ABUSE TRACKER

CALIFORNIA
Santa Barbara Independent

Tuesday, June 25, 2013

After wallowing three years in the horrific minutia of the Roman Catholic Church’s sex abuse scandal, writer and reporter Michael D’Antonio has emerged the unlikeliest of all things—a hardened optimist. D’Antonio’s latest book, Mortal Sins, reads like a courtroom thriller, but chronicles the real life tales of a handful of sex abuse victims who decided to take on the most enduring religious and political institution the planet has ever seen, the Catholic Church. “It took great courage for these people to come forward,” D’Antonio said. “In the face of enormous odds, they accomplished the impossible. I think the service they provided is profound.” Speaking of his own religious affiliation, D’Antonio commented, “I’m not a practicing anything, but I’m a big believer in the human spirit.”

D’Antonio will be in Santa Barbara talking about his book next Friday, June 28, at the Faulkner Gallery of the downtown public library. Ray Higgins, a major player in Santa Barbara’s survivor community noticed that D’Antonio was coming to Southern California on a promotional tour and managed to snag him for the occasion. Higgins—whose son was molested by a Franciscan monk while attending St. Anthony’s—will be part of a panel of experts that will include Jeff Anderson, attorney from St. Paul Minnesota who has represented hundreds of victims who have sued the church; Patrick Wall, victims advocate and former Benedictine monk; Tim Hale, S.B. attorney who has represented many victims of clergy sex abuse.

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CALIFORNIA
The Worthy Adversary

Posted by Joelle Casteix on June 26, 2013

Tell your friends! Events like this don’t come along often.
If you join us: twenty years from now, you’ll look back on meeting a group of people who set out to change the world for the better … and DID!

TODAY
SAN DIEGO, CA Wednesday, June 26, 2013 at 7 pm Alliant University, Green Hall, Co-sponsored by IVAT, the Institute on Violence Abuse and Trauma at Alliant University, 10455 Pomerado Road, San Diego

TOMORROW
FULLERTON, CA Thursday, June 27, 2013 at 7 pm Fullerton Public Library – Presented as a part of Gustavo’s Awesome Lecture Series — 353 W. Commonwealth Ave., Fullerton

FRIDAY
SANTA BARBARA, CA Friday, June 28 at 7 pm Falkner Gallery, Santa Barbara Public Library, 40 E. Anapamu, Santa Barbara Co-sponsored by Therapy Trust and SB Voice of the Faithful

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AUSTRIA
Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests

US Star Whistle-Blower Clohessy on Sexual Abuse and the Difficulty of Coming to Terms

(This is the English translation of an article that appeared Sunday in the Kurier in Vienna)

He sat on the couch with US talkshow star Oprah Winfrey, he was a guest on Good Morning America, and even the The New York Times Magazine dedicated an extensive reportage to him. This man who has received so much media attention in the United States in recent years is David Clohessy, the spokesman of the NGO SNAP (see Info), which has taken up the cause of victims of sexual abuses in the church. He is the star among the investigators of sexual abuse in the USA.

Yet, a star without airs. Clohessy, 56, has been fighting for years against the sexual abuse of children by Catholic clergy. As a young boy, he himself was sexually abused by a priest. His brother, as well, was one pastor who allegedly came too close to children. „Clohessy’s calm manner makes him one of the most credible spokesmen for the victims of sexual abuse,” wrote the Drury University Magazine.

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ITALIA
Apocalisse Laica

di Alberto Sofia – 26/06/2013 –
Il Fatto Quotidiano pubblica in anteprima il verbale della denuncia: “incontri” nelle chiese di Roma Nord con ragazzini dell’ Est “reclutati” da un ex carabiniere tra discoteche e centri benessere

Le rivelazioni dell’ ex parroco Patrizio Poggi sui preti pedofili stanno facendo tremare la Santa Sede e la Curia romana.

Dopo che il Messaggero aveva parlato dell’ iscrizione nel registro degli indagati dei quatto sacerdoti con l’ accusa di violenza sessuale aggravata, il Fatto Quotidiano ha pubblicato il verbale della denuncia dello scorso otto marzo, quando Poggi si presentò di fronte agli uffici del Noe per denunciare l’ organizzazione che – secondo quanto ha dichiarato – “recluterebbe minorenni per metterli a disposizione di prelati e parroci romani”.

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ITALIA
Apocalisse Laica

(AGI) – CdV, 26 giu. – “Il dottor Pignatone, procuratore capo della Repubblica di Roma ha smentito categoricamente che sacerdoti della diocesi di Roma siano indagati per pedofilia sulla base della denunzia dell’ex-prete Patrizio Poggi, dimesso nel 2007 dallo stato clericale per reati di natura sessuale su minori e che ha scontato la condanna nel carcere di Rebibbia”. Lo afferma una nota del Vicariato di Roma, che esprime “sconcerto e indignazione”. “Il cardinale vicario Agostino Vallini – si legge – esprime profonda amarezza per la diffusione di simili notizie calunniose che sparano nel mucchio in maniera generalizzata senza distinguere tra chi ha sbagliato, che deve pagare, e chi e’ calunniato. Egli rinnova ai sacerdoti vicinanza, stima e affetto per il loro generoso ministero. Condanna vivamente il fatto che organi di informazione si facciano megafono di notizie delittuose prive di riscontri oggettivi, violando le piu’ elementari norme della deontologia giornalistica e del rispetto della privacy”.

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VATICAN CITY
National Catholic Reporter

John L. Allen Jr. | Jun. 26, 2013 NCR Today

In a move that observers describe as a clear signal of a desire for greater transparency and accountability, Pope Francis on Wednesday set up a new commission to investigate the activities of the Vatican bank and to report its findings directly to him.

Among other things, observers say the move indicates that Francis intends to take a personal interest in the bank as opposed to relying on others to make decisions in his name.

The commission is not empowered to govern the bank or to implement any reform measures, but to gather information and relay it to the pope in what’s described as a “timely” fashion.

On background, a source with knowledge of the commission was asked Wednesday if it reflected a stance of “trust but verify” vis-à-vis assurances from the bank’s present leadership about its commitment to reform.

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IRELAND
Irish Times

Tom Tuite

First published:
Wed, Jun 26, 2013

A former priest was served with a book of evidence yesterday and has been returned for trial on historic child sex abuse charges.

William Carney, aged 63, who is currently of no fixed abode, is to stand trial on 34 counts of indecent assault of eight boys and two girls, at locations in Dublin and north east Leinster from 1969 until 1989.
The DPP had directed that he must face trial on indictment.

Yesterday at Cloverhill District Court, the State served him with a book of evidence and Judge Grainne Malone then made an order sending Mr Carney forward for trial.

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UNITED KINGDOM
BBC News

The Bishop of Winchester has apologised to the woman at the heart of an abuse complaint inquiry involving the Anglican Church in Jersey.

The Right Reverend Tim Dakin said he had given a “personal and direct apology” to the woman known as “HG”.

The Dean of Jersey, the Very Rev Bob Key, was temporarily removed from office for allegedly mishandling her complaint about a church warden.

The Church has ordered an inquiry into the handling of the case.

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ITALY
Gazzetta del Sud

Sciacca, June 26 – A former priest was charged Wednesday with committing sexual acts with minors and is expected to appear in court next month. Davide Mordino, 42, the former pastor of the Basilica of Saint Calogero in Sciacca, a town on the southwest coast of Sicily, is under house arrest until his court appearance July 17. Police say the former priest performed sexual acts with four boys, while two others say he tried to assault them as well. Mordino, who left the basilica just before Christmas in 2009, is accused of having induced minors to pose naked for photos.

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DEUTSCHLAND
Kritisches-Netzwerk

Wie das Bistum Regensburg mit Menschen in Wirklichkeit umgeht, die Anschuldigungen sexuellen Missbrauchs gegen kirchliche Mitarbeiter erheben

Unter der fast wortgleichen Überschrift verbreitet das Bistum Regensburg auf seiner Homepage seit Januar 2013 falsche Darstellungen und versucht durch Halbwahrheiten und unwahre Behauptungen ausgesuchte Betroffene des sexuellen Missbrauchs bei den Regensburger Domspatzen in der Öffentlichkeit unglaubwürdig zu machen (für Interessierte hier der Link: Bistum Regensburg – Stellungnahme zu den Äußerungen Herrn Alexander Probst).

Zu Beginn des Textes heißt es:

„Jede Beschuldigung gibt das Bistum Regensburg weiter an die Staatsanwaltschaft. Stellt die das Verfahren wegen Verjährung ein, strengen wir kirchenrechtliche Aufarbeitung an. Für den Fall, dass dies nicht möglich ist, weil der Schuldige verstorben ist, hat die Kirche als einzige Institution in Deutschland ein Anerkennungsverfahren eingeführt…“

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DEUTSCHLAND
Evangelische Hochschule

Alarmiert vom Bekanntwerden von Misshandlungs- und Missbrauchsfällen in den 50er und 60er Jahren, hat der Vorstand der Johannes-Diakonie Mosbach eine Aufarbeitung der Vorkommnisse an den beiden Komplexstandorten Mosbach und Schwarzach beauftragt. Das Sozialwissenschaftliche FrauenForschungsInstitut (Soffi) an der EH Freiburg hat das Vorkommen physischer und sexueller Gewalt und den Umgang damit untersucht. Dabei wurden auch die strukturellen Rahmenbedingungen in den Johannes-Anstalten und der Alltag der Bewohnerinnen und Bewohner sowie der Mitarbeitenden rekonstruiert. Der Abschlussbericht dieser historischen Aufarbeitung liegt nun vor.

Prof. Dr. Cornelia Helfferich, Michael Kramer und Beate Massell führten dazu 32 Interviews mit (ehemaligen) Heimbewohnerinnen und Heimbewohnern und weitere zwölf Interviews mit (ehemaligen) Mitarbeitenden. Dabei entstand ein klares Bild der damaligen Verhältnisse, auch wenn nur wenige schriftliche Dokumente zu dieser Aufarbeitung herangezogen werden konnten. Die Interviews zeigen, dass es in den Johannes-Anstalten wie in anderen Einrichtungen ähnlicher Art Gewalt gab.

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VATICAN CITY
Vatican Information Service

Wednesday, June 26, 2013

Vatican City, 26 June 2013 (VIS) – This morning the Secretariat of State issued the following communique:

The Holy Father has appointed a Pontifical Referring Commission to the Institute for the Works of Religion (IOR) with his Chirograph of 24 June, the day before yesterday.

As can be seen from the text of the Chirograph published today, the opportunity to establish a Referring Committee has arisen from the Holy Father’s desire to learn more about the Institute’s juridical standing and activities in order to allow its better harmonization with the mission of the universal Church and the Apostolic See in the more general context of the reforms that should be carried out by the Institutions that give aid to the Apostolic See.

The Commission’s purpose is to gather information on the Institution’s operations and present the results to the Holy Father.

As specified in the Chirograph, during the course of the Commission’s work, the Institute will continue to operate according to the Chirograph of 1990 that established it, unless otherwise authorized by the Holy Father.

The Commission’s purposes and powers are described in more detail in the Chirograph itself.

The members of the Commission are:
Cardinal Raffaele Farina, S.D.B., president
Cardinal Jean-Louis Tauran, member
Bishop Juan Ignacio Arrieta Ochoa de Chinchetru, coordinator
Msgr. Peter Bryan Wells, secretary
Dr. Mary Ann Glendon, member

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VATICAN CITY
BBC News

A commission of inquiry has been set up by Pope Francis to review the activities of the Vatican bank, following recent scandals.

Earlier this month, he named a trusted cleric to oversee the management of the bank, which is known officially as the Institute for Religious Works.

The institution, one of the world’s most secretive banks, has been beset by allegations of money-laundering.

It has 114 employees and $7.1bn (£4.6bn; 5.4bn euros) of assets.

The new commission is tasked with ensuring the bank operates in “harmony” with the mission of the Church.

It is made up of Mary Ann Glendon, a Harvard law professor, and four senior clerics: Italian cardinal Raffaele Farina, French cardinal Jean-Louis Tauran, Spanish bishop Juan Ignacio Arrieta Ochoa de Chinchetru and US cleric Monsignor Peter Bryan Wells.

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VATICAN CITY
Irish Examiner

The Pope has set up an inquiry to look into the activities of the troubled Vatican bank amid a new money-laundering investigation and continued questions about the secretive institution.

It was the second time in as many weeks that Francis has intervened to get to the bottom of the problems that have plagued the Institute for Religious Works for decades.

On June 15, he filled a key vacancy in the bank’s governing structure, tapping a trusted friend to be his eyes inside the bank with access to documentation, board meetings and management. …

The Vatican confirmed that Monsignor Nunzio Scarano had been suspended temporarily from his position in one of the Vatican’s key finance offices, the Administration for the Patrimony of the Apostolic See.

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VATICAN CITY
Reuters

By Philip Pullella
VATICAN CITY | Wed Jun 26, 2013

(Reuters) – Pope Francis on Wednesday set up a special commission of inquiry into the Vatican bank, his boldest move yet to get to grips with an institution that has embarrassed the Church for decades.

The high-powered, five-member panel, which includes four prelates and a woman Harvard law professor, will report directly to him, bypassing the Vatican bureaucracy that itself has sometimes been tainted by allegations of scandal and corruption.

The Institute for Works of Religion (IOR), as the bank is formally known, has long been tarnished by accusations that it has failed to meet international transparency standards intended to combat money laundering and tax evasion.

The Vatican said the commission, which Francis set up with a personal decree known as a “chirografo,” would enable him “to know better the juridical position and the activities of the Institute to allow an improved harmonisation with the mission of the universal Church”.

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VATICAN CITY
Daily Herald

Associated Press

Pope Francis on Wednesday named a commission of inquiry to look into the activities of the troubled Vatican bank amid a new money-laundering investigation and continued questions about the secretive institution.

It was the second time in as many weeks that Francis has intervened to get to the bottom of the problems that have plagued the Institute for Religious Works for decades. On June 15, he filled a key vacancy in the bank’s governing structure, tapping a trusted friend to be his eyes inside the bank with access to documentation, board meetings and management.

On Wednesday, he named a commission to investigate the bank’s legal structure and activities “to allow for a better harmonization with the universal mission of the Apostolic See,” according to the legal document that created it.

He named five people to the commission, including two Americans: Monsignor Peter Wells, a top official in the Vatican secretariat of state, and Mary Ann Glendon, a Harvard law professor, former U.S. ambassador to the Holy See and current president of a pontifical academy.

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AUSTRIA
Our Man in Vienna

Herbert Kuhner

The great crimes on this earth are murder and rape. A murderer takes the life of a human being. A rapist violates a human being.

Pedophilia is rape of an infant, a child or a minor. Pedophilia can be effected by either violent means or by seduction. Committing the crime of pedophilia is tantamount to the murder of an infant, a child or a minor.

Pedophilia is rape of an infant, a child or a minor. Pedophilia can be effected by either seduction, intimidation or violent means

The suffering of a murdered victim ceases after he has been killed. A victim of rape is
spiritually killed but continues to live.

Pope John Paul II in his 2005 book Memory and Identity compared the Holocaust to abortion, as did many other men of the cloth. He wrote that both abortion and the murder of six million Jews were the result of humans under the guise of democracy usurping the “law of God.”
– Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs, No. 68, May 1, 2008 …

Both Pope John Paul II and Benedict XVI oversaw the hush-up and the shuffling around of pedophile priests. Ratzinger, who was Wojtyla’s ideologue, now lays the blame for the cover-up on Wojtyla. Yes, Ratzinger is as innocent as the driven snow!

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NEW YORK
Catholic League

Bill Donohue comments on the New York Times’ reaction to a TV ad calling out the New York City public schools for coddling accused sexual predators:

In today’s New York Times, there is an analysis of former CNN anchor Campbell Brown’s new group, Parents’ Transparency Project, that was established to root out public school employees guilty of sexual misconduct. This is what it says about the ad: “Her case is helped by stark statistics and will appeal to parents who would not want anyone who had been accused of misconduct, no matter how minor, around children. But by blaming unions, and ignoring concerns that the city might impose unnecessarily harsh punishmentson employees, she risks inflaming organized labor, and in turn, the Democratic candidates for mayor.” (My emphasis.)

When it comes to the Catholic Church, the New York Times insists on “zero tolerance,” but not when it comes to the public schools. It wants to go light on “minor” offenses, and is strictly opposed to “unnecessarily harsh punishments.” Furthermore, it is important for officials to bow before the unions, and it is equally critical that nothing be done to undermine the prospects of a Democratic candidate for mayor.

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WISCONSIN
Post-Crescent

A former Catholic priest who sexually assaulted two boys in the 1980s will be released from a state mental health hospital after a judge approved a conditional release plan.

Norbert Maday, 75, was committed to a secure treatment facility in 2012 after he was classified as a sexually violent person. He recently was re-evaluated and Winnebago County Judge Daniel Bissett approved a conditional release plan Tuesday.

Details of the supervised released plan were sealed by the court under an agreement by the attorneys to keep the plan confidential, but it calls for Maday to be released on or before Aug. 2.

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NEW ZEALAND
Queanbeyan Age

By Joelle Dally, in Christchurch June 26, 2013

Convicted paedophile and former Catholic brother Bernard Kevin McGrath has avoided deportation, for now, by appealing against his extradition to Australia to face hundreds of sex-abuse charges.

McGrath, 65, had until Wednesday to either lodge an appeal or voluntarily go back to Australia, where 252 charges have been laid alleging that he raped, molested and abused dozens of young boys at church-run institutions over several years.

The charges relate to 35 complainants between 1977 and 1986.

The Australian government’s application for extradition was granted by Judge Jane Farish in the Christchurch District Court on June 11.

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UNITED KINGDOM
Manchester Evening News

A priest and a headteacher have both quit their posts after investigators were brought in to probe a primary school’s finances.

Chair of governors Father Tom Connolly and headteacher Paul Jackson have both retired from their positions at St Kentigern’s RC Primary in Fallowfield.

Their resignations came after auditors were asked to review the accounts of the school – which is part-funded by nearby St Kentigern’s Church.

It is understood independent accountants were brought in after concerns were raised over a series of payments made over the last academic year amounting to several hundred pounds.

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PENNSYLVANIA
Citizens Voice

– JEFF HORVATH
Published: June 26, 2013

Open lewdness charges against a Catholic priest from Tunkhannock and one of his parishioners who were found in a stage of undress last month in a Wyalusing public park were dropped Tuesday afternoon.

The Rev. Daniel Joseph Doherty, 49, and Joanne Mirabelli, 47, both of Tunkhannock, appeared before Magisterial District Judge Fred Wheaton in Wysox and were only found guilty of trespassing in a park after the sunset curfew.

Assistant District Attorney Francis Rineer Jr. announced the state would be dropping the charges of open lewdness, being under the influence of an intoxicating beverage, and performing an obscene or indecent act.

The state would, however, be charging the Rev. Doherty and Mirabelli with being in the Wyalusing park after dark.

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AUSTRALIA
The Australian

STUART RINTOUL From: The Australian June 26, 2013

AN elderly Catholic priest has been committed for trial charged with “the abominable crime of buggery” and indecent assault of a 12-year-old boy in the early 1970s.

The priest, who cannot be named, appeared in the Melbourne magistrates court this morning, accompanied by supporters.

The court heard that the alleged victim had not spoken about the abuse until he learnt that the priest would officiate at his aunt’s funeral, when he told his wife and sister.

But he had been angry about the church for many years, and would swear when he saw references to church abuse saying “I can’t believe people get away with that”.

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AUSTRALIA
Sydney Morning Herald

June 26, 2013

Genevieve Gannon
AAP

A man remained silent for almost 40 years until a Victorian priest he says sexually abused him was asked to conduct his aunt’s funeral.

When the victim’s sister told him she had tracked down the priest to officiate at their aunt’s funeral in 2010, he said he couldn’t go, according to documents tendered in a Melbourne court.

“If he’s going to the funeral, then I can’t go,” the victim told his sister.

He had done odd jobs at the priest’s house as a teenager in the 1970s to earn pocket money, according to a statement he made to police.

Advertisement
The now-retired Catholic priest, who cannot be named, pleaded not guilty to two counts of indecent assault and one count of buggery of a person under 14 in the Melbourne Magistrates Court on Wednesday.

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AUSTRALIA
The Age

June 26, 2013

Adam Cooper
Reporter for The Age

A Catholic priest who has pleaded not guilty to charges of molesting a boy in a Melbourne parish house more than 40 years ago has been committed to stand trial.

The priest, 87, who cannot be named, appeared in the Melbourne Magistrates’ Court on Wednesday, where magistrate Ann Collins told him there was sufficient evidence for the case to go to trial.

The priest, who struggled to stand up from his seat before he entered a plea, was bailed to appear at the County Court in June next year for a five-day trial.

He has been charged with two counts of buggery on a child under the age of 14 and two counts of indecent assault.

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ITALIA
IVG

Savona. Francesco Zanardi, portavoce della rete nazionale “L’Abuso” e vittima in passato di un prete pedofilo, scrive a Papa Francesco chiedendo udienza per discutere di una piaga che colpisce la Chiesa.

“Seguo con grande attenzione e speranza la Sua intenzione, emersa in pubbliche dichiarazioni come neoeletto Vescovo di Roma, di voler risolvere quello che è il dramma della pedofilia nel mondo cattolico – scrive Zanardi – Comprendo anche le difficoltà nell’affrontare questa problematica, ma al tempo stesso ritengo esistano delle soluzioni concrete e attuabili. Il problema della pedofilia nella Chiesa è un vicenda grave e dolorosa perché, come Lei sa, sono milioni i minori che quotidianamente vengono affidati alle cure del clero. La pedofilia fa del male principalmente ai bambini, ma anche ai credenti e più in generale alla Chiesa di cui oggi Lei è il massimo rappresentante, minando e incrinando l’essenza stessa dei valori sui quali dichiara di fondarsi”.

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VATICAN CITY
The Globalist

By Massimo Franco | Wednesday, June 26, 2013

Among the many reforms that lie ahead for the Vatican, explains Massimo Franco, a key one is to change its financial diplomacy in a globalized environment. That is a tough task and yet critical for Pope Francis to accomplish.

The Roman Catholic Church sees itself as destined to judge and to take confession from the world.

In the past, its moral leadership was undisputed, at least in theory.

But in the last ten years or so, its image has been shattered by scandals — both sexual and financial.

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MASSACHUSETTS
Boston Catholic Insider

We are very pleased to report that Cardinal O’Malley is banning a dissident Austrian priest from speaking at St. Susanna in Dedham. Here is an excerpt from one of two pieces that appeared in the Boston Globe:

Cardinal Sean P. O’Malley is banning a dissident Austrian priest from speaking at a parish in Dedham, prompting a coalition of reform-minded Catholics who invited the priest to move their event to a nearby Unitarian Universalist church. …

BCI commends Cardinal O’Malley for the decision to ban this talk. We also commend the Boston Archdiocese for publicly issuing this policy statement. We have been hoping and praying for a policy like this for many years, and we view it as a very encouraging sign that the Boston Archdiocese is now going to enforce a policy that will not permit any individuals who promote positions contrary to Catholic teachings to speak in Catholic parishes or at church events.

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MASSACHUSETTS
The New York Times

By LAURIE GOODSTEIN
Published: June 25, 2013

Cardinal Sean O’Malley has barred a prominent Austrian priest from speaking in a Roman Catholic parish in the Archdiocese of Boston because the priest advocates the ordination of women and married men as one solution to the priest shortage. The appearance by the priest, the Rev. Helmut Schüller in Boston on July 17 is part of a cross-country speaking tour sponsored by 10 liberal Catholic groups that are pressing the church for change. The Archdiocese of Boston said that its policy, like the practice in other dioceses, is to prohibit individuals who promote “positions that are contrary to Catholic teachings” from speaking in Catholic parishes and at church events.

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MASSACHUSETTS
Boston Herald

Wednesday, June 26, 2013

Associated Press

BOSTON — Boston Cardinal Sean O’Malley has banned an Austrian priest from speaking at a Dedham parish because the priest advocates ordaining woman and making celibacy for priests optional.

A church spokesman tells The Boston Globe that archdiocesan policy doesn’t allow speakers on church property who advocate positions contrary to church doctrine.

The Rev. Helmut Schuller was scheduled to speak at St. Susanna Parish on July 17. His talk has been moved to a nearby Unitarian Universalist church.

Schuller is founder of the Austrian Priests’ Initiative, which advocates allowing women and married people to become priests as a way to address a global priest shortage.

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IRELAND
BBC News

The Irish government is to unveil a compensation package for survivors of Magdalene laundries later.

It will be based on recommendations by Mr Justice John Quirke, who was asked by the cabinet to devise eligibility criteria.

The laundries were Catholic-run workhouses where thousands of women and girls had to do unpaid, manual labour.

Mr Justice Quirke was asked for proposals to set up a scheme to compensate women and bring “healing”.

As well as financial compensation, the supports are expected to include help-in-kind for former residents who need it, such as medical cards and other public health supports like mental health and counselling services.

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IRELAND
RTE News

The Government will this afternoon unveil a package of financial and other supports for survivors of Magdalene laundries.

It will be based on recommendations of Mr Justice John Quirke who was asked by the cabinet to devise eligibility criteria and other aspects of a non-adversarial scheme.

It’s 20 years since the State’s Magdalene laundries became a source of public controversy. In 1993 the exhumation, transfer and cremation of the remains of 155 former residents of a Magdalene laundry in Dublin by an order of nuns clearing its land for sale sparked public outrage.

Eighty of the women had not been identified because death certificates were missing or never existed in the first place.

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IRELAND
Irish Examiner

The details of the compensation scheme for the survivors of the Magdalene Laundries will be published today.

It follows a three-month review by former High Court judge, Mr Justice John Quirke, and it is understood the redress fund could be up to €50m.

The redress scheme comes after a report by former Senator Martin McAleese found that the State had a hand in around a quarter of admissions to the laundries, which were workhouses run by four religious orders between 1922 and 1996.

Last February, the Taoiseach Enda Kenny offered an emotional apology to the women involved and promised to compensate them.

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AUSTRALIA
Newcastle Herald

By STEPHEN RYAN June 26, 2013

SENIOR police were at the ‘‘end of our tether’’ following a series of leaks to the Newcastle Herald that led Detective Chief Inspector Wayne Humphrey to lodge a formal complaint against Detective Chief Inspector Peter Fox, an inquiry heard on Wednesday morning.

Detective Humphrey said the leaks were interfering with an investigation into allegations of sexual abuse cover-ups within the Maitland-Newcastle Catholic Diocese and were putting pressure on investigators.

Detective Humphrey said Detective Fox wanted to run the investigation and ‘‘it got to the stage where he couldn’t be told ‘no’’’.

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AUSTRALIA
Maitland Mercury

By ELLE WATSON June 26, 2013

A senior police officer overseeing a Hunter strike force into sexual abuse concealment has told a Commission of Inquiry, Peter Fox was a zealot who was obsessed with taking part in the investigation.

Detective Chief Inspector Wayne Humphrey told the Commission of Inquiry the detective was “beyond driven” in his attempt to be involved in the investigation into concealment of sexual abuse by Hunter priests.

“It just got to the stage where he couldn’t be told no…he continually tried to take control of Lantle,” Detective Chief Inspector Humphrey said this morning.

He said he lodged a formal complaint against Detective Chief Inspector Fox following a series of articles in the Newcastle Herald by journalist Joanne McCarthy.

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KANSAS
WIBW

By: Lindsey Rogers
Updated: Tue 12:18 PM, Jun 25, 2013

GEARY COUNTY, Kan. (WIBW) — A minister accused of sexually abusing young boys in his church’s congregation is expected to enter into a plea agreement with the state, opting not to let his cases be heard by a jury.

Jordan Young, 25, appeared in Geary County District Court Tuesday for a status hearing.

Young is facing child molestation charges in six cases involving separate underage victims.

He has been behind bars since August when the Junction City Police Department launched an investigation into reports of sexual misconduct at Faith Tabernacle Apostolic Church where he’d been serving as the music minister. He is the son of former Faith Tabernacle pastor Edwin Young.

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AUSTRALIA
Border Mail

By Barney Zwartz June 26, 2013

The Catholic Church is still impeding police pursuit and conviction of clergy sex offenders, according to a former head of Victoria Police’s sexual crimes squad.

Former detective inspector Glenn Davies, who now works with victims of clergy sex abuse, says his experience of working with the church is that it is ”protectionist, elitist and dismissive of suggestions for change”.

Mr Davies, who resigned from Victoria Police last year after he admitted briefing journalists about then current investigations, made a submission to the Victorian inquiry into how the churches handled clergy sexual abuse. This was posted on the inquiry website late on Tuesday.

Ten submissions were posted, including a defence of Towards Healing by one of its investigators, former police superintendent Paul Murnane, plus a second ”right of reply” by Melbourne Archbishop Denis Hart.

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AUSTRALIA
ABC News

The journalist who helped trigger a New South Wales inquiry into sexual abuse in the Hunter Valley’s Catholic Church hopes it will expose how badly the victims have been treated.

Late yesterday, Fairfax journalist Joanne McCarthy finished giving evidence at the special commission which is underway in Newcastle.

The inquiry is looking at Detective Chief Inspector Peter Fox’s claims that the police force and the church tried to cover-up abuse by two priests.

Ms McCarthy’s reporting on clergy abuse in the region has won her a national journalism award and helped trigger the state probe as well as the national Royal Commission.

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AUSTRALIA
ABC News

Victoria Police Chief Commissioner, Ken Lay, says he stands by the force’s submission the state’s child sex abuse inquiry.

Victoria Police claimed the Catholic Church had protected child sex offenders and interfered in police investigations.

In a new submission to the inquiry, the state’s most senior Catholic, Archbishop Denis Hart has refuted those allegations.

He says a Victoria Police allegation that the church has not engaged with investigators is misinformed, misleading and factually inaccurate.

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AUSTRALIA
Milton Ulladulla Times

By Catherine Armitage June 26, 2013

The late-night email set out how to wipe email trails and mask mobile calls to keep them secret. But the contact between Peter Fox and Joanne McCarthy was nevertheless exposed.

As relationships go, this one has caused a lot of trouble – for the police, the Catholic Church, NSW Premier Barry O’Farrell and even the Prime Minister. Now it’s all being laid bare in the Newcastle Supreme Court.

Fairfax Media journalist McCarthy is being grilled in the witness box at the special inquiry into how police and Catholic Church priests and officials handled allegations of sexual abuse in NSW’s Hunter Region.

The inquiry was set up by the NSW Premier after a whistleblower policeman, Detective Chief Inspector Peter Fox, went on ABC’s Lateline last November, alleging a cover-up. The Prime Minister called a separate royal commission on child sexual abuse days later.

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AUSTRALIA
ABC News

A senior policeman giving evidence at the Special Commission of Inquiry into institutional sexual abuse in the New South Wales Hunter Valley has accused Detective Chief Inspector Peter Fox of making outrageous claims.

The Special Commission is looking into Detective Chief Inspector Peter Fox’s claims that he was ordered to stop investigating two Maitland-Newcastle priests, Father Denis McAlinden and Father James Fletcher.

Detective Chief Inspector Wayne Humphrey was the manager of Strike Force Lantle and Detective Chief Inspector Peter Fox’s supervisor.

He has told the inquiry that allegations made by Peter Fox that he was locked out of the investigation into a cover up of child sexual abuse by members of the Catholic Church are outrageous.

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OKLAHOMA
KTUL

[with video]

Tulsa, Oklahoma –
A Tulsa pastor has been charged with sexual abuse of a minor after a teenager accused him of having sex with her numerous times over the past year.

According to a police report, the 15-year-old female victim told officers on Thursday that Gregory Hawkins, 54, had been having sex with her and that she was now five months pregnant with his child.

The teen told police she had sex with Hawkins numerous times, including at his home, at a Tulsa hotel, the Zion Plaza Church and at other locations, the report stated.

The victim reported the sexual intercourse began in April of 2012 and continued until January 2013.

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OKLAHOMA
News 9

[with video]

TULSA, Oklahoma – The pastor of a Tulsa church is free on bond following his arrest Monday afternoon on a complaint of sexual assault of a minor child.

Police arrested Gregory Hawkins, 54, after a 15-year-old girl told officers she was about five months pregnant with his child.

Police have been investigating Gregory Hawkins since February. He is the pastor of the Zion Plaza Church and also is the owner of a daycare called the Zion Plaza Child Learning Center.

The girl says he began having sex with her last year when she was 14, and it happened at his daycare, his home, hotel rooms, and even in a parking lot at River Parks.

The girl told police she lived with him at his home for a time, beginning when she was 14, and that’s when the abuse started.

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ILLINOIS
Journal Standard

By Nick Crow
JOURNALSTANDARD.COM

MOUNT MORRIS — A 64-year-old Mount Morris man who has worked as a pastor with Crossroads Community Church for the past decade will be in an Ogle County court Friday for alleged criminal sexual abuse of a minor.

Charles Babler was arrested by deputies Friday in the wake of an investigation of a 2011 incident in which police say he had contact with a person younger than 13.

Babler posted bail and was released from jail Monday.

Most recently, Babler was as an executive/administrative pastor, with most of his responsibilities pertaining to financial and personnel matters, said Glen Williamson, pastor with the Crossroads campus in Freeport. The church has seven campuses in northern Illinois and southern Wisconsin.

“It is our understanding and belief that the charges made against Mister Babler allege misconduct away from church premises and (are) totally unrelated to Crossroads or to Mister Babler’s employment with Crossroads,” he said in a statement Tuesday night.

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OKLAHOMA
Tulsa World

By AMANDA BLAND World Staff Writer on Jun 26, 2013

The Oklahoma Department of Human Services is investigating a church-affiliated child-care center after the church’s pastor was arrested on a sex-abuse complaint Monday. DHS has visited the center 13 times since July 2012.

Gregory Ivan Hawkins, 54, was jailed on a complaint of sexual abuse of a minor after detectives located him near the 3600 block of the L.L. Tisdale Parkway. He posted a $50,000 bond and was released at 11:17 p.m. Monday.

Hawkins is accused of maintaining a sexual relationship with a teen between the ages of 14 and 15 since April 2012, his arrest report shows. The girl became pregnant in January, allegedly with Hawkins’ child.

Hawkins is the pastor of Zion Fellowship Ministries and owner of Zion Child Care & Learning Center, both of which are located in the Zion Plaza shopping center at 612 E. 46th St. North, his arrest report shows. The report lists the name of the church as Zion Plaza Church.

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OREGON
Daily Astorian

A Utah man filed suit against the Archdiocese of Portland Tuesday, saying he was sexually abused by a Seaside priest during the 1980’s.

43-year-old Scott Little alleges that when he was between the age of 10 and 12, he was sodomized on numerous occasions by Father Maurice Grammond.

Kelly Clark, Little’s lawyer, says “We plan to prove that the Archdiocese of Portland had enough experience with child abuse by the time this man was abused, that for them to put a priest like Father Grammond in ministry, unrestricted with no warnings, essentially amounts to misrepresentation, and if you will fraud.”

The lawsuit seeks more than $12 million in damages. Grammond is now dead, but he had denied any abuse.

In 2007, the Archdiocese of Portland settled with 23 men who claimed sexual abuse.

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AUSTRALIA
SBS

AAP

A Victorian priest will stand trial over an historical abuse claim that surfaced when he was asked to officiate at the victim’s aunt’s funeral.

A man remained silent for almost 40 years until a Victorian priest he says sexually abused him was asked to conduct his aunt’s funeral.

When the victim’s sister told him she had tracked down the priest to officiate at their aunt’s funeral in 2010, he said he couldn’t go, according to documents tendered in a Melbourne court.

“If he’s going to the funeral, then I can’t go,” the victim told his sister.

He had done odd jobs at the priest’s house as a teenager in the 1970s to earn pocket money, according to a statement he made to police.

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ARIZONA
The Arizona Republic

By Michael Clancy
The Republic | azcentral.com
Tue Jun 25, 2013

A dozen victims have filed lawsuits in Coconino County Superior Court alleging they were sexually abused by six Arizona priests who worked in the Catholic Diocese of Gallup, N.M., between 1942 and 1977.

The lawsuits, all filed since Jan. 1, claim the abuse took place in parishes in Flagstaff, Winslow, Holbrook and the Verde Valley.

The package of cases is believed to be the largest single group of priest-abuse lawsuits currently active in the United States, according to Terence McKiernan, president of bishopaccountability.org, a website that has documented abuse in the Catholic Church in the United States since 2003.

In addition to the cases filed this year, another active case was filed in 2012, and as many as a dozen other allegations were settled out of court.

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AUSTRALIA
7 News

AAP

June 26, 2013

The police whistleblower whose allegations helped trigger an inquiry into alleged child sex abuse by NSW priests has been described as a lying zealot.

Newcastle police crime manager Wayne Humphrey told the inquiry on Wednesday he lodged a formal complaint against Detective Chief inspector Peter Fox in 2011 because he suspected him of leaking confidential information to the media, and he was obliged to complain under police operating guidelines.

Detective Chief Inspector Humphrey said he and another senior officer searched Det Insp Fox’s office when he was away on leave in 2011 because he had been directed by another senior officer to locate a document related to allegations of sexual abuse by Catholic clergy.

The special commission is examining the way police and Maitland/Newcastle diocese leaders handled child sexual abuse allegations, particularly involving priests Denis McAlinden and James Fletcher.

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CALIFORNIA
Merced Sun-Star

By Marcos Breton — mbreton@sacbee.com

The crowds have left the side of Uriel Ojeda, the former “rock star” priest facing criminal charges that he sexually molested a young girl.

Roughly 18 months ago, more than 200 of his followers had jammed a Sacramento courtroom when seven criminal counts were filed against the Rev. Ojeda for allegedly abusing the 14-year-old daughter of a former parishioner.

Tall, young, handsome, Ojeda had been the focal point of many stories in The Bee before his arrest in November 2011. I had written about him as well because in September 2008, Ojeda had prayed over my father the night before he died.

This was personal. This was the man who was supposed to be the face of a new church moving beyond a national crisis of sexual abuse.

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AUSTRALIA
ABC – Lateline

[with video]

Australian Broadcasting Corporation
Broadcast: 25/06/2013
Reporter: Susie Smith

The Newcastle inquiry into a coverup of sexual abuse within the Catholic Church has heard evidence that a senior figure within the Church covered up the crimes of a paedophile priest.

Transcript

EMMA ALBERICI, PRESENTER: The New South Wales Premier’s Department has tonight ordered an investigation into the shredding of police and Catholic Church documents by a member of the sex crime squad.

Last week Lateline revealed details of a senior police officer shredding records of meetings she’d had with Catholic Church officials who had been assessing child sex abuse cases. The meetings took place over five years.

Meanwhile the New South Wales inquiry into sexual abuse by the clergy in the Hunter Valley has heard today that a former bishop of Newcastle Maitland released key internal Church documents to a victim triggering one of the biggest police investigations into clergy cover up in Australia.

The special commission of inquiry is investigating allegations by Detective Chief Inspector Peter Fox of cover ups by police and the Church of child sexual abuse. Susie Smith reports from Newcastle.

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NEW JERSEY
The Star-Ledger

By Mark Mueller/The Star-Ledger
on June 26, 2013

In his first interview on the scandal that spawned calls for his resignation, Newark Archbishop John J. Myers said he will no longer sign off on agreements that require the church to monitor priests placed on restricted ministry over sexual abuse allegations.

Myers, in a lengthy exchange with the National Catholic Register, responded to the controversy involving the Rev. Michael Fugee, who was criminally charged last month with violating a lifetime ban on ministry to children.

The ban was outlined in a 2007 agreement with the Bergen County Prosecutor’s Office. Both Fugee and the archdiocese were parties to the agreement.

“We would not enter into a memorandum of understanding that places a burden on the church,” Myers said. “The state has more resources. Our advice would be to tell the priest, ‘Go back for a second trial and clear your name.’”

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COLORADO
KRDO

[with video]

COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. –
Emotional testimony in the case of a 78-year-old Colorado Springs priest accused of sexually assaulting a child. Father Charles Manning’s former assistant broke down in tears when asked if she still considered Manning, a friend.

Manning was a pastor at St. Gabriel the Archangel Catholic Church. His trial started yesterday.

He used a wheelchair to get into the courtroom and was on an oxygen tank. Manning is accused of sexually assaulting a child who was interested in joining the Catholic Church in 2011.

His former executive assistant said Manning gave the victim private classes, but said she never noticed anything inappropriate about the relationship. During her testimony, she said she still considers Manning her friend, and hugged him as she left the courtroom.

Also Tuesday, a Catholic Victim’s Assistance coordinator said the victim reported Manning forced him to dance and perform sex acts on him.

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IRELAND
Irish Times

Harry McGee

Wed, Jun 26, 2013

The Government has made a provision of at least €25 million to compensate former residents of Magdalene Laundries. It is also understood there is no proposal for a reconciliation forum involving the four religious congregations who ran the 10 laundries concerned and the women who had been resident in them, as was mooted recently

Details of the fund that will be available to an estimated 700 women, many of them elderly, will be disclosed by Minister for Justice Alan Shatter this afternoon after he has briefed groups representing the women.

Sources with knowledge of the process have said that payments will range from €10,000 to about €100,000, related to length of stay of women in the laundries. It is also believed that ongoing health and other such supports for the women will be provided by the State. A report by former High Court judge Mr Justice John Quirke examining the various forms of redress and support to be made available to the women will also be published today. No details have emerged as to the nature of the payments, whether they will be once-off lump sums or paid in stages, which was the initial preferred option of Government.

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ST. LOUIS (MO)
Berger’s Beat

June 25, 2013 1:22 pm | Author: Jerry Berger
A St. Louis priest is on trial this week for allegedly molesting a Colorado child. He is Fr. Robert Charles Manning, who reportedly abused the child, gave him booze, pot cigarettes and expensive gifts (including jewelry, watches and a $3,000 car), took him to get his nipples pierced and made him a beneficiary in the cleric’s will. Manning now lives in St. Louis. He worked in the St. Louis Archdiocese, at parishes in Bridgeton, Glencoe and Imperial. Manning went to Colorado Springs a few years ago after St. Louis Bishop Michael Sheridan took over there.

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UNITED STATES
Truthout

Tuesday, 25 June 2013 10:20
By Pam Spees, Center for Constitutional Rights | Op-Ed

Last week, for the first time ever, an international body asked questions about the Vatican’s handling of widespread and systemic rape and sexual violence. Last Wednesday, survivors of rape and sexual violence by Catholic priests met with members of the United Nations Committee on the Rights of the Child (CRC) in Geneva, calling the Vatican to account for its ongoing failure to abide by the Convention on the Rights of the Child, a U.N. treaty that the Vatican long ago signed but, like the children it is designed to protect, has systematically neglected.

Wednesday’s historic meeting is the latest sign that a growing global movement is closing in on that day when Vatican officials will be held accountable for their systemic enabling of rape and sexual abuse. In March, the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests (SNAP), represented by the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR), submitted a report to the UN Committee outlining the myriad ways the Vatican is in perpetual violation of the Convention on the Rights of the Child. Now the CRC has called on the Vatican to report on its implementation, or lack thereof, of its human rights obligations.

The global expansion of this movement is a product of survivors’ efforts to internationalize the search for justice in response to a problem they came to understand as international in scope. As SNAP founder Barbara Blaine observed, “It’s a worldwide problem. We’re a worldwide movement.”

The first big step in the quest for worldwide accountability was the September 2011 complaint that SNAP and CCR submitted to the International Criminal Court (ICC) prosecutor setting out the ways in which the magnitude, scale and gravity of the offenses against children amount to crimes against humanity. In April 2012, we submitted additional evidence that had come to light since the first filing.

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VATICAN CITY
Vatican Insider

The cardinals Francis nominated as advisors in April are also looking into some unresolved issues in the Church

ANDREA TORNIELLI
VATICAN CITY

Although their official meeting will be in October, they are already moving full steam ahead with their work and will use the summer months to prepare thoroughly for their first meeting. The eight cardinals Francis chose as his advisors last 13 April, exactly one month after his election, are currently mulling over ideas and proposals. And they will not just be dealing with Curia reform.

When the Vatican Secretariat of State announced Francis’ decision to set up the advisory group, it specified that it was established “to advise him [the Pope] in the government of the universal Church and to study a plan for revising the Apostolic Constitution on the Roman Curia, ‘Pastor Bonus’.” Advising the Pope on the running of the universal Church is certainly no less important than the council’s task of reforming the Curia, but the latter will be the council’s main focus.

Andrés Rodríguez Maradiaga is responsible for coordinating the group of eight cardinals he himself is a member of (Giuseppe Bertello, Francisco Javier Errázuriz Ossa, Oswald Gracias, Reinhard Marx, Laurent Monsengwo Pasinya, Sean Patrick O’Malley, George Pell, Andrés Rodríguez Maradiaga). The council’s secretary is the Bishops of Albano (Italy), Marcello Semeraro. A representative of the Middle Eastern Churches could also join the group at some point in the future. They are all cardinals and therefore work closely with the Pope. At the same time, they also work or worked within the bodies that represent Episcopal Conferences: the need to improve the relationship between the central Church in Rome and the local Churches was a subject which came up prior to the Conclave that elected Francis. During the summer, the council is expected to draw up a document defining the nature and identity of the council.

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WISCONSIN
Fox 11

OSHKOSH – A former priest convicted of sexual assault in Winnebago County – and later deemed to be a sexual predator – will be released from a state treatment facility before Aug. 2.

Norbert Maday spent 13 years in prison on a 1994 sexual assault conviction. Maday served as a priest in the Chicago area, but was convicted of sexual assaulting boys while at a retreat in Winnebago County. Later, the state had him committed as sexual predator.

Judge Daniel Bissett approved the release plan Tuesday, according to online court records.

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WISCONSIN
WBAY

By Emily Matesic

Oshkosh –
A former Catholic priest from Chicago, convicted of sexually assaulting two teenage boys in Oshkosh back in the 1990’s, will be released into the Winnebago County area by the end of the summer.

Norbert Maday served more than a dozen years in prison and several more in a secure facility for sexually violent offenders. Tuesday, a judge approved a release plan for Maday.

Norbert Maday appeared for the hearing via video conference from the Sand Ridge Secure Treatment Center in Mauston, Wisconsin, near The Dells, where he’s been housed since being released from prison and classified as a sexually violent person.

Both his attorney, who was in the courtroom, and the special prosecutor, who appeared for the hearing on the phone, agreed to a conditional release supervision plan for the former priest.

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NEW JERSEY
National Catholic Reporter

Brian Roewe | Jun. 25, 2013 NCR Today

The decision to return Fr. Michael Fugee to active but restricted ministry in the Newark, N.J., archdiocese “was appropriate at the time,” says Archbishop John Myers, though he added he would seek to avoid future court agreements appointing the archdiocese into a supervisory role.

“We would not enter into a memorandum of understanding that places a burden on the Church. The state has more resources. Our advice would be to tell the priest, ‘Go back for a second trial and clear your name,’ ” Myers said.

The response came in the Newark archbishop’s first interview since his archdiocese became embroiled in the U.S. Catholic church’s latest clergy sex abuse scandal, which centered on Fugee, who was arrested May 20 for violating a memorandum of understanding restricting him from ministry to children. The order came in lieu of a retrial on charges of sexual assault against a 14-year-old boy dating back to 1999, of which a jury found him guilty in 2003 but an appeals court overturned in 2006 on the basis of judicial error.

Myers spoke Thursday with the National Catholic Register, which published the interview Tuesday.

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FALL RIVER (MA)
The Herald

By Brian Fraga

* Below is the full text of a letter that the late James Porter wrote to Pope Paul VI in 1973 requesting to be laicized. The 19-page letter was provided by attorney Jeff Anderson, who is representing a Minnesota woman in a new lawsuit against the Diocese of Fall River and two other co-defendants. Porter, a notorious predator-priest, allegedly molested the woman several times when she was a 9-year-old girl in the late 1960s.

In the letter, Porter admits to his sexually abusing minors but tells the pope toward the end of the letter that his life was turning around after he started working at a bank. Porter – who was removed from the priesthood in the early 1970s and later married – was convicted in 1993 of molesting 28 kids and he was sentenced to 20 years in state prison. He died of cancer in 2005.

May 17, 1973

Most Holy Father,

I, James Robert Porter, would like to humbly petition Your Eminence for a dispensation to and release from the responsibilities of the priesthood including in this the release from the obligation of celibacy. I am presently living at 1751 Gulden Place, St. Paul, Minnesota, 55109. I have lived at this address since September 1, 1972. Immediately preceding this I had lived at 970 Reaney Ave. St. Paul, Minn, from December, 1971 until Sept. 1, 1972. Previous to this after leaving the priestly life in Nov., 1970 I lived with the Schmitz family in Hastings Minn. just a few miles outside St. Paul. The address of Florence and Leo Schmitz is, 9550 Manning Ave. So., Hastings, Minn. I came to live there at their request. They knew of my situation that I was suspended of my priestly duties by Bishop James L. Connolly of the Fall River Diocese, Mass. and for what reasons. However being the good friends they are of mine and both being wonderful Christians, they in Christian charity request that I live with them until I could find my way clear and assist me back to normal living. I accepted their charitable offer only on the condition that I would remain with them only so long as necessary.

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NEW JERSEY
Washington Post

NJ archbishop wary of entering any new pact with prosecutors to oversee restricted priests

By Associated Press, Updated: Tuesday, June 25

NEWARK, N.J. — The Roman Catholic archdiocese of Newark is unlikely to enter into any new agreements with civil authorities that require church leaders to supervise priests on restricted duty, the archbishop said.

Rather than oversee a priest who had a case in the legal system, the archdiocese would tell him to “go back for a second trial and clear your name,” Archbishop John J. Myers told the National Catholic Register in an interview released Tuesday.

“The state has more resources,” he added.

Myers has been under fire for how the archdiocese handled the case of the Rev. Michael Fugee, a priest who violated an agreement between the church and the Bergen County prosecutor’s office.

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OREGON
The Republic

THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
June 25, 2013

PORTLAND, Oregon — A Utah man has filed a $12.25 million lawsuit against the Archdiocese of Portland, alleging he was sexually abused three decades ago by the Rev. Maurice Grammond, Oregon’s most notorious pedophile priest.

Grammond, who died in 2002, molested dozens boys between the 1950s and 1980s, and lawsuits stemming from his behavior cost the archdiocese more than $30 million in settlements by 2007 — the year its bankruptcy proceeding was finalized.

Tuesday’s lawsuit was filed on behalf of a 43-year-old man who was an altar boy at Our Lady of Victory parish in Seaside, Oregon, in the early 1980s.

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AUSTRALIA
Newcastle Herald

Transcript Day 11

Monday, June 24, 2013

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AUSTRALIA
Newcastle Herald

By IAN KIRKWOOD June 25, 2013

ALL day I have searched for an image with which to describe the courtroom feel of the Special Commission of Inquiry sitting in Newcastle.

And the best I can come up with is this: imagine a giant ball of wool that you know is there, but which you cannot see.

Imagine, now, that the court participants – the barristers, the witnesses, the special commissioner Margaret Cunneen – can pull skeins of that ball of wool out into the open and examine them, at length, in minute detail.

That’s what it’s like.

The participants have the full script. The affidavits lodged as evidence in chief. Volume after volume of them, all marked with coloured tabs for ease of finding a particular quote or passage.

The media can apply for material, but approval is not always automatic.

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AUSTRALIA
Newcastle Herald

[with video]

This is a transcript of a statement by Joanne McCarthy outside the commission yesterday afternoon.

“I am pleased to have assisted this special commission in its inquiry into the NSW police force’s handling of the alleged failure of the Maitland-Newcastle Catholic diocese to disclose the offending of paedophile priest Denis McAlinden. This became known as Strike Force Lantle.

I have the highest confidence in the commission’s staff, and thank them for their support.

I am looking forward with interest to the next stage of this inquiry, scheduled to start next week, which is an historic, timely and necessary investigation into how the Catholic Church handled allegations of child sex abuse by clergy in the Hunter Region.

As difficult as inquiries into these kinds of issues can be, they are important issues. It is worth noting that some of the most significant media investigations, and police prosecutions involving Catholic clergy in Australia, have occurred in the Hunter Region.

I am very pleased [that] we have a federal royal commission and we have this inquiry looking into specific issues in the Hunter Region . . . on the back of a Victorian parliamentary inquiry which has really exposed to the Australian public the very real differences between what the Catholic Church has said in the past about how it deals with these matters, and what it actually has done behind the scenes with the victims and their families who have had to deal with the Church on their own.

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AUSTRALIA
Newcastle Herald

By JASON GORDON June 25, 2013

SENIOR Catholic clergy have known about, and covered up, the actions of a paedophile priest in the Hunter for at least 16 years, an internal Church report allegedly reveals.

In a jaw-dropping day of evidence before the Special Commission of Inquiry in Newcastle yesterday, it was also revealed that Newcastle police allegedly knew about and held on to the report for almost 12 months before their inaction was raised with the Police Integrity Commission by Newcastle Herald journalist Joanne McCarthy.

The report, compiled by the Maitland-Newcastle Catholic Diocese in 1995, included a confession from disgraced priest Denis McAlinden that he had abused young victims in the preceding years. It also included a letter from Bishop Leo Clarke urging McAlinden to accept his defrocking, move overseas “for the good of the Church” while his “good name” was protected.

The police also had a 26-page statement from a McAlinden victim who referred to Father Brian Lucas’s alleged knowledge of the criminal nature of McAlinden’s offending in 1993.

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OREGON
The Oregonian

By Aimee Green, The Oregonian
on June 25, 2013

A 43-year-old man who says he was sexually abused by Oregon’s most notorious pedophile priest in the early 1980s filed a $12.25 million lawsuit Tuesday against the Archdiocese of Portland.

The man alleges he was abused by former priest Maurice Grammond from 1980 to 1982 at Our Lady of Victory in Seaside — at least 23 years after church officials began hearing reports that Grammond was molesting children. That included a 1957 report of making boys swim naked with him and “messing” with them.

The man was an altar boy, and 10 to 12 years old when he says Grammond abused him.

“(Grammond) devastated the lives and the souls of dozens of youngsters who loved their church and trusted their priest, and this case is no different,” said Portland attorney Kelly Clark, in a news release.

Clark and the man’s other attorney, Erin Olson, say that the man supressed the abuse until 2012, when he came to terms with it and the detrimental effects it has had on his life. Oregon law allows victims to sue for childhood abuse up until they reach age 40, or until five years after they realize the abuse has damaged them — whichever is later.

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AUSTRALIA
Newcastle Herald

By JASON GORDON June 25, 2013

SENIOR Catholic clergy in the Hunter knew since 1995 that disgraced priest Denis McAlinden had sexually abused hundreds of victims in the Hunter, but failed to report him to police, an inquiry heard yesterday.

Newcastle police also had evidence of the cover-up for almost 12 months, and took little or no action against the Church.

The sensational evidence was dropped like a bomb before the Special Commission of Inquiry in Newcastle yesterday by Newcastle Herald journalist Joanne McCarthy.

Ms McCarthy revealed she had been given a copy of an internal Church report into Father McAlinden’s offending by a victim of the notorious priest.

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CALIFORNIA
Merced Sun-Star

By Andy Furillo — afurillo@sacbee.com

A priest who also is a high-ranking official in the Catholic Diocese of Sacramento testified today that he was not acting in the capacity of a “confessor” or “spiritual director” when he and a private investigator told the Rev. Uriel Ojeda two years ago that he was the subject of a sexual abuse investigation.

The priest, Timothy Nondorf, said none of the rituals even remotely suggesting the Catholic sacrament of confession were at play when he and the investigator visited Ojeda on Nov. 30, 2011, at Ojeda’s parish in Redding. The subject of the visit, Nondorf said, was to deliver a letter to Ojeda informing him that “a credible accusation” had been lodged against him and that he was going to be removed from the ministry.

Nondorf said that when he delivered the letter to Ojeda with the purpose of bringing him back to Sacramento to face charges, he was acting only in his role as an official representative of Bishop Jaime Soto in the investigation into allegations that Ojeda had engaged in sexual misconduct with a girl who was then 14.

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COLORADO
Gazette

Published: June 25, 2013, 12:46 pm, by Lance Benzel

A Colorado Springs teenager who says he was paid to have sex with a priest he called “grandfather” in 2011 told a friend he agreed to the deal partly out of pity for the elderly clergyman.

“I kind of feel sorry for him,” the then-15-year-old altar boy said of the Rev. Charles Robert “Bob” Manning, 78, according to a phone conversation that was secretly taped by a friend in 2011 and turned over to Colorado Springs police.

“He’s on the verge of dying. He’s real close,” the boy says later. “That’s why I don’t want him to get in trouble.”

In a 20-minute recording played for jurors on Tuesday, the boy sounds reluctant to discuss the allegations but opens up after assurances by Evan Hess, a fellow teen who is friends with the accuser’s sister.

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MASSACHUSETTS
Boston Globe

By Lisa Wangsness | GLOBE STAFF JUNE 25, 2013

Cardinal Sean P. O’Malley is banning a dissident Austrian priest from speaking at a parish in Dedham, prompting a coalition of reform-minded Catholics who invited the priest to move their event to a nearby Unitarian Universalist church.

The Rev. Helmut Schuller was invited to speak at St. Susanna Parish on July 17 as part of a 15-city tour of the United States called “The Catholic Tipping Point,” sponsored by a coalition of progressive Catholic organizations, including the Needham-based Voice of the Faithful.

Schuller is the founder of the Austrian Priests’ Initiative, which advocates for women’s ordination, optional celibacy for priests, and greater lay participation as ways of addressing a priest shortage in Western Europe. About 1 in 10 Austrian priests now belong to the group, the Austrian Independent newspaper reported this month. Similar groups have sprung up elsewhere, including the United States.

Terrence C. Donilon, a spokesman for the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Boston, said in a statement released to the Globe: “It is the policy of the Archdiocese of Boston, and the generally accepted practice in dioceses across the country, not to permit individuals to conduct speaking engagements in Catholic parishes or at church events when those individuals promote positions that are contrary to Catholic teachings.”

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UNITED KINGDOM
Washington Post

Child abuse allegations mar anniversary of celebrated Anglican bishop

By Trevor Grundy| Religion News Service, Updated: Tuesday, June 25

CANTERBURY, England — Anglicans around the world are marking the 100th anniversary of the birth of one of their church’s greatest 20th-century heroes, a man who fought poverty and white racism in South Africa and mentored some of that continent’s best-known politicians and church leaders. …

But an explosive story in the magazine “Private Eye” sheds light on a recently released Scotland Yard file on Huddleston alleging the late apartheid icon was a child molester. The file from the 1970s was kept out of the public eye but today might have ended his illustrious career. …

There was speculation he might one day be appointed archbishop of Canterbury, head of the worldwide Anglican Communion.

But then Huddleston was accused by a local mother in the run-down East End of London of sexually harassing her two sons.

Although Huddleston denied the accusations, he told a senior police officer: “It’s all perfectly true. I have sat them on my lap and I have touched their bottoms and pinched them but there is nothing indecent. It was purely a mark of affection.”

In his report, the officer wrote: “He (Huddleston) has been outrageously indiscreet.”

In a book called “Trevor Huddleston: Turbulent Priest,” author Piers McGrandle said that after the accusation, Huddleston withdrew from public life for several months after suffering a mental breakdown.

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AUSTRALIA
Maitland Mercury

The Newcastle Herald journalist at the centre of a Hunter child sex abuse inquiry said police did not act immediately on documents that revealed the church had warned paedophile priest Denis McAlinden about interfering with children.

Joanne McCarthy said she gave internal church documents that warned McAlinden – one of two priests being investigated by the Special Commission of Inquiry into an alleged child abuse cover-up by the Maitland-Newcastle Diocese – to police.

During cross-examination from her counsel, Winston Terracini SC, Ms McCarthy said the material included a confession from priest Brian Lucas who said he was aware McAlinden had sexually abused children.

“Was there any attempt by the police at this point to interview Lucas?” Mr Terracini asked.

Ms McCarthy replied: “No”.

Ms McCarthy agreed with Mr Terracini’s suggestion the material “tends to indicate the systemic protection of paedophiles”.

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NEW JERSEY
The Star-Ledger

By Star-Ledger Staff
on June 25, 2013

NEWARK — Archbishop of Newark John J. Myers said the church will no longer enter into an agreement with a civil authority that places the archdiocese in a supervisory role, according to a report on NCRegister.com.

Myers made the revelation in an interview with the National Catholic Register after admitting the church mishandled the supervision of a priest who violated a lifetime ban on ministry to children.

The agreement with the Bergen County Prosecutor’s Office required the Newark Archdiocese to supervise Michael Fugee, who was convicted of groping a boy in 2003. The verdict was later overturned because of judicial error. To avoid retrial, Fugee entered a state rehabilitation program, underwent counseling for sex offenders and, by means of the agreement with prosecutors, promised to stay away from children.

Fugee resigned from the ministry in May though he is back in the rectory in a different role. In the interview published on the National Catholic Register’s website today, Myers defended the decision to allow Fugee to return to restricted ministry after he won an appeal of his conviction.

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NEW JERSEY
Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests

For immediate release: Tuesday, June 25

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

Even now, an admitted and convicted Newark predator priest is living in an undisclosed rectory, Archbishop John Myers admitted in a newly published interview.

That’s outrageously reckless. Myers should immediately move Fr. Michael Fugee to a remote, secure, independently-run treatment center, far away from those he has hurt.

Fr. Fugee has admitted – and been found guilty – of hurting a Catholic child. Myers is in charge of protecting Catholic children. So why is Myers letting Fr. Fugee live near Catholic children in a Catholic building in a Catholic parish?

And for the sake of public safety, Myers should disclose where he’s been letting Fr. Fugee live for the past few weeks.

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MASSACHUSETTS
GlobalPost

“Banned in Boston” used to refer to plays or films that an Irish Catholic establishment, led by the cardinal-archbishop, deemed immoral and thus blocked from local venues.

In today’s ironic counter-meaning, it is Father Helmut Schüller, a reform-minded priest from Austria who has been banned from speaking at Catholic parishes in Boston by Cardinal Sean O’Malley, as Catholic activists arranging his July speaking tour have learned.

“We have found it necessary to move Father Schüller’s talk,” Larry Bloom, a volunteer in the Boston suburb of Dedham said in an email to members of several reform groups. Schüller had been scheduled to speak at St. Susanna Parish in Dedham on July 17.

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AUSTRALIA
Vatican Crimes

TUESDAY, JUNE 25, 2013

Former bishop of the Maitland-Newcastle Diocese Michael Malone and the mother of a boy abused at the hands of a Catholic priest in Maitland will take the stand during the next round of public hearings into child ­sexual abuse allegations across the diocese.

The hearings will continue today in Newcastle Supreme Court, starting with police officers, including former Maitland detective, Wayne Humphrey.

From July 1 hearings are expected to include evidence from diocesan head Bishop Bill Wright and police whistleblower Peter Fox.

Patricia Feenan – the mother of Daniel Feenan who was abused by Father James Patrick Fletcher – is expected to take part in the public hearings from July 8.

The hearings are part of the ­special commission of inquiry into matters relating to the police investigation of certain child ­sexual abuse allegations in the Catholic Diocese of Maitland – Newcastle.

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AUSTRALIA
The Australian

DAN BOX From: The Australian June 26, 2013

A CATHOLIC bishop ordered the release of internal church documents that ultimately led police to investigate some of the church’s most senior clerics over the alleged cover-up of child abuse committed by priests.

During 2009, a NSW state government inquiry into the alleged cover-up has heard, the then Bishop of Maitland-Newcastle, Michael Malone, ordered the documents be provided to a victim of this abuse.

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MASSACHUSETTS
Catholic Culture

Boston’s Cardinal Sean O’Malley has forbidden a speaking appearance by a dissident Austrian priest at a local parish.

Father Helmut Schüller, the leader of the Austrian Priests’ Initiative, was scheduled to speak in July at St. Susanna’s parish church in Dedham, a Boston suburb. Father Schüller is making a tour of the US, speaking in several cities about the Austrian group, which brought together several hundred Austrian priests in a “Call to Disobedience,” a vow to ignore Church teachings on several controversial issues.

Last year, on Holy Thursday, Pope Benedict XVI lamented that “a group of priests from a European country issued a summons to disobedience,” saying that such an action damaged the unity of the Church and the cause of true reform. Although he did not name the group, Pope Benedict clearly had the Austrian Priests’ Initiative in mind. Later, in November, the Vatican announced that Schüller—a former vicar general of the Vienna archdiocese—had been stripped of his title of “Monsignor” because of his leadership role in the dissident group.

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NEW JERSEY
The Record

TUESDAY JUNE 25, 2013

BY JEFF GREEN
STAFF WRITER
THE RECORD

In his first interview about a scandal involving a Catholic priest arrested last month for allegedly violating an agreement with prosecutors, Newark Archbishop John J. Myers defended his actions and provided new details about church’s decision making during the crisis.

Myers, in an interview published online Tuesday by the National Catholic Register, explained a confidential review board ruling in the decade-old sex-abuse case against the Rev. Michael Fugee and addressed new charges that Fugee violated an agreement with prosecutors by working with children throughout New Jersey.

Fugee was convicted of groping a 13-year-old boy in 2003 when he was an assistant pastor at the Church of St. Elizabeth of Hungary in Wyckoff. The conviction was overturned in 2006 due to a judicial error, but to avoid a retrial, he entered into a special rehabilitation program for first-time offenders.

Fugee also signed an agreement with the Bergen County Prosecutor’s Office and the archdiocese that strictly prohibits ministering to children for as long as he remains a priest. Last month he was charged with seven counts of violating the agreement for allegedly hearing confessions of children.

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NEDERLAND
Een Verzwegen Leven

Robert Chesal

Een misbruikslachtoffer heeft een merkwaardig document onder mijn aandacht gebracht. Alweer beweert een rooms-katholieke congregatie dat het allemaal wel meevalt met dat misbruik in de kerk.

Het document is een recente uitgave van de Mill Hill Missionarissen, een rooms-katholieke congregatie die al jaren onder vuur ligt wegens beschuldigingen van seksueel misbruik van minderjarigen. Een van de beschuldigde Mill-Hill priesters is de Nederlander Cornelius Schilder, vanaf 2003 bisschop van Ngong in Kenia.

In 2009 werd Schilder door het Vaticaan naar huis gestuurd omdat hij een 14-jarige jongen zou hebben misbruikt. Het besluit van het Vaticaan was gebaseerd op onderzoek door Fons Eppink, destijds regionaal-overste van de Mill-Hill Missionarissen in Kenia.

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MILWAUKEE (WI)
Milwaukee Archdiocese Chapter 11

FROM LEXOLOGY.COM

In 2005, as the Archdiocese of Milwaukee (the “Archdiocese” or “Debtor”) faced numerous lawsuits by alleged abuse survivors, it transferred in excess of $35 million from its “Parish Deposit Fund” to its parishes and a newly created Southeastern Wisconsin Catholic Parishes Invest ment Management Trust (the “Trust”).

After the Archdiocese filed for bank – ruptcy protection on January 4, 2011 following its failure to settle more than twenty-three abuse lawsuits, the official Committee of Unsecured Creditors (the “Committee”) of the Archdiocese, which five-member com mit tee was comprised of four personal injury plaintiffs and alleged abuse survivors, investigated those transfers and alleged that they were recoverable as fraudulent conveyances.

Notwithstanding, on December 10, 2012, the United States Bankruptcy Court for the Eastern District of Wisconsin (the “Court”) held that the Committee did not have the derivative standing necessary to commence litigation seeking the avoidance and recovery of the $35 million. See In re Archdiocese of Milwaukee, 483 B.r. 855 (Bankr. E.D. Wis. 2012).

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COLORADO
Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests

For immediate release: Tuesday, June 25, 2013

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

Priest abuse trial starts
St. Louis cleric is accused in Colorado
He allegedly repeatedly molested boy
And he reportedly took child to get nipplies pierced
Prosecutors say priest gave booze, pot and cigarettes too

A criminal trial has begun against a St. Louis priest who allegedly molested a Colorado boy.

The accused is Fr. Robert Charles Manning, who reportedly sexually assaulted the child and named the victim “as a beneficiary of his bank account – and began providing him with expensive gifts, including jewelry, watches and a $3,000 used car,” according to the Colorado Springs Gazette.

Manning now lives in St. Louis. He worked in St. Louis archdiocese, at parishes in Bridgeton, Glencoe and Imperial.

Manning apparently was sent to Colorado, an unusual move for an archdiocesan priest, around 2007.

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AUSTRALIA
lewisblayse.net

Lewis Blayse

They’re at it again. The people who like to add information after the event. The “but wait – there’s more” people.

Police gave their evidence to the New South Wales government enquiry into clerical child sexual abuse last month. This month, the clergy were due to appear. However, more police have been rounded up in an attempt to discredit Peter Fox, who triggered the enquiry in the first place.

Detective Sergeant Jeffery Little (pictured above) accused Detective Fox of producing a report with “significant” inaccuracies and that Fox’s statements were “a manipulation of the truth.” His lawyers, who may have liked the use of horse-racing analogies by virtue of owning horses, probably came up with the widely-reported sound bite that Fox had “ridden on a saddle of lies.”

Unfortunately, the good Detective Little may have been a bit hard of hearing, or nervous about appearing at the enquiry. Most media articles reported him as saying it was “WRITTEN on a saddle of lies.” Presumably, the PR machine did not get to these sources in time.

Mark Cohen, SC, representing Chief Inspector Fox, asked Detective Sergeant Little why it took him 15 months after he was appointed to Strike Force Lantle to contact Chief Inspector Fox. He said he had not seen the need because he relied on an investigator’s report that Chief Inspector Fox had already handed over all relevant information from his investigation.

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AUSTRALIA
Care Leavers Australia Network

The recent claims, by lawyer and lobbyist Bryan Keon-Cohen, that the Catholic Church is a law unto itself in its resistance of governmental responses to child abuse, could be applied to Good Shepherd Australia New Zealand.

On the 22nd of this month, Good Shepherd, an organisation established by the Good Shepherd Sisters has scheduled a Festival at Abbotsford Convent in Melbourne in order to celebrate 150 years since the Good Shepherd Sisters arrived in Australia. The problem is that the summary, by Trish Carroll, Good Shepherd Mission Leader, of the history of the organisation, conveniently excludes the work of the Sisters in the twentieth century. So allow me to fill in the resounding gap.

There are no precise figures for the number of girls who slaved in the eight Magdalene laundries, run by the Good Shepherd Sisters, in twentieth century Australia because Good Shepherd has not released their records. We do know, as a result of the Federal Senate reportForgotten Australians (2004) that the Good Shepherd laundries in Australia acted as prisons for the girls who were forced to labour in workhouses laundering linen for local hospitals or commercial premises. The report alsodescribed the conditions as characterised by inedible food, unhygienic living conditions and little or no education. In 2008, in Federal Parliament, Senator Andrew Murray likened the Convent of the Good Shepherd ‘The Pines’, Adelaide to a prisoner-of-war camp.

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MASSACHUSETTS
National Catholic Reporter

Kate Simmons | Jun. 24, 2013 NCR Today

The first American speaking tour of a reform-minded Austrian priest has hit its first snag.

Boston Cardinal Sean O’Malley says Fr. Helmut Schuller can’t speak on archdiocesan property, forcing a rescheduling of the Boston leg of his 15-city tour, which begins July 15.

Last week, Boston Auxiliary Bishop Walter Edyvean called St. Susanna Parish — Schuller’s scheduled speaking stop — to inform them that O’Malley had ruled that “Father Schuller could not speak at any Catholic parish because he espouses beliefs that are contrary to the teachings of the Catholic Church,” according to parish Deacon Larry Bloom.

Schuller’s talk will be moved to the First Church of Dedham, a Unitarian-Universalist congregation down the street, Bloom told NCR in a email June 24.

St. Susanna tends to attract parishioners with a lot of questions so “we often have speakers who represent various, sometimes controversial, points of view,” wrote Bloom, who serves as Director of Adult Faith Formation for the parish.

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NEW JERSEY
National Catholic Register

Newark’s archbishop discusses the disturbing violation of a court agreement by an archdiocesan priest who is barred from ministering to minors.

by JOAN FRAWLEY DESMOND 06/25/2013

Over the past three months, the Archdiocese of Newark has been at the center of the latest clergy abuse scandal, after local media reported that a troubled diocesan priest, Father Michael Fugee, participated in numerous youth retreats in direct violation of a court agreement that allowed him to return to ministry under restricted conditions that barred him ministering to minors. In 2003, Father Fugee was convicted of sexual assault of a 14-year-old boy, but that decision was overturned on appeal in 2006 because of a judicial error.

The subsequent court agreement, a “Memorandum of Understanding,” required the Newark Archdiocese to oversee the priest’s compliance with the directive.

Archbishop John Myers of Newark acknowledged that Church administrators learned of the priest’s activities after they were reported in the New Jersey Star Ledger in April, and in the wake of the revelations, Msgr. John Doran, the vicar general of the Newark Archdiocese resigned. So did a pastor and youth minister in a Trenton, N.J., parish where Father Fugee had been invited to minister during youth retreats, without formally requesting permission from the Diocese of Trenton. Archbishop Myers has acknowledged in a variety of public forums, including a video on the archdiocese’s website, that an independent investigation by a law firm hired by the diocese had concluded that “the strong protocols presently in place were not always observed.”

During a June 20 interview with Register senior editor Joan Frawley Desmond, Archbishop Myers explained the context for his decision to allow Father Fugee to remain in restricted ministry, outlined the changes he had made to tighten oversight of the 16-17 priests currently supervised by the diocese because of sexual abuse, and raised questions about whether individual dioceses always could effectively supervise priests who were placed in restricted ministry.

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OKLAHOMA
Tulsa World

By DYLAN GOFORTH World Staff Writer on Jun 24, 2013

A Tulsa pastor was arrested Monday on complaints of sexual abuse of a minor after a 15-year-old girl reported to police that she was pregnant with his child.

Gregory Ivan Hawkins is being held on $50,000 bond at the Tulsa County Jail after being arrested at about 3:30 p.m. at 3600 L.L. Tisdale Parkway.

Hawkins, 54, allegedly began the sexual relationship with the girl in April 2012 when the girl was 14, according to his arrest report.

The report states that Hawkins is pastor at Zion Plaza Church, and owner of Zion Child Care & Learning Center, both at 612 E. 46th St. North.

The report states the girl told police she had sex with Hawkins in multiple locations from April 2012 to January 2013, at which time she became pregnant with Hawkins’ child.

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SOUTH CAROLINA
MidlandsConnect

by Ivory Hecker
Posted: 06.21.2013

SUMTER, SC (WACH) — A Sumter minister was arrested Friday after Sumter Police say he sexually assaulted three female members of his church.

Sumter Deputy Chief of Police Alvin Holston said Larry Durant, 58, of Four Bridges Road, is charged with two counts of Criminal Sexual Conduct with a minor, second degree (between the age of 11-14 years old), and four counts of Criminal Sexual Conduct, third degree.

Holston said Durant talked the girls into sex by using his position as a pastor and telling them the sex was part of a “healing process” and “private prayer.”

Police say the victims told police the incidents took place at Word International Ministry facilities on Manning Avenue and North Guignard Drive. The victims also said some of the acts took place at the Durant’s home.

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SOUTH CAROLINA
The Item

By Rob Cottingham rcottingham@theitem.com

Officers of Sumter Police Department have arrested the pastor of WORD International Ministries on Guignard Drive and charged him with multiple counts of criminal sexual conduct involving multiple children.

Larry DuRant, 58, of 2080 Four Bridges Road, was arrested Friday and charged with two counts of second-degree criminal sexual conduct with a minor between the ages of 11 and 14 and four counts of third-degree criminal sexual conduct.

According to the department, detectives had been investigating reports from both victims and their families who told police DuRant allegedly forced the children to participate in various sexual acts. He used his position in the church, according to reports, claiming the occurrences were part of a “healing process” and “private prayer.”

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SOUTH CAROLINA
WLTX

[with video]

Sumter, SC (WLTX) — Court documents are revealing addtional information about the claims being made against a Sumter preacher accused of sex assaults.

Police say 58-year-old Larry Durant, a pastor at Word International Ministries in Sumter, used his influence as a minister to get close to the victims.

“We want to make sure there’s no more victims out there,” Deputy Chief Alvin Holston with Sumter Police said.

“The manner in which he lured them in, we feel that at some level there’s a strong potential that there may be other victims we’re talking about a span of, right now, over two year,” Holston said. “It appeared that he may have had a routine on gaining the trust and the private company of some of the juveniles.”

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SOUTH CAROLINA
The item

BY BRADEN BUNCH bbunch@theitem.com

A young girl having the courage to come forward with her family in mid-May and tell police what happened to her prompted the month-long investigation ultimately leading to the arrest of a local minister on criminal sexual conduct charges, officials with the Sumter Police Department said Monday.

On Friday, Sumter law enforcement charged 58-year-old Larry DuRant, pastor of Word International Ministries on North Guignard Drive, with a total of eight various criminal sexual conduct charges, including two charges of criminal sexual conduct with a minor between the ages of 11 and 14. DuRant was released from the Sumter-Lee Regional Detention Center on Saturday afternoon after meeting a $120,000 bond set earlier in the day.

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SOUTH CAROLINA
WBTW

By Associated Press
By WLTX-TV News

SUMTER, SC –
A Sumter pastor has been charged with sexually assaulting three female members of his church.

Police said that 58-year-old Larry Durant had been arrested and charged with two counts of second-degree criminal sexual conduct with a minor. He also faces four counts of third-degree criminal sexual conduct.

Police say family members told them Durant coerced the victims into having sex with him starting in 2011. Police say the Word International Ministry pastor told the victims the activity was part of the “healing process” and “private prayer.”

“The manner in which he lured them in, we feel that at some level there’s a strong potential that there may be other victims we’re talking about a span of, right now, over two year,” Sumter’s Deputy Chief Alvin Holston told WLTX on Monday.

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UNITED KINGDOM
Eastbourne Herald

Calls for Bishop Bell head Terry Boatwright to resign have been made by the founder of an abuse charity following the jailing of child abductor Jeremy Forrest.

Marilyn Hawes, a mum-of-four, teacher and the founder of Enough Abuse, has said that management at the school should ‘grow a spine’ and apologise for getting it wrong.

This comes after maths teacher Forrest started a sexual relationship with his 15-year-old pupil before taking her to France on September 20 last year.

On Friday (June 21) the 30-year-old from Ringmer was jailed for five counts of sexual activity with a child and child abduction.

Forrest is the latest child sex offender associated with Bishop Bell School, after governor Canon Gordon Rideout was jailed for historic sex offences last month and another teacher, Robert Healy, was sent to prison for having sexual relationships with pupils back in 2009.

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AUSTRALIA
Maitland Mercury

By ELLE WATSON June 25, 2013

The Newcastle Herald ­journalist awarded for her role in bringing about a royal commission into child sexual abuse has told a special inquiry Peter Fox was more eager to investigate ­allegations of clergy concealment than other police.

Winner of the Graham Perkin Award, Joanne McCarthy, gave evidence at the Special Commission of Inquiry yesterday for the final week of hearings into the police investigations of alleged sexual abuse cover-ups by the Maitland-Newcastle Diocese.

Ms McCarthy said when she spoke to Detective Inspector David Waddell about a potential concealment he was “not wholeheartedly” convinced the matters should be investigated.

“I’m not saying that negatively … not saying you’re against doing something,” Ms McCarthy told the special inquiry.

Comparatively, she said Detective Chief Inspector Fox jumped hurdles some officers were unable to overcome because they were matters involving the church.

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AUSTRALIA
The Australian

DAN BOX From: The Australian June 25, 2013

A VICTIM of child abuse by a Catholic priest was upset that a NSW detective publicly discussed her case on television without her consent, an inquiry has heard.

In an interview on the ABC’s Lateline program last year, Detective Chief Inspector Peter Fox publicly claimed he was “ordered to stand down” from the investigation of pedophile priest Denis McAlinden.

During the TV interview, he described taking a witness statement from one of the priest’s un-named victims, who had come forward and whose evidence he described as “explosive”.

Giving evidence today to the NSW Special Commission of Inquiry, established to investigate Detective Fox’s claims, the Newcastle Herald reporter Joanne McCarthy said she had subsequently spoken to the victim, who was upset about the interview.

“Initially she wasn’t upset at all … the distress she relayed didn’t occur until February or March this year,” Ms McCarthy said.

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AUSTRALIA
Herald Sun

NEIL KEENE THE DAILY TELEGRAPH JUNE 25, 2013

POLICE whistleblower Peter Fox pushed to be included in investigations into sexual abuse within the Catholic Church as a “last hurrah” before retiring from the force, a special commission of inquiry has heard this morning.

Newcastle journalist Joanne McCarthy told the inquiry that Inspector Fox gave her his wife’s private phone number and instructed her how to obliterate email trails in order to keep their correspondence secret from other police.

Ms McCarthy said it was “obvious there was some kind of internal police bad blood”.

The commission is investigating why Insp Fox was taken off the case and whether police acted appropriately in doing so.

Ms McCarthy said Insp Fox appeared to be feeling “alone and isolated”, which is why he approached her as his “sounding board”.

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AUSTRALIA
Newcastle Herald

By JASON GORDON June 25, 2013

THE journalist at the centre of an inquiry into how police handled child sex abuse allegations within the Catholic church has denied colluding with whistleblower detective Peter Fox to withhold information from other police.

Newcastle Herald journalist Joanne McCarthy has spent the morning under heavy cross examination from Wayne Roser SC, who is representing several senior police officers.

Mr Roser suggested that Ms McCarthy had refused to identify two witnesses at a meeting she had with former chief inspector Brad Tayler, but Ms McCarthy strongly denied the suggestion.

The meeting with Mr Tayler had been organised by then-Newcastle police commander Max Mitchell. In evidence provided on Monday, and again on Tuesday morning, Mr Tayler had asked Ms McCarthy for the names and numbers of other victims who she had spoken to.

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AUSTRALIA
J-Wire

June 25, 2013 by Vivien Resofsky

About a month ago I sat in the Rabbi’s office, hopeful despite the negative responses over the last 7 years. The question took me by surprise. ” How many people support you?”…writes Viven Resofsky.

I first saw a Rabbi about child sexual abuse in 2004 while I was working at Jewish Care. A terrible example of child sexual abuse was the catalyst. The abuse had gone on for years and finally the girl had the courage to ask for help. She went to a teacher she trusted at Beth Rivkah Ladies College but the teacher did not help her. Instead she told her student that she was not a pure diamond because her parents were not born into Ultra Orthodox families and had become Ultra Orthodox by choice. (Baal Teshuvah).

Despite the fact that the teacher was mandated to report disclosures of abuse she did nothing and consequently nothing in the girl’s life changed. So the girl did something she could do by herself and began to hurt herself physically. Luckily, she came across a doctor who not only knew how to respond but had the confidence and conviction to respond responsibly.

There were other referrals about child sexual abuse and in my opinion, many people who were working with children weren’t sufficiently educated and confident to deal with child sexual abuse.

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