ABUSE TRACKER

WISCONSIN
Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

By Annysa Johnson of the Journal Sentinel

A Catholic priest who was suspended from ministry at two parishes and elementary schools last month after an allegation of having inappropriate contact with a student will not face criminal charges, the Milwaukee County district attorney’s office and his religious order said Friday.

The Society of the Divine Savior said it had been notified by the district attorney’s office that no charges would be brought against Father Robert Marsicek, who was relieved of his duties at Pius X parish in Wauwatosa, Wauwatosa Catholic School and Mother of Good Counsel parish and school in Milwaukee shortly before Easter. Chief Deputy District Attorney Kent Lovern said prosecutors could not prove the elements of a criminal offense based on the facts gathered in the investigation.

Father Joseph Rodrigues, provincial of the Milwaukee-based order known as the Salvatorians, said Marsicek would remain off the job until the order completes its own review.

Marsicek, 71, was removed from his posts on Holy Thursday after a teacher at Wauwatosa Catholic observed behavior she believed to be “questionable or inappropriate,” according to the Archdiocese of Milwaukee, which oversees Catholic schools in the 10-county area.

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WISCONSIN
Patch

The priest who was suspended from his duties at St. Pius X Church in Wauwatosa as police investigated an allegation against him will not face any criminal charges in the incident.

The Journal Sentinel is reporting that Society of the Divine Savior said it had been notified by the Milwaukee County district attorney’s office that no charges would be brought against Father Bob Marsicek.

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CANADA
Edmonton Journal

By Brent Wittmeier, Edmonton Journal April 12, 2013

EDMONTON – Rick Chapman has seen it in childlike whimpers, afflictions hidden under heavy-duty addictions to alcohol, drugs and solvents.

An Anglican pastor with Edmonton’s ecumenical Inner City Pastoral Ministry, Chapman’s work puts him in full view of the brutal daily effects of residential schools. Roughly 60 per cent of Edmonton’s homeless have an aboriginal or Métis background, Chapman said, many directly touched — or a generation removed — from the trauma they experienced there.

“They tremble, they shake, they cry when they have to talk about what actually happened to them,” Chapman said. “The person may be 40 years old, but you’re really talking to a person who’s engaged in a history that happened to them when they’re young. And this history has not been resolved yet.”

About 100 Edmonton pastors and church leaders gathered at Trinity Lutheran Church on Friday to listen to Marie Wilson, a former journalist with CBC and one of three commissioners with the Truth and Reconciliation Commission.

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CHILE
etcetera

La Iglesia chilena protectora durante décadas de varios sacerdotes pederastas, pretende adaptarse a los nuevos tiempos del papa Francisco; y anunció que destinará bienes del sacerdote Fernando Karadima, violador durante más de 40 años de cientos de jóvenes, a prevenir abusos sexuales contra menores.

Karadima, estaba a cargo de la pastoral juvenil de la parroquia del Sagrado Corazón ubicada en uno de los barrios más acomodados de Santiago la capital chilena.

Y aprovechaba los viajes que hacía con los muchachos para agredirlos sexualmente; crímenes que en algunos casos continuaron durante décadas, incluso cuando sus víctimas estaban ya casados y con hijos.

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CHILE
La Tercera

Denunciante de Karadima expondrá en primera Conferencia Mundial sobre abusos sexuales en la Iglesia

por Angélica Baeza Palavecino – 12/04/2013

Los próximos 26,27 y 28 de abril en Dublin, Irlanda, se realizará la Primera Conferencia Mundial sobre abusos sexuales y violencia cometidos por miembros de la Iglesia.

Es esta histórica cumbre, Juan Carlos Cruz, uno de los denunciantes de Fernando Karadima será el orador principal, y relatará su experiencia como víctima del ex párroco de El Bosque.

“Es importante que la maldad de los obispos chilenos trascienda las fronteras y ayude a la reparación del daño en las víctimas”, dijo Cruz a La Tercera.

El periodista aseguró que su intervención “voy a contar todo, voy a contar que los obispos de El Bosque veían los abusos y siguen perteneciendo a la Conferencia Episcopal, estoy hablando de Juan Barros, Horacio Valenzuela, Andrés Arteaga y Tomislav Koljatic. Contaré el actuar de ellos y de Errázuriz, con nombre y apellido, de Ezzati, con nombre y apellido y de Cristián Contreras”.

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CHICAGO (IL)
MK Safety Net

“I Will Not Be Silent Anymore”

April 19 – 21, 2013

Holiday Inn Rolling Meadows Schaumburg
Rolling Meadows, (Chicago), Illinois
3405 Algonquin Rd Rolling Meadows, IL 60008,
United States 847-259-6600

Abuse sent many MKs and their families on an ‘Unexpected Journey’. This conference will address actions and steps to help us move toward reclaiming our lives and breaking the silence.

We invite you to come and join us to hear speakers ranging from professionals in trauma counseling, law, writers and MKs who are breaking the silence.

This conference is intended for former MKs (Missionary Kids) and their families and friends. All keynote speakers and breakout sessions will address abuse and trauma experienced by former MKs with a view to breaking the silence of abuse and offering resources to move toward healing.

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IOWA
WCFCourier

By PAT KINNEY, pat.kinney@wcfcourier.com

WATERLOO — Retired Dubuque Archbishop Jerome Hanus said Thursday he looks forward to giving a deposition soon in a 2011 lawsuit regarding his handling of an alleged clergy sex abuse incident 26 years ago by a monk at a Missouri abbey.

Hanus administered the abbey at time of the alleged abuse, and he plans to retire there.

The national Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests issued a press release Wednesday, two days after Hanus announced his resignation in Dubuque, regarding the pending deposition, critical of his handling of the matter.

Minneapolis attorney Jeff Anderson, representing the plaintiff in the Nodaway County, Mo. suit, confirmed Hanus is scheduled to be deposed this month in the pending case. In the suit, a plaintiff identified as “John Doe 181” said he was sexually molested as a minor while at a choir camp in 1987 at Conception Abbey Inc., a Benedictine abbey, by a Father Bede Parry, who also is scheduled for deposition.

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IOWA
National Catholic Reporter

by Joshua J. McElwee | Apr. 12, 2013

A Catholic archbishop in Iowa who retired Monday will be deposed in upcoming weeks in two lawsuits brought against the Benedictine abbey in Missouri where he was abbot for 10 years.

Two men who say a Benedictine priest sexually abused them as minors in the 1980s filed the lawsuits against Conception Abbey in northwest Missouri. Jerome Hanus, the retiring archbishop of Dubuque, Iowa, was abbot there at the time.

The lawsuits, filed in Missouri circuit court in the summer of 2011, say that before the priest, Bede Parry, allegedly abused the two minors, he had previously reported to Hanus other “inappropriate sexual relationships” with minors.

Upon receiving notice of the previous relationships, the lawsuits say, Hanus allowed Parry to remain as a youth choir director while receiving psychological treatment.

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NEW JERSEY
NJ.com

By Louis C. Hochman/NJ.com
on April 12, 2013

MENDHAM — A date has been set to rededicate a monument to child victims of church sex abuse that has been destroyed twice in as many years — even though repairs won’t be finished when the ceremony is held.

A ceremony will be held April 28, at 2 p.m., at St. Joseph Church in Mendham, where former Rev. James Hanley abused several children.

Organizer Bill Crane, who, as a child, had been among Hanley’s victims, is extending invitations to both Gov. Chris Christie and State Sen. Barbara Buono, Christie’s challenger in the gubernatorial race. Also invited will be Bishop Arthur Joseph Serratelli of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Patterson.

“I’ve gotten so many messages from people saying, ‘Why are you making this a political issue?'” Crane said, as last month he said Christie should attend the dedication, or perhaps issue a proclamation recognizing April as Child Sex Abuse Awareness month. The governor, a Mendham resident whose family attends St. Joseph’s, hadn’t responded to an invitation sent last year, when the millstone memorial was rededicated after an earlier instance of vandalism, Crane has said.

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WORCESTER (MA)
Telegram & Gazette

By Bronislaus B. Kush TELEGRAM & GAZETTE STAFF
bkush@telegram.com

WORCESTER — Francesco C. Cesareo, the president of Assumption College, will lead a special panel of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops that seeks to protect children from sexual predators in the American Roman Catholic Church.

The appointment to chair the National Review Board was made by Cardinal Timothy Dolan of New York, who serves as president of the USCCB.

Mr. Cesareo succeeds Al Notzon III, who will step down from the post at the conclusion of the June meeting of the USCCB.

The NRB advises the bishops’ Secretariat for Child and Youth Protection and was established by the Charter for Protection of Children and Young People, which was adopted by the USCCB in 2002.

Mr. Cesareo has been a member of the NRB since 2012.

“The board and its chair provide valuable feedback to the U.S. bishops and we rely on their expertise and recommendations,” Cardinal Dolan said in a statement. “Mr. Notzon has continued the proud tradition of stellar leadership. I have no doubt that Dr. Cesareo will do the same.”

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UNITED STATES
Better Business Bureau

By
Charles Wood

A fake news story that claims to offer shocking information about newly-appointed Pope Francis is making the rounds via e-mail. Spammers are using the resignation of Benedict XVI and the election of a new pope as an opportunity to spread malware.

Clicking on the fake story leads users to a website that hosts the Blackhole Exploit Kit, according to reports from Yahoo! Finance, cyber-security companies Symantec and Commtouch and others. The Blackhole Exploit Kit can be used to deliver various types of malware.

The spam e-mails have reportedly come from a fake sender email address named “CNN Breaking News.” Reported subject lines in the e-mail include:
• Opinion: Family sued new Pope. Exclusive!
• Opinion: New pope tries to shake off the past
• Opinion: Can New-Pope Benedict be Sued for the Sex Abuse Cases?
• Opinion: New Pope, Vatican officials sued over alleged sexual abuse!
• Opinion: New Pope Sued For Not Wearing Seat Belt In Popemobile…

Better Business Bureau warns consumers not to click the link. If you receive this e-mail, delete it without clicking any links. If you have already clicked a link in a similar e-mail, run an antivirus software program to find and delete the malware.

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SPAIN
Fox News

An online game takes the idea of child’s play to a questionable new level.

Vatican Quest, which has a character resembling Pope Benedict XIV snagging children and delivering them to pedophile priests while being chased my camera-wielding members of the media, is under fire in Spain by critics who claim it makes fun of both sexual abuse victims and the Catholic Church.

The Spanish human rights group Maslibres.org recently launched an online petition demanding that the website RoundGames.org remove the video game from its free website.

“Reducing to caricature the drama of child sexual abuse, and then profiting from it, offends the victims and their families, said Miguel Vidal, spokesman for Maslibres.org, according to The New York Daily News. “Representing the pope as a pimp and the cardinals as pedophiles is an offense to Catholics.

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AUSTRALIA
The Age

April 13, 2013

Catherine Armitage
Senior Writer

The federal government is to spend an unprecedented $44 million on counselling for people who relive traumatic childhood experiences for the royal commission into child sex abuse.

Organisations that can deliver counselling, support and case management services before, during and after interaction with the royal commission are invited to apply for funding, the government said.

Prime Minister Julia Gillard established the royal commission to investigate how institutions entrusted with children had handled allegations and instances of child sexual abuse. The government is promising to do ”everything it can to help survivors of past abuse receive support and justice”, and to ensure such practices do not recur.

Trained counsellors have begun taking calls from abuse survivors, with 5000 or more predicted to come forward. Public hearings are expected to begin within six months.

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AUSTRALIA
NEWS.com.au

Janet Fife-Yeomans
From:The Daily Telegraph
April 13, 2013

VICTIMS of institutionalised child sex abuse have been thrown a $44 million lifeline to help them reveal their ordeals to the royal commission.

The federal government has agreed to pay for counselling and other services to support the victims and their families as they prepare to give evidence to what is becoming one of the biggest inquiries of its type in the world.

Bravehearts founder Hetty Johnston yesterday welcomed the funding as “critically important”. “What a relief,” Ms Johnston said.

As the commission delves into how many institutions with a responsibility for children, including the Catholic Church, have failed to protect them from abuse, Ms Johnston said many victims would consider the commission as an “institution” and find it daunting to tell their stories.

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AUSTRALIA
The Australian

Patricia Karvelas
From:The Australian
April 13, 2013

THE Gillard government will today reveal it will spend $44 million for counselling and support services for participants of the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse.

The government will open a tender today for organisations to run the services. The money is to be spent over a four years.

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OKLAHOMA
KRMG

By Russell Mills

TULSA —
Two Victory Christian Center employees sentenced to 30 days in jail for failing to report the rape of a 13-year-old girl at the church have returned to work after serving fifteen days.

The Tulsa County Sheriff’s Office says Anna George, 25 and Paul Willemstein, 33 served as trustees while in jail, and so qualified to get double credit for time served.

They had pleaded no contest to one count each of failure to report child abuse.

Three other employees who also pleaded no contest never saw jail time.

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ARGENTINA
National Catholic Reporter

by John L. Allen Jr. | Apr. 12, 2013 All Things Catholic

I spent early April in Buenos Aires, where I tried to learn more about Pope Francis from those who know him best as Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio. The idea was to gain insight into the man and his vision of the church, and I published some of what I found along the way.

However, I also had to look into some hard questions about the new pope’s record in Argentina. They include:
• Bergoglio’s response to two priests accused of sexual abuse, where critics have suggested he dropped the ball;
• why Argentina’s conference of Catholic bishops did not finish a set of sex abuse guidelines while he served as president;
• his relationship with Argentina’s military dictatorship as a Jesuit provincial during the 1970s;
• Bergoglio’s attitude toward liberation theology; and
• confusion over where he stood on the question of civil unions during a contentious national debate on gay marriage in 2009 and 2010.

The following are the best answers I can provide based on what I learned in Argentina.

Abuser priests

On March 18, The Washington Post moved a story from Argentina about Bergoglio’s record on the sexual abuse crisis that highlighted two cases: Fr. Julio César Grassi, convicted in 2009 of two counts of abuse and acquitted of several others, and Fr. Napoleon Sasso, convicted in 2007 of abusing five minor girls.

In general, the story suggested Bergoglio did not handle either case by the standards now accepted by the church in other parts of the world. It noted he did not meet victims, did not offer apologies or financial restitution, and did not take ecclesiastical action against the priests involved.

To begin with, here’s an important point not made in the Post story or in most subsequent commentary: Neither Grassi nor Sasso is a priest of the Buenos Aires archdiocese, and thus they were never under Bergoglio’s direct supervision. (Among other things, that means Bergoglio was never in a position to impose ecclesiastical punishment, which would have to be done by their own bishops.)

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VATICAN CITY
Gazzetta del Sud

Vatican City, April 12 – The Vatican Bank’s 2012 accounts were reviewed on Friday by a committee of cardinals after they had been approved by the supervisory committee, headed by German President Ernst von Freyberg, Vatican sources told ANSA. The cardinals were part of the oversight committee, which is overseen by Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, the body’s president and former Vatican secretary of state under retired pope Benedict XVI. The Vatican Bank is also known as the Institute of Religious works (IOR). Von Freyberg, together with IOR managing director Paolo Cipriani, hosted a dinner for the committee in the Vatican two days ago. The Vatican Bank has been at the center of scrutiny over alleged money laundering and has vowed to deliver a complete report in December on measures it is taking. On Wednesday it announced it was continuing to work with the Council of Europe’s Moneyval agency on an evaluation of national measures to meet global standards, and will deliver a progress report in December. That report is also expected to include “a more complete overview of the measures taken in the last year to further strengthen its institutional framework in prevention of money laundering and financing of terrorism”.

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SPAIN/UNITED STATES
New York Daily News

By Lee Moran / NEW YORK DAILY NEWS
Friday, April 12, 2013

A video game in which Pope Benedict XVI is depicted as a pimp for pedophile Roman Catholic cardinals is facing calls to be banned.

Vatican Quest, released by U.S. firm RoundGames.com on Mar. 14, has sparked outrage in Spain with critics saying it makes fun of both sexual abuse victims and the Catholic Church.

Human rights group Maslibres.org has launched a petition demanding the free arcade game is removed from the Web, reports El Huffington Post.

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UNITED STATES
The ABP News Blog

by Christa Brown • April 12, 2013

While other major faith groups have recognized the need for clergy accountability mechanisms, Southern Baptists persist in denominational do-nothingness.

Since 2006, clergy abuse survivors, and others, have been asking the Southern Baptist Convention to implement denominational safeguards against clergy child molesters. Southern Baptists have refused.

The requests are nothing radical. We asked for the sorts of safeguards that already exist in other major faith groups in this country. We asked that the denomination provide (1) a safe place where people may report abusive ministers, (2) a denominational panel for responsibly assessing abuse reports (particularly those that cannot be criminally prosecuted), and (3) an effective means, such as a database, of assuring that assessment information reaches people in the pews.

In 2008, TIME magazine ranked Southern Baptists’ rejection of a sex-offender database as one of the top 10 underreported stories of the year.

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UNITED STATES
Catholic News Agency

By Kevin J. Jones

Boston, Mass., Apr 12, 2013 / 04:07 am (CNA/EWTN News).- An upcoming movie on the sex abuse scandal in the Archdiocese of Boston has caused one screenwriter to worry that the film could exploit sex abuse for the sake of Hollywood awards.

“I have very big concerns about making the molestation of children the subject of entertainment,” screenwriter Barbara Nicolosi told CNA April 10.

“These are real people’s lives that have gotten ruined. We want to really pray that this movie doesn’t end up victimizing the victims all over again by turning their suffering into spectacle.”

Nicolosi, a former religious sister, is the founder of the Act One training program for Christians seeking careers in the entertainment industry.

She said she believes a movie about the abuse scandal is similar to screenplays about sex trafficking – both of which are not suitable for entertainment. “They’re never okay. You always feel that it’s a subject that should have been done in a documentary, not as a narrative.”

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OKLAHOMA
Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests

Posted by Barbara Dorris on April 12, 2013

We’re very disappointed that the staffers from Victory Christian Church are getting released from their sentence. It seems that church criminals often get breaks that secular criminals don’t.

These two endangered children. They essentially helped, by their silence and inaction, a child predator. They deserved a longer sentence. And they deserved to serve every minute of the short sentence they received.

Adults who care about kids need to send a strong message to those who profess to care about kids – “Act recklessly and you will be harshly punished.”

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UNITED STATES
Democracy Now!

[with video]

As newly elected Pope Francis orders the Vatican to act more decisively on sexual abuse cases, we speak to retired Bishop Thomas Gumbleton of Detroit. A survivor of sexual abuse himself, Gumbleton was forced to resign in 2007 after he spoke out publicly in favor of an Ohio bill to extend the statute of limitations for cases of sexual abuse by clergy. Gumbleton spoke here in New York City last night at a benefit for the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests. Bishop Gumbleton has also been a leading voice for peace, justice and civil rights for decades. He helped found Pax Christi and Bread for the World. We also speak to him about poverty in Detroit, Lori Berenson, war tax resistance, why he challenges the church’s position on gay marriage, the anti-nuke movement and liberation theology. [includes rush transcript–partial. More to come. Check back soon.]

Transcript
This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: We begin today’s show by looking at the ongoing sexual abuse scandal plaguing the Catholic Church. Newly elected Pope Francis recently made his first public statement on the issue. The pope ordered the Vatican to, quote, “act decisively as far as cases of sexual abuse are concerned, promoting, above all, measures to protect minors, help for those who have suffered such violence in the past (and) the necessary procedures against those who are guilty.”

But outside groups, including the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests, have questioned the pope’s actions. While serving as cardinal in Argentina, Pope Francis was criticized for failing to meet with abuse victims.

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UNITED STATES
National Survivor Advocates Coalition

USCCB’s National Review Board

There is a new chair of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops’ National Review Board. He is Francesco C. Cesareo, who has been on the review board since last year. He is president of AssumptionCollege, Worcester, Massachusetts.

Cesareo’s appointment was made by New York Cardinal Timothy Dolan, who chairs the USCCB.

New review board chairs have been mostly the same as the chairs they succeed: invisible and largely ineffective. That’s except for the first two – Frank Keating, the former governor of Oklahoma, who chaired the first review board, and Illinois Supreme Court Justice Anne Burke. They both served on the first review board which actually came close to being an independent review board.

Keating, you may recall, likened the USCCB members to the Mafia as he handed in his resignation.

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UNITED KINGDOM
Daily Mail

Wife sobs as priest is jailed for sex attack: Secret bride to stand by disgraced Catholic cleric

By Chris Brooke

The secret wife of a Roman Catholic priest made it clear she is standing by him yesterday as he was jailed for sexually assaulting a teenage girl parishioner.

William Finnegan, 60, and 48-year-old Beverley Dawson held hands and kissed outside court as he arrived for sentence.

And the divorced mother of two sobbed as her husband was given six months.

During his trial at Bradford Crown Court, Finnegan revealed he had duped his parishioners and the church authorities by marrying Mrs Dawson abroad, and secretly living with her for part of the week.

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BELGIUM
Expatica

The disgraced former Bishop of Bruges Roger Vangheluwe has said in correspondence with a man from Poperinge (West Flanders) that he hopes to have a permanent address that is publically-known soon.

Journalists from the West Flemish regional television stations WTV and Focus have read the letters and published some of their contents on their websites on Thursday.

Two years ago the Vatican banished Father Vangheluwe to a monastery in France as punishment for his abuse of under-age boys. Officially, no-one knows where he is staying and all correspondence with the disgraced former bishop is supposed to run via the offices of the Bruges Diocese.

It has now emerged that Father Vangheluwe regularly writes letters to a man from Poperinge whose brother committed suicide after he had be abused by a clergyman.

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SOUTH AFRICA
Mail & Guardian

12 Apr 2013 00:00 – Fatima Asmal

‘I can’t be accused of homophobia,” says Wilfred Napier, “because I don’t know any homosexuals.”

The admission is the starkest sign in a lengthy interview that the 72-year-old South African cardinal of the Roman Catholic Church and Archbishop of Durban is unshaken in the face of criticism over his remarks in a BBC interview that he believed paedophilia was a “psychological condition” that needed to be treated.

It took more than two weeks to set up the interview with Napier. The main cause of the delay was the church’s holy week, which came after the unholy row caused by Napier’s interview with the BBC after the appointment of the new pope last month.

To say Napier has had an interesting past few months is an understatement. In late February he travelled to Rome to bid farewell to Pope Benedict, who was retiring, and personally thanked him for the role he had played in the Catholic Church in general and on the African continent, which he visited twice.

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NORTHERN IRELAND
Belfast Telegraph

By Deborah McAleese– 12 April 2013

A woman at the centre of a Catholic Church money scandal saw a priest pay her almost £150,000

Fr Conleth Byrne (78) handed over the large sums of cash to Ballycastle woman Marie Hanna believing that she was homeless and in dire financial difficulties, a court was told.

The retired parish priest, who was serving in the parish of Loughinisland, Co Down, at the time, pleaded guilty earlier this week to fraud by abuse of position.

He claimed that he gave the money to Ms Hanna (54) over a 19-month period out of “charity” and that he believed her assurances that she would pay the money back.

A prosecution barrister told the court that he had shown a “high degree of naivety”.

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PENNSYLVANIA
PhillyBurbs

By BILL DEVLIN STAFF WRITER

Posted on April 12, 2013

WARRINGTON — Bucks County District Attorney David Heckler believes that when looking at revising Pennsylvania’s Child Protective Services Law, there is really only one particular group of stakeholders that counts.

“It’s the children,” Heckler said. “The other public interests groups be damned.”

The DA delivered his message Thursday night at a child advocacy forum sponsored by the League of Women Voters of Bucks County.

Heckler was joined by state Rep. Kathy Watson, R-144, of Warrington, and state Rep. Scott Petri, R-178, of Richboro, at the event held at Central Bucks High School South.

Watson chairs the House Committee on Children and Youth Services; Petri is the sponsor of House Bill 726, which concerns the investigations and handling of child abuse cases.

Heckler recently chaired the state’s Pennsylvania Task Force on Child Protection. The commission was charged with conducting a comprehensive review of the laws and procedures relating to the health and safety of children after the Jerry Sandusky child molestation scandal at Penn State. The task force released a 427-page report last November following a year of hearings.

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AUSTRALIA
7 News

By court reporter Sarah Farnsworth, ABC
Updated April 12, 2013

A rabbi who taught at a Jewish Orthodox boys’ school in Melbourne has pleaded guilty to child sex abuse dating back 20 years.

David Kramer, 52, pleaded guilty in the Melbourne Magistrates Court to six charges of indecent assault for the sexual abuse of students at the Jewish orthodox Yeshiva College in St Kilda East between 1990 and 1992.

It is believed Kramer is the first member of a Jewish institution to admit to child sex abuse allegations in Australia.

Kramer fled overseas in the early 1990s when accusations of abuse were raised with the college.

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AUSTRALIA
NEWS.com.au

Shannon Deery
Herald Sun
April 12, 2013

A FORMER Melbourne school teacher has pleaded guilty to sex crimes against students during his time at a prestigious Jewish college.

Convicted pedophile David Kramer, 52, pleaded guilty to five charges of indecent assault via video link at Melbourne Magistrates court today.

He also pleaded guilty a further charge of an indecent act with a person under the age of 16 while six charges were withdrawn.

It is believed to be the first time a member of Jewish institution in Australia has admitted to child sex crimes.

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OKLAHOMA
Tulsa World

By JARREL WADE World Staff Writer on Apr 12, 2013

Two Victory Christian Center staff members who were sentenced to 30 days in jail last month for failure to report the rape of a 13-year-old girl for two weeks are out early, jail records show.

Paul Howard Willemstein and Anna Alisa George have returned to work at the church and issued a statement to the Tulsa World through their attorney, Matthew Chesbro.

“I spoke with my clients and they asked that I tell you they are ‘grateful for the completion of this part of the process and hope healing can continue for everyone affected,’ ” Chesbro said in an email Thursday.

On March 18, Willemstein and George were led from the Tulsa County District Courthouse in handcuffs after they entered no-contest pleas to failure to report child abuse. Tulsa County Special Judge Bill Hiddle found them guilty of the misdemeanor charge.

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

AUSTRALIA
9 News

The Greek Orthodox Church would never sweep abuse allegations under the carpet, a Victorian inquiry has heard.

The church has a rigorous process for dealing with misconduct complaints, including reporting criminal behaviour to police, but it has never been tested in an allegation of child sex abuse, the parliamentary inquiry heard on Friday.

Church groups The Salvation Army and the Jehovah’s Witnesses told the inquiry on Thursday they felt it was a victim’s responsibility to report abuse to police.

The Greek Orthodox Archdiocesan Bishop Iakovos of Miletoupolis said the church informed police when complaints of a criminal nature were made.

But there was no record of an abuse complaint having ever been made.

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UTAH
KUTV

(KUTV) A member of an LDS bishopric in Orem has been accused of sexual abuse of a teenage girl in his ward.

Cesar Duran, 31, was booked into the Utah County Jail on Tuesday on suspicion of two counts of sexually abusing a child. The charges are a first degree felony.

In response to the investigation, the LDS Church issued this statement:

“The Church has zero tolerance for abuse of any kind. Those found guilty of these actions are subject to the demands of the law and also face Church discipline. The welfare of victims is our utmost concern and church leaders will continue to offer counseling and other resources to help in the healing process.”

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UTAH
Daily Herald

Paige Fieldsted – Daily Herald

OREM — An LDS leader in Orem has been arrested after a 13-year-old girl in his ward reported to family that he sexually abused her.

Cesar Duran was arrested Tuesday on two counts of sexual abuse of a child. According to police documents, Duran is in the bishopric of the accuser’s LDS ward. The accuser and her family were helping clean the church house in Orem. The girl said Duran told her he needed help cleaning a chalkboard in one of the classrooms in the building and lifted her up to reach a high place on the chalkboard. When he put her down, the girl said, Duran told her she was cute and asked for a hug. The accuser said that during the hug Duran thrust his pelvic area into hers. The accuser then left and continued cleaning and while her back was turned Duran allegedly entered the room, grabbed her hips from behind and thrust his pelvis into her backside.

Police reports say that at that point the accuser ran from the room crying and told her aunt about what had happened. The family said they confronted Duran and he said he was sorry for causing problems. Police reports say that during the ride to the jail Duran said he had made a mistake by being alone with the girl, but Duran didn’t answer any further questions and requested an attorney.

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UNITED KINGDOM
Eastbourne Herald

Published on 12/04/2013

A former church organist facing prison for sexually abusing boys ran a children’s home in Polegate in the 1980s.

Michael Mytton, also known as Mark Mytton, is believed to have been at the home in Polegate although county council records do not date back that far.

Sixty-nine-year-old Mytton, also a former choirmaster, was convicted last Friday of sexual offences against boys between 23 and 26 years ago.

Mytton, of East Chiltington, and priest Keith Wilkie Denford, 78 and from Shoreham, were convicted at Hove Crown Court after a three-week trial.

The case was adjourned for sentencing on Thursday May 2, and the defendants remain on bail until then.

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UTAH
The Salt Lake Tribune

By Bob Mims and Michael McFall
The Salt Lake Tribune

First Published Apr 11 2013

A local-level Mormon church counselor has been arrested for alleged sexual abuse of a 13-year-old girl in his ward.

Cesar Duran, 31, was booked into Utah County jail on Tuesday on suspicion of two counts of sexually abusing a child with whom he had a relationship of special trust, a first-degree felony.

However, Duran’s defense attorney, Clayton Simms, said his client will fight the charges.

“His position is that he is absolutely innocent,” Simms said Thursday. “He was alone with this girl and didn’t protect himself from false allegations. He maintains that nothing inappropriate occurred at all, there was no sexual contact.”

LDS Church spokesman Scott Trotter confirmed that Duran had, until this alleged incident, been a first counselor in the bishopric of a Spanish-speaking ward of the Geneva Height Stake in Orem.

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AUSTRALIA
Courier Mail

Former Salesian priest David Rapson faces new charges for sex offences after being ordered to stand trial

Shannon Deery
From:Herald Sun
April 12, 2013

A FORMER Salesian priest ordered to stand trial over a string of alleged sex crimes has been charged with fresh sex offences.

David Rapson, 59, was last year ordered to stand trial at the County Court after being charged with abusing seven young boys at Salesian College Rupertswood, in Sunbury, between 1973 and 1990.

He is facing charges of rape, gross indecency, and indecent assault.

The former vice principal has now been charged with more offences after a new victim made fresh allegations to new police taskforce SANO.

The taskforce was set up last year to investigate historical and new allegations that have emanated from the Victorian parliamentary inquiry into child sex abuse.

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UNITED KINGDOM
Telegraph & Argus

By Jenny Loweth, T&A Reporter

A Roman Catholic priest who sexually abused a 17-year-old girl in his church had damaged her faith in God and divided a community with his lies, a judge said as he jailed him.

William Finnegan, 60, known as “Father Bill” to his parishioners, was imprisoned for six months when he appeared at Bradford Crown Court yesterday afternoon.

Finnegan was parish priest at St Clare’s RC Church, Fagley, Bradford, when he told the girl he loved her, grabbed her bottom and kissed her passionately on the lips in the church on Easter Sunday last year.

He denied sexual assault, forcing the teenager and her mother to give evidence at his trial.

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UNITED STATES
BishopAccountability.org

Regarding: BishopAccountability.org EXPOSED [Part II]: Broadcasting Rumor and Innuendo to Trample the Innocent and the Dead

[Note that BishopAccountability.org is not alone in listing Muth, Haran, Lane, and O’Donovan. The Archdiocese of Los Angeles includes Haran on its list of accused priests

Los Angeles Archdiocese

and the Archdiocese of Boston includes Lane and O’Donovan on its list

Archdiocese of Boston

The Diocese of Kansas City-St. Joseph commissioned a report that includes a discussion of Muth’s case, including Bishop Finn’s decision to remove Muth’s faculties

Diocese of Kansas City-St. Joseph via BishopAccountability.org]

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NEW YORK
New York Daily News

BY Michael O’Keeffe

Save the date: Supporters of the Child Victims Act will gather in Albany next week to push New York State lawmakers to pass the bill inspired by sex-abuse scandals at Poly Prep Country Day School, Syracuse and other institutions.

Current state law requires survivors of childhood sexual abuse to file a case by the time they are 23 years old. The bill by Assemblywoman Margaret Markey (D-Maspeth) would eliminate the criminal and civil statute of limitations on sex-abuse cases.

“I wanted to remind everyone about the Rally and Lobby Days for the Child Victims Act of New York that will take place in Albany on April 16-17 and hope you will make plans to join us to demonstrate there is strong support for the legislation,” Markey said in a statement issued earlier this week.

“On these two days advocates and supporters will work to educate Assembly members and Senators about the need to reform our state’s archaic statute of limitations for child sexual abuse crimes. Highlight of the days will be a rally and press conference in ‘The Well’ of the Capitol’s Legislative Office Building at 12 noon on Wednesday, April 17. Look for more details from me soon about these two days.”

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KANSAS CITY (MO)
The Kansas City Star

April 11

The Archdiocese of Kansas City in Kansas has received a report alleging sexual abuse of a minor by a priest who used to serve in the area, the archdiocese said Thursday.

The priest, who is with the Diocese of Guntur, India, denies the allegation, the archdiocese said.

The priest’s assignments included Prince of Peace Church in Olathe from June 2003 until September 2005, St. Michael the Archangel Church in Leawood in summer 2007, and two other churches in Kansas in 2008, the archdiocese said in a statement.

In 2010, the archdiocese said, the priest resigned and was returned to his diocese in India after he admitted having sexual relations with an adult.

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IOWA
Virtue Online

Archbishop Jerome Hanus of Dubuque, Iowa cites “health reasons”. He was scheduled to be deposed in Bede Parry scandal

By David W. Virtue
www.virtueonline.org
April 11, 2013

The Roman Catholic Archbishop of Dubuque, Iowa Jerome Hanus has announced he is resigning “for health reasons” just two weeks prior to his scheduled deposition of a former pedophile priest who was later accepted into the Episcopal Church. Hanus is the first archbishop to resign under Pope Francis. Archbishop Hanus will move back to Conception Abbey.

The new pope is said to be house cleaning following a worldwide scandal involving the actions of scores of epipedophile priests and allegations that there is a cabal of homosexual cardinals operating within the Vatican. Zero tolerance is the mantra of the new pope.

According to a videotaped interview with Bede Parry, Archbishop Hanus (then Abbot in Conception, MO) knew of Parry’s misconduct with youth BEFORE Parry abused several choir kids in Missouri. Parry admitted to misconduct in a signed May, 2011 statement. You can see a video of Bede regarding Hanus here: [YouTube]

In a November 7, 2011, Parry admitted, “During the camp, I had inappropriate sexual contact in my living quarters with… a member of the Abbey Boy Choir. I have since recognized that I may have acted inappropriately with at least one other member of the Abbey Boy Choir.”

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AUSTRALIA
Pro Bono Australia

The Legal Advisory Service is seeking a Principal Lawyer to establish the Service’s legal practice, building and leading a national legal team.

Location: Sydney
Organisation: National Association of Community Legal Centres
Work Type: Full-time

Legal Advisory Service for people considering engaging with the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse
• Establish and manage the legal practice
• Provide expert legal advice and assistance
• Sydney based, travel required

The Legal Advisory Service is a free service for members of the public engaging or considering engaging with the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse. It is being established by the National Association of Community Legal Centres with funding from the Australian Government. The service will provide legal advice and practical assistance, information and referral, and support services via a national phone line and face-to-face services. The service will not provide legal representation and will work independently of the Commission.

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WORCESTER (MA)
United States Conference of Catholic Bishops

April 11, 2013

WASHINGTON—Francesco C. Cesareo, Ph.D., president of Assumption College, Worcester, Massachusetts, has been named the next chair of the National Review Board (NRB) by Cardinal Timothy Dolan of New York, president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB). He succeeds Al Notzon III, who concludes his term as chair after the June 2013 meeting of the USCCB.

The NRB advises the bishops’ Secretariat for Child and Youth Protection and was established by the Charter for Protection of Children and Young People, which the bishops adopted in 2002.

Cardinal Dolan thanked Cesareo, who joined the NRB in 2012, for accepting this leadership position.

“The board and its chair provide valuable feedback to the U.S bishops and we rely on their expertise and recommendations,” Cardinal Dolan said. “Mr. Notzon has continued the proud tradition of stellar leadership. I have no doubt that Dr. Cesareo will do the same.”

Cesareo holds a doctorate in Late Medieval/Early Modern European History from Fordham University. He also was a Fulbright Scholar and studied at the University of Rome and Gregorian University in Rome.

New NRB members include two psychologists, Michael de Arellano, Ph.D., associate professor and a licensed clinical psychologist at the National Crime Victims Research and Treatment Center (NCVC) of the Department of Psychiatry at the Medical University of South Carolina; and Fernando Ortiz, Ph.D., director of the Counseling Center at Gonzaga University, Spokane, Washington. Other new members include Laura Rogers, a former prosecutor who served as the Deputy Director of the Criminal Division of the Navy’s Judge Advocate General, and earlier as Director of the Office of Sex Offender Sentencing, Monitoring, Apprehending, Registering, and Tracking (SMART) at the U.S. Department of Justice implementing the Adam Walsh Child Protection Safety Act; and Scott Wasserman, a Kansas City, Kansas attorney who focuses on legal issues involving children, especially abused children and children with special needs.

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WORCESTER (MA)
The Catholic Free Press

Francesco C. Cesareo, Ph.D., president of Assumption College has been named the next chair of the National Review Board by Cardinal Timothy Dolan of New York, president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, according to a press release from the USCCB. He succeeds Al Notzon III, who concludes his term as chair after the June 2013 meeting of the USCCB.

The NRB advises the bishops’ Secretariat for Child and Youth Protection and was established by the Charter for Protection of Children and Young People, which the bishops adopted in 2002.

Cardinal Dolan thanked President Cesareo, who joined the NRB in 2012, for accepting this leadership position.

“The board and its chair provide valuable feedback to the U.S bishops and we rely on their expertise and recommendations,” Cardinal Dolan said. “Mr. Notzon has continued the proud tradition of stellar leadership. I have no doubt that Dr. Cesareo will do the same.”

Cesareo holds a doctorate in Late Medieval/Early Modern European History from Fordham University. He also was a Fulbright Scholar and studied at the University of Rome and Gregorian University in Rome.

President Cesareo told The Catholic Free Press that, “It’s a real privilege and great responsibility to serve in this capacity and to really help the bishops in the continued implementation of the Charter.

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DEUTSCHLAND
MissBiT

„Wenn nicht präventive Gründe zu einem raschem Handeln drängen“, sagt Uzulis, „wartet das Bistum die Ergebnisse der staatlichen Ermittlungen ab.“

(…)

Dabei hat Schell noch einen weiteren Fall im Blick: Ein Pfarrer soll in einer saarländischen Pfarrei in den 1980er Jahren mehrere Kinder sexuell missbraucht haben. Das mutmaßliche Opfer D. hatte im vergangenen Sommer beim Bistum Trier angezeigt, missbraucht worden zu sein, sowie einen Antrag auf finanzielle Entschädigung gestellt. Im Januar dieses Jahres hatte das Bistum Trier den Fall an die Staatsanwaltschaft Saarbrücken gegeben. Auch D. hatte im März dort Anzeige erstattet. „Der Vorfall ist verjährt“, sagt der Saarbrücker Staatsanwalt Thomas Reinhardt. Der Betroffene wartet unterdessen auf weitere kirchenrechtliche Untersuchungen und Konsequenzen.

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DEUTSCHLAND
paperblog

11. April 2013 von Josef Bordat

Steven Spielberg möchte den „Missbrauchsskandal“ (also: das Bekanntwerden von Fällen sexuellen Missbrauchs in katholischen Einrichtungen und / oder durch katholische Priester) verfilmen. Das kann man – je nach Temperament – für einen schlechten Scherz halten oder für eine astreine Geschäftsidee, besonders kreativ ist es aber nicht, auch nicht, wenn man die zeitgemäße Bedeutung von „kreativ“ (eigentlich: „schöpferisch“) zugrunde legt: „möglichst skurril und wenn’s irgend geht: religiöse Gefühle verletzend“. Nein, den Vogel abgeschossen hat längst die Firma RoundGames, die kleine Videospielchen für den Computer und das Mobiltelefon feil bietet, Produkte, an und für sich gedacht als netter Zeitvertreib zwischen zwei Meetings oder auch währenddessen.

Eines der Spiele thematisiert den Missbrauch in kirchlichen Einrichtungen. In diesem Spiel besteht der Vatikan aus Kardinälen, die ausnahmslos Kinderschänder sind, und aus Kindern, die sich ausnahmslos prostituieren. Für jede erfolgreiche Vermittlung von Kirchenmann bzw. Kinderschänder und Kind – im Spiel von Benedikt XVI. vorgenommen – erhält der Spieler 1000 Punkte.

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PHILIPPINES
Inquirer

By TJ Burgonio
Philippine Daily Inquirer
1:22 am | Friday, April 12th, 2013

Some are turned off by boring homilies and “second collections.” News of scandals involving priests also bothers them. But most are “distracted” by a lot of things.

Activist priest Fr. Robert Reyes and Msgr. Sabino Vengco offered these explanations to survey results showing “dwindling” numbers of Filipino Catholics hearing Mass over the past two decades.

A Social Weather Stations (SWS) survey in February found that only 37 percent of Catholics were going to church, a huge decline from 64 percent in 1991.

The survey also found that 9.2 percent of Filipino Catholics were considering leaving the Church.

“We’re hemorrhaging. It’s not massive blood loss but there’s blood loss. I see it; I experience it. The parishioners are losing faith, passion and interest in the Catholic Church. There’s something lacking that they can’t put their fingers on,” Reyes said by phone.

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UNITED STATES
TheMediaReport

Visitors to the home page of BishopAccountability.org are greeted with the name of the site and the tag line, “Documenting the Abuse Crisis in the Roman Catholic Church.” Prominently displayed on the top of the home page is a feature called “Abuse Tracker,” while further down the page, the site solicits any visitors to “send us photos of survivors, offenders, affected parishes, and important events.”

What other conclusion are first-time visitors then supposed to reach except that any priests profiled on the site are guilty of horrific child sex abuse?

The “posting policy” of BishopAccountability.org (which is buried on its site) begins with the oft-seen boilerplate language attempting to shield the site from potential defamation suits: “In the U.S. legal system, all accused persons are presumed innocent until proven guilty.” But the site clearly gives initial visitors the opposite impression: that any featured priests are guilty of criminal abuse.

And it is an incontrovertible fact that the site brazenly and openly features numerous priests whose complete innocence has already been long established and who are merely victims of public rumors, innuendos, and scams.
——-

From BishopAccountability.org

[Note that BishopAccountability.org is not alone in listing Muth, Haran, Lane, and O’Donovan. The Archdiocese of Los Angeles includes Haran on its list of accused priests

Los Angeles Archdiocese

and the Archdiocese of Boston includes Lane and O’Donovan on its list

Archdiocese of Boston

The Diocese of Kansas City-St. Joseph commissioned a report that includes a discussion of Muth’s case, including Bishop Finn’s decision to remove Muth’s faculties

Diocese of Kansas City-St. Joseph via BishopAccountability.org]

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VATICAN CITY
Vatican Insider

Pope Francis is kept constantly informed about the state of his predecessor’s health, while Fr. Lombardi has denied rumours about Benedict suffering from any chronic illnesses

Giacomo Galeazzi
Vatican City

Concern has spread about Ratzinger’s apparently rapidly deteriorating health. “Benedict XVI is not suffering from any specific chronic illness; his health problems are purely to do with old age,” the director of the Holy See Press Office, Fr. Federico Lombardi stressed. His statement, released to Catholic news agency Aci Prensa, came in response to rumours that have been circulating in the Spanish press about the Pope Emeritus suffering a serious illness. In recent pictures Ratzinger appears visibly thinner and physically weaker.

According to information from within the Curia, Pope Francis was apparently also told about his predecessor’s health conditions, by Georg Gaenswein, who reassured him. Benedict’s increased general fragility is apparently not due to any specific illnesses, recent routine medical check ups confirm. Physical and nervous deterioration are normal consequences of the stressful period that ensued Ratzinger’s resignation as Pope. He does not need to be hospitalised for the time being and as scheduled, the former Pope is to return to the Vatican next month, to enter the monastery that has been prepared for him, in the Vatican gardens.

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NEW MEXICO
KOAT

[with video]

By Regina Ruiz

ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. —Sexual abuse allegations against a New Mexico priest may have gotten worse, after the victim’s attorney said he’s investigating claims that the priest had AIDS.

As sex abuse allegations mount against former Questa priest Michael O’Brien, attorney Kelly Clark said new information has surfaced about a potentially harmful secret he may have been keeping.

“If it turns out that Father O’Brien suffered from AIDS, God forbid that he passed that on to any of his victims,” Clark said.

Clark represents a 37-year-old who said O’Brien raped him as a boy. A complaint was filed this month against the church and the archdiocese.

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ROME
National Post (Canada)

The Telegraph | 13/04/11

ROME — The Vatican admitted Wednesday that the health of Pope Emeritus Benedict has deteriorated.

Benedict, 85, who made history by becoming the first pope since the Middle Ages to step down, has looked increasingly frail in his few public appearances since his resignation in February.

He appeared particularly unsteady when he was visited by his successor, Pope Francis, at Castel Gandolfo, the summer papal residence outside Rome where Benedict has been staying.

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ROME
Daily Mail (UK)

Vatican is forced to admit Pope Emeritus Benedict’s health has worsened following reports ‘he will not be with us much longer’

The health of Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI has deteriorated, the Vatican has revealed.

Senior church officials were forced to make their fears public after a respected Vatican expert declared ‘we won’t have him with us for very much longer’.

The 85-year-old, who stepped down in February, has looked increasingly frail in his few public appearances.

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NORTHERN IRELAND
BBC News

A parish priest was involved in the sexual abuse of some children in Donagh in the 1970s and 1980s, the BBC can reveal.

Canon Peter Duffy, from County Monaghan, was an uncle of former Bishop of Clogher Joseph Duffy.

He died in 1994 and is buried in Donagh. The police have investigated cases involving three victims.

One of them was Michael Connolly who was also abused by the McDermott brothers.

He said: “The priest was just as bad and he did exactly the same as what the McDermotts had done.

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UNITED KINGDOM
Daily Mail

By Hugo Gye

A Catholic priest who was secretly married was today jailed for six months for molesting a teenage girl in what a judge described an an ‘enormous breach of trust’.

William Finnegan, known as ‘Father Bill’, touched the 17-year-old’s bottom and forcibly kissed her at St Clare’s Roman Catholic Church in Bradford on Easter Sunday last year.

Judge Roger Thomas said that 60-year-old, who admitted during the trial that he had a secret wedding 14 years ago, was ‘in denial’ about his crime.

He also had harsh words for Finnegan’s parishioners who stood by him despite the charges, saying: ‘Maybe some of them would believe the sun would rise in the west tomorrow if he said it.’

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UNITED STATES
Bilgrimage

William D. Lindsey

As April began, I wrote that I agree with Spanish Benedictine theologian Teresa Forcades that, while we welcome positive signs of change in the way Pope Francis is modeling papal ministry now, we must also wait and see how he will deal with the “basic questions.” At the top of the list of those questions is the ongoing crisis in the Catholic church caused by abuse of minors by Catholic religious authority figures.

On that front, the article that Stacy Meichtry and José de Córdoba published in Wall Street Journal* on Sunday is not promising news. As Dennis Coday notes in a summary of this article in National Catholic Reporter yesterday, under the leadership of Cardinal Bergoglio (now Pope Francis) the Argentine conference of Catholic bishops missed a deadline for formulating and implementing guidelines to deal with abuse in the Catholic church in Argentina. The Argentine bishops’ conference does not have a written plan for dealing with abuse.

As Barbara Blaine notes for SNAP, this revelation reinforces the growing sense, among many Catholics watching to see how the new pope will deal with the abuse crisis, that we may be in for the same old, same old behavior of obfuscation and image management with the new pope that we’ve had with other top Catholic leaders for far too long now:

On Friday, the pope said he wanted to “continue” the abuse practices of his predecessor. In a sad and ironic way, by refusing to even write an abuse policy, by saying one thing and doing another, Pope Francis is indeed following the pattern of his predecessor: talking the talk but not walking the walk. . . .

Catholics can feel good about the Pope’s apparently humble and likeable personality and his more down-to-earth demeanor and his professed concern for the poor. But everyone should realize that with the church’s on-going abuse and cover up crisis, he’s the “same old, same old.”

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

Posted by Barbara Dorris on April 11, 2013

A Pulitzer Prize winning journalist and author will be in St. Louis next week to discuss his new book that explores the clergy sex abuse and cover-up crisis.

Author Michael D’Antonio will be at Left Bank Books in downtown St. Louis where he will talk about his new book “Mortal Sins: Sex, Crimes and the Era of Catholic Scandal”. D’Antonio has also written biographies of famous chocolatier Milton Hershey and ex-boxer and self-taught PGA golfer Esteban Toledo.

Publisher’s Weekly has called the book “the definitive history of the Catholic Church’s most severe crisis since the reformation.” (http://www.publishersweekly.com/978-0-312-59489-3)

“If like me you’ve followed this story only glancingly and intermittently over the years, reading Mortal Sins – that is, discovering the full scale and scope and nature of the crimes and cover-ups – will be shocking. Its power is all the greater because Michael D’Antonio is such a scrupulous, lucid chronicler. This is clearly the definitive work on one of the most consequential and appalling stories of our time” said Kurt Andersen, bestselling author of True Believer and Hey Day, and host of Public Radio’s Studio 360

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UNITED KINGDOM
Yorkshire Post

A SECRETLY-married priest who sexually assaulted a teenage girl in what a judge described as an “enormous breach of trust” was today jailed for six months.

William Finnegan, known to his parishioners as Father Bill, touched the 17-year-old’s bottom and “passionately” kissed her at St Mary’s Roman Catholic Church in Fagley, Bradford last Easter.

Finnegan, 60, remains “in denial” about the offence, which led to his “considerable fall from grace” the Recorder of Bradford Judge Roger Thomas QC said as he jailed Finnegan.

“It just seems to me he cannot face up to what he’s done,” Judge Thomas added.

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UNITED KINGDOM
BBC News

A priest has been jailed for six months for sexually assaulting a teenage girl, in what a judge described as an “enormous breach of trust”.

William Finnegan, 60, “passionately” kissed the 17-year-old and touched her bottom at St Mary’s Roman Catholic Church in Fagley, Bradford last Easter.

He was sentenced at Bradford Crown Court after he was found guilty by a jury.

During the trial it emerged he had been secretly married since 1999.

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

UNITED KINGDOM
Telegraph & Argus

By Jenny Loweth, T&A Reporter.

A Roman Catholic priest who sexually assaulted a teenage girl was today jailed for six months.

The Recorder of Bradford, Judge Roger Thomas QC, told William Finnegan, known to his parishioners as “Father Bill”, he committed a gross breach of trust when he groped and kissed the 17-year-old in his church in April last year.

Finnegan, 60, who was parish priest at St Clare’s in Fagley, Bradford, was found guilty by a jury at Bradford Crown Court last month.

During the trial it was heard that Finnegan was secretly married.

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

AUSTRALIA
Sydney Morning Herald

April 11, 2013

Rachel Browne
Social Affairs Reporter

Australia’s inaugural National Children’s Commissioner, Megan Mitchell, has used her first major public speech to warn that there is a heavy toll for not listening to children, and to urge Australians to learn from past tragedies.

Speaking at the Child Aware Approaches conference in Melbourne on Thursday, she said young people need to have greater involvement in decisions which affect their lives.

“We must learn from the mistakes of the past, when children’s voices were ignored with devastating consequences,” she said at the Melbourne Convention and Exhibition Centre.

“The Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse will, I am sure, uncover stories where children’s voices were unheard, and even when heard, were deliberately not taken into account.

“We need to make sure our attitudes and our systems respect the child’s voice. This is one of the essential ways that we can help children to be safe, to realise their potential, and to live full and happy lives.”

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AUSTRALIA
The Daily Telegraph

EXCLUSIVE by Janet Fife-Yeomans
The Daily Telegraph
April 12, 2013

UP to 100,000 people will make claims for compensation in the wake of the royal commission into institutionalised abuse, according to a leading lawyer.

They are pinning their hopes on the commission recommending that a “redress fund” be set up, into which institutions at blame would pay commensurate sums of money.

Lawyer Peter Kelso said the Catholic Church may be forced to sell some of its multi-million dollars worth of land and property holdings to pay its fair share of a fund.

While the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse will not be able to make awards of compensation, its terms of reference call on it to find ways so that victims can get redress from institutions.

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AUSTRALIA
9 News

Jehovah’s Witnesses say it is not their responsibility to report child sex abuse to police unless mandatory reporting legislation is in place.

A Victorian inquiry on Thursday heard that when a Jehovah’s Witness leader hears allegations of abuse they are directed immediately to contact the society’s legal department to check their obligations under state law.

Jehovah’s Witness legal counsel Rachel van Witsen said elders were not expected to know their legal obligations.

“This is done to ensure elders fully comply with any legal requirements that may be applicable in the state in which they reside,” she said.

“In Victoria if there was mandatory reporting the immediate advice would be to report that immediately.”

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PENNSYLVANIA
Patch

By Richard Cook

The Catholic Diocese of Pittsburgh recently sent a letter to parishioners at a Wilkinsburg church warning of abuse allegations against a former priest who also once served at a West View parish.

According to KDKA, the accused priest and the alleged victim have both passed away, but the man in his 40s revealed the abuse to his family months before he died.

KDKA reports the man claimed Rev. John Wellinger abused him between 1981 and 1985 when Wellinger served as an assistant pastor at St. James Parish in Wilkinsburg. The abuse started when the alleged victim was 10.

Local church officials confirmed that Wellinger once served at St. Athanasius Church in West View, but referred all other questions to the diocese.

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NORTHERN IRELAND
News Letter

PARISHIONERS in Loughinisland yesterday told of their “shock and sadness” after their 78-year-old former priest pleaded guilty to fraud earlier this week.

Fr Conleth Byrne, now retired, informed police he paid around £145,000 of parish funds to Marie Hanna from Ballycastle over a 19-month period out of “charity” after she begged him for financial help, a court was told.

He pleaded guilty to fraud by abuse of position just before his trial was due to begin at Downpatrick Crown Court on Tuesday.

The court heard that Byrne had been a priest in Loughinisland in Co Down when Ms Hanna, who is in her 50s, called at the parochial house in September 2007 and claimed to be in “dire need” of financial assistance.

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UNITED STATES
Watch Keep

[I’ve asked Amy to let me write a guest post. I had one condition: she had to let me post it without any input, editing, or contribution on her part. She agreed; every word below is mine.]

I’ve told our story many times over the last two years. How nearly thirty years ago John Langworthy molested several boys in his hometown of Clinton, Mississippi. How he moved from Clinton to Dallas, attended seminary, worked at Prestonwood Baptist Church and befriended my wife’s family. For years at Prestonwood, he molested several more minors. I’ve told how Prestonwood’s leadership discovered the behavior, fired him, but did not report him to the police. About how Langworthy quickly moved back to Clinton, got jobs at a school and a church. And finally how my wife looked him up two years ago, learned he had been working with youth, and reported his past crimes to the authorities and the media.

Thanks in small part to Amy and to several brave victims, John Langworthy has been convicted for child molesting in Mississippi. He still hasn’t faced justice for the more recent abuse he committed in Texas.

Every time I tell this story, people tell me how disgusting Langworthy’s crimes are, and tell me to keep supporting Amy. Many have told her “thank you”, “keep it up” and “good job.” But sadly, these feelings are not universal. My wife has also received insults, baseless accusations, legal threats, and even been disowned by her parents for reporting a child molester and calling on Prestonwood to do the same.

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AUSTRALIA
Eureka Street

Fatima Measham April 11, 2013

The Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse has begun, with its first sitting held in Melbourne last week. Expectations are high; relief runs deep. Both commissioners and victims will be treading a harrowing path together in the coming months and years. It is bound to be a national catharsis.

The six commissioners expect to receive more than 5000 submissions. Orders have already been served on the Catholic Church, its insurer, the Salvation Army and the NSW Director of Public Prosecutions. The Commission foresees that it will miss the 2015 deadline for a full report, due to the monumental scope.

Though it will not be prosecuting criminal cases, it has established links with state and territory police. There is also a focus on policy corrections for institutions which are found to have failed in their duty of care. The prosecutorial and legal outcomes from the commission will be significant. But other wounds bear considering.

The Catholic Church is placed uniquely among institutions under scrutiny. The trust that laypeople hold in priests and other vowed religious is not the same trust held in teachers, doctors and coaches. It is sourced from the stories that feed their faith.

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UNITED STATES
Washington Post

By Kristen Howerton

Published: April 10

A recent lawsuit filed in October against church officials working for Sovereign Grace Ministries (SGM) raises many ethical questions about clergy and their duty to report sexual abuse within the church. SGM is a church network with member churches throughout the world and has engaged in partnerships with many prominent figures in the Reformed movement, including John MacArthur, Mark Dever, and John Piper.

The lawsuit, filed by several women against SGM, alleges that church officials discouraged abuse victims from contacting the police, and instead conducted their own justice process, including forcing victims to meet with the men who assaulted them for “forgiveness.” The suit was originally filed by three women, but more plaintiffs have since been added, including plaintiffs that allege that some of the church officials were perpetrating the abuse as well.

Unfortunately this isn’t the only sexual abuse case involving SGM. In February, a former leader at Maryland’s Covenant Life Church that formerly served as SGM’s flagship church was indicted on accusations of molesting four boys between 1985 and 1990. The church withdrew their association with SGM in December.

SGM released a statement in which they suggested that courts should be prohibited from reviewing confidential advice given during pastoral counseling sessions, claiming it would impinge on the church’s First Amendment rights. “We are saddened that lawyers are now, in essence, seeking to violate those rights by asking judges and juries, years after such pastoral assistance was sought, to dictate what sort of biblical counsel they think should have been provided,” the statement said.

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TENNESSEE
Tennessean

A former public middle school principal charged with a string of sexual abuse was sentenced to three months in prison and 12 years of probation for abuse that occurred four years ago.

The man, Ronald B. Anderson, 34, allegedly met the victims, who were teenage boys, at his church.

Anderson, former principal at Kennedy Middle School in Antioch, was convicted in January by a Davidson County jury of four counts of sexual battery by an authority figure.

Police arrested Anderson in March 2009 after prosecutors charged him with sexually abusing two teenage boys, whom he took under his wing at the Royal Life International Church in Madison. Anderson had given them rides, treated them to dinner and become a mentor of sorts, according to court testimony.

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AUSTRALIA
Brimbank & North West Weekly

By Barney Zwartz
April 11, 2013

The Salvation Army has had 473 complaints about abuse in its Victorian children’s home and has spent nearly $20 million settling them.

But while its representatives could give no explanation of how predators got away with it for so long, it denied there had been a culture of abuse.

The Salvation Army had almost no records of children in the homes, but had not tried to hide, shred or dispose of them, Captain Malcolm Roberts told the Victorian inquiry into how the churches handled child sexual abuse.

The last homes closed in the 1980s, and the church dealt with some 35,000 children, he said.

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UNITED STATES
National Catholic Reporter

by Colman McCarthy | Apr. 10, 2013

Should we come back? Now that it’s a pope named Francis who is being hailed as “a history-making pontiff,” “a man who knows how to govern” and a leader from “outside the walls of Rome,” is it a moment for those of us who were Catholic-raised and Catholic-educated to rejoin the church after having taken a powder years ago?

It was a strong tailwind of reasons that helped blow us out the door: revulsion at the child abuse scandals, the hierarchy’s shielding of pedophile priests, the cruelty of church policy on gays and lesbians, the Vatican’s clamping down on American nuns, the attacks on priests who support women’s ordination, a calcified Eurocentric Roman bureaucracy that rules by fiat and not consensus. Then, too, a final turn-off: doctrinal rigidity. Rome has spoken; that’s it, people. No discussion allowed.

What’s to be learned soon enough about Pope Francis is whether he will be a tinkerer or an overhauler. The former is one who hauls his car to the local gas station and explains to the mechanic that the brakes are worn, the tires are flat, the radiator is not holding water, the oil leaks, the lower control arms are broken, the steering wheel can’t turn, the headlights are out, the carburetor is shot, the doors won’t lock and the wipers don’t wipe. The car owner tells the mechanic to just squirt a bit of Havoline Supreme on the engine and the old girl will run fine.

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MALTA
Times of Malta

Wednesday, April 10, 2013 by
Juan Ameen

The Curia has denied a claim that it abandoned 11 victims of priest abuse, saying they had been contacted by the Missionary Society of St Paul and invited to approach it for help.

The MSSP, under whose care the men lived at St Joseph’s Home in Santa Venera about 20 years ago, contacted the victims in writing in October 2011, a spokesman for the Curia said.

This was immediately after the Congregation for the Doctrine of Faith published its decision about their cases.

“In fact, a number of those involved approached the society and are still receiving help,” the spokesman added.

Lawrence Grech, one of the victims, had told The Times he had expected to be approached by the Therapeutic Evaluation Board, which was set up by the Church last October and tasked with directing victims of clerical sexual abuse to therapy. None of the 11 men had been approached, he claimed.

The spokesman said that the Church had “more than once” publicly invited past victims to come forward.

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ST. LOUIS (MO)
Berger’s Beat

. . . Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Michael D’Antonio will discuss his new book at 6:30 p.m., April 18 at Left Bank Books downtown. Titled “Mortal Sins: Sex Crimes and the Era of Catholic Scandal.” He has written biographies of famous chocolatier Milton Hershey and ex-boxer and self-taught PGA golfer Esteban Toledo. The event will benefit SNAP. . .

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CHILE
Bio Bio

Miércoles 10 abril 2013

Publicado por Alberto Gonzalez

El Arzobispado de Santiago informó este miércoles acerca del destino de los bienes de la disuelta Unión Sacerdotal del Sagrado Corazón de Jesús, que encabezó el sancionado sacerdote Fernando Karadima, condenado por abusos sexuales.

A través de un comunicado, la entidad religiosa anunció la creación de una Fundación cuyos principales objetivos serán la prevención de abusos sexuales de menores y acoger eventuales víctimas.

Lo anterior, como una forma de “proteger y fortalecer el vínculo pastoral entre sacerdotes y fieles”.

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CHILE
La Nacion

El Arzobispado de Santiago anunció este miércoles la creación de una fundación destinada a prevenir abusos sexuales contra menores, la cual se financiará con los bienes de la ex Unión Sacerdotal del Sagrado Corazón de Jesús.

Este disuelto grupo fue creado y encabezado por el sacerdote condenado por el Vaticano por este tipo de abusos, Fernando Karadima.

Mediante un comunicado, el arzobispado explicó que atendiendo al dictamen de la Contraloría que establece que los bienes de la disuelta Unión Sacerdotal pasarán a la Arquidiócesis de Santiago, resolvieron destinar esos bienes “a fines de apostolado que incluyen la prevención de abusos sexuales de menores y el acompañamiento sicológico y espiritual de quienes pudieran resultar, lamentablemente, víctimas de esos nefastos delitos”.

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VATICAN CITY
National Catholic Reporter

by Cindy Wooden,Catholic News Service | Apr. 10, 2013

Vatican City —
A major European regulator will conduct an expanded evaluation of the Vatican’s latest efforts to prevent money laundering and the funding of terrorism.

Moneyval, the monitoring Committee of the Council of Europe, agreed Tuesday to expand its next scheduled review of Vatican policies and procedures. The decision came in response to a request from the Vatican.

“With this initiative, the Holy See wishes to provide a more complete overview of the measures taken over the last year to further strengthen its institutional structure in the area of preventing money laundering and the financing of terrorism,” Vatican Radio reported.

The agreement on the scope of the December 2013 report, the radio said, confirms the Vatican’s “commitment to constructive dialogue with Moneyval.”

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VATICAN CITY
AsiaOne

Wednesday, Apr 10, 2013

VATICAN CITY – The Vatican said Wednesday the next report by the Council of Europe on its efforts to bring its laws into line with international rules against money laundering is due out in December.

The progress report by the Moneyval monitoring committee will also look at the Vatican’s implementation of all recommendations, not just the “key recommendations” in its July 2012 report.

The Vatican last year promised to redouble its efforts to reform its scandal-plagued bank and overhaul financial legislation following an Italian inquiry into alleged money laundering.

In that report, the Vatican scored satisfactory ratings in nine out of 16 key recommendations and unsatisfactory ratings in the remaining seven.

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VATICAN CITY
Telegraph (UK)

The Vatican has volunteered to widen the terms under which it is assessed for financial transparency, following a critical report by European money laundering watchdog Moneyval.

By Andrew Trotman, and agencies
5:37PM BST 10 Apr 2013

The Holy See is seeking to shake off a reputation for murky finances after a year in which documents alleging corruption in its business dealings were leaked by Pope Benedict’s butler, and the head of its bank was ousted in a row over transparency.

In a July 2012 report Moneyval, a department of the Council of Europe, criticised the Holy See for non-compliance with global financial transparency norms and gave it negative grades in seven out of 16 so-called “core” and “key” recommendations.

Under Moneyval rules, the Holy See has until July 4 to comply with all “core” recommendations, for example fully establishing the source and legality of funds and reporting suspicious transactions.

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VATICAN CITY
Bloomberg

By Chiara Vasarri – Apr 10, 2013

The Holy See said it’s continuing efforts to prevent money laundering and improve financial transparency as the Council of Europe presses for compliance with international standards.

In a report issued in July, Moneyval, the Council of Europe’s monitoring body for money laundering and terrorism financing, said the Vatican was making progress in complying with international standards on financial transparency, though it still needed to improve supervision of transactions. That report stressed the importance of independent supervision of the Vatican bank, which is formally called the Institute for the Works of Religion, or IOR.

The Holy See’s next progress report will be presented in December, according to today’s statement posted on the Vatican Radio website. “With this initiative, the Holy See wishes to provide a more complete overview of the measures taken over the last year to further strengthen its institutional structure in the area of preventing money laundering and the financing of terrorism,” the Vatican said.

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IOWA
Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests

Posted by David Clohessy on April 10, 2013

An Iowa Catholic archbishop has announced his resignation “for health reasons” just two weeks prior to his scheduled deposition in a clergy sex abuse and cover up case.

He’s Jerome Hanus who has headed the Archdiocese of Dubuque, IA and will soon live again in the Diocese of Kansas City-St. Joseph.

From 1977 to 1987, Jerome Hanus was abbot at Conception Abbey in Conception, MO (Diocese of Kansas City-St. Joseph). In a videotaped interview and a signed confession from 2011, Bede Parry admitted that Abbot Jerome Hanus knew about Parry’s previous sexual misconduct yet still placed Parry in a position of authority with the Conception Abbey Boy Choir where Parry reoffended with at least five choir participants.

With this resignation, Hanus has become to first high-ranking church official to step down during Pope Francis’ new regime.

[BishopAccountability.org]

“It’s extremely rare for a standing Archbishop to be desposed, and even moreso when that official has been named as an enabler by a predator priest himself,” said said David Clohessy, SNAP Director. “The consequences from this deposition could be huge.”

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AUSTRIA
Global Post

Austrian prosecutors on Tuesday charged a 79-year-old former priest of sexually abusing 15 students at a Benedictine monastery between 1973 and 1993.

The monastery, which runs a boarding school, is in the town of Kremsmuenster in northern Austria, the prosecutor’s office in nearby Steyr said.

The former priest also faces a charge of illegally possessing a weapon, it said, adding that he faces up to 15 years in prison. The Austrian Catholic Church, under Vienna Archbishop Christoph Schoenborn, set up a commission in 2000 to conduct independent investigations into allegations of sexual and other abuses committed by members of the Church. As of April 2012 the commission had probed more than 700 cases, some dating back to the 1960s.

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DEUTSCHLAND
Augsburger Allgemeine

Internat und Gymnasium reagieren auf die Vorwürfe und wollen den Fall aufklären. Von Dominik Mai

Ein Missbrauchsfall hat das Kloster St. Stephan und das angrenzende Gymnasium erschüttert. Der Komponist Wilfried Hiller hatte in einem Interview mit unserer Zeitung schwere Vorwürfe gegen zwei Patres des Internats erhoben – einer von ihnen habe ihn in den 50er Jahren mehrfach sexuell missbraucht, der andere körperlich gezüchtigt. Erst am Wochenende war dies bekannt geworden.

Den Direktor des Gymnasiums, Franz Lettner, haben die Vorwürfe überrascht: „Derzeit kann ich zu dem Fall keine Stellung nehmen, weil ich die Details nicht kenne und es um Dinge geht, die nicht in der Schule passiert sind“, sagt Lettner. Vielmehr hätten sich die Vorfälle im Internat ereignet, dessen Träger das Kloster ist und das somit nicht zum Gymnasium gehört.

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OSTERREICH
Die Presse

Es ist der erste Prozess gegen einen hohen Geistlichen seit mehreren Jahren. Dem ehemaligen Internatsleiter drohen bis zu 15 Jahre Haft.

Die Staatsanwaltschaft Steyr hat wie erwartet Anklage gegen einen ehemaligen Pater des Stiftes Kremsmünster (Bezirk Kirchdorf) u.a. wegen schweren sexuellen Missbrauchs erhoben. Dem heute 79-Jährigen wird angelastet, von September 1973 bis Juni 1993 an insgesamt 15 Zöglingen “Handlungen unterschiedlicher Intensität” vorgenommen zu haben. Ihm drohen bis zu 15 Jahre Haft, teilte die Staatsanwaltschaft am Dienstag mit.

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OSTERREICH
ORF

Seit über drei Jahren sind die Missbrauchsvorwürfe gegen Ordensmänner des Stiftes Kremsmünster in Oberösterreich öffentlich bekannt. Ein mittlerweile ausgetretener Pater wird nun angeklagt.

Der 79-Jährige ist der erste höhere Geistliche, der sich im Zug der Missbrauchs-Affäre in der römisch-katholischen Kirche vor einem weltlichen Richter verantworten muss. Im Folgenden eine Chronologie der Ereignisse:

Chronologie
1950er-Jahre – Es kommt zu Missbrauchsfällen, die erst im Laufe der aktuellen Affäre an den jetzigen Abt herangetragen werden. Die Vorwürfe richten sich gegen drei bereits verstorbene Patres.

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AUSTRALIA
Aljazeera

In late 2012, Australia was rocked by fresh allegations of Catholic clergy child sex abuse by whistleblower, New South Wales Detective Chief Inspector Peter Fox.

Fox has pursued allegations of child sex abuse by Catholic clergy for more than a decade, and he claims that as his investigations continued, a frightening picture emerged of a widespread cover-up by the Catholic Church of the child sex crimes committed by its clergy.

Fox repeated those claims publicly, and also accused the Catholic Church of deliberately obstructing police investigations, destroying evidence, and protecting paedophile priests, sparking calls for a national inquiry.

At the same time as Fox’s investigation, The Newcastle Herald’s senior journalist Joanne McCarthy, had also picked up the scent of a wider conspiracy by senior church officials to conceal sex abuse by its clergy.

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OHIO
Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests

Posted by David Clohessy on April 10, 2013

An accused predator priest from the Diocese of Cleveland has just passed away. Despite promises from church officials to be “open and transparent” about accused clerics, as best as we can tell not one church official in Cleveland told parishioners or the public about the passing of Fr. Joseph Lang.

Fr. Lang was accused in 1987 of raping a young boy while he worked at St. Philomena Parish in Cleveland. He allegedly admitted his guilt when he was sent for treatment. In 2002, the Vatican permanently removed him from active ministry and sent him to “live a life of prayer and penance.”

[BishopAccountability.org]

Being honest about the death of a credibly accused predator priest matters for several reasons:

First, it’s comforting when victims know that their perpetrator can no longer hurt any other kids. But that doesn’t happen (or happens years later) if the predator’s death is kept secret.

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CHILE
Terra

Iglesia destina bienes de grupo de Karadima para prevención de abusos sexuales a menores

El Arzobispado de Santiago anunció este miércoles la creación de una fundación destinada a prevenir abusos sexuales contra menores, aprovechando los bienes de la ex Unión Sacerdotal del Sagrado Corazón de Jesús, instancia que fue creada y encabezada por el sacerdote condenado por el Vaticano por este tipo de abusos, Fernando Karadima.

Mediante un comunicado, el arzobispado explicó que atendiendo al dictamen de la Contraloría que establece que los bienes de la disuelta Unión Sacerdotal pasarán a la Arquidiócesis de Santiago, resolvieron destinar esos bienes “a fines de apostolado que incluyen la prevención de abusos sexuales de menores y el acompañamiento sicológico y espiritual de quienes pudieran resultar, lamentablemente, víctimas de esos nefastos delitos”.

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PENNSYLVANIA
The Morning Call

April 09, 2013|By Steve Esack, Call Harrisburg Bureau

HARRISBURG — A computer system that does not track child abuse complaints among counties. Hospital lawyers who keep doctors from sharing medical information on children they suspect are abuse victims. Low pay and high burnout for young, inexperienced social workers.

Those are three main reasons the training and laws governing how and when child abuse claims are handled need to be overhauled, according to Senate testimony Tuesday by members of the Pennsylvania Task Force on Child Protection.

“Child abuse is an extremely real problem in this commonwealth as it apparently is in our society and our nation,” said the panel’s chairman, Bucks County District Attorney David W. Heckler.

The Legislature started the 11-member task force to examine the state’s patchwork of child protection laws after Jerry Sandusky, the former Penn State assistant football coach, was arrested in 2011 on charges of sexually abusing children. In November, the task force called for rewriting Pennsylvania’s child protection laws to streamline the reporting process, create new statutes and increase penalties for crimes such as possession of child pornography.

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UNITED KINGDOM
Eastbourne Herald

Published on 10/04/2013

A retired Eastbourne priest has gone on trial accused of multiple counts of sexual abuse at a children’s home in the 1960s.

Canon Gordon Rideout, 74, is alleged to have committed 30 indecent assaults and two attempted rapes when he was assistant curate at St Mary’s Church, Southgate.

The complainants, ten woman and four men, were child residents of a Crawley children’s home at the time of the alleged assaults.

Mr Rideout, of Filching Close, Polegate, is also accused of one indecent assault in Essex, and a further three against two victims in Hampshire.

He denied all 37 counts at Lewes Crown Court on Monday (April 8).

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MALTA
Times of Malta

The Curia has denied that it abandoned the victims of priest abuse, saying they had been contacted by the Missionary Society of St Paul and invited to approach it for help.

The MSSP, under whose care the men lived at St Joseph’s Home 20 years ago, wrote to the victims in October 2011, a spokesman said.

“In fact, a number of those involved approached the society and are receiving help ,” the spokesman added.

Lawrence Grech, one of the victims, had told The Times he had expected to be approached by the Therapeutic Evaluation Board, which was set up by the Church last October and tasked with directing victims of clerical sexual abuse to therapy .

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CANADA
Winnipeg Free Press

By: Ian Hitchen

BRANDON — An Anglican priest, who is the son of a Brandon bishop, is accused of charging more than $190,000 in personal expenses to a church credit card.

Noah James Bernard Njegovan, 30, appeared in Brandon court for the first time on Monday. His next court date is set for May 9.

He is charged with fraud over $5,000. The charge has not been proven in court.

Father Shane Bengry said members of the Anglican Diocese of Brandon have been notified of the accusations.

“We wanted to be as transparent as possible to our congregations… We tried to keep people abreast of what was going on,” said Bengry.

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UNITED KINGDOM
Crawley News

A former Crawley priest carried out a string of sex attacks at a children’s home, a court has heard.

Canon Gordon Rideout, 74, is accused of abusing more than a dozen girls and boys at the home over a four-year period.

He is also accused of indecently assaulting a boy at a home in Essex, and two girls in Hampshire.

The retired Church Of England priest denies 35 counts of indecent assault on 17 children as young as five, and two counts of attempted rape, between January 1962 and January 1973.

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PENNSYLVANIA
Patch

By Larissa Dudkiewicz

The Catholic Diocese of Pittsburgh recently sent a letter to parishioners at a Wilkinsburg church warning of abuse allegations against a former priest who also once served at a West View parish.

According to KDKA, the accused priest and the alleged victim have both passed away, but the man in his 40s revealed the abuse to his family months before he died.

KDKA reports the man claimed Rev. John Wellinger abused him between 1981 and 1985 when Wellinger served as an assistant pastor at St. James Parish in Wilkinsburg. The abuse started when the alleged victim was 10.

Local church officials confirmed that Wellinger once served at St. Athanasius Church in West View, but referred all other questions to the diocese.

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PENNSYLVANIA
PhillyBurbs

Some might argue that it’s better late than never. But for the family of Bristol Borough’s Daniel Neill, who took his own life in 2009, the removal of an allegedly abusive Catholic priest from the ministry comes as little consolation for the loss they’ve sustained and the grief they’ve endured. In short, it’s too little, too late.

How would you feel? Fact is, the defrocking of Rev. Joseph Gallagher comes seven years after the 78-year-old now former priest retired.

It was more than 30 years ago that Neill, then just 10 years old, reported to the principal at St. Mark Parish school that he had been sexually molested by Gallagher. According to a 2011 wrongful death suit filed by Neill’s family, the principal called the then altar boy “a liar and threatened … that his family would be disgraced if he persisted in making his report of sexual abuse.”

And so the child kept the allegations under wraps until 2007 — for nearly three decades — before again reaching out to the church. This was after the pedophile priest scandal erupted, including revelations that the Archdiocese of Philadelphia not only covered up the crimes but transferred accused priests from one parish to another in an effort to silence victims and protect the priests.

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NORTHERN IRELAND
Irish Independent

Dedorah McAleese– 10 April 2013

A PRIEST who “naively” gave almost £150,000 (€175,000) of parish funds to a woman he believed to be destitute has pleaded guilty to fraud.

Fr Conleth Byrne (78) told police he paid the money to Marie Hanna from Ballycastle, Co Antrim, over a 19-month period out of “charity” after she begged him for financial help, a court was told.

The retired parish priest pleaded guilty yesterday to fraud by abuse of position just before his trial was due to begin at Downpatrick Crown Court.

Fr Byrne was a priest in Loughinisland, Co Down, when Ms Hanna, who is in her 50s, called at the parochial house in September 2007 and claimed to be in “dire need” of financial assistance, the court heard.

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OHIO
The Plain Dealer

LANG JOSEPH J. LANG, age 73. Beloved son of the late Joseph C. and Maleda (Cummings) Lang; loving brother of James P. Lang; devoted uncle of Andrew M. and Benjamin M. Lang; cherished cousin to three generations and caring friend to all. Entered eternal rest Tuesday, April 2, 2013. Services and burial will be at the convenience of the family. ‘No one ever died of Laughter.’

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PENNSYLVANIA
Patriot-News

By Charles Thompson | cthompson@pennlive.com

The chair of the Pennsylvania Senate’s Public Heath and Welfare Committee said she wants to see a package of bills designed to strengthen protections for children from all forms of abuse moved to Gov. Corbett’s desk by the end of the year.But Sen. Pat Vance, R-Cumberland County, cautioned it may take that much time to ensure the legislature is making the child protection system as strong as possible in Pennsylvania in the wake of sensational cases like the Jerry Sandusky child sex abuse scandal.

“I think we’ve learned a lot,” Vance said after a hearing today on the findings of a blue-ribbon task force empaneled last year to recommend changes. “But have we learned enough to legislate intelligently? That is the question.”

But task force leaders were clear enough about their must-dos.

They continued to hone in on the need for Pennsylvania to broaden its current definitions of child abuse so state reporting systems catch more of the cases that are investigated, and information on the families involved is accessible to those who need it.

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PENNSYLVANIA
WESA

By Mary Wilson and WESA Staff

A state Senate Republican is making a concerted push for the cautious approach when it comes to child protection legislation.

House lawmakers are poised to advance a number of proposals intended to make children safer in the wake of the Jerry Sandusky abuse case.

But at a joint committee hearing this week, GOP state Sen. Bob Mensch of Montgomery County said he’s taking to heart advice from others not to rush anything that could add to the burden of local child welfare offices.

“This is the first step, not the last step,” he said.

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AUSTRALIA
J-Wire

April 10, 2013 by J-Wire Staff

Sydney Yeshiva say they have no connection with the Los Angeles welfare organisation reported to be sheltering a Los Angeles resident once associated with the Bondi community and alleged to be a paedophile .

Media reports that the “self-confessed” paedophile is being protected by the the LA-based Jewish Family Service of Los Angeles and that board members were aware of the situation as recently as 2011. The incidents said to have taken place in Sydney occurred in the 1980s.

Rabbi Eli Feldman told J-Wire that nothing had changed since the Yeshiva’s last statement in which they said they were co-operating fully with police. “As this an issue currently under investigation, we are following police instructions and making no comments. Today’s revelations may throw a new angle on the story, but the it refers to a matter already under investigation and in the hands of the authorities with whom we are fully co-operating. We have no connection with this Californian organisation.”

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