ABUSE TRACKER

CALIFORNIA
Courthouse News Service

By BIANCA BRUNO

SAN DIEGO (CN) – A former Ohio seminary student charged with planning to travel to Mexico to purchase children to sexually abuse pleaded not guilty to a raft of charges in Federal Court Thursday.

Joel Alexander Wright appeared before U.S. District Magistrate Judge Bernard Skomal. He pleaded not guilty to all felony charges including aggravated sexual abuse, travel with intent to engage in illicit sexual conduct and criminal forfeiture.

Wright faces 60 years to life in prison if found guilty on all charges, according to Assistant U.S. Attorney Alessandra Serano.

Federal authorities arrested the seminarian on Jan. 29 at the San Diego International Airport following a months-long sting operation by Homeland Security Investigations agents in San Diego.

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AUSTRALIA
The Courier

Feb. 26, 2016

When Cardinal George Pell likened the Catholic Church’s responsibility for child abuse to that of a trucking company in his last evidence to a child sex abuse inquiry, clergy abuse survivor Peter Blenkiron clenched his teeth so tightly he cracked his tooth.

For years Mr Blenkiron, who was abused by disgraced Christian Brother Edward Dowlan when he was 11, battled suicidal thoughts playing like a stereo in his head.

He says he is one of the lucky ones. He’s still here.

But he describes himself as a broken man looking for healing.

A dark history of abuse and rape has shattered lives across the Ballarat region and Mr Blenkiron has spent years searching for the light in the midst of darkness.

“There has to be an end to this all, there has to be hope for those still struggling and future children have to be protected, always,” Mr Blenkiron said.

Mr Blenkiron said the survivors’ trip to Rome was a small step for the damaged men of Ballarat making the journey and a huge step for Australia.

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RHODE ISLAND
Providence Journal

By Karen Lee Ziner
Journal Staff Writer

Posted Feb. 25, 2016

PROVIDENCE, R.I. — The Rhode Island Supreme Court heard arguments Tuesday in an appeal involving repressed memory claims of child sexual-abuse against the Roman Catholic Diocese of Providence. The claims brought by Helen L. (McGonigle) Hyde and Jeffrey Thomas in 2008 date to the 1960s, when they were both between 6 and 9 years old.

Hyde, of Connecticut, and Thomas, of Massachusetts, are jointly asking the court to reverse dismissal of their lawsuits against the diocese. A Superior Court judge found that the statute of limitations had elapsed.

Hyde and Thomas alleged that they were molested by the late Rev. Brendan Smyth, an Irish priest who served as pastor of Our Lady of Mercy in East Greenwich for three years. Smyth died in 1967, while serving a 12-year prison sentence in Ireland for admitted child sexual abuse.

The case in part hinges on whether repressed memory alone constitutes a form of “unsound mind”; or whether unsound mind also requires that a person be incapable of handling day-to-day affairs. The trial court determined the latter is necessary in order to stop the clock from ticking on the statute, as it relates to “non-perpetrator defendants.”

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OREGON
KATU

BY KELLEE AZAR, KATU NEWS FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 26TH 2016

An Oregon man using a pseudo name of “David Smith” is suing the Dominican Order and Holy Rosary Church in Northeast Portland.

Smith was an altar boy at the time. He alleges he was sexually abused by Father Emmerich Vogt.

“He was subjected to kissing, extended hugging, touching, something no kid should have to go through, especially with a priest,” Smith’s lawyer Kristian Roggendorf of Roggendorf Law said.

Also in the complaint are allegations of graphic sexual conversations.

“That can really mess with a child’s mind having to endure that day after day, year after year. For years and it’s really something that shouldn’t have happened,” Roggendorf said.

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AUSTRALIA
TVNZ

A group of Australian survivors of child sex abuse by Catholic clergy are flying to Rome tonight to watch Cardinal George Pell give evidence to Australia’s abuse royal commission.

Cardinal Pell, a former Ballarat priest and Melbourne archbishop who is now in charge of the Vatican’s finances, will give evidence about the church’s handling of abuse in the Ballarat diocese and Melbourne archdiocese on Monday.

Some other survivors and the parents of victims have already arranged private flights.

“He’s worked his way right through the hierarchy right up to the top of the Catholic Church so we really want to hear the truth about what happened,” Chrissie Foster, whose daughters were abused, told the ABC at Melbourne Airport this morning.

“It’s about time we saw some action out of the Catholic Church so maybe hearing the whole truth from him we might actually start to see some action.”

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AUSTRALIA
The Age

February 26, 2016

Melissa Cunningham

When Cardinal George Pell likened the Catholic Church’s responsibility for child abuse to that of a trucking company in his last evidence to a child sex abuse inquiry, clerical abuse survivor Peter Blenkiron clenched his teeth so tightly he cracked his tooth.

For years Mr Blenkiron, who was abused by disgraced Christian Brother Edward Dowlan when he was 11, battled suicidal thoughts, but he says he is one of the lucky ones. He’s still here.

Mr Blenkiron is among 14 Ballarat clerical abuse victims who will travel 16,000 kilometres to Rome this weekend to see Cardinal Pell give evidence once more to the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse.

The survivors will be in the room at the Rome’s Hotel Qurinale where on Monday Australian time, Cardinal Pell will take the stand to give evidence about his time as an adviser to former Ballarat bishop Ronald Mulkearns.

The trip follows a national crowd-funding campaign to help the survivors bear witness to Cardinal Pell’s evidence in Rome after the inquiry accepted a medical report which said the he was at risk of heart failure if he made the journey back to Australia.

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AUSTRALIA
Newcastle Herald

By JOANNE MCCARTHY
Feb. 26, 2016

IT is two days before an Australian royal commission questions a cardinal in Rome about child sexual abuse, and a Hunter man is thinking about how it all started, with the death of his son.

John Pirona’s suicide in July, 2012, after he was sexually abused by Catholic priest John Denham as a child and left a final note that ended with the words “Too much pain”, was the catalyst for the Newcastle Herald’s Shine the Light campaign for a royal commission.

His father Lou Pirona accepts John’s death provided the focus for a community that said enough was enough. The loss of one life came to represent the loss of many.

The Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse is the legacy of John Pirona and the thousands of others whose childhoods were devastated, Mr Pirona said.

He will watch a royal commission live stream of Cardinal George Pell giving evidence from Rome on Monday about what he knew about child sexual abuse in the Ballarat area of Victoria.

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TEXAS
The Baptist Standard

February 23, 2016
By KEN CAMP / MANAGING EDITOR

DALLAS—The Baptist General Convention of Texas Executive Board voted Feb. 23 to change the convention’s focus on clergy sexual misconduct. It will implement a sexual abuse prevention program and will eliminate its confidential file of clergy charged with misdeeds.

The board will provide training opportunities and web-based resources to strengthen Texas Baptist churches’ ability to avoid clergy sexual misconduct and to extend compassion when misconduct is alleged or proven true.

Resources and training initially will focus on protection for children. Later, the scope will expand to include adult-to-adult abuse.

Grew from internal review of policy

The recommendation from the board’s administration support committee to discontinue the clergy sexual misconduct file and to expand educational resources grew from an internal review of the BGCT policy and its effectiveness, said Rollie Richmond, BGCT director of human resources.

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AUSTRALIA
Daily Mail

By BELINDA CLEARY FOR DAILY MAIL AUSTRALIA

A church minister has taken on Cardinal George Pell and the Australian government’s treatment of refugees in one carefully worded sign.

The Melbourne Welsh Church’s Minister Sion Gough Hughes has publically questioned the government’s decision to fly refugee babies back to detention while failing to fly Cardinal Pell back to Australia to give evidence at the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse.

It reads; ‘Australia – where the government will try to put a sick baby on a plane, but not a sick Cardinal.’

The sign has gone viral online after being posted to Facebook on Monday.

Minister Gough Hughes told Daily Mail Australia the sign is less about Pell then it is refugees.
‘People have taken it to be about Pell, but he is innocent until proven guilty but I do believe he needs to turn up,’ he said.

‘He needs to come and tell the Royal Commission what he knows, we don’t know what he knows so that is the issue.’

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BELGIE
Het Nieuwsblad

[Appeal Court rejects complaint by victims of sexual abuse against the Holy See.]

GENT – De dagvaarding van de Heilige Stoel en de Belgische bisschoppen door slachtoffers van seksueel misbruik, is nietig. Dat heeft het Gentse hof van beroep donderdag beslist in een bevestiging van het vonnis van de rechtbank van eerste aanleg in Gent. Een veertigtal slachtoffers probeerde een groepsvordering in te dienen, maar krijgt opnieuw ongelijk.

De groepsvordering werd ingeleid door de advocatenassociatie Van Steenbrugge, Van Acker & Mussche en gebeurde in naam van slachtoffers van seksueel misbruik in de kerk. Het advocatenkantoor probeerde een collectieve vordering of “class action”-zaak in te stellen. De bedoeling van de klacht was om de aansprakelijkheid in hoofde van de Heilige Stoel, de Belgische bisschoppen en de hogere oversten te laten vaststellen.

Immuniteit

De eisers stelden dat ze allen slachtoffer waren van seksueel misbruik en dat ze schade leden door de nalatigheid van de kerkelijke overheid. De rechtbank van eerste aanleg in Gent besliste in 2013 dat de dagvaarding nietig was. Volgens de rechtbank kon één slachtoffer niet dagvaarden in naam van een hele groep slachtoffers en gold de immuniteit van de Heilige Stoel. Het hof van beroep in Gent oordeelde donderdag eveneens dat de Heilige Stoel staatsimmuniteit geniet en dat de vordering op “geen enkel concreet feit” gebaseerd is.

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NEW JERSEY
Road to Recovery

Leaders of the Salesian Priests and Brothers have refused to settle a childhood sexual abuse claim against one of their priests, Fr. Joseph Maffei, SDB, causing the victim, who was abused in Indiana, to be re-victimized. The victim is being denied justice.

One of the leaders of the Salesian Priests and Brothers, who is in charge of allegations of sexual abuse against Salesian Priests and Brothers, told advocate Dr. Robert M. Hoatson several weeks ago during a demonstration at a New Jersey church that the Salesians were settling the claim of the Indiana man. There has been no settlement and no talks of settlement

What
A demonstration and leafleting alerting the media, general public, parishioners, and school parents about the refusal of the Salesian Priests and Brothers, based in New Rochelle, New York, to settle a claim of sexual abuse of a child by a member of the Salesians of Don Bosco religious order, Fr. Joseph Maffei, SDB, when he was assigned to St. Dominic Savio Juniorate in Cedar Lake, Indiana

When
Friday, February 26, 2016 from 7:00 am until 8:00 am
Friday, February 26, 2016 from 1:00 pm until 2:30 pm

Where
FROM 7:00 – 8:00 AM
On the public sidewalk outside the headquarters of the Salesians of Don Bosco religious order and Salesian High School, 148 East Main Street, New Rochelle, New York 10801

FROM 1:00 PM until 2:30 PM
On the public sidewalk outside Don Bosco Preparatory School, 492 North Franklin Turnpike, Ramsey, New Jersey 07446

Who
Members of Road to Recovery, Inc., a non-profit charity based in New Jersey that assists victims of sexual abuse and their families, including its co-founder and President, Robert M. Hoatson, Ph.D.

Why
The Salesians of Don Bosco religious order refuses to settle a sexual abuse claim against one of its priests, Fr. Joseph Maffei, SDB. Fr. Maffei’s victim is a former student of a Salesian Juniorate school in Indiana. One of the leaders of the Salesians told advocate Dr. Robert M. Hoatson during a demonstration at Our Lady of the Valley Church in Orange, New Jersey several weeks ago that the sexual abuse claim was being settled, yet no settlement talks have taken place since that time. Demonstrators will call on the Salesian Priests and Brothers to do the right thing, settle the sexual abuse claim of the Indiana man, and treat him fairly and justly.

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

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UNITED STATES
Insurance Journal

By Rose French | June 18, 2007

The three companies that insure the majority of Protestant churches in America say they typically receive upward of 260 reports each year of young people under 18 being sexually abused by clergy, church staff, volunteers or congregation members.

The figures released to The Associated Press offer a glimpse into what has long been an extremely difficult phenomenon to pin down — the frequency of sex abuse in Protestant congregations.

Religious groups and victims’ supporters have been keenly interested in the figure ever since the Roman Catholic sex abuse crisis hit five years ago. The church has revealed that there have been 13,000 credible accusations against Catholic clerics since 1950.

Protestant numbers have been harder to come by and are sketchier because the denominations are less centralized than the Catholic church; indeed, many congregations are independent, which makes reporting even more difficult.

Some of the only numbers come from three insurance companies — Church Mutual Insurance Co., GuideOne Insurance Co. and Brotherhood Mutual Insurance Co.

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UNITED STATES
Vanrity Fair

BY JULIE MILLER

With all of the champagne and red-carpet ephemera spilling and swirling through Oscar season, it’s easy to forget the importance of film. But on Wednesday night, Vanity Fair reminded Hollywood of the medium’s potential with an intimate dinner honoring Spotlight, the powerful drama from Tom McCarthy that chronicles the Boston Globe’s Pulitzer Prize–winning investigation of the Catholic Church’s sex-abuse cover-up. The real-life reporters who attended the event, co-hosted by Barneys New York at the Chateau Marmont, cut through the Hollywood pomp to speak about meaningful matters highlighted in the best-picture candidate.

“It says such wonderful things about the importance of investigative journalism, which we very much believe in and which is in serious decline,” said Michael Rezendes, the reporter who is portrayed in the drama by Mark Ruffalo. “And also what it says about clergy sex abuse, an issue that we feel very strongly about, is so important.”

Rezendes joined cast members including Ruffalo, Rachel McAdams, Liev Schreiber, and Brian d’Arcy James at the event, and will be attending the Oscars come Sunday. But even at splashy, celebrity-attended affairs, Rezendes said that he always has the investigation and “the survivors in mind. But the attention the film is getting is all very validating. It’s wonderful.”

Because of Spotlight’s significant subject matter, Rezendes believes that the drama deserves the big best-picture prize come Sunday. “This is a movie about something that really, really matters. But it’s not a pill either. I think it’s incredibly entertaining and suspenseful and authentic.”

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MICHIGAN
Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests

For immediate release: Thursday, Feb. 25, 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 predator priest, Fr. Louis Grandpre, has passed away. As best we can tell, Detroit Archbishop Allen Vignernon kept this quiet, denying abuse victims months of comfort. Vignernon seems incapable of handling any part of the church’s on-going abuse and cover up crisis with honesty and compassion. Shame on him for not letting parents, parishioners and the public know about this predator’s passing.

[Death Notifices]

In 2013, when Fr. Grandpre was finally exposed as a child molester, Vignernon was deceptive. He implied that this was the first allegation of wrongdoing against the priest. It wasn’t.

A private archdiocesan memo showed that Fr. Grandpre was also credibly accused of sexual harassment 15 years ago. How do we know the allegation was “credible?” Because a mediator suggested the victim be paid $160,000. And remember, that was almost 20 years ago.

[BishopAccountability.org]

It would have taken Vigneron minutes to approve and have his public relations team send out a news release about Fr. Grandpre’s death. That would have brought relief to those who worried, until now, that Fr. Grandpre might still be hurting children. That also would have shown that Vigneron takes seriously his repeated pledges to be “open” about predator priests.

Fr. Grandpre retired as pastor of St. Paul of Tarsus Parish in Clinton Township in 2003 but stayed in the parish. A decade later, in 2013, archdiocesan officials disclosed that he’d been credibly accused of molesting a child. We suspect he molested several kids.

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UNITED STATES
USA Today

Edward J. Burns February 25, 2016

It is important to state that the work of fostering a safe environment for children is a top priority and sacred responsibility of the Catholic Church.

In 2002, Pope John Paul II addressed sexual abuse in the Church and called it “a crime.” In light of this abuse, he said that “the Church herself is viewed with distrust.”

In a 2010 pastoral letter, Pope Benedict XVI said to bishops, “It cannot be denied that some of you and your predecessors failed, at times grievously, to apply the long-established norms of canon law to the crime of child abuse.”

This past September, Pope Francis, immediately after meeting with victims of sexual abuse, spoke to the bishops taking part in the World Meeting of Families in Philadelphia. He said, “I commit myself to ensuring that the Church makes every effort to protect minors, and I promise that those responsible will be held to account. Survivors of abuse have become true heralds of hope and ministers of mercy; humbly we owe our gratitude to each of them and to their families for their great courage in shedding the light of Christ on the evil sexual abuse of minors.”

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UNITED STATES
The Dallas Morning News

Pardon us for rooting for Spotlight, a movie about watchdog journalism, to take home the golden statuette for best movie at Sunday’s Oscars.

The critical acclaim for Spotlight has elevated great public service journalism from the anonymous drudgery of tedious record searches, endless interviews and sleepless nights to global prominence. And, we hope, it offers the public a small window into what inspires so many journalists to come to work each day.

The movie depicts how the Boston Globe took on the insular and powerful Roman Catholic Church in Boston to investigate allegations against defrocked priest John Geoghan, accused of molesting more than 80 boys. The Globe showed intense reporting courage and newsroom leadership to prove that the church was covering up sexual abuse.

The real investigation created angst in the Boston Globe newsroom as editors, executives and reporters worked to uncover a horrific story about Boston’s most powerful institution. Most people never bear witness to this internal challenge of journalism; Spotlight portrayed it so accurately.

Most of all, the film revealed the importance of vigorous reporting and how great watchdog work protects our democracy and those who live in it. And it shows that society-changing stories don’t just fall into a reporter’s lap.

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UNITED STATES
USA Today

The Editorial Board

February 25, 2016

Catholic Church drags its feet on accountability for sexual abuse scandal.

You can’t expect a movie, even one as riveting as Spotlight, to change the culture of a centuries-old institution like the Catholic Church. But perhaps the film, up for six Academy Awards on Sunday, can remind the church of its unfinished business in confronting a decades-long coverup of rampant child molestation.

The movie depicts an investigation by the Spotlight reporting team at The Boston Globe, which broke the news in January 2002 and brought international attention to a sickening scandal in Boston that has since engulfed the church around the world. In the United States alone, more than 17,000 victims have reported sexual abuse, going back as far as 1950, involving about 6,400 priests in 100 cities.

Yet, not once in the past 14 years has a single U.S. bishop, let alone a cardinal, been removed from ministry for a role in the scandal. Perhaps the church could not have prevented child molesters from entering the priesthood, but bishops and cardinals could have stopped the crimes of serial predators. Many children would have been spared had religious leaders done what you’d expect any decent person to do: Report alleged crimes to authorities and, at the very least, keep molesters away from children. Often, they did neither.

Reports of abuse were ignored. Predator priests were sent for “treatment,” then shuffled off to other parishes, often to molest again. When lawsuits threatened to blow the church’s cover, the cases were settled secretly.

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BELGIE
KRO-NCRV

[A court in Ghent today said Belgian bishops and other church officials can not be held jointly and liable for the damage to victims of sexual abuse. Forty victims had gone to court to recover damages jointly by church officials for negligence.]

Gent (BELGA/ANP) 25 februari 2016 – Belgische bisschoppen en andere kerkelijke hoogwaardigheidsbekleders kunnen niet hoofdelijk aansprakelijk worden gesteld voor de schade van slachtoffers van seksueel misbruik. Een veertigtal slachtoffers was naar de rechter gestapt om gezamenlijk schade te verhalen bij kerkelijke bestuurders wegens nalatigheid.

Het hof van beroep in Gent verklaarde de dagvaarding vandaag in navolging van het vonnis van de rechtbank in 2013 nietig. “Nergens wordt vermeld wie, waar of wanneer misbruikt werd”, aldus het hof. De beschuldiging is niet concreet en specifiek genoeg en de geestelijken weten dan niet waartegen ze zich moeten verweren, aldus het hof.

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MEXICO
El Popular

[The former priest Alberto Athie Gallo said the number of pedophile priests are still hidden.]

El activista y defensor de las víctimas de abuso sexual cometidos por sacerdotes católicos, Alberto Athié Gallo, aseguró que no se sabe el paradero del sacerdote Nicolás Aguilar, quien se ordenó en la década de 1970 en la diócesis de Tehuacán, región donde trabajó y tras ser señalado por abusos fue cambiado pero después regresó.

También dijo que el número de abusos sexuales cometidos por sacerdotes en territorio poblano es todavía un secreto que se resguarda en el poder que mantiene la Iglesia católica en Puebla, aunado a la colusión que existe con las autoridades civiles.

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ESPANA
El Mundo

[Psychologists say a boy who said he was abused by a teacher at an Opus Dei school was telling the truth.]

25/02/2016

Cuando el chico contó que a los 12 años su profesor le llevaba al despacho y bajaba las persianas, cuando explicó que le tocaba los muslos y le pedía que se masturbara, cuando relató que le hacía desnudarse y le manoseaba por todo el cuerpo, cuando recordó que le forzaba a sentarse en sus rodillas y todo lo demás, decimos, el chico no estaba con una fabulación de adolescente.

El chico estaba contando la verdad de un hombre.Eso es lo que sostienen las dos psicólogas y las dos médicos forenses que han explorado al alumno de 19 años.El informe definitivo encargado por el Juzgado de Primera Instancia e Instrucción número 5 de Getxo (Vizcaya) sostiene ahora que el chaval no miente.

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UNITED KINGDOM
Salisbury Journal

A RETIRED vicar has denied raping a schoolgirl more than 40 years ago.

Fredrick Williams, 74, of Central Street, Ludgershall, pleaded not guilty to nine sexual abuse charges at Salisbury Crown Court on Friday, all relating to the same girl.

He stands accused of raping the girl, who cannot be named for legal reasons, twice between September 1971 and June 1974.

The remaining seven charges relate to other sexual acts allegedly carried out between January 1971 and June 1974.

In the dock at Salisbury Crown Court, Mr Williams requested a hearing-loop to help him follow proceedings.

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UNITED STATES
Reveal: The Center for Investigative Reporting

By Heidi Hirvonen / February 25, 2016

The release of “Spotlight” – the Oscar-nominated film chronicling The Boston Globe’s groundbreaking investigation into child sexual abuse among Catholic priests – has refocused attention on problems in the church and trumpeted the importance of investigative reporting.

This week’s episode of Reveal goes behind the scenes with the real Globe reporters to learn more about how the story broke in 2002 – and what happened after the credits rolled.

CULTURE OF SECRECY LEAVES DOOR OPEN FOR SEX ABUSE

Right now, we’re learning a lot about another religion with a history of hiding child sexual abuse. The themes in our new episode parallel Reveal reporter Trey Bundy’s ongoing investigation into abuse among Jehovah’s Witnesses. Taken together, the two religions share a series of troubling themes and tactics.

Abuse allegations stifled from the top

The Globe’s reporting didn’t just reveal crimes; it shed light on a series of cover-ups by high-ranking Catholic Church officials. In one dramatic example, a priest who had been accused of molestation and rape more than 130 times was not disciplined. Rather, he was reassigned by then-Cardinal Bernard Law to a new parish, with disastrous consequences.

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AUSTRALIA
ABC News

By Rachael Brown

A group of church abuse survivors will take off from Melbourne today for Rome, to be in the same room as Cardinal George Pell as he fronts the child abuse royal commission.

They had hoped the Cardinal would visit the Victorian city of Ballarat, a site of clerical abuse in the 1960s and ’70s, but a heart condition has prevented him leaving the Vatican.

For some, travelling 16,000 kilometres to watch what will be broadcast to Australia via video-link is about taking some power back.

Others feel it will be harder for the Cardinal to fudge facts if victims are staring him in the eye when he faces the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse.

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UNITED STATES
The Jewish Week

02/25/16

Amy Sara Clark
Deputy Managing Editor

Sam Kellner’s defamation suit against The Jewish Daily Forward lives to fight another day.

Manhattan Supreme Court Judge Debra A. James denied the newspaper’s motion to dismiss in a decision issued today, ruling that Kellner is a private person, not a public figure as The Forward had argued. The distinction is key because that means Kellner only needs to show that The Forward acted negligently rather than with actual malice.

The subject of the suit, brought by Kellner in November 2014, is an article written by Paul Berger, “Sam Kellner’s Tangled Hasidic Tale of Child Sex Abuse, Extortion and Faith,” and a tweet, mistakenly referring to Kellner as a convicted extortionist. According to Kellner’s complaint, the tweet went uncorrected by the paper for six days after they were alerted to the error.

The Forward sought to have the case dismissed on the grounds that the article was opinion, and thus protected speech. It also argued that the mistaken language of the tweet was inadvertent and not intended to defame Kellner.

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NEW YORK
Jerusalem Post

The suspect, an unnamed twenty-year-old haredi man who is said to come from a prominent family, turned himself in earlier this week after the NYPD released security camera footage of him.

A police investigation into an ultra-orthodox man believed to have attempted to abduct a Brooklyn teenager was closed this week after the victim stopped cooperating with police due to communal pressure, the Daily News reported on Wednesday.

The suspect, an unnamed twenty-year-old haredi man who is said to come from a prominent family, turned himself in earlier this week after the NYPD released security camera footage of him. The suspect accosted the fourteen year old girl in the Midwood neighborhood of Brooklyn last Tuesday, attempting to physically restrain her and demanding that she come with him until confronted by a third party.

Despite the suspect turning himself in, however, police sources who spoke with the New York newspaper asserted that no further probe into the matter is in the works as the family of the victim “stopped cooperating with the cops.”

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AUSTRALIA
Starts at Sixty

As they readied to board a plane to Rome to face Cardinal George Pell, church abuse survivors shared their thoughts, fears and hopes about the long trip to Italy.

A group of ten victims will leave today, accompanied by a small support team of counsellors and doctors who will help them through to difficult proceedings.

The group hope that by forcing Pell to face them in person as he gives his testimony, he will be compelled to give honest and factual responses to the Inquiry’s questions.

One of the survivors making the trip is David Ridsdale, who told the royal commission he phoned Pell in 1993 to tell him that his uncle Gerald Ridsdale was abusing him.

Instead of helping him and reporting Gerald to the police, Pell tried to silence David.

“What we’re hoping for is the same we’ve given, which is just truth,” David told the ABC.

“I guess it will with a part of the story, because it was the phone call I made to Cardinal Pell which set my trajectory on this very public path I’ve found myself, which was never my intention and something that was very difficult for me to have come to grips with.

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AUSTRALIA
SBS

AAP

There is huge international interest in what Cardinal George Pell has to say about the sexual abuse of children by clergy in the Ballarat region of Victoria when he gives evidence from a conference room at the elegant Hotel Quirinale in Rome.

By virtue of his position – head of the Secretariat of the Economy – Dr Pell is the third most powerful member of the Catholic Church bureaucracy.

This, combined with his request to give evidence by video-link, by itself would have been enough to swing the spotlight towards the Vatican.

However, international media interest has been further boosted by news an Australian crowd funding effort raised the money for abuse survivors to go to Rome to be in the room when the cardinal appears on Monday.

Hope are high the painstaking approach to questioning taken by the child sexual abuse royal commission will get beyond rhetoric and shed light on how the Vatican hierarchy handles abuse by Catholic clergy.

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AUSTRALIA
The Guardian

David Marr
Thursday 25 February 2016

Cardinal George Pell is bold. Priests have told the royal commission into institutional responses to child sexual abuse over and over again that they knew something was going on back then and now regret doing little more than passing the awful news up the line.

They left it to others.

That’s not Pell’s position. He says he knew nothing – nothing while he was a priest in Ballarat about the paedophiles around him, and little about these men and their victims in his years as an auxiliary bishop in Melbourne.

He was never in the loop. No one warned him. No one complained to him. He didn’t read that letter or this report. It never came up at meetings. There’s nothing in the minutes. There’s nothing in the files.

According to the cardinal, he rose through the ranks in a state of nearly perfect ignorance while – as he now acknowledges with remorse – systematic cover-ups allowed paedophile priests to prey on innocent children.

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AUSTRALIA
The Age

February 25, 2016

Chris Johnston

The Christian Brothers hired a private investigator in 1995 to “dig up dirt” on victims of a notorious paedophile priest in Ballarat.

The Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse was told today the private investigator, Glynis McNeight, of Ballarat, visited two victims of Brother Ted Dowlan at home just before Dowlan was charged by police for historical sex crimes against boys.
Ted Dowlan.

The object of the exercise, the commission heard, was for the Christian Brothers’ legal team – from a small firm in Ocean Grove – to find out what kind of witnesses the victims would be in court and whether, according to counsel assisting the commission Stephen Free, they would be “easily torn apart in the witness box”.

One victim Ms McNeight visited ended up crying and agitated and she reported to the law firm – which was being paid by the Christian Brothers – that the victim was “nervous” and “excitable” and was prone to tears and bad language. He would have “no credibility” as a witness, she wrote.

The investigator, who called herself an “inquiry agent”, asked Victoria Police for details of the victims but police refused. A policeman involved in the investigation warned her that she could pervert the course of justice.

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CALIFORNIA
Hollywood Reporter

2/24/2016 by Ben Zauzmer

The winners that a mathematical model predicts in the top eight categories favor Leonardo DiCaprio and Brie Larson, but Sylvester Stallone may have to sweat it out.

The Revenant is twice as likely as Spotlight to take the big prize of best picture at Sunday night’s 88th annual Oscars. Leonardo DiCaprio and Brie Larson are, statistically speaking, assured the top acting awards. But while many are predicting a Sylvester Stallone victory in the best supporting actor category, that race is still looking like a close call.

That, at least, is how my mathematical predictions are looking for the big night.

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UNITED STATES
National Catholic Reporter

Donna B. Doucette | Feb. 25, 2016

The critically acclaimed movie “Spotlight” could receive a Best Picture Oscar this Sunday. The film about how The Boston Globe investigated and brought to light clergy sexual abuse of children and its cover up in the Boston archdiocese has brought renewed awareness to the scandal worldwide.

But many Catholics have had a heightened sense of the crisis all along. Some of those Catholics — determined to remain faithful while addressing the scandal — formed Voice of the Faithful only a couple of months after the Globe’s sensational January 2002 story appeared.

VOTF continues its work nearly a decade and half later because the scandal remains — “a mass psychological dysfunction hidden in plain sight, which has stretched back decades or even centuries and will, unchecked, do precisely the same in the future,” according to Peter Bradshaw’s “Spotlight” review in The Guardian.

Amid the passionate indignation the scandal created, VOTF grew rapidly to comprise an international membership. Key to members is to remain faithful Catholics and to help redress and prevent scandal by changing the way the Church operates.

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UNITED STATES
ProPublica

by Stephen Engelberg
ProPublica, Feb. 25, 2016

There’s a moment in almost every movie when people in the audience who really know the line of work depicted on screen cry out in frustration and say: “Oh, come on!” “Absurd.” “Never happens.”

Over the decades, Hollywood screenwriters have taken liberties with every imaginable profession and craft, from doctors to lawyers to spies to police detectives. Rocky Balboa survives punches that would decapitate an ordinary boxer. The car chases in The Bourne Identity defy physics. John McClane, the hard-boiled cop in the Die Hard series, displays a supernatural ability to evade bullets.

Journalism movies have had their share of utterly improbable moments. In the 1994 film “The Paper,” the city editor of a New York City tabloid gets into a fist fight with his female boss as he tries to stop the presses. (Not a great career move.) More recently, the first season of HBO’s television series The Newsroom showed a producer landing a series of astounding scoops in the first hours after the explosion of the Deepwater Horizon. The reporter’s information came from miraculously well-placed sources – a sister who worked at Halliburton and a close friend who happened to be a junior BP executive attending all the key crisis meetings.

All of this makes “Spotlight,” the film based on the Boston Globe’s investigation of the Catholic Church, a remarkable achievement. The movie, which has been nominated for six Academy Awards including best picture, vividly captures the mix of frustration, drudgery and excitement that goes into every great investigative story. Where liberties were taken, and there were a few, they are in line with the realities of the news business.

One of the most credible aspects of the movie is the cluelessness with which the reporters begin their quest. As is often the case, the Globe’s group of reporters, known as the “Spotlight” Team, have no idea of the size and scope of what they’re trying to examine. At first, they stumble around, lacking the most basic information about how the church bureaucracy worked.

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UNITED STATES
Variety

Sacha Pfeiffer
@SachaPfeiffer

No good can come from getting involved with Hollywood.

That was my firm conviction when a pair of producers approached me and my Boston Globe Spotlight team colleagues seven years ago with what seemed a fanciful proposal: that one of our past projects, on the Catholic Church’s cover-up of clergy sex abuse, could become an intriguing film.

I was highly wary. Never mind that the grim topic would likely have little appeal to mainstream audiences. Never mind that our jobs are hardly cinematic — we make phone calls, review documents, collect data — and were unlikely to be compelling on screen.

Beyond that, I feared for our personal lives, the loss of privacy, the inevitable sensationalism as reality morphed into screenplay. I envisioned fictionalized interoffice affairs — the Hollywoodization of our lives.

But my colleagues had fewer reservations, and were persuaded by Blye Faust and Nicole Rocklin’s pitch: They told us they wanted to make a movie that would celebrate journalism at a time when the newspaper industry is in great financial peril.

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UNITED STATES
TCPalm

By Paul Janensch

My choice for best picture of 2015 is “Spotlight.”

This extraordinary movie shows us how reporters and editors at The Boston Globe exposed the sexual abuse of children by Catholic priests in the Boston area.

We’ll find out if it wins the Oscar for best picture when ABC brings us the Academy Awards at 8:30 p.m. Sunday.

I was the editor of another newspaper that informed the public of sexual abuse by priests. More on that angle later.

“Spotlight” already has won a number of awards after receiving rave reviews. Even the Catholic News Service called it “illuminating.”

The movie takes its name from the Globe’s Spotlight investigative team, which began looking into sex-abuse cases in 2001 under then new editor Martin Baron and despite the opposition of Cardinal Bernard Law, who covered up the scandal.

Not only a gripping drama, “Spotlight” is the most accurate movie portrayal of how good journalists do their work since “All the President’s Men.” …

Ten years before the Globe’s disclosures, I was the new editor of the Telegram & Gazette in Worcester, Massachusetts, west of Boston.

Soon after I started, I learned that priests in the Worcester diocese had sexually abused minors but the offenses were kept secret. We started investigating.

Men who said they had been victims as boys consented to be interviewed. They asked not to be named. I already had established a policy that anyone quoted in a staff-written story must be named and persuaded the men to let us identify them.

We published several stories about such cases on Page 1 under restrained headlines.

A monsignor who was executive assistant to the bishop called me to say that I, a Mass-going Catholic, was a disgrace to the church.

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ROME
Religion News Service

Rosie Scammell | February 25, 2016

ROME (RNS) Police in Spain have arrested a fugitive businessman accused of swindling pensioners from the U.S. and elsewhere out of millions of euros with the backing of a Catholic priest who worked at the Vatican before retiring to the Canary Islands.

Christian Ventisette was stopped at Madrid airport after an international arrest warrant was issued for the French-Italian businessman, Italy’s financial police said Wednesday (Feb. 24).

Ventisette is accused of scamming more than 250 investors out of around 30 million euros ($33 million) in an international operation involving an Argentine priest.

The retired cleric, the Rev. Patrizio Benvenuti, was put under house arrest in Italy earlier this month. He previously worked at a Vatican tribunal and currently has residency in the Canary Islands, a Spanish archipelago off the west coast of Africa.

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UNITED KINGDOM
The Guardian

Jane Martinson and Jamie Grierson
Thursday 25 February 2016

Serious failings at the BBC allowed Jimmy Savile and Stuart Hall to sexually abuse nearly 100 people without detection for decades, according to two damning reports published on Thursday, which insisted that the corporation still had lessons to learn from the affair.

Dame Janet Smith, who started the independent inquiry in October 2012, found that despite what had happened with Savile and Hall in previous years, those worked at the BBC were still worried about reporting potential abuse and taking on the broadcaster’s stars.

She concluded that “an atmosphere of fear still exists today in the BBC possibly because obtaining work in the BBC is highly competitive and many people no longer have the security on an employment contract”.

It was incumbent on the BBC to examine its culture today, Smith added, particularly when it came to the continued fear of speaking out and its attitudes towards “the talent”, or on-air stars.

In total, Savile sexually assaulted 57 females and 15 boys from the late 1950s to the middle of the last decade. Three incidents of rape and attempted rape took place on BBC premises, Smith said, and the youngest victim to whom Smith spoke was eight yearsold at the time of the offence.

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UNITED KINGDOM
The Guardian

Sandra Laville
Thursday 25 February 2016

A hierarchical organisation, overseeing a climate of fear, where the overriding concern is to protect reputation rather than investigate the sexual abuse of children and young people.

Remind you of anyone? Today it is the BBC taking the onslaught as Dame Janet Smith’s report highlights decades of sexual abuse carried out by Jimmy Savile under the noses of senior managers – whom Smith kindly clears because they “generally did not hear rumours”.

But the BBC can take depressing comfort from overwhelming evidence that it was not and is not alone in its failures. The Church of England, the Catholic church, leading private schools, local authorities in Oxford, Rotherham, Rochdale, Derby, the police service and numerous other institutions in British public life have all exhibited these same traits.

When a senior police officer first revealed the scale of Savile’s offending three years ago he noted the entertainer had been “hiding in plain sight” for decades. But the likes of Jimmy Savile, albeit of varying degrees of recidivism, have been hiding in plain sight across many British institutions and within society for years.

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NEW YORK
The Riverdale Press

By Shant Shahrigian
Posted 2/25/16

Rabbi Jonathan Rosenblatt is “stepping aside from the Senior Rabbinate” of Riverdale Jewish Center (RJC), according to a Wednesday email from the president of the synagogue to congregants obtained by The Press.

The move follows a 2015 report in The New York Times that described the rabbi’s years-long habit of taking boys to a sauna naked, prompting some members of RJC to leave the institution.

It was not immediately clear what role, if any, Rabbi Rosenblatt would maintain at RJC. The email from RJC President Samson Fine reads in full:

“Update Regarding Rabbi Rosenblatt’s Plans

“Dear Congregants,

“Rabbi Rosenblatt has today informed RJC’s leadership that he intends to step aside from the Senior Rabbinate of the RJC. The Shul’s Board of Trustees was informed at this evening’s Board meeting and we anticipate discussing transition details with the Board in the next two weeks.

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AUSTRALIA
Border Mail

By Tim Barlass
Feb. 26, 2016

A 72-year-old former Sydney Catholic priest given six months to a year to live has been sentenced to two years and three weeks in jail for sexual assault against teenage boys.

Father Robert Flaherty, who committed the offences in the 1970s and 1980s was allowed to remain seated in the dock at the Downing Centre court with his walking stick in front of him as the sentence was announced.

He had previously pleaded guilty to three charges against two boys but was found guilty in a jury trial last September for two offences committed against an altar boy at the priest’s Mollymook holiday home.

Sentencing Judge Richard Cogswell, SC, said that Flaherty’s age and health together with the impact of a prison sentence must be reflected in the non-parole period.

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FRANCE
Metro

PROCES – Quatre hommes âgés de 46 à 61 ans étaient jugés ce mercredi par le tribunal correctionnel de Paris pour avoir escroqué, tenté d’escroquer ou recelé des biens provenant d’une escroquerie commise à l’encontre de prêtres. 158 hommes d’églises se sont faits avoir entre 2009 et 2012 pour un préjudice environnant les 300 000 euros.

Seule une victime était présente dans la salle ce mercredi. Au total, ils sont pourtant 158 prêtres à avoir fait les frais, entre 2009 et 2012, d’une vaste escroquerie commise par quatre hommes âgés de 46 à 61 ans.

Le tribunal correctionnel les a condamnés ce mercredi à des peines allant de six mois de prison avec sursis à quatre ans de prison ferme pour les faits qui leur étaient reprochés. Jugés pour escroquerie et tentative d’escroquerie, Michel, 59 ans – absent à l’audience pour raisons de santé – et Jacky, 61 ans, ont été condamnés respectivement à quatre ans et deux ans de prison ferme (peine aménageable pour le dernier). Karim, 52 ans, et Denis, 46 ans – lui aussi absent pour raisons de santé – ont eux été condamnés à six mois de prison avec sursis pour recel de bien provenant de l’escroquerie.

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FRANCE
International Business Times

BY JESS MCHUGH @MCHUGHJESS ON 02/25/16

A Paris court on Wednesday sentenced a French man to four years in prison for swindling 158 priests out of 300,000 euros, or approximately $330,286, local media outlets reported. The man, identified only as “Michael,” said the multiple-year scam was vengeance for having been sexually abused by a priest as a child.

Michael, 59, claimed he was abused as a child by a priest or possibly multiple priests who worked for Les Orphelins D’Auteil, a nonprofit foundation for orphans. He later took his allegations to the diocese of Troyes, in the region where the alleged sexual abuse occurred, and then all the way to the Vatican. An official inquest from the Vatican found that the priests in question were deceased.

Available reports do not clarify whether Michael discovered his abusers were dead before or after he began his lucrative scam. The scam included targeting elderly priests by soliciting donations for a Christian charity. He would gain their trust by saying that they had baptized his child or by using their first names before he asked for their donations. Other versions of his story included saying he was a recently released convict and needed money to get back on his feet.

Michael was sentenced to four years in jail for his scheme and three other accomplices, including a friend identified as “Jacky”, were sentenced for their participation and handed sentences ranging from six months to two years. Jacky was an avid gambler and took over the scam when Michael went to jail in 2010. As an active gambler, Jacky told the court he stole money from the priests for gambling, not out of revenge.

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ROME
The Tablet (UK)

25 February 2016 | by Christopher Lamb

Benedict XVI made strenuous efforts to clean up one of the Church’s worst abuse scandals, Pope Francis has said, while hinting that his predecessor was prevented from taking tougher action.

During an in-flight press conference returning home from Mexico, Francis was asked about the case of Fr Marcial Maciel, the Mexican founder of the Legionaries of Christ, who sexually abused numerous seminarians.

He was also a drug addict, maintained relationships with two women and fathered up to six children, two of whom he was accused of abusing.

Despite this, he founded a successful and extremely wealthy religious order, which included a lay branch, Regnum Christi, and was close to Pope John Paul II and senior figures in the Vatican.

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AUSTRALIA
Latin American Herald Tribune

BANGKOK – Former Catholic bishop Ronald Mulkearns said Thursday when he had to tackle child abuse cases involving priests in his diocese in Australia, he knew it was wrong but was not sure if it was a crime, local press reported.

Mulkearns, 85, made an appearance through video-conference at the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse, which is investigating responses from religious, public and educative institutions to pederasty in recent decades in Australia.

The former bishop of Ballarat diocese (1971-1996), in the southeastern state of Victoria, said he never directly asked priests if they had abused minors, but knew about it through reports from psychologists, according to ABC news.

At least 14 priests were denounced in 130 cases of child abuse from the 1960s to the 1980s, and many of the victims committed suicide due to the trauma.

Gerald Francis Ridsdale, one of the abusers, was sentenced to eight years in 2014 for several cases of pedophilia, including one involving his own nephew, between 1961 and 1981.

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NEW YORK
Times of Israel

BY RAOUL WOOTLIFF AND JTA February 25, 2016

Following a tumultuous year of sexual misconduct allegations and a community effort to bring about his ouster, Rabbi Jonathan Rosenblatt told his New York synagogue Wednesday that he would step down as community rabbi.

The decision was announced in a letter sent to the members of the Riverdale Jewish Center by its president, Samson Fine.

“Rabbi Rosenblatt has today informed RJC’s leadership that he intends to step aside from the Senior Rabbinate of the RJC,” the email read. “The Shul’s Board of Trustees was informed at this evening Board meeting and we anticipate discussing transition details the Board in the next two weeks.”

The Riverdale Jewish Center had decided to keep Rosenblatt in place despite protests over reports of sauna chats with naked boys revealed in an exposé in The New York Times in May 2014.

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UNITED KINGDOM
Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse

22 February

The Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse has today announced March preliminary hearing dates for three further investigations, in addition the hearing on 9 March in Lord Greville Janner:

The Anglican Church
Lambeth Council
Cambridge House, Knowl View and Rochdale

The Preliminary Hearing on allegations of child sexual abuse involving the Anglican Church will take place on the morning of Wednesday 16 March, in Court 73 of the Royal Courts of Justice.

The Preliminary Hearing on allegations of child sexual abuse involving Cambridge House, Knowl View and Rochdale will take place in the afternoon of Wednesday 16 March, in court 73 of the Royal Courts of Justice.

The Preliminary Hearing on allegations of child sexual abuse involving children in the care of Lambeth Council will take place on the morning of Thursday 24 March, in Court 73 of the Royal Courts of Justice.

As previously announced, the Preliminary Hearing into allegations of child sexual abuse involving Lord Greville Janner and the institutional responses to those allegations will take place on Wednesday 9 March, in Court 73 of the Royal Courts of Justice.

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WALES
Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse

24 February

The Chair of the Inquiry Hon. Dame Lowell Goddard DNZM today met with eight Welsh victim and survivor groups at the Sexual Assault Referral Centre in Cardiff Royal Infirmary. Also at the meeting was Inquiry Panel member, Professor Sir Malcolm Evans, and Michael May and Lucy Duckworth from the Inquiry’s Victims and Survivors’ Consultative Panel (VSCP).

At the meeting were representatives from Rape and Sexual Assault Support Centre Wales, New Pathways, Seren, Survivors Trust Cymru, Stepping Stones, North Wales Sexual Assault Referral Centre, Cyfannol Women’s Aid, and Ynys Saff Cardiff and Vale Sexual Assault Referral Centre.

The visit marks the next step in the Inquiry’s work in Wales. During the course of the meeting, the Chair discussed the Truth Project and set out plans for the opening of the Inquiry’s Welsh office, which will be located in Cardiff. She also launched the Welsh version of the Inquiry’s website

Hon. Dame Lowell Goddard said,

“I would like to thank the representatives of the Rape and Sexual Assault Support Centre Wales, New Pathways, Seren, Survivors Trust Cymru, Stepping Stones, North Wales Sexual Assault Referral Centre, Cyfannol Women’s Aid, and Ynys Saff Cardiff and Vale Sexual Assault Referral Centre for taking the time to talk to me about their work and to Ynys Saff SARC for hosting our meeting today. Every single day these organisations work incredibly hard, supporting victims and survivors of child sexual abuse right across Wales.

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WALES
Wales Online

The judge investigating the child sexual abuse scandal in Britain has met Welsh victims’ groups ahead of the establishment of the inquiry’s dedicated office in Wales.

Dame Lowell Goddard is leading the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse, which was set up by the Home Secretary after wide-ranging abuse was revealed following the Jimmy Savile scandal .

The New Zealand judge will look into whether institutions in Wales and England failed to protect youngsters from sexual abuse.

And she has urged victims from any “city, town or village” to get in touch with the inquiry.

Her remit also includes demanding accountability for any past failings and will give recommendations to ensure similar failings are avoided in future.

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UNITED STATES
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

‘Spotlight’ 4 stars

Pittsburgh native Michael Keaton stars in the story of how the Boston Globe discovered a conspiracy to cover up clergy sexual abuse of children.

On his first day in 2001, editor Marty Baron (Liev Schreiber) orders the staff to look at defrocked priest and accused sexual predator John J. Geoghan and what the archdiocese did or did not know and do about him.

The task falls to the four-person Spotlight team — editor Walter “Robby” Robinson (Mr. Keaton) and reporters Mike Rezendes (Mark Ruffalo), Sacha Pfeiffer (Rachel McAdams) and Matt Carroll (Brian d’Arcy James) — which normally picks its own projects.

Mr. Keaton plays a member of the Globe investigative team as though he had been working in newsrooms all his life and reminds us he can shine in an ensemble as well as a leading role.

“Spotlight,” which nails the details about how reporters dress, eat and work, treats this investigation as a suspenseful detective story. But it never loses sight of the young people harmed by pedophile priests, the church that figuratively and literally looms large throughout, and the mandate to keep pursuing the story when other editors might have been satisfied with far less much earlier.

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UNITED STATES
Sky News (Australia)

A victim of abuse by a Catholic priest, whose story is the focus of the Oscar contender Spotlight, says the Vatican is still failing to tackle the scandal.

Phil Saviano was repeatedly assaulted, along with several school friends, by a priest in their small home town near Boston in the 1960s.

He revealed his abuse in the 1990s and a decade later handed the dossiers of information to the Boston Globe’s ‘Spotlight’ investigations team.

Their work uncovered evidence that the church in Boston was aware of abuse by dozens of priests and had sought to keep it quiet.

The movie Spotlight, starring Michael Keaton, Mark Ruffalo and Rachel McAdams, is regarded as a favourite to land the Academy Award for Best Picture at Sunday’s ceremony.

Mr Saviano, who still lives in Boston, told Sky News he has been disappointed by the Vatican’s response to the now-global scandal.

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CANADA
The Peterborough Examiner

By Jason Bain, The Peterborough Examiner
Wednesday, February 24, 2016

A former city youth pastor given a 90-day intermittent sentence last year for historical sexual assault will face trial again late this year for outstanding charges of administering a stupefying substance and administering a noxious thing.

Clifton Pelley, 50, appeared in Peterborough Superior Court of Justice on Wednesday where the non-jury trial expected to last between seven and 10 days was scheduled to begin Dec. 5 in Lindsay, with pre-trial motions set for Sept. 26 and assignment court Oct. 17.

The outstanding charges relate to another alleged victim in the case who was not part of Pelley’s non-jury trial, which took place from Oct. 20 to 28, 2014.

A judicial pre-trial, where lawyers from both sides meet before a judge to narrow the scope of a case, usually behind closed doors, was also completed Wednesday – even though Pelley did not have a lawyer formally on the record.

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ISRAEL
Australian Jewish News

Criminals across the world will be watching the case of Malka Leifer very closely. Not because they are necessarily interested in her alleged crimes or have any direct connection to the former Adass head teacher, but because if she can avoid extradition she might set a precedent others will try and follow.

Leifer, who is living in Israel, is fighting an extradition order to return to Australia and face charges relating to child sexual abuse allegations.

So far, she isn’t resisting the order on its merits or by claiming that she has asylum in Israel or by asking for more time to prepare her defence. Her team is simply stating that she has crippling panic attacks before her court appearances that prevent her from showing up.

As a result, the process is facing delay after delay after delay.

And pleading for his client’s health to be taken into account, her lawyer requested last Friday that the case be dismissed, asking the court, “Why are we doing this to her?”

The answer is very simple. Leifer is wanted by Victorian police to face 74 counts of sexual assault.

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COLORADO
Western Slope Now

[with video]

The Senate is seeing two bills involving domestic violence and sexual assault after the House passes both with enormous support.

House Bill 16-1260 wants to double the statute of limitations to report sexual assault from 10 years to 20.

House Bill 16-1066 takes aim at habitual domestic violence offenders, creating their fourth offense open to a class five felony charge, should the prosecute choose.

“”I had two Colorado Women who shared with me their story of being drugged and assaulted by Bill Cosby.” Rep. Rhonda Fields said, a Democrat representing Aurora.

She wrote a previous bill that was killed aiming to eliminate the statute completely. Fields said that bill would have been a stretch.

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AUSTRALIA
Coffs Coast Advocate

Chris Calcino | 25th Feb 2016

BOTH sides of New South Wales politics have backed legislation removing the statute of limitations on civil child abuse claims.

The bill is moving through the lower house and attracting support from all corners.

However, Labor Member for Prospect Hugh McDermott claimed the government was playing politics with the issue.

Mr McDermott used his maiden speech to parliament last year to pay tribute to his mother, who was abused after being taken from her parents and sent to Bidura Children’s Home as a small child.

“I do express my disappointment that a similar bill was put forward by the Opposition last year, and the government decided to oppose that bill,” Mr McDermott said.

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UNITED STATES
USA Today

Maeve McDermott, USATODAY February 25, 2016

Before Liev Schreiber donned wire-framed glasses to play Marty Baron in Spotlight, the newspaper editor was already a legend in his own right, from spearheading the Boston Globe’s investigation of the Catholic Church to winning Pulitzer Prizes at nearly every other paper he’s edited, most recently as the executive editor of the Washington Post.

On Thursday night, Baron discussed the Oscar-nominated film — that he’s seen “eight times,” if anyone’s counting — in a wide-ranging conversation at American University, discussing everything from the film’s impact on abuse survivors and the shocking details uncovered by screenwriters to his opinion of the Revenant.

He loves Schreiber’s portrayal

Baron had nothing but praise for Schreiber, who he’ll presumably meet again when they both travel to the Oscars on Sunday. “He’s a fantastic actor,” he said, joking, “Since the movie came out people say he looks like me.”

He’s been approached by abuse survivors sharing their stories for the first time

“It’s resonated with abuse survivors in an incredible way,” Baron said, sharing an anecdote about an 82-year-old man who, after watching Spotlight at a screening, shared his own account of abuse for the first time.

“He said he’d tried twice to see this movie and couldn’t make it past the parking lot of the theater. He saw it at this screening … he’d never told anyone, never spoken to anyone about it before. He talked about how it’d stayed with him his entire life. He said, ‘All I want to say is thank you,’ and that was incredibly moving, and then he walked back to his family.

That sort of thing has happened at a lot of events I’ve been at … abuse survivors encouraged to come forward and talk about the abuse they suffered.”

And newspapers who’ve changed their minds about investigative reporting

It’s hard to come away from Spotlight and not feel reinvigorated about the role of journalism. Apparently, this extends to journalism execs.

“I’ve heard from publishers saying they are rededicating themselves to investigative reporting,” Baron said.

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AUSTRALIA
ABC News

By Stephanie Dalzell

A former Catholic priest has been sentenced to more than two years in prison for child assault offences in New South Wales dating back to the 1970s.

Robert Flaherty, 72, assaulted three boys in their early teens in Sydney and at Mollymook, on the state’s south coast, during the 1970s and 1980s, but was only arrested in 2013.

A complaint was first made in 1972, however instead of being referred to police, Flaherty was transferred to a parish in Ryde.

The former priest pleaded guilty to three offences of indecent assault, but was also found guilty by a jury last September of two further offences.

He appeared at Sydney’s Downing Centre court and sat impassively as his sentence was handed down.

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ROME
ABC News

By Europe bureau chief Lisa Millar

Cardinal George Pell’s private secretary has sent an email to colleagues in Rome asking for them to attend a royal commission hearing beginning at 10pm (local time) on Sunday in Europe.

A copy of the email, seen by the ABC, was sent out to Fathers and Seminarians saying Cardinal Pell would be pleased if they could provide support with their presence at the hotel.

It tells them to register with the Royal Commission.

The note appears to come from Cardinal Pell’s private secretary, Father Mark Withoos.

Father Withoos confirmed he sent a private email to priest friends of the Cardinal who had made inquires about how they might help when he gave his video evidence.

The email has now been seen by several seminarians, clergymen and media representations, and the ABC is aware that there have been conversations with Father Withoos about gathering support.

The email says there will be at least 15 victims and advocates from Australia, and possibly others who might arrive from elsewhere in Europe, as well as a large media “cohort”.

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AUSTRALIA
The Guardian

Australian Associated Press
Wednesday 24 February 2016

A Victorian bishop says he tried to protect the church’s reputation and ensure pedophile priests did not offend again but regrets he did not handle it differently.

Ronald Mulkearns, the bishop of Ballarat from 1971 to 1997, said he retired early because he was not handling the problem of a number of cases of pedophilia in the diocese as well as he should have.

“I certainly regret that I didn’t deal differently with pedophilia,” he told the child abuse royal commission on Thursday. “We had no idea, or I had no idea, of the effects of the incidents that took place.”

The commission has heard Mulkearns knew about priests who abused children and moved them between parishes, also sending some for treatment.

The counsel assisting the commission Gail Furness SC put to the bishop that he chose to protect the church’s reputation over protecting children in the way he dealt with the abuse complaints.

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AUSTRALIA
news.com.au

Megan Neil
AAP

Prayers couldn’t help Gerald Ridsdale, he needed jail or castration, a psychiatrist says.

Hard-core sexual deviants like pedophile priest Ridsdale had significant personality disorders, had no concept of empathy and were masters of deception, former Franciscan priest and psychiatrist Dr Peter Evans said.

“They are far more difficult to treat. They need to be in jail,” Dr Evans told the child abuse royal commission.

If the hard-core deviants were not in jail they would need medical castration, the use of medication to suppress their sexual drive for as long as it took for them to learn to control their behaviour, he said.

“It’s very difficult to treat them out of jail. It’s almost impossible to stop them acting out.”

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AUSTRALIA
The Age

February 25, 2016

Chris Johnston

John Skewes was sitting at home in Ballarat on Thursday, reading about all the allegations against and proven crimes by Catholic clergy in the regional city he has lived in all his life.

As a victim of abuse himself – not once but twice, although not by Catholics or Christian Brothers – Mr Skewes, 66, decided to drive to the Nazareth House nursing home, a grand Victorian building beside Lake Wendouree. This is where former Ballarat bishop Ronald Mulkearns lies in palliative care, looked after by nuns. He is 85. Today he was giving evidence by video link to the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse.

There John met two women, Gabby Short and Wendy Dyckhoff, holding a quiet vigil outside the nursing home. Both spent time there as children when it was an orphanage and was ruled by notorious paedophile priest Gerald Ridsdale, the chaplain. The women say orphanage girls were sexually, physically and emotionally abused by him. Bishop Mulkearns shuffled priests, including Ridsdale, between parishes, where they continued to offend.

But it was too much for Mr Skewes, who says the “high level of anxiety” in Ballarat while the royal commission rolls through town triggers his own anxiety, and when he got to Nazareth House, he broke down and cried in the women’s arms. He had trouble speaking and forming words. His acute anxiety – caused by the abuse he suffered as a child – literally renders him speechless.

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AUSTRALIA
Daily Mail

By TANG LI FOR DAILY MAIL AUSTRALIA and AAP

A long-time Victorian Catholic bishop has apologised for moving pedophile priests among parishes to avoid scandalising the church.

In his apology, he said he’s sorry and regrets not doing his job very well in handling pedophilia in the Ballarat diocese.

But retired bishop Ronald Mulkearns, 85, denies trying to cover up widespread child sex abuse.

Bishop Mulkearns knew about pedophile priests whom he sent for treatment and moved among parishes, the child abuse royal commission has heard.

The 1971-97 Ballarat bishop admitted he wanted to protect the reputation of the church but told the inquiry he was trying to stop further offending.

Counsel assisting the commission Gail Furness SC said Bishop Mulkearns covered up the conduct of pedophile priests.

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AUSTRALIA
Canberra Times

February 25 2016

Christopher Knaus

A child abuse campaigner has urged Australian governments to follow the ACT’s proposed mandatory disclosure scheme, saying it would have saved children like him from being molested at the hands of a Marist brother decades ago.

Damian De Marco, named ACT Local Hero of the Year for his campaigning, is set to speak at a NSW Ombudsman’s conference in Sydney on Friday, where he will praise the ACT’s “courageous” plans to prevent institutional child sexual abuse and urge other states and territories to follow suit.

That scheme would see organisations with responsibility for children legally required to report any allegations of abuse or neglect to a new independent statutory authority, which would then handle complaints, denying institutions the chance to deal with them internally.

Chief Minister Andrew Barr confirmed on Thursday that he would seek to raise the issue of a consistent, strong national approach to reportable conduct at the next Council of Australian Governments meeting.

“Our children deserve to be protected wherever they live. Some jurisdictions, such as NSW, already have similar measures in place,” Mr Barr said.

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AUSTRALIA
The Standard

By MELISSA CUNNINGHAM
Feb. 25, 2016

A FORMER Ballarat Bishop who presided over decades of paedophile priests says he is “terribly sorry” for not taking the mounting allegations of sexual abuse of children seriously, admitting the situation was out of control and he did not know how to handle it.

“I wish I had of done things differently in that time,” he told the Royal Commission into Child Sexual Abuse on Thursday.

“I really didn’t know what to do or how to do it.”

Appearing via video link from a Nazareth House nursing home,terminally ill Bishop Mulkearns, 85, said he could not have comprehended the gravity of damage the sexual abuse of children by clergy would caused.

“In those days, it’s a long time ago but we really didn’t know how quite to deal with these things,” he said.

“Well I didn’t anyway.”

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HAWAII
Hawaii News Now

By Keoki Kerr

SALT LAKE, OAHU (HawaiiNewsNow) –
A longtime Catholic school teacher accused of molesting dozens of boys in three states for decades is living on Oahu, but his name and those of priests accused of sexual misconduct are not listed in the state’s sex offender registry.

Catholic schoolteacher brother Edward Courtney is accused of sexually abusing more than 50 boys from New York to Chicago to Seattle over three decades.

“Sadly, while bad, it’s not alone. There are other priests who have molested hundreds of kids,” said Michael Pfau, a Seattle-based attorney who has represented hundreds of alleged victims of Catholic clergy and teachers, including 52 men in the Courtney case.

In 2013, Courtney, 81, moved to Oahu and now lives in an apartment on Likini Street in Salt Lake.

But you won’t find Courtney’s name or that of any priests accused of sexual molestation in Hawaii’s Sexual Offender Registry, because they were never convicted of a crime.

“Because the criminal statute of limitations expired for most of these sex crimes, very very few Catholic priests, brothers and other clerics went to jail,” said Pfau, who represented 52 men who sued Courtney, claiming he abused them when they were children.

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NEW YORK
Daily Mail (UK)

A Catholic priest who was convicted last year by a U.S. court of sexually abusing a minor was reinstated by the church last month.

Indian priest Joseph Palanivel Jeyapaul, 61, was suspended for less than a full year by his local diocese in India five years ago after being accused of sexually abusing two girls during a posting to Minnesota.

He later pleaded guilty to molesting one of the teenagers, who has not been identified publicly, and served time in jail. Both of the girls were 14 at the time of the alleged abuse.

In January, the Vatican lifted Jeyapaul’s suspension following a recommendation by an Indian bishop.

Megan Peterson, now 26 and living in New York, accused Jeyapaul of raping and sexually assaulting her over the course of a year when she was 14, according to the New York Daily News.

She was shocked after learning the priest had been reinstated by Catholic Church officials.

‘It’s very clear what side the Church is on and it’s not about child protection or about morality,’ Peterson, an artist who resides in Queens, told the New York Daily News.

‘The bottom line is that the Church is not protecting children.’

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MICHIGAN
Central Michigan Life

By Sydney Smith

A therapist who has sex with a client could lose their license. The same goes for a doctor who has sex with a patient.

In some states, it’s illegal for a priest to have sex with a parishioner. Michigan is not one of these states.

In June 2015, former St. Mary’s University Parish priest Denis Heames was placed on leave for “boundary violations” related to his priestly conduct, said Bishop Joseph Cistone of the Saginaw Diocese.

A complaint about Heames by a Central Michigan University faculty member launched an internal investigation, which found Heames sexually harassed DeWitt senior Megan Winans before and during her time as a parishioner and media intern for the church.

Winans filed a civil lawsuit in Isabella County Court in January against Heames, his spiritual director Trudy McCaffrey, St. Mary’s and the diocese.

Heames’ status as a priest is unclear, as is his affiliation with the Diocese of Saginaw. Central Michigan Life asked for this information multiple times, but the diocese declined to comment. Heames has not responded.

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UNITED STATES
The Villager

BY LINCOLN ANDERSON | Soho actor Neal Huff is known to fans of “The Wire” as Michael Steintorf, chief of staff to Mayor Tommy Carcetti.

Now, in the Academy Award-nominated film “Spotlight,” Huff plays a pivotal supporting role as Phil Saviano, a child sex abuse survivor who helps the Boston Globe’s Spotlight investigative team blow open the hidden plague of pedophile priests in the Boston Archdiocese. The Globe won the 2003 Pulitzer Prize for Public Service based on the Spotlight team’s reporting.

The film also stars Michael Keaton as Spotlight Editor Walter “Robby” Robinson, Mark Ruffalo and Rachel McAdams as reporters Michael Rezendes and Sacha Pfeiffer and Liev Schreiber as Marty Baron, the tough-minded new editor who pushes the team to tackle the story.

Huff plays Saviano as frazzled and frustrated: He had pitched a story to the Globe years earlier about priest abuse in Worcester, but it only resulted in one article that was hardly far-reaching enough, and there was no follow-up.

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AUSTRALIA
The Advertiser

Nigel Hunt
The Advertiser

THE Anglican Church has reactivated its investigation into disgraced priest Father John Fleming in the wake of the damning Supreme Court judgment against him.

Sources have revealed an extraordinary meeting of the Anglican Professional Standards Committee has been called for next Tuesday night to consider the judgment.

The Anglican Church’s Professional Standards Committee had been examining the same allegations against Fr Fleming, but its inquiry was put on hold while the lengthy Supreme Court case was under way.

The move came on Thursday as the Catholic Church moved swiftly to suspend Fr Fleming from ministry as it launched its own investigation.

The Vicar General of the Catholic Archdiocese of Adelaide, Fr Phillip Marshall, advised Fr Fleming of the move.

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UNITED KINGDOM
The Argus

Joel Adams, Reporter

SEX abuse campaigners have called for investigations to look at the former head of the Anglican church in Sussex Eric Kemp after it was revealed he knew of abuse by bishop Peter Ball.

Peter Ball was jailed last year for sexual offences in the 1970s and 1980s against 18 young men who were under his guidance.

Revelations have come out in a report which shows that a Church of England priest held secret talks with police in an attempt to cover up the scale of Ball’s abuse.

The 1993 report, written by a private investigator “in utter confidence” for Eric Kemp and then – Archbishop of Canterbury George Carey, concluded that Ball had abused “very many young men through his care.”

The investigator, a Church of England priest, then held talks with police “to prevent a scandal in the press, especially as Peter was a frequent visitor to Sandringham and is friendly with Prince Charles.”

The pressure bore fruit and Ball was cautioned rather than tried, which the CPS have since acknowledged was the wrong decision in light of the available evidence.

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NEW ZEALAND
Manawatu Standard

RICHARD SWAINSON
February 25 2016

The Catholic church is an easy target.

A socially conservative agenda stands in broad opposition to mainstream thought in liberal western democracies.

The church’s stance on homosexuality, contraception, abortion, transgender issues, the ordination of women and euthanasia is no longer that of the majority.

Its history is full of examples of failing to live up to the high standards of Christian behavior. You cannot easily sweep the Crusades, the Borgias or the Spanish Inquisition under the carpet.

In the 20th century questions about how the church rose to the challenge of fascism can be posed.

It was on the side of Franco in Spain and there are at the very least conflicting views about its relationship with a Nazi regime where a good portion of senior leadership claimed nominal Catholicism.

Then there is the issue of historic sexual abuse by its clergy and the systematic practice of covering these obscene crimes up and even perpetuating them by shifting offenders from one parish to another.

That the institution put the needs of its reputation above that of innocent children is now an acknowledged fact. If the church refuses to engage in a conversation about the effects of enforced celibacy on priests or the predilection of those who put themselves forward for the priesthood to offend it can no longer deny that grave and indefensible errors were made.

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AUSTRALIA
Geelong Advertiser

A VICTORIAN bishop says he regrets that he did not deal with pedophile priests properly and admits he tried to protect the church’s reputation.

Bishop Ronald Mulkearns, who knew about pedophile priests and moved them between parishes, said to the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse he did not know how to deal with abuse complaints while head of the Ballarat diocese from 1971 to 1997.

“I certainly wanted to protect the reputation of the church. I wanted to make sure these incidents didn’t happen in the future and tried my best to work in such a way that it didn’t happen again,” he told the child abuse royal commission on Thursday.

Mulkearns had been living independently in Aireys Inlet, but has recently moved into an assisted living facility in Ballarat.

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AUSTRALIA
SBS

AAP

Sexual abuse allegations against Cardinal George Pell were not leaked by Victoria Police, the chief commissioner says.

Victoria’s anti-corruption watchdog is investigating how allegations Cardinal Pell sexually abused five to 10 victims while he was a priest in Victoria became public over the weekend.

“I know we’re often easy targets when it comes to alleging leaks, but I’ve seen no evidence we’ve leaked anything,” Chief Commissioner Graham Ashton told 3AW radio on Thursday.

Mr Ashton said he was taking accusations Victoria Police leaked the sexual abuse allegations seriously.

“It concerned me that there was this immediate rush to allege the police have leaked something,” he said.

If Victoria Police are found by the Independent Broad-based Anti-corruption Commission to have done something wrong, then “we’ll absolutely wear that”, Mr Ashton said.

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AUSTRALIA
Sydney Morning Herald

February 25, 2016

Beau Donelly
Reporter

A former bishop of Ballarat has apologised for failing to halt what he called a widespread and long-lasting “problem with priests” in Catholic schools and churches in the city.

Abuse survivors and their families have waited decades to hear from retired priest Ronald Mulkearns, who served as Bishop of Ballarat until the late 1990s, and has been accused of failing to prevent rampant child sex abuse during his 26-years as bishop.

On Thursday morning, the 85-year-old appeared via video link from his nursing home, Nazareth House, less than 3 kilometres from where the commission is sitting.

Bishop Mulkearns said he retired in 1997 because he wasn’t “doing the job as well as I felt I should be doing”.

Questioned by Counsel assisting the commission, Gail Furness, SC, about what he was not handling well at the time, he said the “problem with priests”.

“And I’d like to say, if I may, that I’m terribly sorry that I didn’t do things differently in that time, but I didn’t really know what to do or how to do it.

“I certainly regret that I didn’t do it differently with … paedophilia. We had no idea, or I had no idea of the effects of the indecent [assaults] that took place.”

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AUSTRALIA
ABC News

[live stream]

February 25, 2016

Former Catholic bishop Ronald Mulkearns has told a royal commission he is not sure if he knew child abuse was a crime during his time in charge of the Ballarat diocese, but he knew it was wrong.

The former bishop made his much-anticipated appearance at the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse via videolink from the nursing home in which he now lives.

Until now Bishop Mulkearns had been excused from giving evidence because he was too sick.

Asked if he referred paedophile Gerald Ridsdale for help because he knew he was abusing children, he said yes.

Bishop Mulkearns told the hearing he never asked priests directly if they were abusers but instead got reports from psychologists.

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AUSTRALIA
Crux

By John L. Allen Jr.
Associate editor February 24, 2016

SYDNEY/MELBOURNE — It’s undoubtedly an exaggeration to suggest that the entire nation of Australia will come grinding to a halt next Monday at 8 a.m. local time, when Cardinal George Pell is set to begin giving live video testimony before a Royal Commission examining child sexual abuse scandals.

Still, it sort of feels like that here right now.

I’m in Australia this week, not to cover the Pell story, but to speak at several venues. It’s impossible to move around, however, especially in Catholic circles, without the conversation turning sooner or later to Pell and his discontents.

In Australia, Pell has become the public face of what’s perceived as a callous Church response to the abuse scandals. He’s been parodied in a derisive song calling him “scum” and a “coward,” he’s become a staple of news chat, and right now a bright red wagon is being pulled through the streets of the city of Ballarat, where the Royal Commission is meeting, with the slogan, “Pope must act: Sack Pell now!”

In part, the attacks on Pell are about substance: whether at various points in his career he knew about abuse that was going on and either failed to act, or acted primarily to protect the Church’s interests. In part, too, it’s about his pugnacious, strongly conservative public persona and his seeming inability to project the contrition that many Aussies appear to want.

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TEXAS/ARIZONA
The Monitor

PHOENIX — John Feit, the former priest accused of killing a McAllen teacher 55 years ago, has waived his right to an extradition hearing. That means Texas has 30 days to pick him up from Arizona to face a murder charge.

“We’re one step closer to dispensing justice,” District Attorney Ricardo Rodriguez said after the hearing.

Rodriguez added Feit will be picked up “sooner than later.”

Feit, 83, the man long suspected by many of killing Irene Garza more than five decades ago, remains in custody of the Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office, where he has sat for more than two weeks as he awaits for the extradition process to run its course.

Feit was arrested Feb. 9 at his apartment in Scottsdale, Arizona, where he had lived in the Phoenix area since the early ‘80s, when he had started a new life after leaving the priesthood.

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TEXAS/ARIZONA
NBC DFW

An 83-year-old Arizona man accused of murdering a Texas beauty queen when he was a young priest in 1960 has waived his right to extradition.

Maricopa County Superior Court officials say John Feit will be transported to Texas in the next 30 days.

Feit was arrested in Scottsdale, Arizona, on Feb. 9 after he was indicted in south Texas’ Hidalgo County for the killing of Irene Garza, a 25-year-old school teacher.

Authorities allege the then-27-year-old Feit killed Garza on April 16, 1960, after hearing her confession at Sacred Heart Catholic Church in McAllen, where he was a priest.

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ARIZONA/TEXAS
Arizona Republic

Megan Cassidy, The Republic | azcentral.com February 24, 2016

A Scottsdale man accused of slaying a Texas beauty queen in 1960 will not fight extradition back to Hidalgo County, Texas, where he will face a long-awaited charge of murder.

John Feit, an 83-year-old former priest, was arrested Feb. 9 in Scottsdale. After a brief hearing Wednesday afternoon, a Maricopa County Superior Court judge ordered Feit to be returned to Texas within 30 days.

The proceedings come more than a half century after Feit’s name first found its way to the top of the case’s list of suspects in the murder of schoolteacher Irene Garza.

Over the decades, Feit’s freedom has withstood the glare of suspicion by investigators, media and Garza’s family, all convinced he was the sole suspect responsible in the 25-year-old’s death.

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TEXAS/ARIZONA
Valley Central

John Feit, the former McAllen priest accused of killing Irene Garza in 1960, has waived extradition to Texas.

Feit was arrested at his home in Scottsdale, Arizona on Feb. 9 and later booked into the Maricopa County jail.

The 83-year-old man waived his right to extradition during a hearing Wednesday.

Feit has long been suspected of killing Garza, whose body was pulled from an irrigation canal in McAllen in 1960.

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MASSACHUSETTS
Harvard Law Today

By LEWIS RICE, February 24, 2016

Josh Singer ’01 gives a lot of credit to Harvard Law School for helping him in his career. But in one way, it has made things difficult for him.

In his latest project, he was supposed to write a scene in a movie having to do with a legal topic. You may think that would be a cinch for him. But there was one problem.

“I’d write the first draft of the scene, and it would be something no one could understand unless they had gone to Harvard Law,” he said.

Since the filmmakers wanted a slightly wider audience, he went back and rewrote—and then rewrote again. It worked out pretty well, and so did the movie as a whole, since the result, the script for the movie “Spotlight,” turned into one of the most acclaimed movies of the past year, with six Academy Award nominations, including best original screenplay for Singer and his co-writer, Tom McCarthy, who also received a nomination as director.

Singer is thrilled with the acclaim, not so much for himself, he says, but for the exposure that has brought increased attention to the story about the Boston Globe investigation into the Achdiocese of Boston’s coverup of priest sexual abuse and the societal issues it raises. The complexity of the story—and the filmmakers’ commitment to presenting an authentic portrayal of the events—necessitated copious research, many trips to Boston, and lengthy interviews with those involved.

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CHICAGO (IL)
Chicago Tribune

Steve Schmadeke
Chicago Tribune

The final pending criminal case against defrocked Roman Catholic priest and convicted sex offender Daniel McCormack ended Wednesday, when prosecutors said they were forced to drop all charges.

McCormack, 47, who was not in court Wednesday, pleaded guilty in 2007 to molesting five boys and was sentenced to five years in prison. In 2009, prosecutors sought to have him declared a sexually violent offender and committed indefinitely to the Illinois Department of Human Services, which holds such offenders.

That case is pending.

The former St. Agatha’s priest was charged in 2014 with aggravated sexual abuse involving a 10-year-old boy in 2005. The case had been set for trial, but on Wednesday prosecutors said they were dropping the charges because the alleged victim was no longer cooperating.

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PENNSYLVANIA
The Jewish Chronicle

by Toby Tabachnick, Senior Staff Writer

David Menachem Gordon was a lone soldier in the Israel Defense Forces during 2014’s Operation Protective Edge when he went missing one day in mid-August. Two days later, he was found dead, with his rifle beside him.

Gordon, who served in the Givati Brigade, lived for a time in White Oak with his family before making aliyah. He was a student at Hillel Academy of Pittsburgh from 2008 to 2010, and his parents, Ruth and Jacob Gordon, were members of the Orthodox Gemilas Chesed Synagogue.

But it was Gordon’s childhood in Detroit — where he was sexually abused from within the Orthodox community when he was 9 to 11 years old — that arguably had the greatest impact on the trajectory of his life.

David’s mother recounted his story to a packed auditorium at the Jewish Community Center of Greater Pittsburgh Sunday night as part of a program sponsored by Jewish Community Watch, a nonprofit founded in 2011 to combat child sexual abuse (CSA) in the Jewish community, and to help victims. JCW is based in New York.

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NEW YORK
New York Daily News

BY REUVEN BLAU, THOMAS TRACY NEW YORK DAILY NEWS
Wednesday, February 24, 2016

An investigation into an attempted abduction of a 14-year-old girl in Brooklyn fell apart after it was learned that the suspect comes from a prominent Orthodox family, law enforcement sources said Wednesday.

The suspect, a 20-year-old Orthodox man, showed up at the 61st Precinct with his attorney Tuesday — a day after the NYPD released an enhanced photo of him as a suspect in the crime.

But when investigators contacted the victim after the suspect came forward the family “stopped cooperating with the cops,” a police source said.

A source with knowledge of the investigation said the girl changed her mind about talking to authorities after receiving pressure from the community.

The suspect’s father is the principal of a yeshiva and his grandfather is an “influential rabbi,” the source said.

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TEXAS/ARIZONA
The Monitor

LORENZO ZAZUETA-CASTRO | STAFF WRITER

PHOENIX — The former priest accused of murdering a McAllen beauty queen is set to appear for his first extradition hearing since his arrest.

John Feit, 83, the man long suspected by many of killing Irene Garza more than five decades ago remains in custody of the Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office, where he has sat for more than two weeks as he awaits for the extradition process to run its course.

Feit is scheduled to appear Wednesday in Maricopa Superior Court.

Feit, who was arrested Feb. 9 at his apartment in Scottsdale, Arizona, had lived in the Phoenix area since the early ‘80s, where he had started a new life after leaving the priesthood. At his initial hearing the following day, Feit chose to fight his extradition back to Texas. A commissioner set his bond at $750,000 cash only.

Russell Richelsoph, a Tempe-based criminal defense attorney who has more than 16 years of experience, said the hearing Wednesday, the first of four scheduled for Feit, will be a routine check-in for both the defendant and the state.

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CHICAGO (IL)
Chicago Sun-Times

WRITTEN BY RUMMANA HUSSAIN POSTED: 02/24/2016

Cook County prosecutors Wednesday said they were forced to drop an aggravated criminal sexual abuse charge against a convicted child molester and defrocked Catholic priest because the alleged victim was reluctant to cooperate.

Daniel McCormack, who is at a state-run mental health facility pending a hearing on whether he is a sexual deviant person, wasn’t in court before Judge Dennis Porter.

Neither was the alleged victim of the 2005 incidents.

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CHICAGO (IL)
WREX

CHICAGO (AP) – Cook County prosecutors have dropped an aggravated criminal sexual abuse charge against a former Chicago priest because the alleged victim stopped cooperating.

They dismissed the charge Wednesday against Daniel McCormack, who pleaded guilty to multiple child sex abuse charges in 2007 and was sentenced to five years in prison. He was removed from the priesthood.

McCormack also was arrested in 2014 in a 2005 case involving a 10-year-old alleged victim at a West Side parish, but prosecutors say as the case progressed in the courts, the victim stopped cooperating with them.

The Chicago Sun-Times reports (http://bit.ly/1VEPfyf ) prosecutors called out in court Wednesday to see if anyone representing the victim was there and when no one responded, they told a judge they were moving to dismiss the charge. McCormack wasn’t present.

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UNITED STATES
Chicago Tribune

Ted Slowik

Most oddsmakers and film critics say “Spotlight” is a long shot to take home the Best Picture Oscar at Sunday’s Academy Awards. “The Revenant” is favored over the film about The Boston Globe’s investigation into the Catholic Church’s coverup of priests who sexually abused children.

Still, “Spotlight” is an Oscar-worthy film that recounts in dramatic fashion how Globe reporters exposed the systemic transferring of repeat offenders to other parishes, the Church’s relentless efforts to discredit accusers and the willingness of good Catholic laymen to go along with the program.

Reporters who uncovered abuse in other dioceses appreciate “Spotlight’s” accuracy and authenticity. I covered how the issue affected the Roman Catholic Diocese of Joliet, which includes all of Will County.

Others on the beat at the time included Allison Hantschel of the Daily Southtown and David Heinzmann of the Chicago Tribune. Southtown columnist Tim Placher recounted his experience being abused by a priest. Those of us who investigated this issue locally encountered the same personal and professional challenges faced by the Globe team as depicted in “Spotlight.”

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ISRAEL
Australian Jewish News

JERUSALEM – Former Adass Israel head teacher Malka Leifer’s attempt to avoid extradition to Australia took a blow last week when a judge ordered that she undergo a fresh psychiatric assessment.

It is now almost two years since attempts began to extradite the alleged sex abuser from Israel to face 74 charges in Melbourne.

Leifer fled in to Israel in 2008 shortly after allegations of her abusing students at the school became public.

However, she is claiming to be suffering panic attacks whenever court proceedings loom, and therefore unable to participate, causing misery for her accusers who want her to face her charges.

In court on Sunday, the Israeli state prosecutor said that psychiatrists haven’t adequately checked whether there are “elements of fabrication” in her claim and the judge ordered that she be subjected to examination by a state psychiatrist.

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OHIO
Raw Story

TRAVIS GETTYS
24 FEB 2016

A southern Ohio pastor was indicted on more than a dozen felony sex assault charges against two girls and a woman.

Dennis Wright was arrested on seven counts of rape, two counts of sexual battery, two counts of unlawful sexual conduct with a minor, three counts of gross sexual imposition, and one count of illegal use of a minor in nudity-oriented material or performance, reported the Gallipolis Daily Tribune.

Investigators said two of the victims, a girl and the woman, were parishioners at the Old Emory Church in Jackson County, where Wright served as pastor.

Neighbors and even Wright’s son said the pastor was an ill-tempered man who behaved inappropriately around children.

“Everybody in the neighborhood knew what was going on,” said Elliott Perry, who lives next door to the small church outside Oak Hill.

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NEW YORK
New York Daily News

BY MICHAEL O’KEEFFE NEW YORK DAILY NEWS Wednesday, February 24, 2016

When Megan Peterson was 14, she was raped and sexually assaulted — sometimes inside the church confessional booth — over the course of a year by her parish priest.

So the abuse survivor was astounded to learn her tormentor, the Rev. Joseph Jeyapaul, was reinstated earlier this month by Catholic Church officials after a suspension of roughly the same duration of her time as a victim.

“It’s very clear what side the Church is on and it’s not about child protection or about morality,” said Peterson, a 26-year-old artist who now lives in Queens. “The bottom line is that the Church is not protecting children.”

Peterson, the New York City coordinator for the advocacy group SNAP (Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests), charges the church gave a virtual green light for Jeyapaul to target children in his native India.

The reverend returned to his homeland late last year, when he also appealed for a return to his priestly duties. He was suspended for less than a full year.

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AUSTRALIA
ABC News

By Charlotte King
Updated February 25, 2016

They call themselves “Nazzie girls” — children who ended up in the care of the Sisters of Nazareth girls home in Ballarat in the 1950s and 1960s.

Gabrielle Short does not hesitate when she is asked to summarise her childhood here.

“Ninety-five per cent hell, torture, abuse, fear, terror,” she says.

Sisters say they accept residents of the now-nursing home “based on their current needs”.
In the early 1960s, paedophile priest Gerald Ridsdale was their chaplain.

“Up there, in the middle floor there, one of the girls actually tried to jump out the window because she reported the abuse to the nuns, and one of the nuns belted the life out of her until she was lifeless,” Ms Short says.

A group of the girls, now women, are back to confront the order of nuns who run the facility as a nursing home to, Ms Short said, “ask why they’re giving sanctuary to an enabler of this man who ran amok”.

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UNITED STATES
New York Times

By MIKE McPHATE
FEB. 24, 2016

“Journalistic objectivity be damned. I’m hoping it wins the entire lot.”

That’s Martin Baron, the executive editor of The Washington Post and former editor of The Boston Globe.

It has been a disorienting time for the journalists like Mr. Baron depicted in “Spotlight,” the film about The Globe’s investigation in 2002 of sexual abuse of children by members of the Roman Catholic clergy.

Mr. Baron, portrayed in the movie by Liev Schreiber, said the embrace from Hollywood had melted away any pretense of impartiality about the outcome of the Oscars race. The movie is up for six Academy Awards, including Best Picture.

With the ceremony approaching, Mr. Baron weighed in Wednesday with an essay for The Post.

Mr. Baron said he was overcome during the film’s showing at the Toronto International Film Festival last year. After the credits rolled, the actors were called on to the stage, then the journalists, for a sustained standing ovation.

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NEW JERSEY
Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests

for immediate release: Wednesday, Feb. 24, 2014

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 predator priest, Fr. Gerald P. Ruane, has passed away. As best we can tell, Newark Archbishop John Myers kept this quiet, denying abuse victims months of comfort. Myers seems incapable of handling any part of the church’s on-going abuse and cover up crisis with honesty and compassion.

[Obits for Life]

Fr. Ruane was accused in 2002 of abusing a boy in 1970s-1980s. A second accuser also stepped forward. Archdiocesan staff “investigated” and found deemed Fr. Ruane “credibly accused.”

Myers claims to have suspended Fr. Ruane but apparently told no one (or at least few people). So in 2005, Fr. Ruane was still celebrating mass in public, until exposed by the Newark Star-Ledger, in violation of the US bishops’ conference abuse policy. That’s when his name was finally publicly released as a credibly accused child molester. (See BishopAccountability.org for more information.)

[SNAP]

We have heard from one of Fr. Ruane’s victims, Michael Iatesta, who stumbled across news of the priest’s passing by chance this week. A statement from Michael is below.

It would have taken Myers minutes to approve and have his public relations team send out a news release about Fr. Ruane’s death. That would have brought relief to those who worried, until now, that Fr. Ruane might still be hurting children.

We hope this predator’s passing will bring some comfort to those whose lives he devastated. We also hope that someday, Myers might opt for sensitivity over self-serving secrecy. And we hope that anyone who was hurt by any Newark priest, nun, seminarian or other archdiocesan staff will find the courage to speak up, get help, expose predators, protect kids, deter cover ups and start healing.

Statement by Michael Iatesta, abused as a youngster by Fr. Ruane:

“As I was looking for my mom’s obituary to send to family and friends I accidentally came across this notification. How ironic it was, in so many ways, that the priest who sexually and emotionally abused me as a young boy was laid out (August, 2015) at the same funeral home just a few months before my mom. In his obituary he was described as one who lived a life devoted to God and served God’s people with great dignity. I know for certain my mom lived a more saintly life and was always selfless in her actions and in her heart-felt service to others. She is resting in peace now knowing that the man she bestowed her trust upon when I was grieving my father’s death could no longer hurt/abuse or take advantage of any other vulnerable young children. She spoke and wrote to me on countless occasions about the guilt she had not knowing therefore not reporting his inappropriate actions. But as a woman of great faith she was able to forgive him for his sins as she taught us through her own actions, faith and devotion that love and forgiveness is what would ultimately bring us all closer to God and eternal happiness. She was a dedicated Catholic who saw everyone as God sees them and touched the lives of countless people in countless ways. She was in a true sense “priestly” and” charismatic'” unlike Ruane who selfishly used and exerted his priestly duties for his own alternative motives.”

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WISCONSIN
Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests

For immediate release: Wednesday, Feb. 24, 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)

An independent Catholic newspaper has compared church bankruptcies in Milwaukee WI and Helena MT. Predictably and rightfully, Milwaukee Archbishop Jerome Listecki is exposed as particularly callous and foolishly litigious.

[National Catholic Reporter]

Both dioceses “faced two dozen lawsuits” and “established $21 million funds to compensate victims” though Milwaukee is much larger,” the National Catholic Reporter found, but

–Helena settled in 13 months” while “Milwaukee took nearly five years,”

–“Helena spent about $2.5 million on lawyers” while “Milwaukee’s legal fees” were “$20 million”

–“Helena did not challenge the validity of any of the 362 claims” while “Milwaukee challenged each of the more than 575 claims,”

–Helena’s bishop said “a small number of claims appeared bogus” while Milwaukee’s archbishop challenged, to the end, the legal standing of each of the 575 claims” (while stubbornly claiming “bankruptcy was the only way to treat all equitably.”

A lawyer who has represented (victims) in 11 church bankruptcies, “including those of Milwaukee and Helena,” said “the lack of consultation on the part of the Milwaukee Archdiocese was almost unheard of in bankruptcy cases.”

Not surprisingly, Helena’s bishop “received praise from lawyers on the other side and from the judge who handled the case” and says “the relatively swift resolution has resulted in high priest morale and increased support by people in the community,” according to the NCR.

No one in the Milwaukee Catholic hierarchy can make that claim here.

We hope Wisconsin citizens and Catholics will read this report and learn more about how church officials elsewhere treat clergy sex abuse survivors more compassionately and less combatively than they do here in Milwaukee.

To Wisconsin victims, there’s little news here. To Wisconsin citizens and Catholics, however, there’s eye-opening information, if they’ll take the time to read this troubling comparison.

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DEUTSCHLAND
Focus

Regisseur Tom McCarthy hat sich mit „Spotlight“ an ein heikles Thema gewagt: sexueller Missbrauch in der katholischen Kirche. Das Star-Ensemble wurde brillant gecastet. Es ist ein Film, der berührt, aufwühlt und vielleicht sogar tief erschüttert. Gerade deswegen ist es ein ganz wichtiger Film.

Sexueller Missbrauch in der katholischen Kirche – ein heikles Thema, das sich Regisseur und Drehbuchautor Tom McCarthy („Cobbler – Der Schuhmagier“) für seinen Film „Spotlight“ ausgesucht hat. Er schickt sein brillantes Star-Ensemble in ein Fadenkreuz des Glaubens und lässt sie Stück für Stück die erschütternde Wahrheit aufdecken. Dieser Film, der auf wahren Begebenheiten beruht, wird niemanden kalt lassen, er wühlt auf, berührt und erschüttert. Gerade deswegen ist es ein ganz wichtiger Film. „Spotlight“ ist für sechs Oscars nominiert, u.a. „Bester Film“, „Beste Regie“, „Bestes Drehbuch“ und Mark Ruffalo und Rachel McAdams als „Beste Nebendarsteller“.

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DEUTSCHLAND
NZZ

von Tim Slagman
24.2.2016

Nur ein einziges Mal platzt jemandem der Kragen: «Es ging um Kinder, und Sie haben es einfach zugelassen», brüllt Michael Rezendes seinem Boss entgegen, dem Leiter des Investigativ-Ressorts «Spotlight» beim «Boston Globe». Dessen Team gewann 2003 den Pulitzerpreis für seine Recherchen zu Fällen von sexuellem Missbrauch in den Institutionen der katholischen Kirche – Dutzende von Vergehen alleine in der Erzdiözese Boston, die jahrelang systematisch vertuscht wurden. Rezendes’ Wutanfall ist also absolut verständlich, womöglich sogar notwendig, und dennoch eine bemerkenswerte Anomalie in dem Film von Tom McCarthy, der die Geschichte dieser Enthüllung nacherzählt.

Ein Schauspielerfilm

McCarthy, der gemeinsam mit Josh Singer auch das Drehbuch verfasst hat, mag keine Heldengeschichten, kein Skandalpathos. Er hat 2003 in seinem Langfilmdebüt «Station Agent» den «Game of Thrones»-Star Peter Dinklage entdeckt. Doch McCarthy hat kein Interesse am Epischen, an der grossen Geste. Der Regisseur, der auch als Schauspieler arbeitet und in der legendären Krimiserie «The Wire» ausgerechnet einen betrügerischen Reporter gespielt hat, macht Filme für Schauspielkollegen – und für Antihelden.

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DEUTSCHLAND
Welt

Der Film “Spotlight” mit Michael Keaton feiert die Reporter, die den Missbrauchsskandal der Kirche in Boston aufdeckten. Der Cast sieht aus wie bei einem Comic-Film. Aber Superkräfte hat hier keiner. Von Lucas Wiegelmann

Stellen Sie sich vor, Ihr Pfarrer kommt morgen zu Besuch. Stellen Sie sich nicht irgendeinen Priester vor, einen gesichtslosen Mann mit schwarzem Hemd und weißem Kragen, sondern wirklich Ihren Pfarrer. Den Mann, den Sie vielleicht hin und wieder im Gottesdienst sehen. Der vielleicht Ihre Kinder getauft hat oder jedes Jahr auf dem Adventsbasar das Waffeleisen bedient oder vor einiger Zeit nach dem Tod Ihres alten Schulfreundes eine tröstliche Rede gehalten hat.

Vielleicht haben Sie sogar irgendwann schon einmal bei ihm gebeichtet. Vielleicht ist es schon Jahre oder Jahrzehnte her, und als Sie fertig waren mit Ihren bescheidenen Vergehen, mit dem Neid auf den Mercedes des Nachbarn oder mit den unprofessionellen Gedanken, die der Anblick ihrer hübschen neuen Kollegin in Ihnen hin und wieder auszulösen pflegt, hat der Priester Ihnen die Absolution erteilt, nicht mit Worten, sondern mit seinem Wesen, mit seiner Aura, er war die Mensch gewordene Vergebung. Er hat Ihnen die Hand auf die Stirn gelegt. So etwas tun sonst nur Mütter, wenn ihr Kind Fieber hat. So eine Berührung war das.

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UNITED STATES
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

By Barbara Vancheri / Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

Michael Keaton said he had the “greatest day” — thanks to the Teenie Harris photography collection in Pittsburgh — and 200-plus people could boast the same, thanks to the actor known as Beetlejuice, Batman, Birdman, Mr. Mom and one of the stars of “Spotlight.”

The Pittsburgh native and Walter “Robby” Robinson, the real-life Boston Globe editor he portrays on screen, were part of a private event Tuesday night at the SouthSide Works Cinema. Outside was a small red carpet and inside, flutes of champagne, phones in camera mode, and sobering conversations about challenges both in the Catholic Church and the newspaper business.

The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette organized the reception, the screening of “Spotlight” and a conversation with the men afterward, moderated by executive editor David Shribman.

“Spotlight” is the story of how the Boston Globe exposed predatory priests and the Catholic Church’s cover-up of the molestation. Clergy were shuffled from one parish to the next or placed on “sick leave” while their superiors lost sight of their targets, often young boys from poor or broken homes.

The Globe’s investigation won the 2003 Pulitzer Prize for public service. The movie goes into Sunday’s Academy Awards with six nominations, including for best picture, director and original screenplay.

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NEW MEXICO
Gallup Independent

Published in the Gallup Independent, Gallup, N.M., Feb. 22, 2016

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

ALBUQUERQUE – Two years ago U.S. Bankruptcy Judge David T. Thuma urged attorneys to get to the “end zone” in the Diocese of Gallup’s Chapter 11 case.

On Friday, after attorneys for the diocese were not able to reach their own goal of filing a plan of reorganization the first week of February, Thuma pushed attorneys in the case to have the plan filed Feb. 29.

“We are behind where we hoped to be a month ago, but things are moving along and progressing,” diocesan attorney Thomas Walker told Thuma Friday, during the latest in a series of continued status hearings.

Walker said attorneys for the Gallup Diocese planned to distribute a “somewhat vetted plan” and disclosure statement to all the parties in the case next week. With the distribution, he said, the plan would be open for discussion and possible changes.

“It’s still in draft form,” diocesan attorney Lori Winkelman explained. “There’s different parts that need to be discussed and are still being somewhat negotiated, but we’re hoping that everybody can move relatively quickly on that and shoot for having something on file at the end of the month. That is still our goal.”

Winkelman said retired U.S. District Court Judge Michael R. Hogan, the new future claims representative, has already had discussions with many of the parties in the case. In addition, Winkelman said an “all parties call” is scheduled for Tuesday afternoon that will include “the entire universe of the settling parties” to discuss approval of a disclosure statement and other documents.

Attorney James Stang, legal counsel for the Official Committee of Unsecured Creditors, which represents the interests of clergy sex abuse claimants, agreed the call was a good idea and will allow all the parties to “literally do a page turn” on significant documents.

Stang said his committee had approved someone to be an abuse claims reviewer and had approved an allocation protocol. The committee had also offered comments to the Gallup Diocese about the last version of a settlement agreement with Catholic Mutual and still owed comments on a Franciscan settlement agreement.

Thuma scheduled another status conference Friday morning and urged the attorneys to have the reorganization plan ready the following Monday.

“I hope I’m not leaning on people too hard… I think it would be great to get a plan on file by the 29th,” Thuma said. “So let’s shoot for it and see if we can get it done.”

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CALIFORNIA
LAObserved

By Kevin Roderick | February 24, 2016

Washington Post editor Martin Baron usually falls asleep during the Academy Awards, but this year he will have to stay awake. That’s because he will be inside the Dolby Theatre in Hollywood as part of the contingent for “Spotlight.” In the movie about the Boston Globe investigation into Catholic priest sexual abuse and the Boston church’s cover-up, he is portrayed by Liev Schreiber.

It’s not about the statuette, the former LA Times reporter and editor writes for the Post.

The movie has been nominated for six Oscars, including best picture. And, journalistic objectivity be damned, I’m hoping it wins the entire lot. I feel indebted to everyone who made a film that captures, with uncanny authenticity, how journalism is practiced and, with understated force, why it’s needed.

The awards take the form of a statuette, recognition for outstanding moviemaking. The rewards of this film matter more to me, and they will take longer to judge.

The rewards will come if this movie has impact: On journalism, because owners, publishers and editors rededicate themselves to investigative reporting. On a skeptical public, because citizens come to recognize the necessity of vigorous local coverage and strong journalistic institutions. And on all of us, through a greater willingness to listen to the powerless and too-often voiceless, including those who have suffered sexual and other abuse.

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UNITED STATES
Hi-Def Digest

Posted by Philip Brown – February 24, 2016

‘The Club’
Movie Rating:
3.5

Complex, thought-provoking, daring and bleakly funny in the most disturbingly possible ways, Pablo Larrain’s ‘The Club’ is a savage little intimate drama.

It’s also a peculiar companion piece of sorts to this year’s awards darling ‘Spotlight’. Anyone who has seen that movie will recall the sequence in which a father discovers that a house on his street was used to shelter priests accused of child molestation. Larrain’s film takes place inside one of those houses and tackles all the icky subject matter therein head on.

The film opens by gradually introducing viewers to the four aging priests and one creepily perky nun sharing a house in a small community. Their days are dull, spent mostly in hiding. Their only connection to the outside world is a dog that they train to race with great success. They watch the race from a distance through binoculars and squirrel away their winnings for unknown purposes. Things are shaken up when a stranger (Roberto Farias) arrives. He screams about being molested as a child in graphic detail outside the house. Eventually, one of the hidden priests commits suicide. That event prompts the arrival of a new priest (Marcello Alonso), sent to interrogate and challenge these lost souls in the hopes of getting some sort of confession and doling out penance. In other words, the movie doesn’t exactly occur within a happy space, and you can be certain that it isn’t marching towards a redemptive ending either.

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