ABUSE TRACKER

NEW YORK
New York Daily News

‘This is a frame-up,’ says father of Brooklyn rabbi arrested for allegedly sexually abusing at least three former students of his at a yeshiva

By Rocco Parascandola , Kerry Burke AND Larry Mcshane / NEW YORK DAILY NEWS
Published: Thursday, January 31, 2013

A depraved Brooklyn rabbi, busted for sexually abusing three teenage boys, shamelessly blamed his underage victims for trying to seduce him, police sources said Thursday.

Yoel Malik, 33, a highly regarded member of an ultra-Orthodox Hasidic sect, lured all three teens to Brooklyn motels, prosecutors and police said.

But Malik, after his arrest on 28 criminal counts late Wednesday, tried to convince cops that he was the victim rather than the predator. The boys were all his students at Ohr Hameir, a now-shuttered Satmar yeshiva in Borough Park.

The twisted teacher’s comments “were self-serving,” said one police source. “In other words, they were coming on to him.”

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NEW YORK
The New York Times

By MOSI SECRET

Published: January 31, 2013

A rabbi from a prominent ultra-Orthodox Jewish family in Clinton Hill, Brooklyn, was charged on Thursday with sexually abusing three teenage boys from a school he ran, in a case that is likely to shine yet another spotlight on a secretive community grappling with abuse allegations.

The rabbi and leader of the school, Yoel Malik, 33, is accused of taking two of the boys to a local hotel for sexual encounters and rubbing another boy’s penis through his pants while masturbating in a parked car.

The encounters, the police said, occurred from March of last year until early in January. The three boys ranged in age from 14 to 16, the police said, although prosecutors said they were 13 to 16. The police said no charges were filed concerning a fourth victim, who is currently in Israel. A prosecutor said at an arraignment hearing in Brooklyn Criminal Court that there was a video of Rabbi Malik entering a hotel with the fourth victim at 3 a.m. and leaving later in the morning.

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LOS ANGELES (CA)
Die Welt

Der Erzbischof von Los Angeles, Jose Gomez, hat Akten über mutmaßlichen sexuellen Missbrauch von Kindern durch Priester veröffentlicht. Auf der Internetseite der US-Diözese sind seit Donnerstag die Daten zu Vorwürfen gegen 124 Priester einzusehen. In 82 Fällen geht es um mutmaßlichen Missbrauch. Die Veröffentlichung ist Teil einer Einigung der Kirche und der mutmaßlichen Opfer von 2007.

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LOS ANGELES (CA)
News.ch (Schweiz)

Los Angeles – Der Erzbischof von Los Angeles, Jose Gomez, hat Akten über mutmasslichen sexuellen Missbrauch von Kindern durch Priester veröffentlicht. Auf der Internetseite der US-Diözese sind seit Donnerstag die Daten zu Vorwürfen gegen 124 Priester einzusehen.

In 82 Fällen geht es um mutmasslichen Missbrauch. Die Veröffentlichung ist Teil einer Einigung der Kirche und der mutmasslichen Opfer von 2007.

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LOS ANGELES (CA)
Beverly Hills Courier

[with video]

(CNS) Posted Thursday, January 31, 2013–7:17 PM

After a years-long legal battle, the Catholic Archdiocese of Los Angeles today released personnel files of more than 100 clergy members as part of a 2007 settlement of a lawsuit alleging sexual abuse by priests.

In conjunction with the release, Archbishop Jose Gomez announced that former Archbishop Roger Mahony will “no longer have any administrative or public duties,” and Mahony’s former top adviser on sex-abuse issues, Auxiliary Bishop Thomas Curry, has stepped down as regional bishop of Santa Barbara.

The clergy files include the names of priests, culminating years of legal wrangling over whether names should be redacted from the paperwork.

“The 2013 public release of the files of clergy who were subject of the 2007 global settlement concludes a sad and shameful chapter in the history of our local church,” according to a diocese statement announcing the release of the files. “In the 2004 Report to the People of God and elsewhere, the archdiocese acknowledged and apologized for failing to treat victims of abuse with compassion, as well as for employing what we now know to be inadequate standards for treatment and supervision of priests who were found to have abused children and young people.”

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LOS ANGELES (CA)
OTZ (Deutschland)

Der Erzbischof von Los Angeles, Jose Gomez, hat Akten über mutmaßlichen sexuellen Missbrauch von Kindern durch Priester veröffentlicht.

Der Erzbischof von Los Angeles, Jose Gomez, hat Akten über mutmaßlichen sexuellen Missbrauch von Kindern durch Priester veröffentlicht. Auf der Internetseite der US-Diözese sind seit Donnerstag die Daten zu Vorwürfen gegen 124 Priester einzusehen. In 82 Fällen geht es um mutmaßlichen Missbrauch. Die Veröffentlichung ist Teil einer Einigung der Kirche und der mutmaßlichen Opfer von 2007.

“Diese Akten dokumentieren Missbrauch, der vor Jahrzehnten begangen wurde. Das macht ihn aber nicht weniger schlimm”, erklärte Erzbischof Gomez. “Ich finde es schmerzhaft und brutal, diese Dokumente zu lesen. Das darin beschriebene Verhalten ist furchtbar traurig und böse. Es gibt keine Entschuldigung, keine Erklärung dazu, was diesen Kindern geschehen ist.”

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LOS ANGELES (CA)
Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Los Angeles

Personnel Files of clergy who where subject of the 2007 global settlement have been publicly released and are listed below. We ask that you read the introduction page before exploring content below.

Frequently Asked Questions/Clergy Personnel Files:

1. Which files are being disclosed?
The files concern those priests named in the litigation that settled in 2007. Pursuant to the settlement agreement between victims and the Archdiocese, retired Federal Judge Dickran Tevrizian ordered files released subject to certain rules designed to protect the privacy of certain individuals, including the redaction of the names of victims, third parties and church hierarchy.

Judge Emilie Elias then adopted the Judge Tevrizian order with certain modifications. Specifically, she ordered that the names of the church hierarchy generally be disclosed in the files. The Archdiocese accepted her ruling, and has restored the names of church hierarchy in the documents being released. …

Clergy Personnel Files

•Abercombie, Leonard
•Aguilar-Rivera, Nicolas
•Alzugaray, Joseph
•Arzube, Juan
•Baker, Michael
•Barmasse, Kevin
•Boyer, Leland
•Brennan, John
•Buckley, Michael
•Buckman, Franklin
•Caffoe, Lynn
•Carey, Cleve
•Carriere, David
•Carroll, Michael
•Casey, Edward
•Casey, John
•Castro, Willebaldo
•Chandler, David
•Coffield, John
•Cosgrove, John
•Coughlin, Richard
•Cronin, Sean
•Cruces, Angel
•Daley, Wallace
•Dawson, John
•Deady, John
•DeJonghe, Harold
•Devaney, James
•Diesta, Arwyn
•Doherty, John
•Dolan, James
•Duggan, Albert
•English, Thomas
•Farabaugh, Clint
•Farmer, Donald
•Farris, John
•Faue, Matthias
•Feeney, John
•Fernando, Walter
•Fessard, Gerald
•Fitzpatrick, James
•Ford, James
•Gallagher, George
•Garcia, Cristobal
•Garcia, Peter
•Garcia, Richard
•Ginty, Denis
•Granadino, David
•Grill, Philip
•Grimes, James
•Gunst, George
•Hackett, John
•Hagenbach, Clinton
•Hanley, Bernard
•Haran, Michael
•Hartman, Richard
•Henry, Richard
•Hernandez, Stephen
•Hovath, Bertrand
•Hunt, Michael
•Hurley, Daniel
•Jaramillo, Luis
•Kearney, Christopher
•Kelly, Matthew
•Knoernschild, John
•Kohnke, John
•Lapierre, David
•Lindner, Jerold
•Llanos, Theodore
•Loomis, Richard
•Lopez, Joseph
•Lovell, Lawrence
•MacSweeney, Eugene
•Marshall, Thomas
•Martinez, Ruben
•Mateo, Leonard
•McAsey, Joseph
•McCarthy, Kevin
•McElhatton, Thomas
•Miani, Titian
•Miller, George
•Monte, Alfred
•Nocita, Michael
•O’Carroll, Charles
•O’Connor, Donal
•Orellana-Mendoza, Samuel
•Pecharich, Michael
•Perez, Henry
•Pina, Joseph
•Plesetz, Gerald
•Ramos, Eleutario
•Reilly, Terrence
•Rodriguez, Carlos
•Roemer, Donald
•Roper, William
•Rowe, Dorian
•Rozo, Efrain
•Rucker, George
•Ruhl, John
•Ryan, Joseph
•Salazar, John
•Salinas, Gabriel
•Sanchez, Manuel
•Santillan, John
•Savino, Dominic
•Scott, George
•Sharpe, Joseph
•Sheahan, John
•Shimmaly, Edward
•Silva-Flores, Fidencio
•Stalkamp, Louis
•Sutphin, Carl
•Tamayo, Santiago
•Tepe, Raymond
•Terra, Michael
•Ugarte, Jose
•Van Liefde, Christopher
•Vetter, Henry
•Villa Gomez, Nemoria
•Weitz, Wilfrid
•Wempe, Michael
•Ziemann, Patrick
•z-I
•z-II
•z-III
•z-IV
•z-V
•z-VI

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LOS ANGELES (CA)
Wall Street Journal

By TAMARA AUDI and ERICA E. PHILLIPS

The Catholic Archbishop of Los Angeles removed retired Cardinal Roger Mahony from public and administrative church duties Thursday night, just before the church released thousands of pages of personnel files of priests accused of abusing children.

Cardinal Mahony was a well-known figure in Los Angeles who had led the diocese as archbishop from 1985 until his retirement in 2011. His removal from public duties came on the heels of a previous document release that showed he and other church officials allegedly attempting to keep priests accused of abuse from prosecution.

Shortly after announcing the decision regarding Cardinal Mahony, the church unexpectedly released thousands of pages of documents about more than 100 priests believed to have abused children. The document release is part of a $660 million civil settlement reached with more than 500 plaintiffs in 2007.

In a statement, Los Angeles Archbishop Jose Gomez called the files “brutal and painful reading.”

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LOS ANGELES (CA)
The New York Times

By JENNIFER MEDINA and LAURIE GOODSTEIN

LOS ANGELES — Cardinal Roger M. Mahony, who retired less than two years ago as the leader of the nation’s largest Roman Catholic archdiocese, was removed from all public duties by his successor, Archbishop José H. Gomez, as the church complied with a court order to release thousands of pages of internal documents that show how the cardinal shielded priests who sexually abused children.

The documents, released as part of a record $660 million settlement in 2007 with the victims of abuse, are the strongest evidence so far that top officials for years purposely tried to conceal abuse from law enforcement officials. The files, which go from the 1940s to the present, are the latest in a series of revelations that suggest that the church continued to maneuver against law enforcement even after the extent of the abuse crisis emerged.

Auxiliary Bishop Thomas Curry, who was the vicar for clergy and one of the cardinal’s top deputies and his adviser on sexual abuse, also stepped down as the regional bishop for Santa Barbara, Calif.

The church had fought for years to keep the documents secret, and until this week it argued that the names of top church officials should be kept private. In letters written in the 1980s, then-Father Curry gave suggestions for how to stop the police from investigating priests who admitted that they had abused children, like stopping the priests from seeing therapists who would be required to alert law enforcement about the abuse.

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LOS ANGELES (CA)
Los Angeles Times

Built in the 18th century, Our Lady Queen of Angels Church on Olvera Street is a historic landmark that Cardinal Roger Mahony would frequently visit for various events including the popular blessing of the animals.

But on Thursday, the mood at the Spanish Colonial chapel was decidedly more somber as parishioners quietly discussed Archbishop Jose Gomez’s dramatic decision to strip Mahony of any public and administrative church duties in the wake of the priest abuse scandal.

There were only a few people at the church Thursday evening. But when Mahony’s name was mentioned, other came to join the discussion.

“They seem to be taking drastic measures,” said Ralph Ochoa, a food volunteer. “They have to for the church to survive. A lot of people were hurt, they feel they were betrayed. It hurt parishioners and everyone too.”

Gomez acted after the release of church records showing that Mahony and another church leader tried to hide child abuse by priests from police.

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LOS ANGELES (CA)
LA Weekly

By Dennis Romero
Thu., Jan. 31 2013 at 10:34 PM

We’re not sure that a stunning rebuke is, but we’re going to guess that this is one.

Los Angeles Archbishop José Gomez stated tonight that retired Cardinal and Archbishop Emeritus Roger Mahony would “no longer have any administrative or public duties” for the 4-million-parishioner L.A. Archdiocese.

The announcement came as Gomez unveiled its files related to clergy sexual abuse:

Gomez also said he accepted the the request of Auxiliary Bishop Thomas Curry “to be relieved of his responsibility as the Regional Bishop of Santa Barbara.”

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LOS ANGELES (CA)
NBC Southern California

[with video]

Former Cardinal Mahoney Stripped of Public Duties for Role in Shielding Alleged Priest Child Molesters

By Samantha Tata

Thursday, Jan 31, 2013

Hours after personnel files detailing years of alleged sexual abuse by Los Angeles priests were released Thursday, the Archbishop of Los Angeles apologized for priests’ past abuse as he took action against two church leaders who were at the helm while the suspected abuse took place.

Retired Cardinal Roger Mahony will “no longer have any administrative or public duties,” and his former Vicar of Clergy Auxiliary Bishop Thomas Curry will resign as the Regional Bishop of Santa Barbara, Archbishop José H. Gomez said in a statement released Thursday evening.

Mahoney and other top Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Los Angeles officials maneuvered behind the scenes to shield molester priests, provide damage control for the church and keep parishioners in the dark, according to the church personnel files.

As Vicar for Clergy, Curry was responsible for “promoting the spiritual and physical well-being” for all priests and deacons in the archdiocese, including those who were inactive, sick or on leave, according to the archdiocese’s website. He also doled out assignments for priests and deacons.

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LOS ANGELES (CA)
Catholic News Agency

Los Angeles, Calif., Jan 31, 2013 / 11:05 pm (CNA).- Los Angeles Archbishop José H. Gomez has relieved retired Cardinal Roger Mahony of his remaining duties after the release of personnel files of priests accused of sexual abuse decades ago.

“We need to acknowledge that terrible failure today. We need to pray for everyone who has ever been hurt by members of the Church,” the archbishop said in a Jan. 31 statement.

“And we need to continue to support the long and painful process of healing their wounds and restoring the trust that was broken.”

Archbishop Gomez noted that “effective immediately, I have informed Cardinal Mahony” – who served the archdiocese from 1985 to 2011 – “that he will no longer have any administrative or public duties.”

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LOS ANGELES (CA)
CBS 47

[with video]

Reported by: Lemor Abrams
Email: LemorAbrams@cbsfresno.com

A bombshell from the Catholic Church.

Retired cardinal Roger Mahony is relieved of his remaining duties with the Archdiocese of Los Angeles.

It comes as the Church releases 12,000 documents from files on priests accused of sexual abuse.

Records show Mahony worked for years to conceal molestation by the clergy from law enforcement.

Archbishop of Los Angeles Jose Gomez released a statement late Thursday.

He says in part:

“My predecessor, Retired Cardinal Roger Mahony, has expressed his sorrow for his failure to fully protect young people entrusted to his care. Effective immediately, I have informed Cardinal Mahony that he will no longer have any administrative or public duties.”

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LOS ANGELES (CA)
The Times (United Kingdom)

Lucinda Beaman

America’s largest Roman Catholic diocese has released thousands of pages of personnel files of priests accused of child molestation and removed a top clergyman who has been linked to efforts to conceal the abuse.

The former head of the Los Angeles diocese, the retired Cardinal Roger Mahony, has been stripped of administrative and public duties by his successor, Archbishop José Gómez.

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LOS ANGELES (CA)
Press TV (Iran)

A US Catholic archbishop has stripped a top cardinal, who led a Los Angeles Archdiocese before him, of all church duties for his role in concealing child sexual abuse offenses by Catholic priests from authorities.

Archbishop Jose Gomez announced in a Thursday statement by the Los Angeles Catholic Archdiocese that he had removed his predecessor, retired Cardinal Roger Mahony, of all public and administrative duties.

Former top advisor to 76-year-old Mahony on child sexual abuse cases in the church, Thomas Curry, 70, who colluded with him in hiding child molestation offenses by Catholic priests, has reportedly quit his current position as a bishop in the California city of Santa Barbara.

“I find these files to be brutal and painful reading. The behavior described in these files is terribly sad and evil,” Gomez proclaimed in a statement issued by the largest Catholic archdiocese in the US.

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LOS ANGELES (CA)
Redlands Daily Facts

By Susan Abram and Barbara Jones, Staff Writersdailynews.com

Cardinal Roger Mahony, who has stood at the center of the Los Angeles Archdiocese clergy sex abuse scandal after mounting evidence showed he shielded pedophile priests from law enforcement, has been relieved of all public duties, Archbishop Jose Gomez announced late Thursday.

Gomez’s unexpected announcement came as the archdiocese, under court order, released some 12,000 documents from the internal personnel files of priests accused of sexual abuse.

“Effective immediately, I have informed Cardinal Mahony that he will no longer have any administrative or public duties,” Gomez said in a written statement.

He also said auxiliary Bishop Thomas Curry, who served as Mahony’s vicar of clergy and his point person on sex abuse cases, has stepped down as regional bishop of Santa Barbara.

“I have accepted his request to be relieved of his responsibility,” Gomez said.

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LOS ANGELES (CA)
Indian Express

The archbishop of Los Angeles has stripped his predecessor of all church duties as he released files on more than 100 clerics, as required under a 2007 lawsuit deal over alleged sex abuse.

Archbishop Jose Gomez said retired Cardinal Roger Mahony will “no longer have any administrative or public duties,” while Mahony’s former top adviser on sex-abuse issues, Thomas Curry, has stepped down as a regional bishop.

“These files document abuses that happened decades ago. But that does not make them less serious,” he wrote, releasing the personnel files online after prolonged wrangling over whether the names should be blanked out.

“I find these files to be brutal and painful reading. The behaviour described in these files is terribly sad and evil. There is no excuse, no explaining away what happened to these children.

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LOS ANGELES (CA)
CNN

By Ben Brumfield, CNN

updated 7:12 AM EST, Fri February 1, 2013

(CNN) — A California judge has forced the Archdiocese of Los Angeles to release some 12,000 pages of church documents revealing how it handled allegations of priest sexual abuse.

There were many — 192 priests and bishops were named in litigation, the archdiocese said.

“The cases span decades,” Archbishop Jose H. Gomez said in a statement Thursday. Some go back to the 1930s.

“But that does not make them less serious. I find these files to be brutal and painful reading,” he said.

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LOS ANGELES (CA)
U-T San Diego

By Gillian Flaccus Associated Press

Los Angeles

Los Angeles Archbishop Jose Gomez announced Thursday night he has relieved retired Cardinal Roger Mahony of his remaining duties and a former top aide to Mahony has stepped down from his post, on the same night the church released thousands of pages of personnel files of priests accused of sexual abuse.

“I find these files to be brutal and painful reading,” Gomez said in a statement, referring to the newly released files made public by the church Thursday night hours after a judge’s order. “The behavior described in these files is terribly sad and evil. There is no excuse, no explaining away what happened to these children.”

Gomez announced he has “informed Cardinal Mahony that he will no longer have any administrative or public duties.”

Mahony, who retired in 2011 after more than a quarter-century at the helm of the archdiocese, has publicly apologized for mistakes he made in dealing with priests who molested children.

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LOS ANGELES (CA)
The Guardian (United Kingdom)

Reuters in Los Angeles
guardian.co.uk, Friday 1 February 2013

The Catholic archdiocese of Los Angeles has removed a top clergyman linked to efforts to conceal abuse as it released thousands on files of priests accused of molesting children.

Archbishop Jose Gomez said he had stripped his predecessor, the retired cardinal Roger Mahony, of all public and administrative duties. “I find these files to be brutal and painful reading. The behaviour described in these files is terribly sad and evil,” Gomez said in a statement released by the US’s largest Catholic archdiocese.

“There is no excuse, no explaining away what happened to these children. The priests involved had the duty to be their spiritual fathers and they failed,” he said.

Mahony’s former top aide, Thomas Curry, also stepped down as bishop of Santa Barbara.

The 12,000 pages of files were made public more than a week after church records relating to 14 priests were unsealed as part of a separate civil suit, showing that church officials plotted to conceal the abuse from law enforcement agencies as late as 1987.

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LOS ANGELES (CA)
Newser

By Matt Cantor, Newser Staff

Posted Feb 1, 2013

(Newser) – The former archbishop of Los Angeles has been removed from all public duties due to the central role he played in the coverup of child abuse. Tens of thousands of pages revealing the extent of the abuse crisis, now posted on the church’s website, are “brutal and painful reading. The behavior described in these files is terribly sad and evil,” said current archbishop Jose Gomez. The public action against Cardinal Roger Mahony—which comes within hours of the documents’ court-ordered release—is “unprecedented” within the American Catholic Church, according to the Los Angeles Times.

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LOS ANGELES (CA)
BBC News

A retired Los Angeles cardinal accused of mismanaging a child sex abuse crisis has been stripped of all administrative and public duties by his successor.

Retired Cardinal Roger Mahony, 76, has apologised for his “failure”, Archbishop Jose Gomez said on Thursday.

The Los Angeles archdiocese, the largest in the US, has released thousands of pages of files on priests accused of child molestation.

Cardinal Mahony retired in 2011, having run the archdiocese for 25 years.

In 2007 Los Angeles paid $660m (£415m) to alleged victims of abuse, the largest sex abuse payout on record.

Cardinal Mahony has publicly apologised for mistakes he made handling the clerical sex abuse issue.

‘They failed’

“I find these files to be brutal and painful reading,” Archbishop Gomez said in a statement. “The behaviour described in these files is terribly sad and evil.

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LOS ANGELES (CA)
Coshocton Tribune

by Cathy Lynn Grossman, USA TDOAY

One of the most powerful Catholic leaders in the USA, Cardinal Roger Mahony, the retired archbishop of Los Angeles, has been relieved of his duties for covering up for sexually abusive priests – a role the current archbishop called “evil.”

Just hours after a court-ordered massive release of priest personnel files revealed the extent of Mahony’s role in covering up for known sexual predators, Archbishop José Gómez announced Thursday night that he has relieved Mahony of his remaining duties.

A former top aide to Mahony also stepped down from his current post.

This is the first time since the massive abuse scandal exploded in 2002 hen there were direct repercussions for top church officials. In December 2002, Cardinal Bernard Law resigned his post as archbishop of Boston when protesters and priests called for him to step aside.

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LOS ANGELES (CA)
RTE News (Ireland)

The Catholic Archdiocese of Los Angeles, after years of legal battles, has released files on priests accused of molesting children.

Archbishop Jose Gomez said he had stripped his predecessor, retired Cardinal Roger Mahony, of all public and administrative duties.

He also removed a top clergyman who had been linked to efforts to conceal the abuse.

Cardinal Mahony’s former top aide, Thomas Curry, stepped down as bishop of Santa Barbara.

“I find these files to be brutal and painful reading. The behaviour described in these files is terribly sad and evil,” Archbishop Gomez said in a statement.

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LOS ANGELES (CA)
IrishCentral

By
PATRICK COUNIHAN,
IrishCentral Staff Writer

Published Friday, February 1, 2013, 7:05 AM

A Catholic Archbishop has described the efforts of the American church to thwart police investigations into clerical sex abuse as ‘terribly sad and evil’ – after he banned Cardinal Roger M. Mahony from public life.

The Los Angeles Times has revealed that new documents show that Cardinal Mahony has been removed from all public office by his successor Archbishop José H. Gomez.

Cardinal Mahony was leader of America’s largest Roman Catholic archdiocese when Archbishop Gomez took initial action two years ago as the church complied with a court order to release thousands of pages of internal documents that show how the cardinal shielded priests who sexually abused children.

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LOS ANGELES (CA)
National Catholic Reporter

by Jerry Filteau | Feb. 1, 2013

In an action possibly without any precedent in church history, Los Angeles Archbishop Jose H. Gomez has barred his predecessor, Cardinal Roger M. Mahony, from any public ministry in Los Angeles.

“Effective immediately, I have informed Cardinal Mahony that he will no longer have any administrative or public duties” Gomez said in a Jan 31 letter.

He cited Mahony’s alleged failures to protect young people from sexually abusive priests – extensively documented in court filings in recent years – as grounds for the extraordinary decision, in church terms, to bar the cardinal from any future public activities in the Los Angeles Archdiocese.

Mahony, archbishop of Los Angeles from 1985 to 2011 and a cardinal since 1991, has long been one of the leading church figures in the United States, a leader in justice for farmworkers, immigrants and other victims of economic injustice.

Church law gives cardinals extraordinary authority even beyond their own dioceses, with Canon 357 of the Code of Canon Law saying that “in those matters which pertain to their own person, cardinals living outside of Rome and outside their own diocese are exempt from the power of governance of the bishop of the diocese in which they are residing.”

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LOS ANGELES (CA)
St. Augustine Record

LOS ANGELES (AP) — Cardinal Roger Mahony, who retired with a tainted career after dodging criminal charges over how he handled pedophile priests, was stripped of duties by his successor as a judge ordered confidential church personnel files released.

The unprecedented move by Archbishop Jose Gomez came less than two weeks after other long-secret priest personnel records showed how Mahony worked with top aides to protect the Roman Catholic church from the engulfing scandal.

One of those aides, Monsignor Thomas Curry stepped down Thursday as auxiliary bishop in the Los Angeles archdiocese’s Santa Barbara region. Gomez said Mahony, 76, would no longer have administrative or public duties in the diocese.

“I find these files to be brutal and painful reading,” Gomez said in a statement, referring to 12,000 pages of files posted online by the church Thursday night just hours after a judge’s order. “The behavior described in these files is terribly sad and evil. There is no excuse, no explaining away what happened to these children.”

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LOS ANGELES (CA)
Arquidiócesis de Los Ángeles

Monseñor José H. Gomez
Arzobispo de Los Ángeles
Los Angeles, 31 de enero de 2013

Hermanos y Hermanas en Cristo,

Esta semana estamos haciendo públicos los archivos de los sacerdotes que abusaron sexualmente a niños mientras servían en la Arquidiócesis de Los Angeles.

Estos archivos contienen documentación sobre abusos que sucedieron hace varias décadas. Pero eso no los hace menos graves.

La lectura de esos archivos es brutal y dolorosa. El comportamiento que se describe ahí es tristísimo y terriblemente malo. No hay excusas ni explicaciones posibles sobre lo que pasó a esos niños. Los sacerdotes involucrados tenían el deber de ser sus padres espirituales, y fallaron.

Hoy, necesitamos admitir esas terribles faltas. Tenemos que rezar por todos aquellos que alguna vez han sido heridos por miembros de la Iglesia. Y tenemos que seguir ofreciendo nuestro apoyo en el largo y doloroso proceso de la sanación de sus heridas, así como de la recuperación de la confianza que fue destrozada.

No puedo deshacer los errores del pasado que se encuentran en esas páginas. Leer esos archivos, reflexionar sobre las heridas causadas, ha sido la experiencia más triste que he tenido desde que asumí la responsabilidad de ser su Arzobispo en el 2011.

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LOS ANGELES (CA)
Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Los Angeles

[en espanol]

Most Reverend José H. Gomez
Archbishop of Los Angeles
Los Angeles January 31, 2013

My brothers and sisters in Christ,

This week we are releasing the files of priests who sexually abused children while they were serving in the Archdiocese of Los Angeles.

These files document abuses that happened decades ago. But that does not make them less serious.

I find these files to be brutal and painful reading. The behavior described in these files is terribly sad and evil. There is no excuse, no explaining away what happened to these children. The priests involved had the duty to be their spiritual fathers and they failed.

We need to acknowledge that terrible failure today. We need to pray for everyone who has ever been hurt by members of the Church. And we need to continue to support the long and painful process of healing their wounds and restoring the trust that was broken.

I cannot undo the failings of the past that we find in these pages. Reading these files, reflecting on the wounds that were caused, has been the saddest experience I’ve had since becoming your Archbishop in 2011.

My predecessor, retired Cardinal Roger Mahony, has expressed his sorrow for his failure to fully protect young people entrusted to his care. Effective immediately, I have informed Cardinal Mahony that he will no longer have any administrative or public duties. Auxiliary Bishop Thomas Curry has also publicly apologized for his decisions while serving as Vicar for Clergy. I have accepted his request to be relieved of his responsibility as the Regional Bishop of Santa Barbara.

To every victim of child sexual abuse by a member of our Church: I want to help you in your healing. I am profoundly sorry for these sins against you.

To every Catholic in the Archdiocese of Los Angeles, I want you to know: We will continue, as we have for many years now, to immediately report every credible allegation of abuse to law enforcement authorities and to remove those credibly accused from ministry. We will continue to work, every day, to make sure that our children are safe and loved and cared for in our parishes, schools and in every ministry in the Archdiocese.

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LOS ANGELES (CA)
Los Angeles Times

By Harriet Ryan and Victoria Kim, Los Angeles Times
February 1, 2013

In a move unprecedented in the American Catholic Church, Los Angeles Archbishop Jose Gomez announced Thursday that he had relieved his predecessor, Cardinal Roger M. Mahony, of all public duties over his mishandling of clergy sex abuse of children decades ago.

Gomez also said that Auxiliary Bishop Thomas J. Curry, who worked with Mahony to conceal abusers from police in the 1980s, had resigned his post as a regional bishop in Santa Barbara.

The announcement came as the church posted on its website tens of thousands of pages of previously secret personnel files for 122 priests accused of molesting children.

“I find these files to be brutal and painful reading. The behavior described in these files is terribly sad and evil,” Gomez wrote in a letter addressed to “My brothers and sisters in Christ.”

The release of the records and the rebuke of the two central figures in L.A.’s molestation scandal signaled a clear desire by Gomez to define the sexual abuse crisis as a problem of a different era — and a different archbishop.

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LOS ANGELES (CA)
Los Angeles Times

A trove of confidential church files detailing how the Los Angeles archdiocese dealt with priests accused of molestation must be released “as soon as possible” and include the names of Cardinal Roger Mahony and his aides, a judge ruled Thursday.

In a written order, Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge Emilie H. Elias gave the church a Feb. 22 deadline to turn over about 30,000 pages of internal memos, psychiatric reports, Vatican correspondence and other documents.

“Let’s just get it done,” Elias said in court Thursday.

Her order brought to a close five and a half years of legal wrangling and delays and set the stage for a raft of new and almost certainly embarrassing revelations about the church’s handling of pedophile priests. A small portion of the files were made public in a civil case last week and showed that in the 1980s Mahony and a top aide discussed methods for concealing abuse from police, including giving molesters out-of-state assignments.

DOCUMENT: Los Angeles Archdiocese priest abuse files

The files Elias ordered released are the final piece of a landmark 2007 settlement between the archdiocese and about 500 people who said clergy abused them. As part of that $660-million settlement, the archdiocese agreed to hand over the personnel files of accused abusers. Victims said the files would provide accountability for church leaders who let pedophiles remain in the ministry; law enforcement officials said the records would be important investigative tools.

But the release was delayed for years by appeals and the painstaking process of reading and redacting 89 files, some hundreds of pages long. A private mediator in 2011 ordered the church to black out the names of victims and archdiocese employees not accused of abuse, saying he wanted to avoid “guilt by association.”

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LOS ANGELES (CA)
Washington Post

Judge orders LA archdiocese to release 30K pages of priest files without blacked-out names

By Associated Press

LOS ANGELES — A judge on Thursday ordered the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Los Angeles to turn over 30,000 pages from the confidential files of priests accused of child molestation without blacking out the names of top church officials who were responsible for key decisions in how to handle the sexually abusive priests.

Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Emilie Elias ordered the nation’s largest archdiocese to turn over the files to attorneys for alleged victims no later than Feb. 22.

The archdiocese had planned to black out the names of members of the church hierarchy who were responsible for the molesting priests in the documents and instead provide a cover sheet for each priest’s file, listing the names of top officials who handled that case. The church reversed course Wednesday after The Associated Press, the Los Angeles Times and plaintiff attorneys objected in court.

The archdiocese had also planned to black out handwritten comments on the files inked by recently retired Cardinal Roger Mahony and provide those in typewritten form instead.

A record-breaking $660 million settlement in 2007 with more than 500 alleged victims paved the way for the ultimate disclosure of the tens of thousands of pages, but the archdiocese and individual priests fought to keep them secret for more than five years. The AP and the Los Angeles Times intervened in court in January because the 4.3 million-person archdiocese intended to release the files with the names of top officials, including Mahony’s, blacked out.

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LOS ANGELES (CA)
ABC 6

Posted: Jan 31, 2013

By GILLIAN FLACCUS
Associated Press
LOS ANGELES (AP) – A judge has ordered the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Los Angeles to turn over 30,000 pages from the confidential files of priests accused of sex abuse without blacking out the names of top church officials who were responsible for handling their cases.

Judge Emilie Elias on Thursday ordered the nation’s largest archdiocese to release the files by Feb. 22.

A record-breaking $660 million settlement with more than 500 victims in 2007 set the stage for the release of the files, but the archdiocese and individual priests fought for five years to keep them secret.

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LOS ANGELES (CA)
Los Angeles Times

By Sandra Hernandez
January 31, 2013, 4:47 p.m.

Earlier this month, a state judge ordered the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Los Angeles to include the names of church leaders who mishandled sex-abuse claims when it finally releases scores of confidential priest files as part of a 2007 settlement.

Yet despite that court order, the archdiocese has continued to act as if the rules don’t apply to it. This week, the church resubmitted a proposal that would have redacted the names of top church leaders from the documents and only provided the names of those officials in a generic cover sheet attached to the priest’s file. The church’s actions were nothing short of an attempt to delay justice and conceal the truth from the victims and the public.

I can’t say the church’s request came as a surprise. The archdiocese has spent years in court fighting to keep those records under wraps. And last week, we learned why.

As The Times’ Victoria Kim and Harriet Ryan reported, confidential letters and memos, filed in a civil court case, reveal Cardinal Roger M. Mahony’s role in plotting to shield pedophile priests from coming to the attention of police or prosecutors. The letters document how Mahony and Msgr. Thomas J. Curry, his top advisor on sex-abuse cases, discussed strategies to keep pedophile priests out of state.

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MICHIGAN
The Oakland Press

By CAROL HOPKINS
carol.hopkins@oakpress.com Twitter: @opcarolhopkins

Officials with SNAP, the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests, are inviting people to come forward after learning a Franciscan friar who once worked at Orchard Lake Schools committed suicide and left a note apologizing to his victims.

Brother Stephen Baker worked at the school in Orchard Lake between 1983 and 85. There is no record that Baker molested anyone connected with the school system, said officials with the Archdiocese of Detroit.

Baker, 62 — who killed himself Jan. 26 with a self-inflicted knife wound to the heart at the St. Bernardine Monastery in Hollidaysburg, Pa. — is accused of molesting high school students in Pennsylvania and Ohio.

Baker was named in legal settlements last week involving 11 men who alleged that he sexually abused them at a Catholic high school in northeast Ohio three decades ago. The undisclosed financial settlements announced Jan. 16 involved his contact with students at John F. Kennedy High School in Warren, Ohio from 1986-90.

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LOS ANGELES (CA)
NBC Southern California

By Patrick Healy and Jonathan Lloyd

Thursday, Jan 31, 2013

A judge is expected to issue an order Thursday afternoon governing the release of personnel files that include the names of Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Los Angeles leaders who handled priest abuse cases.

Attorneys and the judge concluded a conference call Thursday morning in which they discussed how the 30,000 pages of confidential personnel files will be released. The archdiocese is expected to be given 30 days to comply, but officials might have the documents ready in as soon as one week.

The files will be provided to attorneys for clergy abuse victims.

Attorneys for the archdiocese said Wednesday they will not pursue a plan that would have blacked out church leaders’ names when the files are released, according to the Associated Press. The move is a reversal of the archdiocese’s plan to redact the names, citing privacy rights of priests and others.

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DETROIT (MI)
Desert Sun

Written by
Patricia Montemurri
Detroit Free Press Staff Writer

EDITOR’S NOTE: An earlier headline on this story incorrectly stated that the Archdiocese of Detroit had abuse complaints tied to Catholic friar Stephen Baker. The archdiocese does not have a record of any abuse complaints against Baker. This was an editing error. The current headline is correct.

The Archdiocese of Detroit said it has no record of complaints against a Catholic friar who taught at Orchard Lake St. Mary’s Prep High School for two years, and killed himself Saturday after allegations surfaced that he had molested students at Ohio and Pennsylvania Catholic schools.

Brother Stephen Baker, a Franciscan friar, taught at the all-boys St. Mary’s Prep from 1983 to 1985. He then went on to teach at Catholic high schools in Warren, Ohio, and Johnstown, Pa.

“The Detroit archdiocese has no record of sexual abuse complaints involving minors brought against Br. Baker during the two years in Michigan,” the archdiocese said in a statement released Wednesday.

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MICHIGAN
Tribune Chronicle

January 31, 2013

The Detroit Archdiocese is reporting that it has no record of sexual abuse complaints brought against Brother Stephen Baker during his two years in Michigan.

The archdiocese made the statement on its website after members of SNAP, a support group for clergy sex abuse victims, called on it to investigate whether Baker had sexually abused any of his students while teaching at Orchard Lakes Schools from 1983 to 1985.

Baker is accused of abusing former students while he was working at John F. Kennedy High School in Warren from 1986 to 1990 and then at Bishop McCort in the 1990s. He committed suicide Saturday morning at St. Bernardine Monastery in Hollidaysburg, Pa., where he lived. In a letter found in his room at the monastery, Baker apologized to the church, the Blair County Coroner’s Office confirmed.

In its statement, the Detroit Archdiocese confirmed that Baker, a Franciscan friar, took classes and worked at Orchard Lakes Schools. However, the archdiocese explained that OLS reports that it does not have any record of an abuse complaint during or after those years.

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INDIA
Ucanews

Priscilla Pinto, Pune
India
2013-01-31

Catholic leaders are questioning the investigation of a Salesian priest accused of molesting a minor girl in Pune.

Father Igidius Falcao, a vice principal at Don Bosco high school in Pune, Maharashtra state, was arrested January 21 after a 14-year-old Catholic student complained he had attempted to molest her on January 2 in his office.

Father Falcao, 61, was transfered from police custody to magisterial custody on Monday, where he will stay until February 11, his lawyer said.

He applied for bail yesterday, but police are seeking an extension of custody while they investigate the priest’s past positions in Mumbai, according to police inspector Reshma Mulani.

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UNITED STATES
ABC 23

There is more information tonight on the investigation into a cleric accused of sexually abusing young kids at Bishop McCort High School. We told you last week that Brother Stephen Baker also worked at two schools in Ohio and one in Virginia. Today we have learned of another, a prep school in Michigan. A support group known as “SNAP” held a rally in Detroit today asking why church leaders have kept silent about Baker’s past especially now that the number of alleged victim reach at least eight. We did reach out to the Diocese of Richmond Virginia and Detroit today both told us there were never any allegations against Brother Baker at their schools and said today was the first they even heard of the case.

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UNITED KINGDOM
Failed Messiah

Shmarya Rosenberg • FailedMessiah.com

According to a Behadrei Haredim report, the beit din (religious court) called to investigate allegations that Rabbi Chaim Halpern has arrived in London. It met this morning to deal with administrative matters and will begin hearing Halpern’s case tomorrow.

The dayanim (rabbi-judges) are: Rabbi Sariel Rosenberg, of Rabbi Nissim Karelitz’s Beit Din Tzedek (Badatz) of Bnei Brak; Rabbi Yisroel Berger, who was sent by Rabbi Ephraim Nussbaum of Badatz Ahvas Shalom and Beit Din Hayashor Vehatov in Jerusalem; and Rabbi Avraham Baruch Rosenberg of Monsey, New York who heads the Badatz Toras Chaim-Vizhnitz Monsey USA and who also heads another beit din there, Machon Le’Hora’ah.

Rabbi David Cohen Rabbi of the large Sephardic community in London was appointed as a special assistant to the Beis Din to screen those who want to testify and determine the procedures for the hearings, which are expected to continue for another week. After the beit din finishes hearing testimony it will meet in a series of hearings to decide the case.

A decision is expected to be handed down in late February or early March.

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Huffington Post

Rabbi Yitzchak Shochet

Last night, British Channel 4’s Dispatches programme did an exposé on attitudes within some of the Orthodox Jewish community in London toward sex abuse crimes. One particular victim went undercover to expose the way his community has for decades been dealing with paedophilia. It’s been a year long investigation and it has sent shockwaves through much of the Anglo-Jewish community. Unfortunately this is one of many stories emerging of late. There was the high profile trial and conviction of an Orthodox Jewish “therapist” in Williamsburg, N.Y., and a lot of media attention focussed on a spiritual leader in Golders Green, London.

Often the community rallies around alleged offenders and ostracise the would-be victim. Edward Thorndike, president of the American Psychological Association in the early 20th century, coined a term called “the halo effect.” The theory goes that we tend to give someone the benefit of the doubt based on personal image and stature. When we hear about a common man having committed an offence we immediately presume him to be guilty while feeling sorry for the victim. But when it’s someone of stature in the community, we immediately presume that person’s innocence while vilifying those who bring the accusations. As Thorndike put it, we make “a generalisation from the perception of one outstanding personality trait to an overly favourable evaluation of the whole personality.”

Isn’t that why Jimmy Saville got away with what he did for so long? I’ve spoken to several people involved in the music industry during the Saville era that now claim with hindsight that “Jimmy Saville was obviously up to no good.” Only at the time they didn’t see it. Like them, the hundreds who have clamoured to the support of a rabbi in London, the thousands who have done the same for one of their own in New York and the many more who immediately ostracise those bringing claims of sexual abuse, all suffer from the halo effect. After all who are you more likely to believe: a “skimpy clad, rebellious” teenage girl or a long frock coated, black-bearded therapist; a leading rabbi or a “desperate” divorcee; a “troubled” student or a popular star-studded teacher?

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NEW YORK
New York Daily News

By Rocco Parascandola , Eric Badia AND Larry Mcshane / NEW YORK DAILY NEWS

Thursday, January 31, 2013

A Brooklyn rabbi sexually abused three teenage boys from the ultra-Orthodox yeshiva where he once taught, cops said Thursday.

Yoel Malik, 33, a well-regarded member of the Satmar Hasidic sect, was arrested on 28 charges ranging from sexual abuse to forcible touching, police said.

He lured two of the underaged victims to Brooklyn hotels, according to sources.

The arrest came a week after a Satmar counselor was sentenced to 103 years behind bars for his repeated sexual abuse of a teenage girl sent to him for help.

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MINNESOTA
Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests

Posted by David Clohessy on January 31, 2013

A Catholic cleric who is accused of molesting dozens of boys and who killed himself on Saturday worked for at least four years in the Twin Cities and may have molested a Minnesota child, a newspaper has reported.

And a support group is blasting two Catholic institutions – the St. Paul-Minneapolis archdiocese and a religious order called the Franciscans – for not disclosing the accused man’s presence here and the allegation against him.

On Jan. 26, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette disclosed that Brother Stephen P. Baker “had been banned from ministry in 2000 after his order settled a claim that he had sexually abused a minor while serving in Minnesota in the 1980s.”

Leaders of SNAP, the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests, believe that Baker was at St. Patrick’s church in Inver Grove Heights from 1978 to 1981. That parish has long been staffed by priests and others from the Franciscans.

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IOWA
Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests

Posted by Barbara Dorris on January 31, 2013

We think this idea deserves serious consideration. There’s no magic age at which a sex offender is suddenly no longer dangerous. Older sex offenders may look harmless but actually be more dangerous than ever.

Serial offenders with stooped shoulders, thick glasses, thinning hair and advanced age tends look like harmless grandpas. They often lull us into complacency. But having spent years picking, grooming and assaulting the vulnerable, then telling cunning lies and making shrewd excuses, these older predators are often more dangerous than ever.

The real remedy, however, is reforming Iowa’s archaic, predator-friendly statutes of limitations. If more victims can seek justice in courts – both civil and criminal – more child predators will be suspended, arrested, charged and imprisoned. And more officials will think twice about – and decide against – covering up child sex crimes.

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PHILADELPHIA (PA)
National Survivor Advocates Coalition

The jury in Philadelphia convicted Rev. Charles Engelhardt and former teacher Bernard Shero on Wednesday.

Here is the link to the Associated Press story via ABC News: [click here]

There will be news stories, columns, and other editorials about these convictions but it is our desire that these words spoken by Philadelphia District Attorney Seth Williams capture and hold center ground today.

”The victim in this case has shown exceptional courage,” said District Attorney Seth Williams. “Not only did he have the strength to report his abuse, he had the tenacity to look his abusers in the eye and testify in front of complete strangers about the horrific details of his attacks. I hope this verdict will help him to continue with the long journey of healing that comes after such trauma.”

Indeed, without the courage of victims, truth is strangled.

Society is deeply indebted to them for tearing away the masks, the veils, the abusers’ sought after opaque personas.

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CALIFORNIA
KPCC

A Superior Court judge has ordered the release of thousands of documents held by the L.A. Archdiocese identifying Roman Catholic priests who have been accused of molesting children.

If you are Catholic or have been involved with the Catholic Church, how does this information release affect you, your family and the Church?

KPCC journalists want to hear from Catholics, clergy, survivors and others about the benefits or harms they see coming from the Church’s policy of keeping allegations confidential, and the public release of these files.

Responses to our questions are confidential, so nothing you share will be aired or published without your permission.

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NORTHERN IRELAND
BBC News

The former administrator of Newry Cathedral has been sentenced to 100 hours community service for indecently assaulting a teenage girl.

Father Terrence Rafferty, of Chestnut Grove, Newry, pleaded guilty to four counts of indecent assault.

The priest was also given a three-year probation order.

The details of the case were only released after a court ban protecting the priest’s identity was lifted.

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MICHIGAN
Youngstown Vindicator

Staff report

WARREN

A support group for victims of clergy sex abuse called attention in Detroit on Wednesday to what it says is another place where Brother Stephen Baker worked as a Franciscan friar.

The Survivors Network of Those Abused By Priests said Baker was assigned three years to a Catholic prep school in Orchard Lake, Mich., from 1983 to 1985.

Judy Jones, SNAP’s Midwest associate director, said the organization was told by someone in the Detroit area that Baker served at the school.

SNAP held signs Wednesday outside the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Detroit headquarters to talk about Baker, and hand- delivered a letter to the office of the archbishop asking that he reach out to anyone who “saw, suspected or suffered” crimes by Baker, Jones said.

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OHIO/PENNSYLVANIA
Tribune Chronicle

January 31, 2013

By VIRGINIA SHANK , Tribune Chronicle | TribToday.com

YOUNGSTOWN – The Diocese of Youngstown confirmed it has been notified of a potential civil lawsuit on behalf of victims who say they were abused by a Franciscan friar.

Nancy L. Yuhasz, chancellor, said the matter has been turned over to the attorney representing the diocese.

“There’s really not a lot to say at this point,” she said. “There’s nothing to comment on at this point. It’s basically letting us know there could be a lawsuit.”

The Diocese of Altoona-Johnstown, the Third Order Regular Franciscans and Bishop McCort Catholic High School also were to be served with similar notices this week.

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AUSTRALIA
The Age

February 1, 2013

Barney Zwartz

A LEADING rabbi who compared child sex abuse to diarrhoea – ”it’s embarrassing but nobody’s business” – will be sued in Jewish courts by a victim advocacy group that wants him to stand down.

In a lecture posted on YouTube but later removed, Rabbi Manis Friedman says that not reciting a blessing after eating cake is worse than being sexually abused, that victims learn ”an important lesson” from abuse, and suggests victims ”are not that damaged, cut it out”.

Rabbi Friedman is an emissary at large from the Chabad Lubavitch headquarters in New York, and has been generally regarded as a serious and moderate figure in the Orthodox movement. That movement, and particularly its Melbourne Yeshivah centre, has been embroiled in child sex abuse controversies.

Manny Waks, an abuse victim at Yeshivah himself in the 1980s and founder of the Tzedek advocacy group for Jewish abuse survivors, said on Thursday he had launched lawsuits against Rabbi Friedman in the Jewish court or Beth Din in Sydney and Crown Heights in Brooklyn, New York. The courts would decide which of them had jurisdiction.

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NORTHERN IRELAND
Lurgan Mail

Published on Thursday 31 January 2013

A FORMER town priest has been sentenced to 100 hours community service for indecently assaulting a teenage girl.

Father Terrence Rafferty, of Chestnut Grove, Newry, pleaded guilty to four counts of indecent assault.

The priest was also given a three-year probation order.

The details of the case were only released after a court ban protecting the priest’s identity was lifted.

This followed a request from the victim. The incident happened more than a decade ago.

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LOS ANGELES (CA)
Los Angeles Times

Attorneys for the Los Angeles Archdiocese are scheduled to speak with a judge Thursday to discuss the release of personnel files of priests accused of sexually abusing children.

The church had agreed to make public the personnel files of 89 priests accused of sexually abusing children as part of a 2007 court settlement. Fourteen files were released last week in ongoing civil litigation.

Those files showed Cardinal Roger M. Mahony and his chief advisor on abuse, Msgr. Thomas Curry, plotted to hide the sexual abuse of children from police in the 1980s.

This week, church lawyers submitted papers to the Los Angeles County Superior Court judge overseeing the release of the remaining, much larger batch of files. They proposed the archdiocese be allowed to hand over the documents with the names of top church officials removed.

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NORTHERN IRELAND
UTV

Victims of clerical abuse have reacted with anger after a former priest, who pleaded guilty to indecently assaulting a schoolgirl, was given probation and community service.

Terence Rafferty, of Chestnut Grove in Newry, was a priest in St Peter’s Parish in Lurgan when the four offences took place during a six month period in 2001.

Rafferty, who was 38 years old at the time, maintained the physical relationship he had with the 16-year-old was consensual.

He stepped aside from his responsibilities as a priest following the allegation, which was made against him in April 2011.

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PHILADELPHIA (PA)
My Fox Philly

PHILADELPHIA –
There’s been another big verdict in a child sex abuse case that rocked the Archdiocese of Philadelphia.

A jury on Wednesday convicted Rev. Charles Engelhardt and sixth-grade teacher Bernard Shero. …

On Thursday morning, Philadelphia District Attorney Seth Williams joined “Good Day” to discuss the verdict.

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CONNECTICUT
Stratford Star

By Joe Pisani on January 31, 2013

A friend of mine sent me a newspaper clip from 1981 with a story about Kevin Wallin, the notorious “Monsignor Meth,” as a young man about to enter the priesthood. The headline said, “Life’s a well-planned journey for future ‘new breed’ priest.”

The tragic irony is that the new breed of priest in the photo, smiling and mustachioed, wearing a Lacoste golf shirt and khakis, and standing on the steps of Sacred Heart Church in Byram, would 32 years later be at the center of a scandal for allegedly having sex in the rectory dressed as a woman and facing a life in prison for allegedly selling $300,000 of crystal meth and laundering the profits through a porn store. The diocese relieved him of his public ministry as pastor of St. Augustine Cathedral last May.

Is that the life of a well-planned journey for the future new breed of priest? Are there any old breed priests left?

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MINNESOTA
BishopAccountability.org

Summary of Case: Reynolds was accused in a 1991 lawsuit of the sexual abuse of a girl from about 1972-1984, while he was pastor of a Buffalo, MN parish. The girl was a parishioner and attended the parish school. Reynolds died in 1988.

Ordained: 1955
Incardinated: St. Paul
Retired: 1986
Died: Feb. 13, 1988

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UNITED STATES
Bilgrimage

William D. Lindsey

Important news in the ongoing (and now international) battle to hold the leaders of the Catholic church accountable for covering up child sexual abuse by priests: yesterday, a jury in Philadelphia found Father Charles Engelhardt and Bernard Shero guilty on multiple charges in a case involving the sexual assault of a 10-year-old altar boy. Joseph A. Slobdozian summarizes the story at the Philly.com website (and see also Jon Hurdle at the New York Times). The victim, “Billy Doe,” reports that he was serially raped by Engelhardt, his parish priest, and Shero, principal of his Catholic school, when he was in fifth and sixth grade.

As Brian Roewe writes for National Catholic Reporter, a former priest, Edward Avery, was also accused of raping “Billy Doe,” and pled guilty, but has now denied that he knew the victim. Roewe states,

The 2011 investigation [which issued in a grand jury report conducted by the Philadelphia district attorney’s office] revealed the story of “Billy Doe,” the now-24-year-old man who accused Engelhardt, Shero and Avery of serially raping and abusing him. The report presents a picture where the three men passed Billy among one another. The young man, who has battled a drug addiction since his teens, took the stand for several hours during the trial.

Just as this news breaks from Philadelphia, Alex Gibney’s hard-hitting documentary on the story of Father Lawrence Murphy and his abuse of boys at St. John’s School for the Deaf in Wisconsin is preparing to premier on HBO.* The documentary, “Mea Maxima Culpa,” will air next Monday, 4 February, on HBO at 9 P.M. ET. A press release I received yesterday about the documentary notes its significance as an exposé showing that the cover-up of clerical sexual abuse cases reaches the very highest levels of the Catholic church:

From the row houses of Milwaukee through the bare ruined choirs of Ireland’s churches, all the way to the highest office of the Vatican, it was an international and systematic conspiracy to silence victims of sexual abuse.

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AUSTRALIA
The Tablet

31 January 2013

An independent inquiry commissioned by two Australian bishops has found deficiencies in the Church’s response to child sexual abuse allegations about a former priest, “F”, in the 1980s and ’90s.

The inquiry accuses the late Bishop Henry Kennedy of Armidale in New South Wales of ignoring advice not to ordain the priest and of an “utterly inexplicable” failure to examine claims against him.

The inquiry, by former Federal Court judge Antony Whitlam, QC, found that, had current procedures for reporting child abuse by the Catholic Church and protocols regarding the transfer of priests been in force, “F” would have been “stopped in his tracks”.

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PHILADELPHIA (PA)
Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests

Posted by Barbara Dorris on January 31, 2013

The newly-established guilt of two Philly Catholic employees should be a clarion call for Philly’s Catholic hierarchy. After hearing and seeing voluminous evidence, an impartial jury has found that Fr. Charles Engelhardt and Bernard Shero are child molesters. What now?

Now, Archbishop Charles Chaput has two choices. He can break with the long-standing, selfish and destructive practices of the Catholic hierarchy, and aggressively seek out others who were hurt by these two predators. Or he can do what he and his brother bishops have done for decades, and essentially be passive.

We urge Chaput to act like a compassionate shepherd, not a cold-hearted CEO. We urge him to personally visit every church or school where these two convicted child molesters worked or lived. We urge him to beg any victims, witnesses, and whistleblowers to step forward, call police, expose wrongdoers, and deter wrongdoing. We urge him to print prominent and clear appeals in every parish bulletin and on the archdiocesan website, prodding others who have been victimized to step forward. This is an inexpensive and non-controversial way to help those who were violated as kids but are still in pain as adults.

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IOWA
The Messenger

January 31, 2013

By BILL SHEA (bshea@messengernews.net) , Messenger News

Iowa would establish a specialized nursing home to house elderly sex offenders under legislation being drafted by state Rep. Helen Miller, D-Fort Dodge.

Miller said Wednesday that her proposal would direct the state government to either set up the facility or hire a private company to do so.

”The 800 pound gorilla in the room that no one wants to talk about is what are you going to do with these individuals if they’re denied entry to a nursing home or are kicked out of one,” she said. ”They’ve got to go somewhere.”

”My bill cuts to the chase and quits the dinking around because you’ve got to put them somewhere,” she added.

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PHILADELPHIA (PA)
CBS Philly

By Tony Hanson

PHILADELPHIA (CBS) – A priest and former lay teacher were taken into custody immediately after a jury convicted them of sexually assaulting the same boy, the same victim who was assaulted by another priest who pleaded guilty last year. The convicted defendants are scheduled to be sentenced in April.

Father Charles Engelhardt and Bernard Shero face possible maximum sentences of decades in prison and District Attorney Seth Williams says there’s really not enough jail time that they could get for what they did.

The victim, now 24, testified in painful detail to the attacks when he was just 10 and 11-years-old. Prosecutors have praised his courage. But, he was not in the courtroom for the verdicts. His civil attorney, Paul Lauricella says he was relieved to return home, outside this area, after his testimony and he now knows the result.

“He’s relieved, he’s gratified. He’s, quite frankly — you can’t say ecstatic in a situation like this because the story is so troubling, so horrible, that it is not even a time for joy. It’s a time for more relief and reflection.”

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IRELAND
The Tablet

31 January 2013

More than 200 people took part in a protest in support of dissident priest Fr Tony Flannery outside the papal nuncio’s residence in Dublin last Sunday.

The protesters left a letter for the nuncio calling for dialogue within the Church to address the case of Fr Flannery, who has been threatened with excommunication if he does not sign a document retracting his views on women priests, artificial contraception and homosexuality.

The letter, organised by the lay reform group We Are Church Ireland, was critical of the way the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF) exercises its authority in relation to those who question church teaching.

A petition against the CDF’s treatment of Fr Flannery is being delivered to Rome and has already gathered more than 1,450 signatures.

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IRELAND
Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests

Posted by Barbara Blaine on January 30, 2013

We are hopeful that the new Bishop, Dr William Crean, will hold true to his pledge to keep children safe and continue the work of healing those who were violated.

Cloyne was one of the worst hit areas in the Catholic abuse scandal. The road to wholeness is a long one and the best start is with honesty from the church, outreach to those who have been hurt and justice for the wrongs they suffered.

We have heard Bishops make lofty promises, with little fruition. We are cautiously hopeful that Crean will follow through and that anyone who saw, suspected, or suffered abuse will speak up and get the help they need.

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IRELAND
Association of Catholic Priests

Fr. Tony Flannery C.Ss.R.

The CDF expressed concerns about four quotes taken from articles I had written in Reality Magazine. They imposed certain sanctions on me, and also, in order to make sure a priest who has committed the delict of heresy ‘irregular for the exercise of orders received’, while I realised the seriousness of my situation, sent a document which contained the following paragraph:

“The Church’s canon law (c. 1044) callscanon 1364 says that ‘a heretic … incurs a latae sentientiae excommunication’. Before imposing the sanctions provided for in the law, it is the practice of the CDF to take steps to restore a priest to the faith, and to ensure that he is not in a state of contumacy regarding the position(s) he may have taken. Only should these remedies fail would the canonical penalties be required”

After a period of reflection I wrote the following statement and sent it to the CDF:
Since some concerns have been raised by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith over possible interpretations of articles I have written in the past few years. I respectfully take this opportunity to clarify my views and to offer the reassurance necessary to lay those concerns fully to rest. Such words as I have written were written in good faith with absolutely no intent whatever to imply anything contrary to the truths we are all obliged to hold by the divine and catholic faith to which I fully adhere and to which I have always adhered.

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MICHIGAN
The Detroit News

By Mike Martindale
The Detroit News

Troy — A spokesman for the Archdiocese of Detroit said Wednesday a longtime church employee who sold a $500,000 Florida condominium to the priest who is the focus of an embezzlement probe is no longer employed at St. Thomas More Church.

At the center of financial questions is the Rev. Edward Belczak, 67, the popular pastor of the Troy church for nearly 30 years. He has not been criminally charged, but was “temporarily excluded” as head of the church and also his church-provided lodgings Jan. 22 after an archdiocese audit revealed $429,000 in “questionable financial transactions and practices.”

“We are aware of the Florida land records and deal but we are not an investigative agency,” said Joseph Kohn, spokesman for the archdiocese. “Priests can make whatever purchases they want and other church workers and members are not restricted in making sales to them. Or, for that matter, making gifts if they feel it’s appropriate.”

Kohn said Belczak’s annual pay as parish pastor would fall in the “mid-$30,000 range.”

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LOS ANGELES (CA)
Los Angeles Times

By Victoria Kim and Harriet Ryan, Los Angeles Times
January 30, 2013

The long-awaited release of 30,000 pages of internal church records was thrown into turmoil when attorneys for the Los Angeles archdiocese proposed, and then disavowed, a plan to turn over the documents with the names of Cardinal Roger Mahony and other church leaders handling cases of child abuse blacked out.

The church had agreed to make public the personnel files of 89 priests accused of sexually abusing children as part of a 2007 court settlement. Fourteen files were released last week in ongoing civil litigation. Those files showed Mahony and his chief advisor on abuse, Msgr. Thomas Curry, plotted to hide the sexual abuse of children from police in the 1980s.

Earlier this week, church lawyers submitted papers to the Los Angeles County Superior Court judge overseeing the release of the remaining, much larger batch of files proposing that the archdiocese be allowed to hand over the documents with the names of top church officials removed.

Attorneys for victims and the media criticized the legal maneuver, saying it flouted a previous ruling by Judge Emilie H. Elias that the public was entitled to the information.

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MICHIGAN
WKBN

The Catholic Diocese of Detroit is looking into whether Brother Stephen P. Baker, the Franciscan friar who fatally stabbed himself in the heart Saturday after more than 80 former students in Warren and Johnstown, Pa. accused him of sexually molesting them during the 1980s and 1990s, had worked at high school in Orchard Lake, Mich.

Victim advocates on Wednesday said they are hoping officials at Catholic dioceses in Detroit and in Richmond, Va. come forward with information about Baker’s tenure at the two schools where he taught before transferring to teach religion, coach baseball and serve as the athletic trainer at Warren’s John F. Kennedy Catholic High School in 1986.

The advocates, from the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests, said Baker worked at the now-defunct James Barry-Robinson High School and Home for Boys in Nofolk, Va. from 1977 to 1983. They also said he was assigned to St. Mary’s Prep High School in Orchard Lake, Mich. from 1983 to 1985, when he was then transferred to Warren.

A spokesman for the Detroit Catholic Diocese said on Wednesday they are aware of the allegations that Baker worked within their diocese but have been unable to find records of his employment. He said the diocese is “taking extra steps” to see if they can find records of him working in the area. A call to St. Mary’s Prep was not immediately returned.

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PORTLAND (OR)
Daily Astorian

The Catholic Archdiocese of Portland has a new archbishop. Alexander Sample from Marquette, Mich., is taking over the reins from Archbishop John Vlazny, who is retiring. …

But the group Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests is not happy with Sample’s promotion. The group says he took no real steps to warn families about eight priests in Marquette. Spokeswoman Barbara Dorris said those priests were “credibly accused” of molesting children.

“We see no evidence that he took any steps to do outreach to the victim, to encourage witnesses or whistleblowers to come forward, so that these crimes could be fully investigated,” Dorris said.

At the meeting to welcome Sample, he addressed the sex abuse scandal in the Catholic Church, saying he’s had a lot of experience listening and talking to victims.

“We have worked very hard to put in place measures that will protect children in the future,” Sample said. “Our safe environment programs, our back room checks, the educational effort that we have done. To reassure people that we are doing everything we can to protect our young people and our children from this happening again.”

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WISCONSIN
SNAP Wisconsin

Watch Peter Isely, SNAP Midwest Director, discuss Thursday afternoon on LA’s “Media Mayhem” with Allison Hope Weiner…

the ongoing global clergy sex abuse crisis, the release of church documents in Los Angeles and more, airing 3:00 pm CST Thursday (January 31st) at www.thelip.tv/media-mayhem/. In the program, Peter argues not only why child sex offenders may have been historically attracted to the priesthood but the more disturbing possibility that the system itself may produce or manufacture a certain kind of sex predator, which is why reactionary attempts by the hierarchy to cure the illness will likely only recreate the disease. You can also view the program after that airing at the same website.

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CANADA
Toronto Star

By:Jackson Lafferty Published on Tue Jan 29 2013

The British novelist and crusader against social injustice, George Orwell, once remarked that “telling the truth is a revolutionary act.” That’s being proven in northern Canada where schools in the Northwest Territories and Nunavut have begun teaching youth the true lessons of Canada’s residential schools history and the legacies that flow from it. In the process, they are not only confronting uncomfortable truths about the past; they are laying the foundation for a radically different future.

It has taken nearly a century for mainstream Canadian society to acknowledge the misguided historic policies of assimilation, which were designed to stamp out aboriginal cultures, heritage and languages. The resulting physical, psychological and cultural damage was inflicted on vulnerable aboriginal children and families, separated from each other and forced to attend residential schools. It’s a legacy that has haunted successive generations, is a source of national shame and at the root of widespread personal, family and community dysfunction that lingers today.

Once viewed as an instrument of oppression of aboriginal people, education is now beginning to be seen as a powerful tool to promote honesty, rectify wrongs and inspire a new generation to believe in a future of hope and possibilities. An innovative high-school social studies program recently launched by the two territories is helping families and communities to come to terms with the past and heal old wounds, enabling today’s youth to move forward to healthier, more positive and productive lives.

“Residential Schools in Canada: Understanding the Past, Seeking Reconciliation, Building Hope for the Future” is the first comprehensive teaching unit of its kind in Canada. The governments of Nunavut and the N.W.T. partnered with the Legacy of Hope Foundation to produce the groundbreaking resource.

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CANADA
Toronto Sun

OTTAWA – A judge has ordered the feds to release documents to a commission probing the dark legacy of Canada’s residential schools.

In December, Prime Minister Stephen Harper said the government would “let the courts decide” if documents related to the system could be released to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC).

“The commission is now seeking some documents, which the government believes are outside of its mandate … for example, personal records of survivors given in confidence to the government,” Harper said in the Commons prior to the holiday break.

In previous documents filed to the Ontario Superior Court, the TRC suggested Ottawa was hampering the retrieval of documents related to its mandate.

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CANADA
Ottawa Citizen

By Colin Perkel, The Canadian Press
January 31, 2013

The federal government is obliged to turn over its archival records on Indian residential schools to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, an Ontario court decided Wednesday.

In his decision, Justice Stephen Goudge said the obligation to provide the materials is clear from the settlement agreement that established the commission.

“The plain meaning of the language is straightforward,” Goudge said.

“It is to provide all relevant documents to the TRC.”

The decision comes in an increasingly acrimonious dispute between the federal government and the commission over millions of government documents the commission says it needs to fulfil its core mandate.

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CANADA
The Globe and Mail

GLORIA GALLOWAY
OTTAWA — The Globe and Mail

Published Wednesday, Jan. 30 2013

The federal government must scour its archives for millions of documents related to the Indian residential schools that operated in Canada for more than century – institutions where physical and sexual abuse was rampant and from which many students never returned.

An Ontario Superior Court judge ruled on Wednesday that it is not good enough for Ottawa to provide the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) with records that can be found in the active files of departments.

Most of the relevant documents were long ago sent to Library and Archives Canada (LAC) for storage, and Mr. Justice Stephen Goudge said the government must now retrieve them so that the commission can fulfill its mandate of compiling a historical record of the residential-schools experience.

Canada’s obligation under a settlement agreement signed in 2006 with the school survivors, the government, the churches that ran the institutions, and others, is straightforward, Judge Goudge wrote.

“It is to provide all relevant documents to the TRC,” which was created as part of the settlement agreement, he wrote. “The obligation is in unqualified language unlimited by where the documents are located within the government of Canada.”

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MICHIGAN
My Fox Detroit

By Taryn Asher, Fox 2 News

SOUTHFIELD, Mich. (WJBK) –
A man of the cloth who once served in metro Detroit has taken his own life. He is accused of sexually abusing children in Ohio and Pennsylvania. Now many want to know if the same thing happened here.

Leading the charge is SNAP, the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests. They believe if it happened elsewhere with nearly 80 accusers, there’s a good chance it happened here.

Brother Stephen Baker is accused of molesting a dozen students at Catholic high schools in Pennsylvania and Ohio in the late eighties and nineties. One alleged victim explained how the Franciscan friar used his position as an athletic trainer to treat injuries with massages that would lead to the molestation.

“Quadricep muscle that was injured, back muscle, shoulders, whatever, you were usually asked to strip down regardless of the place of where the injury was,” said Michael Munno.

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PENNSYLVANIA
WJAC

[with video]

By Maria Miller

New details continue to unfold in the case against a now-deceased friar accused of sexually molesting former students in at least four states.

6 News reported last week that in addition to Bishop McCort High School in Johnstown, brother Stephen Baker also worked at two schools in Ohio and one in Virginia. On Wednesday, 6 News learned of a another; a prep school in Michigan.

“Some feel, ‘OK, he can never harm another child,'” said Judy Jones, Midwest director for the support group Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests, or SNAP. “Some may feel cheated that they won’t ever see him behind bars.”

It’s been nearly two weeks since allegations of sexual abuse against Baker surfaced locally, and members of SNAP continue to uncover new details.

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PENNSYLVANIA
Tribune-Democrat

Kathy Mellott kmellott@tribdem.com

JOHNSTOWN — When Franciscan friar Stephen Baker took his life Saturday, the possibility of any criminal prosecution against him ended.

But adults who were aware of Baker’s abuse and failed to report it could face consequences, Cambria County’s top law enforcement officer said Wednesday.

District Attorney Kelly Callihan said she is seeking advice from the state Attorney General’s office on reporting laws and the statute of limitations in place more than a decade ago when Baker was a teacher at Bishop McCort Catholic High School.

“If the abuse alleged is as widespread as it appears to be, then I believe the criminal investigation should continue,” Callihan said.

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NEW JERSEY
Asbury Park Press

Written by
Alex Biese
@ABieseAPP

It all started with one case.

With his latest film, “Mea Maxima Culpa: Silence in the House of God,” Academy Award-winning documentary filmmaker Alex Gibney gives voice to the students of St. John’s School for the Deaf in Milwaukee, Wisc. who were sexually abused by the charismatic head of the school, Father Lawrence Murphy. The film premieres at 9 p.m. on Monday, Feb. 4 on HBO.

In telling the story of four of Murphy’s victims — Terry Kohut, Gary Smith, Arthur Budzinksi and Bob Bolger — Giney unravels a centuries-old conspiracy to cover up church abuses leading all the way to Rome.

Gibney, who lives in Summit, said the inspiration for his film came from a 2010 front page article in the New York Times by Laurie Goodstein.

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UNITED STATES
Pop Matters

Short-listed for the Best Documentary Oscar, acclaimed documentarian Alex Gibney’s film will be broadcast on HBO February 4th.

Just when you thought you’d heard everything about Catholic priests molesting children, here comes one of the most disturbing documentaries released in recent years. Alex Gibney shares the untold story of the children of St. John’s School for the Deaf in Milwaukee, Wisconsin who for decades were under the sick regime of Father Lawrence Murphy, a cherub-faced man who raped over 200 of them while the Vatican kept it a secret.

Featuring interviews with four men – Gary Smith, Bob Bolger, Terry Cohut and Arthur Budzinski – who were abused by Murphy, the film finds the right amount of scandalous storytelling without ever becoming downright sensationalist (meaning it will infuriate you, but it will also make you want to help these people after watching the movie). The men’s testimony is read by famous actors (including Ethan Hawke and John Slattery) but you don’t really need the celebrity sounds to make out the heartbreak, horror and disappointment in their lives. Their lack of a “voice” is in fact what makes the story’s center all the more horrifying.

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NEW YORK
Failed Messiah

Shmarya Rosenberg • FailedMessiah.com

Yoel Malik, a 33-year-old rabbi from a prominent family of Satmar hasidim, was arrested and charged yesterday in Brooklyn with 28 counts of sexually abusing three teenage boys.

The arrest was reported on FailedMessiah.com yesterday afternoon.

Yoel Malik alleged brought two of the boys to motels for sexual encounters. A third boy was sexually assaulted in Malik’s car. The boys are all between the ages of 14-years-old to 16-years-old.

All of the assaults reportedly took place between March 2012 and last week, the AP reported.

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NEW YORK
My Fox New York

By KATHY CARVAJAL, Web Producer –

NEW YORK (MYFOXNY) –
The NYPD arrested the rabbi of a Brooklyn Yeshiva for allegedly having sexual relations with several students.

Yoel Malik, 33, of Brooklyn, is accused of sexual abusing three, teenage male students.

Malik, a member of the ultra-Orthodox community, reportedly had sex with one student and is accused of rubbing two others.

He was arrested late Wednesday.

According to the NY Daily News, the teens were 14 and 15 at the time of the alleged incidents.

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NEW YORK
New York Daily News

Brooklyn yeshiva leader Yoel Malik, 33, charged with having sex with teenage boy in a hotel and rubbing the groin of another

By Kerry Burke AND Rocco Parascandola / NEW YORK DAILY NEWS
Published: Wednesday, January 30, 2013

A Brooklyn yeshiva leader was arrested late Wednesday night on a dozen sex abuse charges involving three teenage boys, cops said.

Yoel Malik, 33, of Brooklyn had sex with one of the teens and rubbed his hand on two others, a police source said.

The teens were 14 or 15 at the time of the alleged incidents. The sexual intercourse assault on the one boy took place in a hotel, a cop source said, adding another victim fled a different hotel after Malik started rubbing his back.

The third teen was in the suspect’s car, en route to school, when Malik allegedly rubbed the boy’s groin through his pants.

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UNITED KINGDOM
International Business Times

By Hannah Osborne

January 30, 2013

A Channel 4 Dispatches investigation has uncovered evidence of religious officials hiding child sex abuse in Britain after secretly filming a senior rabbi telling a victim not to involve the police.

The documentary, Britain’s Hidden Child Abuse, shows how some rabbis within a strict Orthodox Jewish community forbid victims from reporting crimes committed against them.

There are around 40,000 Charedin – strict Orthodox Jews – in Britain. During the investigation, reporters uncovered 19 alleged cases of child sex abuse. None had been reported to the police.

Rabbi Ephraim Padwa, who leads the Charedi community in north London’s Stamford Hill, is secretly filmed speaking to an alleged victim of child sex abuse.

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NEW YORK
Wall Street Journal

Associated Press

NEW YORK — A rabbi at a religious school in New York’s ultra-orthodox Jewish community has been arrested on charges of sexually abusing students, a law enforcement official says.

The arrest of Yoel Malik, 33, of Brooklyn comes amid mounting pressure to report allegations of abuse within the insular, secretive community, the largest outside Israel, and barely a week after a respected religious counselor in the same sect was sentenced to 103 years in prison for sexually abusing a girl.

Both cases come from within the Satmar Hasidic sect, the official said.

Malik was taken into custody Wednesday after reports he may have brought two students to motels for sexual liaisons, said the official who was not authorized to speak publicly on the case and spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity. A third encounter was reported in a car. The official said the victims were all teenage boys, ages 14 to 16, and the encounters took place between March of last year and last week.

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UNITED STATES
Christian Catholicism

Jerry Slevin

Another Philly priest and a Catholic school teacher were convicted today of sexually abusing a young boy. A New York City rabbi was recently convicted of sexually abusing a young girl. Los Angeles Catholic Archdiocesean recent file revelations indicate extensive priest abuse of children. Often the abuse crimes were covered-up for years. Too many similar stories have come out about these and other other religious groups in cities ranging from Boston, to Miami, to Kansas City, to Milwaukee and many U.S. cities in between.

It seems evident that these cases are just the tip of the iceberg of child sexual abuse in religious organizational settings. What is disturbingly also evident, to me as a parent and a retired experienced lawyer, is that neither local legislators nor prosecutors have dealt with many of these cases adequately, timely or comprehensively. Many thousands of abuse survivors have been totally denied justice by all indications.

President Obama was just re-elected with the strong support of mothers and mothers-to-be who wanted him to protect their access to family planning. They also expected, and still expect, his help in protecting the families they have, and will yet have, from sexual violence in institutional settings. These families need his help now!

A petition has been opened for signatures today asking President Obama to set up a national investigation commission into the sexual abuse of children by priests, rabbis, ministers and other religious leaders. Already many have begun to sign it, including abuse survivors and their supporters. Please take 30 seconds to sign it no matter where in the world you live. This is a worldwide epidemic. Just click on the below link at:

[Click here for the petition site.]

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IRELAND
Renew America

By Eamonn Keane

Since April 2012, Irish Redemptorist priest, Fr. Tony Flannery, has been at the centre of a controversy over questions of Catholic doctrine that has gained media coverage in many parts of the English-speaking world.

News of the controversy erupted in April 2012 when the Catholic Church’s Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (hereafter CDF) instructed Fr. Flannery to discontinue his regular column in Reality magazine which is a publication of the Redemptorist Order in Ireland. Amongst other things, the CDF exists to help the Pope carry out his duty of guarding Catholics from false doctrine and its negative impacts on their understanding and practice of the faith.

The CDF censure of Fr. Flannery was all the more noteworthy given that he was a founding member and one of the spokespersons of the Association of Catholic Priests (hereafter ACP) in Ireland. The ACP claims to have a membership of 1000, representing about twenty five percent of priests in Ireland.

Many media headlines reporting on the controversy portrayed Fr. Flannery as a victim of an abusive use of power by Pope Benedict XVI and the CDF. Some examples of this are: “Hoover FBI tactics used against Irish priests by Vatican” (IrishCentral, April 7, 2012); “Fr Flannery may not be burned at the stake but the censure is itself frightening” (Irish Examiner, April 9, 2012); “Dissent in the Catholic Church, especially from members of the clergy, invariably elicits a mailed fist reaction from the Vatican” (Irish Examiner, April 7, 2012); “Pope has consistently come down on dissent within the church like a hammer” (Irish Times, April 18, 2012); “Fr. Flannery’s grasp of theology better than that of his silencers” (Catholic National Reporter, January 25, 2013).

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UNITED STATES
The Duquesne Duke

By Wes Crosby
News Editor

Published: Wednesday, January 30, 2013

Law professor Nicholas Cafardi has been mentioned as a potential candidate for ambassador to the Vatican. Cafardi was also considered in 2009, but was passed over.

Duquesne law professor and Dean Emeritus of the School of Law Nicholas Cafardi was mentioned as one of the possible candidates President Barack Obama is considering for ambassador to the Vatican.

Cafardi, a Duquesne graduate who has taught at the University for 20 years, said he is honored to be considered, but realizes there is a possibility he might not be chosen.

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DETROIT (MO)
Melodika

Thursday, 31 January 2013

SOURCE Archdiocese of Detroit

An open letter dated January 30, 2013, the group SNAP (Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests) levels a series of unfair and untrue statements regarding the Archdiocese of Detroit.

1. Regarding Br. Stephen Baker, TOR (Third Order of Regular Franciscans): The Detroit archdiocese has no record of sexual abuse complaints brought against Br. Baker during his two years in Michigan. As a professed Franciscan friar, Br. Baker took classes and worked at Orchard Lakes Schools (OLS) from 1983-85. OLS reports that it does not have any record of an abuse complaint during or after those years. Neither the archdiocese nor OLS ever received any reports/advisories from the other locations where Br. Baker subsequently worked. Additionally, we were not informed of the legal claims made against Br. Baker or his apparent suicide last weekend. SNAP’s criticism of the archdiocese makes absolutely no sense. How and why would the archdiocese be criticized as negligent for not disclosing information it did not have?

2. Regarding Fr. James Kurtz, SJ (Jesuits): When a sexual abuse complaint involving a minor came in against Father Kurtz in 2002, then a teacher at University of Detroit Jesuit High School (UDJ), the Detroit archdiocese notified the Jesuit provincial and the office of the Wayne County Prosecutor. Information about the 2011 arrest and subsequent legal actions involving Fr. Kurtz was communicated locally by UDJ officials and nationally by the Chicago-Detroit Province of the Jesuits. Fr. Kurtz is listed on the archdiocesan website. These facts counter the claim made by SNAP that the public was not notified about this matter.

3. Regarding Fr. Thomas Williams, LC (Legion of Christ): While he grew up in the Detroit-area, Fr. Williams neither studied for nor was ordained to the priesthood in the Detroit archdiocese, nor did he serve here. When information regarding his personal life was released last year, Fr. Williams’ religious order granted him a leave of absence. The Legionaries were not required to report to the archdiocese his choice of residence. They did not and have not. Fr. Williams does not have “faculties” (permission) from the archdiocese to perform any public ministry in southeast Michigan. Again, SNAP criticizes the archdiocese for not warning the public about something it did not know. And, does not now.

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PHILADELPHIA (PA)
The New York Times

By JON HURDLE

Published: January 30, 2013

PHILADELPHIA — A Roman Catholic priest and a former Catholic school teacher were convicted on Wednesday on nine charges relating to the sexual abuse of a 10-year-old boy at different times more than a decade ago.

A jury in Common Pleas Court here found the teacher, Bernard Shero, guilty of five charges, including rape and involuntary deviant sexual intercourse, after hearing testimony that he had assaulted the boy in the back of his car.

After deliberating for about 19 hours over four days, the jury also convicted the Rev. Charles Engelhardt on four counts, including indecent assault and endangering the welfare of a child.

The jury was unable to reach a verdict on a charge of involuntary deviant sexual intercourse against Father Engelhardt, who was accused of abusing the boy in a church sacristy during the 1998-99 school year. Judge Ellen Ceisler declared a mistrial on that count.

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NEW MEXICO
Santa Fe New Mexican

Tom Sharpe | The New Mexican
Posted: Wednesday, January 30, 2013

Documents made public this month on a multimillion-dollar settlement in 2007 between the Archdiocese of Los Angeles and hundreds of victims of clergy abuse have tarnished the reputations of dozens of priests, including some well-connected Catholic leaders.

But the documents also shed light on one New Mexico-born pedophile who advanced through priestly ranks with protection from church officials.

Peter E. Garcia, born in Albuquerque in 1940, began seminary at age 14 in Los Angeles, where he had moved with his parents a couple of years earlier. Soon after he was ordained as a priest at age 26, Garcia began to have sex with underage boys, often the children of undocumented immigrants he had befriended.

Garcia was first accused of sexually abusing minors when he was 35. Nevertheless, he advanced to the rank of monsignor. By then, he’d reportedly had sex with up to 20 boys. After his third accusation, Garcia tried to commit suicide by combining sleeping pills with alcohol, and he was sent back to New Mexico, where he received psychiatric treatment at the Foundation House of the Servants of the Paraclete in Jemez Springs.

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PHILADELPHIA (PA)
Philadelphia Inquirer

Joseph A. Slobodzian, Inquirer Staff Writer

Posted: Thursday, January 31, 2013

In a case that has already put a Philadelphia Catholic Church official behind bars for covering up child sexual abuse, a jury returned guilty verdicts Wednesday against a priest and a former parochial-school teacher for the sexual assault of a 10-year-old Northeast altar boy.

Wednesday’s verdicts against the Rev. Charles Engelhardt and Bernard Shero for the serial sexual assault of a St. Jerome’s pupil in 1998 and 1999 were lauded by District Attorney Seth Williams as another victory for sexual-abuse victims.

“You saw how . . . they tried to victimize and demonize the victim,” Williams said afterward. “I’m very thankful that the jury listened and did what they did to hold these two men accountable and responsible for the heinous crime they committed.” …

Defense lawyers Michael McGovern and Burton A. Rose seemed stunned at the verdict and at Judge Ellen Ceisler’s decision to have both defendants immediately taken into custody.

“I’ve been present for trial jury verdicts for 37 years now, and this is the most disappointing, shocking verdict I’ve ever experienced,” McGovern said afterward. “I still believe that Father Engelhardt is innocent of all charges 100 percent.”

Rose said he also remained convinced that Shero was innocent and called him a “soft-spoken man with a lot of integrity.”

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PHILADELPHIA (PA)
Big Trial

Wednesday, January 30, 2013

By Ralph Cipriano
for bigtrial.net

Even the district attorney was surprised.

“I’m overjoyed; I did not expect it,” District Attorney Seth Williams told reporters today after a jury convicted Father Charles Engelhardt and former Catholic lay teacher Bernard Shero on nine of ten counts in the Archdiocese of Philadelphia sex abuse case.

Given the way “the victim in this case” was “vilified” and subjected to lengthy cross-examination, Williams said, he would have understood if the jury had reached another conclusion, say an acquittal or a hung jury, and not the verdict that had the district attorney beaming.

Williams talked about the suffering of the victim, “Billy Doe,” the former 10-year-old altar boy who was “passed from priest to priest to teacher” for alleged sex sessions in a sacristy, a church supply closet, and the back seat of Shero’s car. Engelhardt faces a maximum sentence of 37 years in prison, Shero, a maximum of 57 years, when both men are sentenced on March 18.

As far as the DA was concerned, however, the judge can’t give the two defendants enough time. The district attorney at today’s press conference also castigated the archdiocese for its official response to the triple rape of Billy Doe. “They protect them,” Williams said of the convicted rapists, “and then they “cover up. It’s disgusting.”

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PHILADELPHIA (PA)
The Item

PHILADELPHIA (AP) — A jury on Wednesday convicted a priest and teacher in a pivotal church-abuse case that rocked the Philadelphia archdiocese and sent a church official to prison for child endangerment.

The verdict supports accounts by a 24-year-old policeman’s son that he was sexually abused by the Rev. Charles Engelhardt and sixth-grade teacher Bernard Shero in about 1999.

The accuser’s 2009 complaint describing abuse by two priests and the teacher led to Monsignor William Lynn’s landmark conviction last year for endangerment. Lynn is serving three to six years in prison for his role transferring an admitted pedophile priest to the accuser’s parish in northeast Philadelphia.

The young man said the abuse started after Engelhardt caught him drinking altar wine in fifth grade. He said Engelhardt told fellow priest Edward Avery about their “session,” prompting Avery to twice sexually assault the boy. And he said Shero raped him in a car a year later, after driving him home after detention.

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LOS ANGELES (CA)
Lompoc Record

Associated Press

The Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Los Angeles has said the names of church leaders who made key decisions on how to deal with cases of sexual abuse by priests will not be blacked out in some 30,000 soon-to-be-released pages of confidential personnel files.

The names of any bishops, vicars for clergy and supervisory parish priests will be included in all the documents and they will be turned over to lawyers for abuse victims soon, archdiocese attorney Michael Hennigan said Wednesday. Vicars for clergy are responsible for priestly discipline and often made significant decisions about how to handle problem priests with input from the bishop or archbishop.

“We have chosen to remove redactions of those key individuals on every document,” Hennigan said in an email. “There will be no ambiguity.”

The commitment to release the documents without significant redactions comes after a five-year legal battle over the priests’ privacy rights and a more recent dispute in court with The Associated Press and the Los Angeles Times, along with victims, over identifying those in positions of responsibility within the archdiocese.

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LOS ANGELES (CA)
Miami Herald

By GILLIAN FLACCUS
Associated Press

LOS ANGELES — The Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Los Angeles says it will soon reveal 30,000 pages of confidential personnel files without blacking out the names of church leaders who knew about sexual abuse by priests.

Archdiocese attorney Michael Hennigan said Wednesday the church has given up on its plan to redact the names and the files will be turned over to lawyers for abuse victims.

The Associated Press and the Los Angeles Times, along with victims, went to court to force the archdiocese to reveal the names.

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DETROIT (MI)
Detroit Free Press

By Patricia Montemurri
Detroit Free Press Staff Writer

A Catholic friar found dead Saturday after being accused of sexually molesting former Catholic school students in Ohio and Pennsylvania taught at the all-boys St. Mary’s Preparatory School in Orchard Lake, according to a victim’s advocacy group.

Representatives of The Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests (SNAP), said Brother Stephen Baker worked at the all-boys St. Mary’s Preparatory School in Orchard Lake from 1983-85. On Tuesday, the group delivered a letter to the Archdiocese of Detroit headquarters demanding that Archbishop Allen Vigneron investigate the Detroit-area tenure of the Franciscan friar.

Baker died of a self-inflicted knife wound at St. Bernardine Monastery near Altoona, Pa.

“We’re asking the bishop to acknowledge it and ask that anybody abused by Baker to come forward,” said Matt Jatczak, a Detroit-area representative for SNAP.

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PHILADELPHIA (PA)
National Catholic Reporter

by Brian Roewe | Jan. 30, 2013
NCR Today

On Wednesday afternoon, a Pennsylvania jury found two men guilty of sexually assaulting the same altar boy during the late 1990s, the latest convictions in the ongoing sexual abuse scandal in the Philadelphia archdiocese.

The jury of eight men and four women found Fr. Charles Engelhardt guilty of indecent assault of a minor, corruption of a minor and conspiracy, but could not come to agreement on a count of indecent sexual assault, according to the Associated Press.

In addition, Bernard Shero, a former Catholic school teacher at St. Jerome parish school, was found guilty of rape and indecent sexual assault, among other charges.

Engelhardt’s conspiracy charge was tied to former priest Edward Avery — accused as well by the same boy, who was 10 years old at the time of the abuse — who pleaded guilty in March 2012 to charges of conspiracy and sexual assault.

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