican jail even if convicted, since they’re citizens of Italy rather than the Holy See, many can’t help wondering what the point is.

Second, it seems clear the Vatican has more serious fish to fry.

A new tribunal created by Pope Francis to judge cases of bishops accused of covering up sex abuse crimes is struggling to get off the ground, there’s a backlog of cases in the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith against clergy directly accused of committing abuse, and to date the Vatican has yet to prosecute a single instance of financial crime flagged by its own watchdog units.

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MEXICO
Desde Puebla

[No final legal judgment has been made against any priest who sexual abuse children despite all the evidence because there is complicity between the state, the Catholic Church and society, according to Joaquin Aguilar Mendez, a leader in Mexico of the Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests.]

Joaquín Aguilar

En México no ha habido ninguna sentencia firme contra ningún sacerdote que ha cometido abuso sexual de niños, a pesar de todas las pruebas existentes, porque hay una complicidad entre el Estado, la Iglesia católica y la misma sociedad, advirtió Joaquín Aguilar Méndez del Snap México durante su participación en la XV Semana Cultural de la Diversidad Sexual del Instituto Nacional de Antropología e Historia, cuya sede es esta ciudad.

Para el especialista, cuyo caso ha sido uno de los más visibilizados en México porque señala al actual arzobispo primado, Norberto Rivera Carrera, como encubridor de los actos de pederastia cometidos por el sacerdote Nicolás Aguilar, siempre que hay una denuncia pública, hay una revictimización de los menores por que se cuestionan sus testimonios y se pone en entredicho su condición moral.

El titular de la organización que ha denunciado más de 203 casos de pederastia por parte de sacerdotes católicos en diferentes estados como San Luis Potosí, Oaxaca y la Ciudad de México, indicó que ese rechazo social ha derivado en situaciones como que más de 90 por ciento de los casos denunciados por quienes fueron víctimas del abuso ya prescribieron por el temor de hacer la denuncia y el largo tiempo transcurrido entre el hecho y la voluntad de denunciar.

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NEW YORK
Putnam Daily Voice

Carol Reif 05/06/2016

KIRYAS JOEL, N.Y. – A video that appears to show a Kiryas Joel school official fondling a male student was posted online after child advocates accused authorities of doing nothing about previous abuse complaints, according to multiple media reports.

The video hit Facebook on Sunday, May 1.

Kiryas Joel is a village in the Orange County town of Monroe.

According to a report by lohud.com , police are saying that the video is “similar in nature” to one investigated in the fall of 2015 by the Orange County Child Abuse Unit.

No criminal charges were brought in that investigation, police told lohud.com .

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NORTHERN IRELAND
News Letter

By Helen McGurk
Saturday 07 May 2016

Margaret McGuckin is the stalwart campaigner for victims of historical institutional abuse in NI. In this harrowing interview she talks about the horrendous years she spent in the notorious Nazareth House orphanage

Margaret McGuckin has a residual fear of going to the hairdresser as it reawakens horrific memories of the Belfast orphanage where she spent her formative years.

She recalls how the sadistic nuns in Nazareth House, a dour, cruel institution on the Ormeau Road, used to cut the children’s hair off as punishment.

‘‘Everyone used to line up, you were trembling in fear, because they (the nuns) came with big jugs of boiling water that they poured right round your scalp.’’

Margaret, now 59, adds: ‘‘To this day I hate going to a hairdresser. It’s not only about the water. The touch of scissors brings back memories of their big black scissors. They would cut your hair off as a punishment. You would see lovely girls coming in (to the orphanage) and they just chopped off their hair.’’

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MINNESOTA
Bilgrimage

[with video]

William D. Lindsey

The story told in the video above is one to which a valued reader of this blog alerted me yesterday. The report is from KMSP (Fox News) in Eden Prairie, Minnesota. As you’ll see when you watch the video, a reporter from this news outlet, Tom Lyden, interviews a cousin of deposed Twin Cities archbishop John Nienstedt — Mike Hinske — who maintains that a priest-friend of Nienstedt’s, Samuel Ritchey, sexually abused him when he was 16 years old. Lyden also interviews an unwilling Nienstedt.

According to Hinske, Ritchey told him at the time that he had other “special friends,” who were, it was clear to Hinske, also minors. Ritchey went on to teach at Catholic schools in the diocese of Columbus, Ohio, where he was eventually removed from the priesthood due to his abuse of teenaged boys.

As you’ll also learn when you watch the video, Mike Hinske reports that he told his mother, a former Dominican nun who was Nienstedt’s cousin (and who is now dead), and his sister Mary Beth that Ritchey had molested him, and they informed Nienstedt of what had happened to Hinske. Nienstedt did nothing — and now claims that it was not clear to him that Hinske was actually molested, or that Hinske wanted him to do something.

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NEW MEXICO
KJZZ

By Kathy Ritchie
Published: Friday, May 6, 2016

Dozens of clergy sex abuse victims, including 49 from Arizona, may finally be compensated by the Catholic Diocese of Gallup.

A bankruptcy judge has schedule a June hearing on the diocese’s Chapter 11 reorganization plan. If the proposed settlement is approved by the victims, they could be compensated by early fall.

James Stang represents the victims. He said of the $22 million that is being offered by the diocese, $17 million will be divided among the 57 victims, with some receiving more than others.

Then there’s the non-monetary compensation.

“The bishop is writing an apology letter to all survivors,” said Stang. “If you don’t want one, you can opt out. There will be plaques posted in schools basically saying abuse is not tolerated. There are agreements to abide by existing child protection policies.”

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MINNESOTA
Legal Examiner

Posted by Mike Bryant
May 5, 2016 5

There is less than a month and just over two weeks for Survivors to come forward and right so many past wrongs. There is still much more to do. Time is running out. Survivors of sexual abuse have until May 25th, 2016 to seek justice against their attackers. The Window is limited by the statute of limitation that was expanded by the Child Victims Act. Anyone who was sexually abused by an employee of the diocese, or who believes the diocese is liable for their abuse have until May 25, 2016.

Those with claims must act within that time.

Abuse of children and the continued silence by the offenders needs to be prevented. If you suffered, saw, or suspected such events, it is important to know that there is help out there

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AUSTRALIA
The Age

May 7, 2016 –

Chris Vedelago, Beau Donelly, Cameron Houston

The Catholic Church is allowing paedophile priests to live anonymously in the community with limited supervision and has ignored warnings about their misconduct.

The Sunday Age can also reveal one of Victoria’s top Catholic officials, Bishop Les Tomlinson, has conducted mass alongside a priest banned from public ministry for committing acts of sexual abuse.

An investigation into the Melbourne archdiocese’s program for managing sex offenders within its ranks has found:

* The church is uncertain how many abusive priests are under its supervision

* No written policy for managing sex offenders exists despite the church identifying dozens of predator priests since the start of the Melbourne response victim compensation scheme in 1996

* Priests who have left the church’s jurisdiction without permission or ignore directives from superiors about their conduct are still being financially supported and protected

* Parishioners are unaware priests have been banned from public ministry for sexual misconduct because the information is being withheld or removed

A spokesman for the Melbourne archdiocese said risk assessments were conducted for each priest found to be an abuser and the church was “committed to managing these people responsibly”.

“Each case is obviously quite different with many of these people now very old indeed. Most, however, are under varied levels of supervision or monitoring as best we are able,” director of communications Shane Healy said.

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MICHIGAN
Record-Eagle

BY MATT TROUTMAN mtroutman@record-eagle.com

TRAVERSE CITY — A judge sentenced a former interim priest at Grace Episcopal Church to jail for trying to sexually touch a parishioner.

Accusations from three women prompted prosecutors in March to charge the Rev. Bryant Whitman Dennison Jr., 70, of Ann Arbor, with a sex crime. He eventually pleaded guilty to one count of attempted fourth-degree criminal sexual conduct, a misdemeanor.

Eighty-sixth District Court Judge Thomas J. Phillips on Thursday sentenced Dennison to a 180-day jail term and two years of probation.

“The victims from our conversations with them were very satisfied with this sentence,” said Grand Traverse County Prosecutor Bob Cooney.

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NEW YORK
CBS New York

[with video]

ROCKVILLE CENTRE, N.Y. (CBSNewYork) — The Diocese of Rockville Centre was under fire Friday for not removing a priest who is the subject of sexual abuse lawsuits.

As WCBS 880’s Sophia Hall reported, there are two lawsuits accusing the Rev. Gregory Yacyshyn of sexually abusing a girl and a boy decades ago.

Both accusers are now adults. The woman who filed suit claimed that Yacyshyn molested her as a young parishioner at St. Francis of Assisi Church in Greenlawn.

“As a child, I was sexually abused by Father Greg. With counseling and support of my family, I now know I did nothing wrong,” the woman’s attorney John Michael Reck said when the suit was filed in January 2015, reading from his client’s statement.

The lawsuit claimed the diocese “failed to protect children, ignored credible complaints of sexual abuse and failed to act on obvious warning signs of sexual abuse.”

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GEORGIA
Atlanta Journal-Constitution

A prominent Catholic school in north Fulton County and Sandy Springs police are not talking about a police investigation of an incident involving a priest and a juvenile.

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution asked the police for an incident report filed Monday after hearing about the incident. The police provided a report that is blank except for listing an unnamed female student at Holy Spirit Preparatory School as the victim and Thomas Flynn as a suspect. Flynn had been listed previously on the school website as chaplain. It did not describe what the investigation is about or provide any other details, atypical for a police report.

Sandy Springs police Sgt. Forrest Bohannon said they did not have answers yet when asked what is being investigated, referring questions to the school.

“The detectives are still working on information gathering,” Bohannon said via email.

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NEW YORK
News 12

ROCKVILLE CENTRE – A group of clergy sex abuse victims say the leader of Long Island’s Catholics is putting kids at risk by refusing to suspend a twice-accused priest.

Gail Howard, of the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests, says Father Gregory Yacyshyn should not be allowed near children. In a pair of pending civil cases, the Roman Catholic priest is accused of sexually assaulting two children more than a decade ago while assigned to St. Francis of Assisi of Greenlawn.

As News 12 Long Island has reported, Father Yacyshyn is still an active priest and is the pastor at St. Jude Parish in Mastic Beach.

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UNITED STATES
BishopAccountability.org

Summary of Case: Morin was ordained in 1942 for the CA Province of the Society of Jesus. He is referred to variously as Gerald or Gerard. He spent his career in parishes and schools in the dioceses/archdioceses of Seattle, Portland in OR, Spokane and, for a few years, in the Vicariate Apostolic of Alaska. For more than thirty years Morin was assigned to St. Leo the Great parish in Tacoma WA. He died in 1992. Morin’s name was included on the Seattle archdiocese’s list released January 15, 2016 of clergy and religious with admitted, established or credible allegations against them of sexual abuse of a minor.

Ordained: 1942
Died: January 18, 1992

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ILLINOIS
Newsday

SPRINGFIELD, Ill. – (AP) — In a story May 4 about Illinois legislation that would eliminate the statute of limitations on child sex abuse crimes, The Associated Press reported erroneously that former U.S. House Speaker Dennis Hastert paid $3.5 million to silence someone who accused him of sexual abuse. Hastert agreed to pay that amount, but he ultimately paid only $1.7 million and the victim is now suing him to collect the rest.

A corrected version of the story is below:

After Hastert, Illinois weighs change to child sex abuse law

A state lawmaker and former prosecutor wants to eliminate the statute of limitations on child sex crimes in Illinois, a response to the hush-money case against former U.S. House Speaker Dennis Hastert

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UNITED STATES
Bilgrimage

William D. Lindsey

I have seen no reports about this story in English-language media. I thought I would share it with you since 1) we’ve previously discussed the role played by Monsignor Tony Anatrella, a Vatican “expert on homosexuality,” at the Synod on the Family and in a recent controversy about a Vatican document instructing new bishops that they need not report allegations of sexual abuse by clergy to criminal authorities; and 2) some readers of this blog may not read French and so may otherwise miss this report. A French-speaking friend of mine on Facebook has shared this news link with me.

The first two links above will provide background to the current story. As material discussed at those two links indicates, when news broke this past February that the Vatican was apparently informing new bishops that they need not report allegations of sexual abuse of minors by priests to criminal officials, it was also reported that the Vatican was relying on a training manual produced by Monsignor Tony Anatrella, a French priest-psychotherapist touted by the Vatican as its “expert on homosexuality.” Anatrella has a history of characterizing homosexuality as a psychological disorder that can be “cured” through reparative therapy.

He himself specializes in such therapy. Due to his retrogressive, scientifically ill-informed views on homosexuality, LGBTQ Catholic leaders objected to his invitation to the Synod on the Family, where he played a role in advising the synod attendees about homosexuality and “gender theory,” another of his bugbears.

And now it’s being reported in the French media (third news link above) that a France 3 journalist, Sylvie Cozzolino, has been provided with testimony of a lay Catholic in France who states that he was sent as a minor to Anatrella to be “cured” of homosexuality, and that, in the context of “curing” him, Anatrella sexually molested him, explaining that the “cure” for homosexuality is “corporal” and requires sexual touching.

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FRANCE
France 3

De nouvelles révélations viennent jeter le trouble sur une personnalité éminente de l’Eglise de France, le père Tony Anatrella, psychanalyste et membre de la commission pontificale sur la famille.Un laïc vivant en Rhône-Alpes a été victime de sa part d’attouchements sexuels en 2011.

Ph.Bette avec Sylvie Cozzolino Publié le 29 avril 2016

Le témoignage recueilli par Sylvie Cozzolino, journaliste à France 3 Rhône-Alpes, dans le cadre de son enquête sur l’Eglise de France est explicite. Il provient d’un laïc vivant aujourd’hui en Rhône-Alpes et qui parle de ce qu’il a vécu voilà 5 ans. Il laisse peu de doute sur les pratiques du père Tony Anatrella, aujourd’hui 75 ans et membre éminent de la commission pontificale sur la famille et par ailleurs psychothérapeute.

Les faits remontent à 2011.La victime est alors majeure. A l’époque, un prêtre lui recommande d’aller consulter le père Tony Anatrella, qui officie à Paris. Ce prélat est considéré au Vatican comme “le spécialiste de l’homosexualité”,un mal qu’il se propose de soigner par une approche “corporelle”. Il considère en effet que l’homosexualité est un déréglement qui nécessite des soins. Et s’agissant de cette thérapie commencée en 2001, ce patient affirme que le père Anatrella l’a curieusement contraint à des attouchements sexuels durant la consultation. Provoquant chez lui un profond malaise.

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NEW YORK
Newsday

Updated May 6, 2016

By Bart Jones bart.jones@newsday.com

A national sex abuse victims group on Friday criticized Bishop William Murphy of the Diocese of Rockville Centre for refusing to suspend from ministry a priest who is accused of abusing two children in a parish where he worked.

The Rev. Gregory Yacyshyn was recently accused in two separate lawsuits of allegedly abusing a boy and a girl while serving at St. Francis of Assisi in Greenlawn more than a decade ago.

“Murphy is acting incredibly recklessly,” said David Clohessy, director of the Chicago-based Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests. “How does he justify not even temporarily ousting [Father] Greg while an investigation is done? That’s what he and his brother bishops have promised for years now, but refusing to do time and time again.”

If Murphy doesn’t act, church officials including Cardinal Timothy Dolan of New York should “discipline and denounce him for his recklessness,” Clohessy said in a statement.

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UNITED KINGDOM
Croydon Advertiser

By Tom_Matthews | Posted: May 06, 2016

A COULSDON pastor found guilty of spanking women in his congregation for sexual pleasure has been jailed.

Howard Curtis, 73, was unanimously found guilty of six counts of sexual assault and two counts of child cruelty on March 24, after a four-week trial at Croydon Crown Court.

At the same court today, Judge Peter Gower QC ordered that Curtis, former minister of Coulsdon Christian Fellowship, in be jailed for six years and sign the sex offender register for life.

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SOUTH CAROLINA
Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests

For immediate release: Wednesday, May 4, 2016

Statement by Amy Smith, , Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests leader,

Florence church youth volunteer kissed and fondled teen boy, police say

By Eric Walters, April 29, 2016, WBTW News 13

FLORENCE, SC – A youth group volunteer at a Florence church has been arrested for sexually assaulting a minor.

According to Florence Police Major Carlos Raines, a 15-year-old boy claimed Leo LaSalle Comissiong, 20, of Florence kissed and fondled him through his clothes.

The incident happened in February at the NewSpring Church on North Cashua Drive, Raines said.

Comissiong is charged with criminal sexual conduct with a minor, 3rd degree.

[WBTW]

A spokesperson for NewSpring Church, Suzanne Swift, released the following statement regarding the case:

On Sunday, April 24, 2016, a NewSpring Church staff member saw Leo La Salle Comissiong III enter an unoccupied room with a 15 year old. The staff member immediately entered the room and questioned Comissiong. Comissiong denied any wrongdoing at that time. Because we take the safety of minors very seriously, we never allow adults to be alone with children or teens while on a NewSpring Campus. NewSpring Church questioned Comissiong again, and at that time removed him from volunteering in any capacity at NewSpring. After a separate conversation with the student, NewSpring staff contacted law enforcement. Since that time, NewSpring has fully cooperated with authorities and in this investigation.

NewSpring Church will continue to corporate with this investigation and we are praying for everyone impacted.

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UNITED STATES
National Catholic Reporter

EDITORIAL

Charles Curran, Roger Haight, Margaret Farley. What some of this country’s most prominent theologians share in common, sadly, is a history of investigation and censure by the Vatican’s Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. And it’s not just an American problem. Consider Switzerland’s Hans Küng, Brazil’s Leonardo Boff or Sri Lanka’s Tissa Balasuriya.

Now some theologians and two bishops are calling for Pope Francis’ spirit of openness and transparency to be extended to Catholic theologians under investigation by the doctrinal office. In a letter sent to the congregation and Francis last month, a prominent group of church men and women are recommending that the current procedures be updated and reformed. The most basic demands are that the curtains of secrecy that envelop this process be lifted and that all parties involved engage in open, civil discourse.

The new approach should aim “to reflect the attitude of Jesus and to integrate values that the world sees as basic to a functioning, civilized society,” says a copy of the letter obtained by NCR.

Reforms should make the process “just and equitable,” with presumptions of “sincerity, innocence, and loyalty to the church on the part of the person being investigated,” the letter said.

We agree. While we have seen time and again church authorities giving the benefit of the doubt to those who prey on children or reject the Second Vatican Council, the treatment of theologians whose job is to wrestle with the tough questions of our faith hearkens back to the doctrinal congregation’s origins in the infamous medieval Inquisition. Such unjust practices are more befitting countries headed by dictators than the church founded by Jesus.

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MINNESOTA
Fox 9

POSTED:MAY 06 2016

The following is an emailed statement to Fox 9 investigative reporter Tom Lyden in response to this story: Family members claim Nienstedt failed to report abusive priest in the 1970s

Dear Mr. Lyden,

I am writing to address questions you recently asked me regarding my cousin’s son. Please allow me to answer your questions.

I want to start with the timeline because I think it’s important. I was ordained as a priest in July 27, 1974, which is important to note because I was not assigned to a parish until I was ordained a priest. I was immediately assigned as an associate pastor at Guardian Angels Parish in Clawson until 1976. During that time, I reconnected with a first cousin and her family as they were members of Guardian Angels parish. The family was very kind to me and opened their home for dinners, family gatherings or simply to enjoy each other’s company. I still remain very grateful to, and a deep regard for, all of them.

During the year and a half I served at Guardian Angels parish, then Father Sam Ritchey, a priest from Columbus, Ohio, whom I met during my schooling at the Pontifical North American College in Rome, would attend school during the summer at Marygrove College in Detroit. I introduced him to my cousin’s family and they were just as generous to him as they were to me during the two summers he was there. In 1976, I returned to Rome to study for my licentiate.

When I did return from Rome in January 1977, as I recall, I stopped by my cousin’s house for a visit, and she and her daughter told me they wanted to talk with me. As I remember, my cousin relayed an incident where her son had driven Father Ritchey to a retreat center. She told me that once they were in his room at the retreat center, Father Ritchey apparently said something inappropriate to her son and placed his hand on her son’s knee. It’s my understanding her son immediately left the retreat house.

It’s my memory that I asked my cousin if she wanted me to talk with her son, and I recall that she said he did not want to talk with anyone about what happened. We continued to discuss the matter, which I took very seriously.

After I left, I contacted Father Ritchey, who denied anything had happened. We did not discuss the matter again. However, I continued to keep in touch with my cousin.

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UNITED KINGDOM
Telegraph

Lexi Finnigan
5 MAY 2016

A respected deputy head at a prestigious Catholic school spent his weekends at chemsex child porn parties with paedophiles he met on Grindr, a court heard as judge said the teacher led a “double life”.

Peter Allott, 37, was accused of having a “split personality” after it was revealed he spent up to £600 a week on Class A drugs and was addicted to child sex images whilst teaching at St Benedict’s School.

He kept child abuse images on his iPhone and on a hard drive found in his office at the Ealing-based school, which includes comedian Julian Clary and actor Andy Serkis amongst its former pupils.

Jailing Allott for 33 months at Blackfriars Crown Court today Judge Peter Hillen said the teacher was addicted to “debauchery”.

Judge Hillen described how Allott turned to chemsex parties and Class A drugs after the deaths of his mother and grandmother.

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UNITED KINGDOM
The Freethinker

Peter Allott, 37, above, a respected deputy head at a prestigious London Catholic school, has been jailed for 33 months for possessing child pornography and drugs.

According to this report, Allott, of St Benedict’s School, spent his weekends at chemsex child porn parties with paedophiles he met on the gay dating app, Grindr.

Judge Hillen described how Allott turned to chemsex parties and Class A drugs after the deaths of his mother and grandmother.

The consensual sexual activity between you and other people is of no concern of this court save for it was at the drug parties that you became aware of, and addicted to, indecent images of children.

You watched videos, moving images, of child sex abuse. That would lead you to online chat room Zoom where you and others, as many as 25 at a time I have been told, would watch and exchange the images.

I use the phrase of a paedophile ring, that’s precisely what that was.

Over the weekends you would engage in chemsex parties using crystal meth and m-cat and having sex with multiple partners but also watch these images.

Then on Monday morning you would put on your suit and you would be the brilliant, high-flying deputy was master doing your public duty and your work for society.

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NEW MEXICO
Albuquerque Journal

By Olivier Uyttebrouck / Journal Staff Writer
Published: Thursday, May 5th, 2016

After nearly a quarter of a century on the lam, a priest who helped ignite the clerical sex abuse crisis in New Mexico in the 1990s has turned up in Morocco, working at an English-language school for children, an Albuquerque attorney said.

Arthur Perrault, who vanished from his Albuquerque parish in 1992, was served last month with a civil lawsuit filed by a man who alleges he was sexually molested repeatedly by the former Archdiocese of Santa Fe priest.

“Getting (Perrault) away from children is priority No. 1 for me, especially if he is still surrounded by kids, because he will never change,” said Kenneth Wolter, 35, who filed the suit against Perrault in December.

Wolter was an altar server at St. Bernadette’s Church in Albuquerque in 1991 and 1992 when Perrault sexually abused him at the church and at Kirtland Air Force Base, where Perrault served as a chaplain, the lawsuit charges. Wolter was age 10 and 11 at the time of the abuse, which ended when Perrault fled New Mexico.

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VATICAN CITY
Catholic Herald (UK)

Cardinal Karl Lehmann of Mainz said the rejection of lists of names showed ‘intolerable disrespect’ for a country’s Church

A German cardinal has said names of candidates submitted to the Vatican as potential bishops are being vetoed by “unauthorised people” in Rome.

Cardinal Karl Lehmann of Mainz, who was president of the German bishops’ conference from 1987 to 2008, said: “In the name of the law, these unlawful outside influences must be set aside and a proper voice given to those who’ll be living with the chosen candidate.”

“If there really is something against a candidate, then the nuncio or Rome must talk about it with the cathedral chapter. Rome cannot just reject names without any comment,” he said.

The cardinal made his criticisms in a German-language book, published by Freiburg-based Herder-Verlag. Extracts were published on May 3 by the German Catholic news agency, KNA.

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NEW ZEALAND
New Zealand Herald

Under fire dean of Napier Cathedral, Dr Michael Godfrey, has denied accusations of a long term affair with an underage girl, as he vowed to clear his name.

Dr Godfrey was suspended for a year from his job as a priest at the Diocese of Waiapu after revelations of two extra marital affairs he had 25 years ago were made public yesterday.

The Diocese of Waiapu said Dr Godfrey’s conduct had fallen short of that expected of an Anglican priest, adding that it was a “historic matter of behaviour” related to church law.

In an interview with Rachel Smalley of Newstalk ZB, Dr Godfrey said the 25-year-old issue had resurfaced because the Royal Commission in Australia, who were looking into institutional responses to child abuse, had been given his name. It was later thrown out, he said.

“They look at it and said look it is immoral but we are not moral judges, it is not criminal, it is not predatory flick past it. The church picked it up and said look it is a lapse in moral standards.

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AUSTRALIA
Herald Sun

May 4, 2016

Shannon Deery
Herald Sun

A YOUNG orphan boy who was publicly flogged after reporting sexual abuse at the hands of a Christian Brother suffered years of torture because he wasn’t believed.

The nine-year-old was abused almost immediately after having the misfortune of being assigned to the St Augustine’s Boys’ Home dormitory monitored by Br William Stuart Houston in 1963.

So fearful during his first attack, that saw Houston gag him and lie in bed with him, the young boy wet himself.

It earned him a series of strappings by Houston who wanted to punish the boy for wetting the bed.

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RHODE ISLAND
Naples Herald

BY MICHELLE R. SMITH

PROVIDENCE, R.I. (AP) — Between cocktails, campus tours and squash games, alumni visiting St. George’s School for their annual reunion weekend will find something different this year: discussions about what has unfolded at the elite boarding school since December, when leaders acknowledged dozens of students were sexually abused in the past.

St. George’s is the most extreme example of abuse scandals that have bubbled up recently at New England boarding schools, which are handling reunion weekends this month with different approaches.

Many St. George’s alumni have struggled with whether to attend the reunion, which runs Friday through Sunday. They are upset by what happened to them or fellow alums, and by how the school handled it when told of abuse. Some say they will not attend. Others say they want to be among friends as they work to understand what has happened.

One said she was relieved that the school has finally acknowledged the abuse, is investigating what happened and is paying for therapy. She was one of at least 17 people the school acknowledges was abused by athletic trainer Al Gibbs.

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NEW YORK
Times of Israel

NEW YORK – A second hidden video from inside the largest yeshiva in the Satmar Hasidic village of Kiryas Joel shows a principal holding a school-age boy between his legs while kissing him in what sex-abuse watchdogs are describing as another case of abuse.

The video follows the release of a previous hidden-camera recording that seems to show the same Hasidic man in the same school office kissing, caressing and rubbing up against another boy the man holds between his legs. That video has prompted an inquiry by police.

While the man in the film, said to be a principal at United Talmudical Academy, a K-12 school with some 6,000 students in the Satmar village in Orange County, New York, has not responded to requests seeking comment, some community members who say they know him are rallying to his defense.

One such man, Joseph Waldman, told a local cable station, News 12, that the principal is a well-known rabbi who is highly respected in the community.

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PARAGUAY
La Conferencia Episcopal Paraguaya

Los Obispos del Paraguay ante denuncias que involucran a eclesiásticos, en casos de abusos de menores y otros hechos punibles y, en particular del caso Carlos Ibáñez, manifestamos que:

1) Sentimos un inmenso dolor por el escándalo de quienes han causado graves consecuencias en personas vulnerables. Estos hechos no los aceptamos y los condenamos, porque contradicen el mensaje cristiano y la misión de la Iglesia, y pedimos perdón por todos ellos.

2) Rechazamos la acusación de encubrimiento de los hechos y reafirmamos nuestro compromiso con la verdad, la transparencia y la acción firme. Por eso, proseguiremos con las oportunas investigaciones, según las prescripciones previstas en el Protocolo para investigar denuncias contra clérigos sobre abuso sexual de menores (julio 2015) hasta que se diluciden los casos y los que resulten culpables sean severamente sancionados como corresponde.

3) Mientras aseguramos nuestro compromiso sincero y determinado en la búsqueda de la verdad, valoramos el papel que cumplen los medios de comunicación en la formación de la opinión pública y entendemos que la población tiene derecho a recibir información veraz, responsable y ecuánime.

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PARAGUAY
La Nacion

[The Paraguayan Episcopal Conference (CEP) met in special session yesterday and released a statement asking forgiveness for the acts of sexual abuse committed against minors.]

La Conferencia Episcopal Paraguaya (CEP) se reunió en asamblea extraordinaria y dio a conocer ayer un comunicado en el que piden perdón por los hechos de abuso sexuales cometidos contra menores de edad. “Condenamos estos hechos porque contradicen el mensaje cristiano y la misión de la Iglesia, y pedimos perdón por todos ellos”, señala parte del comunicado que prosigue asegurando que existe un compromiso “sincero y determinado de la búsqueda de la verdad”.

Asimismo, expresaron su cercanía con los afectados por los graves delitos y “asumiendo nuestra responsabilidad de pastores nos comprometemos a luchar decididamente para evitar que hechos de esta naturaleza produzcan el incalculable daño a todos los que confían en la Iglesia y sus pastores”.

Los obispos del Paraguay aseguran que continuarán con las investigaciones relacionadas a las denuncias de abuso sexual en menores y niegan que estén encubriendo a los sacerdotes pederastas y pedófilos. Sostienen que la población tiene derecho a recibir información veraz, responsable y ecuánime.

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AUSTRALIA
3AW

Tom Elliott says it’s “disgusting” the Catholic church is planning a memorial mass for disgraced former Ballarat Bishop Ronald Mulkearns.

Bishop Mulkearns died of cancer early last month.

He had previously confessed to covering up the sexual abuse of children by priests under his watch.

3AW Drive host Tom Elliott said the planned tribute showed the church still “didn’t get it” when it came to admitting its wrongs of the past.

“If a serial killer died in jail and that person just happened to have been a Catholic earlier in life, would the church have a mass in his name? I don’t think so…” Tom Elliott said on Friday.

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UNITED STATES
Baptist Press

by Diana Chandler, posted Thursday, May 05, 2016

NASHVILLE (BP) — Southern Baptists were represented among many groups planting pinwheels in gardens across America this spring to spotlight child abuse prevention and spread awareness of the 700,000 children in the U.S. who are maltreated each year.

Accepted as symbolic of the innocent whimsy of childhood, more than 5 million pinwheels have been distributed nationally during the annual April Pinwheels for Prevention emphasis since Prevent Child Abuse America (PCAA) adopted the symbol in 2008.

The pinwheel garden at Calvary Baptist Church, a Southern Baptist congregation in Chapmanville, W.Va., marked the church’s fourth straight year of participation, pastor John Freeman told Baptist Press.

“We just have a great burden for kids, children at our church and especially those who go through the awful experience of being abused,” Freeman said of the church that draws about 100 Sunday worshippers. “It just seems like each year it grows and grows.” Following a special service April 3, the church planted perhaps 200 pinwheels on its grounds and in flower pots inside the church, Freeman estimated.

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TENNESSEE
WBRC

Reported by Liz Lohuis

NASHVILLE, TN (WSMV) –
A Nashville megachurch has been slapped with a $10 million lawsuit connected to a rape that happened nearly a decade ago.

Brian Lance Mitchell has been in prison since 2012, convicted of multiple sex crimes against children.

Mitchell worked for Cornerstone Nashville church.

Attorneys for the victim said the church’s negligence led to the sexual abuse of a 10-year-old boy back in 2007.

The victim is being represented by Ozment Law.

The lawsuit says Mitchell was part of the youth staff at the church, and the victim’s mentor.

Pastor Maury Davis declined an on-camera interview and told Channel 4 to reference comments he made during last Sunday’s service.

“Though he (Mitchell) attended our church he was not a volunteer in Cornerstone Nashville’s children or youth ministry at any time,” Davis said.

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MINNESOTA
The Legal Examiner

Posted by Mike Bryant
May 5, 2016

There is less than a month and just over two weeks for Survivors to come forward and right so many past wrongs. There is still much more to do. Time is running out. Survivors of sexual abuse have until May 25th, 2016 to seek justice against their attackers. The Window is limited by the statute of limitation that was expanded by the Child Victims Act. Anyone who was sexually abused by an employee of the diocese, or who believes the diocese is liable for their abuse have until May 25, 2016.

Those with claims must act within that time.

Abuse of children and the continued silence by the offenders needs to be prevented. If you suffered, saw, or suspected such events, it is important to know that there is help out there.

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IRELAND
The Irish Times

Editorial

The publication of the final tranche of current reviews by the National Board for Safeguarding Children in the Catholic Church in Ireland has tended to be overshadowed by another appalling case of church cover-up and mishandling of clerical child sexual abuse.

In this instance it involved serial abuser Fr Paddy McDonagh and his Salvatorian congregation superiors. It should not be forgotten that this came to national attention because the board published its stark review of that case.

It was the latest example of a robust integrity which has characterised the board’s work since it was set up in 2006.

Based at Maynooth and funded by the Irish Bishops’ Conference, the Conference of Religious of Ireland, and the Irish Missionary Union, it has operated with a studied independence of those bodies. This has been so even as tensions developed but also, as proven repeatedly, in its published reviews. These, frequently, have been unsparing of relevant church personnel and institutions.

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NEW ZEALAND
Radio New Zealand

The Anglican church is justifying its decision to stand down a senior priest over two affairs he had 25 years ago.

Reverend Michael Godfrey, 56, said he was sexually assaulted just days before the affairs, which were a misguided attempt to find comfort after the attack.

Reverend Michael GodfreyReverend Michael Godfrey Photo: Facebook
The highly-ranked priest said he had two separate extramarital affairs during a 10-day period while working in Australia in 1991. He was assaulted by a man just 10 days before the first affair.

In a statement, the Anglican Church said Reverend Michael Godfrey was removed from his position as Dean of Waiapu Cathedral for a historic matter that – while not illegal – breached the church’s rules.

Dr Godfrey, 56, thinks the church made the wrong decision, but the church said he had been removed because his affairs breached church rules and were not reported to the right people at the time.

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MASSACHUSETTS
Canton Citizen

By Jay Turner

Editor’s note: The name of the victim who was interviewed for this story has been changed in order to protect his privacy.

When reports first surfaced in late 2012 that Father Thomas H. Maguire had been removed from public ministry in Norwell following allegations of inappropriate sexual conduct, Mark L., a Canton native and former St. John the Evangelist parishioner, felt a complex flood of emotions ranging from anger to regret to disgust.

Then he picked up the telephone and made a call that he felt was long overdue.
Contacting the Norwell police and speaking to an investigator, Mark would go on to recount his own experiences with Father Maguire in Canton in the early 1990s, back when Mark, his brother and their friends were students at Canton High School and members of the St. John’s CYO leadership board. Maguire, who was assigned to the parish during those years, worked directly with the CYO, and Mark recalled multiple instances where Maguire both supplied and consumed alcohol with the teens, along with one or more instances of inappropriate behavior and alleged sexual misconduct during “off-site” CYO meetings.

Ultimately, police determined that none of the alleged offenses could be prosecuted because they all fell outside of the criminal statute of limitations. However, the Archdiocese undertook its own investigation into the matter, and on March 31, 2016, following a lengthy probe and a church process undertaken under canon law, Maguire was found “guilty of abuse of a minor” and removed from the priesthood by order of the Holy See.

According to a public database of accused priests provided by the Archdiocese on its website, Maguire is the first Boston area priest since 2009 to be defrocked due to allegations of abuse and just the seventh in the last decade. And it was the reports of inappropriate conduct from the “mid 1990s and before” — coinciding with his years at St. John the Evangelist (1989-1996) — that appeared to carry the most weight in the decision.

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NEW YORK
New York Daily News

GLENN BLAIN, MICHAEL O’KEEFFE, LARRY MCSHANE NEW YORK DAILY NEWS Thursday, May 5, 2016

It’s his pizza party, and he’ll cry if he wants to.

Powerful state Senate Republican John DeFrancisco whined Thursday after the Daily News reported he served pizza pies to the Syracuse women’s basketball team while three child sex abuse survivors stood nearby in his office.

“It’s ridiculous,” DeFrancisco said just before the Senate went into session in Albany. “If you think that’s good reporting, then we have a difference of opinion.”

DeFrancisco said he was willing to meet with the trio to discuss their support for the pending Child Victims Act (CVA). But he said the timing of Wednesday’s pop-in was just wrong.

“I just think there is some basic office management that you have to do, no matter who happens to come in,” the Syracuse senator said.

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UNITED STATES
Huffington Post

Nikki DuBose
Former Model, Commercial Actress & Host turned Author, Speaker & Mental Health Advocate

I am a survivor of child abuse. Starting at age four, I was repeatedly beaten and called names that no child or adult should ever be called. Then from eight through thirteen years of age, the abuse escalated to sexual victimization by a close male figure and my mother, who suffered from mental health issues. At nineteen and through my early twenties, I was re-victimized as an amateur model and again as a professional model. Now at thirty-one, I have been in strong recovery for a few years, am an author (my memoir, Washed Away: From Darkness to Light hits stores Summer 2016), speaker and mental health advocate. I understand the long-lasting effects of abuse and how it can trigger other serious mental health conditions, yet I am also a believer that full recovery is possible. On the other side of the coin, I grasp the concept that hurting people hurt people and that forgiveness is a powerful force in this world – for ourselves and others.

But when I read an article in the New York Times about John Mackey, the co-CEO of Whole Foods, and his relationship with Marc Gafni, an admitted child-sexual-abuser-turned-spiritual-leader, I couldn’t turn a blind eye and continue to shop at my once-favorite store. I’ll admit it, I used to love Whole Foods, and most people do. It carries an enormous variety of overly priced organic foods that are appealing to the senses; basically it’s like the Saks Fifth Avenue of grocery stores. However, I refuse to support any company that openly backs a pedophile and doesn’t use their platform to take a stand against something as important as child sexual abuse – an issue that affects more than 42,000,000 Americans.

So on May 25th I will be at the Whole Foods 365 launch in Los Angeles to protest co-CEO John Mackey’s link to Marc Gafni; if you live in NYC, there is a planned coordinated protest underway. Mackey’s ignorance as a leader to publicly evade the issues at hand enables the perpetrator, allows the stigma to continue, and brings up another question: what percentage of child sexual abuse survivors shop at Whole Foods? Bill Murray, founder and CEO of NAASCA, the National Association of Adult Survivors of Child Abuse, believes that the government-reported 1 in 3 girls and 1 in 5 boys who are sexually victimized before they turn eighteen equates to roughly 20 to 25 percent of adults who will shop at the newly launched Whole Foods 365. “365 is comparable to Trader Joes, so (Whole Foods) is most likely banking on the fact that the prices will appeal to the classes represented by child sexual abuse survivors,” Murray says. However, statistically victims of child sexual abuse have a harder time in life holding down jobs, are more likely to run away from home, attempt suicide, develop fatal eating disorders, get involved in the sex industry, work as dancers, or act in pornographic films.

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UNITED STATES
Huffington Post

Stephen H. Dinan
Author, CEO of The Shift Network

I’m writing to bring attention and sound a serious warning about what are, in my opinion, deceptions taking place around the movie RiseUp, which has been enrolling many trusted leaders and has begun a major fundraising campaign at Generosity.

I strongly urge you to educate yourself and others and consider boycotting this movie due to the participation of Marc Gafni, who appears to be using credible authors, speakers, musicians, and business leaders to establish a socially-acceptable front.

Gafni has been the subject of more than 35 recent articles in the press that describe a very troubling history, some of which are included below.

In January, more than 100 of the most respected rabbis and cultural leaders in the Jewish world came together in a Change.org petition to give a very strong warning of the danger Gafni poses. They said, “Marc Gafni has left a trail of pain, suffering, and trauma amongst the people and congregations who were unfortunate to have trusted him.” As further support to their statement, more than 3400 other signatories from all periods of Gafni’s life signed as well, many with extensive comments.

I strongly recommend reading the petition, as well as 75 of the comments on the petition that share many terrible first-hand accounts. It’s also valuable to watch the video testimony of Gafni’s third wife, and Rabbi Ingber.

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NEW MEXICO
KRQE

ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. (AP) – A bankruptcy judge in New Mexico has scheduled a confirmation hearing on the Diocese of Gallup’s reorganization plan, signaling the possible end of a case that has spanned more than two years.

The Gallup Independent reports that attorneys for the diocese filed amended copies of the reorganization plan and a disclosure statement Tuesday. U.S. Bankruptcy Judge David T. Thuma scheduled the confirmation hearing for June 21.

Clergy sex abuse claimants will have to accept or reject the plan by June 10.

The abuse claimants have also been promised that they will be able to electronically access a read-only personnel file of their abuser. An attorney representing the claimants expressed concern that the provision will go away because the security details haven’t yet been worked out.

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MALTA
Times of Malta

Just one of the 27 complaints forwarded to the Church’s Safeguarding Commission last year was substantiated, statistics released today revealed.The commission investigates any cases of emotional, physical and sexual abuse and neglect by members of the Church, including clergy and lay people.

The other concluded cases either not proven or the allegations were false, were malicious in intent, or did not involve minors.

Until last December, seven cases were undergoing an assessment and in five cases, the persons concerned had their pastoral activity restricted.

The government should set up an authority to protect minors and vulnerable adults, the Church’s Safeguarding Commission has recommended.

The authority would establish a structure to share information between organisations and tasked with the revision of existing procedures through which the names of perpetrators are placed in the Register for the Protection of Minors.

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UNITED KINGDOM
International Business Times

By Paul Wright
May 5, 2016

The former deputy head of a leading independent Catholic school has been jailed for just over two-and-a-half years after pleading guilty to possessing hundreds of child porn images and the illegal drug ecstasy (MDMA). Peter Allott, 37, taught at the prestigious £15,000-a-year St Benedict’s Catholic Independent Day School in Ealing when he was targeted by officers from a child abuse unit.

His arrest in December 2015, which saw his phone and hard drive confiscated, came following intelligence that an individual had been using video conferencing facilities to share indecent images of children with others around the UK. He was found with more than 200 illegal child abuse pictures and videos in his possession.

Allott, of Marchwood Crescent in Ealing, appeared at Blackfriars Crown Court on Thursday (5 May) where he was sentenced to 33 months in prison. He had admitted three charges of possessing, showing and making indecent images of children, one charge of possessing extreme pornography and another of possession of the class A drug ecstasy at a court hearing in March.

Matt Sutton, from the National Crime Agency, said: “Every indecent image of a child is an image of a child being abused. Peter Allott had images of the worst category in his possession and it is appropriate that he is now serving a custodial sentence.

“While there is no evidence that Allott abused his position of trust at his place of work, we consider he posed a significant risk due to nature of the images he was sharing.

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UNITED KINGDOM
Mirror

BY SAM WEBB

The deputy head of a scandal-hit Catholic private school became hooked on child abuse images after getting embroiled in a drug-taking paedophile ring that met on gay dating app Grindr.

Pervert Peter Allott, 37, was introduced to child sex images and became addicted to Class A drugs – spending up to £600-a-week – at ‘chemsex’ parties.

He kept child abuse images on his iPhone and on a hard drive found in his office at the £15,000-a-year St Benedict’s School, which includes comedian Julian Clary, former Hong Kong governor Chris Patten and Lord Of The Rings actor Andy Serkis amongst its former pupils.

Cambridge University graduate Allott was a teacher at the scandal hit school in Ealing, west London, where one priest is on the run from a child abuse charge and another was convicted of nearly four decades of abuse.

The school was heavily criticised in a report into its protection of children from abuse.

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UNITED KINGDOM
Daily Mail

By REBECCA CAMBER, CRIME CORRESPONDENT FOR THE DAILY MAIL

The deputy head of a scandal-hit Catholic private school was jailed today after admitting getting hooked on child pornography blowing £600 a week on paedophile drug parties.

Peter Allott, 37, led a double life working as a high-flying devout Christian headteacher, while at the weekends he indulged in drug-fuelled sex orgies, swapping sickening images of children with other perverts.

The Cambridge–educated deputy headteacher became addicted to child sex images and Class A drugs after being introduced to both at ‘chemsex’ parties organised on gay dating app Grindr.
He amassed nearly 400 horrific images of children as young as two, which he kept on his iPhone and on a hard drive in his office at the £15,000-a-year St Benedict’s School.

Investigators also found the Class A drug MDMA, otherwise known as ecstasy, in a raid of his home, a property owned by the school.

The private school in Ealing, West London, which counts comedian Julian Clary, Tory peer Chris Patten and actor Andy Serkis amongst its alumni, has been dogged by scandal after one teacher was convicted of nearly four decades of sexual abuse of children and another priest is still on the run from a child abuse charge.

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UNITED KINGDOM
BBC News

The deputy head of a fee-paying Catholic school in London has been jailed for 33 months for possessing extreme images of child abuse.

Peter Allott, 37, who taught at St Benedict’s in Ealing admitted possessing, showing and making category A indecent images of children.

Allott, of Marchwood Crescent, Ealing, was caught using video conferencing to share images with others in the UK.

Blackfriars Crown Court heard him admit possessing a controlled drug, MDMA.

Matt Sutton of Child Exploitation and Online Protection Command (CEOP) said: “Every indecent image of a child is an image of a child being abused. Peter Allott had images of the worst category in his possession and it is appropriate he is now serving a custodial sentence.

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ILLINOIS
Central Illinois Proud

[with video]

BLOOMINGTON

The statute of limitations for child sex abuse cases could be eliminated in Illinois.

State senator Scott Bennett of Champaign recently introduced a bill that would do just that, after former U.S. House Speaker Dennis Hastert was sentenced in a hush-money case, where he admitted to sexually abusing teenagers decades ago. Hastert could not be prosecuted because of the current statute, which gives a victim until they turn 38 to open a criminal case.

Both Bennett and Attorney General Lisa Madigan have both called for the change. Local prosecutors say they will use whatever tools they can to prosecute offenders.

“If there are statute of limitations on cases, we work with in those limitations. If they change the laws to extend those, then we will use that like any other tool available to us, if it unlimits us in some of those cases,” said McLean County State’s Attorney Jason Chambers.

Lawmakers in Massachusetts, New York and Pennsylvania are considering similar proposals.

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NEW YORK
WXXI

By BETH ADAMS

Current law in New York State gives victims of sexual abuse until the age of 23 to pursue either criminal charges or a civil lawsuit against their alleged abuser.

Child advocates are pushing to change that during the current legislative session in Albany.

Mary Whittier, executive director of Bivona Child Advocacy Center in Rochester, says child sexual abuse is cloaked in secrecy and shame, and many victims don’t come to terms with what happened until they are well into their adult years.

“I’ve done presentations before, where people who are 45, 50..I had a 64-year-old woman come up to me who said, ‘I was the victim of childhood sexual abuse and I never told anybody. I’m telling you for the first time, and I wish there was something I could do about it.’ ”

Whittier says lifting the statute of limitations on felony sex crimes is the number one item on the legislative agenda for the New York State chapter of the National Children’s Alliance, but she says there is strong opposition from the Catholic Church and other organized groups, and it will take an army of supporters to bring about change.

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NEW YORK
Riverdale Press

Posted May 5, 2016

There is a bill now being considered in the State Senate’s Codes Committee that deserves wider support.

The proposed law would eliminate the statute of limitations that now prevents victims who are 23 or older from filing claims of sexual abuse against individuals or private institutions.

Current law limits when a criminal or civil action can be taken against someone accused of certain kinds of sexual acts with children under 18. Accusers must file charges or claims before they turn 23. After that, regardless of what they later say was done to them, victims can find no justice in a New York court.

The Senate bill would eliminate the age limit and enable victims to bring actions against public institutions, like public schools, without a time limit. Now, unless they file a notice of claim against a public entity within 90 days of the injury, it is dismissed. That requirement would end.

The proposed law would also permit a one-year opportunity for victims to demand an examination of cases that had been denied review because the age limit of 23 had precluded action. So older victims could seek — for one year after the bill became law — a hearing on their sexual abuse claims.

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ILLINOIS
WGN

Associated Press

SPRINGFIELD, Ill. — An Illinois lawmaker is responding to the Dennis Hastert hush-money case with a proposal to give prosecutors the right to pursue child sex abuse charges no matter how long ago the crimes occurred.

The former U.S. House Speaker was sentenced to 15 months in prison last week in a hush-money case that revealed accusations he sexually abused teenagers decades ago while coaching high school wrestling in Yorkville, Illinois. Hastert was prosecuted for breaking federal banking rules but not on the sex-abuse allegations because of a statute of limitations.

Democratic Sen. Scott Bennett says time should not prevent child molesters from being prosecuted.

Lawmakers in Massachusetts, New York and Pennsylvania are also considering proposals that would remove statutes of limitations for child sex crimes.

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NEW YORK
Haaretz

A bill to lift the statute of limitations in New York has failed to pass mainly due to the concerns of certain members of the Jewish community and Catholic Church. If we give them a little, the rest of us might gain a lot.

Rabbi Yehoshua Looks May 05, 2016

Since arriving in Israel 20 years ago, I have watched my home state of New York in shock and disgust as allegations have been brought against certain yeshivas, day schools and synagogues there that they shelter and protect employees, often rabbis, who sexually abused children, at the expense of the victims who were entrusted to their care.

While mental health experts have shown that it can take decades for a victim of child sexual abuse to overcome the fear, shame and trauma of abuse to come forward, New York’s current law allows people abused in their childhood to pursue criminal or civil justice only until the age of 23, under a statute of limitations.  

New York ranks among the very worst in the United States, alongside Alabama, Michigan and Mississippi, for how the courts and criminal justice system treat survivors of child sexual abuse.

There is no statute of limitations in halakha (Jewish law). In Judaism, an eye for an eye (Exodus 21:24) is understood by the rabbis as providing monetary damages, not exacting revenge. Culpable Jewish organizations must be held accountable, along with the perpetrators, in order to send a clear message that there is zero tolerance in our community for sexual abuse. Effective accountability requires a steep price to be paid for these heinous crimes.

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IRELAND
Religion News Service

By Rosie Scammell

(RNS) A religious order covered up the sexual crimes of an Irish priest who abused more than 100 children, some as young as 6, according to a new report.

The failures of the Salvatorian order to act on the crimes of a priest named “Father A” were outlined in a report released Wednesday (May 4) by Ireland’s National Board for Safeguarding Children in the Catholic Church.

During a career spanning more than 50 years, the priest sought out girls between the ages of 6 and 9 and abused them while visiting their family homes.

“Fr. A would stop visiting families when their daughters turned 10 years of age, as they were then outside his preferred target age group,” the report said.

The priest has been named in Irish media as the Rev. Patrick McDonagh, who was convicted in 2007 of sexually abusing several girls and died two years later.

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MINNESOTA
Crux

By Crux Staff
May 5, 2016

Archbishop John Nienstedt of St. Paul-Minneapolis, who resigned in June 2015 amid controversy over his handling of sexual abuse allegations, now has been accused of failing to act when a member of his own extended family was molested by a fellow priest.

The charge comes in a May 4 report from a local television station in the Twin Cities, Fox9, and is based on an interview with the alleged victim, Mike Hinske, whose mother is a former Dominican nun and Nienstedt’s cousin.

According to Hinske, the molestation occurred in 1974, when Nienstedt was a newly ordained priest and a frequent guest at the Hinske family home in Michigan. One of the friends Nienstedt brought along was a fellow priest named Father Samuel Ritchey, introducing him to Hinske, who was 16 at the time.

Hinske told a reporter that Ritchey once asked him to give him a ride to a retreat, then invited the teenager to his room and turned off the lights. He described Ritchey removing his clothing, and said, “He did molest me, without a shadow of a doubt.”

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MALTA
The Church in Malta

The Church’s Safeguarding Commission is recommending that the State create an authority for the protection of minors and vulnerable adults, with the purpose of establishing a structure for the sharing of information between organisations that work with children and vulnerable adults. Furthermore, this authority would be charged with the revision of existing procedures through which the names of perpetrators are placed in the Register for the Protection of Minors.

The Commission believes that safeguarding children and vulnerable adults is everyone’s responsibility and it is also recommending that every organisation that works with minors and vulnerable adults, should have a designated person that is responsible for the safeguarding of vulnerable persons.

Speaking at a Press Conference at the Archbishop’s Curia, in Floriana, Mr Andrew Azzopardi, the Head of Safeguarding, put forward these recommendations following the Commission’s experience in the first year since its inception. During the past year, two thirds of reported complaints involving minors were concluded in less than six months. Of the 27 complaints received by the Commission between February and December 2015, one case was substantiated and accordingly, the Commission recommended that the necessary steps be taken. The other concluded cases were either not proven or the allegations were false or were malicious in intent or did not involve minors. Until December 2015, seven cases were undergoing an assessment, and in five cases the persons concerned had their pastoral activity restricted.

As regards to complaints involving vulnerable adults, 70% of them were concluded in less than 6 months. Of these 14 complaints, the allegations concerning 3 cases were substantiated and therefore the Commission advised a course of action. The other complaints either were not proven or the allegations were false, or did not involve abuse and thus were referred. At the end of last year, five cases were undergoing an assessment, and in one case the person concerned had one’s pastoral activity restricted.

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MINNESOTA
BishopAccountability.org

Summary of Case: Ordained for the Crookston diocese in 1982, “Fr. Pat” Sullivan worked in parishes East Grand Forks, Nebish, Bemidji, Wilton, Warroad, Falun, Red Lake, Bagley, Dilworth and Hawley. He also served as a campus minister and on the diocesan Priests Council and the Priests Retirement Board. On April 29, 2016, the diocese was informed that Sullivan was accused of having sexually abused a 15-year-old boy in Red Lake in 2008. Sullivan was placed on Administrative Leave pending an investigation. He denied the accusation.

Ordained: 1982

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MALTA
Independent

Neil Camilleri
Thursday, 5 May 2016

Only one out of 24 complaints assessed by the Church’s safeguarding commission between February and December 2015 was substantiated.

Details about the number of complaints and other works and plans by the commission were given to the press this afternoon.

Andrew Azzopardi, the Head of Safeguarding & Director of Children’s Homes, said the commission received a total of 27 complaints last year. The commission also inherited another 4 pending cases.

24 risk assessments were concluded while the other seven are ongoing.

Mr Azzopardi explained that these cases are not limited to sexual abuse but could also deal with physical, and emotional abuse, neglect, bullying and poor practice.

Until December there were restrictions on pastoral activities imposed against five people – a diocesan priest, three religious persons (priests, brothers or nuns) and a lay person while their assessments were ongoing. One diocesan priest had their pastoral activity restricted as a result of the assessment.

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NEW YORK
Daily Messenger

New Yorkers who were molested as children joined lawmakers and advocates in a two-day rally for lifting the state’s statute of limitations on suing abusers, saying the law closing the window at age 23 guarantees many more young victims. Their effort has faced years of opposition from the Catholic Church and other institutions.

By News partner, News10NBC

Posted May. 5, 2016

New Yorkers who were molested as children joined lawmakers and advocates in a two-day rally for lifting the state’s statute of limitations on suing abusers, saying the law closing the window at age 23 guarantees many more young victims.

Their effort has faced years of opposition from the Catholic Church and other institutions.

Lawmakers said prospects are improving with a recent change in legislative leadership in Albany. They also cited Massachusetts’ passage two years ago of a similar measure and the recent Academy Award-winning film “Spotlight” about priests sexually abusing boys in Boston.
The film was being shown Wednesday near the Capitol.

“I think we have some movement on the bill,” Assemblywoman Margaret Markey said Wednesday. The Queens Democrat has repeatedly introduced legislation that hasn’t advanced, but which currently has 61 co-sponsors in the 150-seat Assembly.

Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie, a Bronx Democrat, has said the bill will be discussed in the majority Democratic Conference this year, a spokesman said Wednesday. The legislative session ends in June.

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NEW YORK
New York Daily News

BY MICHAEL O’KEEFFE NEW YORK DAILY NEWS Wednesday, May 4, 2016

ALBANY — Not every Catholic believes efforts to reform New York’s statute of limitations on child sex abuse cases are driven by anti-church bias.

While Catholic League president Bill Donohue argues that’s the case, advocates of the Child Victims Act said Wednesday that their only interest was aiding the victims of predatory adults.

“This is an effort to show the other side of the Catholic Church, and to let legislators know that there are Catholics who are very much for passage of the Child Victims Act,” said Joann Venek, who traveled from Manhattan to lobby lawmakers to pass the bill.

The church’s lobbying group has long opposed the legislation, arguing it would be unfairly targeted by such a law.

But Maryanne Perseo, an attorney who also came from Manhattan to Albany, said she is shamed by the church’s opposition to statute of limitations reform.

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MINNESOTA
Canonical Consultation

[Family members say Nienstedt hid priest abuse of cousin – Fox 9]

05/04/2016

Below is a redacted copy of the letter sent by Archbishop Nienstedt to the victim/survivor featured in today’s Fox 9 news story:

[copy of letter follows]

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IRELAND
Irish Independent

Tim Healy
PUBLISHED
05/05/2016

Gardaí are entitled to keep a computer record relating to allegations of historic child sex abuse against a former priest, the High Court has ruled.

The court refused the former priest’s wife orders seeking the removal of the material concerning her and her two children from the garda PULSE database.

He had left the priesthood in 1995 and later married. The abuse allegations, involving sex with two children, dated back to 1981. The PULSE record states that historical abuse allegations were made against the former priest and as he now has two children, there “may be child protection issues”.

It also states the former priest is considered to be of such a low risk level that the HSE would be entitled to close its file on him.

The wife claimed the refusal to erase the material breached her and her children’s constitutional and European Convention privacy and family rights.

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NEW JERSEY
Fox 29

[with video]

By: Jeff Cole

CAMDEN, N.J. – The Diocese of Camden has opened an investigation of one its priests after FOX 29 Investigates raised questions about his actions.

The probe has been under way for nearly three weeks. How did this story get started?

Investigative Reporter Jeff Cole explains that a parishioner of his former church urged us to take a look at where Father Joel Arciga-Camarillo spends his time away from the church. Here’s what we saw.

It’s just past 2 p.m. on Wednesday, April 13, and we’re keeping an eye on a light-green, four-door Volkswagen tucked behind this multistory, bright-yellow home in Camden.

We sit and watch for about an hour and see a man in a T-shirt and ball cap emerge from the back of a van with a female driver and small children, some in Catholic school uniforms. They go in the home.

We return in the early evening, and there’s the green Volkswagen again, along with the guy in the cap. This time, he’s working on a vehicle in back and moving about the yard.

Why are we looking? Because we’ve seen the VW before, parked in the lot of the Devine Mercy Catholic Church in Vineland, N.J.

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NEW YORK
News 12

KIRYAS JOEL – A second video has surfaced showing alleged child sex abuse at a yeshiva in Kiryas Joel.

Anti-abuse activists leaked the surveillance tape. It shows a man who police describe as the principal of United Talmudical Academy with a young boy between his legs. Some believe that the video shows the man appearing to kiss the boy and give him candy at the end of their encounter.

On Monday, another video surfaced that allegedly shows the same man holding and caressing an elementary school boy between his legs for 15 minutes.

While police have begun a joint sex-abuse investigation, residents within the extremely religious and private Hasidic community are coming to the principal’s defense.

Joseph Waldman says the rabbi-principal seen on tape is well-known and respected within the ultra-Orthodox community for having what he calls a “fatherly” approach with kids.

“This person is such a loving person that instead of taking out a belt and beating up a child, he’d rather give an extra kiss or an extra show of love,” he said.

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NEW YORK
New York Daily News

BY MICHAEL O’KEEFFE, LARRY MCSHANE NEW YORK DAILY NEWS Wednesday, May 4, 2016

One of the state Senate’s most powerful Republicans served up a piping-hot slice of “get lost” to three sex abuse survivors on Wednesday.

Instead of meeting with the trio, Senate Deputy Majority Leader John DeFrancisco opted for an afternoon pizza party with the Syracuse women’s basketball team. Steve Jimenez, Kathryn Robb and her sister Dorothy Robb Farrell wanted to talk to the conservative lawmaker about the Child Victims Act.

“I can’t see you now,” DeFrancisco (R-Syracuse) told them. “I am sorry.”

The three advocates for the pending bill arrived in DeFrancisco’s Albany digs in hopes of securing his support for legislation to change New York’s statute of limitations on child abuse cases.

DeFrancisco appeared shortly after an aide emerged to say the senator typically meets only with those who make an appointment — and the advocates didn’t have one.

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IRELAND
Headlines from the Catholic World

Dublin, Ireland, May 5, 2016 / 12:08 am (CNA/EWTN News).- The Salvatorians have offered their “deepest apology” for failing to stop a priest who sexually abused children in Ireland until his 2004 arrest.

“The Salvatorians express their deep sorrow for the prolific abuse carried on by a particular member of our Order in Ireland and elsewhere over a long number of years,” Father Alex McAllister S.D.S., provincial superior of the Salvatorians’ British Pro-Province, said May 3.

“We acknowledge that the response of the provincial superior at the time was completely inadequate and that it was a clear failure of the duty of our order to protect children.”

The case of a priest, called only “Father A,” was described in a child safety audit of religious congregations by Ireland’s National Board for Safeguarding Children in the Catholic Church.

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FRANCE
Eglise Catholique en Haute-Garonne

[Archbishop Le Gall, archbishop of Toulouse, on Tuesday made a statement in which he described the decisions taken in the fight against pedophilia in the diocese of Toulouse.]

Mgr Le Gall, archevêque de Toulouse, a fait ce mardi 3 mai 2016 une déclaration dans laquelle il expose les décisions qu’il a prises en matière de lutte contre la pédophilie dans le diocèse de Toulouse.

Depuis quelques semaines, de nombreuses victimes d’actes de pédophilie de la part de prêtres s’expriment. Ces victimes nous font entendre leur souffrance et leur difficulté à se reconstruire après toutes ces années. Savoir des prêtres coupables d’actes de pédophilie encore en exercice les blessent et les scandalisent. J’entends ces victimes et je tiens à leur témoigner ma proximité. Les actes qu’elles ont subis sont extrêmement graves, d’autant plus de la part de prêtres. Je condamne fermement ces crimes.

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FRANCE
Rene Poujol

[Sexual abuse: The evil at its roots. Despite initiatives of the bishops conference, doubt remains on determination of the bishops to eradicate pedophilia and sectarianism.]

Malgré les initiatives de la Cef, le doute demeure sur la détermination des évêques à éradiquer la pédophilie et les dérives sectaires.

Cet article a été rédigé pour l’hebdomadaire catholique la Voix de l’Ain et publié dans son édition du 6 mai 2016
_______

Avec les affaires de pédophilie qui touchent le diocèse de Lyon et son archevêque, le cardinal Philippe Barbarin, l’Eglise de France est entrée dans une période de turbulences dont on ne saurait fixer ni l’amplitude ni le terme. Sans doute le succès mérité du film Spotlight, sur des affaires de pédophilie dans le diocèse de Boston, a-t-il servi d’amplificateur au dépôt de plainte de l’association La parole libérée, à l’origine de l’affaire lyonnaise.

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DEUTSCHLAND
Deutschlandfunk

[A long overdue step.]

Wenn es um die Aufarbeitung sexuellen Missbrauchs gehe, sei die Politik viel zu lange untätig gewesen, kommentiert Christiane Habermalz. Die jetzt vom Bundestag beschlossene Unabhängige Kommission sei immerhin einer erster Schritt. Leider habe es an der Konsequenz gefehlt, die Kommission mit einem stärkeren Mandat auszustatten, etwa um Zeugen vorzuladen oder Akteneinsicht zu verlangen.

Von Christiane Habermalz

Zahlen sind bei dem Thema Kindesmissbrauch, dass sich in den dunkelsten Ecken unserer Gesellschaft abspielt, naturgemäß schwer zu bekommen. Doch stimmen die Berechnungen der Weltgesundheitsorganisation auch nur annähernd, dann haben wir es mit Verbrechen zu tun, die längst nicht nur einzelne Unglückliche treffen. Danach leben in Deutschland eine Million Kinder und Jugendliche, die schon mindestens einmal in ihrem Leben sexuell missbraucht wurden. Eins ist klar: Diese Dimension kann nur erreicht werden, wenn es für die Täter ein gesellschaftliches und institutionelles Umfeld gibt, das ihnen Rückendeckung gibt, sprich: Sie damit rechnen können, dass systematisch weggeguckt, bagatellisiert und verdrängt wird.

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DEUTSCHLAND
Weser Kurier

[Reprocessing of child abuse and taking a look into the darkest corners.]

Berlin. Sechs Jahre ist es her, dass Mat­thias Katsch dem Leiter des Canisius-Kollegs über den sexuellen Missbrauch berichtete, den er dort als Schüler erfahren musste. Katsch war 46, als er sein Schweigen brach. Die Berichte über das katholische Gymnasium in Berlin lösten 2010 eine Welle der Enthüllungen aus, die der Debatte über Missbrauch in Deutschland eine neue Dimension gaben. Sechs Jahre später sitzt Katsch nun als ständiger Gast in der Unabhängigen Kommission für die bundesweite Aufarbeitung von Kindesmissbrauch. Das neue Gremium aus sieben ehrenamtlichen Experten hat am Dienstag auf der Bundespressekonferenz in Berlin sein Arbeitsprogramm bis 2019 vorgestellt.

Bereits im Jahr des Missbrauchsskandals hatte die Bundesregierung einen Runden Tisch eingerichtet und die Stelle eines Unabhängigen Beauftragten für Fragen des sexuellen Kindesmissbrauchs geschaffen. Amtsinhaber Johannes-Wilhelm Rörig sagte am Dienstag, es sei ein besonderer Tag: „Jetzt endlich ist eine Tür geöffnet, um Täter, Verharmloser und Unterstützer zu erkennen und den Opfern Genugtuung zu geben.“ Aufgrund der Zahlen der Weltgesundheitsorganisation (WHO) für Europa gehe man pro Jahr von einer Million betroffener Kinder und Jugendlicher in Deutschland aus – und es gebe keine Anzeichen für einen Rückgang der Fälle, so Rörig.

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IRELAND
Irish Examiner

Thursday, May 05, 2016

By Conall Ó Fátharta
Irish Examiner Reporter

The McAleese report is “neither accurate nor respectful” in the suffering women endured in Magdalene laundries, it has been claimed.

The comments were made by Claire McGettrick of Justice for Magdalenes Research, accepting a Dublin Lord Mayor Award on behalf of the Magdalene women.

She said survivors felt vindicated by an apology from Taoiseach Enda Kenny, but repeated the group’s claim the McAleese report did not disclose the full story with regard to the Magdalene laundries.

“On the surface, the women have been vindicated since Enda Kenny’s emotional apology in 2013.

“Beneath, however, there is the inescapable reality that the official State record on the experiences of Magdalene women is neither accurate nor respectful of what they endured.

“The State’s official position is that a very small level of physical abuse took place in the laundries and we absolutely refute this assertion,” said Ms McGettrick.

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AUSTRALIA
Herald Sun

May 4, 2016

Shannon Deery
Herald Sun

A YOUNG orphan boy who was publicly flogged after reporting sexual abuse at the hands of a Christian Brother suffered years of torture because he wasn’t believed.

The nine-year-old was abused almost immediately after having the misfortune of being assigned to the St Augustine’s Boys’ Home dormitory monitored by Br William Stuart Houston in 1963.

So fearful during his first attack, that saw Houston gag him and lie in bed with him, the young boy wet himself.

It earned him a series of strappings by Houston who wanted to punish the boy for wetting the bed.

When the child reported the sexual abuse to the Highton orphanage’s head brother, he was promised the matter would be looked into.

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AUSTRALIA
9 News

AAP

A former Christian Brother could die in jail over sex crimes against underprivileged, vulnerable boys in Victoria more than 40 years ago.

William Stuart Houston, 77, abused six boys when he was their supervisor at the St Augustine’s Orphanage, Highton, in the 1960s.

He prowled around some victims after lights went off in the dorm, rubbing his bristly face on theirs, kissing them, sticking his tongue in their mouths and lying on top of them.

Houston exposed and rubbed himself on other victims, and touched boys’ crotches.

He told one boy: “Don’t tell anyone. That’s right, you can’t tell anyone because you’ve got no one.”

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AUSTRALIA
The Age

May 5, 2016

Adam Cooper

Boys who were sexually assaulted by a Christian Brother at a Victorian orphanage were strapped by other men of religion after reporting the abuse, a court has heard.

When one boy reported William Stuart Houston, the head Brother declared: “This is what we do to boys who fabricate stories about us”, and strapped the child every morning for five days in front of the entire St Augustine’s orphanage.

That victim, now in his 60s, told the County Court on Thursday of the anger that still consumed him at being accused of lying and punished by the two Brothers he had approached separately about Houston.

“I am still angry to this day and the anger will be there because as a ward of the state I was let down by the system. I will never forgive William Houston for what he did to me,” he said. The court heard another victim was also punished after reporting Houston.

Houston, 77, was last month found guilty at trial of four charges of buggery, one of attempted buggery and three of indecent assault, related to attacks on three boys at the Geelong orphanage in the 1960s.

He was to face three more trials, but on Thursday pleaded guilty to 12 charges of indecent assault, related to assaults on three other boys.

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GUAM
Pacific News Center

Written by Janela Carrera

Professor Giuseppe Gennarini, however, emphasizes that the declaration of deed restriction does not give the property away.

Guam – Giuseppe Gennarini disclosed on K57 with host Patti Arroyo this morning that the declaration of deed restriction signed in 2011 was done in order to protect the Redemptoris Mater Seminary from any potential lawsuit.

Gennarini is considered a key leader in the Neocatechumenal Way and is on Guam to teach courses at the Redemptoris Mater Seminary. He has received a lot of animosity from some local catholics, many of whom are frustrated with the alleged conveyance of the Redemptoris Mater Seminary, a multimillion dollar property, to the Neocatechumenal Way.

But Gennarini has vehemently denied these allegations, pointing out that the declaration of deed restriction does not give away control from the Archbishop.

Gennarini denied any involvement in drafting of the papers and told Patti that the deed restriction was created at the suggestion of former Archdiocese of Agana legal counsel, Attorney Ed Terlaje.

“He was asking the seminary and the archbishop that in order to protect the estate of the diocese in case there is lawsuit … this was five, seven years ago, six or seven years ago. In order to protect the estate, it was better to do what they do in many diocese of America, which is somehow to assign the property to the different corporation of the diocese,” explained Gennarini.

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MINNESOTA
Fox 9

By: Tom Lyden
POSTED:MAY 04 2016

(KMSP) – When John Nienstedt resigned as Archbishop of the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis last June, he left the Archdiocese in bankruptcy and under a criminal investigation that continues to this day. The criminal investigation stems from the cover-up of sexual abuse in the church. But of all the secrets Nienstedt is accused of keeping, there is one that has never been revealed: the secret in his own family.

More than 40 years ago, as a young priest, John Nienstedt, knew of an allegation involving one of his best friends and it was Nienstedt who introduced him to his victim.

Mike Hinske is from a family of devout Catholics living in Michigan. His mother, a former Dominican nun, is John Nienstedt’s cousin.

“Oh my God he was the Pope,” Hinske said of Nienstedt. “[My parents] looked up to him like there was no tomorrow.”

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GUAM
Pacific News Center

Written by Janela Carrera

Callers were able to call into K57 to ask some tough questions of Professor Giuseppe Gennarini.

Guam – Things got pretty heated on K57 this morning as the Gennarinis were the guests on Mornings with Patti show. Halfway through the show a number of callers began asking some tough questions forcing the leaders of the Neocatechumenal Way to go on the defensive.

Some local Catholics who have been openly frustrated with Giuseppe Gennarini had a chance to openly ask questions of the Neocatechumenal Way professor, first on The Big Show with Travis Coffman yesterday and this morning on Mornings with Patti.

Gennarini and his wife, Claudia, start off explaining the motivation behind the Neocatechuman Way, especially with today’s youth.

“The youth is in a very serious situation and this is why so many pastors, so many bishops, the popes have always supported the Neocatechumenal Way–as one way, not the only one,” explains Gennarini.

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SOUTH CAROLINA
Baptist News

BOB ALLEN | MAY 4, 2016

A 20-year-old youth group volunteer at the nation’s largest Southern Baptist church has been arrested on a charge of sexually assaulting a minor.

Leo LaSalle Comissiong III is accused of kissing and fondling a 15-year-old boy in February at the Florence, S.C., location of NewSpring Church, a multi-site congregation based in Anderson, S.C. The church is ranked No. 1 on a LifeWay Christian Resources list compiled by LifeWay head Thom Rainer of the 500 largest Southern Baptist churches with an average attendance of 31,215 in 2014.

Suzanne Swift, chief public relations and marketing officer for NewSpring Church, released a statement saying a NewSpring Church staff member saw Comissiong enter an unoccupied room with a 15-year-old, violating a policy that forbids adults from being alone with children or teens while on a NewSpring campus.

Swift said Comissiong denied any wrongdoing at that time but after questioning him a second time church leaders removed him from volunteering at the church in any capacity. After talking separately to the student, Swift said NewSpring staff contacted law enforcement and have since then fully cooperated with the investigation.

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TENNESSEE
Nashville Post

Cari Wade Gervin

Cornerstone Church, the evangelical megachurch located in Madison, has been sued by a former member who alleges its negligence led to his molestation by a volunteer on the youth staff in 2008.

Brian Lance Mitchell was convicted of the abuse in 2012. At the time, the church said Mitchell had been pretending to be a volunteer to obtain access to the victim.

However, the lawsuit alleges that isn’t true. It states:

Mitchell had been vetted by Cornerstone for the Youth Staff in 2007, at which point he disclosed that he had been convicted of contributing to the delinquency of a minor in 2003, when he provided alcohol to three minor children. Yet Cornerstone still let him volunteer with children, along with operating a sound board. After the victim’s mother asked pastor Dana Lawson for advice in finding a male role model for her son — whose father had committed suicide when he was an infant — Lawson recommended Mitchell. Throughout 2007, the suit claims, Mitchell regularly spent unsupervised time with the victim, both on and off the church’s campus, and in the summer of 2008 was appointed his “official mentor.” Later that summer, the lawsuit alleges, Mitchell fondled and raped the victim and also took nude pictures and videos of him. Shortly thereafter, the victims’ mother found inappropriate text messages from Mitchell to her son, referring to himself as “Daddy.” She told the church administration about the messages, and they promised to “take care” of the situation. But the next Sunday, Davis allegedly used the situation in his sermon, publicly blaming her for letting her son be alone with an older man. Meanwhile, Mitchell continued to attend Cornerstone on occasions until at least 2010.

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NEW YORK
WHEC

New Yorkers who were molested as children joined lawmakers and advocates in a two-day rally for lifting the state’s statute of limitations on suing abusers, saying the law closing the window at age 23 guarantees many more young victims.

Their effort has faced years of opposition from the Catholic Church and other institutions.

Lawmakers said prospects are improving with a recent change in legislative leadership in Albany. They also cited Massachusetts’ passage two years ago of a similar measure and the recent Academy Award-winning film “Spotlight” about priests sexually abusing boys in Boston.

The film was being shown Wednesday near the Capitol.

“I think we have some movement on the bill,” Assemblywoman Margaret Markey said Wednesday. The Queens Democrat has repeatedly introduced legislation that hasn’t advanced, but which currently has 61 co-sponsors in the 150-seat Assembly.

Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie, a Bronx Democrat, has said the bill will be discussed in the majority Democratic Conference this year, a spokesman said Wednesday. The legislative session ends in June.

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AUSTRALIA
Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse

5 May, 2016

The Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse has invited submissions from individuals and organisations about any factors which may have contributed to the occurrence of child sexual abuse in Catholic institutions, or affected the institutional response to child sexual abuse within the Catholic Church.

The Royal Commission’s Issues Paper 11: Catholic Church Final Hearing was released today, giving all interested parties the chance to provide input prior to a final public hearing into the Catholic Church in February 2017.

Royal Commission Chief Executive Officer Philip Reed said the Royal Commission case studies have considered a number of Catholic Church institutions, including the Archdioceses of Melbourne and Adelaide, the Dioceses of Ballarat, Wollongong and Rockhampton, Catholic Education Offices, and the Marist Brothers, the Christian Brothers, and the Sisters of Mercy. Case studies have also considered the Towards Healing process and the Melbourne Response.

“The Royal Commission is inviting submissions on a number of factors identified through our work including canon law, mandatory celibacy and the selection, screening, training and ongoing support and supervision of working priests and religious,” Mr Reed said.

“We wish to examine to what extent these and other factors have contributed to the occurrence of child sexual abuse in Catholic institutions, or whether these issues have affected the institutional response to child sexual abuse,” Mr Reed said.

The Royal Commission is also seeking comment and submissions on the current and future proposed approaches of Catholic Church authorities to responding to survivors of child sexual abuse, individuals subject to allegations of child sexual abuse and the prevention of child sexual abuse.

To access a copy of Issues Paper 11: Catholic Church Final Hearing, please visit the Royal Commission’s website at http://www.childabuseroyalcommission.gov.au/research/issues-papers-submissions.

Submissions should be made by 1 July 2016 in writing to GPO Box 5283, Sydney, NSW, 2001 or via email to catholic@childabuseroyalcommission.gov.au. Submissions can be anonymous.

If individuals have participated in a private session and would like their session to be recognised as a formal, confidential submission to this Issues Paper, please contact the Royal Commission at catholic@childabuseroyalcommission.gov.au.

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