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  More Charges in Moehler Case; Sex Abuse Victims Respond

SNAP
November 20, 2009

http://www.snapnetwork.org/snap_statements/2009_statements/112009_more_charges_in_moehler_case_sex_abuse_victims_respond.htm

Statement by Barbara Dorris, National Outreach Director for SNAP 314-862-7688

Survivors network of those Abused by Priests

We are grateful that law enforcement officials continue to investigate these horrific crimes. They have sent a very strong and important message to any child who is being abused that help is available. By encouraging anyone who saw or suspected these crimes to come forward they have been able to move forward with this case. When predators are behind bars, children are safer.

Victims of child sex abuse are often trapped in silence and self blame but even more so when the predator is a trusted, respected member of a religious community. We beg anyone who has been hurt to come forward and get the help they need and deserve.

(SNAP, the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests, is the nation’s oldest and largest support group for clergy abuse victims. We’ve been around since 1988 and have more than 9,000 members across the country. Despite the word “priest” in our title, we have members who were molested by religious figures of all denominations, including nuns, rabbis, bishops, and Protestant ministers. Our website is SNAPnetwork.org)

Contact David Clohessy (314-566-9790 cell, 314-645-5915 home), Peter Isely (414-429-7259) Barbara Blaine (312-399-4747), Barbara Dorris (314-862-7688 home, 314 503 0003 cell)

http://www.kansascity.com/115/story/1580475.html

More Mohler charges; children may have been used for child porn

By DONALD BRADLEY

The Kansas City Star

Prosecutors filed 11 new charges in the Mohler case this afternoon, raising the total to 42 against men accused of carrying out years of sexual assaults against young children in the extended family.

Also, acting on allegations that some of the assaults were used for pornography, investigators have recovered 65 video tapes from an uncle’s home in Columbia, Mo. Earlier, investigators found incest pornography, video tapes and recording equipment at the Independence home of the victims’ grandfather.

Lafayette County Prosecutor Kellie Ritchie said she did not know what was on the tapes.

According to documents to support today’s new charges, which include more accounts of bestiality, several sisters in the family ran away to flee the abuse in 1988 when the youngest would have been 6, but later returned home. As punishment, their father, Burrell Mohler Jr., allegedly made them watch him sodomize their sibling.

Mohler is in jail in Lexington, along with his father and three brothers. The men are alleged to have committed years of rape, sodomy and bestiality against the children.

Today’s charges could be the last in the Lafayette County case that has shocked the local community, country and even the world. Authorities indicate that other charges might come from Jackson County and other jurisdictions.

Others charged are the grandfather, Burrell Mohler Sr., 77, of Independence, and three uncles: Jared Mohler, 48, of Columbia; David Mohler, 52, of Lamoni, Iowa; and Roland Mohler, 47, of Bates City.

A brother of Burrell Mohler Sr., Darrel Mohler, also is charged.

According a search warrant affidavit for Jared Mohler’s house in Columbia, the victims told their mother about the abuse. The woman, however, took the complaints to the head of the family’s church rather than law enforcement.

Authorities now say the mother is cooperating with the investigation that began in August.

The alleged abuse occurred from the mid-1980s to the mid-1990s. The victims told investigators recently they remembered being taken from location to location for photographs of them with naked men and in provocative poses.

As with the grandfather’s house, cameras and computers also were taken from Jared Mohler’s home in the 1900 block of Fair Lane in Columbia.

 
 

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