INTERNATIONAL FALLS (MN)
International Falls Journal

June 5, 2019

By Father Ben Hadrich

The past few decades have been an extraordinarily difficult time for the Catholic Church – for its leadership, for its members, for the clergy, and particularly for the victims of clergy sexual abuse. As a Catholic priest, I can tell you that the subject of sexual abuse, especially at the hands of clergy, is truly gut-wrenching.

It is heart-breaking to think that I am a brother of deacons, priests, bishops and cardinals who have used their power and leadership to abuse adults and children, boys and girls. As tough as it is, it cannot be swept under the rug or hidden in the crevices. In addition, I feel that I must apologize for this abuse, as weak and insignificant as that apology (mea culpa) may sound, to these victims whose lives have been so much changed by these brutal acts.

I hope that we, the clergy, may open our doors to listen, to support, and to pray for our brothers and sisters who have experienced inhumane abuse. Our deacons, priests, bishops and cardinals must continue to seek justice and penance for all who have acted against God’s children.

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JERUSALEM (ISRAEL)
Jerusalem Post

June 3, 2019

Amudim, a crisis center focusing on combating sexual abuse and addictions in the Orthodox community, released a video to break the silence and stigma of sexual abuse. The video has been making its rounds on social media in late-May and early June.

“Not in our community,” is the resounding statement, various Jewish authority figures tell victims of sexual abuse in the video.

The clip depicts two parents and their daughter in the same scenario over and over again. Belonging to different Orthodox denominations in several scenes, they are not believed when they tell a school or a synagogue that their daughter is being abused.

“I watched the clip once, twice, and three times, and then I just broke down and cried and cried,” Esti, who later called the Amudim hotline, recalled after she watched the video. Esti, an Orthodox 20-year-old who grew up in Brooklyn had been molested by her older brother. When she told someone she respected at her seminary, she was told “You’ll be dating soon, my dear! Why risk destroying your reputation and everything you’ve worked to achieve?”

Esti’s call was just one of the 200 calls Amudim fields daily.

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BERKSHIRE (MA)
Berkshire Eagle

June 4, 2019

By Larry Parnass

A former member of the board that reviews sexual abuse allegations for the Springfield Diocese says the church is attempting to quash an altar boy’s report of molestation to preserve the reputation of a longtime local bishop.

In a statement in response to an article in The Eagle, the diocese says that when its review board met last year with a Chicopee man who served as an altar boy in the 1960s, that man did not allege sexual abuse by the late Bishop Christopher J. Weldon.

But Patricia Martin and two others who attended that June 13, 2018, session confirmed this week that the victim specifically named Weldon as an abuser.

“We were in the room where it happened and [the man] did say that Weldon abused him,” said Martin, a practicing Catholic who has worked as a doctoral-level clinical psychologist for 35 years. “I heard [the man] say that Weldon brought him in a room and abused him.”

The Eagle is not naming the man, because he is a survivor of sexual assault.

“They are trying to cover [Weldon’s] reputation rather than support a victim,” Martin said. “It’s beyond awful. It makes me so angry that they would deny it now. They’re lying.”

Weldon, who led the Western Massachusetts diocese for 27 years, died in 1982.

In September, three months after meeting with the victim, the review board produced a letter saying it found his allegations “compelling and credible.”

“We want to express our sincere sorrow for the pain and suffering you have endured,” the board wrote to the man.

The letter named Weldon, along with two other priests — the Rev. Edward Authier and the Rev. Clarence Forand. Weldon was bishop at the time the Chicopee man says the cleric abused him sexually.

The Eagle reported the contents of that letter in a May 29 story. The article noted that of the three clerics, only Forand was listed as “credibly accused” by the diocese. The church provides the names of “credibly accused” clergy on its website. The diocese’s policy holds that priests accused after their deaths are not listed because they did not have a chance to defend themselves.

Late Friday, the chairman of the review board released a statement through the diocese challenging the accuracy of The Eagle’s report. It says the victim who came before the board did not accuse Weldon of abuse. The board’s job is to judge whether a complaint of abuse is credible.

“There was no finding against Bishop Weldon as the individual also indicated that the former Bishop never abused them,” said John M. Hale, the review board chairman who presided over the session.

“Let me be clear, the Review Board has never found that the late Bishop Christopher Weldon, deceased since 1982, engaged in improper contact with anyone,” Hale said.

The statement does not question the credibility of the victim’s account that he was sexually abused by priests in the diocese. It focuses, instead, on a claim that Weldon was not accused of molestation.

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LONG ISLAND (NY)
Long Island Press

June 4, 2019

By Julia Moro

Victims advocates are urging The Diocese of Rockville Centre to release the names of clergy members that allegedly committed sexual abuse against children.

The Manhattan-based law firm of Jeff Anderson & Associates compiled the names of 65 publicly accused perpetrators, their histories, and photographs, but implored the diocese to release the other data they have on priests accused of sexual abuse.

“I’ll say it right now,” Anderson told reporters Monday during a news conference. “This is a dirty diocese.”

The call comes after church officials nationwide have released similar data following a bombshell Pennsylvania grand jury report last year detailed sexual abuse allegations against more than 300 priests. The Diocese of Rockville Centre, which has more than 1 million baptized Catholics on Long Island, is the only diocese in New York State to not release such a list.

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BUENOS AIRES (ARGENTINA)
Catholic News Agency

June 5, 2019

The bishops’ conference of Argentina has said it is examining and will respond to a new report of more than 60 allegations of sexual abuse by priests and religious in the country.

Officials with the conference said they are working on new protocols and actions to protect minors, following the Vatican summit on the topic earlier this year.

A recent report in La Nación detailed 63 cases of alleged sexual abuse by priests and religious of the Church in Argentina in the last two decades. Of these cases, 17 resulted in convictions, 22 are in judicial process, 24 were not prosecuted and 12 led to dismissal from the clerical state.

Among the cases mentioned are those of Juan Escobar Gaviria, who is now serving a 25-year prison sentence; Nicola Corradi, accused of abusing hearing impaired minors at the Próvolo Institute; and Gustavo Zanchetta, the bishop emeritus of Orán and adviser to the Administration of the Patrimony of the Holy Apostolic See since December 2017, who is under investigation at the Vatican for alleged sexual abuse and the abuse of power.

In their report, La Nación says that the Church in Argentina “for years covered up its priests and religious accused of sexual abuse” through a system of transferring them to new assignments rather than removing them from ministry.

Bishop Sergio Buenanueva of San Francisco warned in a statement that transferring priests accused of sexual abuse was a “habitual” and “totally fatal” practice.

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TAMPA (FL)
Tampa Bay Times

June 3, 2019

By Kathryn Varn

A 71-year-old retired priest accused this week of sexual battery had been arrested 20 years ago in a prostitution sting, according to police.

In July 1999, Clearwater police arrested Koumianos Hatzileris on a charge of soliciting a prostitute on Gulf-to-Bay Boulevard. He was 52 then, wearing his black priest robes and collar, when he approached a woman who turned out to be an undercover detective and offered to pay her $20 for sex, according to a police report.

Hatzileris founded the Dormition of Theotokos at 1910 Douglas Ave. in Clearwater, a parish affiliated with the Church of Genuine Orthodox Christians of America. The church formed in the 1950s after a contentious break from the Eastern Orthodox Church by a group unhappy with the main church’s direction. The parish is not affiliated with St. Nicholas Greek Orthodox Church in Tarpon Springs, a member parish of the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of America.

After his 1999 arrest, the church suspended Hatzileris for three or four years, said Bishop Christodoulos Michaels of Theoupolis. Hatzileris eventually returned to the Clearwater parish and worked as a priest until he retired two weeks ago due to age.

Church officials took the same action Monday, after Tarpon Springs police announced they had arrested Hatzileris on two sexual battery charges.

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GREEN BAY (WI)
Press-Gazette

June 5, 2019

By Haley BeMiller

The Catholic Diocese of Green Bay last month identified another priest who molested a child, amending its list of known abusers with little public notice.

The diocese on May 23 added Steven Scherer to the list of priests who sexually abused minors over the past century. Scherer, who died in 1999, was determined by the diocese to have committed a single instance of abuse around 1980 or 1981. The allegation surfaced after his death.

Scherer served at St. Jude Catholic Church in Green Bay at the time of the abuse, according to the diocese. He also worked at Appleton’s St. Elizabeth Hospital, now known as Ascension St. Elizabeth Hospital, from 1984 to 1993.

After years of public pressure, the Green Bay diocese in January released the names of 46 priests with “substantiated” allegations of sexual abuse of minors, 15 of whom are still alive. Officials quietly modified the initial disclosure list in April with the name of a 47th priest, along with additional incidents of abuse by previously named clergy.

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AUKLAND (NEW ZEALAND)
Stuff

June 5, 2019

By Amanda Saxton

Isileli Halalupe’s trial at Auckland District Court was put on hold, after the jury was dismissed on day two.

A jury in the trial of a church leader accused of sexual abuse has been dismissed.

Isileli Halalupe had pleaded not guilty to five charges of indecent assault against an underage girl, and was on trial at Auckland District Court.

He was accused of groping the complainant’s breasts, thighs and bottom between 2015 and 2017 – and of kissing her ears against her will. She was 13 years old when the alleged offending was said to have started.

On the second day of the trial on Wednesday, Judge Poole discharged the jury.

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HOUSTON (TX)
Click 2 Houston

June 4, 2019

By Jacob Rascon

Father John Keller repeatedly sexually abused a teenage boy at St. Justin Martyr for more than a year, an accuser said Tuesday.

Justin Davis is now the third person to publicly accuse Keller of abuse. He was a 15-year-old altar boy at the time, and Keller was supposed to be his mentor.

“The church was my family, it was the only place where I felt safe. It was the only place where I wasn’t emotionally or physically abused in my life,” Davis said. “I ran into the arms of my pastor, and he took advantage of that.

“There was a lot of time when the only people in that building were me and the pastor, and that’s when it happened. He fed me alcohol, and then he would, you know, grab me, and place my hand on him, and accuse me of being sexually turned on. Lean on me, rub himself on me. It happened weekly, if not daily, I mean, we were there a lot together, alone.”

Davis stopped going to church a little over a year later and tried to block out the abuse for 35 years until the Archdiocese of Galveston-Houston published a list of accused priests.

When he saw Keller’s name on the list, with a single accuser, he wanted to help.

“All I wanted to do was to lend credibility, credence or support to the other victim who had come forward,” Davis said. “I figured another voice saying, ‘no, this also happened to me,’” would be helpful.

Davis spent hours detailing the abuse to a representative at the archdiocese. Months later, he said, he hasn’t heard back from them.

On Sunday, Keller’s replacement at Prince of Peace Catholic Church was announced and, according to people in the congregation, Keller was repeatedly praised.

“This guy was just allowed to retire, and praised from the pulpit after being removed,” Davis said.

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NEW YORK (NY)
Crux

June 5, 2019

By Christopher White

France’s first ever independent commission set up by the Catholic Church to examine claims of clergy sex abuse has now launched its appeal for witnesses to offer testimony.

The Catholic French bishops’ Independent Commission of Inquiry into Sexual Abuse within the Church (CAISE), which was formally established in November 2018, opened itself up for testimonials this week and will seek to chronicle clergy abuse dating back to the 1950s.

At the time of the announcement, Archbishop Georges Pontier of Marseille, who serves as president of the Conference of Bishops of France said that their November meeting “between the victims and the bishops has confirmed for us all, victims and bishops, the need to work together better in this fight.”

“The bishops wish to work with the victims to see how to make sure that our history doesn’t forget those acts that have left too many people to die,” he added.

Former deputy president of the French Council of State, Jean-Marc Sauvé, has been named the chairman of the commission, which includes 22 lawyers, theologians, and medical professionals, 12 of whom are men and 10 women. The body has pledged to deliver its full report by the end of 2020.

According to the official agreement signed between the French bishops and the head of the commission, the bishops’ conference will pay for all costs related to the review of cases, but the commission has been guaranteed full independence to review cases related to both the abuse of minors and vulnerable adults.

A letter dated Feb. 19, outlining the mandate of the commission, states that the first task will be to identify the number of both victims and perpetrators throughout the country.

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HOUSTON (TX)
Associated Press

June 5, 2019

Representatives of a top leader of the U.S. Catholic Church say he acted “swiftly and justly” to the allegations made by a woman who claims his former deputy lured her into a sexual relationship.

The Archdiocese of Galveston-Houston issued a statement Tuesday in response to an Associated Press investigation of Cardinal Daniel DiNardo, who is leading the U.S. church’s response to its sex abuse scandal.

Laura Pontikes accuses DiNardo of not fulfilling the archdiocese’s promises to prevent Monsignor Frank Rossi from being a pastor or counseling women after engaging in a sexual relationship with her. Instead, DiNardo allowed Rossi to go to a parish in rural east Texas in another diocese.

The statement from church officials says DiNardo agreed not to reassign Rossi in his archdiocese. It accuses the AP of publishing “unprofessional, biased and one-sided reporting,” and says some comments attributed to DiNardo by Pontikes and her husband, George, are “an absolute fabrication.”

It also says Pontikes demanded $10 million from the archdiocese. Pontikes acknowledges she made a demand for an unspecified amount of money in an off-the-cuff fit of anger, but says she was clear from the start that she wasn’t interested in a financial payoff. The Pontikeses and her lawyer told AP that details of mediation, including any financial negotiations, were confidential.

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Patheos blog

June 5, 2019

By Hemant Mehta

So that’s where the congregation’s money is going.

According to a new study titled “Church Influencing State: How the Catholic Church Spent Millions Against Survivors of Clergy Abuse,” between 2011 and 2018, the U.S. Catholic Church spent more than $10 million on lobbyists to fight against legislation that would have allowed victims of pedophile priests to sue the Church for damages even if prior statutes of limitations had passed. And that was just in northeastern states.

It may not have helped given how many states introduced or passed bills that allow victims to sue the Church even if the abuse occurred decades earlier.

NBC News reports:

“This report lays out what we have known all along — that the Catholic Church refuses to take responsibility for the decades of abuse that took place knowingly under its watch,” said attorney Stephen Weiss, who works for one of the law firms that commissioned the study.

“Statute of limitations reforms give survivors more time to obtain some measure of closure on the atrocities committed against them,” attorney Gerald Williams added. “The church has yet to implement meaningful reforms, and by working to prevent these laws from passing, the church is clearly demonstrating that it does not stand with survivors.”

More than half the lobbying money was spent in Pennsylvania alone. That’s the state where a grand jury report rocked the nation last August and opened the door to even more intensive investigations by other attorneys general.

Even if the lobbying wasn’t meant to stifle the bills entirely, but intended to modify them within reason, the Church ought to be at the forefront of advocating for these bills. Hell, they should be writing them and urging legislatures to pass them immediately in order to atone for their own sins.

If there’s any good news, it’s that some of the states passed victim-friendly bills anyway, while others have at least introduced those bills. It’s not clear if the lobbying killed any potential bill.

It’s truly disturbing that Catholics who give money to their Church are effectively subsidizing lobbyists whose job it is to make sure victims of child sexual abuse can’t get justice. You might be able to dismiss pedophile priests as bad apples. You might be able to ignore those involved in the cover-up. But when the entire Church is working against victims like this, it’s absolutely fair to blame everyday Catholics for continuing to support the Church with their money.

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NASHVILLE (TN)
Nashville Tennessean

June 4, 2019

By Holly Meyer

Key leaders in the largest Protestant denomination in the U.S. have spent the last year owning up to that while trying to figure out how their network of evangelical churches can do a better job of addressing and preventing sexual abuse in the future.

In the wake of recent revelations illustrating how widespread the problem is, Southern Baptists will soon have a chance to enact changes that would make it easier to hold churches accountable and keep people in their pews safe.

Sexual abuse in the church is expected to be front and center when thousands of representatives from the more than 50,000 Southern Baptist congregations gather June 11-12 in Birmingham, Alabama, for their big annual meeting.

That focus is intentional, Southern Baptist Convention President J.D. Greear said. Victim revelations have made it clear that Southern Baptists need to create systems that protect the vulnerable, he said.

“God gave his life for them,” Greear said in an interview. “How dare we not provide protection for them so when they’re in the house of God they know that they’re safe and that they’re cared for.”

Up for consideration are two changes to core Southern Baptist Convention governing documents:

The first is an amendment to the Southern Baptist Convention’s constitution that would explicitly state that addressing sexual abuse and racism is a part of what it means to be a Southern Baptist church.

The second is a proposed bylaw change that would create a committee to assess misconduct claims, including sexual abuse, against churches.

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NEW YORK (NY)
Daily Beast

June 5, 2019

By Jamie Ross

The leader of La Luz del Mundo—a Mexican church that claims to have more than one million followers around the world—has been charged with a string of child sex crimes in Los Angeles.

According to The New York Times, the allegations against Naasón Joaquín García include that he forced children to have sex and made them pose naked for photos. He was reportedly arrested Monday at Los Angeles International Airport—two others affiliated with the church were also arrested, and authorities are looking for a fourth person.

Prosecutors allege García has four victims, including three children. The charges include rape and human trafficking.

“Crimes like those alleged in this complaint have no place in our society. Period,” said Attorney General Xavier Becerra of California. “We must not turn a blind eye to sexual violence and trafficking in our state.” García, 50, is considered by La Luz del Mundo to be an apostle of Jesus Christ.

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HOUSTON (TX)
Associated Press

June 5, 2019

When Cardinal Daniel DiNardo first met Laura Pontikes in his wood-paneled conference room in December 2016, the leader of the U.S. Catholic Church’s response to its sex abuse scandal said all the right things.

He praised her for coming forward to report that his deputy in the Galveston-Houston archdiocese had manipulated her into a sexual relationship and declared her a “victim” of the priest, Pontikes said. Emails and other documents obtained by The Associated Press show that the relationship had gone on for years — even as the priest heard her confessions, counseled her husband on their marriage and pressed the couple for hundreds of thousands of dollars in donations.

She says the archdiocese assured her that the priest, Monsignor Frank Rossi, would never be a pastor or counsel women again.

Months after that meeting, though, she found out DiNardo had allowed Rossi to take a new job as pastor of a parish two hours away in east Texas. When her husband confronted DiNardo, he said, the cardinal warned that the archdiocese would respond aggressively to any legal challenge — and that the fallout would hurt their family and business.

On Tuesday, three years after the meeting with DiNardo and after written inquiries by the AP last week, the church temporarily removed Rossi, announcing in a statement from his new bishop that he was being placed on administrative leave.

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MELBOURNE (AUSTRALIA)
The Age

June 5, 2019

By Debbie Cuthbertson

If clothes maketh the man, or at least provide an insight into his state of mind, then George Pell’s decision to wear his clerical collar on the first day of his appeal seemed an emphatic statement.

He was last seen in civvies, sans collar, in a fawn jacket and open-necked shirt, as he was sentenced to six years in prison in March, an event that dramatically impugned the already sullied reputation of the Catholic Church.

His donning this time of his clerical uniform of a priest’s collar with black shirt and black jacket was a declaration in itself, a protestation of his innocence and his intention to reinstate his reputation, so mired in scandal after his conviction of sexually abusing two choirboys in 1996.

It also shows what’s at stake. Pell, who turns 78 on Saturday, faces a potential Vatican trial and defrocking after more than half a century as a priest, during which he rose to the posts of priest in Ballarat, Archbishop of Melbourne and Sydney, and latterly a cardinal, one of the global church’s most senior figures.

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LOS ANGELES (CA)
WIVB TV

June 4, 2019

By Chris Horvatits

The former executive assistant to Bishop Richard Malone says the compensation program set up by the diocese for victims of clergy sex abuse “didn’t have survivors best interest at heart or in mind”.

Siobhan O’Connor, who leaked several documents that detailed clergy sex abuse from the diocese’s archives, spoke at a press conference in Los Angeles Tuesday afternoon. The announcement was made as six dioceses in California are launching a victims compensation program similar to the Independent Reconciliation and Compensation Program that the Diocese of Buffalo set up.

O’Connor was still Malone’s executive assistant when the program launched on March 1, 2018.

“As I learned more about it and experienced the fallout from it, I learned that really what they had been preparing for was the legal and the financial ramifications. They had not planned for the practicalities and the logistics,” O’Connor said.

Last week, the diocese announced that the program was complete, and that $17.6 million had been paid out to 107 victims of clergy abuse.

O’Connor also alleged that diocesan officials didn’t adequately respond to victims who called about the program.

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MANDALUYONG (PHILIPPINES)
CNN

June 5, 2019

By Hilary Whiteman

Cardinal George Pell, who was once one of the most powerful men in the Roman Catholic Church, could be released from prison this week, if an Australian appeals court overturns his conviction for historical sexual abuse.

Pell, 77, was sentenced to six years in prison in March for what Judge Peter Kidd described as a “callous” attack on two choirboys at Melbourne’s historic St. Patrick’s Cathedral in the mid-1990s, when he was archbishop of that city.

The former Vatican treasurer was found guilty of one charge of sexual penetration of a child and four charges of an indecent act with or in the presence of a child in the late 1990s during a secret trial late last year. The verdict was suppressed until February to avoid prejudicing a possible second trial, which did not go ahead.

Pell is expected to be in court on Wednesday when his barrister, Bret Walker SC, tries to persuade a panel of appeal judges to overturn his conviction on three grounds, including that the guilty verdict was “unsafe,” because the evidence could not have convinced a jury beyond reasonable doubt.

The proceedings will be livestreamed.

The other grounds are that Judge Kidd did not allow Pell’s lawyers to show a “moving” video during summing-up, which they say would have detailed their version of events, and that Pell was not given the chance to enter a not guilty plea in front of the jury, as legally required.

The two latter grounds are unlikely to prompt a retrial, said Jeremy Gans, a professor from Melbourne Law School, because even if errors were made during the trial, the judges would also have to find that they caused a “substantial miscarriage of justice.”

But Gans said the “unsafe” claim had a “good chance” of succeeding.

“The test in Australia for whether a verdict is unsafe is the judges have to decide for themselves whether they are left in doubt by the evidence,” said Gans, who has studied details of the case, except for video of the victim’s testimony, which was played to a closed court.

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ATLANTA (GA)
CNN

June 4, 2019

Between June 2017 and June 2018 the Catholic Church in the United States spent a whopping $301.6 million on costs related to clergy sexual abuse, including nearly $200 million in legal settlements, according to a report commissioned by the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops.

The new report also revealed that, during the same 12-month period, the church fielded 1,051 new “credible allegations” of sexual abuse of a minor by priests and other clergy.

The number of allegations and the costs related to abuse were significantly higher than reported in previous years, which the report attributes to a victim-compensation program adopted in New York state last year. That program fielded 785 new allegations of abuse against Catholic clergy, many from past decades.

What’s remarkable is that these numbers may rise against next year.

The information in the new report, released last Friday, predates the escalation of the church’s sexual abuse scandal last summer. That’s when abuse allegations surfaced against former cardinal Theodore McCarrick and a damning report by a Pennsylvania grand jury accused some 301 “predator priests” of abusing more than 1,000 victims.

Most of those accusations dated from before 2002, when the bishops instituted new sex-abuse polices.

But those policies do not apply to bishops, a loophole the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops have pledged to fix next week at their annual meeting in Baltimore.

How the money was spent
Called the “Report on the Implementation of the Charter for the Protection of Children and Young People,” the 74-page document is based on statistics provided by religious orders, the country’s 197 Catholic dioceses and information obtained by an outside auditor, StoneBridge BusinessPartners.

Here’s how the $301 million was spent:
— Settlements: $194,346,291.
— Other payments to victims: $7,317,904.
— Support for offenders: $23,366,845.
— Attorney fees: $30,517,658.
— Other costs: $7,070,839.
— Child-protection efforts, including background checks and training: $39,290,069.

According to the report, between June 2017 and June 2018 there was an 132% increase in allegations, a 133% increase in victims, and a 51% increase in offenders reported over the previous 12 months.

The $301 million spent by dioceses and religious institutes on child protection efforts and costs related to abuse allegations represents a 14% increase from the previous year, according to the report.

The vast majority of the accused abuse occurred before 1999, according to the report. Nearly half (48%) is alleged to have occurred before 1975 and an additional 40% between 1975-1999, the report says.

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NEW YORK (NY)
NBC News

June 4, 2019

By Corky Siemaszko

The U.S. Catholic Church spent $10.6 million on lobbyists to prevent victims of clerical sex abuse from suing for damages. According to a new report, the money was doled out from 2011 through 2018 in eight northeastern states where bills to reform statute of limitations laws were either in the works or being considered. “This report lays out what we have known all along — that the Catholic Church refuses to take responsibility for the decades of abuse that took place knowingly under its watch,” said attorney Stephen Weiss, who works for one of the law firms that commissioned the study.

“Statute of limitations reforms give survivors more time to obtain some measure of closure on the atrocities committed against them,” added attorney Gerald Williams. “The Church has yet to implement meaningful reforms, and by working to prevent these laws from passing, the Church is clearly demonstrating that it does not stand with survivors.”

In Pennsylvania, where currently victims of child sex abuse can come forward with criminal allegations until the age of 50 and can file civil claims until age 30, the Church spent $5,322,979 to keep those limitations in place, according to the report “Church Influencing State: How the Catholic Church Spent Millions Against Survivors of Clergy Abuse.”

The report was commissioned by Seeger Weiss LLP, Williams Cedar LLC, Abraham Watkins and the Simpson Tuegel Law Firm, which collectively represent 300 clergy sex abuse survivors nationwide. The data in the report was obtained from public filings in the individual states.

Attorney General Josh Shapiro, whose blockbuster grand jury report last year identified 301 “predator priests” in six dioceses who were alleged to have abused more than 1,000 children, has been leading the charge to lift those statutes of limitations.

“The extensive lobbying by the Catholic Church in Pennsylvania against the reforms recommended by the Grand Jury proves what I have said all along: the Church cannot be trusted to police itself,” Shapiro said. “It’s reprehensible that the Church continues to spend significant sums of money fighting these reforms, instead of protecting and supporting the victims of clergy sexual abuse.”

The Pennsylvania Catholic Conference and the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops did not return an NBC News request for comment.

In New York, the church spent $2,912,772 in what ultimately was a failed bid to prevent the passage of the Child Victims Act, which Gov. Andrew Cuomo signed into law on Feb. 14. It allows child sexual abuse victims to sue their abuser or institutions until age 55. Previously the cut off was age 23.

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

June 4, 2019

The head of the US bishops is once again under fire for inaction in a case of clergy sex abuse. We call on him to resign his post or at least recuse himself from leading the bishops’ meeting in Baltimore next week.

This time, Cardinal Daniel DiNardo reportedly deceived an abuse victim and quietly moved her perpetrator – Monsignor Frank Rossi, one of his highest-ranking deputies – to another parish, even after telling the victim that Msgr. Rossi would never be a pastor again.

According to the AP, in 2016, Cardinal DiNardo told Laura Pontikes that he believed she was a victim because Msgr. Frank Rossi had sexually exploited her. Still, according to records obtained by reporters, the Cardinal instead made Msgr. Rossi the head of an eastern Texas parish without telling Laura and apparently without disclosing the allegations to the public or parishioners. When Laura’s husband confronted Cardinal DiNardo, “the cardinal warned that the archdiocese would respond aggressively to any legal challenge — and that the fallout would hurt their family and business.”

We applaud Laura for coming forward about her experience. It is incredibly challenging for any victim to come forward and especially for those who were abused as adults. Fortunately for folks in Texas, Laura was willing to put her reputation on the line in speaking out against wrongdoing and in standing up for other survivors. We are very grateful for her courage and stand in solidarity with Laura and other victims who were abused as adults.

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WASHINGTON (DC)
Catholic News Service

June 4, 2019

By Chaz Muth

For centuries, the Catholic Church has maintained that what a penitent says to a priest in the confessional is strictly confidential, but in 2019 that rite continues to be challenged by governments.

Church scholars assert the concept of the seal of confession was given to the apostles by Jesus, eventually morphing into the sacrament of penance, providing the faithful with an opportunity to confess their sins and to be reconciled with God.

The soul-cleansing, sacred practice is private, confidential and repeatable.

Governmental leaders have challenged the priest-penitent privilege of the seal of confession since at least the 14th century, prompting priests to sacrifice their freedom and sometimes their lives protecting that confidentiality.

In the wake of renewed attention on the clergy child sexual abuse scandals, 21st-century lawmakers in Australia, the United Kingdom, Ireland, Chile and the U.S. have introduced measures that would compel priests to report to civil authorities information related to child abuse and neglect learned in the confessional.

“There are many reasons why we are seeing challenges to the seal of confession today,” said Father Ronald T. Kunkel, theology professor at Mundelein Seminary at the University of St. Mary of the Lake in Illinois, near Chicago.

The Church has suffered “self-inflicted wounds” to its reputation and credibility from the clergy sex abuse crisis, making the seal of confession vulnerable to governmental intrusion, Kunkel told Catholic News Service in an April interview.

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WASHINGTON (DC)
Catholic News Service

June 4, 2019

By Dennis Sadowski

The path to rebuilding the U.S. Church’s credibility as it emerges from the lingering clergy sexual abuse scandal rests in embracing the role of laypeople as important collaborators, said the chairman of the National Review Board.

Francesco Cesareo told Catholic News Service June 3 that laypeople want transparency and openness from the bishops and the sooner the prelates put aside their guardedness about welcoming laity as partners, the sooner the U.S. Church will heal.

“I think the problem is that they perceive that it’s this ‘gotcha’ mentality that (the laity) are after. What we’re really trying to do is find what’s wrong,” Cesareo said.

Leaders of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops continued to develop a series of policies in early June as they hone their response to clergy abuse. They will consider and vote on several proposals at their spring general assembly June 11-14 in Baltimore.

The new policies are expected to be refinements of proposals they originally had hoped to adopt at their fall general assembly in November. They put them aside at the request of the Vatican hours before they convened.

Vatican officials sought the delay, citing Pope Francis’ desire first to meet with the heads of bishops’ conferences from around the world in February to discuss the Church’s response to the crisis.

The proposals then included the establishment of a third-party confidential reporting system for claims of any abuse by bishops; instruction to the U.S. bishops’ canonical affairs committee to develop proposals for policies addressing restrictions on bishops who were moved or resigned because of allegations of abuse of minors or adults; and initiating the development of a code of conduct for bishops regarding sexual misconduct with a minor or adult or “negligence in the exercise of his office related to such cases.”

Cesareo said he hoped that during the intervening months, the U.S. bishops have developed “concrete action items” that will signal how serious they are in addressing clergy abuse and ensuring accountability and transparency.

“I’m hoping that they will be bold enough to include in a very meaningful way laypeople in whatever they will be deciding,” he said. “My biggest concern is that it’s going to end up being bishops overseeing bishops and if that’s the case it’s going to be very difficult for the laity to feel any sense of confidence that anything has truly changed.”

The proposals being developed recently circulated among members of the all-lay National Review Board and, Cesareo said, each member individually offered comments and observations. While declining to discuss the specifics of the proposals because they were confidential, Cesareo said he offered wide-ranging and “hopefully constructive” responses.

Cesareo has long pushed the bishops to welcome lay involvement in the process of rebuilding Church credibility. As review board chairman, he has been frank with the bishops in conversations about the steps he sees as necessary for the Church to right itself.

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ROME (ITALY)
Associated Press

June 4, 2019

By Nicole Winfield

When Cardinal Daniel DiNardo first met Laura Pontikes in his wood-paneled conference room in December 2016, the leader of the U.S. Catholic Church’s response to its sex abuse scandal said all the right things.

He praised her for coming forward to report that his deputy in the Galveston-Houston archdiocese had manipulated her into a sexual relationship and declared her a “victim” of the priest, Pontikes said. Emails and other documents obtained by The Associated Press show that the relationship had gone on for years — even as the priest heard her confessions, counseled her husband on their marriage and pressed the couple for hundreds of thousands of dollars in donations.

She says she was assured that the priest, Monsignor Frank Rossi, would never be a pastor or counsel women again.

Months after that meeting, though, she found out DiNardo had allowed Rossi to take a new job as pastor of a parish two hours away in east Texas. When her husband confronted DiNardo, he said, the cardinal warned that the archdiocese would respond aggressively to any legal challenge — and that the fallout would hurt their family and business.

On Tuesday, three years after the meeting with DiNardo and after written inquiries by the AP last week, the church temporarily removed Rossi, announcing in a statement from his new bishop that he was being placed on administrative leave.

Laura Pontikes, a 55-year-old construction executive in Texas, had been at a low point in her life when she sought spiritual counseling from Rossi, the longtime No. 2 official in the Galveston-Houston archdiocese DiNardo heads. Instead, she said, Rossi preyed on her emotional vulnerability to draw her into a physical relationship that he called blessed by God.

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LONON (ENGLAND)
BBC Radio

May 31, 2019

A 91-year-old former monk, jailed for sexually abusing three boys, is to have his sentence increased by 18 months, the Court of Appeal has ruled.

Judges backed claims that the 10-and-a-half years term, originally imposed on Vincent Lewis for subjecting his young victims to a “shocking” series of attacks, was unduly lenient.

Lord Chief Justice Sir Declan Morgan ordered him to serve 12 years instead.

He highlighted the damage caused by the decade-long campaign of molestation

Lewis, formerly Brother Ambrose of Our Lady of Bethlehem Monastery in Portglenone, County Antrim, admitted more than 50 offences committed between 1973 and 1983.

Lewis was a former monk at Our Lady of Bethlehem Abbey in Portglenone.

He abused one boy while still a monk, and targeted the others after marrying and moving to Annagher Road in Coalisland, County Tyrone.

Some of the attacks were carried out at Portglenone Abbey, where his main responsibility involved operating the printing press.

He also took one victim to isolated woods along the river where he had prepared a private place to carry out further assaults.

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LONDON (ENGLAND)
BBC Radio

May 30, 2019

Some children at the Nazareth House orphanages in Scotland were subjected to sexual abuse of the “utmost depravity”, the Scottish Child Abuse Inquiry has found.

Chairwoman Lady Smith said the children’s homes were places of fear, hostility and confusion.

Youngsters were physically abused and emotionally degraded “with impunity”.

The Sisters of Nazareth charity said it had apologised for any abuse that took place in its institutions.

Over 27 days last year, the inquiry heard evidence from former residents of four institutions in Aberdeen, Glasgow, Midlothian and Ayrshire.

‘What happened was wrong’
Helen Holland told the inquiry she suffered years of physical and emotional cruelty as a child at Nazareth House in Kilmarnock, where she was raped by a priest.

She welcomed the fact that Lady Smith had believed her evidence to the inquiry.

“It is almost as if she reached beyond me as an adult and spoke to the child inside, and said to that child: ‘This wasn’t your fault. This shouldn’t have happened. What happened was wrong.’

“That in itself is massive.”

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Patheos blog

June 4, 2019

By Sarahbeth Caplin

For years now, as the sex abuse scandal shifted to various Protestant denominations, we knew that many of the victims hoping for justice told their stories to other church leaders… only to see their abusers face few, if any, consequences. In some cases, the pastors were allowed to resign without further comment. Sometimes, they went right back to the pulpit.

But there was a place where the victims’ stories were taken seriously, and investigated, and shared with a wider audience.

The Washington Post‘s Sarah Stankorb reports on the bloggers who took it upon themselves to exact justice through their blogs called Watch Keep, the Wartburg Watch, and Spiritual Sounding Board.

They stepped in when church leaders would not, and their articles forced some of those churches to take real action.

While clergy sex abuse within the Catholic Church has been in the headlines for years, it’s only more recently that abuses within Protestant churches have started to draw mainstream media attention. Much of the credit for this quickening churn goes to a circle of bloggers — dozens of armchair investigative journalists who have been outing abuse, one case and one congregation at a time, for over a decade now, bolstering their posts with court records, police reports, video clips of pastors’ sermons, and emails, often provided to them by survivors.

Most of these bloggers are women; many come from churches that teach women’s submission and deny women’s spiritual authority. “Investigative blogger women started a revolution at their kitchen tables,” says pastor Ashley Easter, who hosts the Courage Conference, a Christian, survivor-focused gathering. They have advocated “for victims of abuse from where they were, where they could find a platform — blogs and social media.”

In addition to women bloggers are the former evangelicals who left their churches after being exposed to one too many toxic leaders and theological teachings. While many of them are still Christian, others have left the faith entirely, in part because of the abuse they endured.
Recently, a younger cohort of “ex-vangelicals” and online activists have joined the fold, and in late 2017 #ChurchToo started to trend on Twitter. In turn, a wave of secret-smashing tweets blossomed into reported pieces at publications like Mother Jones and the New Yorker. Yet the bloggers who built the foundation for this activist network are known mainly to church abuse survivors and reporters covering these stories. To the rest of the world, their efforts have mostly blended into the joint backgrounds of the clergy sex abuse scandal and #MeToo.

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KANSAS CITY (MO)
National Catholic Reporter

June 3, 2019

By Heidi Schlumpf

There are 441 active and retired Catholic bishops who oversee 196 Latin- and Eastern-rite dioceses and archdioceses and one “personal ordinariate” (for former Anglican groups and clergy in the United States who became Catholic) in the United States and U.S. Virgin Islands. This includes 15 cardinals: six who lead archdioceses, five who are retired and four in other positions.

More than a third (168) of U.S. bishops are retired; the remaining 273 active ones include six cardinals, 29 archbishops, 162 diocesan bishops and 76 auxiliary bishops. Bishops submit their retirement to the pope at the age of 75; about six to eight bishops retire each year and are replaced, so the total number of active bishops remains roughly the same.

The bishops themselves make up the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops and are served by a staff of approximately 315 laypeople, priests, deacons and religious located at the Conference headquarters in Washington, D.C., according to the U.S. bishops’ conference website. The staff work is overseen by the General Secretariat, an office currently headed by Msgr. Brian Bransfield.

The average bishop in the U.S., according to survey data from 2016, is a non-Hispanic white 65-year-old. (In fact, about 88% of bishops are white.) He has served for 12 years in a diocese of about 250,000 Catholics in 92 parishes, with 87 active diocesan priests (another 51 retired, infirm or serving elsewhere), 98 permanent deacons about 200 mostly-retired sisters.

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VIENNA (VA)
ABC 7 News

June 3, 2019

By Anna-Lysa Gayle

Local advocates are calling for more transparency in Catholic churches.

They held a town hall discussion on the issue on Monday night, in Vienna.

Among the demands discussed were calls for a third-party national hotline, to hear out tips involving clerical sex abuse and full transparency throughout an investigation, when it comes to clerical sex abuse victims and their families.

Our Lady of Good Counsel’s Advocates for Church and Transparency hopes leaders will take action on the issue at the upcoming Conference of Catholic Bishops next Tuesday in Baltimore.

“We just want to make sure that that is a set procedure, for us to always be informed – in terms of what’s going on in this parish and within this diocese and make sure we are armed with the information we need to know as parishioners who are making decisions about ourselves, our faith, our kids, etc,” said Kevin Bae.

In his letter last month, Pope Francis called for clear standards for supporting victims and their families and protections for whistleblowers.

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

June 3, 2019

The Diocese of Oakland has updated their list of “credibly accused” clergy. However, we are very disappointed that they apparently did so without notifying anyone.

The entire point of these lists is to keep parishioners and the public informed. When people are aware that those listed have been accused, they know to look within their communities for survivors who might be struggling in silence. When victims see the name of the person that abused them acknowledged, it often helps them realize that they are not alone and encourages them to come forward and get help.

We urge Church officials in Oakland to publicly announce the changes they have made to their list, explain why these eighteen names have been added, and renew their calls for survivors, witnesses, and whistle blowers to come forward and make a report to police and prosecutors.

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DUNDEE (SCOTLAND)
The Courier

June 4, 2019

By Michael Alexander

The ongoing Scottish Child Abuse Inquiry (SCAI) that was set up to “investigate the nature and extent of abuse of children in care in Scotland” has turned its attention to allegations of abuse at a former residential home in Fife.

Witness statements began to be heard on Tuesday relating to claims that boys were abused at the former St Ninian’s School which was run by the Christian Brothers, in Falkland, before it closed in 1983.

And it was revealed that the headmaster and teacher of the school for troubled boys – who were convicted of physical and sexual abuse against six pupils more than 30 years ago – are to give evidence from behind bars.

John Farrell and Paul Kelly – who were sentenced to five and 10 years respectively in 2016 for assaulting pupils at the former St Ninian’s School in Falkland in the late 1970s and 80s – will give evidence by video screen in mid-June and early-July, the inquiry’s senior counsel Colin MacAulay QC revealed during opening statements in Edinburgh.

The men were members of the Catholic religious order the Congregation of Christian Brothers, which ran the school.

Phase four of the ongoing Scottish Child Abuse Inquiry is expected to last for more than a month. It turned its attention to allegations of abuse at St Ninian’s when it got under way in Edinburgh on Tuesday morning.

Chaired by Lady Smith, opening statements were made on behalf of the Lord Advocate, Chief Constable of Scotland, Scottish ministers, the Bishops Conference and Christian Brothers. Witness statements from two survivors were due in the afternoon.

The inquiry heard how St Ninian’s had a “relatively short existence” from 1951 to 1983.

John Scott of INCAS (In Care Abuse Survivors) began by noting the recent publication of the SCAI report into allegations of abuse at the Sisters of Nazareth home in Kilmarnock which found that children there were subjected to sexual abuse of the “utmost depravity”.

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

June 3, 2019

A handful of brave female bloggers who expose child sex crimes in churches have just been profiled by the Washington Post. We are humbled by and grateful for the extraordinary compassion and courage of these women and hope their work to protect the vulnerable encourages others to follow in their footsteps. We also hope that other mainstream journalists will see how impressive and credible these prophets are.

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

June 3, 2019

The Iowa attorney general’s office has announced that it will be gathering information on sexual abuse by spiritual leaders and clergy in that state. This is a good first step for Iowa.

We are glad that Attorney General Tom Miller has taken this step towards getting to the bottom of clergy abuse in Iowa. At the same time, we believe that for any review or investigation to have a real “sunlight” effect that it must involve subpoena power, the ability to compel testimony under oath, and perhaps even search warrants. We are hopeful that AG Miller will find ways to utilize these tools as he seeks to get to the bottom of clergy abuse cases in Iowa.

We encourage all survivors within Iowa – as well as any survivor that now lives elsewhere but may have been abused in Iowa – to come forward today and make a report to AG Miller’s hotline by calling 855-620-7000 or by filling in this questionnaire on his website.

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WASHINGTON (DC)
Catholic News Service

June 4, 2019

The Australian Catholic Church has released its National Catholic Safeguarding Standards, more than 18 months after they were recommended by the country’s landmark Royal Commission into Institutional Child Sexual Abuse, in the latest chapter in the overhaul of how the church responds to clergy sexual abuse.

The standards closely parallel the commission’s recommendations as well as norms enshrined by the government in the National Principles for Child Safe Organisations, although some provisions have been watered down, observers noted.

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BRIDGEWATER (NJ)
Bridgewater Courier News

June 4, 2019

By Nick Muscavage

Editor’s note: This article contains graphic descriptions that are sexual in nature. The three individuals making the allegations have agreed to allow their names and details of the allegations from the testimonies to be published. Reader discretion is advised.

A Presbyterian minister, who said he was following the Bible, used Native American exorcism rituals, gemstones and even oral sex to extract “evil spirits” from men undergoing crises in their lives, the church and men claim.

The so-called healing acts, which date to 1999, were allegedly performed by the Rev. Dr. William Weaver, a prominent Presbyterian minister who served as pastor at Linden Presbyterian Church for 39 years, one of two Presbyterian churches in Linden, a city with a population of over 40,000. He also held several public roles, including chaplain for a county police department.

Weaver, 69, was scheduled to face his three accusers during an internal church trial, but on Jan. 25, 2019, one day before the trial was to begin, he renounced the jurisdiction of the Elizabeth Presbytery. He was accused by the church of “multiple acts of idolatry and sexual misconduct.”

The church charges have no bearing on the secular government’s civil and criminal courts. No public charges have been filed against Weaver. The men said they did report the sexual encounters to authorities, but the Union County Prosecutor’s Office hasn’t responded for comment on this story.

With his renouncement, Weaver gave up his ordination and membership in the Presbyterian Church but also avoided a religious trial. He then moved to a gated retirement community in Lakewood.

The trial was scheduled after the men alerted the Elizabeth Presbytery, which oversees 41 Presbyterian churches in Somerset, Hunterdon, Middlesex and Union counties.

The Presbytery determined, through an investigating committee, “that there are probable grounds or cause to believe that an offense was committed by the accused,” according to the official church charges. If Weaver was found at the religious trial to have violated church rules, the most punishment he would have faced would have been expulsion from the Presbyterian ministry.

“In April 2018, the Presbytery of Elizabeth received allegations of multiple instances of sexual misconduct perpetrated by William Weaver, who was a minister member of the Presbytery. The Presbytery of Elizabeth, a regional body of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), takes seriously any allegation of misconduct,” the Rev. Leslie Dobbs-Allsopp, interim leader of the Elizabeth Presbytery, said in a statement.

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LA CROSSE (WI)
La Crosse Tribune

June 4, 2019

By Emily Pyrek

A retired priest of the Diocese of La Crosse was charged Monday with fourth-degree sexual assault, three weeks after being accused of assaulting and propositioning a woman outside the La Crosse Public Library.

A library security worker reported Msgr. Bernard McGarty, 94, to police May 15 after a victim came forward regarding an incident that occurred after library closing hours on May 11. The victim stated a man, who identified himself as Bill, took her arm and placed it on his genitals, according to the criminal complaint.

Upon pulling up library video surveillance footage, staff members were able to identify the perpetrator as McGarty, who was previously charged with disorderly conduct in 2014 after exposing himself to a masseuse in Wausau and asking the masseuse to rub his genitals.

Footage from May 11 showed McGarty handing the victim $20 and pulling her hand onto his lap, according to the report. The victim stated McGarty said “he would like a little kiss” and before departing asked “how he could get a hold of her,” according to the complaint.

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ROME (ITALY)
Crux

June 4, 2019

By Inés San Martín

As the home country of Pope Francis, Argentina is of obvious relevance to the global Church, especially the ins and outs of its local Catholic scene. Three things developing right now worth keeping an eye on: The clerical sexual abuse crisis; a fight between church and state over the remains of a Gaucho saint; and buzz over a papal visit.

On Sunday, La Nación, Argentina’s biggest daily newspaper, ran a series of articles revealing the closest thing to a comprehensive investigation into the extent of the clerical sexual abuse crisis locally.

There are some 5,600 priests in Argentina, and according to the newspaper, in the past 20 years there have been 63 credible allegations of sexual abuse. In 17 of those cases there’s a criminal conviction, and in 22 there’s an ongoing trial. The rest of the cases never made it to court.

Bishop Sergio Buenanueva, of San Francisco, Cordoba, serves as coordinator of the Pastoral Council for the Protection of Minors and Vulnerable Adults of Argentina’s bishops’ conference. Speaking with La Nación, he said that they don’t have a registry of cases yet, but that he could confirm that “there are certainly no fewer” than those compiled by the paper.

He also said that the clerical sexual abuse crisis is one of the “gravest” the institution has faced in modern times.

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MELBOURNE (AUSTRALIA)
The New Daily

June 3, 2019

By Lucie Morris-Marr

Cardinal George Pell begins his next major legal fight on Wednesday with the start of an appeal against his conviction over shocking sex attacks on Catholic Church choirboys.

The former treasurer for the Vatican has spent the past 97 days in solitary confinement after being sentenced to six years in prison for violent assaults on two teenage boys at Melbourne’s St Patrick’s Cathedral in the 1990s.

Pell is expected to appear in court for at least the first day of the two-day hearing, giving victims and their supporters their first glimpse at the convicted sex offender since he was taken to a segregation unit of the Melbourne Assessment Prison.

Fighting for him will be one of the country’s leading barristers, whom the Cardinal hired to aid in his bid to have the conviction quashed.

Sydney-based Bret Walker SC will argue Pell’s case in front of three senior judges: Supreme Court Chief Justice Anne Ferguson, Justice Chris Maxwell – the president of the Court of Appeal – and Justice Mark Weinberg.

Bret Walker SC has represented a number of high-profile clients.

There are three main grounds for the appeal.

Firstly, his team will argue the guilty verdicts on the five charges were “unreasonable” and unsafe as it was not open to the jury to be satisfied beyond reasonable doubt on the word on the complainant alone.

During the mistrial and re-trial of the case last year only one of the accusers gave evidence, as the other choirboy passed away of a drug overdose aged 30 in 2014. Neither can be named for legal reasons.

The second ground is the argument that the trial judge, Chief Justice Peter Kidd, made an error by preventing the defence from using a video of the “moving visual representation” of its impossibility argument during the closing address by Pell’s lead barrister Robert Richter QC.

The “pac man” animation, as it was dubbed by court reporters covering the case, represented Pell, the choir, altar servers, assistant priests and staff, as moving dots on the background of a map of the Cathedral.

Finally, the third ground for the appeal is the argument that there was a “fundamental irregularity” in the trial process because the accused was not arraigned in the presence of the jury panel, as required by the Criminal Procedure Act.

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ROME (ITALY)
Crux

June 4, 2019

By Elise Harris

Last week representatives of the Liberian bishops’ conference traveled to the Vatican to address accusations from a local priest that two of the country’s bishops were guilty of soliciting him for sex.

Bishop Anthony Borwah, President of the Liberia Bishops’ Conference, traveled to Rome to meet with Vatican officials after Father Gabriel Sawyer, a parish priest from Monrovia, raised accusations against the current Archbishop Lewis Zeigler, who heads the archdiocese, and against Bishop Andrew Karnley of Cape Palmas – located on Liberia’s southern coast – of sexual advances and abuses of power.

Reportedly accompanying Borwah to the Vatican were Father Dennis Cephus Nimene, secretary of the bishops’ conference and Archbishop Dagoberto Campos Salas, Vatican envoy to Liberia.

In a lengthy 17-page August 2018 letter to Campos Salas, Sawyer said that when he was in seminary in Monrovia in 1997, Karnley, who was vocations director at the time, had made inappropriate advances and attempted to have sex with him while on trips to say Mass outside of the seminary.

Sawyer alleges that after refusing, Karnley threatened to block his ordination to the priesthood and made his life both pre- and post-ordination difficult. When Zeigler was named archbishop of Monrovia in 2011, Sawyer said he also made sexual advances, and harassed him after he resisted.

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BURLINGTON (VT)
VTDigger

June 3, 2019

By Xander Landen

Gov. Phil Scott last week signed a new law that removes the time limit for victims of child sexual abuse to bring civil claims against their abusers.

Scott also signed a bill that will extend the statute of limitations for criminal offenses including manslaughter and sexual exploitation of a vulnerable adult.

The bill eliminating the six-year statute of limitations for civil child sexual abuse cases, H.330, was a priority for the House Judiciary Committee this year.

It was largely inspired by a December conference in which Rachael Denhollander, a former gymnast and the first woman to publicly accuse former USA Gymnastics team doctor Larry Nassar of sexual assault, addressed Vermont officials at the Statehouse.

Denhollander pointed to the statute of limitations as a key problem for adjudicating child sexual abuse: often, survivors can’t process what’s happened to them – let alone decide to come forward – until it’s too late.

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DANVILLE (CA)
KRON TV

June 3, 2019

By Dan Thorn

A Catholic order in Oakland releases its first list of clergy accused of child sex abuse. The list of 50 names includes three men who were last recorded living at a retreat in the East Bay.

Abuse by one of those men has never been reported until now.

Most of this abuse happened between the 1960s and 1980s and most of the men have died.

Survivors say the number of clergy involved was a lot more than they expected.

They’re just hoping the release of these names will allow people to come forward.

Of the four friars still alive, three are living in California — Stephen Kain, Josef Prochnow and Dennis Duffy were all most recently staying at this retreat in Danville.

Kain and Prochnow were both previously accused of sexual misconduct but Duffy’s abuse hasn’t been reported until now.

Dan McNevin is an area leader for survivors network of those abused by priests.

He says the list helps to validate victims, but he doesn’t understand why the three friars living at the San Damiano retreat were not known about sooner.

“The list came out then magically all the men have left. So it came out after they left. So there was obviously a decision that was made to withhold the list until these guys were put someplace else. We don’t know where they are now,” McNevin said.

The list only says the men are now living at an elderly care facility somewhere in California.

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LA CROSSE (WI)
WKBT News 8

June 3, 2019

By Martha Koloski

Monsignor Bernard McGarty with the Diocese of La Crosse was officially charged with 4th degree sexual assault in La Crosse County court today…. even though McGarty failed to show up for his court hearing.

According to the criminal complaint, a woman accused McGarty of offering her money for sex, trying to kiss her and taking her hand and putting it on his genitals.

McGarty’s attorney, Cheryl Gill had this to say about why the 94-year-old wasn’t in court today, “Monsignor McGarty is 94-years-old and he has some difficulty getting out and about, notwithstanding this particular charge, so I will try to get him in here.

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CLEVELAND (OH)
Fox 8 News

June 3, 2019

By Kevin Freeman

It’s a crime that’s violent, traumatizing and often goes unreported. On Monday, Ohio’s highest law enforcement official announced a proposal to eliminate the statute of limitations for rape. Under current Ohio law, a person who commits rape, cannot be prosecuted for the crime after 20 years have passed.

“I don’t think that a rapist ought to be able to run out the clock on justice,” said Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost.

Yost was flanked by two former Attorneys General, Nancy Rogers and Betty Montgomery, to publicly announce a plea to state lawmakers. They are urging the state legislature to toss out the current 20-year statute of limitations for rape offenses. Yost and five of Ohio’s former Attorneys General sent a letter to state lawmakers, requesting that there be no time limit on prosecuting rape cases, just like it is for murder.

“We believe that murder and rape have a lot in common in the sense that they are grievous offenses,” Yost said.

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LAS VEGAS (NV)
Review-Journal

June 3, 2019

By Mike Shoro

Henderson police have identified a murder suspect in the deadly shooting of a disgraced former New Jersey priest.

An arrest warrant has been issued for Derrick Decoste, 25, after John Capparelli, 70, was found dead of a gunshot wound in Henderson in March, Police Department spokeswoman Katrina Rothmeyer said. Decoste is wanted on charges of murder and robbery, each with a deadly weapon.

Decoste is currently jailed in Oakland County, Michigan, on unrelated charges, Rothmeyer said. He is pending extradition to Henderson.

What led police to pinpoint Decoste as a murder suspect wasn’t immediately clear. Capparelli was discovered March 9 inside his Henderson home on the 1400 block of Bonner Springs Drive, near Eastern Avenue and Reunion Drive, police said.

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DES MOINES (IA)
KTIV TV

June 3, 2019

Iowa Attorney General Tom Miller has asked for information on records of clergy sexual abuse from all four Catholic dioceses in Iowa.

In the letters sent to the bishops, Miller says his office met with survivors of abuse by clergy, and the survivors urged them to investigate and, quote “bring attention to the injustice they and others have suffered.” Miller’s office wants lists of all priests, deacons, or other clergy who have been deemed as “credibly accused” of sexual abuse by the dioceses. Miller’s office also wants the definition of “credibly accused,” “sexual misconduct” and “sexual abuse.” The attorney general has also requested lists of accused clergy in which the dioceses deemed the accusation “not credible.”

In addition, Miller wants notes from meetings of diocesan boards of review that were convened to consider accusations, the documentation of reports of abuse received by diocesan officials and actions taken, and copies of all settlement agreements that diocesan officials entered into with abuse survivors.

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MCALLEN (TX)
KVEO TV

June 3, 2019

By Joanna Guzman

Dallas Police recently executing a search warrant at the Offices of the Catholic Diocese of Dallas, after accusations of sex abuse by priests involving minors spark cover-ups by church officials of the alleged abuse.

Local 23 News spoke to Bishop Daniel Flores about the church’s effort to remain transparent with the local community, after the diocese released the names of accused clergy members earlier this year.

“Well we constantly have a board that reviews any complaint received. We have a call-in number that is 24 hours, and we have a special victim’s assistant who talks to people. It’s a constant sort of review of any complaint whether it’s credible or not credible that come in and then following up with them. Then we have an independent review board that goes over any of those complaints. They’re the ones who look at that, they’re experts in the field.”

According to Bishop Flores, none of the clergymen revealed earlier this year is in active ministry in the Diocese of Brownsville.

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DES MOINES (IA)
Iowa Catholic Conference

June 3, 2019

By Tom Chapman

The Catholic bishops of Iowa are pledging cooperation with the Iowa Attorney General’s request for information to be voluntarily provided regarding clergy sexual abuse. Please see below for the full text of the statement:

“Last week the Iowa Attorney General asked the state’s four Catholic dioceses to submit, by Aug. 1, 2019, documents related to clergy sexual abuse so that his office can provide a credible third-party review of the response made to reports.

Each diocese, in the interest of transparency and accountability, plans to comply with the Attorney General’s request. In fact, most of the information requested is already a matter of public record. Also, the efforts of each diocese to protect minors from clergy sexual abuse have for many years now been subject to an annual credible third-party review.

Our compliance is inspired by the teachings of Jesus and his Catholic Church: that it is right and good to respond to the sin and crime of clergy sexual abuse with sorrow, repentance, amendment of life, and efforts to repair the harm done.

In this regard, if there have been failures in the past, it is not for lack of trying. And after discovering when and where our efforts have fallen short, we will try again; there is no perfection this side of heaven.

It is our hope that the Attorney General will use the resources of his office to protect minors from the scourge of sexual abuse wherever it occurs, and not limit his focus just on the Catholic Church.”

The Catholic bishops of Iowa are Archbishop Michael Jackels of Dubuque; Bishop R. Walker Nickless of Sioux City; Bishop Richard Pates of Des Moines, and Bishop Thomas Zinkula of Davenport.

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ROCHESTER (NY)
Catholic Courier

June 3, 2019

By Mike Latona

For more than a quarter-century, an advisory group in the Diocese of Rochester has played a crucial role in addressing cases of alleged child sexual abuse by clergy.

The Diocesan Review Board, a confidential consultative panel, provides guidance and advice to Bishop Salvatore R. Matano in assessing sexual-abuse allegations and determining whether accused people are suitable to continue in ministry. The board also assists in updating diocesan polices related to handling and preventing sexual abuse.

The board was established by Bishop Emeritus Matthew H. Clark in 1993, nine years before the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops’ Charter for the Protection of Children and Young People made such boards mandatory for all dioceses and eparchies nationwide.

In keeping with provisions of the bishops’ 2002 charter, the current review board primarily comprises laypeople who are not employed by the diocese. These volunteer members have experience and expertise in such areas as law enforcement, child-protective services and the practices of law, psychiatry and psychology. Two priests also sit on the board.

Members of the current Diocesan Review Board are Douglas Nordquist, retired Town of Ogden police chief; James VanBrederode, current Town of Gates police chief; John McIntyre, psychiatry professor at the University of Rochester Medical Center; Robert Napier, a criminal defense lawyer; Teresa Pare, an attorney specializing in family law; Margaret Joynt, a retired child-advocacy lawyer; Jeff Munson, a clinical social worker who works with men who were sexually abused as youths; Father Daniel Condon, diocesan chancellor; and Father Kevin McKenna, rector of Sacred Heart Cathedral and diocesan chancellor from 1991-2001. Assisting the board are attorney Philip Spellane along with Deborah Housel, diocesan victim assistance coordinator.

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ROCHESTER (NY)
Democrat and Chronicle

June 3, 2019

By Maureen Maas-Feary

I didn’t go to Catholic school, though I grew up Catholic and wished I could have attended a special school and worn plaid jumpers.

Our church was the center of our small town. Attending Mass every Sunday provided a secure sense of belonging. Later, I experienced predictable teenage rebellions, complaining about going to church and rejecting religion totally.

In my mid-20s, I started needing the church. I had a joyful wedding at the same church where my parents and older sister were married. That day marked our family’s last huge family occasion. We lost my great aunts first, and then my mom, whose time came way too early. I promised her as she died that I’d have kids and bring them up Catholic. I did my best, prodding my daughters through the same rituals I’d grown up with. They even enrolled in a Catholic high school, my dream realized vicariously.

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WASHINGTON (DC)
National Catholic Register

June 3, 2019

Joan Frawley Desmond

Celebrating his 60th anniversary as a priest with fellow jubilarians in the Archdiocese of Washington, D.C., then-Cardinal Theodore McCarrick received a standing ovation after he affirmed the need for priestly holiness during a May 2018 banquet address, with his successor, Cardinal Donald Wuerl, in attendance.

Yet, by then, both U.S. prelates knew McCarrick was under investigation, following an allegation that he had sexually abused a minor more than 45 years earlier, when he was a priest in New York.

Within five weeks of the jubilee celebrations, Cardinal Timothy Dolan of New York announced that the allegation against McCarrick was “credible and substantiated,” and he was suspended from public ministry.

A second disclosure, issued on the same day by Cardinal Joseph Tobin of Newark, New Jersey, divulged secrets that had long been rumored but never publicly confirmed by Church authorities: “This Archdiocese and the Diocese of Metuchen received three allegations of sexual misconduct with adults decades ago; two of these allegations resulted in settlements.”

A year after the revelations left Catholics stunned and angry, Archbishop Wilton Gregory has succeeded Cardinal Wuerl as the archbishop of Washington, multiple seminaries are under investigation, and the Vatican has issued norms that punish bishops who engaged in sexual misconduct or abuse of power. The U.S. bishops are also poised to approve reforms that will make bishops more accountable.

But Catholics still have not received a formal accounting that explains how McCarrick was able to rise to the highest levels of the Church and communicates which Church officials knew about his harassment of seminarians but said nothing.

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SAGINAW (MI)
Saginaw News

June 3, 2019

By Cole Waterman

When police executed search warrants at three Catholic Diocese of Saginaw properties last year during an investigation into claims of sexual abuse of minors, documents show they seized nearly 60 items of evidence.

Among them, located in the bottom drawer of a filing cabinet at diocese headquarters, was a file labeled “victim list.”

That information is contained in search warrant paperwork detailing what police seized during the March 2018 raid. The paperwork was recently unsealed and copies were obtained by MLive and The Saginaw News.

The list of confiscated property shows investigators took 57 items during the search of three locations – former Bishop Joseph R. Cistone’s home at 32 E. Corral Drive in Saginaw Township, the Saginaw Diocese offices at 5800 Weiss St. in Saginaw Township and the rectory at Cathedral of Mary of the Assumption at 615 Hoyt St. in Saginaw.

The items included computers, flash drives, expense accounts, internal memos and boxes containing the personnel files of now-convicted Rev. Robert J. DeLand Jr., three other priests and one deacon. The police paperwork does not explain the contents of the “victim list” file seized by investigators.

The majority of evidence police seized has been turned over to the Michigan Attorney General’s Office, which is currently investigating all seven Catholic dioceses in the state on sex-abuse claims dating to the 1950s.

As part of that investigation, law enforcement in October executed search warrants on each diocese in Saginaw, Detroit, Marquette, Lansing, Kalamazoo, Gaylord, and Grand Rapids.

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WASHINGTON (DC)
Washington Post

June 3, 2019

By Sarah Stankorb

During the fall of 2017, along with the rest of the country, Jules Woodson watched the Me Too movement play out in the media. As women came forward to expose the predatory behavior they’d survived, the Colorado Springs-based flight attendant reflected on a night in 1998, when Andy Savage, the youth pastor at her local church in her hometown of The Woodlands, Tex., offered her a ride home. At some point, Woodson says, Savage passed the turn to her home and drove down a dirt road, where he reached a dead end and switched off the headlights. He unzipped his jeans and asked Woodson, then 17, to perform oral sex. A few minutes later, she says, Savage jumped from the truck, fell to his knees and told Woodson she must take what happened to the grave.

The next day, terrified and traumatized, Woodson told the church’s assistant pastor what happened; she says he asked if she’d “participated.” While Savage continued as youth pastor — even leading a True Love Waits event encouraging youth to abstain from all physical contact, not just from sex — Woodson sank into shame and a deep depression. Although she retained her faith, she eventually left the church.

Twenty years later, Woodson found Savage’s email and sent him a note with the subject line: “Do you remember?” She asked if he recalled the night he was supposed to drive her home — “and instead drove me to a deserted back road and sexually assaulted me?” She signed off with “#metoo.”

When Woodson Googled his name, along with “sex abuse in church” and “youth pastor sex abuse,” she found a blog dedicated to Christian survivor stories called the Wartburg Watch; there, she read a post about an alleged abuse coverup at a church affiliated with Savage’s current church. About a month later, Woodson submitted her own first-person account about her abuse to the Wartburg Watch and a similar Christian survivor blog called Watch Keep. When the blogs simultaneously published her story, Woodson figured that maybe a hundred people would read it — but by that afternoon, the posts had spread enough that Savage responded with a statement. On the website of the Highpoint Church in Memphis — where he worked at the time — Savage described a regretful “sexual incident with a female high school senior” 20 years prior. For his mea culpa at church that Sunday, Savage’s congregation gave him a standing ovation. Within days, Savage responded to Woodson’s email, saying, in part: “I am genuinely sorry for the pain this has caused you and I ask for your forgiveness.”

Woodson soon found herself at the center of a media storm. The hashtag #JusticeForJules bubbled up on Twitter. On a CNN commentator’s radio show, Savage described the incident as an “organic sexual moment.” The New York Times ran a news story the next week and, two months later, a video piece in which Woodson detailed her story. Eleven days after the video came out, Savage resigned from Highpoint Church, acknowledging that his “relationship” with Woodson was “not only immoral, but meets the definition of abuse of power.” The same day, Savage emailed Woodson to again apologize and to say his initial in-church statement and the church’s response were “defensive and self-serving.” (Savage did not respond to my requests for comment.)

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NEW YORK (NY)
Daily Beast

June 3, 2019

By Kelly Weill

Grand Marais is a quiet Minnesota town on the Lake Superior coast. Seth Jeffs is the brother of notorious cult leader Warren Jeffs, and the leader of his own secretive sect. The only thing separating them is a dispute over local wetlands.

Seth Jeffs was a prominent figure in the Fundamentalist Church of the Latter Day Saints, a polygamist sex cult that married off underage girls to adult men. After leader Warren Jeffs was sentenced to life in prison for crimes including raping his 12-year-old “wife,” Seth Jeffs and other FLDS members flitted from state to state establishing new religious compounds and dodging legal action. Now Seth Jeffs is build a new compound in Grand Marais, all while facing a lawsuit from a woman who says he and the FLDS subjected her to ritual sex abuse at 8 years old.

Right now, Grand Marais’ best hope to stop Jeffs is a regulation about construction in the area’s wetlands.

On May 18, approximately 100 Grand Marais residents, nearly a tenth of the town, gathered for a community meeting about their new neighbors. In December, Jeffs secured a permit to build a 5,760-square-foot structure on 40 acres of local land. (Jeffs was unreachable for comment.)

“We wouldn’t be able to tell if anything is going on there,” one local worried during the meeting, according to KARE 11.

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CINCINNATI (OH)
WCPO TV

June 3, 2019

By Paula Christian

A Franklin man accused of driving a church bus into poor neighborhoods in order to meet and sexually victimize young boys faces a jury in U.S. District Court in Cincinnati on Monday.

Jory Leedy, 49, faces three charges of taking boys as young as 9 years old on overnight trips as far away as Florida and Canada, and as close as Kings Island and Crossroads Church, in order to engage in sexual abuse. He faces a possible life sentence if convicted.

The trial before U.S. District Court Judge Timothy Black will last a week. Prosecutors will likely call witnesses from Leedy’s past to allege a pattern of abuse that goes back 20 years, according to court documents.

Leedy became a registered sex offender after a 2002 conviction for gross sexual imposition in Montgomery County involving an 11-year-old boy who he had met through Big Brothers. He served two years in prison, according to court documents.

A decade later Leedy was a volunteer bus driver for Target Dayton Ministries in 2012, transporting residents of poor neighborhoods to church, when he met two brothers, ages 7 and 8, and their mother, according to court documents.

“A few weeks after meeting the family Leedy, got permission from the mother to start taking the victims to his church, Crossroads, located in Cincinnati,” according to a search warrant affidavit from Hamilton County Sheriff’s Department Detective Donald Minnich. “The boys would be picked up every Sunday morning and then dropped off later Sunday evening. Leedy also began taking the victims on trips to the zoo, Kings Island, Reds games and other places for the day.”

Leedy bought the family a car, paid part of the family’s rent, helped the boys enroll in East Dayton Christian School and took the boys on frequent trips to Florida, North Carolina, Georgia and New Jersey, according to Minnich’s affidavit.

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PRESTONSBURG (KY)
Associated Press

June 3, 2019

A Kentucky pastor is accused of trying to set up a threesome with two underage girls.

The Courier Journal reports that 26-year-old Bobby J. Blackburn, pastor of the Elevate Church in Prestonsburg, was arrested last week and charged with using an electronic communication system to get a minor to commit a sex act. WYMT said Blackburn also owns a local Giovanni’s pizza place, which plays Christian music and puts Bible verses on receipts.

An arrest citation says Blackburn’s business employs the girls, one of whom showed officers the sexual messages from Blackburn.

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DUBLIN (IRELAND)
RTE

June 3, 2019

An independent commission set up by the French Catholic Church to look at allegations of sexual abuse by clerics began its work by launching an appeal for witness statements.

France’s Catholic bishops set up the commission last year in response to a number of scandals that shook the church in the country and also worldwide.

It now has the task to shed light on sexual abuse committed by French clerics on minors or vulnerable individuals going right back to the 1950s.

“For the first time in France, an independent institution is going to launch, over the course of a year, an appeal for witness statements about sexual abuse,” said commission president Jean-Marc Sauve.

He has promised that the commission, which is made up of 22 legal professionals, doctors, historians, sociologists and theologians, would deliver its conclusions by the end of 2020.

“It is an important action to be able to give victims psychological or legal help,” he said.

The commission opens after Pope Francis in May passed a landmark new measure to oblige those who know about sex abuse in the Catholic Church to report it to their superiors, a move that could bring countless new cases to light.

Mr Sauve expects thousands of telephone calls to a special hotline, as well as messages to an email address, with victims then offered face-to-face interviews in a later stage.

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NEW YORK (NY)
Daily News

June 2, 2019

By Ella Torres

A Roman Catholic bishop who admitted to knowing about incidents of child sexual abuse but did nothing deemed LGBTQ Pride Month “harmful for children.”

Bishop Thomas Tobin of the Roman Catholic Diocese in Providence, R.I., tweeted Saturday that Catholics should not support or attend events held for Pride Month.

“They promote a culture and encourage activities that are contrary to Catholic faith and morals,” he wrote. “They are especially harmful for children.”

In 2018, Tobin acknowledged that he “became aware of incidents of sexual abuse when they were reported to the diocese” between 1992 and 1996 in Pittsburgh when he was the auxiliary bishop of that city, according to The Providence Journal.

He said, however, that reporting the allegations was not his responsibility.

“My responsibilities as Vicar General and General Secretary of the diocese did not include clergy assignments or clergy misconduct, but rather other administrative duties such as budgets, property, diocesan staff, working with consultative groups, etc. Even as an auxiliary bishop, I was not primarily responsible for clergy issues,” he said in an email statement to the Journal.

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SAULT STE. MARIE (MI)
Associated Press

June 3, 2019

By David Eggert

Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel said Republican-backed cuts to her budget would have a “devastating” impact, limiting the office’s ability to protect consumers, prosecute sexually abusive clergy and look into wrongful convictions.

The general fund reductions proposed by the Senate and House range between 10% and 15%, or $4.2 million to $5.3 million, not including sizable cuts to what are known as restricted funds. They are seen as payback for some of the Democrat’s moves since taking office in January, like reaching a legal settlement to prohibit faith-based adoption agencies that contract with the state from discriminating against LGBT couples.

“The proposed cuts would be devastating to the residents of our state,” Nessel told The Associated Press in an interview this past week at the Detroit Regional Chamber’s Mackinac Policy Conference. “It’s very short-sighted of the Legislature to think that cutting the budget of my office is in some way going to punish me personally for any of my views that I disagree with them on. The fact is it’s going to punish their constituents, and it’s going to be harmful to all our state residents.”

She listed a number of a ways that the funding reductions would hurt, and she said lawmakers may not know that for every $1 allocated to the department, it can generate $10 or more.

The consumer protection division this year has received more than $15 million in settlements that went to the state or to defrauded victims, Nessel said. Her office has intervened to scale back utility rate increases, saving customers.

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NEW YORK (NY)
The Smart Set

June 3, 2019

By James McWilliams

The reasons to be enamored of the late poet Frank Stanford are endless. Stanford, who was born in Mississippi, lived in Memphis, and settled in western Arkansas (as much as he could ever “settle”), became a poet’s poet, a writer whose prolific output never penetrated beyond the small stable of writers and critics who wildly admired him. John Berryman, Alan Dugan, Allen Ginsberg, and Gordon Lish were fans.

Given up by his biological mother at birth (in 1948), adopted by the first single woman authorized to adopt a child in Mississippi (Dorothy Gildart), and a frequent denizen of the levee camps where his later adoptive father (Albert Franklin Stanford in 1952) worked as an engineer, Stanford merged memory and fantasy to develop an iconic style that, as he published routinely throughout the 1970s, is best grasped in his defining The Battlefield Where the Moon Says I Love You. When his editor, Michael Cuddihy, first read this manuscript, he recalled, “It was endless, shot through with brilliant passages echoing Beowulf, Dante, the Troubadours, and others.” Stanford said he started writing it when he was 13.

Perhaps inevitably, though, admiration for Stanford often began with the body. His wife said his eyes were “soft to the point of bovine;” a lover called him “handsome as the sun” (before calling him the biggest liar she’d ever met); a male acquaintance noted “his boundless physical strength.” His friend and publisher Irv Broughton called him “dark and intense.” In photos, “Frankie,” as his niece, Carrie Prycock calls him, kind of smolders. People were naturally drawn to the handsome poet from Arkansas, eager to consume a man whose “hormonal literary excesses” — that’s from the editor of his works Michael Wiegers — always seemed on the verge of flash flooding the reality he transformed.

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BERGEN (NJ)
North Jersey Record

June 3, 2019

By Steve Janoski

Two well-known brothers, living what looked like ordinary lives in their respective hometowns.

One was a proud father and Denville middle school principal who filled his Twitter feed with his students’ accomplishments. The other worked for the family’s long-running South Orange construction business by day and served on a handful of Florham Park municipal boards at night.

But Paul Iantosca, of Randolph, and Mark Iantosca, of Florham Park, apparently hid a black secret that torched their ambitions: An alleged sexual preference for underage boys. Mark, 55, is now serving a seven-year sentence in state prison for sexually abusing a teenage nephew, while Paul, 52, was charged two weeks ago with attempting to sexually abuse a former student in Denville after telling police he arranged on social media to meet the 16-year-old for sex.

Valleyview Middle School principal Paul Iantosca is accused of attempting to sexually assault a former student.
Valleyview Middle School principal Paul Iantosca is accused of attempting to sexually assault a former student. (Photo: Gene Myers/NorthJersey.com)

The arrests, separated by two years, stunned the communities in which they occurred. But experts are not surprised that two men with much to lose appeared so willing to risk it.

“We look at people who are public figures, or in positions of power or in positions of respect and say, ‘Well, how could someone with these issues get to that position?'” said Michael Donahue, a Lawrenceville attorney who represents sexual assault victims. “In reality, every person is different and there are people who have some incredibly dark sides to them.”

Professionals said that in general, childhood trauma contributes heavily to such behavior later in life, but there’s no scientific way to predict who might eventually commit a sex crime against a minor.

Paul Iantosca’s recent arrest comes at a pivotal point in New Jersey’s fight to hold accountable those accused of past sexual abuse. In February, the state’s five Catholic dioceses released the names of 188 priests and deacons credibly accused of sexually abusing childrenover decades, dating back to the 1940s. Three months later, the state passed a law giving child sex abuse victims until the age of 55 to decide whether to sue their abusers — a 35-year extension from the previous statute.

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SPRINGFIELD (MA)
WWLP TV

June 3, 2019

By Jennifer Zarate

The Springfield Diocese has come out to clear the name of a former bishop named in a sexual abuse investigation.

Last September, a victim came forward about his molestation by two now deceased priests — Reverend Edward Authier and Reverend Clarence Forand.

In a newspaper article published earlier this week, the headline read that former Bishop Chistopher Weldon was not listed as ‘credibly accused,’ despite “Diocesan Board’s finding.”

In a statement to 22News, Diocesan Review Board Chairman John Hale said the board would like to clarify “inaccurate” reporting in a May 29 article in the Berkshire Eagle.

Chairman Hale’s statement reads,

“Let me be clear, the Review Board has never found that the late Bishop Christopher Weldon, deceased since 1982, engaged in improper contact with anyone. The complaint reported on in the Eagle article involved sexual misconduct involving two now deceased priests that dates back to the early 1960s with the individual recalling it within the last few years and bringing the complaint to the Review Board in 2018.”

Mark Dupont of Catholic Communications responded, “There was never a claim from this victim of Bishop Welson sexually abusing him. As a matter of fact, the victim in this case specifically said otherwise. What the review board did find was the victim had made credible allegations against two deceased priests of the Diocese.”

Dupont told 22News, the process to determine who is named on the diocese’s online list of “credibly accused clergy” is currently under review. For example, naming those who are accused of sexually abusing a child after they are dead.

“With allegations that come 30, 40, 50 years after the fact we don’t list that clergy member’s name on the list with the understanding that they never had the opportunity to defend their good name,” Dupont explained, saying that’s why former Priest Authier was not listed as “credibly accused.”

Dupont told 22News, it was the victim who alleged that Bishop Weldon had actual knowledge of the abuse or that he should have known because he was present at a gathering where some of the abuse took place.

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AUKLAND (NEW ZEALAND)
One News Now

June 1, 2019

Chris Ledingham can still remember the first time he drove past an Auckland church where he was sexually abused as a seven-year-old Catholic schoolboy decades earlier.

“Quite a few years ago before any of this stuff came out, my younger brother wanted some help buying some carpets to take back to Taranaki,” Chris said.

“And he drove me down to Onehunga – I’d said I’d give him a hand – and we passed that presbytery, and it was like I was being stabbed in the chest with a brick with a knife on it. It really affected me.”

Yesterday, the 66-year-old returned to Our Lady of the Assumption Church for only the second time, to help launch his and his two brothers’ book telling the story of their abuse.

At least his older brother Mike will be there, too.

What Chris didn’t know for decades was that Mike had been abused too, by the same priest, and that Mike found out in the 1980s that the same thing had happened to their younger brother Gerry, all of it in the 1950s and 60s.

“It’s hard to talk about now, but we’ve got the words for it now – back then we didn’t even have the words,” Chris said.

“What do you call it? I didn’t know what the hell was going on.”

Mike said: “We didn’t know that people rooted kids, you know – I don’t know if you can put that on the radio.”

The previously-published Mike is the author of the book The Catholic Boys, helped by his sister Mary Ledingham, and put out by Rotorua’s boutique BMS Books.

The boys’ tormentor, the late Father Frank Green, used gymnastics as a way to get close to children; the New Zealand Herald has reported he was also chair of the New Zealand Gymnastic Council for several years.

Green died in the 1990s, before being held to account.

Their sister Mary Ledingham, one of the writers of the book, still hurts for her brothers.

“As a sister, I and their two other sisters and two other brothers are also angry that we did not protect them and to this day we still feel they have been cheated of their lives by those who should have known better,” she wrote.

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STONEY CREEK (ONTARIO)
Dundas Star News

June 1, 2019

Dundas resident Peter Rosser has published his first book.

Rosser, who spent 37 years in youth ministry with the Catholic Youth Organization, has written “Crimes Against Children,” which he describes as a vision of God as the ultimate conveyor of restorative justice in a thought-provoking drama.

Subtitled “Discord in the After-Life: A Bishop and an Atheist Deny Their Culpability for Abuse and War,” Rosser uses his two central characters as vehicles of his own protests against the Catholic Church’s ongoing sexual abuse scandal and the collateralization of civilians, especially children, in today’s regional wars.

A book launch party is planned for June 26, 1-3 p.m., at Dundas Museum and Archives, 139 Park St. W., Dundas. RSVP to sarahrosser@hotmail.com.

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Open Tabernacle blog

June 1, 2019

By Betty Clermont

In February 2017, posters appeared around Rome denouncing Pope Francis’ “decapitation” of the Knights of Malta. At the heart of the pope’s sacking of the Grand Master is a multi-million dollar donation. WikiLeaks provided critical information about what Vatican officials knew and when they know it.

Of course, the sexual torture of hundreds of thousands of children is the Catholic Church’s worst scandal and, of all pontiffs, Pope Francis is the worst offender from the very first days of his pontificate when he appointed already well-known pedophile-priest-protectors Cardinals George Pell and Francisco Javier Errazuriz to his Council of Cardinals, to his leaving Archbishop Joseph Wesolowski and Fr. Nicola Corradi free men even after being informed of their crimes, to his present protection of Cardinals George Pell, Luis Ladaria Ferrer, Phillipe Barbarin and Ricardo Ezzati and most recently, his “toothless,” PR mandate that priests and nuns report clerical sex abuse to bishops and not the police.

However, the January 2019 release by Wikileaks of confidential documents regarding the Sovereign Order of Malta remind us that Pope Francis is not the moral authority he claims to be in finances either.

The first report that money might be the underlying issue in the pope’s dismissal of Grand Master Fra Matthew Festing, who was “elected for life,” was published on Jan. 7, 2017 by the well-connected Vatican reporter, Edward Pentin writing for the National Catholic Register. He stated that those opposed to Festing and favored by the Pope Francis “have been involved with a very large bequest to the order made by a benefactor resident in France, worth at least 120 million Swiss Francs ($118 million).”

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CARDIFF (WALES)
WalesOnLine.com

June 1, 2019

By Liz Day

“Depravity” is a word that has been used by many of the judges dealing with sexual predators for their horrendous crimes.

Figures released last year suggested the number of registered sex offenders living in Wales was rising rapidly.

The statistics from the Ministry of Justice, Prison and Probation Service showed there were just over 4,700 registered sex offenders living in Wales at the end of March, 2018.

That represents an increase of 60% compared to eight years ago and is the equivalent of one sex offender for every 844 people aged 10 and over.

Here are some of the most shocking sexual offence cases seen in Wales:

Lostprophets singer Ian Watkins was jailed for 29 years for sexually abusing children.

He pleaded guilty in November 2013 to 13 counts of sex abuse – including the attempted rape of a baby.

A judge told him he had “plumbed new depths of depravity”, before jailing him.

He was also given an extended licence of six years, meaning a total sentence of 35 years.

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NEW YORK (NY)
Huffington Post

June 1, 2019

By Mary Papenfuss

Rhode Island Bishop Thomas Tobin admonished Catholics in an inflammatory tweet on Saturday not to support or attend any LGBTQ Pride Month commemorations in June, warning that such events promote a “culture” and “activities” that are “especially harmful for children.”

Joe Lazzerini, president of Rhode Island Pride, said in a statement to The Providence Journal that his organization “respectfully calls on Bishop Tobin to do some self-reflection, as the majority of Catholic Rhode Islanders in this state reject the idea that to be Catholic is to be complicit to intolerance, bigotry, and fear.” He pointed out that many Catholics are members of or strongly support the pride community.

Pride Month is particularly significant this year because it marks the 50th anniversary of the Stonewall Riots in Manhattan, which fueled the gay — and soon LGBTQ — rights movement.

Tobin’s particularly harsh warning stunned many, given the many revelations in recent years of the Catholic Church’s history of child sexual abuse. The U.S. Catholic Church revealed Friday that allegations of child sex abuse by clerics more than doubled to 1,455 in its latest 12-month reporting period, and that spending on victim compensation and child protection efforts topped $300 million.

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BOSTON (MA)
Suffolk Journal

June 1, 2019

By Haley Clegg

One of America’s most distinguished journalists came to Suffolk University to be presented with the Ford Hall Forum’s 2019 First Amendment Award. Martin, or ‘Marty,’ Baron was the former editor of the Boston Globe from 2001 to 2012, and is the current executive editor of the Washington Post.

“The Forum honors you for your powerful, dogged, determined and fearless defense of the First Amendment, one of the greatest constitutional rights in our country,” said Susan Spurlock, the Executive Director of the Form Hall Forum, as she presented Baron with the award.

Following the presentation, Baron sat down for a discussion about journalism with NPR’s Meghna Chakrabarti.

Baron said his passion for journalism began in his childhood home in Tampa, Florida. His parents were both immigrants, which fueled an interest in what was happening both in this country and around the world. Their media habits included reading the local newspaper, receiving their weekly Time Magazine and watching network and local news channels every evening.

Newsrooms under Baron have won a plethora of awards, including 16 Pulitzer Prizes. Six of those were earned while he was the executive editor of the Boston Globe. The Globe was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Public Service in 2003 for its investigation into clergy sex abuse in the Catholic Church.

“The day before I was to start, on that Sunday there was a column by Eileen McNamara, a regular columnist at the Globe and she talked about the case of a particular priest John Geoghan who had been accused of abusing as many as 80 kids, and at the end of the column she pointed out that the lawyer for the plaintiffs had alleged that the Cardinal himself, Cardinal Law, was aware of this abuse and yet re-assigned this particular priest from parish to parish,” said Baron in an interview with The Suffolk Journal.

“At the end of the column she said, ‘the truth may never be known,’ which is like chum to journalists. If you say the truth may never be known, well the truth should be known and we should be going after it,” said Baron.

The story of the Globe’s Spotlight team investigation into the Catholic Church was later portrayed in the Academy Award-winning film “Spotlight.” Baron has seen the film and believes it gave great insight into how journalism is actually practiced.

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SAN FRANCISCO (CA)
KQED Radio

June 1, 2019

By Polly Stryker

An Oakland-based Catholic order for the first time on Friday released its own list of clergy with credible accusations of child sex abuse.

The Franciscans of the Province of St. Barbara’s list contains 50 names involving 122 victims. Some of the accused have been previously reported by advocates or are included in court documents, but at least one has never been reported.

The majority of the abuse occurred between the 1960s and 1980s. Father David Gaa, the order’s leader, said of the 50 names on the list, 27 men have died and 19 have left the Franciscans. Some of those may have died, but Gaa says he does not track brothers who leave the order.

Of the four living credibly accused priests, three are living in California, including Dennis Duffy, whose abuse Gaa says has never been reported until now. Gaa says Duffy, Stephen Kain and Josef Prochnow are living in an elder care facility in California. Gerald Chumik is in a similar facility in Missouri.

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CHICAGO (IL)
Chicago Tribune

June 1, 2019

Meredith Colias-Pete

Months after the Rev. Stephen Muth retired at St. Mary Byzantine Catholic Church in Whiting, superiors put him on administrative leave, removing him from the priesthood.

Church leaders had concluded Muth, 69, received a “recent credible accusation of sexual misconduct involving a vulnerable adult (considered a minor under canon law),” according to a statement dated Oct. 22.

The priest denied the allegation to the Byzantine Catholic Eparchy of Parma, an Eastern rite sect based in Ohio that has churches in several Midwestern states. It is affiliated with the Roman Catholic Church. Muth worked for both after he was ordained.

“Though Father Stephen Muth denies the accusation, Bishop Milan Lach, SJ, having heard from the priest, the Review Board, and the Promoter of Justice, has found the accusation to be credible,” according to the statement.

“A finding that the accusation is credible is not an accusation of guilt,” the church’s statement read. “While on administrative leave, Father Stephen Muth is unable to function in any capacity as a priest anywhere.”

Lach was installed as bishop in June 2018.

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LONDON (ENGLAND)
The Independent

June 1, 2019

By Jacob Stolworthy

A documentary showing secret camera footage of sex abuse victims confronting the priests who molested them has sparked outrage against the Catholic Church in Poland.

Tell No One features several scenes of priests confessing to the abuse on tape and has since inspired the country to move ahead with plans to double jail terms for paedophiles.

As a consequence, those convicted could now face up to 30 years or life imprisonment.

The documentary, which is available to watch on YouTube, has been viewed more than 21 million times. It’s been hailed as “difficult” and “essential” viewing.

One harrowing scene sees a former priest seemingly attempting to justify his abusive behaviour by saying: “If there is no orgasm, there is no sin.”

The National Public Prosecutor’s Office in Poland has confirmed it’s pulled together a team of prosecutors. They will now analyse the cases presented in the documentary.

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BUFFALO (NY)
Buffalo News

June 1, 2019

By Jay Tokasz

The clergy sex abuse scandal is costing the Catholic Diocese of Buffalo more than the $17.5 million paid to childhood victims of abuse through a special compensation program.

Giving at area Catholic parishes is down since last August and is likely to result in a budget shortfall at the diocese and cuts to ministries and services, according to the Rev. Peter J. Karalus, the diocese’s chief operating officer.

“The abuse scandal has had consequences on the financial condition of the diocese beyond the cost of settling claims,” said Karalus, vicar general and moderator of the curia, in a preface to the diocese’s 2018 financial report.

Karalus also warned of “significant financial challenges” facing the diocese, including clergy abuse lawsuits allowed under the Child Victims Act.

A spokeswoman for the diocese said Friday it was too soon for the diocese to discuss bankruptcy protection.

“It is impossible to determine the impact of the cases filed under the CVA until we actually review the filings,” Kathy Spangler, the spokeswoman, said in an email response to several questions from The Buffalo News. “A number of other dioceses have sought the protection of the bankruptcy statutes but it is too early for us to make that determination.”

Under the Child Victims Act, a one-year window opens Aug. 14 for childhood victims of alleged abuse to file lawsuits that previously were barred by time limitations.

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WASHINGTON (DC)
Catholic News Service

June 1, 2019

By Cindy Wooden

Most Catholics have never heard of a “metropolitan archbishop,” even if their archbishop is one.

Designating an archdiocese as a “metropolitan see” is part of an organizational model, borrowed from the Romans, that goes back to the early days of Christianity, said Bishop Juan Ignacio Arrieta, secretary of the Pontifical Council for Legislative Texts.

The term “metropolitan” comes from the Greek words for “mother city,” and, Arrieta said, “as evangelization extended into a certain area,” the original diocese – the “mother” diocese – “became bound to the new dioceses that arose around it.”

Pope Francis’s universal law on dealing with sexual abuse allegations, Vos estis lux mundi (“You are the light of the world”) was released in early May and gives a prominent, investigative role to metropolitan bishops when one of the bishops in his province is accused of sexual abuse, possessing child pornography or covering up an abuse allegation.

At their June meeting, members of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops are scheduled to discuss specifics for implementing a “metropolitan model” of holding bishops accountable.

Francis’s new rules make such a model possible, Arrieta said, because the authority exercised by a metropolitan archbishop had faded over the centuries and had become mostly a vague, generic role of “keeping watch” over the suffragan dioceses surrounding his own.

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Patheos blog

June 1, 2019

By David Gdd

A 71-year-old pastor from Pennsylvania was just charged with multiple child exploitation offenses, including possession of child pornography, and he faces up to 170 years in prison if he’s convicted.

Jerry Zweitzig, the former pastor of Horsham Bible Church in Horsham, was charged with enticing a minor to engage in illicit sexual conduct and possession of child pornography. He faces a minimum term of 15 years if convicted, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of California.

“Child exploitation is a pervasive problem – made more so by the accessibility of the internet and digital media – that demands an aggressive response,” said U.S. Attorney McSwain. “The allegations in this case are particularly disturbing due to the defendant’s history as a spiritual leader in a position of community trust. We stand ready with our federal and local partners to identify and prosecute those who would prey upon minor children.”

McSwain is right. These types of cases are especially interesting because of the nature of religion, and the support communities have for it. People usually trust religious leaders implicitly, and that trust is often abused by predator clergymen.

It’s nice to know that, in this case, the alleged offender has been taken down. It’s actually being taken seriously, according to the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s (ICE) Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) in Philadelphia.

“Crimes against children are disgraceful and unacceptable,” said Marlon V. Miller, special agent in charge of HSI Philadelphia. “HSI will continue working with our partners to aggressively investigate cases in which child predators use the internet to further exploit children within our community, and around the world.”

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

May 31, 2019

America’s bishops have put out today yet another self-report on the church’s on-going abuse and cover up crisis. At this point, no one should trust internal church figures on this horror.

We do agree with Catholic officials on one point: abuse reports are increasing. Bishops claim that this is because a handful of dioceses are announcing victim pay out programs. We believe, however, that the reasons are more complex than one single cause.

Victims are coming forward now because of real progress by secular authorities, as lawmakers are increasingly getting rid of archaic, predator-friendly laws and at least 19 attorneys general have launched investigations. This progress has many survivors feeling hopeful.

We also believe that ongoing revelations about institutional sexual abuse cases – from the #MeToo movement in Hollywood to recent scandals at major universities like Michigan State and Ohio State – are leading more people to become informed about the realities of sexual violence, creating a more welcoming atmosphere for survivors of all kinds to come forward.

At the same time though, we also believe that victims are also speaking up because they’re dismayed by continuing recklessness and cover ups by church officials. Many are feeling disgusted.

Catholic officials continue to disingenuously stress that the offenses themselves happened years ago. But that is no indication that there is less abuse these days, it is just a reflection of a simple reality: very few have the maturity, strength and courage to promptly report being victimized by a trusted adult. Reaching that point takes decades. There always has been and will be many years between when a child is sexually violated and when they come forward later in life.

Everyone acknowledges that false child sex abuse reports are very, very rare, so we are alarmed that church officials have found only three of 26 new allegations involving current children “substantiated.” Sadly, that is eve

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NEW YORK (NY)
First Things

May 31, 2019

Phil Lawler

It is no small thing to call the pope a liar. Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò has done just that, in straightforward language. “What the Pope said about not knowing anything [about Theodore McCarrick’s misconduct] is a lie,” he told LifeSite News.

On the other hand, it is no small thing to claim that an archbishop, a veteran member of the Vatican diplomatic corps, had lied about the pope as part of a political conspiracy to undermine his authority. Such charges have been leveled against Viganò by the pope’s most stalwart public defenders and perhaps—depending on how one interprets some unusually convoluted papal utterances—by the pontiff himself.

Someone is not being forthright here. The unedifying charges and countercharges have aggravated a scandal that already plagues Catholicism, and the faithful have waited far too long for a restoration of confidence that Church leaders are telling the truth.

The conflict between Francis and Viganò became a public matter last summer, when the former papal envoy in Washington reported that the pope had been informed of, and decided to rescind, disciplinary restrictions placed on McCarrick by Pope Benedict XVI. Viganò’s testimony was vigorously contested by the pope’s allies, who said that McCarrick’s ministry had not been restricted, and/or that Francis had not been informed of the restrictions. Francis himself had refused public comment on the matter, until this week.

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LANSING (MI)
Herald Paladium

May 31, 2019

By Julie Swidwa

A Catholic priest from India has been charged with raping a then 15-year-old parishioner when he was serving as a visiting priest in Benton Harbor more than 40 years ago.

According to the Michigan Attorney General’s Office, the girl was a volunteer administrative assistant in the rectory at what was then St. John the Evangelist parish on Columbus Avenue, when the visiting priest allegedly began molesting her.

Fr. Jacob Vellian, 84, is charged with two counts of rape and faces any number of years, up to life in prison, if convicted. He is in Kerala, India, and will be extradited to Michigan to face charges in Berrien County Trial Court, according to the felony complaint.

Vellian is one of five priests who have been charged with a total of 21 counts of criminal sexual conduct following a long investigation by law enforcement from several counties in Michigan. The charges were announced last week by Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel at a news conference in Lansing.

Vellian served as a visiting priest at St. John’s in 1973 and 1974. The church is overseen by the Catholic Diocese of Kalamazoo.

According to charging documents obtained this week from the attorney general’s office, about a month after a 15-year-old female parishioner began volunteering at the rectory, Vellian allegedly began to compliment her, provide gifts, and rub her neck and shoulders.

The girl told police the conduct escalated, and on one occasion, she said he touched her breasts and told her he was praying for her and “trying to fill (her) soul with the Holy Spirit.” The molestation continued and escalated into rape, the complaint alleges.

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MELBOURNE (AUSTRALIA)
The New Daily

May 31, 2019

Victims of sexual abuse can never appeal their sentence. They have to live with the results of abuse for the rest of their lives.

Meanwhile the Catholic Church, with tens of billions of dollars in Australian assets, and tens if not hundreds of millions of dollars in annual Australian tax breaks, still has not fairly compensated victims.

This week convicted child abuser and former head of one of the largest and most wealthy banks in the world, the Vatican Bank, George Pell will appeal his sentence.

Here is a thought: In this week of Pell’s appeal, why not redirect those tax breaks to victims?

Pell has every right to be heard and justice must ensure that his conviction for abusing the two children is fair. Love or hate Pell, justice demands that he not serve time in this case for any other issue of with which he stands accused, but was not before the courts in this case.

This case is not about the larger sins of the Catholic Church, which for years turned its backs on victims and allowed abusing priests to continue their vile crimes.

This case is not about the 7 percent of clergy who, according to the Child Abuse Inquiry, engaged in sexual abuse.

This case is not about the appalling ‘Melbourne Response’ Pell set up which has seen victims under Pell’s control get about 30 percent less than victims in the rest of the country. Even then, the national average was a pitiful $49,000 under the ‘Towards Healing’ program.

This case is not about the $30 billion in assets that the Church has been estimated to own throughout the country.

This case is not about the tens or hundreds of millions of dollars the Church gets in tax breaks on land tax, shops, businesses and other activities.

This case is not about the $39 million that the Melbourne archdiocese paid for its new headquarters, right when it said paying more compensation would threaten the Church’s social programs. I didn’t realise ‘social program’ was a euphemism for ‘buying our new headquarters’.

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NEW YORK (NY)
Commonweal

May 31, 2019

By Austen Ivereigh

Because he has a weak heart and must build strength in his chest muscles, the seventy-seven-year-old Australian cardinal asks for a broom he can push around the jail’s exercise yard each day. The remaining twenty-three hours of his solitary confinement in Melbourne Assessment Prison George Pell reads and writes, when not sleeping and praying. He is not allowed to say Mass.

He tells some that his prison sentence is a retreat; to others he describes it as a martyrdom. Never exactly the contemplative sort—as archbishop of Melbourne, Pell used to tell his priests he liked to get his prayers over and done with in the morning, to leave more time for the day—the second rings more true, especially for his supporters. They say that Pell, who tells it how it is, has always been a lightning rod, and is now a scapegoat, the victim of a monstrous injustice.

The former Vatican finance chief will next week learn whether he is to serve the remainder of a non-parole minimum sentence of three years and eight months for the rape of two choirboys in Melbourne Cathedral in 1996. These are charges that he has always vigorously denied and that many find frankly incredible. They strained the credulity of the first jury at his trial last year, which was reliably rumored to be deadlocked ten to two in his favor.

But then a second jury last December went unanimously the other way, shocking a respected Jesuit human-rights lawyer who sat in on the hearing. Because he is so obviously not part of “Team Pell,” the article Fr. Frank Brennan, SJ, later wrote has colored many people’s view of the trial. His amazement that the jury could have convicted on the basis of a single complainant’s “improbable if not impossible” evidence has persuaded many that a major injustice has been committed.

That was a common view among dozens of knowledgeable Catholics I spoke with during a week of talks and lectures in Sydney and Melbourne in March. Among them was Fr. Brennan. When we shared a panel at Melbourne’s Newman College he had just emerged from his spiritual exercises to learn that, because of his article on Pell’s conviction, the city’s university had decided not to award him an honorary doctorate in divinity.

But I also met Catholics who took a different view. They weren’t concerned so much with the details of the case as with the wider principle: Hadn’t the church learned, after all this time, that victims are almost always telling the truth, that abusers brazenly lie? Some drew my attention to a cogent riposte to Brennan by a Dominican friar in Melbourne who warned against assuming that the jury had got it wrong.

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MACKINAC ISLAND (MI)
Associated Press

June 1, 2019

Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel says Republican-backed cuts to her budget would have a “devastating” impact, limiting the office’s ability to protect consumers, prosecute sexually abusive clergy and look into wrongful convictions.

The general fund reductions proposed by the Senate and House range between 10% and 15%. They are seen as payback for some of the Democrat’s moves since taking office in January, like reaching a legal settlement to prohibit faith-based adoption agencies that contract with the state from discriminating against LGBT couples.

Nessel tells The Associated Press that the proposed cuts are “short-sighted” and would hurt residents. She also is concerned that the Legislature has not allocated money to an investigation of clergy abuse.

Budget work is expected to heat up this month.

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WASHINGTON (DC)
Religion News Service

May 31, 2019

By Jack Jenkins

Breaking with a long tradition of clerical privilege, California is edging toward requiring priests and other church employees to inform authorities if they learn of a case of child sex abuse during the sacrament of confession.

On Thursday (May 31), the California State Senate passed a bill that would require priests to report child abuse if they learn about it while hearing the confession of a fellow priest or colleague. The bill — which passed overwhelmingly with a 30-4 vote, with 4 not voting at all — was amended from its original version, which would have required a priest to report abuse they learn about in any confession they hear, not just those of their fellow clerics and coworkers.

But even the altered version of the bill is sparking outrage among Catholic leaders who see it as forcing priests and other clergy either to comply with the law and violate the sacramental seal of confession or defy authorities and risk arrest.

The California Catholic Conference decried the bill in a statement, describing it as an “attack on the sanctity of the confessional” and noting that under church law, any priest who violates the seal of confession is automatically excommunicated.

In a separate interview with Religion News Service, a spokesperson for the conference argued that the narrowing of the bill only sharpens opponents’ argument that it violates religious freedom provisions and is discriminatory.

“The more you narrow it down, the more unconstitutional it gets,” the spokesperson said.

The spokesperson added that, while Catholic officials won’t prepare any legal challenges before the bill passes in California’s lower chamber, they wouldn’t rule out potential future lawsuits.

“I do find it quite shocking, because it is a blatant violation of the First Amendment,” San Francisco Archbishop Salvatore Cordileone told Relevant Radio. “The whole point of the First Amendment, and one of the foundational principles of this country, was to keep the government out of the church. Here is… the government intruding into the church’s affairs.”

Bishop Michael Barber of the Diocese of Oakland, Calif., also forbade any priests in his region from obeying the bill, which was sponsored by State Senator Jerry Hill, if it becomes law.

“(Y)our right to confess to God and have your sins forgiven in total privacy must be protected,” Barber wrote in a letter released on Tuesday.

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SACRAMENTO (CA)
ABC 10 News

May 27, 2019

By Lilia Luciano

In California, victims of childhood sexual abuse have until they are 26 years old to file lawsuit damages, a statute of limitations that Assemblywoman Lorena González hopes to extend until those victims are 40 years old.

Introduced by González, AB 218 seeks to significantly extend the statute of limitations for victims of childhood sexual abuse.

The bill is exactly the same as the one González (D-San Diego) introduced last year, which passed, but was killed when vetoed by Gov. Jerry Brown. In 2013 Brown also vetoed a Senate bill that sought to eliminate the statute of limitation altogether.

With a new Governor in the state, supporters of AB 218 are hopeful that it will pass and be signed into law by Gov. Gavin Newsom.

The timing of the bill’s passing could coincide with the recent announcement by the Sacramento Catholic Diocese that it will participate in the creation of an Independent Victim Compensation Program for survivors of sexual abuse by clergy.

The fund will be administered by the Washington D.C. based Feinberg Law Firm, which has handled similar programs in New York, Pennsylvania, and Colorado.

In the announcement, the Diocese of Sacramento stated “through their efforts, more than 1,200 victims/survivors have received compensation in New York alone.”

The Sacramento diocese released the names of 46 clergymen credibly accused of abusing 130 victims, but Joe George, the leading attorney in Sacramento representing victims of clergy abuse said about the list, “I think games were played with numbers of victims.”

He added that the Church made it seem like the “overwhelming majority of the number of victims were as a result of three or four Mexican-American and Hispanic perpetrators.”

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ROME (ITALY)
LaCroix International

May 31, 2019

By Robert Mickens

When Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò called on Pope Francis to resign last summer for allegedly covering up the sexual crimes of the former cardinal Theodore McCarrick, it was “like an earthquake for the Church.”

That’s how Monsignor Anthony Figueiredo, a former Vatican official and a longtime consultant for CBS News, described Viganò’s “testimony,” an 11-page dossier of accusations and innuendos that targeted the pope and nearly a dozen high-ranking Vatican prelates. Msgr. Figueiredo, a priest from the Archdiocese of Newark (New Jersey) who has been living in Rome since 2006, immediately defended Viganò’s credibility.

“I know him personally,” he told CBS. “I know him as a man of great integrity, honest to the core. He’s worked for three different popes, and [was] sent to a Vatican position, a diplomatic position as big as the United States, which means he’s a trusted man.

“The very bright and articulate Newark priest vouched for Viganò on Aug. 27, 2018, just one day after the former papal nuncio carefully coordinated with LifeSite News and the National Catholic Register to publish his 11 pages of accusations.

Taking Viganò’s leadNow nine months later Msgr. Figueiredo is back in the news. And how!

Following in the footsteps of his friend or acquaintance, Archbishop Viganò, the 55-year-old priest has become the latest clergyman with a public profile to blow the whistle on Church cover-up in the hierarchy.

He did so this past May 28 when he released – simultaneously through CBS and the Catholic publication, Crux – excerpts of personal correspondence with McCarrick, a man whom (you will see in a moment) he once considered a father figure and patron.

These carefully chosen excerpts reinforce claims made by Viganò and others that a number of high-ranking Church officials were aware that Benedict XVI had quietly placed restrictions on the former cardinal but they did nothing to enforce them.

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ROME (ITALY)
Crux

May 31, 2019

By Elise Harris

A troubled Peruvian lay group has received two new Vatican-appointed representatives to help oversee institutional reform as questions over the group’s identity and stability continue to hang in the air following public scandals involving high-ranking members.

Earlier this month the Vatican Congregation for Institutes of Consecrated Life and Societies of Apostolic Life named Franciscan Father Guillermo Rodríguez as delegate ad nutum Sanctae Sedis, or “at the behest of the Holy See,” to the Sodalitium Christianae Vitae (SCV) to help implement reforms, and Jesuit Father GianFranco Ghirlanda to revamp the group’s formation process.

In 2017 the SCV’s founder, Peruvian layman Luis Fernando Figari, was sanctioned by the Vatican for abuses of power, conscience and sexuality within the community.

In 2018 the Vatican congregation tapped Colombian Bishop Noel Londoño of Jerico to serve as a “commissioner” for the group, essentially taking the reins and guiding the community as they sought to implement their reform.

When the SCV held its fifth general assembly in Aparecida, Brazil in January, Londoño voiced his conviction that his role was no longer needed, and that the SCV could move forward with its own leadership guiding the reform.

During the meeting Londoño also announced that a special Vatican-appointed delegate would be named in the following months to serve as a point of reference with the Vatican to assist the SCV government in continuing to implement changes.

In their roles, Rodríguez will advise SCV leadership on key decisions while Ghirlanda will assist in the revision of the rules guiding the group’s formation process and community life, help to ensure formators are well-prepared for the task, and that new members have the support they need, and develop plans for initial and ongoing formation.

Daniel Caledron, communications representative for the SCV, told Crux that since their nomination is ad nutum Sanctae Sedis, the assignment has no timeline, and for now is “indefinite.”

However, despite the positive review from Londoño, many have voiced skepticism over the depth of the SCV’s reform, with some victims arguing that Londoño’s tenure was ineffective given the fact that he oversees a diocese in Colombia, while the SCV is headquartered in Peru, making it difficult to keep track of the SCV’s progress.

Many victims complained that during his year as commissioner, Londoño never scheduled meetings with them, including those who were former members of the organization and could have offered advice for renewal.

Victims in November 2018 met with the leadership of the Peruvian bishops’ conference and subsequently sent Pope Francis a letter, which Crux obtained, asking him to resolve the situation, saying reform efforts had been poorly handled.

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NEW ORLEANS (LA)
Times-Picayune

May 31, 2019

By Kim Chatelain

Nearly 1,500 new allegations of clerical sexual abuse in the Catholic church were brought forward over a one-year period ending June 30, 2018, a marked rise over previous years, the U.S. bishops’ conference reported Friday (May 31).

The annual report for audit year July 1, 2017 through June 30, 2018 indicates that 1,385 adults came forward with 1,455 new allegations, the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops’ Secretariat of Child and Youth Protection reported in a news release.

Based on the findings of StoneBridge Business Partners, a Rochester, New York, firm that specializes in forensic, internal and compliance audit services, the report indicated that 92 percent of the offending clergy members identified during the annual reporting period were either already dead, laicized, removed from ministry or missing. The majority of allegations concerned the period between 1960-1990, with a concentration in the 1970s, the audit found.

The report is the 16th of its kind since 2002 when the U.S. bishops’ conference approved the Charter for the Protection of Children and Young People, a formal pledge to address the problem of clergy abuse that has rocked the Catholic church over the past several decades. The charter involves programs for background checks, safe environment training, review boards enforcing zero tolerance policies and victims’ assistance efforts.

In his preface to the report, Cardinal Daniel DiNardo, president of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, wrote of his “sincere gratitude” for the courage of victims of abuse.

“Because of their bravery in coming forward, victim/survivor assistance and child protection are now core elements of the Church,” DiNardo wrote. “The Church is a far safer place today than when we launched the charter in 2002.”

The escalation in the number of allegations displayed in the most recent report was attributed to the state-wide adoption of Independent Reconciliation and Compensation Programs by the five dioceses in the state of New York.

Some Catholics call for an outside investigative entity to hold leaders accountable.

Twenty-six new allegations involving current minors were presented during the report’s window, three of which were substantiated and resulted in a priest being removed from active ministry, according to the report. Seven allegations were listed as “unsubstantiated” by the time the report’s window closed.

Three were categorized as “unable to be proven” and investigations were still in progress for six of the allegations as of June 30, 2018. For the remaining seven allegations involving minors, two were referred to a religious order, two were reported as unknown clerics, and three were not claims of sexual abuse, but were boundary violations, according to the news release.

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)
Associated Press

May 31, 2019

Quantifying its vast sex-abuse crisis, the U.S. Roman Catholic Church said Friday that allegations of child sex abuse by clerics more than doubled in its latest 12-month reporting period, and that its spending on victim compensation and child protection surged above $300 million.

During the period from July 1, 2017, to June 30, 2018, 1,385 adults came forward with 1,455 allegations of abuse, according to the annual report of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops’ Secretariat of Child and Youth Protection. That was up from 693 allegations in the previous year. The report attributed much of the increase to a victim compensation program implemented in five dioceses in New York state.

According to the report, Catholic dioceses and religious orders spent $301.6 million during the reporting period on payments to victims, legal fees and child-protection efforts. That was up 14% from the previous year and double the amount spent in the 2014 fiscal year.

The number of allegations is likely to rise further during the current fiscal year, given that Catholic dioceses in New Jersey and Pennsylvania have started large compensation programs in the wake of a scathing Pennsylvania grand jury report released in August. The grand jury identified more than 300 priests in six of the state’s dioceses who have been credibly accused of child sexual abuse committed over many decades.

Since then, attorneys general in numerous states have set up abuse hotlines and launched investigations, and a growing number of dioceses and Catholic religious orders have released names of priests accused of abuse.

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.