ST. LOUIS (MO)
Post Dispatch

August 12, 2019

By Tom Unger

On July 26, the Archdiocese of St. Louis published a list of 61 members of the clergy with verified allegations of sexual abuse of a minor against them, and an additional three with verified allegations of possession of child pornography. Two priests on the list had been stationed at the church I attended when I was growing up, and I knew two others through another parish. One was a close family friend for decades.

The focus of clergy sexual abuse is usually, and rightly, placed on the offenders and direct victims of the abusive behavior. But the radius of the effects is much larger.

For me, the grooming began around fourth grade, as soon as I became an altar boy at our parish church. I went to the grade school connected to our church, so the segue was a given. My path into the inner circle was all but guaranteed since my older brothers had taken that route. It wasn’t long before a close friend and I were favorites of the priests — being pulled out of class to be altar boys for funerals, getting calls to serve weekend weddings, etc.

A select crew of us became the focus of the priests’ attention. We were their companions. Joining in on visits to the country house and boat rides, helping with Christmas shopping, running errands to buy them cigarettes, washing their cars, etc. To a devout Catholic teenager, this was gold.

I felt special and privileged, like I was being treated like a peer. Outside my own home, I spent most of my time in that rectory. In our household no one was more revered than priests. Priests were among the few friends that our family had and socialized with.

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BUFFALO (NY)
WKBW TV

August 12, 2019

By Charlie Specht

A lawsuit that will be filed later this week accuses an active Buffalo priest of sexually abusing an 8-year-old boy, according to the law firm that will file the suit.

“A lawsuit is being filed on behalf of an adult male who was sexually abused when he was 8 years old by an active priest who is still employed by the Diocese of Buffalo,” states a news release sent Monday by the Herman Law law firm.

The news release goes on to state that the suit is one of three locally the firm is filing against the Diocese of Buffalo as part of the Child Victims Act. More than 200 lawsuits are expected to be filed against the diocese and other institutions by other attorneys when the one-year “window” suspending statutes of limitation in civil cases opens up Wednesday.

The news release does not specify the identity of the priest but the lawsuit is expected to do so when it is filed in State Supreme Court on Wednesday. A spokeswoman for Herman Law said she could not share the identity of the accused priest until the lawsuit was filed.

More than 150 Buffalo priests and religious have been accused of sexual misconduct, with most of the revelations coming in the last year. Buffalo Bishop Richard J. Malone is under intense pressure to resign as bishop for his handling of abuse cases involving, minors, adults , and seminarians.

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TAMUNING (GUAM)
Guam Daily Post

August 12, 2019

By Mindy Aguon

A former Boy Scout says he was ordered to swim naked during Boy Scout outings in the late 1960s and witnessed a priest, who also was a scoutmaster, sexually abuse other scouts.

B.Q.V., who is using his initials to protect his identity, filed a civil complaint against the Capuchin Franciscans and the Boy Scouts of America, alleging he was subjected to the sexually predatory practices of the late Louis Brouillard when he served as a priest and boy scoutmaster on Guam.

B.Q.V. attended church in Mangilao and was a Boy Scout when he was 10 years old.

He recalled visiting the Lonfit River four or five times a month during Boy Scout outings over three years.

“On numerous occasions, too many to count, B.Q.V. witnessed Brouillard fondle the genitals of the other Boy Scouts,” the lawsuit states.

B.Q.V. says he was able to pull away from Brouillard when he attempted to abuse him.

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UNITED STATES
Religion News Service

August 10, 2019

By Yonat Shimron

Since they were first offered an opportunity to pool their resources and buy background checks on volunteers and employees at a discount 11 years ago, about a third of Southern Baptist churches have signed up for the OneSource program from LifeWay Christian Resources.

Earlier this year, LifeWay reported that 16,000 congregations and other church organizations ran background checks on men and women it hired through a service called backgroundchecks.com. (The Southern Baptist Convention has so far resisted calls to set up a database of its own, saying the national registry was more dependable.)

Other denominations are also increasingly using searchable databases on prospective employees as the #ChurchToo movement begins to shift church attitudes toward sexual abuse and prevention.

Most background checks sift through more than 600 million felony, misdemeanor and traffic records. Perhaps most importantly, they also check the nationwide sex offender registry.

But that may give churches and other religious groups a false sense of security about preventing abuse, experts say.

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NEW YORK (NY)
The Wall Street Journal

August 11, 2019

By The Editorial Board

The results of the investigations need to be made public.

Attorney General William Barr says he’s appalled by the death of sexual offender Jeffrey Epstein in a jail cell Saturday, and he’s not alone. The death by apparent suicide of the politically connected financier couldn’t have been scripted better to undermine trust in law enforcement and the prison and legal systems.

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NEW YORK (NY)
Fox News

August 12, 2019

By Nicole Darrah

Correctional officers at the New York City prison that was housing Jeffrey Epstein didn’t check in on him for hours leading up to his apparent suicide on Saturday, which occurred after his cellmate was transferred for reasons that were not immediately clear.

Epstein, 66, was found unconscious in his cell at the Metropolitan Correctional Center, and later pronounced dead, raising questions about how the wealthy financier, imprisoned on sex trafficking charges, could have been able to kill himself while in a high-security facility just over two weeks after being placed on suicide watch.

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ISRAEL
Haaretz

August 8, 2019

By Mordechai Kremnitzer

Recent police allegations show that in Yaakov Litzman’s case, public interest isn’t a priority. But will Netanyahu do anything about it?

In today’s Israel, the man who is ostensibly the deputy health minister, but is the health minister de facto, has prima facie used his governmental powers to confer benefits on those he favors. Judging by the police’s description, this deputy minister, whose status is so exalted that he has made the prime minister forget during a recent government meeting that he is also actually the health minister, acts as if the public gave him power so that he could do whatever he pleases.

The police say Yaakov Litzman rushed to rescue a favorite restaurant – which even named some of its dishes after him – from an impending closure order over its poor hygiene. The listeria bacterium was repeatedly found in its salads, and a woman who ate there had a miscarriage.

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LOS ANGELES (CA)
People

August 12, 2019

By KC Baker

A Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department sex crimes detective was sentenced to three years in prison for raping a 15-year-old girl in 2017 while he was investigating a previous sexual assault she reported, authorities say.

In July, Neil David Kimball, 46, of Agoura, California, pleaded guilty to a lewd act with a child and unlawful sexual intercourse, Ventura County District Attorney Gregory Totten announced in a news release.

On Thursday, Kimball was sentenced to the maximum term of three years in state prison for sexually assaulting the teen.

Kimball was also ordered to register as a sex offender, pay the victim $50,000 for her pain and suffering and have no contact with her.

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PARIS (FRANCE)
LaCroix International

August 12, 2019

By Nicolas Senèze

From Santiago to Dublin – or how the pope’s trip to Dublin in Aug. 2018 marked the beginning of an attack against himRead exclusively the first chapters of the book by Nicolas Senèze, permanent special envoy of “La Croix” in Rome, to be published by Bayard Publishing on Sept. 4. Pre-order from your bookseller.On Sunday morning, Aug. 26, 2018, there was great excitement at The Alex, the small hotel in central Dublin where the Vatican housed journalists following the pope on his trip to Ireland.

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NEW YORK (NY)
WPIX TV

August 12, 2019

They say justice delayed is justice denied, but a provision of a New York state law that goes into effect Wednesday will give child sexual abuse victims a chance to defy that conventional wisdom.

The Child Victims Act, signed into law on February 14, expands the ways that those who suffered sexual abuse as children can use the legal system to address the damage.

In particular, the law specifically said that six months after its passage, there would be a one-year period when any adult survivors of child sexual abuse could sue an abuser or a negligent institution, no matter how long ago the abuse took place.

That one-year “window of justice,” as Child USA CEO Marci Ann Hamilton called it, starts Wednesday.

The idea behind the law is that many victims of child sexual abuse keep it a secret for years, well beyond the previous statute of limitations, out of shame and fear. This law gives them a chance to “reclaim their dignity,” said Michael Polenberg of Safe Horizon, a victim assistance non-profit that worked to pass the law.

“For survivors who understand what has happened to them and know in their hearts what happened to them, they get to name that person in court,” he said.

The one-year reprieve could create new opportunities for lawsuits against people or institutions implicated in child sex abuse scandals, such as the Catholic Church, the Boy Scouts, or the estate of the late Jeffrey Epstein.

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DENVER (CO)
Crux

August 11, 2019

By Father Jeffrey F. Kirby

Last weekend, in observance of the one-hundred sixtieth anniversary of the death of Saint John Vianney, Pope Francis issued an unexpected but affectionate letter to his sons and brother priests throughout the Church.

The letter was another surprise for the pope who, in the words of the prefect of his household, Archbishop Georg Gänswein, “is a person who surprises and welcomes surprises.”

For a pope most known for constructively criticizing his priests, the letter is a welcomed suspension of previous comments. It comes as blessed relief, a letter of paternal reassurance and fraternal charity.

Pope Francis begins the letter: “As an older brother and a father, I too would like in this letter to thank you in the name of the holy and faithful People of God for all that you do for them, and encourage you…”.

After the initial introduction, which provides an outline for the letter, the pope moves into a summary of the pain caused by the current crises, then to words of gratitude, followed by a message of encouragement, and then concludes with praise for the Blessed Mother, who is hailed as an example and model for priests and for the Church.

In the first part of the letter, the pontiff acknowledges the current crises in the Church and the pain they have caused believers and society. He also addresses the suffering of good priests, grieving for the priests whose own faith has been scandalized by the abuse and cover-ups, who are also thrown into an environment of suspicion by people of goodwill, and who have had their own pastoral ministries limited by the questioning and hesitation of others because of the crises.

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NEW YORK (NY)
Verdict Justia

August 6, 2019

By Marci A. Hamilton

On August 14, 2019, the New York Child Victims Act will open a window for the victims of child sex abuse—reviving the expired civil statutes of limitations (SOLs) for one year. This isn’t the best window in the United States, but it is the most hard-fought. It took a total of 16 years, a series of lawmakers, and an army of advocates and survivors to pull New York up from being one of the worst states in the country for child sex abuse victims to being in the top third as the “State Civil SOL Ranking” graphic here shows.

Lest anyone think that this SOL reform victory is the end of the line for improving the plight of child sex victims in New York or anywhere else, let me explain how massive this project is. This is a war on three fronts: we need legal reform, civil society reform, and more effective public education.

Reform the Laws
SOL reform is necessary legal reform to end child sex abuse, because it empowers the victims, but it is not sufficient. It needs to be a priority because it is the most effective way to arm victims against the perpetrators, institutions, and society that let the abuse happen. We can’t win this war without giving real weapons to the victims, and civil lawsuits and criminal prosecution are powerful. This is a banner year for SOL reform, with many states reviving expired civil SOLs for the victims, as listed here. Despite recent advances, however, most states could improve their child sex abuse SOLs.

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NEW YORK (NY)
Forward

August 9, 2017

By Avital Chizhik-Goldschmidt

You wouldn’t believe she’s only 20.

With no film schooling or experience, Baltimore native Miryam Rabinowitz has thrown herself into a film project that tells the story of sexual abuse — or rather, its lonely, complex aftermath.

“Still Feeling” [https://www.stillfeeling.org] tells the story of Yuval Goldenberg, a young woman who was abused during her childhood in an Israeli national religious community. Goldenberg, no longer Orthodox, is a singer and composer now. With an earthy voice, standing rather awkwardly, eyes half-closed, she lets song tell her pain.

Still Feeling: Promo – https://vimeo.com/210450474

Rabinowitz is a survivor of sexual abuse herself — and a graduate of the ultra-Orthodox Bais Yaakov girls school system.

“Most people around me don’t acknowledge the fact that I was abused at all,” she told me in an interview. “I have close friends who don’t acknowledge it. My film trailer was the first time I said it publicly. I’m making this documentary for my friends and family to be able to say, ‘This is for you to know how to talk about it with me.’

“I know it’s hard for people to process. When someone says they were raped by a family member, you’ll never be able to understand what that feels like, but you do understand that basic feeling of shame and suffering. It’s by empathy — through art and music — that we can come to understand another’s pain, rather than through intellectual understanding.”

In her forthcoming film, shot mostly in Tel Aviv, Rabinowitz shows Goldenberg talking about her music and her dissociation, as she bounces between her Orthodox family and her artist friends, many of whom are also survivors of abuse.

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New York (NY)
Raw Story

August 11, 2019

By Matthew Chapman

The National Prayer Breakfast is a relatively uncontroversial affair these days. Presidents from both parties make a habit of attending it, and giving simple speeches about what their faith means to them, and leaders from around the world join them.

But a new Netflix documentary miniseries, “The Family”, explores the shadowy group known as the Fellowship, which originally set it up in 1935.

The Fellowship began as a secretive fraternity of evangelical men, first organized under the leadership of a man named Abraham Veride, who was attempting to gather business leaders to thwart union drives. It evolved into what Rolling Stone described as a “secret theocracy” used by powerful Christian men to influence politics worldwide. Its members include Sens. Chuck Grassley (R-IA) and Jim Inhofe (R-OK), and Vice President Mike Pence is also reported to have ties to it.

The group has stringent rules against sex and dating, and there is an undercurrent of homophobia — but also simultaneously homoeroticism. “[There’s] a lot of that uneasy joking about masculinity and the potential for it and, at the same time, this desire for intimacy that becomes really challenging for people who have a theological and ideological opposition to that,” said Jeff Sharlet, an author who has written extensively on the Fellowship.

They also have had ties to current and former authoritarians around the world who have committed atrocities in their home countries, for the sake of advancing a conservative religious agenda — including the late former Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi.

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YORK (PA)
York Daily

August 12, 2019

By Candy Woodall

The most recent total is 1,862.

But to state Attorney General Josh Shapiro, it’s more than a number.

They are 1,862 new stories of abuse. They are 1,862 new victims who came forward since he read a landmark grand jury report on Aug. 14, 2018, identifying 301 abusive priests in Pennsylvania and a cover-up that stretched from here to the Vatican. They are 1,862 survivors.

And those 1,862 people, along with the “thousands” of victims tallied by a state grand jury, are still waiting on state lawmakers to act.

Victims in Pennsylvania continue to come forward, calling a state hotline every day to report crimes against them.

Shapiro wants all victims to know, a year later, they can still call the line at 1-888-538-8541.

“Whenever you’re ready to share your truth, we’ll be here ready to listen, and we’ll be here ready to fight for you,” Shapiro said in an interview with the York Daily Record Tuesday.

The attorney general and his team sometimes seem like the only people who are listening, according to abuse survivor Michael McDonnell, a leader with the Philadelphia chapter of SNAP, the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests.

“Throughout the investigation, they’d call at 9 p.m. just to see how we were doing,” McDonnell said.

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DAYTON (OH)
Daily News

August 11, 2019

By Denise G. Callahan & Michael D. Clark

Alleged inappropriate touching, texting and sexual comments by a former Butler County pastor prompted action by the Archdiocese of Cincinnati that will impact more than 450,000 parishioners.

Late last month, the archdiocese confirmed the Rev. Geoff Drew, former pastor of St. Maximilian Kolbe Catholic Church in Liberty Twp., was suspended for actions involving teenage boys. Drew previously served as pastor of St. Rita of Cascia Parish in Dayton and parochial vicar at St. Luke the Evangelist Church in Beavercreek.

There was a week full of activity in the case that caused strong reaction from the local Catholic community. Beginning with a Monday news conference trhat communicated accusations against Drew, officials took actions that included meeting with members of the Liberty Twp. church where he served from 2009-18.

Church officials also said they would change how they handle investigation accusations of inappropriate behavior against priests because of the Drew case, which caused criticism of church officials.

Communications Director Mike Schafer outlined allegations against Drew that led Archbishop Dennis Schnurr to place him on administrative leave July 23 and order him into “comprehensive physical, psychological and spiritual evaluation at an independent in-patient treatment facility.

“In 2013 and again in 2015, the central office of the archdiocese received concerns from St. Maximilian Kolbe parishioners regarding Father Drew’s behavior. The alleged behavior involved a pattern of such things as uninvited bear hugs, shoulder massages, patting of the leg above the knee, and inappropriate sexual comments about one’s body or appearance, directed at teenage boys,” Schafer said. “This behavior naturally made these boys uncomfortable.”In addition, there was a report of Father Drew texting some of the boys “teasing them about girlfriends’.”

Drew is one of two priests on administrative leave in the archdiocese, which covers 19 counties in southwest Ohio. The Rev. Clarence Heis, who previously served at Holy Trinity Parish in Coldwater, St. Michael Parish in Mechanicsburg and Immaculate Conception in North Lewisburg, is also on administrative leave.

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PHILADELPHIA (PA)
Catholics 4 Change

August 7, 2019

By Susan Matthews

First-person account written by Jim Tucker:
When the Archdiocese announced its’ compensation program last fall, I was extremely skeptical. My first reaction was the church was trying to circumvent efforts to change Statute of Limitation reform in the Pennsylvania Legislature. If the Church could get victim/survivors to accept lesser settlement amounts, the Church would save millions of dollars.

On the other hand, I saw this as the first time the Church has taken any action to help victims of clergy sexual abuse. I was so tired of hearing apologies, begging for forgiveness and other hollow words from those in the Hierarchy. While I can question their motives, this was at least some action.

So I decided to apply for the compensation program, also known as the Independent Reconciliation and Reparations Program {IRRP]. The first step for me was to contact the Victims Assistance office at the Archdiocese of Philadelphia. I had never reported the abuse to the Archdiocese directly. I had written several letters but had never sent them. I had been warned by other survivors back in the late 90s, not to do so.

I called the Victims Assistance office and was impressed with the way I was treated. They treated me with compassion, kindness and concern. They offered counseling services. After telling one of the people in the office my story, they promised to request an application form be sent to me. I received the application from the Feinstein Law group late last year.

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PHILADELPHIA (PA)
Catholics 4 Change

August 11, 2019

By Susan Matthews

Experience matters when it comes to leading an independent review of Church policies. Is that why the Archdiocese of Philadelphia chose George Mitchell? According to recent allegations, he has first-hand experience with sexual abuse.

Jeffrey Epstein’s alleged sex-trafficking victim names Mitchell in newly-released court documents.

Who better to oversee the Independent Reconciliation and Reparations Program (IRRP) for victims of clergy child sex abuse? The Archdiocese of Philadelphia announced Mitchell’s appointment in November of 2018. The Maine senator is a former U.S. Senate Majority Leader.

The National Catholic Reporter quoted Mitchell at the time. “This is a good faith attempt to remedy a number of wrongs,” he said, and noted “the failure of the archdiocese to prevent these unspeakable crimes, the archdiocese has itself recognized there is a need for reconciliation and reparation after many years of suffering by these victims.”

Did Mitchell consider serving on the committee a personal penance?

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NEW ORLEANS (LA)
WVUE TV

August 11, 2019

By Katherine Mozzone

Almost one year after Pennsylvania’s attorney general called for statute of limitations reform for sexual abuse, SNAP – the Survivors Network for those Abused by Priests — is asking for those same changes here in Louisiana, so victims can pursue justice.

In a shady spot in Jackson Square, Kevin Bourgeois and Richard Windmann stood together Saturday (Aug. 10), united as survivors, feet from St. Louis Cathedral.

“I can’t believe I’m here today. I really can’t. And I can’t imagine being anywhere else today,” Bourgeois said.

Windmann, now a leader with SNAP, is no stranger to publicity. He told his story on FOX 8 last fall, detailing accusations of sexual abuse by Pete Modica, a Jesuit High School janitor and former officer Stanley Burkhardt.

But, Saturday was the first day Bourgeois has appeared on camera, having only recently become public with allegations of abuse against now deceased priest Carl Davidson.

“I feel like a thousand pounds has been lifted off of me,” Bourgeois said.

But that’s not the way he felt at first. Bourgeois said, for 35 years, he didn’t tell anyone what he says happened to him while he attended the now closed St. John Vianney Prep School in the 1980s.

“When Archbishop Gregory Aymond said he was going to release the list of names back in November, I’m like, ‘Wow, my secret is going to be out,’ because it was a secret. I’d never told anybody before,” Bourgeois recalled. “I didn’t have the ability to come forward as a 16-year-old boy. Not at all. No one was going to believe me. I didn’t want to admit it happened. It was horrifying and embarrassing.”

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JOHNSTOWN (PA)
Tribune Democrat

August 12, 2019

By Dave Sutor

Shaun Dougherty and Cindy Leech sat, a few feet away from each other, inside the Pennsylvania State Capitol on Aug. 14, 2018.

Robert Hoatson stood, by himself, with his back against a wall.

Together, they, along with about a hundred other individuals, listened as Pennsylvania Attorney General Josh Shapiro provided details about a grand jury investigation into clergy sexual abuse and cover-up within six Roman Catholic dioceses throughout the commonwealth.

As invited guests, Dougherty and Leech were behind Shapiro.

Leech held a framed photo of her son, Corey Leech, who battled personal demons for years after being sexually abused by Brother Stephen Baker, a trainer at what was once called Bishop McCort High School in Johnstown.

Dougherty, who, as a child, was violated by a priest at St. Clement Church on Lindberg Avenue, had, by last summer, already established himself as a nationally known advocate for victims. Hoatson, co-founder of Road to Recovery, had counseled Leech before his death in 2017.

Now, a year has passed, and all three have watched as victims, their loved ones, advocates, church officials, law enforcement officers and legislators have processed the findings of the grand jury report that pointed to more than 300 priests allegedly committing at least 1,000 acts of abuse.

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HAGÅTÑA (GUAM)
Church Militant (blog)

August 9, 2019

By Stephen Wynne

At least 223 lawsuits filed ahead of August 15 deadline

As an Aug. 15 filing deadline nears, a flood of sex abuse claims is sweeping across Guam.

At least 223 lawsuits have been filed against the archdiocese of Agaña, with claimants alleging abuse at the hands of 35 Catholic priests, teachers and Boy Scout leaders, including former Abp. Anthony Apuron.

Anticipating at least $45 million in liabilities, the archdiocese filed for bankruptcy in January.

Claims began erupting in 2016 after lawmakers passed a bill retroactively terminating the statute of limitations for child sex abuse cases. Scores of men came forward, alleging that between 1955 and 1994, as minors, they were raped and subjected to other forms of sexual abuse by archdiocesan priests, including Apuron himself.

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MEXICO CITY (MEXICO)
La Croix International

July 24, 2019

By Claire Lesegretain (with Cath-Info)

Francis says the non-protection of minors is a serious problem that has brought “shame to the Church”

The pope has told a workshop on sexual abuse in Mexico City that he would like to see the creation of a “prevention apostolate” because “prevention is a major remedy” in the process of protecting minors.

Anyone who “prevents a young person from coming to Jesus must be stopped in his attitudes, corrected if there is still time, or punished if there is a crime,” Pope Francis said in a video message to the gathering held by the Interdisciplinary Research and Training Center for the Protection of Minors or CEPROME, established in 2016.

The failure to protect minors is a serious problem that has brought “shame to the Church,” Francis continued, referring to Saint John Bosco, founder of the Salesian congregation in the 19th century, who was at the origin of a “preventive system in education.”

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WASHINGTON (PA)
Observer-Reporter

August 11, 2019

It’s August, when the news is supposed to slow and people work in their last trips to the beach before school and the obligations of autumn arrive. Maybe it’s the good weather and lack of anything else to chew over that’s led some pundits to ponder why Americans are in such an incongruously crummy mood right now.

Why we are, in fact, glum.

Hey, the thinking goes, the economy is good and we aren’t in a hot war. Happy days are here again!

Well, mass shootings have a way of making you reluctant to click your heels, as does an unstable stock market, an economy that fails to evenly distribute its bounty, a warming climate that could wreak havoc in the lives of our children and grandchildren, a president whose Twitter feed is little more than a noxious stream of score-settling and self-aggrandizement, and on and on.

The lousy mood is justified.

And certainly another factor you can add to the pile of woe is the decreasing trust many Americans are feeling toward institutions that, in theory, are supposed to provide succor and inspiration. We’re on the eve of the first anniversary of the blockbuster report by Pennsylvania Attorney General Josh Shapiro that detailed the widespread sexual abuse of children by priests across the commonwealth over the last several decades, which has led other states to launch their own investigations into the Catholic Church. At the same time, the Boy Scouts of America is confronting serious allegations that its leaders turned a blind eye to predators within its ranks.

A lawsuit filed in Philadelphia last week by an unnamed 57-year-old man alleges that he was assaulted numerous times by an assistant scoutmaster in the 1970s. The suit also alleges that the Boys Scouts worked to keep abuse quiet, and was guilty of “reckless misconduct” in not confronting abuse more aggressively.

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ERIE (PA)
GoErie.com

August 11, 2019

By the Editorial Board

The fallout from the crimes, cover-ups and profound human toll exposed a year ago by a statewide investigative grand jury continue to ripple through the Catholic Diocese of Erie and others in Pennsylvania.

As Erie Bishop Lawrence Persico said earlier this month, coming to terms with the monstrous legacy of predator priests and the hierarchy that harbored and enabled them will continue to roil the church and the faithful in the years ahead. Persico, 68, told reporter Ed Palattella that he expects the sexual abuse crisis to remain at the forefront for the rest of his tenure.

“We just can’t say, ‘Well, OK, that was a year ago. We just move on and it’s business as usual,’” he told Palattella. “It isn’t. It can’t be.”

That’s reflected in the $3 million in claims paid to abuse survivors so far from the church compensation fund Persico established in February. He said the diocese would provide a full report on compensation fund payouts after the claims window closes this month and the remaining claims are processed.

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UNITED STATES
Patheos.com

August 11, 2019

By Hemant Mehta

The organization that oversees the Jehovah’s Witnesses is currently embroiled in a major legal battle that involves child molestation, religious secrecy, and (possibly) the Supreme Court. The entire story is bananas, and both sides have now made their arguments as to why their case should (or should not) be taken up in the Court’s next term.

While we await the Court’s decision, it’s worth summarizing what this is all about.

The case centers around an incident that took place on July 15, 2006.

J.W., a nine-year-old girl with Jehovah’s Witness parents, was invited to her first slumber party at the home of Gilbert Simental. He had a daughter her age, so that wasn’t too weird. Two other girls (sisters) were also at the party. These families all knew and trusted Simental because, while he was no longer a local Witness leader, he had spent more than a decade as an elder in the faith. He was a religious leader who stepped down, he said, to spend more time with his son. They believed him. They all respected him. It’s why they allowed their girls into his home.

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COLORADO
The Legal Examiner

August 11, 2019

By Joseph H. Saunders

In February, the three Catholic dioceses of Colorado announced they would open their records and provide information about allegations of sexual abuse of children by priests that go back decades. Led by former U.S Attorney Robert Troyer, the investigation and review is examining alleged abuse of minors by clergy in the Roman Catholic Church in Colorado since 1950. The initiative also includes a reparation fund for victims to be paid for by the church, and will incorporate a full review of church policies and procedures for responding to and preventing abuse.

This Colorado inquiry is a direct response to the bombshell report released in Pennsylvania last August that found credible allegations that more than 300 priests had abused thousands of victims in the state over seven decades. After the Pennsylvania report calls from victims began to flood the office of then Colorado Attorney General Cynthia Coffman. The Colorado branch of the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests (SNAP) organization also reached out to her office as part of its effort to spur all 50 state attorneys general to initiate investigations and reviews.

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WEST PALM BEACH (FL)
WPEC

August 11, 2019

by Denise Sawyer

A licensed mental health counselor in West Palm Beach, who spoke with one of Jeffrey Epstein’s alleged rape victims in 2012, sats down with CBS12 News after Epstein’s suicide. (WPEC file)

A licensed mental health counselor in West Palm Beach, who spoke with one of Jeffrey Epstein’s alleged rape victims in 2012, sat down with WPEC News after Epstein’s suicide.

“It’s infuriating,” said Becky Dymond, as she speaks from the victim’s perspective. “They’re thinking, ‘I didn’t have the option. I couldn’t say no. I couldn’t clock out. But he did.’ That’s enraging.”

Faced with the terror of the abuse, dozens of women will not get a chance to face their accused abuser.

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IRVINESTOWN (NORTHERN IRELAND)
The Impartial Reporter

August 11, 2019

By Rodney Edwards

John McElholm was regarded as a pillar of the Irvinestown community when he was Principal of St. Paul’s Primary School over 30 years ago.

But now it is claimed he abused that position by preying on innocent children and sexually abusing them where they should have been safe – in school.

An investigation by The Impartial Reporter over several months has uncovered serious child sexual allegations against McElholm who died in 1995 and claims that the alleged abuse was well known.

It’s understood specialist detectives from the Police Service of Northern Ireland’s Public Protection Branch are interviewing his alleged victims as part of a major review into historic sex abuse here, even though none of them will ever get justice.

“Everyone in Irvinestown knew what was going on, it was an open secret in the town,” a source from the area told this newspaper.

“It was accepted, as he was treated as a God in the community,” said another source who claims to have witnessed abuse.

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LIVERPOOL (ENGLAND)
Liverpool Echo

August 11, 2019

By Neil Docking and Kate McMullin

The Catholic Church paid out £35,000 to another man, who said he had been abused by three priests at St Joseph’s Catholic Seminary

A disgraced Catholic priest who sexually abused boys was not the only clergymen to have betrayed his youthful charges, it has been alleged.

Former Darlington parish priest Michael Higginbottom was jailed for 18 years for the sexual abuse of two teenage boys at St Joseph’s College in Upholland, near Skelmersdale , in the 1970s and 80s.

However shocking allegations have been uncovered suggesting that more boys at St Joseph’s seminary were preyed upon by perverted priests.

At least three Catholic priests have been accused of abusing children at the facility in West Lancashire, with several pupils having reported horrifying mistreatment at the hands of clergy who they should have been able to trust.

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CHICAGO (IL)
Chicago Sun-Times

August 11, 2019

By Laura Washington

Is nothing sacred in my Church?

That was my question as I read the headline: “Retired Celebrity Priest George Clements Accused of Sex Abuse in 1970s.”

It invades the realm of the unthinkable.

The Rev. George Clements, 87, has been accused of sexually abusing a minor in 1974 while serving as pastor of Holy Angels Church on Chicago’s South Side.

Cardinal Blase Cupich has asked Clements “to step aside from ministry pending the outcome of an investigation,” according to a statement from the Archdiocese of Chicago.

The charge is “totally unfounded,” Clements told the Chicago Sun-Times.

The “atmosphere here today is so toxic,” he added, referring to the never-ending sexual abuse scandal in the Roman Catholic Church. “The overwhelming majority of priests have to wake up each morning wondering, ‘Is this the morning that someone is going to accuse me of something negative?’”

Last year, an investigation by the Illinois attorney general’s office found that 690 Catholic clergy had been accused of sexual assault and abuse by minors.

Now an accusation comes to Clements, once the most famous priest in America.

In black Chicago, Clements is family. African American Catholics who came of age from the 1960s to the 1990s know “Father Clements” as a pioneering icon.

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KERALA (INDIA)
Daily Hunt News

August 11, 2019

By Ashutosh Bharadwaj, Smitha TK and Shubhangi Mishra

Sister Lucy received a dismissal order from the church on 5 August that read “did not show the needed remorse and you failed to give a satisfactory explanation for your lifestyle in violation of the proper law of the FCC”.

Sister Lucy Kalapura: “The church accused me of going to protests, speaking on a TV channel, speaking against the church, buying a vehicle. All those things should not have been done (according to them) but I think I should have done even more.”

Some of her other ‘crimes’ were learning to drive, owning a car and publishing a collection of poems. She was a prominent face in the protests held in September 2018 by nuns demanding the arrest of rape-accused Bishop Franco Mulakkal.

The Quint spoke to Lucy, who talked about how this seems like a move by the Church to intimidate those who are supporting the victim. We also caught up with Catholic Christians to find out if they thought the church was right and how they view the protests by the nuns against the Bishop.

‘A Blasphemous Order’

‘Absolute blasphemy,’ is what a few students in Kerala and Mumbai had to say about the way the church has dismissed Sister Lucy.

Eugine Augustine, Ernakulam, Kerala”The unceremonious dismissal was totally deplorable and unjust.”

Many Catholics said learning to drive and wanting to publish poems is a person’s right and it is unjust for the church to impose such restrictions and dismiss her ‘on such flimsy grounds.’

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ALBANY (NY)
Associated Press via WENY

August 11, 2019

Thousands of people who say they were molested as children in New York state will head to court this week to file lawsuits against their alleged abusers and the institutions where they worked.

It’s because of a new law that creates a one-year window for molestation lawsuits that had previously been barred by the statute of limitations.

Earlier this year, lawmakers extended the statute of limitations going forward and created the litigation window to victims of past abuse a chance to sue, even if the abuse occurred decades ago.

Large institutions that care for children such as the Catholic Church and the Boy Scouts are expected to be named as defendants, along with a long list of smaller groups and individuals.

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[Google Translation: The circle of hell: what role did each of the accused of Provolo play in the abuse network?]

MENDOZA (ARGENTINA)
TN.com

August 10, 2019

Con lengua de señas y sollozos, los alumnos víctimas de los abusos sexuales denunciados en el colegio religioso Antonio Provolo de Mendoza han descripto el espanto y el rol que cumplía cada uno de los acusados.

El miércoles se reanuda el juicio y los jueces del Tribunal Colegiado 2 escucharán los testimonios de las 11 víctimas de la causa inicial, que tiene a dos curas y un administrativo como imputados. El fiscal Gustavo Stroppiana y los abogados de las familias víctimas coinciden en que hubo “un plan sistemático de corrupción de menores, una red de complicidad y la selección de víctimas más vulnerables por su contexto social y familiar”.

[Google Translation: With sign language and sobs, students victims of sexual abuse reported in the religious school Antonio Provolo de Mendoza have described the horror and the role it fulfilled

Each of the accused. On Wednesday the trial resumes and the judges of the Collegiate Court 2 will listen to the testimonies of the 11 victims of the initial case, which has two priests and an administrative as accused. Prosecutor Gustavo Stroppiana and the lawyers of the victim families agree that there was ” a systematic plan for corruption of minors , a network of complicity and the selection of victims most vulnerable by their social and family context.”]

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BUFFALO (NY)
The Buffalo News

August 11, 2019

By Maki Becker, Jay Tokasz and Dan Herbeck

She was making a pot of beef and barley soup in 2013 when her phone rang.

It was a detective from the Niagara Falls police. A woman had told police she was sexually abused many years earlier by a Niagara Falls City School District teacher, and that there may have been other victims. The detective asked the woman making soup if she was one of them.

“I dropped an entire bottle of parsley in the pot I was so shocked,” said the woman, who asked that her name not be published.

She says her music teacher, Patrick Kuciewski, began sexually abusing her in the seventh grade. Because of New York State’s statute of limitations on child sex abuse cases, which only allowed victims to pursue charges or file lawsuits up until their 23rd birthday, it was too late for the woman or police to do anything.

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NEW YORK
New York Daily News

August 11, 2019

By Erin Schumaker

When she was a child, Beatriz Mendoza told her mother that she was sexually abused by an adult.

Mendoza remembers her mother’s response. “‘That’s not possible. How could that be?’” her mom questioned. “She really took no action,” Mendoza recalled. “I was 6-and-a-half.”

Because her mother didn’t believe her, Mendoza kept the assault to herself until she started working in victims’ assistance decades later.

It’s stories like this that New York’s Child Victims Act, which was signed into law in February, is intended to correct. The legislation, which extends the criminal and civil statutes of limitations for reporting child sex abuse, also includes a one-year, one-time-only look back window, in which victims of any age can file civil lawsuits against their abusers between Aug.14, 2019 and Aug. 13, 2020.

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ALBANY (NY)
Newsday

August 11, 2019

By Yancey Roy

New York courts, law firms, Catholic dioceses, Boy Scout troops and schools are bracing for an onslaught of civil lawsuits to be filed by people seeking justice for long-ago sexual abuse when a special one-year “look back” period begins Wednesday.

Thousands of cases are expected to be filed on that first day alone. At least two law firms are handling upward of 400 claims each, court officials said.

Forty-five judges have been designated around the state to hear the claims, including five on Long Island. All the judges went through special training this summer. Expedited timelines for proceedings have been established and all cases will be offered mediation services as a way to settle claims more quickly.

“It is really unprecedented, what is happening in New York,” said Jason Amala, an attorney whose firm anticipates filing more than 100 claims on Wednesday.

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NEW ORLEANS (LA)
WVUE TV

August 11, 2019

By Katherine Mozzone

Almost one year after Pennsylvania’s attorney general called for statute of limitations reform for sexual abuse, SNAP – the Survivors Network for those Abused by Priests — is asking for those same changes here in Louisiana, so victims can pursue justice.

In a shady spot in Jackson Square, Kevin Bourgeois and Richard Windmann stood together Saturday (Aug. 10), united as survivors, feet from St. Louis Cathedral.

“I can’t believe I’m here today. I really can’t. And I can’t imagine being anywhere else today,” Bourgeois said.

Windmann, now a leader with SNAP, is no stranger to publicity. He told his story on FOX 8 last fall, detailing accusations of sexual abuse by Pete Modica, a Jesuit High School janitor and former officer Stanley Burkhardt.

But, Saturday was the first day Bourgeois has appeared on camera, having only recently become public with allegations of abuse against now deceased priest Carl Davidson.

“I feel like a thousand pounds has been lifted off of me,” Bourgeois said.

But that’s not the way he felt at first. Bourgeois said, for 35 years, he didn’t tell anyone what he says happened to him while he attended the now closed St. John Vianney Prep School in the 1980s.

“When Archbishop Gregory Aymond said he was going to release the list of names back in November, I’m like, ‘Wow, my secret is going to be out,’ because it was a secret. I’d never told anybody before,” Bourgeois recalled. “I didn’t have the ability to come forward as a 16-year-old boy. Not at all. No one was going to believe me. I didn’t want to admit it happened. It was horrifying and embarrassing.”

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NEW YORK (NY)
CNN

August 10, 2019

By Catherine Valentine

“I am sorry. I have been sorry. I will always be sorry for raping you.”

In a 20-minute long phone call in 2013, Air Force Lt. Col. Michael Briggs confessed to raping SSgt. “DK” in 2005. After receiving a call from the victim, Briggs detailed how he went to her room after a long night of drinking, pushed himself on her and continued to have sex with her despite pleas for him to stop.

A recording of that call would be played in a military court in 2014. Briggs would be tried by a judge, found guilty and sentenced to five months in prison. He would be dismissed from the Air Force and registered as a sex offender.

It was understood, based on military law and reinforced through legal precedent, that there was no statute of limitations for rape in the military. Though the assault occurred in 2005, and Briggs was not accused for eight years, defense counsel did not even raise the issue of statute of limitations at trial.

But last year, the top military appeals court came to a different understanding. When presented with a separate rape charge brought years after an alleged incident, it found that a five-year statute of limitations existed before 2006. The decision eventually led to Briggs’ rape conviction — and the convictions of at least three other service members – being vacated.

This one decision has reverberated through the entire military court system. It has not only vacated convictions. It has prevented at least 10 new cases from being heard, the Justice Department says. This comes as #MeToo trickles through the armed forces.

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BALTIMORE (MD)
Baltimore Sun

August 8, 2019

By Jonathan Pitts

Baltimore County police have arrested a former pastor of a fundamentalist Baptist church in Dundalk on charges he sexually abused a teenager on the church’s grounds and elsewhere in the Baltimore area more than 10 years ago.

Cameron Shane Giovanelli, 42, of Orange Park, Florida, was pastor of Calvary Baptist Church from 2004 to 2014.

Authorities charged him with sexual abuse of a minor, perverted practice and a fourth-degree sexual offense involving the girl, who was part of the congregation. The incidents allegedly occurred in 2007. Police said Thursday that they believe there may be other victims, and encouraged them to come forward.

A warrant for Giovanelli’s arrest was issued Monday, and he traveled Tuesday to Maryland to turn himself in to county police under an agreement made through his attorney, county State’s Attorney Scott Shellenberger said. Giovanelli was released on his own recognizance.

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SAN DIEGO (CA)
Union-Tribune

August 8, 2019

By Peter Rowe

Dr. Marianne Benkert Sipe, a psychiatrist and world-renowned expert on the sexual abuse of minors by clergy, will address next month’s meeting of the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests (SNAP).

The free session will be held 10 a.m. to noon, Sept. 7, on the second floor of the Rancho Bernardo Library, 17110 Bernardo Center Drive, San Diego.

A former Maryknoll nun and practicing psychiatrist, Dr. Sipe in 1970 left her order and married Richard Sipe, a former priest and also an expert in this field. They were jointly awarded the 2019 Presidential Citation from the American Psychiatric Association, Richard Sipe posthumously as he had died in August 2018. He was 85.

“Dedicated Catholics,” the citation read in part, “they have endeavored to restore their church to the morality they have always known it should represent.”

La Jolla residents since 1999, the Sipeses published books and papers on this topic, counseled victims and testified in court cases brought against priests and church officials. In 2001, they were contacted by the Boston Globe’s investigative reporting team, as the journalists were working on a series of articles exposing sexual abuse within that city’s archdiocese.

The Globe’s work, including the Sipeses’s contributions, was dramatized in the 2015 Oscar-winning film, “Spotlight.”

Since her husband’s death, Dr. Sipe has continued to work in this field. Among her areas of expertise is the sexual abuse of — and by — nuns. She’s also examined sexual abuse within other faith traditions.

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BRISBANE (AUSTRALIA)
The Courier

August 3, 2019

By Jolyon Attwooll

The mother of one of Paul David Ryan’s victims has said she was “devastated” by the sentence imposed on the convicted paedophile this week.

Helen Watson, whose son Peter was abused while Ryan was working as a priest in Ararat, said she was dumbfounded when she left the sentencing hearing earlier this week.

Now aged 70, Ryan was sentenced to 26 months’ imprisonment at the County Court of Victoria, after pleading guilty to three charges involving the sexual abuse of children.

After dispensation for his guilty plea and time served, it means he could be entitled to apply for parole in just 13 months’ time.

Mrs Watson, who now lives in Beaufort, said she supported one of the three victims through the trial process.

Her own son Peter was abused while staying overnight at the Ararat presbytery in 1991. Ryan was never tried for the crime as Peter took his own life eight years later.

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Patheos blog

August 9, 2019

By William M. Shea

Answers to serious questions, especially political ones, tend to multiply and to develop and change over time. I began a spectrum slide from William Buckley-Barry Goldwater small-government Republican politics some sixty years ago and have landed in the past few years in the mystery called democratic socialism. I wish I could say that I slid on the basis of pure knowledge but I admit to my slide being a matter largely of opinion, belief and social conviction. In political matters too much is involved to call any one position simply true. The best one can do is call it “informed opinion.” I should be immune, then, to the foolhardiness of suggesting any definitive answer to the question of reform in the Catholic Church. Think of the other possible answers, says my conscience, and then I blush. For example, there is a lot to be said for the episcopal form of church governance.

Think of the complications of understanding a church with a two thousand year history in which many answers to the issue of governance have been tried and in which each form has been subject to abuse and even failure, often extraordinary. None had proved perfect or even reasonably and consistently successful. So my antipathy to the monarchical system of government atop the Catholic Church is a matter of opinion. Like my years’ long slide into democratic socialism, my gradual slide into governmental reform in the church started small with Cardinal Patrick O’Boyle’s crushing of any dissent in the archdiocese of Washington from Pope Paul’s tragic mistake in the matter of contraception (1968). Is there really only one Catholic voice? Can Pope Paul be wrong and pope at the same time? Ultimately, some forty years later, I decided that monarchy, even in the church, is absurd and the dying remnant of the Empire.

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KANSAS CITY (MO)
National Catholic Reporter

August 9, 2019

By Michael Sean Winters

The Holy Father was true to his name last weekend when he published a fatherly letter to priests on the occasion of the 160th anniversary of the death of St. John Vianney. The letter was remarkable in many ways, a most exemplary text in understanding how Pope Francis brings our tradition alive and uses it to face the challenges and opportunities of our day. I should like to highlight some elements that seem to me to be quintessential Papa Bergoglio.

First, there is his brutal frankness. He begins by addressing the clergy sex abuse and its effects on the presbyterate. “As you know, we are firmly committed to carrying out the reforms needed to encourage from the outset a culture of pastoral care, so that the culture of abuse will have no room to develop, much less continue,” he writes. “This task is neither quick nor easy: it demands commitment on the part of all. If in the past, omission may itself have been a kind of response, today we desire conversion, transparency, sincerity and solidarity with victims to become our concrete way of moving forward. This in turn will help make us all the more attentive to every form of human suffering.”

The direct acknowledgement of both the scourge and the challenges they face is followed by a deeply spiritual insight: Accompanying the victims of abuse will “make us all the more attentive to every form of human suffering.”

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OMAHA (NE)
Associated Press

August 9, 2019

A new trial date has again been set for a Roman Catholic priest accused of sexually assaulting a woman in central Nebraska.

Television station KSNB reports that trial for the Rev. John Kakkuzhiyil (kah-kuh-ree-AL’) is now set for Jan. 6. The trial had been set to begin next month. Court documents did not indicate the reason for the delay.

Kakkuzhiyil was arrested earlier this year following a monthlong investigation by the Nebraska State Patrol after a woman told police he sexually assaulted her in November in his Ord home. The woman told investigators she blacked out after having a couple of drinks with the priest.

Kakkuzhiyil was the parish priest in Ord and Burwell at the time of the accusation. He was placed on leave Dec. 15.

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CHICAGO (IL)
Sun-Times

August 8, 2019

After the Rev. John Calicott was removed from ministry at a Chicago parish years ago following sexual misconduct allegations, a group of parishioners signed a petition urging the Archdiocese of Chicago – the Catholic Church for Cook and Lake counties – to return him.

“We now firmly believe that the allegations made against Father Calicott were scurrilous and totally without substance,” the petition stated.

On Thursday, a decade after he was laicized following credible accusations of sexual abuse of children, a Chicago law firm announced an $8 million legal settlement has been reached with the archdiocese over long-ago allegations that Calicott sexually abused a boy in the 1990s.

It’s the largest payout of its kind, according to lawyer Blake Horwitz, whose firm represents the victim, now a grown man who was identified as “John Doe” to protect his identity.

No lawsuit was filed; the settlement was reached out of court, Horwitz said, adding the archdiocese has already paid up, with the last installment arriving in July.

Reached by phone Thursday night, Calicott said that while he does not know definitely who made this accusation, he insisted he didn’t molest the person accusing him of abuse. He called the accusation “crazy” and “absurd.”

A spokeswoman for the archdiocese declined to comment, saying in an email, “We do not confirm or comment regarding settlements.”

Calicott was once assigned to Holy Angels Church on the South Side, where the Rev. George Clements was also a long-time pastor.

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ROME (ITALY)
Crux

August 8, 2019

By Inés San Martín

Bishop Gustavo Zanchetta, an Argentine prelate whom Pope Francis transferred to Rome after accepting his resignation due to what he acknowledged was “despotic” behavior, presented himself in court today in the diocese he once led, where he faces charges of “aggravated continuous sexual abuse.”

The charges carry a maximum penalty of 10 years in prison. As the pope revealed in an interview earlier this year, the bishop is also being investigated by the Vatican’s Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, that deals with cases of clerical sexual abuse of minors but, on the pope’s request, also cases involving adults.

The bishop left the chambers of Judge Cluadio Parisi in Oran, Salta, northern Argentina, after only 10 minutes and with a smile on his face. He refused to answer questions from the media, instead going straight to the white Audi of an unidentified man who accompanied him to see the judge.

He had been ordered by the judge to attend on August 8 to present his passport and other travel documents. He’s been banned from leaving the country and his movements are restricted since he’s been ordered to be at the disposal of the justice system.

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CHICAGO (IL)
Chicago Sun Times

August 8, 2019

By David Struett and Sam Charles

The archdiocese said the alleged abuse occurred in 1974 while Clements served as pastor of Holy Angels Parish in Bronzeville. The priest said the accusation is “totally unfounded.”

Retired Chicago priest Father George Clements — famous for marching with Martin Luther King Jr. and being the first Catholic priest to adopt a child — now faces an accusation of sexually abusing a minor in the 1970s.

Cardinal Blase Cupich has asked Clements, 87, “to step aside from ministry” pending the outcome of an investigation into the sex abuse claim, according to a statement from the Archdiocese of Chicago.

The archdiocese said the alleged abuse occurred in 1974 during Clements’ 22-year tenure as pastor of Holy Angels Parish in Bronzeville.

The Chicago Police Department learned of the complaint in June and has been working on it since then; police notified the Archdiocese in the last week or two, CPD spokesman Anthony Guglielmi said.

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UNITED STATES
Huffington Post

August 8, 2019

By Alanna Vagianos

Gymnast Simone Biles broke down in tears on Wednesday while discussing USA Gymnastics’ failure to protect its athletes from former trainer and convicted pedophile Larry Nassar.

“It’s hard coming here for an organization and having had them fail us so many times,” the five-time Olympic medalist said on Wednesday as she warmed up for the U.S. championships in Kansas City.

“We’ve done everything that they’ve asked us to even when we didn’t want to. And they couldn’t do one damn job,” Biles, 22, said while tearing up. “You had one job. You literally had one job and you couldn’t protect us.”

Biles’ emotional comments were in reaction to a congressional report published last week which found that USA Gymnastics, the United States Olympic Committee and the FBI “fundamentally failed” to protect athletes from Nassar’s abuse.

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NEW JERSEY
North Jersey Record

August 7, 2019

By Deena Yellin and Abbott Koloff

A man who grew up in North Jersey plans to file a lawsuit alleging that he was sexually abused as a child by former Cardinal Theodore McCarrick, his attorney announced Wednesday during a news conference.

Mitchell Garabedian, the attorney, also released the names of 28 New Jersey priests who allegedly abused 30 of his clients who are seeking settlements through a victim’s compensation fund set up by the state’s five Catholic dioceses.

The New Jersey Independent Victim Compensation Program began accepting applications in June and offers a way for victims of clergy abuse to settle their cases without going to court. As of Aug. 5, more than 50 victims filed claims and seven received cash settlements. The process calls for the victims to file claims with independent mediators who evaluate the supporting documentation and, once they establish an accusation’s credibility, offer a monetary award.

Twelve of the priests on the list have never been publicly named before, Garabedian said during the news conference, which was held in West Orange.

The attorney said that if the victims aren’t satisfied with the settlements offered by the church, they could file lawsuits in December when a new state law opens a two-year window for such cases to be filed.

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LITTLE ROCK (AR)
Bilgrimage blog

August 9, 2019

By William Lindsey

This essay is the sixth in a series of essays Ruth Krall has generously offered us on Bilgrimage, under the series title “Recapitulation: Affinity Sexual Violence in a Religious Voice.” This link will point you to links to each previous essay in the series. In her “Recapitulation” series, Ruth addresses what she sees as the he endemic nature of sexual abuse of followers in religious contexts and contexts offering spiritual guidance. From the outset, Ruth’s latest essay on moral corruption in the religious commons announces its theme:

If it takes a village to raise a child, it also takes a village to repeatedly enable sexual abuse of that same child. This is so whether she lives inside secular society or he lives inside a deeply pious religious and worshipping community.

Ruth’s essay “Moral Corruption in the Religious Commons” follow. Because the essay is rich and long, I’ll be sharing it in several installments, of which this is the first.

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VATICAN CITY
The Associated Press

August 6, 2019

At first glance, the handwritten postcards and letters look innocuous, even warm, sometimes signed off by “Uncle T.” or “Your uncle, Father Ted.”

But taken in context, the correspondence penned by disgraced ex-Cardinal Theodore McCarrick to the young men he is accused of sexually abusing or harassing is a window into the way a predator grooms his prey, according to two abuse prevention experts who reviewed it for The Associated Press.

Full of flattery, familiarity and boasts about his own power, the letters provide visceral evidence of how a globe-trotting bishop made young, vulnerable men feel special — and then allegedly took advantage of them.

The AP is exclusively publishing correspondence McCarrick wrote to three men ahead of the promised release of the Vatican’s own report into who knew what and when about his efforts to bed would-be priests. Access to an archbishop for young men seeking to become priests “is a key piece of the grooming process here,” said one of the experts, Monica Applewhite.

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LONDON (ENGLAND)
The Times of London

August 9, 2019

By David Brown and Will Humphries

The Church of England will order an investigation into fears that entire congregations can be “groomed” by abusers after an aspiring vicar was convicted today of murdering a parishioner.

Church officials had been warned of “serious concerns” about Benjamin Field but he was able to continue targeting a second elderly victim and was five days away from possible selection for ordination when he was arrested.

Police believe that Field, 28, was planning to become a serial killer and had drawn up a list of 100 targets including members of his church congregation, his parents and people connected with Stowe public school.

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STATEN ISLAND (NY)
Staten Island Advance

August 9, 2019

By Maura Grunlund

Attorneys are poised to file hundreds if not thousands of lawsuits beginning on Wednesday for adults on Staten Island and throughout New York who allege they were sexually abused as children.

A one-year window of opportunity exists for victims of any age who were abused at any time as minors to file lawsuits against their alleged abusers and institutions that purportedly turned a blind eye to those crimes.

The window is part of the Child Victims Act, which was signed into law by Gov. Andrew Cuomo on Feb. 14.

Attorneys have been advertising for clients and holding news conferences, demonstrations and other events to draw attention to alleged sex abuse that in may cases happened decades ago in New York City and State and throughout the country.

On Friday, attorney Irwin Zalkin held a news conference in Manhattan announcing that two alleged victims, Heather Steele and Michael Ewing, will file lawsuits in state Supreme Court in Brooklyn on Wednesday. The lawsuits will name as defendants eight members of the Governing Body of the Jehovah’s Witnesses (JWs).

Now located in Tuxedo Park, N.Y., the JWs World Headquarters occupied a building with a large Watchtower sign in Brooklyn.

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ALLENTOWN (PA)
The Morning Call

August 9, 2019

By Paul Muschick

The cries for justice were deafening last August after a Pennsylvania grand jury disclosed accusations that hundreds of priests sexually abused more than 1,000 children, and that their sins were covered up by the Catholic church and others.

Those cries still haven’t been answered.

The grand jury recommended that state lawmakers allow future sexual abusers to be criminally prosecuted no matter how long it takes for them to be exposed. It pointed out that’s the law in more than half of the country. It also urged that long-ago victims be allowed to sue retroactively.

Lawmakers did nothing.

The lack of action is disturbing and doesn’t do justice to the work of the grand jury, which was groundbreaking on several levels.

* It was perhaps the most explosive expose since The Boston Globe’s “Spotlight” investigation in 2002.

* It covered nearly the entire state, while other investigations were regional.

* It named priests going back decades and went into great detail, much of it stomach-turning, of what they were accused of doing.

* It pulled many of those details from the church’s own files, its “secret archives.”

* It prompted at least 14 other state attorneys general to launch investigations or reviews of their dioceses.

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LEWIS COUNTY (KY)
WSAZ TV

August 9, 2019

Glenmary Home Missioners has removed a priest from eastern Kentucky and recalled him to the society’s Cincinnati headquarters.

The priest is accused of making inappropriate contact with two teenage volunteers.

Glenmary Home Missioners says two teenage girls were working on a construction project at Emmaus Farm in Lewis County, Kentucky.

That’s when they say the 84-year-old made inappropriate contact with them.

Within 24 hours, Glenmary President Father Dan Dorsey removed the priest from service and reported the allegation to both the Lewis County Sheriff’s Office and the Diocese of Covington.

He had been serving at a church in Vanceburg, Ky. in the Diocese of Covington since 2012.

According to the Diocese of Covington, the priest will be stationed at the Glenmary headquarters in Cincinnati while the matter is being investigated.

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NEWARK (NJ)
The Newark Advocate

August 9, 2019

By Maria DeVito

Jodi Priest is a survivor.

She didn’t always think that, but in the last few months, she’s come to view herself from that perspective.

Throughout her high school years in the 1980s, Priest said she was sexually abused by a teacher at her school. After she graduated, she become pregnant with the teacher’s baby and had a son in 1990 when she was 19.

That teacher was John Schouten, the pastor who stepped down in October from the Licking County church he started after a classmate of Priest’s informed the church of Schouten’s past.

In October, the church described Schouten’s behavior as “wrong, evil, and illegal” in an emailed statement to parishioners. A spokesman previously told The Advocate the actions were a “sexual sin.”

Priest, who is now 48, didn’t want to speak publicly at the time. She wasn’t ready. She said had she come forward even just a few months ago, her story would have been that of abuse.

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LOUISVILLE (KY)
Catholic Record

August 9, 2019

Archbishop Joseph F. Naumann of Kansas City told diocesan pro-life leaders gathered in Louisville Aug. 5-7 that they are part of the “most important human rights effort of our time and our age.”

Eighty-five directors of pro-life ministry from 63 dioceses around the country gathered this week at the Brown Hotel in downtown Louisville for the Diocesan Pro-Life Leadership Conference.

The theme of the conference, sponsored by the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, was “Christ, Our Hope.”

Archbishop Naumann, who serves as the chair of the USCCB’s Secretariat of Pro-Life Activities, delivered the conference’s opening keynote address Aug. 5. In the talk — titled Life Will Be Victorious, which is also his episcopal motto — he thanked the diocesan pro-life leaders for helping their bishops and dioceses “build a culture of life in this particular moment in time when the church is wounded by the clerical sexual abuse scandal; at a time of pro-life promise with the current composition of the U.S. Supreme Court; and a time when supporters of legalized abortion are incredibly motivated and energized.”

“This is a moment of great opportunity as well as a moment of great peril for our culture and society,” Archbishop Naumann said.

During the three-day conference, participants attended a variety of break-out sessions led by experts in law and medicine, diocesan leaders and parish priests.

Sessions addressed topics related to overturning Roe vs. Wade, ministry to people after abortion, hospice and palliative care and assisted suicide.

During his keynote address Aug. 5, Archbishop Naumann acknowledged the pain and anger caused by the clergy sexual abuse crisis and encouraged his listeners to persevere as leaders in the church.

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LONDON (ENGLAND)
The Tablet

August 9, 2019

By Rose Gamble

Since 2016, there have since been at least 223 lawsuits filed accusing 35 clergymen, teachers, and Boy Scout leaders of sexual abuse

Court documents have shown that a systemic pattern of sexual abuse by clergy of the Catholic Church took place on the US territory of Guam for over six decades.

The Associated Press conducted an extensive investigation that found collusion and cover-ups from priests all the way up to the top of the church’s hierarchy had been happening since the 1950s.

Anthony Sablan Apuron served as the archbishop of the Archdiocese of Agaña, Guam, from 1986 until 2016 when he was convicted in a secret Vatican trial and suspended. In 2018 he was found guilty of sexual abusing minors and finally removed from his post.

There have since been at least 223 lawsuits filed accusing 35 clergymen, teachers, and Boy Scout leaders of sexual abuse. The Guam archdiocese filed for bankruptcy protection this year, estimating $45 million in liabilities.

Apuron was named by seven men in lawsuits, including one by his own nephew.

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PHILADELPHIA (PA)
Philadelphia Inquirer

August 9, 2019

A lawsuit filed in Philadelphia this week against the Boys Scouts of America on behalf of a Pennsylvania man has created a heart-sinking déjà vu. Lawyers claim to have uncovered hundreds of unreported cases of sexual abuse in the organization. It hearkens back to almost exactly a year ago when Attorney General Josh Shapiro released a grand jury report that detailed decades of sexual abuse by 300 priests across the Commonwealth.

The déjà vu has much to do with the similarities between the scouting scandal and the legacy of abuse in the Catholic Church — and how hierarchal organizations supposed to be wholesome and beneficial instead preyed on the innocent and vulnerable, compounding the damage by remaining secretive and insulated.

The Boy Scout abuse scandal emerged nearly a decade ago when a secret file of “ineligible volunteers” suspected of abusing their charges – called the “perversion files” — came to light.

In the church, the cover-up was even worse: secrecy compounded by the fact that instead of making abusive priests ineligible to serve, the church would simply transfer them to new communities where the abuse could continue.

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Legal Examiner blog

August 5, 2019

By Ryan J. Farrick

The two sisters say they and another siblings were abused by a parish priest for years.

Two Bronx women who were sexually abused by a Catholic parish priest in their own homes have reached a settlement with the Archdiocese of New York.

“In bringing this into the light, the evil cannot hide and we can begin the healing process,” said 54-year old Imelda Maldonado Davis in a public statement. “And we can protect all of our children.”

Davis, writes The New York Daily Post, was joined for a news conference outside St. Patrick’s Cathedral by her younger sister, Mercedes. Both women were targeted by the late Monsignor Charles McDonagh. The abuse began in 1972 and lasted for several years. It only stopped when McDonagh, a Bronx parish priest, was promoted.

The Post notes that neither woman nor the foundation which assisted them in the lawsuit would discuss the specifics of the settlement, saying only that they received a five-figure payout.

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CHICAGO (IL)
Chicago Tribune

August 9, 2019

By Morgan Greene

A retired priest of the Archdiocese of Chicago who served at multiple parishes in the city has been asked by the archbishop of Chicago to “step aside from ministry” amid an investigation into an allegation of sexual abuse of a minor, the Archdiocese of Chicago said Thursday.

The Rev. George Clements is being investigated for an alleged incident that occurred in 1974 while he was pastor of Holy Angels Parish, the archdiocese said in a news release. Clements retired from active ministry in 2006. He served at the Bronzeville church as pastor from June 20, 1969, to June 30, 1991, according to the archdiocese.

Clements was a charismatic and controversial leader who brought hope to the church where about 500 families worshipped, the Tribune reported in 2002 amid allegations of abuse involving another pastor who served after Clements departed.

At Holy Angels, Clements established a school that grew to more than 1,000 students, and after a 1986 fire destroyed the church, Clements led a campaign to bring the church back to life.

Rev. George Clements, shown in 1981, is being investigated for an alleged incident that occurred in 1974 while he was pastor of Holy Angels Parish, the Archdiocese of Chicago said in a news release on Aug. 8, 2019.

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NEW YORK (NY)
Newsweek

August 9, 2019

By Shane Croucher

The comedian Sarah Silverman shared a clip to Twitter of an extremist Christian pastor’s anti-Semitic rant against her, and said she fears that he will “get me killed.”

Adam Fannin, formerly of the literalist Stedfast Baptist Church in Jacksonville, Florida, is the preacher in the disturbing video.

He is now part of the Law of Liberty Baptist Church, also in Jacksonville, following a recent scandal involving Stedfast that saw its leader admit to using sex workers.

It is not clear exactly when the clip dates from, though the background and pulpit look similar in style to Stedfast videos uploaded to YouTube in the second half of 2018.

“You know these Jewish false prophets, anti-Christian, anti-God, they’re willing to put Jesus to death again,” Fannin says in the video.

“You heard this comedian Sarah Silverman? You guys know who I’m talking about? She brags about ‘I’d do it again.’ Listen, she is a witch. She is a Jezebel. She is a God-hating whore of Zionism.

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WASHINGTON (DC)
Catholic News Service

August 8, 2019

By Jessica Rinaudo

During Mass the weekend of July 27-28, it was announced at Masses that Father Geoff Drew, pastor of St. Ignatius Parish in Cincinnati, is on administrative leave.

No further details were provided, which left many feeling frustrated.

On July 29, parishioners attended a meeting at St. Ignatius where archdiocesan officials revealed that Drew had allegedly engaged in behavior that violates the archdiocese’s Decree on Child Protection – although no allegations of sexual abuse or criminal activity had been reported at that time.

The gravity of this incident was underscored by the revelation just over a week later that this was not the first time Drew’s behavior had been reported to the archdiocese. Two separate reports were written in 2013 and 2015 about the priest’s behavior while he served as pastor at St. Maximilian Kolbe Parish in Liberty Township.

The reports from those time periods included allegations that Drew gave uninvited hugs, shoulder massages, leg pats above the knee and made inappropriate sexual comments about their bodies and appearances to teenage boys.

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ST. LOUIS (MO)
Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests

August 8, 2019

Two young girls are testifying in open court this week about the abuse they suffered at the hands of a parish priest in Washington D.C. We honor the bravery of these courageous and young survivors as they share details about things that should never have happened to them in the first place.

According to testimony heard in court yesterday, Fr. Urbano Vazquez repeatedly fondled, groped, and kissed the then-9-year-old victim whose family attended Shrine of the Sacred Heart Church in Columbia Heights. Our hearts ache for the pain and confusion that Fr. Vazquez subjected these young girls to and we hope that he is given the maximum possible punishment. And we hope that as this trial moves forward, these young girls are able to find the support and healing that they will need to recover from this trauma.

“I was abused from the ages of 8 to 12, so I can empathize with what these young girls are going through, but am incredibly impressed at their bravery,” said Becky Ianni, volunteer SNAP leader for Virginia and Washington D.C. “Even at the age of 48 it was hard for me to speak out and I can only imagine how difficult it is for these girls this week. But I believe that their example will inspire other young victims to tell their parents or a trusted adult when someone is hurting them.”

Anyone who has any knowledge of crimes committed by Fr. Vazquez or any other cleric, nun, or church staffer should follow in the footsteps of these brave girls and make a report to their local police and prosecutors today. They should also report to the U.S Attorney’s Office in D.C. (USADC.ReportClergyAbuse@usdoj.gov, (202) 252-7008) and the Washington D.C. Attorney General (online reporting form) as both offices are currently investigating clergy abuse. Silence is toxic but speaking up can make a big difference.

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WASHINGTON (DC)
Sojourners Magazine

August 8, 2019

By Angela Denker

Rachael Denhollander could have been a poster child for American conservative Christianity. Like many Red State Christians, she had been homeschooled and dressed conservatively. Her hair was long, dark, and straight, reminiscent of the encouragement in many conservative Christian communities for women to let their hair grow long and avoid cutting it. Thus Denhollander cut a sympathetic, or at least familiar, figure to Red State Christians watching the coverage of the Nassar case. True to her conservative Christian background, Denhollander said she forgave Nassar — and then asked the judge to give him the maximum sentence. To Nassar himself, she said at his sentencing hearing, “I pray you experience the soul-crushing weight of guilt so you may someday experience true repentance and true forgiveness from God, which you need far more than forgiveness from me—though I extend that to you as well.” She was the final person to speak, and as she did, a long-held dam was broken, and the mighty waters of justice came crashing through. For Denhollander, a trained lawyer and married mother of three who considers herself a conservative Christian, her outspokenness was costly. In her statement, she noted that speaking for sexual assault victims had “cost me my church and our closest friends.”

She told Christianity Today in January 2018 that Christians tend to “gloss over the devastation of any kind of suffering but especially sexual assault, with Christian platitudes like God works for all things together for good or God is sovereign. Those are very good and glorious biblical truths, but when they are misapplied in a way to dampen the horror of evil, they ultimately dampen the goodness of God. Goodness and darkness exist as opposites. If we pretend that the darkness isn’t dark, it dampens the beauty of the light.” Denhollander had shined a light into the sickly heart of American evangelicalism and its own cover-up of sexual abuse and oppression of women. As she told Christianity Today, “Church is one of the least safe places to acknowledge abuse because the way it is counseled is, more often than not, damaging to the victim; there are very, very few who have ever found true help in the church.”

Denhollander went on to say that the reason she’d lost her church was her advocacy for other victims of sexual assault within the evangelical community. She was referring to the Sovereign Grace Ministries scandal. In 2012, Sovereign Grace Ministries president C. J. Mahaney and the ministry itself were accused of covering up sexual abuse within the church network. The suit was dismissed in 2014, though a former youth leader in the network was convicted of sexually abusing three boys in a separate case. Denhollander drew an analogy between the scandal at Sovereign Grace and the scandal of the abuse she had suffered:

The ultimate reality that I live with is that if my abuser had been [Sovereign Grace youth group leader] Nathaniel Morales instead of Larry Nassar, if my enabler had been [a Sovereign Grace pastor] instead of [a gymnastics coach], if the organization I was speaking out against was Sovereign Grace under the leadership of [Mahaney] instead of [Michigan State], I would not only not have evangelical support, I would be actively vilified and lied about by every single evangelical leader out there. The only reason I am able to have the support of these leaders now is because I am speaking out against an organization not within their community. Had I been so unfortunate so as to have been victimized by someone in their community, someone in the Sovereign Grace network, I would not only not have their support, I would be massively shunned. That’s the reality.

Denhollander’s words were all the more prophetic within the pages of America’s most prominent magazine for conservative evangelicals. For decades, women had been sublimated and objectified and silenced within American churches. But their liberation would never come from secular feminists. It would come from within the church itself, during the presidency of a man who bragged about grabbing women by the pussy. But the rise of women in evangelical churches would not come easy. And many leaders would fall in its wake.

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ATLANTA (GA)
The Open Tabernacle blog

August 8, 2019

By Betty Clermont

These men claim to be religious leaders, spiritual guides, moral authorities. They are addressed as “His Eminence.” The man who appoints and promotes them is addressed as “Holy Father” and his government is the “Holy See.”

Theodore McCarrick, Donald Wuerl and Kevin Farrell were among the officials who received thousands of dollars from West Virginia Bishop Michael J. Bransfield. Bransfield was seeking to “purchase influence” with “those whose opinions carry weight with the Vatican” according to a recent Washington Post investigation.

In September 2018, one of Bransfield’s closest aides “came forward with an incendiary inside account of years of sexual [with priests] and financial misconduct.” The Post provided evidence that “senior Catholic leaders in the United States and the Vatican began receiving warnings about Bransfield as far back as 2012 [but] his conduct went unchecked.”

Church law requires bishops to turn in their resignation to the pope when they turn 75; the pope has the option of accepting or rejecting it. Pope Francis accepted Bransfield’s resignation when he turned 75 in September 2018.

“Bransfield spent $2.4 million on travel, often flying in private jets, as well as $4.6 million in all to renovate his residence” using diocesan funds in one of the poorest states in the country.

As head of the Wheeling-Charleston diocese, “Bransfield maintained a prominent public profile” noted The Post. “He regularly traveled to the Vatican while serving as treasurer of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops and as [an official] on the board of trustees for the Papal Foundation.”

The Papal Foundation’s response to a request by Pope Francis for a $25 million donation to a crime-ridden Vatican-owned hospital is only part of a narrative that shows – when it comes to bribes, cover-ups, sexual and financial misconduct – Bransfield is only the tip of an iceberg.

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WASHINGTON D.C.
Washington Post

August 7, 2019

By Paul Duggan

A 12-year-old girl, speaking barely above a whisper in D.C. Superior Court, testified Wednesday that as a second-grader, she studied the life of a Catholic saint who had been a nun. “And I got inspired,” she said. She was 8 at the time. She told a jury that back then, she decided she wanted to be a nun, too, someday.

But she doesn’t feel that way now.

“When did you change your mind?” a prosecutor asked.

“When everything started,” she replied, meaning in 2016, when she was 9 and a parish priest, the Rev. Urbano Vazquez, then 44, allegedly kissed her on the mouth and “touched me on my private parts.” She said he kissed and groped her repeatedly over a span of months.

And she lost interest in a life of religious vocation.

“What do you want to be?” the prosecutor, Sharon Marcus-Kurn, asked.

“A chef,” she said.

The girl, in a blue sweater, her dark hair pulled back in a ponytail, clawed discreetly at a foam squeeze ball during four hours of testimony. She was such a small figure on the witness stand that only her head and shoulders were visible to the lawyers questioning her in Vazquez’s trial on five child sexual abuse charges.

“Disgusting,” was how she described her alleged encounters with Vazquez, who was an assistant pastor at the Shrine of the Sacred Heart Church in the Columbia Heights area of Northwest Washington before he was arrested late last year.

“Gross,” she added in a low voice.

“Yes, it hurt,” she said quietly.

Vazquez, ordained as a priest in the Capuchin Franciscan order in 2014, is accused of two counts of felony second-degree child sexual abuse and one count of misdemeanor child sexual abuse of the girl. He also is charged with two counts of felony second-degree child sexual abuse for allegedly groping a 13-year-old female parishioner. That girl is expected to testify Thursday.

As Marcus-Kurn gently questioned the girl, gradually eliciting her story of alleged abuse, Vazquez, clad in a black suit, listened impassively at the defendant’s table.

On the witness stand, picking at the little foam ball, the girl said Vazquez kissed her and grabbed her “private parts,” front and back, “a lot of times,” in the church — including in the sacristy — and during a religious retreat in Delaware.

The first time it happened, “in the back of the church,” she said, “I was, like, in full shock, and I couldn’t move my body.”

As more such incidents happened, the girl said, she kept them a secret from her mother because she was “scared something worser would happen” if Vazquez got mad.

Marcus-Kurn asked her specifically what she was afraid of.

“Like, rape,” the girl replied.

But she said she eventually worked up the courage to tell her mother what was happening. “I started getting angrier and getting bad grades,” she told the jury. “I couldn’t, like, hold on. I wanted to be done with it.”

Near the end of her testimony in the late afternoon, Judge Juliet J. McKenna ordered a 10-minute recess, and the girl got up and walked out of the courtroom. Marcus-Kurn’s colleague, prosecutor J. Matt Williams, approached the empty witness stand and saw what was left of the squeeze ball. It had been clawed to shreds.

He scooped up the remnants with both hands and dropped them in a recycling bucket.

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MADISON (WI)
August 7, 2019

Associated Press

By Morgan Wolfe

Democratic lawmakers are introducing bills that would eliminate the statute of limitations on child sexual assault lawsuits and force clergy members to report allegations of child sexual assault they learn about during confidential conversations.

Under current Wisconsin law, children who are sexually assaulted have until age 35 to file a civil action. Sen. Lena Taylor and Reps. Melissa Sargent and Chris Taylor’s bill would remove the deadline.

Current law allows clergy members who learn about allegations of child sexual assault during confidential conversations to keep them secret. The Democrats’ second bill would eliminate that exception.

Laurie Asplund is an advocate for child sexual assault victims because she is one. Asplund was 14-years-old when her family’s Christian Youth Pastor began to “groom” her. Groom is a term used by child abusers as a predator will start to manipulate the child into trusting them.

By the time Asplund was graduating highschool, she was being forced into sexual acts with a man her family had no idea was a predator.

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BELLEVILLE (IL)
Madison County Record

August 8, 2019

By John Breslin

The Catholic Diocese of Belleville is accused of allowing a priest to be alone with children, one of whom he allegedly abused.

A man identified only as John Doe filed the lawsuit July in St. Clair County Circuit Court, alleging Joseph Schwaegel abused him when he was six years old at Catholic Grade School in Bellville some time after August 1987. Schwaegel was allegedly a senior member of the diocese at the time and was involved in investigations of sexual misconduct by other clergy.

The Diocese of Belleville was not able to immediately respond to the lawsuit.

Schwaegel, who died in 2016, is accused of first gaining the plaintiff’s trust, then taking him out of class and abusing him on property owned by the diocese.

The plaintiff alleges the diocese failed to prevent Schwaegel from being alone with children and failing to monitor and supervise his activities.

This is the second lawsuit that names Schwaegel as an abuser of minors. The first, filed in 1999, was settled out of court.

Schwaegel, who was removed from ministry in 1994, admitted publicly he was a “sex addict” but denied any inappropriate sexual behavior involving minors.

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WEST ORANGE (NJ)
Associated Press

August 8, 2019

By Mike Catalini

An attorney for childhood victims alleging sexual abuse by Catholic clergy said Wednesday he has turned up the names of 12 New Jersey priests who were not previously disclosed on lists the church released.

Attorney Mitchell Garabedian represents 22 men and 8 women who say they were abused as children by New Jersey priests and that the names of 12 of the accused aren’t on lists of more than 180 priests the church released earlier this year.

Garabedian said he was coming forward Wednesday for the sake of “transparency” and so other victims “know they’re not alone.”

He stood alongside Robert Hoatson, who is the president and co-founder of the victim counseling organization Road to Recovery. Hoatson, who had previously said he was abused while involved in a Catholic religious order, said Wednesday he had also been abused by a now deceased priest in the Archdiocese of Newark who was among the dozen Garabedian identified.

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ORAN (ARGENTINA)
Crux

August 8, 2019

By Inés San Martín

Bishop Gustavo Zanchetta, a prelate from Pope Francis’s native country whom the pontiff brought to Rome and gave a Vatican job in 2017 and who’s now facing charges of sexually abusing seminarians, is expected to appear in court in the diocese he once led on Thursday.

Zanchetta has been formally accused of “aggravated continuous sexual abuse” of two young men, and a judge previously ordered him to remain in Argentina and stay away from the alleged victims and their families. The charges carry a maximum penalty of 10 years in prison.

Oran’s prosecutor, María Soledad Filtrín, presented the judge with a 30-page report containing a summary of facts, evidence and testimony collected against the bishop, which she believes are enough to bring the case to trial.

Crux has confirmed that the bishop is expected in court on Thursday, at 10 am local time (one hour ahead of Eastern Daylight Time in the U.S.). The hearing could determine if he’s to be tried for the charges. If he fails to attend, he could await the trial in prison.

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AGAT (GUAM)
Associated Press

August 8, 2019

By Michael Biesecker

Walter Denton wanted to grow up to be just like Father Tony Apuron, until the night he says the parish priest raped him in a church rectory. The pastor sent the sobbing 13-year-old altar boy away with a warning: “If you say anything to anybody, no one will believe you.”

Denton told his mother, but says she accused him of making it up. He told another priest, but that man did nothing and later turned out to be an abuser himself. And Denton watched helplessly as Pope John Paul II named his alleged rapist Archbishop of Agaña, the voice of divine authority in the small, overwhelmingly Catholic U.S. territory of Guam.

For decades, Apuron oversaw a culture of impunity where abusers went unpunished. Long after it erupted into scandal on the mainland, clergy sexual abuse remained a secret on Guam. On this island where four out of five people are Catholic, the abusers held the power.

Now, thousands of pages of court documents reviewed by The Associated Press, along with extensive interviews, tell a story of systemic abuse dating from the 1950s to as recent

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NEW ORLEANS (LA)
WVUE TV

August 7, 2019

By Rob Masson

A Metairie man has come forward about the abuse he says he faced at the hands of a prominent deceased monsignor, 42 years ago.

George Bertucci received a large settlement from the Archdiocese of New Orleans related to his accusations against Henry Bezou, who he says raped him in 1977. Bertucci said the abuse started at St. Francis Xavier Church in Metairie on his very first day as a 9-year-old altar boy.

“There were other altar boys who served mass, and one of them tapped me on the shoulder, and said ‘Monsignor Bezou wants to talk to you,’” Bertucci recalled.

Bertucci said he did what the older boys told him to do, and went into the church sacristy after mass. There, he said he witnessed other boys touching themselves inappropriately in the presence of Bezou.

“After the other boys did it, I thought I needed to do it to become a man,” Bertucci said.

He then said then Bezou — a longtime priest at Saint Francis Xavier and former superintendent of Archdiocese schools — told the other boys to leave.

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PHOENIX (AZ)
3TV/CBS 5

August 7, 2019

By Nicole Crites

Arizona sex-abuse survivors are asking Attorney General Mark Brnovich to join 20 other states investigating sex abuse and subsequent cover-ups in the Catholic Church.

The Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests, or SNAP, says we cannot trust the Church to self-report.

They want Brnovich to open a new statewide investigation and set up a new hotline for victims of sex abuse.

The AG’s team says they do not have original jurisdiction here. But at least three other states — New York, Colorado and Missouri — are in the same boat, and are still going after institutions like the Church using fraud, consumer protection and voluntary compliance.

Mary O’Day runs the Phoenix chapter of SNAP.

She is also a survivor.

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NEW ORLEANS (LA)
Times Picayune

August 7, 2019

By Ramon Antonio Vargas

A man recently accepted a $150,000 settlement from the Archdiocese of New Orleans after claiming a veteran priest repeatedly molested him as a teenager in the mid-1980s at Notre Dame Seminary, when now-Archbishop Gregory Aymond held a high-ranking post there.

The man, Kevin Michael Bourgeois, said that he often encountered Aymond as priest Carl Davidson, then in his mid-40s, led the high schooler into booze-soaked sleepovers at the seminary. That’s where the abuse unfolded.

Bourgeois argues that Aymond should have known what was going on and put a stop to it.

In an interview Wednesday, Aymond said, “I can assure you, in all complete honesty, that is not true. I wish I had known, because if I had known, I would have done something to stop it — I would have reported it, but I didn’t know.”

Davidson, who died in 2007, was among the 61 priests whom the archdiocese last fall identified as credibly accused child abusers.

Bourgeois said he is speaking out because he is plagued with doubts over whether the archdiocese can give parishioners the full accounting the church has promised, and which many victims crave, after decades’ worth of revelations of clergy abuse.

“Every time I see him on the news (claiming) empathy, it makes me want to puke,” Bourgeois, now 52, said of Aymond. “I don’t believe him, don’t believe that he is penitent, because he knew my abuser was abusing boys.”

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ST. LOUIS (MO)
Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests

August 7, 2019

Three times in six years, Cincinnati Catholic officials reported suspicious conduct by a priest to a prosecutor. However, they then ignored the prosecutor’s recommendation, and let the cleric “self-report” to a ‘’monitor” not connected with his parish. Today, that prosecutor, Mike Gmoser, called the church leaders’ behavior “absurd.” We would use much harsher language.

Fr. Geoff Drew, until recently the pastor of St. Ignatius Loyola Paris, allegedly “touched and communicated with teenage boys in a sexually suggestive manner.” The priest should have been suspended following each and every report, and Archbishop Dennis Schnurr should have publicly announced the suspension and the reasons behind it. The archbishop should also have sought out others who may have suffered, witnessed or suspected similar behavior by Fr. Drew.

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ST. LOUIS (MO)
Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests

August 7, 2019

A report from the Associated Press has highlighted the incredible amount of information that has been gathered about institutional sexual abuse by investigators from the attorney general’s office in Pennsylvania. As the probe continues, now a year after the grand jury report was released, a critical element in the success of the investigation has been the existence of a confidential hotline.

We cannot stress enough the importance to survivors of having a place to share their stories where they know that they will be not only be listened to, but more importantly, where they will also be believed. Many victims, witnesses, and whistleblowers fear coming forward with information about cases of clergy abuse. There are many reasons for this fear, whether it is due to feelings of shame, or to worries of being blamed or of being singled out as a troublemaker. These reasons are examples of why having a confidential hotline where people can make reports can make such a difference in investigations into cases of institutional sexual abuse. It certainly made a difference in Pennsylvania, where the hotline set up by AG Josh Shapiro received nearly 1900 calls in one year.

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BUFFALO (NY)
WKBW TV

August 7, 2019

By Charlie Specht

One day after a 7 Eyewitness News I-Team report about Bishop Richard J. Malone’s alleged cover-up of allegations against a Cheektowaga pastor, the Diocese of Buffalo has removed the priest from ministry.

The Rev. Jeffrey L. Nowak, pastor of Our Lady Help of Christians Church in Cheektowaga, is facing allegations of inappropriate contact with children, harassment of a seminarian and perhaps the greatest Catholic sin of all: violating the seal of confession.

Despite this, Bishop Malone allowed Nowak to remain in ministry until Tuesday’s I-Team report was published.

The bishop issued a statement Wednesday denying reports of a “cover-up” and disputing a seminarian’s mother’s statements that he had “done absolutely nothing” since her son contacted the bishop with written allegations in January.

The diocese said it “has never received any allegation that Fr. Nowak ever engaged in sexual contact with anyone, including any adult.” But the same statement said the diocese had received allegations “that Fr. Nowak engaged in other inappropriate behavior and made inappropriate comments.”

Despite putting the complaints in writing and submitting them to the diocese — and pushing the bishop’s staff for answers — Marie Bojanowski, the seminarian’s mother, said Bishop Malone had never responded to her, and the bishop allowed Nowak to remain pastor of the Cheektowaga parish.

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ST. LOUIS (MO)
Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests

August 7, 2019

Again it seems Buffalo’s bishop is putting children and vulnerable parishioners at risk. A recent news report revealed that Bishop Robert Malone has been keeping an accused priest on the job for roughly nine months. America’s bishops should denounce his behavior and call for immediate discipline if their recent pledges to hold their brother bishops accountable are to have a shred of credibility.

Bishop Richard Malone is letting Fr. Jeffrey Nowak lead a parish “despite allegations of inappropriate contact with children, harassment of a seminarian and . . .perhaps violating the seal of confession” according to WKBW’s investigative team. This open violation of the church’s Charter for the Protection of Children and Young People would be egregious on its own, but the fact that it comes after nearly a year of scandal and lies is even more disturbing. Bishop Malone’s repeated choices to protect reputations over children and the vulnerable is a mockery of the pledges of reform that American bishops have made and deserves immediate intervention from the Vatican.

Bishop Malone’s secrecy has been repeatedly revealed in mainstream news accounts for months on end now. Yet the US Catholic hierarchy remains silent. This must end if the “Metropolitan model” advanced at this year’s US Conference of Catholic Bishops meeting is to have any credibility.

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CINCINNATI (OH)
WPCO TV

August 7, 2019

By Craig Cheatham

Butler County Prosecutor Mike Gmoser blasted the Archdiocese of Cincinnati on Wednesday for its admitted failure to actively monitor a priest repeatedly accused of inappropriate behavior with teenage boys.

“That sort of falls into the absurd category,” Gmoser said from his Hamilton office. “Absurd — or how about stupid?”

Gmoser said he told the Archdiocese in September 2018 that Father Geoff Drew, the Pastor of St. Ignatius Loyola Paris, should be monitored based on allegations that Drew touched and communicated with teenage boys in a sexually suggestive manner.

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WELLINGTON (NEW ZEALAND)
Radio New Zealand

August 7, 2019

By Michael Cropp

Survivors say they’re losing faith it will uncover the extent of what happened to children in state and church care.

Some of them hope Sir Anand isn’t the only commissioner to step down.

The Commission has been dogged by controversy since it was set up early last year.

That includes appointing a gang member to a key role, using survivors for trial or pilot interviews, claims Sir Anand fell asleep while a survivor told their story and accusations commissioners shut down questions on potential conflicts of interest.

Social worker, and survivor of abuse in state care, Paora Crawford Moyle, said Sir Anand’s resignation was yet another blow.

“It’s worrying, it makes [me] and probably my brothers … really wonder what’s going on in there and what else is to come,” she said. “Are the cracks starting to appear.”

Ms Moyle said she did not have a lot of faith in the inquiry and she was worried the work would not get done, because the Commission was having to spend so much time on damage control.

That was a view shared by Anne Hill, a survivor of abuse in church care.

“I have found it quite re-traumatising and at times very frustrating because the issue of child abuse gets lost in issues about who has the power to speak now,” Ms Hill said.

Liz Tonks, from the network of survivors of abuse in faith-based institutions, said people were having trouble believing the inquiry would go ahead.

“Any issue that needs to be resolved and isn’t straightforward and just doesn’t let them get on with the job, is a setback. Survivors have been waiting for this for years,” she said.

Attention’s now turning to who’ll take over when Sir Anand leaves in November.

Dr Christopher Longhurst, a Catholic church member who was also the national leader of the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests, was worried Judge Coral Shaw – who he found dismissive and disapproving during a hearing earlier this year – would get the job.

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MADISON (WI)
Wisconsin Public Radio

August 7, 2019

Bt Melissa Ingells

Time limits for bringing cases of child sexual assault to law enforcement would be abolished in Wisconsin under a proposal unveiled Wednesday at the state Capitol.

Under current law, children who are sexually assaulted must file a civil action before turning 35. The Child Victims Act would remove that statute of limitations.

The bill was introduced along with another plan to expand the types of child abuse clergy members are required to report and eliminate a reporting exemption for clergy for information gleaned during private conversations.

The proposals come in the wake of new reporting by The Cap Times outlining allegations of sexual assault at Calvary Gospel Church in Madison.

Survivors of childhood sexual assault joined lawmakers at the press conference to introduce the proposals.

Debbie McNulty, who was assaulted beginning at the age of 11, said she has never received justice.

“Eventually, I got up the courage to tell my pastor — he did nothing,” said McNulty, who is now in her forties. “The church of my childhood was able to cover up many crimes.”

She said if the bills gain support, “maybe they can give me justice.”

Rebecca Martin Byrd said she was assaulted at the same church as McNulty, Calvary Gospel Church. Martin Byrd said women often get the courage to report their crimes later in life.

“We cannot expect our children, who are the most vulnerable, to be able to step up and do what most adult people can’t do,” she said of bringing forward allegations.

Peter Isely, a founding member of Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests (SNAP), said the bills uphold the religious liberty of children.

Sen. Lena Taylor, center, speaks at a press conference Wednesday, Aug. 7, 2019 at the state Captiol where Democratic lawmakers introduced bills addressing the reporting of childhood sexual assault. Laurel White/WPR

“(Children) have the absolute right to be able to form their thinking and their prayer and their feelings about God within our communities and within our churches without that threat (of sexual violence),” Isely said.

The proposal to end time limits for bringing legal action related to child sexual assault has been brought several times before the Legislature, beginning in 2002. It has been opposed by the Archdiocese of Milwaukee and other church officials.

The proposal to expand reporting requirements for clergy is being introduced for the first time.

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WOODBRIDGE (NJ)
New Jersey Advance Media

August 7, 2019

By Kelly Heyboer

Thirty people who say they were sexually abused as children by 28 New Jersey priests are among those applying for financial settlements through a new compensation fund backed by the state’s five Catholic dioceses.

The list of 28 priests includes 12 who have never before been named as alleged abusers, said Mitchell Garabedian, a Boston attorney representing the alleged victims.

“It’s an honor to represent victims of clergy sexual abuse. They show an enormous amount of courage coming forward,” Garabedian said at a press conference in West Orange. “I tell each and every victim, if it helps you to heal enter into the settlement program.”

The fund — called the New Jersey Independent Victim Compensation Program — was unveiled earlier this year by the state’s Catholic dioceses as a way for victims of clergy abuse to settle their cases with the church privately, without going to court.

It began accepting its first applications June 15. Fund administrators said they received 44 claims in the first month and made three settlement offers. More offers were expected as the fund administrators continued reviewing cases.

New Jersey recently changed its law to allow more sexual abuse victims to file civil lawsuits against their alleged abusers and institutions, including the Catholic Church, starting on Dec. 1. The New Jersey compensation fund is expected to help head off some of those lawsuits by allowing alleged victims to ask for private settlements with the church.

Under the fund’s rules, victims file claims that are reviewed by independent fund administrators. If their claims are found credible, the administrators make the victim a settlement offer. If the victim agrees to take the cash, he or she signs documents promising to never sue the Catholic Church in the future.

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WOODLAND PARK (NJ)
North Jersey Record

August 7, 2019

By Deena Yellin and Abbott Koloff

A man who grew up in North Jersey plans to file a lawsuit alleging that he was sexually abused as a child by former Cardinal Theodore McCarrick, his attorney announced Wednesday during a press conference.

Mitchell Garabedian, the attorney, also released the names of 28 New Jersey priests who allegedly abused 30 of his clients who are seeking settlements through a victim’s compensation fund set up by the state’s five Catholic dioceses.

Twelve of the priests have never been named before, Garabedian said during the press conference, which was held in West Orange. The attorney said that if the victims aren’t satisfied with the settlements offered by the church, they could file lawsuits in December when a new state law opens a two-year window for such cases to be filed.

Garabedian said that the abuse occurred between 1946 and 1982.

One man, James Greiner, who once lived in Bergen County, was planning to file a lawsuit rather than go through the compensation fund, the attorney said.

Greiner, now 61 and living in Virginia, told the New York Times last year that McCarrick was a close family friend he knew as “Uncle Ted.” The report said that in 1958, shortly after McCarrick was ordained as a priest, he baptized Greiner at Our Lady of Mount Carmel in Tenafly.

An attorney who previously represented Greiner told NorthJersey.com that some of the abuse took place at his client’s home in Tenafly.

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NASHVILLE (TN)
Bpatist News Global

August 6, 2019

By Bob Allen

Jacop Hazlett, arrested last November for allegedly sexually abusing a 3-year-old boy at the Charleston campus of the multi-site NewSpring Church, faces 10 new charges of sexual exploitation of and criminal sexual conduct with a minor.

The charges relate to five newly identified alleged victims, raising the total number to 15. Hazlett now faces a total of 23 indictments.

While watching a group of preschoolers on Nov. 25 last year, Hazlett allegedly escorted a 3-year-old to the bathroom, where he sexually assaulted him. After learning of the allegation, church leaders reviewed security camera footage monitoring the day-care area and found 14 separate incidents where Hazlett allegedly molested boys in the children’s bathroom.

Authorities at the time said there might be other victims, because the church only kept archived video for 90 days.

NewSpring Church, a multi-site megachurch started in 2000 as a church plant by the South Carolina Baptist Convention, faces multiple lawsuits in connection with the alleged crimes.

The most recent, filed May 21 in the Charleston County Court of Common Pleas, claims NewSpring Church failed to properly vet Hazlett, adhere to safety protocols or adequately train and supervise employees and volunteers.

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MADISON (WI)
Capitol Times

August 7, 2019

By Katelyn Ferral

In Wisconsin, those who have experienced sexual assault as children have two paths of recourse: they can make a police report and pursue criminal charges or sue in civil court for damages.

But both of these options have time limits, known as statutes of limitations, which bar some victims from bringing cases to court.

There is no statute of limitations for criminally prosecuting someone for having sexual contact or intercourse with a minor under the age of 13, according to state law. For a sexual assault against a minor under the age of 16, the alleged crime can be prosecuted until the victim reaches the age of 45.

For civil cases, there are different sets of time limits to seek legal recourse. A person who, as a child, has experienced sexual assault by an adult, has until they are 35 years old to bring a case.

State Rep. Chris Taylor, D-Madison, wants to eliminate that restriction and is pushing for passage of the Child Victims Act, a proposal that failed to pass in the Legislature at least four times. The proposal would also open a three-year window during which victims barred under existing limitations could file lawsuits.

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TAMUNING (GUAM)
Guam Daily Post

August 7, 2019

By Mindy Aguon

A former altar boy and Boy Scout alleges he was sexually abused by a priest while on church grounds and was told the abuse would bring him “closer to God,” according to the latest clergy sex abuse lawsuit filed in the District Court of Guam.

J.C.B., who used initials to protect his identity, filed a civil complaint against the Capuchin Franciscans and Boy Scouts of America.

The lawsuit named the late Louis Brouillard as his abuser and alleged the abuse occurred for three to four years in the early 1960s beginning when J.C.B. was 11 years old.

Once or twice a week, Brouillard allegedly took J.C.B. to his back room for the stated purpose of cleaning his bedroom. However, while in the room, the boy was ordered to undress and to lie in Brouillard’s bed next to the priest because doing so would result in the boy being “closer to God,” the lawsuit states.

Brouillard allegedly fondled and sexually abused the boy and told him not to worry about it or be scared because he was a priest. The boy was also told not to tell anyone because “no one will believe” him because Brouillard was a priest.

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HARRISBURG (PA)
Associated Press

August 6, 2019

By Mark Scolforo

Investigations remain underway after 1,862 calls were made to a clergy abuse hotline in the 12 months since a landmark grand jury report exposed decades of child abuse within Pennsylvania’s Roman Catholic dioceses, the state attorney general said Tuesday.

About 90 percent of those calls concerned allegations of abuse or cover-ups within the Catholic church, Attorney General Josh Shapiro said. The rest were about institutions or people outside the Catholic church.

“We’ve gotten calls that have materialized into charges that were filed,” Shapiro said. “One case involved charges that were filed by the Allegheny County District Attorney. Others are being investigated by other law-enforcement agencies, including our own.”

Shapiro said he has been stopped daily by people who are grateful for the investigation or want to tell him their own stories of victimization.

“That has been just a profoundly impactful experience,” Shapiro said. “It has happened to me at big, formal events with public figures, and it has happened to me walking through the supermarket, buying food for my family.”

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HARRISBURG (PA)
Associated Press

August 6, 2019

By Mark Scolforo

Investigations remain underway after 1,862 calls were made to a clergy abuse hotline in the 12 months since a landmark grand jury report exposed decades of child abuse within Pennsylvania’s Roman Catholic dioceses, the state attorney general said Tuesday.

About 90 percent of those calls concerned allegations of abuse or cover-ups within the Catholic church, Attorney General Josh Shapiro said. The rest were about institutions or people outside the Catholic church.

“We’ve gotten calls that have materialized into charges that were filed,” Shapiro said. “One case involved charges that were filed by the Allegheny County District Attorney. Others are being investigated by other law-enforcement agencies, including our own.”

Shapiro said he has been stopped daily by people who are grateful for the investigation or want to tell him their own stories of victimization.

“That has been just a profoundly impactful experience,” Shapiro said. “It has happened to me at big, formal events with public figures, and it has happened to me walking through the supermarket, buying food for my family.”

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ST. LOUIS (MO)
Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests

August 7, 2019

Proposed Victims Rights bills would dramatically reform Wisconsin’s child protection laws

Clergy Mandated Reporting Act would require all clergy to report suspected abuse

The Child Victims Act would eliminate civil statute on child sex crimes, open three year window for past abuse

CVA endorsed by Democrats Evers and Kaul during 2018 campaign, provisions supported by then Republican Governor Walker

WHAT
Wisconsin Senator Lena Taylor, Representatives Chris Taylor and Melissa Sargent will be joined by survivors of childhood sexual assault, the Wisconsin Coalition Against Sexual Assault, (WCASA), the Wisconsin Chapter of The National Association of Social Workers (WI-NASW), and the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests (SNAP) to introduce two major victim rights and child protection bills.

WHEN
August 7th at 11:15 a.m.

WHERE
State Capitol, Senate Parlor

Note: This is an Abuse Tracker excerpt. Click the title to view the full text of the original article. If the original article is no longer available, see our News Archive.

ST. LOUIS (MO)
Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests

August 7, 2019

Proposed Victims Rights bills would dramatically reform Wisconsin’s child protection laws

Clergy Mandated Reporting Act would require all clergy to report suspected abuse

The Child Victims Act would eliminate civil statute on child sex crimes, open three year window for past abuse

CVA endorsed by Democrats Evers and Kaul during 2018 campaign, provisions supported by then Republican Governor Walker

WHAT
Wisconsin Senator Lena Taylor, Representatives Chris Taylor and Melissa Sargent will be joined by survivors of childhood sexual assault, the Wisconsin Coalition Against Sexual Assault, (WCASA), the Wisconsin Chapter of The National Association of Social Workers (WI-NASW), and the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests (SNAP) to introduce two major victim rights and child protection bills.

WHEN
August 7th at 11:15 a.m.

WHERE
State Capitol, Senate Parlor

Note: This is an Abuse Tracker excerpt. Click the title to view the full text of the original article. If the original article is no longer available, see our News Archive.

ST. LOUIS (MO)
Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests

August 7, 2019

A priest who worked in Niles IL is accused of sexual abuse, according to Minnesota Catholic officials. Unfortunately, Chicago area Catholics had to learn this information from a bishop elsewhere instead of from church officials at their own archdiocese.

Duluth Bishop Paul Sirba disclosed the allegation against the Fr. David Tushar on Sunday. Sirba claims the allegations stem from Fr. Tushar’s time as a Holy Cross Father and Catholic school teacher in Niles in the late 1970s. The priest has reportedly been in the Duluth diocese since 1985, works today in Carlton and Sawyer and has worked in eight other Minnesota towns: Bigfork, Buhl, Chisholm, Cloquet, Cohasset, Effie, Grand Rapids and Warba.

Now that this information has been disclosed, Cardinal Blase Cupich should do outreach to potential victims of Fr. Tushar in the Chicagoland region. He can start by publicizing the allegations against Fr. Tushar in parish bulletins and on diocesan websites. He should follow that step by personally visiting the parishes where Fr. Tushar worked and encouraging anyone who may have seen, suspected, or suffered abuse to come forward and make a report to police.

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ST. LOUIS (MO)
Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests

August 7, 2019

A priest who worked in Niles IL is accused of sexual abuse, according to Minnesota Catholic officials. Unfortunately, Chicago area Catholics had to learn this information from a bishop elsewhere instead of from church officials at their own archdiocese.

Duluth Bishop Paul Sirba disclosed the allegation against the Fr. David Tushar on Sunday. Sirba claims the allegations stem from Fr. Tushar’s time as a Holy Cross Father and Catholic school teacher in Niles in the late 1970s. The priest has reportedly been in the Duluth diocese since 1985, works today in Carlton and Sawyer and has worked in eight other Minnesota towns: Bigfork, Buhl, Chisholm, Cloquet, Cohasset, Effie, Grand Rapids and Warba.

Now that this information has been disclosed, Cardinal Blase Cupich should do outreach to potential victims of Fr. Tushar in the Chicagoland region. He can start by publicizing the allegations against Fr. Tushar in parish bulletins and on diocesan websites. He should follow that step by personally visiting the parishes where Fr. Tushar worked and encouraging anyone who may have seen, suspected, or suffered abuse to come forward and make a report to police.

Note: This is an Abuse Tracker excerpt. Click the title to view the full text of the original article. If the original article is no longer available, see our News Archive.

MADISON (WI)
The Capitol Times

August 7, 2019

By Katelyn Ferral

A Pentecostal church on Madison’s east side has concealed allegations of sexual assault among its congregants for over 30 years, and continues to perpetuate a culture of fear and control that fosters abuse, former members say.

The Cap Times interviewed 13 people, four of whom said they were sexually assaulted and manipulated as children attending Calvary Gospel Church. Nine others, including parents, siblings of alleged victims, members who witnessed sexual misbehavior and one pastor who was in leadership at the time of many allegations, corroborate the description of the church’s culture, numerous accounts of sexual abuse in the congregation and concealment by its leaders.

The women who say they were assaulted as children — Debbie McNulty, Rachel Capacio, Rachel Huff and Rebecca Martin Byrd, all of whom agreed to publication of their names for this story — say they were groomed at a young age to accept sexual abuse from men in the church as other adults at the time looked the other way.

Their alleged perpetrators, often seen as service-oriented “men of God” in their 20s and 30s, sexually pursued them when they were girls. All of the women were under 18 at the time of the alleged assaults — and one was as young as 11. The Cap Times is not naming the alleged perpetrators because they have not been charged with crimes.

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MADISON (WI)
The Capitol Times

August 7, 2019

By Katelyn Ferral

A Pentecostal church on Madison’s east side has concealed allegations of sexual assault among its congregants for over 30 years, and continues to perpetuate a culture of fear and control that fosters abuse, former members say.

The Cap Times interviewed 13 people, four of whom said they were sexually assaulted and manipulated as children attending Calvary Gospel Church. Nine others, including parents, siblings of alleged victims, members who witnessed sexual misbehavior and one pastor who was in leadership at the time of many allegations, corroborate the description of the church’s culture, numerous accounts of sexual abuse in the congregation and concealment by its leaders.

The women who say they were assaulted as children — Debbie McNulty, Rachel Capacio, Rachel Huff and Rebecca Martin Byrd, all of whom agreed to publication of their names for this story — say they were groomed at a young age to accept sexual abuse from men in the church as other adults at the time looked the other way.

Their alleged perpetrators, often seen as service-oriented “men of God” in their 20s and 30s, sexually pursued them when they were girls. All of the women were under 18 at the time of the alleged assaults — and one was as young as 11. The Cap Times is not naming the alleged perpetrators because they have not been charged with crimes.

Note: This is an Abuse Tracker excerpt. Click the title to view the full text of the original article. If the original article is no longer available, see our News Archive.

BUFFALO (NY)
WKBW TV

August 6, 2019

By Charlie Specht

The mother of a seminarian wants to know why Bishop Richard J. Malone is allowing a Cheektowaga pastor to remain in ministry despite allegations of inappropriate contact with children, harassment of a seminarian and perhaps the greatest Catholic sin of all: violating the seal of confession.

Those were the allegations brought months ago against the Rev. Jeffrey Nowak, pastor of Our Lady Help of Christians Church, by Marie Bojanowski, the mother of a Buffalo Diocese seminarian whom Nowak allegedly sexually harassed.

“I would say it’s a cover-up,” Bojanowski said. “Bishop Malone has done absolutely nothing.”

Despite putting the complaints in writing and submitting them to the diocese — and pushing the bishop’s staff for answers — Bojanowski said Bishop Malone has never responded to her, and the bishop has allowed Nowak to remain pastor of the Cheektowaga parish.

Additionally, 7 Eyewitness News has learned from Buffalo Diocese sources that Malone — without any notice to parishioners — is secretly planning to send Nowak for psychiatric evaluation at one of the Catholic Church’s “treatment centers,” which for decades were unsuccessful in treating priests who engaged in abusive sexual behavior with parishioners.

“That’s why I’m here now,” Bojanowski said in an interview with the 7 Eyewitness News I-Team. “I’m forcing the bishop’s hand and I want the people of Buffalo to know there is no transparency. He’s been covering this up for nine months. And he has not done a thing to Father Nowak.”

Reached by phone Tuesday afternoon, Father Nowak said, “Right now I’m unaware of that and I’d just ask you to talk to my legal counsel. That’s all I have to comment.” He then hung up.

Note: This is an Abuse Tracker excerpt. Click the title to view the full text of the original article. If the original article is no longer available, see our News Archive.

EASTON (PA)
Times Express

August 6, 2019

By Julia Owens

Last August, the public finally got to see the chilling findings of a grand jury investigation into decades of sexual abuse within six of Pennsylvania’s Roman Catholic dioceses, including the Diocese of Allentown.

According to a grand jury report, 301 priests, 35 of whom had ties to the Allentown Diocese, were accused of sexually abusing at least 1,000 children going back to the 1940s. It alleged church officials had been involved in covering up the abuse cases.

Fast forward a year: investigations remain underway and 1,862 calls have been made to a clergy-abuse hotline. About 90% of those calls concerned allegations of abuse or cover-ups within the Catholic church, Attorney General Josh Shapiro said.

In conjunction with the one-year anniversary of the report’s release, the Allentown Diocese issued a statement about programs it has implemented to prevent abuse and keep children safe.

“The diocese uses vigilance, education, and prevention, coupled with swift and decisive action in the event of an accusation, to address abuse,” the statement said.

Note: This is an Abuse Tracker excerpt. Click the title to view the full text of the original article. If the original article is no longer available, see our News Archive.

NEW YORK (NY)
CBS News

August 6, 2019

By Ed Leefeldt

Child Victims Act laws in some U.S. states allow people who suffered sexual abuse as children to file lawsuits in cases going back decades.

Institutions facing such claims are usually willing to settle, lawyers say, and sometimes offer payouts of up to $1 million per plaintiff.

Recent publicity around child sexual abuse, including high-profile allegations against financier Jeffrey Epstein and singer R. Kelly, are spurring more such lawsuits.

When sex abuse victim Jim Keenan filed his first lawsuit 13 years ago, he thought his was “a lone case.” But after settling with the Catholic Archdiocese of St. Paul, Minnesota, in 2018, he became the leader of a small army as chairman of a group of 440 sexual abuse victims within that diocese. It paid him, along with other former children who had been molested by clergy, a total of $210 million.

Yet that settlement may pale in size compared to potential payouts in New York, New Jersey and 15 other states around the country that have passed, or are considering, what are called Child Victims Acts (CVAs). These laws allow adults like Keenan, now 52, to sue churches, the Boy Scouts and other organizations that may have ignored, or covered up, cases of sexual abuse. The rationale for CVAs: Children may not be aware of what constitutes sexual abuse, or even that they were molested, and they deserve legal recourse as adults.

Note: This is an Abuse Tracker excerpt. Click the title to view the full text of the original article. If the original article is no longer available, see our News Archive.