Megachurch Workers Plead Not Guilty to "Covering up Rape of Girl, 13, for Two Weeks"
Daily Mail
The five were charged Sept. 17 with failing to report child abuse after an alleged two-week lapse in reporting the initial rape allegations. A 13-year-old girl was raped in a campus stairwell of the 17,000-member Victory Christian Center in Oklahoma, police said. They accuse a church worker at the Bible Belt megachurch of carrying out the attack. Tulsa police say the girl is among at least three victims of alleged sex crimes by two former employees of Victory Christian Center who face criminal charges. A child crimes investigator said more victims could surface as police continue to investigate. Police said this week that the worldwide ministry's pastor and co-founder, Sharon Daugherty, whose daily broadcasts are beamed via satellite to more than 200 countries, knew about the allegations, but trusted ministry employees to follow in-house policies on reporting incidents. The church said it did not follow those policies. Former church employee Chris Denman, 20, was arrested Sept. 5 for allegedly raping a 13-year-old girl in a stairwell before a church service on Aug. 13. He also is charged with molesting a 15-year-old girl sometime between Aug. 13 and Aug. 17. He has pleaded not guilty, court records show.
Another ex-employee, 23-year-old Israel Shalom Castillo was arrested Thursday after turning himself in at the Tulsa jail. He is charged with making a lewd proposal to a child and using a computer to commit a sex crime. In a statement issued last Wednesday, the church said its employees failed to follow a written policy requiring any allegation of abuse to be reported by employees to the state's Department of Human Services, and internally within one hour to their department head and the director of human resources. The five employees charged with failure to report abuse have been suspended by the ministry while it decides disciplinary action, the organization said. Police Detective Cpl. Greg Smith, who works in the child crisis unit, said the ministry has fully cooperated with investigators since the alleged abuse was reported. 'There was a couple weeks where we probably lost some evidence,' he said. Smith said police are pursuing cases involving at least two more victims and another suspect. In one of the cases, police have failed to connect with the accuser. In the other, the victim's parents are not cooperating, Smith said. None of the documents threatened the papacy. Most were of interest only to Italians, as they concerned relations between Italy and the Vatican and a few local scandals and personalities. But their very existence and the fact that they were taken from the pope's own desk provoked an unprecedented reaction from the Vatican, with the pope naming a commission of cardinals to investigate alongside the Vatican magistrates. Clerics have since lamented how the episode shattered the trust and discretion that characterize day-to-day life in the Vatican, with bishops now questioning whether to send confidential information to the pope for fear it may end up on the front page of a newspaper. Journalist Nuzzi, for his part, remains calm despite his role as the other key protagonist in the case. "The only thing I can say is that I strongly hope that the trial will unveil the motives and convictions that compelled Paolo Gabriele to bring to light documents and events described in the book," he told The Associated Press this week. Gabriele, a 46-year-old father of three, is being represented by attorney Cristiana Arru after his childhood friend, Carlo Fusco, quit as his lead attorney last month over differences in defense strategy. The Vatican had said the trial would be open to the public, though access is limited and no cameras or audio is allowed. Eight journalists will attend each session and brief the Vatican press corps afterward. There is no indication how long the trial will last, how many witnesses will be called or what Gabriele's defense will be given that he has, according to prosecutors, confessed to taking the documents. Giacobbe noted that in the Vatican legal system, a confession is not enough to convict and that it must correspond with the other evidence uncovered during the investigation. Prosecutors did order a psychiatric evaluation and determined that Gabriele was conscious of his actions, although they quoted the psychiatrists as saying he was unsuited for his job, was easily manipulated and suffered from "a grave psychological unease characterized by restlessness, tension, anger and frustrations." Despite the peculiarities of the Vatican's legal system and the pope's absolute authority over all things legislative, executive and judicial, at least one outside authority has deemed it credible and fair: A federal judge in New York last year dismissed a lawsuit against the Vatican concerning rights to reproduce images from the Vatican library, ruling that the plaintiffs failed to show they couldn't get a fair hearing in the Vatican courts. There has been no such vote of confidence for the Vatican's onetime Congregation for the Holy Roman and Universal Inquisition, the commission created in 1542 that functioned as a tribunal to root out heresy, punish crimes against the faith and name Inquisitors for the church. One of its more famous victims was Giordano Bruno, burned in Rome in 1600 after being tried for heresy.
|
.
Any original material on these pages is copyright © BishopAccountability.org 2004. Reproduce freely with attribution.