UNITED KINGDOM
The Times

Richard Ford Home Correspondent
Last updated at 2:13PM, February 4 2015

A New Zealand High Court judge has been chosen to head the child sex abuse inquiry, the home secretary announced today.

Justice Lowell Goddard, 66, is to lead a new statutory inquiry which is expected to investigate child sex abuse going back to 1945.

The New Zealand judge will be questioned by MPs next week when the Commons home affairs select committee holds a pre-appointment hearing with her.

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NEW ZEALAND
TVNZ

By Jessica Mutch
Published: 3:52AM Thursday February 05, 2015

A high powered New Zealand judge has been named to lead a controversial inquiry into historic child sex abuse in England and Wales.

Justice Lowell Goddard has been named to head the investigation and Home Secretary Theresa May told the British Parliament she has a “wealth of expertise”.

Justice Goddard is the third choice. The other two candidates quit because of perceived conflicts of interest so the British government turned to the Commonwealth for someone who is “removed” from those being investigated. There were 150 nominations for the position.

Theresa May says: “Justice Goddard is a judge of the high court of New Zealand and is a highly respected member of the judiciary who has been at the forefront of criminal law and procedure. As chairman of the Independent Police Complaints Association of New Zealand she conducted an inquiry into the policing of child abuse in New Zealand and she is also a member of the United Nations sub committee on prevention of torture. She will bring a wealth of expertise to the role of chair and crucially she will be as removed as possible from the organisations and institutions that might become the focus of the inquiry.”

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UNITED KINGDOM
BBC News

Campaigners for a child abuse inquiry have welcomed the appointment of New Zealand judge Justice Lowell Goddard as chairwoman of the independent panel.

Labour MP Simon Danczuk, who led calls for an inquiry, told the BBC the appointment was “right this time”.

Peter Saunders, a spokesman for one victims’ group, said Justice Goddard would “enhance the whole credibility of the inquiry”.

Two chairwomen have resigned amid concerns over links with the establishment since July.

Making the announcement in the Commons, Home Secretary Theresa May said Justice Goddard would bring a “wealth of expertise” to the role and was “as removed as possible” from individuals and groups that may be implicated in the inquiry.

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UNITED KINGDOM
The Guardian

Owen Bowcott, legal affairs correspondent
@owenbowcott
Wednesday 4 February 2015

Justice Lowell Goddard, the newly appointed chair of the inquiry into child sexual abuse, is a New Zealand high court judge who has served on United Nations committees.

The first woman from a Maori background to sit in her country’s high court, Goddard, 66, has experience working with victims of sexual assault; as a barrister she helped establish support programmes for survivors of abuse.

Goddard has also been chair of New Zealand’s Independent Police Conduct Authority and has sat on the UN subcommittee on the prevention of torture.

A law graduate from the University of Auckland, she began practising as a barrister in 1977 and was appointed Queen’s counsel in 1988. In 1992 she was appointed deputy solicitorgeneral for New Zealand. Goddard was appointed to the high court bench in December 1995.

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AUSTRALIA
7 News

By Jessica Longbottom and Norman Hermant
February 4, 2015

For Manny Waks it has been a long road to the royal commission investigating institutional responses to child sex abuse.

The only survivor of abuse within Melbourne’s Jewish community to speak publicly, he has become a name synonymous with the fight against sexual abuse in the Jewish community worldwide.

However it has come with a cost.

Mr Waks has felt so ostracised by the ultra-orthodox Chabad Jewish community that he moved his family to France to start a new life.

Only days ago he returned to Australia to give evidence at the royal commission, as it hears for the first time allegations of abuse in Jewish institutions.

“You know on the plane ride on the way here I had to pinch myself to say, ‘Wow, I’m actually coming to Australia because the royal commission is happening’,” he said.

“I’ve literally been working towards this goal, even subconsciously, for decades.”

Mr Waks, 39, was sexually abused by security guard David Cyprus at the Yeshivah Centre in Melbourne in the 1990s.

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TEXAS
Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests

Victims blast Catholic officials
Child sex abuse case vs. priest settles
But church hierarchy acts “callously,” group says
SNAP: “Bishop must “reach out” to others who were hurt
Group urges Ft. Worth diocese to put 3 more predators on its website

WHAT
Holding signs and childhood photos at a sidewalk news conference, clergy sex abuse victims and their supporters will

— blast two Catholic officials for their reaction to a recent clergy sex abuse settlement,
— make public the personnel files of this offender, and
— urge them to “aggressively reach out” to others who may have been hurt by the predator priest.

They will also prod Ft. Worth’s bishop to

— post at least three more names of credibly accused child molesting clerics on his website, and
— send a letter rebuking an Arkansas church staffer who made harsh remarks that hurt a victim.

WHEN
Wednesday, Feb. 4 at 11:00 a.m.

WHERE
Outside the Ft. Worth Catholic cathedral, 1206 Throckmorton Street (corner of 11th) in Ft. Worth

WHO
Three-four victims who belong to a support group called SNAP, the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests (SNAPnetwork.org)

WHY
A Dallas area attorney has disclosed that two Catholic institutions – the Ft. Worth diocese and an Arkansas abbey – have settled a clergy sex abuse case. The victim is a Ft. Worth woman and the crimes took place in Cooke County at Sacred Heart Catholic Church in Muenster. The alleged predator is a now-deceased priest, Fr. Bede Mitchel, who taught at Corpus Christi Academy and Laneri High School in Ft. Worth, worked at six local parishes and traveled extensively leading retreats and missions.

[Star-Telegram]

But SNAP is begging Catholic officials – in Ft. Worth and Arkansas – to do more. Specifically, the group wants church staff to “come clean” about all child molesting clerics and post their names on church websites “for the safety of the vulnerable and healing of the wounded.” Roughly 30 US bishops have done this.

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MARYLAND
The Baltimore Sun

By Jonathan Pitts
The Baltimore Sun

The leader of the Episcopal Diocese of Maryland suspected that the Rev. Heather Elizabeth Cook — now facing drunken driving and manslaughter charges in the December death of a local bicyclist — was intoxicated at a dinner two days before she was installed as bishop last year, according to the diocese.

The Rt. Rev. Eugene Taylor Sutton, head of the Maryland diocese, quickly shared his concerns about Cook’s behavior that night with the Most Rev. Katharine Jefferts Schori, presiding bishop of the Episcopal Church in the United States, the diocese said in a timeline posted on its website this week.

“Bishop Sutton suspects that Cook is inebriated during pre-consecration dinner and conveys concern
The timeline does not say whether Schori in fact talked to Cook — who church officials were aware had been arrested four years earlier on a charge of driving under the influence.

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MARYLAND
Philly.com

JULIET LINDERMAN, ASSOCIATED PRESS
POSTED: Wednesday, February 4, 2015

BALTIMORE – The leader of the Episcopal Diocese of Maryland said a bishop-elect charged in a drunken-driving death may also have been inebriated at a dinner months earlier, just days before her consecration as a bishop, according to a timeline released by the diocese.

The diocese leader relayed his concerns to the head of the national church, according to the timeline released Monday, which is the first indication church officials had concerns about alcohol misuse occurring after a 2010 drunken-driving conviction.

Bishop Heather Cook is facing manslaughter, drunken-driving and texting while driving charges after she fatally struck bicyclist Thomas Palermo in December in Baltimore while legally drunk. Palermo was a native of Riverton, N.J.

Prosecutors say Cook left the scene before returning and recording a breathalyzer reading of .22. The blood-alcohol content limit for driving in Maryland is .08.

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PENNSYLVANIA
PA Homepage

Andy Mehalshick

Eyewitness News was there as Adam D’Albero of Drums walked into district court near Hazleton to be charged with indecent contact with a 13-year old girl.

Detectives say D’Albero met the alleged victim while he was working as a youth ministries director at the Mountain View Community church near White Haven.

“There was a youth group at the Mountain View Community Church which brought in youth from all over the area.Then when he opened up his own church Well Spring Life center a lot of the youth group followed him to.” said Chief Tom Szoke of White Haven Police Department

It’s at that Wellspring Church that detectives say D’Albero began a one year long relationship between May of 2011 and May of 2012.

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AUSTRALIA
J-Wire

February 4, 2015 by Henry Benjamin

Statements made by Sydney Rabbi Moshe Gutnick have reignited a commitment to Judaism for child sexual abuse victim Manny Waks.

Waks, who co-founded the child sexual abuse advocacy organisation Tzedek was present at the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse hearings in Melbourne today when Rabbi Gutnick’s statements came under the scrutiny of counsel assisting the enquiry.

Waks told J-Wire at the end of the day’s proceedings: “Rabbi Moshe Gutnick has restored my faith in ultra-orthodox Judaism. Following his statements it seems that whereas more reform is urgently needed within the ultra-orthdox’s handling of what has happened to me and others, the reform seems closer. We need more like Rabbi Moshe Gutnick.”

Rabbi Gutnick is a senior rabbi and Dayan at the Sydney Beth Din. After learning that individual rabbis were in effect the spiritual head of the community in which they functioned, Counsel Assisting the Royal Commission Maria Gerace asked Rabbi Gutnick: “Is it accurate to say there is no overseeing body in terms of the way that that rabbi acts or operates within that community.” Rabbi Gutnick responded: “There is no overseeing body but any member of the Jewish faith has the ability to challenge that rabbi and to take him to Beth Din. [Jewish Court of Law].” When asked if a rabbi could refuse to attend, Rabbi Gutnick said: “If the rabbi didn’t want to attend he would have to give good reason why he doesn’t want to attend. Nobody is above the law.”

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AUSTRALIA
The Guardian

Melissa Davey
@MelissaLDavey
Wednesday 4 February 2015

An orthodox Jewish religious leader said he “forgot” about a boy who called him to say he had been sexually abused at the Yeshivah Centre in Sydney because he thought it must be a prank – a judgment he said he came to “profoundly regret”.

Rabbi Moshe Gutnick, a senior judge of the Sydney Beth Din rabbinical court, now worked with victims of child sexual abuse and encouraged them to go to police without fear, he told the royal commission into institutional responses into child sex abuse on Wednesday.

Gutnick said he received the phone call in 1987, when he was a teacher at the orthodox Yeshivah Centre Bondi, and it was the first time he had heard of sexual abuse there.

Gutnick said he first spoke to an “older boy” who told him he had a “younger boy” with him who had something to tell him.

“He then put the younger male on the phone and [he] told me he had been sexually abused by Daniel Robert Hayman, ‘Gug’,” Gutnick said.

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AUSTRALIA
Sky News

A prominent Melbourne rabbi insists the idea that reporting sexual abuse to police goes against Jewish religious principles is an abomination.

He brushed off a sex abuse report 28 years ago as a hoax, and profoundly regrets it.

Rabbi Moshe Gutnick is now an advocate for child sex abuse victims and says those who come forward should be considered heroes.

He told the sex abuse royal commission on Wednesday he felt guilty for taking no action after a boy called him in 1987 to report a man, Daniel Hayman, who was later convicted of abusing another boy.

The rabbi told the commission the victim, with the help of another boy, called him about abuse by Hayman.

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UNITED KINGDOM
Belfast Telegraph

04 FEBRUARY 2015

Theresa May is expected to announce the new chair of the troubled child abuse inquiry following the resignations of two previous holders of the post.

The Home Secretary has also been considering the format of the inquiry, which could potentially involve scrapping the existing panel and replacing it with a more powerful body.

The new appointment follows the loss of two former chairwomen, who stood down over perceived conflicts of interest.

A Home Office spokesman said: “The Home Secretary has been having a series of meetings with survivors of child abuse right up to this point. She is going to make an announcement today.”

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AUSTRALIA
The Age

February 4, 2015

Jane Lee

One of Australia’s most senior Orthodox rabbis says Jewish people have an obligation to report sexual abuse, and that the prohibition against informing against other Jews to secular authorities does not apply to child sexual abuse.

Rabbi Moshe Gutnick spoke out against the ultra Orthodox Chabad community’s treatment of victims and cover-up of past crimes at the royal commission into child sexual abuse on Wednesday.

“I believe it is an absolute religious obligation to report any allegations of child sexual abuse as quickly as possible to the appropriate authorities and to suggest there is some religious obligation not to do so is an abomination,” he said.

Victims of former Yeshivah Centre employees David Cyprys, Daniel Hayman and David Kramer have told the commission that senior rabbis have labelled them “mosars”, or informers, for breaching the prohibition of mersirah, which they said prevented other victims coming forward.

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Women’s Ordination Conference

Sexism is the Original Sin: WOW Statement on The Pontifical Council for Culture’s Plenary Assembly About Women’s Cultures

For Immediate Release
February 2, 2015
Pat Brown, (UK) +44 (0) 113 268 2887
Miriam Duignan (USA) +1 510 984 8678
Marilyn Hatton (Australia) +61 2 6262 5275
Kate McElwee, (Italy) +39 393 6922100

Sexism is the Original Sin: WOW Statement on The Pontifical Council for Culture’s Plenary Assembly About Women’s Cultures

The Vatican’s Pontifical Council for Culture’s Plenary Assembly about Women’s Cultures has released its Working Document for the Assembly set to begin on February 4, 2015. The document yet again shows that the Vatican refuses to read the signs of the times to an unacceptable degree. The international umbrella network, Women’s Ordination Worldwide (founded in 1996 at the First European Women’s Synod), observes several glaring aspects about the document:

The document claims that there will be no discussion on women’s ordination because “according to statistics, [ordination] is not something that women want.” This undeniable falsehood and the Vatican’s refusal to open dialogue shows contempt for the faithful and demonstrates that as a leadership, the male hierarchy is out of touch with the people it is called to serve. Many qualified women, with the support of their communities, discern vocations to priesthood, and yet the hierarchy is comfortable in rejecting the obvious: God does not discriminate.

The document divides humanity into socially-constructed stereotypes and attempts to say they are “natural,” with corresponding gender-defined roles. This thinking and language have been challenged and rejected in scholarship for decades, and are wildly culturally and spiritually unacceptable. Human beings exist on multiple continuums, with intersectional identities: without including gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgendered people, this document denies the full humanity of God’s people.

Sexism is the original sin of Church leadership. It is long past due for the Church to rid itself of this sin and to welcome women as equal partners in all realms of ministry and leadership.

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UNITED STATES
Bilgrimage

William D. Lindsey

Vatican. Vatican. Vatican. Women. Women. Women. (“Equal” but Different and Subordinate.)

The Vatican’s Pontifical Council on Culture (whose members are all cardinals and bishops) will discuss women tomorrow. And for several days after that. And as Kaya Oakes says (see the tweet above), this is the image their website is using to advertise their discussion?

The conference’s working document states that the group won’t discuss the issue of women’s ordination since women don’t want that — they don’t want ordination. Women want, the cardinals and bishops doing the discussing inform us, some kind of “equality” which recognizes that they are distinctively different from men.

Here’s the wonderful response of the Women’s Ordination Conference to this toxic silliness:

The document claims that there will be no discussion on women’s ordination because “according to statistics, [ordination] is not something that women want.” This undeniable falsehood and the Vatican’s refusal to open dialogue shows contempt for the faithful and demonstrates that as a leadership, the male hierarchy is out of touch with the people it is called to serve. Many qualified women, with the support of their communities, discern vocations to priesthood, and yet the hierarchy is comfortable in rejecting the obvious: God does not discriminate.

The document divides humanity into socially-constructed stereotypes and attempts to say they are “natural,” with corresponding gender-defined roles. This thinking and language have been challenged and rejected in scholarship for decades, and are wildly culturally and spiritually unacceptable. Human beings exist on multiple continuums, with intersectional identities: without including gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgendered people, this document denies the full humanity of God’s people.

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AUSTRALIA
Maitland Mercury

By NICK BIELBY Feb. 1, 2015

The leader of the Catholic church in the Hunter has thrown his support behind a suggestion to repeal a time limit for victims of child sexual abuse to pursue civil litigation against the church and its clergy.

The Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sex Abuse discussed a possible repeal in its consultation paper, which was released on Friday.

It also earmarked the possibility of a national redress scheme, which would involve the federal government and institutions that were responsible for child sexual abuse.

Diocese of Maitland-Newcastle Bishop Bill Wright said in a written statement that a significant number of Catholic church abuse victims were from the Maitland-Newcastle region.

He said the church was committed to continuing to support abuse victims.

“As I have stated previously, I strongly support the royal commission in its mission to investigate and recommend improvements to laws, policies and procedures to better protect children,” Bishop Wright said.

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MONTANA
NBC Montana

Adam Painter, Reporter/Meteorologist, apainter@keci.com

ST. IGNATIUS, Mont. –
A settlement has been reached between 232 plaintiffs who were sexually abused by priests and nuns.

It happened from the 1930s to the 1970s at the Ursuline Academy in St. Ignatius, which is located about 40 miles north of Missoula.

The case began in 2011, and the settlement is for $4.45 million. The agreement breaks down to less than $20,000 per victim.

We spoke with Vito de la Cruz, one of the attorneys who represented 35 percent of the plaintiffs. He said, “Child sexual abuse is often hidden, and it often lies buried for many years. For people to stand up and fight for their dignity, speak truth, and shine a light on this horrible, horrible occurrence to children is, for me, one of the most courageous things that victims can do.”

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MINNESOTA
Minnesota Public Radio

Martin Moylan Feb 4, 2015

The Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy on Jan. 16, a step that allows the church to operate as usual while reorganizing its operations and paying its creditors.

Federal bankruptcy Judge Robert Kressel, who is overseeing the process, has ordered the archdiocese and its creditors into mediation, where the parties will attempt to negotiate a settlement to reorganize the archdiocese and compensate victims of clergy sexual abuses.

Compromise is critical to mediation, as parties try to work toward a settlement that most — or many — can live with.

If mediation is successful, the archdiocese and its creditors can avoid moving the process to a federal bankruptcy courtroom — where the process can be more contentious than negotiation.

“Litigation is war,” said Roger Haydock, professor at the William Mitchell School of Law in St. Paul. “It’s civil war, but it’s war. To that extent, you try to get a peace treaty.”

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AUSTRALIA
The Courier

By William Vallely Feb. 3, 2015

A FORMER Ballarat parish priest who indecently assaulted a nine-year-old girl with a carrot told police he mistakenly thought he was playing a “practical joke” on her mother, a court has heard.

Leslie Sheahan, 84, offered a “bizarre” and “troubling” explanation for the historical crime, telling police it was a practical joke gone awfully wrong, Ballarat Magistrates Court heard on Tuesday.

Sheahan, who was appointed priest at a Ballarat North church in the mid 1960s, was an assistant priest in the Horsham Catholic Diocese when the offence occurred between 1970-1971.

He pleaded guilty to unlawful/indecent assault of a girl – a historical charge which the court heard predates the sexual penetration of a child charges introduced in 1980s.

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ICELAND
International Business Times

By Zoe Mintz

For the first time in 1,000 years, Iceland will have a new temple dedicated to Norse gods. The house of worship will be a circular building built into a hill that overlooks the country’s capital, Reykjavik, Reuters reported.

The 3,800-square-foot-temple will belong to members of Ásatrúarfélagið, a neopagan faith that has tripled in size over the last decade in Iceland. The organization was founded in 1972 and had fewer than 100 members for nearly two decades. Today there are nearly 2,400 followers in the island nation of only 320,000 people.

“I don’t believe anyone believes in a one-eyed man who is riding about on a horse with eight feet,” Hilmar Örn Hilmarsson, high priest of Ásatrúarfélagið, told Reuters. “We see the stories as poetic metaphors and a manifestation of the forces of nature and human psychology.” …

The Ásatrúarfélagið denomination grew after its leader Sveinbjörn Beinteinsson died in 1993. This thrust the faith into the national spotlight. A sexual abuse scandal in the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Iceland also led many to leave the pews.

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IRELAND
Irish Independent

Ralph Riegel and Majella O’Sullivan
PUBLISHED
04/02/2015

A CLERIC has vowed to fight the decision by a top Vatican court to dismiss him from the priesthood.

Fr Dan Duane (76) told the Irish Independent that he was “very disappointed” by the decision of the Vatican to uphold a ruling of the Apostolic Signatura, one of Rome’s highest clerical courts, which recommended he be dismissed.

The Vatican court last month rejected Fr Duane’s appeal against being defrocked following a Church investigation over child sexual abuse allegations.

Fr Duane, who has been in restricted ministry for the past eight years, had appealed the ruling of a canonical court in Ireland that he be dismissed from the clerical state.

But Pope Francis has now endorsed the decision of the top Roman court.

The Diocese of Cloyne apologised to those who had levelled abuse allegations for the length of time the clerical dismissal process took.

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PENNSYLVANIA
Montgomery Media

By Carl Hessler Jr.
chessler@21st-centurymedia.com
@MontcoCourtNews on Twitter

Norristown >> A onetime Lansdale priest will be under court supervision after he admitted to having indecent contact with a man in a local YMCA locker area.

John H. Roebuck, 65, of the unit block of Lansdale Avenue, was sentenced in Montgomery County Court to two years’ probation after he pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor charge of indecent assault without consent in connection with the December 2013 incident that occurred at the YMCA on East Main Street in Lansdale.

“Basically, he admitted to inappropriately touching another patron outside the locker room area at the Lansdale YMCA. He violated another person right out in the open. It really shocked the victim,” Assistant District Attorney Jordan Friter, who leads the district attorney’s sex crimes prosecution division, said on Wednesday.

“He’ll be supervised by the sex offender unit of the probation department. They’ll do their own evaluation and then they determine what kind of counseling and treatment he’ll undergo,” Friter added.

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CANADA
CBC News

Feb 04, 2015

A Nunavut judge will announce today how much time former priest Eric Dejaeger will get for sexually abusing children in Igloolik 30 years ago.

Eric Dejaeger was convicted last year on 32 counts of child sexual abuse dating back to his time as a priest in Igloolik between 1978 and 1982.

The Crown has asked for a sentence of 25 years in prison, while the defence suggested 12 years. Both lawyers suggested the accused be credited two days for every day spent in pre-trial custody.

Dejaeger has been in custody since January 2011 following his arrest on immigration charges in his home country of Belgium. It was discovered his citizenship there was no longer valid. Dejaeger was then returned to Canada to face charges that were laid in 1995.

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CALIFORNIA
National Catholic Reporter

David Gibson Religion News Service | Feb. 3, 2015

When Pope Francis unexpectedly announced last month that he would canonize Fr. Junipero Serra during his visit to the U.S. in September, he thrilled the many fans of the legendary 18th-century Spanish Franciscan who spread the Catholic faith across what is now California.

But the pope who has decried the “ideological colonization” of the developing world by the secular West is now facing criticism from those who say Serra — called “the Columbus of California” — abused Native Americans and pressured them to convert, aiding in the devastation of the indigenous culture on behalf of the Spanish crown.

“Serra was no saint to us,” Ron Andrade, executive director of the Los Angeles City/County Native American Indian Commission, told the Los Angeles Times.

Some of Serra’s sharpest critics say he was part of an imperial conquest that beat and enslaved Native Americans, raped their women, and destroyed their culture by forcing them to abandon their traditional language, diet, dress and other customs and rites.

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VATICAN CITY
The Daily Beast

Barbie Latza Nadeau

VATICAN CITY — One has to wonder who spiked the holy water when the publicity gurus for the Pontifical Council for Culture came up with the idea to use a sexy blond actress as their talent in an ad ahead of a plenary conference in Rome this week called Women’s Cultures: Equality and Difference. The protagonist, Nancy Brilli, a sort of Italian Suzanne Somers, is no doubt devout in her faith. But considering Brilli’s best-known role was as a ditzy adulteress in a 1980s comedy, one might ask exactly who the Vatican is trying to reach with it latest missive. Writing in National Catholic Reporter, Phyllis Zagano, a research associate at Hofstra University, has the million-dollar question: “Is the Vatican convinced women’s intellectual abilities rise only to the level of televised soap operas and cosmetics commercials?”

Brilli, fabulous at 50, may be a fine actress. But in the Vatican’s advertisement, she pouts for the camera and says, “I am sure you have asked yourself many times who you are, what you do, what you think about your being a woman, your strengths, your difficulties, your body, and your spiritual life,” before asking women to send in a one-minute video with the hashtag #lifeofwomen to be considered for the February 4-7 conference opening program. After a tsunami of criticism from Catholic women who said they don’t relate to Brilli, the Vatican took down the English version of the video.

Perhaps the Vatican can be forgiven for not knowing its female audience. After all, it is hard to understand the opponent in the fight for equality when there are so few women in the hierarchy of the Holy See’s good old boys’ club. One person who has been knocking at the door for a long time is Miriam Duignan, communications director for the Catholic reform think tank Wijngaards Institute for Catholic Research and a leader in the WOW Women’s Ordination Worldwide movement. Last year she took 700 letters to Pope Francis from women who have been called to the priesthood, but the open-minded pope didn’t respond to a single one. The Catholic Church has been telling women to wait their turn for far too long, she says. “So many men in the priesthood who gravitate to the Vatican like to live in their fortress on the hill as if women don’t exist,” she told The Daily Beast. “The world will not fall apart if there are more women in the church.”

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UNITED STATES
Catholics for Choice

By W. David Myers

IT IS WHEN SITTING BEFORE A CLASS full of bright, eager, even devout young university women that the jarring history and current realities of their relationship to Catholicism strike with full force. Honors students all, many among them theology majors, they see in their daily life on campus the work of women—scholars, campus ministers, counselors—whose talents and accomplishments can only inspire to greater heights. They demand every week to hear something of the “woman’s voice” in European history. Every week, I dutifully try to set something out. We talk about St. Teresa of Avila of course, and a host of intelligent, ardent women who led vital, active, and meaningful lives within the church. In return, the hierarchy has variously demanded the images, minds and bodies of these women without giving something in return except the promise of heavenly happiness. Whether women have created mystical music and visions or served uncomplainingly as servants and cooks for priests and monks, the Catholic hierarchy has v iewed them as instruments, useful but second class. And yet women stay. They have always stayed.

The history of Catholicism’s relation to women is a long and tangled one, involving dazzling, beautiful myths based on female sanctity and a more depressing, mundane reality rooted in exploitative labor and exclusion from power. The contrast between the two explains much of the tension in Catholic life and culture, from the beginnings until today. The New Testament displays the tension. Women were among the first and most persistent disciples of Jesus—the last to remain at the cross and the very first to witness to the Resurrection of Christ.

In the culture of early Christianity, women as owners or managers of houses where Christians met were active in welcoming and fostering the community. Over time, wealthy women could have a profound influence in granting land and founding monasteries. This is not to say the early church was any kind of golden age for gender equality in Christianity. It was instead a time of continual crisis, in which Christianity grew at the margins of society, always under threat of persecution and suppression, constantly forced to make concessions to its members in order to survive. The letters of St. Paul are full of greetings and references to women’s activity, and at the same time they admonish women to silence and duty, forbidding them to preach.

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AUSTRALIA
ABC News

Allegations of sexual abuse at ACT institutions covering a period of more than 60 years are to be investigated under a new police operation.

In 2013, laws passed by the ACT Legislative Assembly recently removed the statute of limitations on historic abuse crimes.

Previously, victims had to report the offence within 12 months or it could not be prosecuted.

Operation Attest has now been set up to allow police to prosecute certain sexual offences allegedly committed between 1951 and 1985.

Former Marist Brother John ‘Kostka’ Chute was convicted of multiple counts of acts of indecency on children under the age of 16.

Last year the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse hearings in Canberra heard from some of Brother Kostka’s victims while examining the response of the Marist Brothers to allegations of child sexual abuse in schools across the ACT, New South Wales and Queensland.

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CANADA
Toronto Star

By: Marco Chown Oved Staff Reporter, Published on Tue Feb 03 2015

They stood up; they yelled; they walked out.

Members of Aurora’s Our Lady of Grace Roman Catholic Church had a raucous mass on Sunday, the first since learning that their pastor, Joe Gorman, had been suspended from his duties due to alleged financial issues and “ecclesiastical irregularities” at weddings.

When contacted by the Star on Tuesday, the 38-year-old priest said he had no comment on the allegations.

Auxiliary Bishop Wayne Kirkpatrick was dispatched by the Archdiocese of Toronto to explain the situation to the congregation, which is 6,000 families strong. But many in the church, which was packed with confused parishioners, were angry that their priest could be removed without warning.

Kirkpatrick read a statement issued by the Archdiocese and specified that there was no reason to suspect Father Gorman sought any personal financial gain, before he was interrupted by several people who stood and demanded their pastor back.

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UNITED STATES
National Catholic Reporter

Soli Salgado | Feb. 3, 2015 NCR Today

The Vatican Pontifical Council of Culture recently sparked controversy when the cover image for an online working document intended to advertise this week’s annual plenary assembly in Rome on “Women’s Culture: Equality and Difference” was Man Ray’s 1936 sculpture, “Venus Restored,” a plaster cast of a headless Venus bound in ropes. The work of art, according to an article at Crux, is meant to depict women as a subjugated sex object, but also as a creature who rises above men’s depictions.

Association of Roman Catholic Women Priests Bishop Bridget Mary Meehan wrote on her blog that it “reflects the Vatican’s patriarchal, dysfunctional view that holds women in spiritual bondage. This image denigrates women’s bodies and souls and reflects a deep misogyny in need of healing and transformation.”

“If we had women priests at the Vatican, do you think an image like this would see the light of day?” she asked.

Micol Forti, director of the contemporary art collection at the Vatican Museums, defended the use of the image, telling Crux that the sculpture was chosen because it represents the past as an “anchor to generate new ideas.” She added that while it is imperfect in fully articulating the purpose of the assembly, “it’s not a headless or armless body, but a reflection on classic tradition and the possibility of rediscovering a role in contemporary life.”

We Are Church of Ireland also took offense to the choice of images, saying that Man Ray was a misogynist who objectified women and viewed them as subordinates, targets of male desire and subjects to erotic fantasies.

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UNITED STATES
Questions from a Ewe

Boys and girls, a strange week it is indeed, and it’s only Monday. First, I read an article by Sr. Mary Ann Walsh in “America” magazine touting the Catholic Church as superior in offering career advancement opportunities for women as compared to secular industries. Then I gazed upon the bizarre female bondage artistic choice for the cover of the Pontifical Council on Culture’s working document regarding women. (see image below…)

It must be “happy irony week” in the Catholic Church because what else explains all this?

Let’s first enjoy the “America” magazine article’s irony in and of itselt. However, I will preface my comments with this thought: I work in the secular world as an executive and I’ve also done a lot of volunteering in the Catholic Church. “Career advancement opportunities for women” just has never been a phrase I use when describing the Catholic Church…never…not once.

Sr. Mary Ann’s article highlights statistics indicating the percentage of women CEOs for Catholic affiliated organizations such as hospitals is a higher than for secular companies. She fails to mention that those institutions cannot call themselves “Catholic” without the approval of the reigning bishop, the CEO of the local diocese. How many of those bishop/CEOs are women? The answer is “the empty set.”

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PHILADELPHIA (PA)
NBC 10

By Vince Lattanzio

How do you put an international spotlight on an issue like child sexual abuse which people often don’t like to hear about?

Have the leader of one the largest organized religions in the world stop by for a visit.

That’s what staff of the Philadelphia Children’s Alliance (PCA) are hoping will happen come September.

The nonprofit, which offers care to sexually abused children and works with police to bring their abusers to justice, penned a letter to Pope Francis asking him to visit their facility when he travels to Philadelphia for the upcoming World Meeting of Families conference.

“We really thought that knowing what we know about him, knowing about his interesting commitment to the welfare of children that it would be great to showcase our work to Pope Francis,” Chris Kirchner, PCA’s executive director, tells NBC10.

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UNITED STATES
Crux

By John L. Allen Jr.
Associate editor February 3, 2015

Just a day before America’s big game, Pope Francis set the stage for the Vatican’s equivalent of the 2015 Super Bowl by confirming 48 prelates as members for October’s Synod of Bishops on the Family, after they had been chosen by their bishops’ conferences around the world.

It’s not yet a complete lineup; other bishops’ conferences still have to submit their picks. In addition, the pope presumably will appoint the heads of Vatican offices as members of the Oct. 4-25 summit, and also will make a handful of personal picks.

Looking only at Saturday’s crop, however, one point already seems clear: There’s absolutely no reason to believe the 2015 Synod of Bishops will be any less contentious than last year’s edition, which featured a vigorous, and occasionally nasty, back-and-forth over issues such as homosexuality and divorce.

On the contrary, the forecast for October seems to be for storms every bit as intense as those that erupted during the synod last fall. If anyone wondered whether Pope Francis might try to “stack the deck” in advance this time around, Saturday’s confirmations clearly seem to refute that idea.

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VATICAN CITY
Pontifical Council for Culture

Premise

“I am convinced that the human species develops as a twofold species, ‘male’ and ‘female’; that the essence of the human being, of which no trait should be missing, is present in both, manifesting itself in two ways: and that the entire structure of being highlights this specific mould.” (Edith Stein)

In our Plenary, the invaluable contribution of our Members and Consultors will allow us to gather some aspects of women’s cultures in four thematic stages, in order to identify possible pastoral paths, which will allow Christian communities to listen and dialogue with the world today in this sphere. The expression “women’s cultures” does not imply any division from men’s cultures, but shows our awareness that there is a women’s “perspective” on the world and all that surrounds us, on life and on
experience. This perspective is a normal part of the fabric of all cultures and societies; we can see it in the family and in work, in politics and the economy, in study and decision making, in communications and literature, in art and sport, in fashion and cuisine, etc. This text has been composed by a group of women in the light of pastoral considerations sent in by our Members and Consultors and will guide us in our reflections.

At the dawn of human history, societies divided roles and functions between men and women rigorously. To the men belonged responsibility, authority, and presence in the public sphere: the law, politics, war, power. To women belonged reproduction, education, and care of the family in the domestic sphere. In ancient Europe, in the communities of Africa, in the most ancient civilisations of Asia, women exercised their talents in the family environment and personal relationships, while avoiding the public sphere or being positively excluded. The queens and empresses recalled in history books were notable exceptions to the norm.

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VATICAN CITY
NPR

[with audio and video]

FEBRUARY 03, 2015

SYLVIA POGGIOLI

Even before it opens Wednesday, the Vatican’s outreach initiative toward women got off to a bad start.

A promotional video produced ahead of a conference on women’s issues has been widely ridiculed as a sexist stereotype of the modern Western woman.

The Vatican’s Pontifical Council for Culture is sponsoring the conference on Women’s Cultures: Equality and Difference.

In December, organizers released a promotional video that features Italian actress Nancy Brilli, tossing her hair, looking at the camera coquettishly and asking in a sultry voice for women to contribute 60-second clips of their lives to be broadcast at the conference.

“I am sure you have asked yourself many times,” the sexy blonde says, “who you are, what you do, what you think about your being a woman, your strength, your difficulties, your body and your spiritual life.”

The video drew intense criticism.

“What are they thinking at the Vatican?” asked Phyllis Zagano of Hofstra University, writing in the National Catholic Reporter.

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UNITED STATES
Barefoot and Pregnant

February 3, 2015 by Calah Alexander

On Sunday, the prosecutor general of the Holy See announced that two cases of child pornography were discovered in the Vatican last year, along with numerous instances of drug trafficking and money-laundering.

Unveiling the Vatican’s justice report, Milano stopped short of naming those accused of possessing child pornography. Holy See spokesman Federico Lombardi however identified Josef Wesolowski, a disgraced former ambassador, as one of the people facing charges.
(Read the rest here)

This is no longer shocking or even surprising news. Frankly, I’m so weary of hearing about the new and horrible crap some of those in our hierarchy pull that even my knee-jerk attempt to “find the positive” is half-hearted and cynical.

To be fair, the drug-trafficking and money-laundering might be more complex than corrupt clergy. The Vatican, as a small sovereignty, can be used as a center for international crime that might not involve the citizens or clergy of the Vatican state. In the instance of the cocaine-filled condoms, the Vatican was indeed cooperating with civil authorities in an attempt to ensnare the buyer. I have a hard time imagining that the German authorities who handed the package over to the Vatican as bait would have just shrugged and let it go if the buyer had turned out to be a Vatican priest. Nor do I believe that the Vatican would have insisted that a clear instance of international crime be left for them to handle if the perpetrator had been a clergyman.

The child porn case seems different.

For the record, the prosecutor general was not obligated to reveal the details of the investigation, nor was the spokesman obligated to reveal the name of one of the perpetrators.

This is good in the same way that it’s good when one child tells another child that he found his brother lighting kittens on fire, again. Honesty might be a virtue, but the tortured kittens need courage and justice to save them. I doubt they’ll be comforted to know that yeah, the people they trusted with their lives and souls might have tortured and mangled both body and soul, but at least they told the truth.

If this were being handled by the civil authorities, Wesolowski would be awaiting trial in a cozy jail cell. It seems that he is under house arrest rather than in the Vatican jail, since, as my colleague at the atheist channel points out that the Vatican jail has been otherwise, er, “occupied”.

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UNITED STATES
Wall Street Journal

[with video]

2/3/2015

Gerald Posner discusses his new book “God’s Bankers,” in which he says the Vatican Bank was founded by a Nazi spy, the same institution helped siphon funds for illicit reasons, and how a “gay network’ in the Vatican may have helped oust Pope Benedict. Photo: Getty.

TRANSCRIPT –

This transcript has been automatically generated and may not be 100% accurate.

… Pope Francis making strides to bring some transplants eight to one of the world’s most opaque institutions … the Vatican Bank … may be even more questionable things going on of that than most people couldn’t imagine … that’s what our next guest says it’s Gerald PostNL opening new vocal gold to bankers have a Cobia thank you Brian much for being so thanks for having me I’m because we will was surfing through about a Vatican Bank is a mysterious place so aam did you put some pretty interesting … things to get ahead why did you want this book will get to some of the things that you found I wrote the book because I wanted to find out what was going on behind the scenes was this mysterious and the news was we thought it turns out to be just as bad as one could imagine I did it actually seems to be even worse the money I can imagine that made it a summit did make some of the opinion of the fictional stuff seemed tank so the fuss thing that is that you use a former man say … when was the man who founder and former Nazi was the spike found that the Vatican idea I mean the men who founded the Vatican Bank in the middle of World War two so the Vatican Bank and avoiding keep doing business with the Nazis in the entire time the Americans and British for top trying to stop that … was actually a Nazi intelligence agent from there it goes on to become an oral than some of the biggest upset of downfalls and it’s had in political history ..

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MARYLAND
WBAL

BALTIMORE —The Episcopal Diocese of Maryland said it suspects that the bishop charged in a fatal drunken-driving crash was drunk during her installation.

The diocese posted an updated timeline of events to its website Monday, saying another bishop thought Bishop Heather Cook was drunk in September when she officially became a bishop.

The timeline read, “Bishop Sutton suspects that Cook is inebriated during pre-consecration dinner and conveys concern to Presiding Bishop before rehearsal the next morning. Presiding bishop indicates she will discuss with Cook.”

Cook was installed despite that concern.

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MARYLAND
Daily Mail (UK)

BALTIMORE (AP) — The Episcopal Diocese of Maryland says a church leader was concerned a bishop-elect accused of hitting a bicyclist while drunk had been intoxicated at a dinner before her consecration last year.

Heather Cook was charged with killing the cyclist Dec. 27 in Baltimore, nearly four months after that dinner. She left the scene before returning.

An official timeline of Cook’s election and her Sept. 6 consecration reports Bishop Eugene Sutton told the presiding bishop he was concerned “Cook is inebriated during pre-consecration dinner.”

The timeline says Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori “indicated she would discuss with Cook.” The timeline says another bishop met with Cook, but the details are known only to Jefferts Schori’s office.

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NORTHERN IRELAND
UTV

The inquiry had originally hoped to finish taking evidence by June 2015, and was scheduled to complete its report and present it to the Office of the First Minister and deputy First Minister by January 2016.

The request was made due to the heavy workload involved and was granted on Tuesday at the Assembly.

It is now expected that Sir Hart, a former senior judge, will present his report in January 2017.

The inquiry is examining the extent of wrongdoing in a number of institutions – including industrial schools, workhouses, and borstals. Many of which were run by religious orders.

Speaking at Stormont after the vote, Patrick Corrigan, of Amnesty International NI, welcomed the move.

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NEW YORK
The Jewish Daily Forward

A rabbi and a former Judaic studies teacher in Westchester County, N.Y., has been arrested and charged with receiving and possessing child pornography.

Lyle Kamlet, 62, is alleged to have purchased illegal DVDs over the Internet and to have had them mailed to Westchester Day School, a co-ed Modern Orthodox school in Mamaroneck, N.Y., where he worked for some three decades.

Kamlet resigned his post at WDS — a preschool, elementary and middle school — in February 2012.
On Monday, Head of School Joshua Lookstein, together with the board’s president and chairman,
emailed parents to inform them of Kamlet’s arrest. “As far as we know, during his tenure, the school had no information and had received no complaints concerning his involvement in any illegal activities,” the letter stated. “Since his resignation, Westchester Day School has not provided any references or recommendations for Kamlet.”

Kamlet was detained Friday, and charged with two counts of receipt and possession of child pornography.

“We are going to vigorously contest these charges in court,” Kamlet’s lawyer, James Roth, told The Journal News. Officials at WDS said they have been cooperating with federal authorities since April 2013. At the request of the U.S. Attorney’s Office, they agreed not to share information about the case until Kamlet’s arrest became public because “we did not believe that any of our current students were at risk,” the letter to parents stated.

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NEW YORK
Patch

By Alfred Branch (Patch Staff)
February 3, 2015

Mount Vernon resident Rabbi Lyle Kamlet, 62, was arrested by federal authorities on Jan. 30 on charges he allegedly possessed and received child pornography, and additional details are emerging about the case.

Kamlet formerly worked at the Westchester Day School in Mamaroneck, and officials of the Jewish day school emailed parents Monday notifying them of the arrest, according to JTA.org, a Jewish news site.

“As far as we know, during his tenure, the school had no information and had received no complaints concerning his involvement in any illegal activities,” the letter said, as reported by JTA. “Since his resignation, Westchester Day School has not provided any references or recommendations for Kamlet.”

Federal authorities did not identify the school Kamlet worked at, only saying that he was a “former Mamaroneck teacher,” causing some confusion in the community and initial media reports.

The Mamaroneck School District issued the following statement about the case:

“Over the last 24 hours, all of the local media outlets have picked up the news alert issued by the U.S. Attorney’s Office indicating that a ’former Mamaroneck teacher’ was arrested on child pornography charges. Just to clarify, the teacher did work at a school located in Mamaroneck; however, we have reviewed our personnel records and confirmed that he was never employed by the Mamaroneck School District.”

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NEW YORK
Syracuse.com

By The Associated Press
on February 02, 2015 at 9:08 PM, updated February 02, 2015 at 9:22 PM

WHITE PLAINS, N.Y. — A former teacher in the New York City suburbs is facing federal child pornography charges, authorities said Monday.

Lyle Kamlet of Mount Vernon in Westchester County ordered child porn videos by mail and had some of them mailed to him at his school, the U.S. attorney’s office said.

Kamlet faces a mandatory minimum of five years in prison if convicted of receiving child pornography. He is also charged with possessing child porn, which has no mandatory minimum.

The charges cover a period from 2008 to 2010. The complaint, made public Monday, said the 62-year-old Kamlet was teaching at a school in Mamaroneck at the time. The school was not identified.

The complaint states that Kamlet ordered 23 DVD videos from a film company in Canada. The titles include “Boy Fights XXVI: Buddy Brawl” and “Skate Brats.” When the film company was raided in 2011, Kamlet’s name and address were in a customer database that authorities seized.

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NEW YORK
Mirror (UK)

February 2015 By Sophia Sleigh

Authorities said 62-year-old Lyle Kamlet used his work e-mail address to order child pornography to several addresses, including the school where he worked

A teacher allegedly ordered child porn to be delivered to the school where he worked.

Authorities said 62-year-old Lyle Kamlet used his work e-mail address to order child pornography to several addresses, including the school where he worked.

An online search indicates he worked at the Orthodox Jewish School, Westchester Day School, in Mamaroneck, New York.

According to the indictment Kamlet’s home was searched in 2013 when disturbing videos were unearthed, along with movies he is alleged to have created featuring images of naked children.

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VATICAN CITY
Huffington Post

[with video]

AP/ Huffington Post | By Antonia Blumberg

Posted: 02/02/2015

The Vatican’s Pontifical Council for Culture will meet to discuss “the life of women” during a Feb. 4-7 conference.

The conference’s aim is to unpack “women’s cultures” with four sessions looking at the meaning of equality versus difference, “generativity” beyond maternity, the female body and women’s roles in the church. To promote and gather resources for the conference, the Vatican invited women around the world to post a one-minute video online speaking on their experience as women, accompanied by the hashtag #LifeofWomen.

A promotional video introducing the campaign was posted to the Vatican’s website over the Christmas holiday and drew criticism from both conservative corners of the church as well as feminist and women’s rights voices. Following ridicule in North America, the Vatican removed the English version of video from its website.

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AUSTRALIA
The Australian

FEBRUARY 04, 2015

Pia Akerman
Reporter
Melbourne

REVELATIONS of child-sex abuse within Australia’s orthodox Chabad Jewish community have provoked retaliatory attacks akin to the Salem witch trials, with prominent rabbis accused of preaching “hellfire and damnation” for people who co-operate with secular authorities.

The Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse yesterday heard moving evidence from the wife of a man who was abused by convicted pedophiles David Cyprys and Daniel Hayman about the consequences of his decision to report the abuse to police.

The woman, known by the pseudonym AVC, wept as she ­described how her family now felt hated and isolated, and had lost faith in the community leadership.

“Our community has become a reincarnation of Salem, Massachusetts, of 1692 and the devil is everywhere,” she said.

“Rabbis preach against mesi­rah (informing on a Jew to non-Jewish authorities), preaching hellfire and damnation for those who have let the secular world in.

“The community’s response to their awakening to the child sexual abuse riddling the community is to turn on the victim and make them the subject of suspicion.”

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ITALIA
L’Unione Sarda

A scoprire il passato dell’ex parroco sono stati gli studenti di un liceo di Ancona: il prof ha perso la supplenza.

Hanno scoperto il suo passato attraverso internet: quell’ex sacerdote, che era diventato il loro supplente di storia e filosofia, era stato condannato per violenza sessuale e stalking. Gli studenti del liceo scientifico Galilei di Ancona hanno quindi segnalato la vicenda alla dirigente scolastica e il prof ha perso la supplenza. Lui è Armando Bicchiarelli, 47enne ex parroco di Isola del Piano, in provincia di Pesaro e Urbino: dopo essere stato condannato in primo grado a due anni e 10 mesi per aver abusato per 11 anni di un suo parrocchiano, un 29enne, era stato ridotto allo stato laicale. Tornato in libertà, si era trasferito a Rimini e nei mesi scorsi ha presentato domanda per la supplenza, compilando l’autocertificazione obbligatoria sui carichi giudiziari pendenti.

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ITALIA
Crime Blog

Scritto da: Renato Marino – martedì 3 febbraio 2015

L’ex prete che aveva ottenuto la supplenza è Armando Bicchiarelli, già parroco di Isola del Piano. A scoprire il suo passato gli studenti su internet

Era arrivato come supplente di storia e filosofia in quella scuola di Ancona, ma quando si è scoperto che si trattava di un ex prete condannato in primo grado per stupro e stalking l’uomo è stato allontanato.

Sono stati gli stessi studenti dell’istituto scolastico, il liceo scientifico Galilei di Ancona, che grazie alle informazioni raccolte in rete hanno scoperto il passato dell’insegnante condannato per gli abusi commessi ai danni di un suo parrocchiano di 29 anni.

Appresa la notizia la dirigente della scuola ha fatto perdere la supplenza al prof. A raccontare la vicenda è oggi Il Resto del Carlino. L’insegnante in questione, Armando Bicchiarelli, di 47 anni, era l’ex parroco di Isola del Piano (Pesaro e Urbino), poi ridotto allo stato laicale dalle autorità ecclesiastiche.

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ITALY
Gazzetta del Sud

Ancona, February 3 – A supply teacher was removed from his post after it emerged that he was an ex-priest with a first-instance conviction for sexual violence and stalking, local media reported Tuesday. The director of Galilei upper secondary school in the Marches coastal city of Ancona began investigating Armando Bicchiarelli, 47, after students reported his ‘eccentric’ behaviour in class. The supply teacher in history and philosophy, a former priest in Isola del Piano (Pesaro Urbino), allegedly “didn’t teach, he would leaf through the text book in class, it seemed he didn’t know what to do” said school director Annarita Durantini. Internet research revealed that Bicchiarelli was convicted by a first instance court to two years and 10 months and stripped of his priestly status for abusing a young male parishioner over the course of 11 years and stalking him after he got a girlfriend.

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MINNESOTA
Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests

For immediate release: Tuesday, Feb. 3, 2015

For more information: Verne Wagner of Duluth, Northeast MN (Duluth, MN & Superior, WI) SNAP director ( 218- 340-1277, lwagsmn@yahoo.com ), David Clohessy of St. Louis, SNAP Director (314) 566-9790 cell, SNAPclohessy@aol.com

Duluth predator priest is exposed
Catholic officials are re-opening probe
Cleric is accused of abusing a boy and a girl
He was transferred to five states & 7 MN towns
Victims to Duluth bishop: “How many others are you hiding?”

Twin Cities Catholic officials are re-opening an investigation into accusations that a priest who worked in the Duluth area sexually abused two South Dakota children.

Leaders of SNAP, the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests, learned last week that Fr. J. Vincent Fitzgerald was at St. Michael’s parish in Northome from 1970- 1971 and at St. Catherine’s parish in Squaw Lake from 1972-1983.

In 2010, Fr. Fitzgerald was sued for reportedly assaulting a boy and a girl in the late 1960s at the Tekakwitha Indian Mission in Sisseton, South Dakota.

http://ncronline.org/news/accountability/twin-cities-archdiocese-reopens-case-priest-accused-sex-abuse

Fr. Fitzgerald was in the news last week, when a Twin Cities judge ruled that two Minnesota bishops must release his records and when St. Paul Catholic officials re-opened their investigation into him.

Fr. Fitzgerald worked in five states and SNAP strongly suspects that he may have assaulted kids in each of them.

“Child predators rarely strike once or twice,” said Verne Wagner of Duluth. “We worry that there are adults here in Minnesota who were hurt by Fr. Fitzgerald and are still struggling in shame, silence and self-blame. And we worry how many other credibly accused predator priests there are like Fr. Fitzgerald – who are still being hidden by Catholic officials in Duluth.”

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UNITED STATES
Christian Catholicism

Jerry Slevin

Pope Francis’ key theologian, Cardinal Walter Kasper, and former Irish president, Mary McAleese, recently captured best Pope Francis’ “all celibate male” approach to discussing and responding to questions about women and children. “ABSURD” said Cardinal Kasper, and “BONKERS” said canon lawyer McAleese. Notwithstanding these obvious and accurate reactions, the Vatican continues its latest “Fortnight For Servitude” — servitude for women that is. Are Vatican men mad about women and children?

In little over two weeks, a fortnight, Pope Francis has in effect warned, millions personally in the overpopulated Philippines and tens of millions worldwide on TV, about his continuing the disastrous papal contraception ban that has through Church political lobbying denied millions of women in the Philippines, Africa, Latin America and even the USA a real choice about effective contraception.

The pope has now made his initial 48 all celibate male appointments to his Final Synod on the Family in several months. And astonishingly Francis’ Pontifical Council for Culture, in effect, made up of celibate Cardinals and Bishops, are now discussing “Women’s Cultures: Equality and Difference”, including opposing plastic surgery while overlooking contraception.

A UK woman theologian has wisely observed about the Council’s prospects: “Neither women nor men exercise competence in the Church because of some mysterious, gender-related genius, but because they are baptised. If that recognition can be the starting point, this time we might get somewhere.” Please see, “Pontifical council to consider challenges women face in society, church“, here,

[National Catholic Reporter]

Please also see the Council’s outline document, here, “Women’s Cultures: Equality and Difference,” and my related remarks here (1) “Pope’s Fix For Street Child Woes: More Babies ?“, at,

[Christian Catholicism]

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NEW YORK
John Cardillo

St. Francis Preparatory School in Fresh Meadows, Queens NY is the largest private Catholic high school in the United States, and consistently ranked one of the best.

President Ronald Reagan visited the school and presented it with an award his last year in office, only a few years after the school’s football team was ranked one of the top 25 in the nation.

Graduates include legendary coach Vince Lombardi, world champion NY Yankee manager Joe Torre, TV host Julie Chen, police officer and movie subject Frank Serpico, actor Peter Facinelli. and a plethora of other professional athletes, business titans, politicians, law enforcement administrators, military officers, and celebrities.

Those graduating from the school enjoy a global network of power broker alumni, and the contacts made over four years in one’s teens benefits them throughout their life.

I should know as I myself am a 1987 graduate of St. Francis Prep..

St. Francis Preparatory School also bears another distinction, but this one is far less impressive.

It appears that for decades, St. Francis Prep has been aggressively covering up allegations of child sexual abuse, and allowing the alleged abusers to be reassigned to other teaching jobs free of prosecution or civil liability.

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UNITED STATES
Bilgrimage

Four Stories Hot off the Press: Catholic Whistleblowers, Mennonite Conference on Yoder, Catholic Abuse Case Settled in Arkansas, Dr. Rosemary McHugh Tells Her Story

William D. Lindsey

Several links this morning to stories about the abuse situation in communities of faith:

Back in May 2013, I told you that a group called Catholic Whistleblowers had formed.* As I noted, twelve nuns and priests had organized the group to monitor and blow the whistle on the cover-up of abuse cases in the Catholic church, and had written a letter to Pope Francis about their concerns.

And now this: as Brian Roewe reports for National Catholic Reporter yesterday, the Catholic Whistleblowers group is going to air a documentary in New York City on 5 February, focusing on the difficulties faced by people who have spoken out about abuse in the church. Catholic Whistleblowers premiered this documentary last October at Boston College.

For readers of Bilgrimage in New York: the film will be shown at Cardozo Law School in Manhattan. I have no idea if it will eventually be more widely available (e.g., online). If you’re interested in following this group, supporting it, and obtaining information about its activities, you might visit its website.

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MINNESOTA
Canonical Consultation

02/02/2015

Jennifer Haselberger

One of the many legends that is told about the first Archbishop of Saint Paul and Minneapolis, John Ireland, is that he rose up out of his death bed in order to burn his papers, including the list of donors, donations, and other acts of procurement that facilitated the building of the Cathedral of Saint Paul. His sister, Sister Seraphine, CSJ, was entrusted with completing the job, but as any historian can tell you both brother and sister were only partially successful. Therefore, I can only imagine the thoughts of the illustrious Archbishop Ireland if he happened to be looking down from heaven last Friday when his former Archdiocese submitted its financial schedules to US Bankruptcy Court. ‘Did I teach you nothing?’, would probably have been first and foremost.

For, in providing what it described as a ‘good faith best effort’ to account for its financial assets, the Archdiocese may have fallen into the old Ireland trap of having produced more documents than it is possible to account for in the eleventh hour. Local and national newspapers and media outlets are already having a field day identifying those areas in which the Archdiocese has apparently significantly underestimated the value of its assets, as well as attempts to shield those assets by transferring them out of church control. From my perspective, however, what the schedules demonstrate is abysmally poor bookkeeping and administration. In other words, from where I stand the schedules simply don’t match the current situation of the Archdiocese.

For instance, Schedule A is the list of real property owned by the Archdiocese. It lists the Chancery complex on Summit Avenue and Kellogg Boulevard, the Cathedral, the Hazelwood property which was the retirement home of Archbishop Flynn prior to his move to the University of St Thomas, the land on which three Catholic high schools sit, and the Indian Ministry building in Minneapolis (listed as Gichitwaa Kateri although she was canonized in 2012 as Saint Kateri Tekakwitha, a ceremony which Deacon Joseph Damiani attended despite accusations of child sexual abuse) .

I find it interesting that the Archdiocese chose not to list its current value interest in the high school properties in the Schedule, but only gave an estimated land market value in the notes. I also question whether such numbers truly represent a ‘good faith best effort’ to assess the value of those properties. As I mentioned in an earlier blog post, in 2004 the Archdiocese executed a quit claim deed for its 49% of the property on which Hill Murray sits, and the school purchased the other 51% from the Sisters of Saint Benedict. The total value of the property at that time was estimated at $12,000,000, which makes last week’s estimated appraisals of the De LaSalle property (located on the historic Nicollet Island, and listed by the Archdiocese at $2,682,100), Totino Grace ($5,088,200), and Benilde-St Margaret ($5,900,000) seem suspiciously low.

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ZIMBABWE
allAfrica

The Herald

By Prosper Dembedza

The former Roman Catholic priest who was recently ordered to pay $80 maintenance for a child he sired while still serving, also sired two other children with his wife’s sister during the same period.

Roman Catholic church priests pledge to celibacy, but it emerged at the Harare Civil Court last week that not only did Mathew Jonga, who was based in Guruve, break the cardinal rule by marrying, he went on to sire two children with his wife’s sister.

Jonga was recently ordered to pay $80 per month for the upkeep of a child he had with wife Emma Mutaka.

It was revealed that Jonga sired two other children with Mutaka’s sister Trinity (54) after he went to court applying for custody of the seven-year daughter he had with Mutaka.

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INDIA
UCA News

Saji Thomas, Bhopal
India
February 3, 2015

A former nun in the central Indian state of Madhya Pradesh has filed a complaint against a local Catholic priest, accusing him of raping her four years ago.

In the complaint filed last week, the nun alleges that she was raped in April 2010, a year after she was set to work at the Shampura church. She says that the priest took photos of her naked and threatened to release them if she reported him. According to the complaint, she gathered the courage to report him only after the accused was transferred to another diocese.

Officials from the Catholic Church have blasted the complaint, claiming the accusation is a form of retaliation.

Anthony Chirrayath of Sagar claimed that a day before the complaint, the former nun met him demanding incorporation of her name into the family cards of a married man with whom she was living. When he refused, she left “threatening dire consequences”.

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MINNESOTA
The Catholic Spirit

Maria Wiering | February 2, 2015

A little girl, around age 10, squints in a black-and-white photo. She wears short hair with bangs, and a blouse with a pointed collar.

She does not smile.

The photo passed from person to person in the chapel of the Church of St. Paul in Ham Lake, where about 50 people gathered Jan. 29 to pray and listen to victims/survivors of child sexual abuse share their stories.

It belonged to Connie, a 59-year-old survivor who described being raped by her parish priest around age 9.

The photo was taken of her sometime after she was victimized. When Connie looks at it, she sees a struggling child, she said.

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PHILIPPINES
Asia One

Raul DancelThe Straits TimesTuesday, Feb 03, 2015

At a busy corner of Roxas Boulevard arcing Manila Bay, Dennis, only three years old but spunky, dashes for a jeepney – a repurposed passenger jeep – as it waits for the light to turn green.

He dives into the open rear of the vehicle on all fours. With a dirty rag in his hand, he wipes the feet of the passengers, then stands up and starts begging for money. Sometimes, he gets a coin.

Sometimes, just a pat on the head. At other times, it may be a scolding. But most of the time, he is ignored.

He jumps off the jeepney just before the traffic light turns green, and then waits for it to turn red again.
A few paces away, his six-year-old sister Lyka, in clothes two sizes too big, is carrying their year-old brother. She taps on car windows, also asking for money. …

The Pope’s recent visit here has brought a renewed interest in the street children.

In one of the most moving images of that visit, 12-year-old Glyzelle Palomar broke down before she could finish narrating her hard life and how she had seen other children use drugs and forced to work as prostitutes. “Why does God let bad things happen to children?” she asked the Pope, who had no answer, just a rosary and a grandfatherly embrace.

Poverty continues to drive the poorest in the countryside to move to urban centres, creating even more homeless families, says Childhope’s president Teresita Silva, who has been a social worker for more than four decades.

The population has also been exploding, from 85 million in 2006 to more than 100 million last year, breeding one generation of street children after another.

The Pope himself, while reiterating the Church’s opposition to contraceptives during his Philippine visit, has taken issue with Catholics “breeding like rabbits”.

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UNITED STATES
WAMU

For centuries, the Roman Catholic Church relied mostly on taxes and donations to finance operations. But during World War II, Pope Pius created The Institute for the Works of Religion. Commonly known as the Vatican Bank, it now holds billions of dollars in assets. For decades, the Bank has been plagued by a series of scandals, including bribery and money laundering. And the author of a new book says the Bank collaborated with the Nazis and tried to hide that fact for years. Pope Francis has enacted a series of reforms to end the scandals and increase transparency. Diane and guests discuss the history of the Vatican Bank and the current pope’s efforts to make lasting changes.

Guests

Gerald Posner investigative journalist and author of “God’s Bankers: A History of Money and Power at the Vatican”
Joshua McElwee Vatican correspondent, National Catholic Reporter
Gerard Mannion professor, Catholic Studies, and senior research fellow, Berkley Center for Religion, Peace and World Affairs, Georgetown University; author of “The Art of Magisterium: a Teaching Church That Learns” (2014)

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OREGON
Statesman Journal

Alexa Armstrong, Statesman Journal February 2, 2015

A former Brooks youth pastor, Peter Bass, 33, who has been charged with 10 counts of first-degree rape, declined to enter a plea during a short court appearance Monday morning.

His case has been moved to Marion County Circuit Court where it will be heard by Judge Tracy Prall.

Sgt. Chris Baldridge, a spokesman for the Marion County Sheriff’s Office, declined to say how Bass may have known the victims, but said it was not through his work as a youth pastor.

Bass was arraigned at the Marion County Circuit Court Annex Jan. 22, and was formally charged with 10 counts of first-degree rape. His bail was set at $1 million.

The court also issued a no-contact order for Bass, prohibiting him from having any interaction with the victims or minors. He is also not to use a smartphone, the Internet or a computer. According to Bass’s attorney, Robert Botta, an alleged victim has left the state.

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GEORGIA
Online Athens

By WALTER C. JONESMORRIS NEWS SERVICE – updated Tuesday, February 3, 2015

ATLANTA | Justin Conway testified that he didn’t realize until age 35 that the sexual abuse he suffered as a boy was still affecting him, and when he reached that realization it was too late to prosecute or sue, which is why he told legislators Monday the law should be changed.

“This is what I thought: People who do these things go to jail. But that’s not true,” he said.

Conway was among the male and female victims and their family members who testified before a subcommittee of the House Judiciary Non-Civil Committee, along with legal and psychological experts. One witness said she was in the place of her son, who didn’t wish to come to the Capitol for fear of encountering the lobbyist who had abused him. All supported House Bill 17, the Hidden Predator Act, sponsored by Rep. Jason Spencer, R-Woodbine.

The mental and emotional development of child-sexual-abuse victims is often delayed because the perpetrator is usually a trusted, “institutional figure” like a parent, coach or preacher, leaving victims confused until middle age when they have children of their own or even later, according to Dr. Carlene Taylor, a psychologist in St. Marys, Ga., specializing in cases of sexual abuse. She said one in four girls and every fifth boy is a victim, but the frequency of the crime isn’t commonly accepted because victims are reluctant to confront abusers who are respected community members.

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AUSTRALIA
SBS

John Hennessey, who was brutalised at the notorious Bindoon orphanage, says the Royal Commission could see his pain lasted a lifetime.

A survivor of the notorious Christian Brothers-run Bindoon orphanage in Western Australia says redress isn’t so much about money, it’s about knowing the truth has finally come out.

John Hennessey was taken away from his mother at birth and in 1947 sent to Australia at the tender age of 11.

She’d been banished from Ireland to England because she was pregnant out of wedlock – and was told he had died.

It wasn’t until he was aged 62 that they were reunited, thanks to the Child Migrants Trust.

Over those lost years, he repeatedly begged the same Christians who had abused him to help him find his mother, but they refused.

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AUSTRALIA
JTA

February 3, 2015

SYDNEY, Australia (JTA) – The Chabad-Lubavitch movement in Melbourne and Sydney is under the spotlight as a Royal Commission into the child sexual abuse scandal began hearings.

The government-sponsored inquiry into institutional responses to child sexual abuse, which began in 2013, has allocated two weeks to interrogate victims and officials of the Yeshivah Center in Melbourne and its counterpart in Sydney, as well as senior Orthodox rabbis.

In particular, the commissioners will probe the response by Chabad officials to allegations of sexual abuse by David Kramer and Davis Cyprys, who both were employed by the Yeshivah Centre in Melbourne in the 1980s and 1990s. They were jailed in 2013 for multiple offenses against boys at the Chabad-run school.

In Sydney, the response of rabbis to offenses committed by Daniel “Gug” Hayman in the 1980s also is being investigated. Hayman, who moved to the United States, was convicted but received a suspended sentence in 2014.

Victims and family members testified at the County Court of Victoria this week. “As a spouse of a victim and whistleblower, I feel hated and isolated in my community,” a woman told the hearing, fighting back tears. “I have lost faith in the leadership of the Jewish community.”

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GEORGIA
WSB

[with video]

By Rachel Stockman

ATLANTA — More than a dozen victims came out in support of a new Georgia bill which would extend the statute of limitations in civil court for child sexual abuse victims to 35 years.

This would allow victims to file claims against their attackers until they are 53 years old. Current law bars claims that are filed after a victim is 23 years old.

“We are here under this dome- seeking justice in House Bill 17 to extend the statute of limitations on civil statute so the courtroom doors can be open for the survivors of child sexual abuse,” said Angela Williams, a rape victim, and founder of Voice Today, an advocacy group. Williams says it often takes years — even decades, for victims to come forward.

The “Hidden Predator Act” would also open more investigative records, and would add a two-year window for revival of claims for victims.

“These folks are locked out of the courts and justice is absolutely denied,” said Rep. Jason Spencer (R – Woodbine). Spencer is sponsoring HB 17.

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AUSTRALIA
Herald Sun

SHANNON DEERY NEWS LIMITED FEBRUARY 03, 2015

MEMBERS of Melbourne’s Jewish community routinely used “standover tactics” to bully people who spoke out against child sexual abuse, the royal commission has heard.

Senior Rabbis also threatened “hellfire and damnation” for anyone who engaged in ‘mesirah’, the act of informing on a Jewish person to non Jewish authorities.

Zephania Waks, whose son Manny was abused by several Jewish leaders at Yeshiva College, said Rabbis openly told community members they were not to cooperate with police.

Mr Waks said after his son went public with his story of abuse their family was ostracised from the tight-knit community.

“That sealed our fate. It felt like we were suddenly reduced to nothing and had lost all our friends,” he said.

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AUSTRALIA
The Guardian

Melissa Davey
@MelissaLDavey
Tuesday 3 February 2015

The orthodox Jewish community has responded to allegations of child sex abuse within their institutions with “moral destitution” and by “turning on the victim”, the wife of a man who was abused by religious leaders said.

Her testimony to the royal commission into institutional responses into child sex abuse on Tuesday followed evidence from other victims and their families, who also described being attacked and ostracised after coming forward.

The witness, identified only as AVC, said the abuse of her husband occurred while he was a student at the Yeshivah Centre in Melbourne, but he only gained the strength to speak up as an adult.

“As a spouse of a victim and whistleblower, I feel hated and isolated in my community,” she told the commission at Victoria’s county court. “I have lost faith in the leadership of the Jewish community.”

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AUSTRALIA
Sydney Morning Herald

February 3, 2015

Jane Lee
Legal Affairs Reporter for The Age

The Jewish father of three sexual abuse victims says that being branded an informer on fellow Jews to secular authorities is a taboo as frowned upon as incest.

Three of Zephaniah Waks’ 17 children were abused by employees of Jewish institution Yeshivah Melbourne as students of Yeshivah College, including prominent Jewish victims’ advocate Manny Waks.

Mr Waks, who has been ostracised by the ultra Orthodox Chabad community after supporting Manny in going public with his story, likened the stigma associated with being a “moser” in the Jewish community to incest in general society “It’s that bad,” he told the Royal Commission into child sexual abuse on Tuesday.

Victims’ families tearfully recounted to the commission how they had been shunned for reporting abuse to the police, which was seen as a breach of “mersirah” a religious rule preventing Jews from informing on other Jews to secular authorities.

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AUSTRALIA
Sky News

The father of three boys sexually abused at a Jewish school was so fearful of being shunned by his community for breaching an ancient principle that he didn’t report the crime to police.

Zephaniah Waks insists breaking a code of silence by telling non-Jewish authorities about abuse by a Jewish man without permission from senior Rabbis was a taboo on a par with incest.

One witness, known as AVC, told the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sex Abuse that rabbis preached hellfire and damnation for people who breached the mesirah.

Mr Waks, a father of 17, says he feared being shunned and intimidated.

‘It was taboo, like, incest or anything like that. It was that big a taboo,’ he told the commission on Tuesday.

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NEW YORK
New York Daily News

BY STEPHEN REX BROWN NEW YORK DAILY NEWS Monday, February 2, 2015

The former Mamaroneck teacher had the child porn delivered to the school where he worked, authorities said Monday.

A creepy former Mamaroneck teacher was busted for having child porn delivered to the school where he worked, authorities said Monday.

Lyle Kamlet, 62, of Mount Vernon, faces up to 20 years on charges of possession and receipt of child pornography.

Authorities searched Kamlet’s home in 2013 and found the disturbing porn videos, as well as 8mm “home movies that he had created that contained images of naked children,” according to an indictment.

Authorities did not specify where Kamlet taught, but a search of teacher-rating websites indicate he worked at Westchester Day School.

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NEW YORK
Empire State News

WHITE PLAINS – The United States Attorney’s office and U.S. Postal Inspection Service announced the arrest of a Mount Vernon man for possession and receipt of child pornography.

Lyle Kamlet, 62, a former teacher at a school in Mamaroneck, New York, was arrested on Friday, January 30th by USPIS agents, and presented in White Plains federal court From 2008 through 2010, on a number of occasions, Kamlet ordered child pornography videos – some of which he directed to be mailed to the school where he was then employed. During a search of his residence, law enforcement seized those videos and also found home movies he had created that contained images of naked children.

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NEW YORK
JTA

February 2, 2015

A rabbi and a former Judaic studies teacher in Westchester County, N.Y., has been arrested and charged with receiving and possessing child pornography.

Lyle Kamlet, 62, is alleged to have purchased illegal DVDs over the Internet and to have had them mailed to Westchester Day School, a co-ed Modern Orthodox school in Mamaroneck, N.Y., where he worked for some three decades.

Kamlet resigned his post at WDS — a preschool, elementary and middle school — in February 2012.

On Monday, Head of School Joshua Lookstein, together with the board’s president and chairman, emailed parents to inform them of Kamlet’s arrest. “As far as we know, during his tenure, the school had no information and had received no complaints concerning his involvement in any illegal activities,” the letter stated. “Since his resignation, Westchester Day School has not provided any references or recommendations for Kamlet.”

Kamlet was detained Friday, and charged with two counts of receipt and possession of child pornography.

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NEW YORK
The Journal News

Richard Liebson, rliebson@lohud.com February 3, 2015

A former Mamaroneck school teacher was arrested Friday, accused of buying mail-order child pornography which he had delivered to the school and then took home.

Lyle Kamlet, 62, of Mount Vernon, is charged in a federal complaint with single counts of receiving child pornography and possessing child pornography. His arrest came after an investigation by the U.S. Attorney’s Office and U.S Postal Service inspectors.

Authorities say that, from 2008 through 2010, Kamlet ordered a number of kiddie porn DVDs, some of which he had sent to the school where he had been employed. The six-page complaint does not say which school that is, only that it’s in Mamaroneck.

“This arrest was the result of a search of his house that occurred a year and a half ago,” Kamlet’s lawyer, James Roth, said Monday. “We are going to vigorously contest these charges in court.”

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MARYLAND
Washington Post

Bishop accused in cyclist’s death suspected of being drunk at installation festivities

By Michelle Boorstein February 2

The bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of Maryland suspected that Heather Cook — now charged in the drunken-driving death of a Baltimore bicyclist — was drunk during her installation festivities this past fall, a new official timeline shows.

Officials with the diocese, which elected Cook its first female bishop last spring, have said for weeks that they knew before her election of a drunken-driving incident in 2010. However, they have declined to answer questions about whether they had any reason to be concerned about her drinking after she was elected — until the fatal accident in December.

The timeline, which the Diocese of Maryland said Monday it had added to its Web site, says the head of the national Episcopal Church was made aware that Cook may have been drunk during her installation celebration. Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori was the leader of the Sept. 6 service that consecrated Cook, or made her a bishop.

Bishop Eugene Sutton — who oversees Episcopalians in much of Maryland aside from the D.C. suburbs — suspected Cook was “inebriated during pre-consecration dinner,” the timeline says, “and conveys concern to Presiding Bishop. Presiding Bishop indicates she will discuss with Cook. Cook consecrated.”

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UNITED KINGDOM
The Tablet

02 February 2015 by Gemma Simmonds

The Pontifical Council for Culture is meeting from 4-7 February to discuss women’s cultures: equality and difference. The discussions will cover such urgent matters as physical and sexual violence against women, patriarchal attitudes that subjugate women within the Church and wider society, and the crisis of women’s alienation from the Church in some parts of the world. The assembly document has been drafted by a group of women appointed by the council, and considers both the promotion of gender equality and the valuing of gender difference as well as the extent to which women are excluded in decision-making processes within the Church.

All this is a positive move, but in the past, official church documents and pronouncements have talked an admirable talk about women in the Church while walking precisely nowhere. There is, of course, no single generic category of women, since cultures and contexts will differ enormously. The council cautions against unhelpful generalisations while seeking to “identify possible pastoral paths”. At the same time its anxiety to counteract contemporary theories that gender identity is a self-chosen construct nevertheless leads it to make the very generic judgements and statements that alienate so many women.

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GEORGIA
WSBR

By Sandra Parrish

Atlanta — State House members hear testimony from adult victims of child sexual abuse who are calling for more time to be able to go after their abusers in court.

House Bill 17, which is called the Hidden Predator Act, would extend the statute of limitations for victims to file a lawsuit from five to 35 years once the victim reaches age 18.

Angela Williams, founder of Voice Today which advocates for such victims, was sexually abused by her now deceased stepfather from the age of 3 to 17. She tells WSB’s Sandra Parrish the median age for a victim to disclose the abuse is 40.

“We really need time for an adult to be able to process the trauma, to be able to heal, and to have the courage to face the perpetrator,” she says.

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ILLINOIS
Patch

By Shannon Antinori (Patch Staff)
February 2, 2015

A shuttered downtown Joliet church could get a new life as a restaurant, Mayor Tom Giarrante said last week.

A developer has secured funding to purchase St. Mary Carmelite Church, 113 N. Ottawa St., and its rectory, Giarrante said.

While neither Giarrante nor Community and Economic Development Director Jim Haller would identify the developer, both said plans call for a restaurant in the historic limestone church and apartments in the rectory. …

In 2010, the church gained notoriety as the site of a suicide attempt by the Rev. Alejandro Flores, a Diocese of Joliet priest facing child sexual abuse allegations. Flores, who was seriously injured after jumping from the church’s choir loft, pleaded guilty to criminal sexual assault and was deported to his native Bolivia in 2013.

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RHODE ISLAND
Providence Journal

Published: February 02, 2015

BY JOHN HILL
JOURNAL STAFF WRITER
jhill@providencejournal.com

PROVIDENCE — A second Rhode Island lawsuit that accused the disgraced Catholic religious order the Legion of Christ of improperly influencing a well-off elderly person’s donations has been settled out of court, according to court documents.

Senior U.S. District Court Judge Ronald R. Lagueux approved a motion dismissing Paul Chu’s suit against the Legion of Christ.

John J. Flanagan, who represented Chu, said he could not comment beyond saying the case was settled “to the satisfaction of the parties.”

The suit involved the estate of James Boa-Teh Chu, a former Brown University mechanical engineering professor who died in 2009 at the age of 85. He had been in declining physical and mental health for several years.

The elder Chu was born in China in 1924. He had converted to Catholicism as a young man and donated generously to Catholic charities throughout his life. In his will he had named the Legion of Christ the beneficiary of several annuities worth between $1 million and $2 million, according to court documents.

As Chu’s son and executor of his estate, Paul Chu challenged that bequest, claiming the Legion abused its role as his father’s spiritual adviser and used undue influence on him in his last years.

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AUSTRALIA
ABC News

By Sarah Farnsworth

The father of three boys sexually abused at the Yeshivah Centre in Melbourne renounced the ultra-Orthodox Chabad movement after his family was persecuted for going public about the abuse, the child sexual abuse royal commission has been told.

The hearing of the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sex Abuse heard that two of Zephaniah Waks’ sons were assaulted by convicted child abuser David Kramer, and the other son, Manny Waks, was assaulted by serial child abuser David Cyprys.

The inquiry heard when Manny Waks told his father he had been abused by David Cyprys, he went straight to police.

“It was worse than the first case. It was very bad I thought I had failed him,” Zephaniah Waks said.

He said when Manny went public about the abuse, it “sealed their fate”.

Mr Waks was verbally attacked in the street by prominent members within the Chabad community.

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AUSTRALIA
The Australian

FEBRUARY 03, 2015

Pia Akerman
Reporter
Melbourne

JEWISH leaders who knew a teacher had admitted fondling young boys did not stop him associating with children in Israel after paying for his ticket to move there, the royal commission has heard.

The actions of the Yeshivah Centre and school in Melbourne — part of the orthodox Chabad movement — as well as its counterpart in Sydney are being examined in relation to three convicted pedophiles who abused children while working there.

The royal commission investigating institutional responses to child sexual abuse today heard evidence about how Yeshivah had responded when parents became aware in 1992 that teacher David Kramer had sexually touched some of his young students.

Zephaniah Waks, father of three boys who were abused at Yeshivah College, said senior rabbi Yitzchok Dovid Groner had told him a psychiatrist had examined Kramer and concluded the teacher allowed himself to be caught because he wanted to be stopped.

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UNITED KINGDOM
The Guardian

Peter Walker
Monday 2 February 2015

Margaret Thatcher was adamant officials should not publicly name Sir Peter Hayman, a senior diplomat connected to a paedophile scandal, even after she had been fully briefed on his activities, examination of formerly secret papers released to the National Archives shows.

The 37-page file includes numerous handwritten notes and annotations by the late Conservative prime minister. It also reveals that security services were not initially informed about Hayman’s proclivities, as a secretary forgot to pass on a message to the relevant official and police neglected to follow up the matter.

The densely typed documents, which are available for view to the public for the first time on Tuesday, also describe how Hayman, who died in 1992, apparently arranged for “obscene correspondence” to be sent to the British high commission in Ottawa when he was the most senior diplomat there. A member of domestic staff at the mission was wrongly blamed at the time for the letters, which were sent to a false female name.

The file, compiled between October 1980 and March 1981, is made up of memos and background notes put together for Thatcher, then prime minister, and is littered with her handwritten notes, underlinings and crossings out.

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ST. LOUIS (MO)
Berger’s Beat

…Popular KMOX host Charlie Brennan challenged his immense audience this week: “Name two governors of other states who spent part of their childhoods in St. Louis.” The answer: Pete Wilson of California and Ted Kulongoski of Oregon. Brennan revealed that he once tried to get Kulongoski on his show but he was rebuffed. Kulongoski said it was too painful to talk about his childhood, spent at St. Joseph’s Home for Boys in south city. (At least three child sex abuse lawsuits – one involving Fr. Alex Anderson – have been filed against the home.)…

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IRELAND/UNITED STATES
Irish Central

Niall O’Dowd @niallodowd February 02,2015

A distinguished US physician has vividly described how she was abused by a priest predator when she was studying in Ireland in the 1970s and how Archbishop of Dublin Diarmuid Martin eventually came to her aid and ensured the priest was punished.

Dr Rosemary McHugh, now 70, has written her story for a chapter on a new book on restorative justice in the church. She had filed criminal charges against her abuser, who has since passed away.

Dr McHugh, a well-known family physician and frequent commentator on church issues, grew up as the child of Irish immigrants from Mayo who moved to Chicago.

She was one of three children in a devoted Catholic home. Her brother entered the priesthood for a while but later left.

She describes how after receiving her medical degree from Trinity College in Dublin In 1972 she trained and worked in Dublin including at the Rotunda.

She chose Trinity for her medical training as she liked the fact that it had balanced classes of women and men. She says she was deeply grateful for her excellent medical education at Trinity College, Dublin.

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UNITED STATES
Reveal News

By Amy Julia Harris / February 2, 2015

The Rev. Thomas Stitts was known within the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Saint Paul and Minneapolis as a priest who molested boys.

But three civil trials on abuse that were supposed to start a week ago never did. Instead, the archdiocese filed for bankruptcy, becoming the 12th Roman Catholic diocese in the last decade to declare bankruptcy amid a wave of clergy abuse lawsuits.

Stretching from Delaware to Alaska, these bankruptcy proceedings often have taken years to hammer out, as the church and victims negotiate the terms of how much victims should be compensated. The payouts to victims have been in the millions of dollars – in San Diego, the diocese paid more than $198 million to 144 abuse victims, the largest clergy sexual abuse settlement to date.

Bankruptcies can help to bring order to chaos, says Pamela Foohey, an associate professor at Indiana University’s Maurer School of Law. They ensure that hundreds of lawsuits become more manageable and that all victims get paid – not just those who file cases early.

But victim advocates and attorneys say churches that declare insolvency often do it for a less noble purpose. They say it has become a go-to move for dioceses to stop damaging trials and avoid putting church officials on the witness stand.

“Bankruptcies don’t protect kids,” said victims attorney Patrick Noaker, whose suit against Stitts was supposed to go to trial last week. “Trials and disclosures do.”

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VATICAAN
NRC (Nederland)

door Marije Willems

Het Vaticaan heeft vorig jaar twee arrestaties verricht wegens het bezit van kinderporno. Dit heeft de openbaar aanklager van de Heilige Stoel, Gian Piero Milano, gezegd bij de opening van het juridisch jaar.

Een van de verdachten is Josef Wesolowski, een voormalige nuntius (diplomatiek vertegenwoordiger van het Vaticaan) in de Dominicaanse republiek. Hij is daar beschuldigd van het misbruik van jonge jongens.

De 66-jarige Wesolowski was in juni vorig jaar uit zijn ambt gezet nadat een rechter in het Vaticaan hem schuldig achtte aan misbruik. Op zijn computer werden 86.000 foto’s en ruim 100 filmpjes met minderjarigen gevonden. Hij kreeg een van de zwaarste straffen in het kerkelijk recht: laïcisering, een terugkeer naar een leven als leek. Hij verloor daarmee ook zijn diplomatieke immuniteit. Wesolowski is vanwege zijn zwakke gezondheid onder huisarrest geplaatst.

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NEW YORK
National Catholic Reporter

Brian Roewe | Feb. 2, 2015 NCR Today

A documentary detailing the often-difficult experiences of people who spoke out about clergy sexual abuse to church leaders and civil authorities is set to make its New York City debut.

The film “A Matter of Conscience” Confronting Clergy Abuse” will be shown Feb. 5 at the Cardozo Law School in Manhattan. The film originally premiered Oct. 4 at Boston College, where its producers John and Susan Michalczyk are professors. John is also co-director of the BC film studies program.

The documentary shares the stories of individuals who reported issues of clergy abuse, the stonewall responses many received, and their ongoing efforts to advocate for survivors of abuse.

Participating in the film are numerous members of the Catholic Whistleblowers group, which formed in May 2013 as a support network for those exposing abuse and advocating church reform on the issue. Among those featured are Fr. James Connell of the Milwaukee archdiocese, Dominican Fr. Thomas Doyle, Notre Dame de Namur Sr. Maureen Paul Turlish, and Anne Barrett-Doyle of BishopAccountability.org.

For many of the whistleblowers, the decision to bring abuse to light posed serious repercussions, often resulting in marginalization from the church.

“Some were ostracized, removed from their positions, and deemed disloyal. Others were looked at as traitors to their religious order or Church for breaking the code of silence,” the producers said in September.

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CALIFORNIA
Breitbart News

by WILLIAM BIGELOW
2 Feb 20151

Parishioners praying Sunday Mass at the Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels in downtown Los Angeles on Sunday were confronted by one dozen demonstrators protesting the Pope’s decision to canonize Father Junipero Serra.

Carrying signs picturing Archbishop Jose Gomez, the head of the Los Angeles Arcgdiocese, as Adolf Hitler, with a toothbrush mustache and a swastika medallion, as well as other signs depicting Serra with a halo adorned with a swastika, the group marched straight to the gates of the cathedral.

Olin Tezcatlipoca, director of the Mexica Movement, told the Los Angeles Times that Serra committed “genocide” against the indigenous Spanish people. He added, “Serra set up forced labor camps, death camps. Women and children were raped the same way as the pedophile priests, and the church has hidden that.” He said Gomez refused to meet with the group.

Gomez has called Serra, who instituted the mission system in California, one of his “spiritual heroes,” and said his canonization is a “gift to California and the Americas.” In 1988, Pope John Paul II called Serra a “shining example of Christian Virtue and the Missionary Spirit.”

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UNITED STATES
Christian Catholicism

Jerry Slevin

The Catholic Church leadership after two years under Pope Francis still continues its longstanding policy of trying to cover up priest child abuse cases, it appears. This is almost inexcusable.

Church leadership, including apparently the pope’s “child abuse czar” and even a bishops conference, currently still seem to fail to abide by the Vatican’s “zero tolerance” hype. They are trying, despite Pope Francis’well publicized grand gestures and warm words about abuse survivors, (a) to keep potential abuse cases away, as long and as much as feasible, from independent and experienced local police and criminal prosecutors, who are trained in handling these cases (most recently near Boston and in the South Pacific near Australia), and (b) to avoid paying acknowledged priest abuse survivors’ just claims, as the Minneapolis, Milwaukee and dozen USA diocesan bankruptcy filings make so clear. Pope Francis the “man” is not matching up to his “myth” once again, while many in the media sadly continue to be entranced in their two year “Francismania coma”.

Please see here,

[Radio Australia],

here, [Revere Journal], here [Reuters], here,

[Star Tribune],

[BishopAccountability.org],
and here,

[Milwaukee Journal Sentinel]

Boston”s Cardinal Sean O’Malley, the pope’s “child abuse czar”, is finally about to hold his first full meeting of the pope’s abuse commission, even as he is criticized for mishandling the recent Revere case. For O’Malley’s poor “prior record” on priest child abuse cases, please see here

[BishopAccountability.org]

Pope Francis’ response to date on the Vatican’s most sensational scandal, the abuse cover up, seems to be mostly more of the same half measures used by his failed predecessors. This is consistent with Pope Francis’ earlier failure as Cardinal to address priest child abuse claims fully in Argentina; please see Pope Francis & Database of Argentine Abuse .

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CALIFORNIA
Los Angeles Times

By GALE HOLLAND

Hoisting a sign depicting Archbishop Jose Gomez with a toothbrush mustache and a swastika medallion, a dozen people gathered outside Sunday Mass at the Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels downtown to protest the proposed canonization of Father Junipero Serra.

Olin Tezcatlipoca, director of the Mexica Movement, an indigenous-rights group, said Serra and the California mission system he founded were responsible for the Spanish “genocide” of native peoples. Gomez, who heads the Los Angeles Archdiocese and has called Serra one of his “spiritual heroes,” refused to meet to discuss the group’s objections, Tezcatlipoca said.

“Serra set up forced labor camps, death camps,” Tezcatlipoca said as the group gathered in front of the Father Serra statue across from Olvera Street for the short march to the gates of the cathedral. “Women and children were raped the same way as the pedophile priests, and the church has hidden that.”

A spokeswoman for the archdiocese said she didn’t know of the Mexica Movement, which has taken part in local immigration and other protests since the 1990s, and would have no comment.

Serra’s complex legacy has sharply divided people in and out of the Catholic Church since the Pope Francis’ surprise announcement last month saying that he planned to grant the missionary’s long-sought sainthood.

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MNNESOTA
Star Tribune

Article by: JENNIFER BJORHUS , Star Tribune Updated: February 2, 2015

The archdiocese holdings include churches, schools and the archbishop’s residence.

The Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis says it owes creditors $15.9 million and has assets of at least $45.2 million, according to a bankruptcy filing.

The tally of assets is likely much larger since the archdiocese lists the current value of its interest in key pieces of real estate, such as the Cathedral of St. Paul and the land under three Catholic high schools, as “unknown” and puts those estimates in notes.

Filed late Friday in U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Minnesota, the schedules offer a rare glimpse of the holdings and financial operations of the archdiocese, which filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy Jan. 16, becoming the 12th Catholic organization to file for bankruptcy in the clergy sex abuse scandal.

The parties have been ordered into mediation.

Since October, the archdiocese has paid $1.6 million to Briggs & Morgan, the Minneapolis law firm the archdiocese hired to guide it through bankruptcy, the documents show.

It also paid $53,946 to Whyte Hirschboeck Dudek S.C., the law firm representing the Archdiocese of Milwaukee in its ongoing bankruptcy, for services it provided last year.

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NEDERLAND
NRC

[The European Court of Human Rights has rejected an appeal by the Martijn pedophile association and the organization will remain prohibited.]

door Sterre van der Hee

Het Europees Hof voor de Rechten van de Mens heeft de klacht van pedofielenvereniging Martijn verworpen. De vereniging blijft dus verboden, schrijft persdienst ANP. Martijn wilde dat het verbod op de organisatie in Nederland ongedaan werd gemaakt.

De Hoge Raad heeft de vereniging vorig jaar verboden. Dat was een uitzondering, maar in dit geval noodzakelijk, bepaalde de rechter. De vereniging bagatelliseert en verheerlijkt seksueel contact tussen volwassenen en kinderen. Die activiteiten zijn volgens de Hoge Raad schadelijk voor kinderen en in strijd met de openbare orde.

.

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DEUTSCHLAND
n-tv

[The Cologne archdiocese has dismissed a 73-year-old priest for what officials called “sexual boundary violations.” The church did not provide details but it is said the allegation dates to the 1970s and involved a 9-year-old girl.]

In den 70er Jahren soll sich ein heute 73-jähriger Pfarrer einem damals neunjährigen Mädchen unsittlich genähert haben. Die Rede ist von einer “sexuellen Grenzverletzung”. Genauer wird die Kirche nicht. Die Gemeinde ist empört über die Vorverurteilung.

Das Erzbistum Köln hat einen 73 Jahre alten Pfarrer wegen des Vorwurfs “sexueller Grenzverletzungen” abberufen. Die Vorgänge, zu denen die Kirche keine Details nannte, sollen sich in den 70er Jahren abgespielt haben und ein damals neunjähriges Mädchen betreffen. “Die Aussage der Betroffenen ist detailliert und glaubwürdig”, teilte das Erzbistum mit. Der Pfarrer habe “grenzverletzendes Verhalten” gegenüber dem Kind eingeräumt, bestreite aber einen sexuellen Hintergrund.

Der Fall wird nun in einem langwierigen Verfahren von der Kongregation für Glaubenslehre in Rom untersucht.

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AUSTRALIA
The Australian

FEBRUARY 03, 2015 12:00AM

Pia Akerman
Reporter
Melbourne

THE royal commission into child sexual abuse has been urged to call for a criminal investigation into some of Melbourne’s most prominent Orthodox Jewish leaders, amid claims of cover-up and harassment aimed at enforcing a “code of silence”.

In its first hearing examining Jewish institutions, the royal commission yesterday heard leaders from the Yeshivah communities in Melbourne and Sydney would be challenged over what actions they had taken when allegations of abuse were made. Manny Waks, who was abused in the late 1980s by pedophile David Cyprys while Cyprys was working for the ­Yeshivah Centre in Melbourne, told the commission he had not received a direct apology from any Yeshivah leader since telling its senior rabbi, Yitzchok Dovid Groner, of his abuse in the early 2000s.

“Had Yeshivah Centre been forthright, honest, apologetic, showing contrition and that they … work with victims and support them, there’s no way I could possibly have been so antagonistic towards them,” Mr Waks said. “But all I have seen from ­Yeshivah for the last few decades has been initially (to) ignore the abuse, then cover it up, and then be involved in intimidation and harassment.”

Mr Waks said he hoped the hearings would prompt resig­nations among Yeshivah’s leadership and said criminal liability should be considered for people in positions of authority who had knowingly turned a blind eye or helped a perpetrator flee.

“The fact that not a single person from the Yeshivah leadership has ever been held to account in any way, shape or form is astounding,” he said.

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AUSTRALIA
The Jerusalem Post

According to Manny Waks, the halachic concepts of mesira and Loshon hora serve to deter victims from reporting their experiences.

“The abuse first occurred at Yeshivah Centre – inside the synagogue itself during the Jewish festival of Shavuot,” Manny Waks recalled, testifying about his molestation at the hands of employees of a Jewish school in Melbourne before Australia’s Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse on Monday.

“I went upstairs to the women’s section of the synagogue to rest for a while on one of the wooden benches. [Zev] Serebryanski followed me up there, sat on the bench beside me and started stroking me on my clothes – initially on my thighs and eventually my groin area.”

The former Chabad hasid, who was eleven years old at the time when the abuse began in 1998, was molested on at least two other occasions, he said.

Waks recounted suffering verbal abuse at the hands of classmates after disclosing the abuse to a friend. The youngsters called him a homosexual, as “in many segments of the ultra-Orthodox Jewish community who conflate homosexuality with paedophilia,” he explained.

A year later, he would again be molested, this time by a school guard cum martial arts instructor named Shmuel David Cyprys, including, on one occasion, at the mikvah.

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AUSTRALIA
9 News

AAP

Public hearings into child sexual abuse at a Jewish community centre and school will continue in Melbourne with testimony from the father of a victim.

Zephaniah Waks, a Royal Commission heard on Monday, was forced to move to Israel after being shunned by Melbourne’s Yeshivah community after his son Manny Waks went public with details of how he was sexually abused at Yeshivah College.

Two abuse victims, and the wife of a victim, all who are known only by pseudonyms, are also expected to give evidence as the hearings continue on Tuesday.

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ARKANSAS
Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests

For immediate release: Saturday, Jan. 30

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

A woman who says she was sexually abused as a child by an Arkansas priest has settled her child sex abuse and cover up suit. We applaud her and her family for their courage and beg Arkansas Catholic officials – especially Little Rock Bishop Anthony Taylor – to “come clean” about child molesting clerics. And we condemn the harsh words of a Subiaco Catholic official whose cruelty is rubbing even more salt into the deep wounds of this brave family.

[Star-Telegram]

A lawsuit charged that Father Bede Mitchel repeatedly sexually assaulted her when she was eight years old. He was a Benedictine priest from Subiaco Abbey who worked for four years in the Ft. Worth diocese where these crimes took place.

Subiaco Abbot Jerome Kodell claims nothing in Mitchel’s record indicates wrongdoing and claims to have done a fruitless “search for corroborating evidence of the sexual assault.”

“The abbey did not want to settle. The insurance provider opted to settle,” Kodell said. “If this had gone to trial, Mitchel would have been found innocent.”

We are appalled by these mean-spirited remarks. Years ago, Flip Wilson’s character Geraldine quipped that “The devil made me do it.” It’s equally ludicrous that Kodell claims “the insurance company made us.” Worse, it’s callous and disingenuous.

It’s callous because it heaps more pain on this brave victim. And it’s disingenuous because it contradicts the obvious fact that both the Ft. Worth Catholic officials AND the insurance company found this abuse report credible.

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UNITED STATES
Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests

For immediate release: Saturday, Jan. 31

Statement by Joelle Casteix of Newport Beach CA, western regional director of SNAP, the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests ( 949 322 7434, jcasteix@gmail.com )

For at least a month-and more likely several months-top Catholic officials have kept silent about a child porn case in the Vatican itself, again showing that secrecy is still the norm in clergy sex cases.

[Reuters]

Telling the public about current child sex cases is the best and quickest way Catholic officials can help parents protect their kids and help police and prosecutors pursue predators. And keeping credible accusations hidden gives criminals more chances to destroy evidence, intimidate victims, threaten whistleblowers, discredit witnesses and even flee the country.

This information surfaced in an annual report given by a Vatican bureaucrat (Gian Piero Milano). That’s just wrong.

There’s simply no excuse for information about possible child sex crimes – especially crimes that could be prosecuted – to be kept concealed. And there’s only one reason to do so – to protect those who commit and those who conceal these heinous crimes.

If Vatican officials can’t bring themselves to promptly and publicly disclose current child sex crimes within their own walls, there’s virtually no chance that Vatican officials will force the world’s 3,000 bishops to end their continuing and selfish secrecy in this scandal.

Where is this person who allegedly had child pornography in the Vatican? Is he still on the job? Did church officials tell law enforcement? Was he quietly shuffled off to work elsewhere?

The Catholic hierarchy admits that 100,000 US kids were sexually assaulted by priests. But the US is only four percent of the world’s population. So it’s pretty clear that more than one million children across the globe have been raped, sodomized or molested by priests.

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MISSOURI
Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests

For immediate release: Monday, Feb. 2, 2015

For more information: David Clohessy of St. Louis, SNAP Director (314) 566-9790 cell, SNAPclohessy@aol.com

Another predator priest is exposed
He worked in three area Catholic dioceses
Cleric was in Belleville, Springfield MO & Springfield IL
Church investigation into his alleged crimes is re-opened
Sex abuse victims to bishops: “How many others are you hiding?”

For at least ten years, a priest quietly lived and worked in two Illinois dioceses and one in Missouri. Last week, Catholic officials disclosed that they are re-opening an investigation into accusations that he sexually abusing a boy and a girl in South Dakota.

Leaders of SNAP, the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests, learned last week that Fr. J. Vincent Fitzgerald spent time in the Belleville, Springfield MO and Springfield IL dioceses. The group is urging these three bishops to “aggressively use church bulletins, parish websites, and pulpit announcements to find others who saw, suspected or suffered” child sex crimes by Fitzgerald.

In 2010, Fr. Fitzgerald was sued for reportedly assaulting two children in the late 1960s at the Tekakwitha Indian Mission in Sisseton, South Dakota.

[National Catholic Reporter]

According to the Official Catholic Directory:

–From 1995-2002, Fr. Fitzgerald lived at St. Henry’s Oblate Residence 60 N. 60th in Belleville. The residence is run by a Catholic religious order called the Missionary Oblates of Mary Immaculate, to which Fr. Fitzgerald belonged. (It’s the group to which just-retired Cardinal Francis George of Chicago also belongs.)

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TEXAS
Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests

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

We’re worried about Austin’s new Catholic auxiliary bishop and how he’ll deal with the church’s on-going clergy sex abuse and cover up crisis.

[U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops]

[KVUE]

[Reporter]

Bishop Daniel Garcia graduated from one of the most troubling Catholic institutions in the US – St. John’s in Collegeville Minnesota. According to a website called Behind the Pine Curtain, 50 monks and ten other members of Saint John’s are proven, admitted or credibly accused offenders who have sexually violated kids, teens or vulnerable adults.

And for several years, he’s been a diocesan “insider” – a member of the priests’ personnel board since 2011 and vicar general for almost a year. Yet we’ve seen no improvement in how Austin Catholic officials deal with abuse in that time.

Roughly 30 US bishops have posted predator priests’ names on their website. Austin Catholic officials refuse. (There are at least six publicly accused Austin area predator priests. They include Fr. Dan Clogan, Fr. Dan Delaney, Fr. Daniel Michael Drinan, Fr. C. Richard Nowrey, Fr. James O’Connor, and Fr. Lonnie C. Reyes. We strongly suspect there are far more child molesting clerics who live or work – or have lived and worked – in the Austin diocese but who remain “under the radar.”)

Often, parents, parishioners, police, prosecutors and the public give new church figures the benefit of the doubt. We hope this doesn’t happen in Austin. Complacency protect no one. Only vigilance prevents abuse and cover ups.

We urge Austin citizens and Catholics to continue to share what they know or suspect about clergy sex crimes and cover ups to secular officials, not church figures.

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VATICAN CITY
Vatican Information Service

Vatican City, 31 January 2015 (VIS) – The Holy Father has ratified the appointment of the following prelates as members and substitutes, elected by their respective Episcopal Conferences, for the 14th Ordinary General Assembly of the Synod of Bishops, which will take place in the Vatican from 4 to 25 October 2015 on the theme “The vocation and mission of the family in the Church and in the contemporary world”:

AFRICA
BURUNDI
Member: Bishop Gervais Bashimiyubusa, of Ngozi, president of the Episcopal Conference.
Substitute: Bishop Joachim Ntahondereye of Muyinga.

ETHIOPIA and ERITREA
Member: Bishop Tsegaye Keneni Derera, apostolic vicar of Soddo, Ethiopia.
Substitute: Bishop Markos Gebremedhin, C.M., apostolic vicar of Jimma-Bonga, Ethiopia.

GHANA
Member: Archbishop Gabriel Charles Palmer-Buckle, of Accra.
Substitute: Bishop Anthony Kwami Adanuty of Keta-katsi.

KENYA
Members: Cardinal John Njue, archbishop of Nairobi, president of the Episcopal Conference.
Bishop James Maria Wainaina Kungu of Muranga.
Substitute: Bishop Emanuel Barbara, O.F.M. Cap. of Malindi.

MADAGASCAR
Member: Bishop Desire Tsarahazana of Toamasina, president of the Episcopal Conference.
Substitute: Bishop Jean de Dieu Raoelison, auxiliary of Antananarivo.

RWANDA
Member: Bishop Antoine Kambanda of Kibungo.
Substitute: Bishop Smaragde Mbonyintege of Kabgayi, president of the Episcopal Conference.

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CANADA
CBC News

Former St. Patrick’s Parish bookkeeper Dianne Coady, 69, is heading to jail for defrauding her long-time employer of more than $300,000.

Coady, who defrauded the St. John’s parish over a span of about five years, offered no explanation for her frauds when she appeared in provincial court on Monday.

Judge Lois Skanes sentenced Coady to 14 months in jail, followed by a two-year probation term.

She was also ordered to pay back the $306,000 that was determined to have gone missing in an audit.

During her sentencing in St. John’s provincial court, Skanes said Coady was in a position of trust at the time and showed no remorse for what she did.

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