ABUSE TRACKER

ARGENTINA
Urgente 24

CIUDAD DE BUENOS AIRES (Urgente24).-Este miércoles 18/09 la Suprema Corte de Justicia bonaerense ratificó la condena de 15 años de prisión contra el sacerdote Julio César Grassi por los delitos de abuso sexual agravado y corrupción de menores. Ocurre que, el tribunal rechazó los recursos extraordinarios presentados por la defensa del cura y confirmó la condena dispuesta por el Tribunal Oral Criminal 1 de Morón, que luego fue confirmada por la Sala II del Tribunal de Casación Penal.

El fallo de la Suprema Corte se expresa sobre los recursos presentados por la defensa y por la querella, rechazando todos ellos y ratificando la condena dictada por el TOC 1 de Morón.

Sin embargo, no le corresponde al máximo Tribunal determinar que Grassi sea detenido. Ahora será el Tribunal Oral de la primera instancia el que deberá decidir si el acusado tiene que cumplir la prisión efectiva.

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COSTA RICA
La Nacion

ALBERTO BARRANTES C. – Actualizado el 18 de septiembre de 2013

Las religiosas salesianas de la orden Hijas de María Auxiliadora blindan con silencio todo cuestionamiento con respecto al caso de la monja acusada por el Patronato Nacional de la Infancia (PANI), en Casa Maín, Heredia.

Pese a que se intentó conocer la reacción de la madre superiora de la casa provincial, sor Elia Flores, una de las religiosas de la orden indicó que sor Flores se encontraba en Nicaragua.

La casa provincial de las salesianas está ubicada en Curridabat, en San José. La monja que atendió las consultas de La Nación no quiso dar su nombre, ni explicar las funciones que cumple en el centro, ni la situación actual en que se encuentra la religiosa acusada e identificada como sor Adela.

“No, no, no, yo no le voy a dar ningún dato, tengo la orden de no darle ningún nombre; si quiere pídaselo al abogado”, advirtió.

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COSTA RICA
Panorama

La Iglesia Católica de Costa Rica separó a una monja de sus actividades religiosas por el supuesto abuso de dos niñas de tres y seis años en una casa hogar, caso que es investigado por la fiscalía, informó una fuente eclesiástica.

“Paralelo al proceso judicial, se hará un proceso canónico de investigación. Después se determinará si puede continuar como religiosa o si se le ayuda a regresar a la vida laica”, afirmó a la prensa local el encargado de prensa de la diócesis y párroco de San Joaquín de Flores, Sixto Varela

El sacerdote identificó a la sindicada como sor Adela, de origen nicaragüense, precisó el diario La Nación.

La monja fue denunciada el 30 de agosto por el Patronato Nacional de la Infancia (PANI) por presunto abuso sexual y violación de dos niñas de tres y seis años, hechos que se habían dado en el albergue privado Casa Maín en la provincia de Heredia, aledaño a la capital costarricense.

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COSTA RICA
GlobalPosti

The Costa Rican Catholic church has relieved a nun of her duties over the alleged sexual abuse of two young girls, a church official was quoted as saying Wednesday.

A church probe would be carried out in parallel to the legal process, Sixto Varela, pastor and press officer of the San Joaquin de Flores diocese, told local media.

On August 30, a children’s advocacy agency alleged the nun had sexually molested and raped two girls aged three and six at the home in the province of Heredia.

After the claim, the 13 girls in the home were moved to other facilities.

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WEST VIRGINIA
Daily Mail

by Cheryl Caswell
Daily Mail staff

CHARLESTON, W.Va. — A former church custodian was sentenced to 15 to 35 years in prison for the sexual abuse of a young family member.

Charles Brainard Hogan, 58, of Cross Lanes, gave a lengthy statement to Kanawha Circuit Judge Paul Zakaib, telling a courtroom full of people that they had all sinned.

“Romans 3:23 says ‘for all have sinned and come short of the glory of God,’ ” Hogan said. “So nobody in this court can say they have not committed any kind of sin, because if they do they are a liar.”

Hogan said he engaged in sexual acts with the 7-year-old girl in his care because his wife was not receptive to him. He told authorities the girl tempted him by “prancing around in short shorts.”

“I’m very ashamed of what I’ve done, I’m not proud of it,” he said. “I did this because my wife was not there for me. I had no relationship with her for three years and she was not in my bed for two years. She has completely forsaken me.”

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AUSTRALIA
Maitland Mercury

A DVD about the impact of child ­sexual abuse will be shown in Morpeth this weekend with additional screenings planned for the Coalfields region.

The DVD – Breaking the Silence: The Impact of Sexual Abuse by Church Personnel – presents the testimony of two Maitland residents Patricia Feenan and Bob O’Toole, in a confronting and unflinchingly honest account of their experiences.

The DVD was produced by Insights – an arm of Zimmerman Services in the Catholic Diocese of Maitland-Newcastle that was established in 2009 to explore the ongoing consequences of historic child sexual abuse in the diocese.

Ms Feenan is the mother of Daniel Feenan, a victim of deceased priest James Fletcher, while Morpeth man Bob O’Toole was sexually abused by a Marist Brother while at school. They represent many more Hunter residents who are not yet able to tell their stories.

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UNITED KINGDOM
The Argus

By Anna Roberts, Crime reporter

A priest appeared in court charged over alleged historic sexual abuse at a children’s home.

Father Anthony McSweeney, 66, was in the dock at London’s Southwark Crown Court with a former manager at the home, John Stingemore, 71.

The men will appear next on December 19 for a plea and case management hearing.

No venue was set for the case which may move to Lewes Crown Court as Stingemore is in a wheelchair and lives in Stonehouse Drive, St Leonards..

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ARGENTINA
Pagina 12

La Suprema Corte de Justicia de la provincia de Buenos Aires rechazó los recursos extraordinarios presentados por la defensa del sacerdote y ratificó la pena de 15 años de prisión dispuesta por el Tribunal Oral Criminal 1 de Morón por los delitos de abuso sexual agravado y corrupción de menores. El abogado de las querellas reclamó la “detención inmediata” de Grassi.

El abogado Juan Pablo Gallego, quien representa a adolescentes que denunciaron los abusos, reclamó la “detención inmediata” de Grassi, a quien señaló como “un pedófilo peligroso” con condena confirmada. La decisión del arresto deberá ser tomada por el Tribunal Oral Criminal 1 de Morón, donde está radicada la causa principal.

La nueva sentencia contra Grassi se aprobó con los votos de los ministros Luis Genoud, Héctor Negri, Juan Carlos Hitters y Daniel Fernando Soria. El máximo tribunal bonaerense resolvió desestimar los recursos extraordinarios de inaplicabilidad de ley interpuestos por la defensa particular del cura y el presentado por derecho propio con patrocinio letrado.

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

ARGENTINA
La Capital

La Suprema Corte de Justicia bonaerense confirmó la pena de 15 años de prisión contra el sacerdote Julio César Grassi por considerarlo autor responsable de los delitos de abuso sexual agravado y corrupción de menores.

En un fallo de 165 hojas, el máximo tribunal de la provincia de Buenos Aires rechazó los recursos extraordinarios presentados por la defensa del sacerdote.

El Tribunal resolvió “desestimar los recursos extraordinarios de inaplicabilidad de ley interpuestos por la defensa particular de Grassi y el presentado por derecho propio con patrocinio letrado”.

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

ARGENTINA
Telam

La Suprema Corte de Justicia de la provincia de Buenos Aires ratificó la condena a 15 años de prisión del sacerdote Julio Grassi por abuso sexual y corrupción de un menor.

“La Suprema Corte rechazó todos los recursos extraordinarios presentados tanto por la defensa como de la querella pero no es su artribución resolver la prisión del sacerdote, eso lo debe efectuar el tribunal de ejecución de la sentencia”, detalló el vocero.

La defensa de Grassi posee la instancia ahora de presentar un recurso extraordinario ante la Corte Suprema de Justicia de la Nación aunque debe en primer lugar resolver si acepta o no el caso.

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ARGENTINA
Clarin

La Suprema Corte de Justicia bonaerense ratificó la condena de 15 años de prisión contra el sacerdote Julio César Grassi por los delitos de abuso sexual agravado y corrupción de menores.

El máximo tribunal rechazó los recursos extraordinarios presentados por la defensa del cura y confirmó la condena dispuesta por el Tribunal Oral Criminal 1 de Morón.

Los jueces Luis E. Genoud, Héctor Negri, Juan Carlos Hitters y Daniel Fernando Soria, arribaron a la sentencia luego del análisis de los fallos previos y el expediente. El Tribunal resolvió desestimar los recursos extraordinarios presentados por la defensa particular de Grassi, informó en un comunicado el Supremo Tribunal.

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

ARGENTINA
La Nacion

La Suprema Corte de Justicia bonaerense ratificó la condena contra el sacerdote Julio César Grassi .

Grassi había sido sentenciado a 15 años de prisión por los delitos de abuso sexual agravado y corrupción de menores. El máximo tribunal de la provincia rechazó los recursos extraordinarios presentados por la defensa del cura y confirmó la condena dispuesta por el Tribunal Oral Criminal 1 de Morón.

La sentencia, informada por la Corte en un comunicado, fue resuelta con los votos de los ministros Luis Genoud, Héctor Negri, Juan Carlos Hitters y Daniel Fernando Soria.

¿IRÁ PRESO GRASSI?

El fallo de la Suprema Corte se expresa sobre los recursos presentados por la defensa y por la querella, rechazando todos ellos y ratificando la condena dictada por el TOC 1 de Morón.

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

ARGENTINA
TN

[con video]

[Summary: Plaintiff attorney Juan Pablo Gallego said the court decision is definitive and final and there are no more legal barriers. It appears priest Julie Cesar Grassi will go to jail. The lawyer said the news was greeted with great satisifaction.]

Después de que la Suprema Corte de Justicia bonaerense ratificara la condena de 15 años de prisión contra el sacerdote Julio César Grassi por los delitos de abuso sexual agravado y corrupción de menores, el abogado querellante, Juan Pablo Gallego, calificó como “definitiva” la medida judicial.

De esta manera, no le quedan más barreras judiciales a las que acudir y deberá ir a prisión. El letrado adelantó que pedirán además un agravamiento de la pena: 37 años de prisión, en lugar de los 15 actuales.

“Es un fallo definitivo. No tiene más recursos para avanzar en sus pedidos. Los jueces han comprobado su culpabilidad”, aseguró el abogado, en diálogo con TN. “Recibimos la noticia con una enorme satisfacción”, agregó.

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ARGENTINA
TN

{Summary: It was the last resort. The Supreme Court has upheld the 15-year prison sentence imposed on priest Julio Cesar Grassi who was charged with aggravated sexual abuse and corruption of minors. There are no more legal barriers.]

Fue la última instancia. Ya no queda más. La Suprema Corte de Justicia bonaerense ratificó la condena de 15 años de prisión contra el sacerdote Julio César Grassi por los delitos de abuso sexual agravado y corrupción de menores. De esta manera, no le quedan más barreras judiciales a las que acudir y deberá ir a prisión.

El máximo tribunal rechazó los recursos extraordinarios presentados por la defensa del cura y confirmó la condena dispuesta por el Tribunal Oral Criminal 1 de Morón, que luego fue confirmada por la Sala II del Tribunal de Casación Penal.

Grassi quedó sospechado en 2002, luego de que el programa “Telenoche Investiga” difundiera un informe en el que salieron a la luz algunas denuncias que lo vinculaban con abusos sexuales a menores, a quienes se suponía que tenía bajo custodia. El sacerdote estuvo sólo un mes en prisión y luego esperó su juicio en libertad. En 2009, fue condenado por 2 de los 17 cargos en su contra.

Según el abogado de la querella, Juan Pablo Gallego, Grassi “debería ir preso inmediatamente”, ya que la condena “es firme e irreversible”. “No hay ninguna duda de que se cansó de burlarse de la Justicia. Nunca tuvo ningún tipo de restricción”, dijo Gallego, quien dijo que Grassi vivió en una quinta justo enfrente de su exfundación Felices los Niños.

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ARGENTINA
La Razon

[Summary: A court has ratified the 15-year prison sentence of Father Julio Cesar Grassi who was charged with aggravated sexual abuse and corruption of minors. The court rejected the challenge to the sentence made by defense lawyers.]

La Corte bonaerense rechazó los recursos extraordinarios presentados por la defensa del sacerdote y ratificó los 15 años de cárcel. Permanece en libertad porque el caso todavía no quedó firme, sin embargo, a partir de hoy, la Cámara Criminal deberá decidir si puede presentar una nueva apelación y llegar a la Corte Suprema; o bien, como se prevé, ordene su arresto.

Otro revés judicial para el padre Grassi: la Suprema Corte de Justicia bonaerense ratificó la condena de 15 años de prisión en su contra por los delitos de abuso sexual agravado y corrupción de menores.

El máximo tribunal rechazó los recursos extraordinarios presentados por la defensa del cura y confirmó la condena dispuesta por el Tribunal Oral Criminal 1 de Morón, luego ratificada por la Sala II del Tribunal de Casación Penal.

Los jueces Luis E. Genoud, Héctor Negri, Juan Carlos Hitters y Daniel Fernando Soria, resolvieron dicha sentencia luego del análisis de los fallos previos y del expediente. Según se informó en un comunicado, el Supremo Tribunal resolvió desestimar los recursos extraordinarios presentados por la defensa particular del sacerdote.

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ST. LOUIS (MO)
KSDK

Aja Williams

ST. LOUIS (KSDK) – The St. Louis Archbishop is scheduled to give a sworn deposition to prosecutors Thursday, which could be the first time ever for someone in this position.

Archbishop Robert Carlson will give a deposition in the case involving Father Joseph Jiang. Father Jiang has been charged with child endangerment for having a sexual relationship with a 16-year-old girl. He’s also charged with witness tampering in a separate case.

Father Jiang pleaded not guilty to the charges.

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ST. LOUIS (MO)
San Francisco Chronicle

ST. LOUIS (AP) — St. Louis Archbishop Robert Carlson is scheduled to testify under oath Thursday in a Lincoln County felony sexual misconduct case involving a Catholic priest and allegations of witness tampering.

The Rev. Joseph Jiang is accused of molesting a teenage girl and then leaving a $20,000 check atop a car belonging to the victim’s family. He faces one charge of endangering a child’s welfare and one tampering charge.

Jiang was an associate pastor at the Cathedral Basilica in St. Louis and lived in Carlson’s private residence.

KMOX-AM (cbsloc.al/19dbq67 ) reports that Carlson’s deposition is scheduled for Thursday at the Rigali Center in Shrewsbury.

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SAN DIEGO (CA)
Patch

Posted by Gina Tenorio (Editor) , September 18, 2013

The resignation of Bishop Robert Brom after 24 years as head of the Catholic Diocese of San Diego became official today, and he was succeeded by Bishop Cirilo Flores.

Catholic bishops are required to step down as of their 75th birthday, according to the diocese, which said the resignation, and promotion of Flores, was accepted by Pope Francis.

Brom said he was grateful to God for his blessings during both joyful and challenging times as the leader of the diocese, and thankful for the help of other church officials and followers.

“In retirement here, I hope that, without the demands of administration and insofar as health permits, there will be ministerial needs to which I will be able to respond,” Brom said. “In particular, I want to promote missionary discipleship as our common way to participate in the new evangelization, and to foster priestly vocations.”

The Catholic church was hit worldwide with numerous accusations and lawsuits over sex abuse by priests during Brom’s tenure as bishop. In 2007, he approved the second-highest settlement in the U.S. for priest sex abuse cases, $198.1 million for 144 victims.

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LITTLE ROCK (AR)
Arkansas Matters

Update (3:05 p.m.):
LITTLE ROCK, AR – A Pulaski County Circuit Court jury has convicted a former Mount St. Mary Academy counselor of failure to report a sexual relationship between a student and another teacher who was a partner of the counselor.

That’s according to our content partner the Arkansas Times, which also reports that after further deliberation, the jury handed down a sentence of one year probation and a $2,500 fine.

Original story (1:45 p.m.):
LITTLE ROCK, AR — The trial of a former counselor at Mount St. Mary’s Academy accused of failing to report sexual abuse of a student is approaching its closing arguments.

Kathy Griffin is charged with a misdemeanor count of failure to notify by mandated reporter after not calling the child abuse hotline or telling the school administrator that she’d found out about a sexual relationship between a student and teacher Kelly O’Rourke.

Griffin has pleaded innocent, saying she wasn’t aware of the sexual relationship between the teacher and student until after the girl had turned 18 and was no longer a student at the school, according to KARK content partners at ArkTimes.com.

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CINCINNATI (OH)
WCPO

[with video]

Greg Noble
gregory.noble@wcpo.com
Anna Langlinais, anna.langlinais@wcpo.com

NOTE: Graphic details were discussed during Wednesday’s testimony that may be difficult to read or considered inappropriate.

CINCINNATI – A man testified Wednesday that Rev. Robert Poandl sodomized him in a church rectory when he was 10 years old and he later plotted to kill the priest and commit suicide.

Testifying in federal court, the accuser, now 32, said he was haunted by nightmares, experimented with LSD and cocaine while in school and later became addicted to Oxycodone.

He said Poandl “screwed up my life by raping me.”

“I wanted to go and kill him, punish him for what he’s done,” the accuser said.

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AUSTRALIA
Courier Mail

Judge’s eyes open to pain – child sex abuse testimony gives commissioner Peter McClellan a sense of victims’ scars

ONE of the state’s most senior judges who has been chosen to preside over the child sexual abuse royal commission has never sat on a sexual assault trial or heard the evidence of a rape victim.

Royal commissioner Peter McClellan once banned a prosecutor from a gang rape trial because she showed empathy for the victim and had given a lecture about the case.

Justice McClellan, who this week said that he had not appreciated how devastating sexual assault was to a victim, had slammed senior crown prosecutor Margaret Cunneen’s public show of support for the 17-year-old who had been raped 25 times by 14 men in four locations over six hours.

As they walked from court after the guilty verdict, Ms Cunneen SC told the waiting media: “I commend the quality of the police investigation and the fortitude of the victim.”

In a joint judgment, Justice McClellan and his fellow judges on the Court of Criminal Appeal, Justice Virginia Bell and Justice Cliff Heoben, said a prosecutor had to be impartial.

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AUSTRALIA
Maitland Mercury

There was no legal impediment to a man subject to child abuse claims taking a 17-year-old boy into his personal care, a royal commission has been told.

Children’s Guardian Kerryn Boland said the Commission for Children and Young People had been concerned in 2010-11 over a potential conflict of interest stemming from principal officer of Hunter Aboriginal Children Services Steve Larkins’ care of the boy.

Arrested in 2011, Larkins is now in jail for child pornography and related offences.

“The principal officer would be the one who would have responsibility for dealing with complaints to HACS,” Ms Boland told the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse yesterday.

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AUSTRALIA
The Australian

DAN BOX
From: The Australian
September 19, 2013

HUNDREDS of Christian groups and organisations in NSW have not conducted background checks on church leaders working with children, despite legislation requiring them to do so being in place for 15 years.

Evidence tendered to the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse shows almost half the 700 religious organisations surveyed were found not to have registered for the Working With Children Checks, as required by laws introduced in 1998.

“Religious organisations came to attention following evidence that, in some cases, the WWCC obligations were not being met,” the July 2013 report from the NSW Children’s Guardian states.

Overwhelmingly, those found to be not complying with the scheme were from the Baptist, Catholic and other Christian churches, the report said.

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SCOTLAND
Herald Scotland

Wednesday 18 September 2013

MONSIGNOR Leo Cushley, the man appointed to succeed shamed Cardinal Keith O’Brien, is ‘looking forward’ to taking on arguably the most fraught position in the UK’s Christian churches.

Now just days away from what the Catholic church hopes will bring down the curtain on one of the most turbulent periods in its modern history in Scotland, Mgr Cushley will be ordained as Archbishop of St Andrews and Edinburh on at St Mary’s Cathedral in Edinburgh on Saturday.

Principal consecrators will be Cardinal James Michael Harvey of the Basilica of Saint Paul Outside the Walls, UK Papal Nuncio Antonio Mennini and Archbishop Philip Tartaglia of Glasgow.

Mgr Cushley will next week begin individual conversations with the 100-plus priests in the Archdiocese. He is also expected to ask those priests who accused Cardinal O’Brien of sexual behaviour against them if they are maintaining celibacy.

With Cardinal O’Brien maintaining pockets of support across the Archdiocese and Mgr Cushley stating at the weekend that O’Brien should not return to Scotland, he will need to mend a church broken locally, as well as being at a low ebb nationally.

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CANADA
Sylvia’s Site

I will eventually write up my observations of what I saw and heard at the sentencing hearing of Father Daniel Miller in the Pembroke, Ontario courthouse yesterday (17 September 2013). For now I am posting media coverage. I have also posted a few pictures I took outside the courthouse, and am in the process of posting a few Victim Impact Statements. …

I will be posting two more Victim Impact Statements shortly. I had asked for copies of VIS from others who took the stand yesterday. Those whom I asked kindly agreed to allow them to be posted, we just have to make arrangements for me to get them, hopefully we will get that sorted out today.

I just feel so strongly that everyone should have the opportunity to hear first-hand what happens to a child – and, yes, a mother – when a priest sexually abuses a child. You can’t “hear” it on Sylvia’s Site, but when victims allow their VIS to be posted, you can read it [I am redacting anything in the VIS which might identify the victim or his family]. People need to understand the absolute devastation caused by clerical sexual abuse. I believe that this is one way which says what needs to be said far better than I could ever hope to say or recap.

To all who so readily agreed to let me post your words, thank you so much. I do believe your words will reach and touch the hearts. Thank you.

Once the next two statements are ready and posted I will make note. Keep an eye on NEW to the site, or check the Victims page, or, of course, go to the Father Daniel Miller page. The links will be posted at all three locations.

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CANADA
Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Ottawa

In recent days, new reports have circulated with respect to a law suit against the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Ottawa with respect to allegations of sexual abuse committed by a former priest of the Archdiocese, the late Jean Gravel.

In the absence of Archbishop Terrence Prendergast who is currently on spiritual retreat with the English-language priests of the archdiocese, the Vicar General, Monsignor Kevin Beach, issued the following statement:

“John’s painful story is a reminder that most sexual abuse against a minor is committed by a family member, or a close family friend. By the facts known to us, it appears that the late Jean Gravel had access to John, not by virtue of his role as a priest or pastor, but by reason of his being a member of the Gravel family.

Jean Gravel’s story is tragic as it is scandalous. Ordained a priest in 1950, he exhibited behavioural problems which required diocesan authorities of the time to intervene, seeking his correction and rehabilitation. After criminal charges and a trial leading to Gravel’s conviction in the late 1960’s, the Archbishop of Ottawa of the time, the late Joseph-Aurèle Plourde, successfully petitioned the Vatican to have Gravel dismissed from the clerical state (“laicized”) in 1970.

In my conversations with John, I learned that Jean Gravel took his own life in 1980.

As John mentioned in his public statement, we listened to his painful story with a sympathetic ear. That is more than three years ago. Since that time, on the basis of pastoral care and not on the basis of legal liability, we have assisted John in his search for healing. In the resolution of any claim of abuse, we ask victims to seek independent legal advice. It appears that John, with the advice of his lawyer, has decided to sue the Archdiocese rather than settle the matter without litigation. We will engage in the process, seeking a just solution that addresses John’s circumstances.

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CANADA
Sylvia’s Site

[The following is the Victim Impact Statement which was prepared by a mother whose son was sexually abused by Father Dan Miller – the statement was read to the court on 17 September 2013 by the victim’s sister]

I sit here in this court room as a mother of a son who was your victim Dan Miller. I was a mother who trusted you with her son, to go with you to the movies and overnighters to your mother’s house. Now I know, years later that I had completely failed him as a mother. I trusted in you with my son as I waved goodbye to him as he headed away on an adventure as he would call it with you. I was a failure as a mother not to see beneath your smile and charismatic personality that you were truly evil. You-were and are a pedophile.

In our home you had been welcomed. You were invited in as a faithful leader of my family, with open arms and trust, a trust that I had allowed my children to have with you. A trust I never thought would be broken or shattered as it has now been.

I have spent this past year and a half sad beyond words. It has consumed me and my thoughts. The guilt, the anger, the sadness has taken control of my aging thoughts. This Mr. Miller is how I will spend my last days on earth. This is what your actions have done. The tears still fall but the love for my God has not faulted. He is with me always. I tell God that I forgive you each and every day of my life but I know that God knows differently, so far. It is because of your disgusting actions as a man, a man that I called Father & friend that I now live a life of sorrow. I have died inside knowing that I failed to protect my son from you. I did not know that a wolf in sheeps clothing existed in my family’s world but we do now, don’t we Mr. Miller.?

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CANADA
Catholic Register

Written by Deborah Gyapong, Canadian Catholic News
Wednesday, 18 September 2013

OTTAWA – A 62-year-old man has launched a lawsuit against the Ottawa archdiocese for the childhood sexual abuse of a priest who was also his uncle.

The lawsuit names the late Fr. Jean Gravel, who was defrocked in 1970 following his conviction on unspecified criminal charges in the late 1960s.

“Under the cover of mentoring and spiritual guidance, Fr. Gravel violated the innocence of ‘John’ and ravaged his body and his soul,” said a statement from Becket Personal Injury Lawyers.

According to court documents, the abuse began when John was eight years old and lasted for seven years. In addition to being the boy’s uncle and parish priest, Gravel was also John’s Godfather.

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STOCKTON (CA)
Catholic San Francisco

September 18th, 2013
By Carol Zimmermann

WASHINGTON – In his role with U.S. bishops’ committees over the years, Bishop Stephen E. Blaire of Stockton has frequently urged members of Congress not to cut programs that help the poor.

Now, the bishop, who has led the Diocese of Stockton since 1999, is speaking closer to home about how his diocese – while facing financial burdens – must continue its ministries and its outreach to the local poor.

Bishop Blaire, chairman of the U.S. bishops’ Committee on Domestic Justice and Human Development, detailed the financial situation of the diocese in two recent letters to Catholics in the diocese that were read during weekend Masses at 35 parishes and 14 mission churches.

The most recent letter, read during the Sept. 7-8 weekend Masses, announced the diocese’s plans to consider filing for bankruptcy. The diocese has been paying for multiple clergy sexual abuse lawsuit payments and is running out of funds for future settlements.

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DEUTSCHLAND
kath.net

Präfekt der Glaubenskongregation: Die Kampagne gegen Bischof Tebartz-van Elst hat das Ziel, Bischöfe, die nicht ins eigene Kirchenbild passten, einzuschüchtern oder zu eliminieren

Würzburg (kath.net/KNA) Der Präfekt der Glaubenskongregation, Erzbischof Gerhard Ludwig Müller, hat dem in die Kritik geratenen Limburger Bischof Franz-Peter Tebartz-van Elst Rückhalt zugesichert. Die «Kampagne» gegen den Limburger Bischof sei «ein sich selbst tragendes Lügengebäude», sagte Müller in einem Interview mit der in Würzburg erscheinenden «Die Tagespost» (Donnerstag). Sie habe das Ziel, Bischöfe, die nicht ins eigene Kirchenbild passten, einzuschüchtern oder zu eliminieren. Da gegen von Tebartz-van Elsts Lehre und Leben nichts vorliege, vertraue Rom ihm «voll und ganz». Müller fügte hinzu: «Der Bischof von Limburg bleibt.»

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

For immediate release: Wednesday, Sept. 18, 2013

Statement by Barbara Dorris of St. Louis, Outreach Director of SNAP, the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests ( 314 862 7688 home, 314 503 0003 cell, SNAPdorris@gmail.com )

Tomorrow, for what we believe will be the first time ever, prosecutors will depose St. Louis’ highest ranking Catholic official (and one of his top aides) in a troubling, recent child sex abuse case.

[KMOX]

We believe it’s the first time any St. Louis archbishop has been deposed in any clergy sex case – criminal or civil. Nationally, it’s rare that members of the church hierarchy are deposed in these cases and even more rare when it’s a criminal case.

We hope Carlson doesn’t “plead the Fifth” or delay the deposition. We hope he tells the truth. And we hope prosecutors will ask him pointed questions about warning signs that Fr. Joseph Jiang was a predator and about the $20,000 check from Jiang to a victim’s parents that Carlson reportedly tried to get his hands on.

Fr. Jiang is accused of repeatedly molesting a girl as recently as last summer. He allegedly admitted the abuse to her parents and then left them a check for $20,000. That day, Carlson reportedly called the girl’s mom and asked if he could get the check. In a civil suit, Carlson is charged with “evidence tampering.” We wonder if he will or should face similar criminal charges.

And we’re curious about Deacon Phil Hengen’s role in all of this. He is also being deposed. He purports to “help victims.” But over the years, we’ve received many concerns and complaints by victims about him. If prosecutors want to question him, we can’t help but wonder if he too is playing a role in the cover up of Fr. Jiang’s crimes.

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SOUTH AFRICA
Mmegi

JOHANNESBURG: A German Catholic priest on trial for child abuse in South Africa could face extradition over 36 more counts of sexual offences against children in Germany.

The New Age reported that Georg Kerkhoff appeared in the Brits Magistrate’s Court on Monday in connection with the German offences, after Interpol arrested him at the same court last week.

Kerkoff’s lawyer Graham Kerr-Phillips said his client’s arrest on the German charges was “unnecessary and arbitrary”, according to the report.

A German newspaper reported earlier that Kerkhoff allegedly shared beds, saunas, and showers with young men and boys.

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SAN DIEGO (CA)
DFW Catholic

San Diego, Calif., Sep 18, 2013 / 10:11 am (CNA/EWTN News).- Bishop Cirilo B. Flores was appointed Bishop of San Diego today, Sept. 18, succeeding Bishop Robert H. Brom, whose resignation, having reached the age limit of 75, was accepted by Pope Francis.

Bishop Flores had served as coadjutor bishop of the Diocese of San Diego since Jan. 4, 2012.

He was born in 1948 in Corona, Calif., and after completing undergraduate studies at Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles, he received a law degree from Stanford. He practiced law in California for 10 years before entering St. John’s Seminary in Camarillo in 1986, studying for the Diocese of Orange in California.

Bishop Flores was ordained a priest in 1991, and served in several parishes. In 2009, he was consecrated a bishop, and appointed auxiliary bishop of the Orange diocese.

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SAN DIEGO (CA)
Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests

For immediate release: Wednesday, Sept. 18, 2013

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

The Vatican has announced that Bishop Cirilo Flores is the new head of the San Diego diocese. We’re disappointed and worried by this move.

[Vatican Information Service]

Flores spent years in the Diocese of Orange, a diocese with a very troubling track record in concealing crimes and endangering kids. For more than a decade, he was on a small panel there dealing with clergy sex crimes and cover ups. Flores did little or nothing that showed any real courage or compassion.

[BishopAccountability.org]

In fact, while he was in leadership posts, he helped keep secret the crimes, status and whereabouts of proven, admitted and credibly accused child molesting clerics.

Often Catholics feel hopeful when a new bishop is named. Many of them naively assume the new guy will do better at protecting kids than the old guy. But that’s rarely the case.

The newer breed of bishop is usually just more media savvy than the older breed. Prelates like Flores seem more warm and outgoing and open. But when it comes to dealing with clerics who commit or conceal child sex crimes, they almost always act in the same reckless, callous and deceitful ways as their predecessors.

So we urge San Diego Catholics and citizens to avoid the temptation to become complacent. Complacency protects no one. Only vigilance protects children.

And we urge San Diego Catholics and citizens to share anything they know or suspect about child sex crimes and cover ups with law enforcement, no matter how old, small or seemingly insignificant the information or suspicions may be. It’s our duty to contact police and prosecutors if we see, suspect or suffer crimes. It’s their duty to determine whether action can be taken.

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MISSOURI
Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests

For more information: David Clohessy (314) 566-9790 cell, SNAPclohessy@aol.com, Barbara Dorris (314) 862-7688, SNAPdorris@gmail.com

Files released on two predator priests
Each abused in CA but spent time in MO
They’re with a St. Louis-based religious order
But each worked in the Cape Girardeau diocese
Victims blast MO Catholic officials for “continued secrecy”
SNAP to prelates: “Reach out to others who may be in pain”

Almost 250 pages of records about two predator priests who worked in southern Missouri have just been released and a support group for clergy sex abuse victims is urging three bishops to “reach out” to others who may have been hurt by them.

One priest worked at a college and a parish in Cape Girardeau. The other worked primarily in eastern Missouri but also spent time in Cape Girardeau.

Both Fr. John Edward Ruhl and Fr. John V. “Jack” Farris belonged to the St. Louis-based western region of the Vincentians but spent much of their careers in California, where child sex abuse suits were filed against them.

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ST. LOUIS (MO)
Berger’s Beat

. .Reportedly, St. Louis Archbishop Robert Carlson will be deposed tomorrow by prosecutors in the criminal child sex case against a priest very close to him, Fr. Joseph Jiang. Why? Because Carlson is accused of trying to get hold of a $20k check Jiang reportedly gave to parents of a girl Jiang allegedly molested. The report doesn’t mention that another high-ranking church official, Deacon Phil Hengen, is also being questioned. It’s not clear what role Hengen may have played in the crucial days since. Jiang supposedly admitted abusing the girl. (But Hengen was involved in abuse cases against Fr. Robert Osborne, Fr. John Wieberg and other clerics.). .

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UNITED STATES
Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests

POSTED BY DAVID CLOHESSY ON SEPTEMBER 18, 2013

It feels like justice for child sex abuse comes in waves. There will be a string of stunningly negative court decisions over days and then there’s a sudden reversal, and a series of positive legal developments will happen.

In Canada, for instance, a judge recently ruled that two sisters from Ontario must pay their uncle $125,000 in libel damages for allegedly accusing him – falsely – of sexually assaulting them when they were children.

[CBC News]

And in Montana, a judge recently gave a child molesting teacher a depressingly light sentence, claiming that his 14-year-old victim is “older than her chronological age” and “as much control of the situation” as the teacher.

[The Kansas City Star]

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UNITED KINGDOM
London 24

A Roman Catholic priest appeared in court today charged over alleged historic sexual abuse at a children’s home in Hounslow.

Father Anthony McSweeney, 66, was in the dock at Southwark Crown Court with a former manager at the home, John Stingemore, 71.

McSweeney, who walks with a stick, faces three counts of indecent assault, three of making indecent images of a child, one of taking indecent images of a child and one of possessing indecent images of a child.

The charges came following an investigation into alleged abuse at Grafton Close Children’s Home in Hounslow, west London.

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AUSTRALIA
lewisblayse.net

Scouts Australia continues to be the focus of attention from the Royal Commission into child sexual abuse. While former Scouts leader Steven Larkins was a volunteer with the Scouts, he was employed at various times by the NSW government, the Lutheran Church and the Catholic Church’s St. John of God order.

Allan Currie Evidence: Yesterday, the commission quizzed Allan Currie, the Scouts official responsible for Larkins at the time. He claimed that, prior to February 1997, he had not heard of rumours about Larkins. In July of that year, following a series of anonymous telephone calls regarding Larkins, Currie requested a police check on Larkins.

When Currie received a call from police, who asked if Larkins had been suspended, Currie did not ask why police were interested in Larkins. There is a slight problem here in that Currie should have known it was partly in response to his own complaint about Larkins. Currie went on to say he did not remember being told by police there was a complaint about Larkins. Counsel Assisting, Gail “Snow White” Furness (see previous postings) did not pursue this matter further.

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CANADA
Daily Observer

By Sean Chase, Daily Observer
Wednesday, September 18, 2013

PEMBROKE – A Pembroke priest, who has pleaded guilty to fondling boys four decades ago, not only took away his victims’ innocence but their faith, a court heard Tuesday.

During impact statements delivered by the five men who were touched inappropriately by the priest, Father Daniel Miller was described as a revered member of the Catholic church and the community who, secretly, committed the worst possible perversion against them.

Many were exploited by the priest because they came from broken or impoverished homes, the court heard, with Miller offering his friendship and spiritual guidance. They were boys between the ages of nine and 13 when their trust in the priest was violated.

“For the last 43 years I have kept a dark secret which I couldn’t have told anyone,” said one of the victims, whose identity is protected by a publication ban.

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DETROIT (MI)
Press & Guide

By Joe Slezak
Press & Guide Newspapers

DETROIT — The Archdiocese of Detroit has restricted a former priest at St. Alphonsus Catholic Church in Dearborn from public ministry because of an allegation against him of sexual misconduct with a minor.

The Rev. Louis Grandpre, 79, served at St. Alphonsus, 7469 Calhoun, as a weekend assistant in 1965 and ’66, according to biographical information released by the archdiocese Tuesday.

The archdiocese said that the Wayne County Prosecutor’s Office was notified, and the “Archdiocesan Review Board has deemed the allegation substantive.” As of Wednesday morning, there was no case record for Grandpre on the Wayne County Circuit Court website. Felony cases still in the county’s district courts also are on the site.

The archdiocese said the alleged incident happened in his early years as a priest. It gave no additional information about the allegation.

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CANADA
24 hrs

By David P. Ball, 24 hours Vancouver
Tuesday, September 17, 2013

The Truth and Reconciliation Commission begins four days of hearings in Vancouver Wednesday into residential school abuses.

Hundreds gathered around False Creek Tuesday to witness a flotilla of ocean-going canoes paddled by aboriginal youth and non-aboriginal supporters.

It was part of a week of reconciliation for Canada’s residential schools, in which roughly 150,000 students were placed in church-run schools, many abused sexually and physically.

Watching the boats arrive, Irene Stevens recalled the day authorities arrived at her home to take her to Lejac Indian Residential School at Fraser Lake, B.C.

“They had a gun in their hands,” Stevens told 24 hours. “They told my dad that if none of us children went to the residential school, they were going to take (social support funding) away from him.

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PHILADELPHIA (PA)
Big Trial

TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 17, 2013

By Ralph Cipriano
for Bigtrial.net

In a sunlight-drenched courtroom this morning, a couple of state appellate judges asked the Philadelphia district attorney’s office to explain the pretzel logic of its suspect prosecution of Msgr. William J. Lynn.

After four years of hiding behind secret grand juries and gag orders, the D.A. finally had to answer some tough questions in broad daylight. Seth Williams wasn’t there, but his top appellate lawyer was. He responded with a litany of legal citations. But when the judges attempted to pin him down, the bottom line was, the D.A.’s office has no real answers. It’s hard to explain the illogical and the politically expedient.

Msgr. Lynn is now serving a 3 to 6 year prison term for his June 22, 2012 conviction on one count of endangering the welfare of a child. Could the appellate judges be contemplating a ruling that might free the defendant? There was a moment today during the intense 40-minute hearing that quickened the pulse of every defense lawyer in the packed courtroom.

It came when John T. Bender, the president judge of the 15-member appellate court, asked defense lawyer Thomas A. Bergstrom how long his client had been in jail. It was a question that seemingly came out of nowhere. The answer was 15 months. But it left defense lawyers wondering whether the appellate court was sending a signal that it would entertain a new bail motion to be filed on behalf of Msgr. Lynn.

“I don’t know what to do; I don’t want to be precipitous,” a smiling Bergstrom told reporters after the hearing. Bergstrom said he would wait until the court issues a ruling on the Lynn appeal. And if that ruling favors his client, Bergstrom said, he’ll be filing that bail motion about “five minutes later.”

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VATICAN CITY
Vatican Information Service

Vatican City, 18 September 2013 (VIS) – Today, the Holy Father: …

– appointed Bishop Cirilo B. Flores as bishop of San Diego (area 22,942, population 3,124,081, Catholics 982,183, priests 311, permanent deacons 163, religious 353), U.S.A. Bishop Flores, previously coadjutor of the same diocese, was born in Corona, U.S.A in 1948, was ordained to the priesthood in 1991, and received episcopal ordination in 2009. He succeeds Bishop Robert H. Brom, whose resignation from the pastoral care of the same diocese, upon having reached the age limit, was accepted by the Holy Father.

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ST. LOUIS (MO)
KMOX

ST. LOUIS (KMOX) – St. Louis Archbishop Robert Carlson is scheduled to face questions under oath this week in a sexual misconduct case involving a Catholic priest under his authority and allegations of witness tampering.

The case involves a longtime Carlson associate, Father Joseph Jiang. Jiang is accused of molesting an underage girl in Lincoln County in recent years and accused of attempted witness tampering in the form of a $20,000 check allegedly left on the car on the victim’s family.

Jiang was an Associate Pastor at the Cathedral Basilica and lived in Carlson’s private residence in St. Louis.

David Clohessy with the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests (SNAP) says Carlson may face some tough questions from a Lincoln County prosecutor.

“I would hope the prosecutors will ask Archbishop Carlson, ‘did you know about the check in advance? Was it Father Jiang’s money of the Archdiocese’s money?’ and ‘why did you try to get your hands on it?’” Clohessy said.

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IRELAND
Irish Central

Niall O’Dowd

Father Iggy O’Donovan celebrated the funeral Mass for my mother in Drogheda, a large town 30 miles from Dublin, in 2000 when she passed away.

He did a fine job as he always did when his pastoral duties were called for. He was a people’s priest, hugely popular in Drogheda where his down to earth demeanor and friendly smile won him huge popularity.

Now he has effectively been banished from his job and told to take a year’s sabbatical no doubt in some distant place because he has upset the church’s orthodoxy.

Ignoring bureaucratic rules was something Iggy has done. I remember there was some silly rule at the time of my mother’s death that members of the family could not eulogize the departed. Iggy pointedly let me ignore it to speak about my mother’s life.

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UNITED KINGDOM
Keighley News

Rapist vicar Peter Hedge must spend an extra five years behind bars after two more of his victims spoke out, bringing the number of boys he abused to eight.

Hedge, who is former vicar of Holy Trinity Church in Queensbury, was locked up for 14 years in 2009 for what the judge described as the “wicked and cynical” rape and sexual abuse of boys in his pastoral care.

Now 51, Hedge – who spent many years working as a volunteer on the Keighley & Worth Valley Railway – was brought from prison to Bradford Crown Court yesterday to be sentenced for sexually abusing two more boys.

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UNITED KINGDOM
Yorkshire Post

A DISGRACED vicar has had five years added to his jail sentence after he admitted having sex with two more vulnerable young boys.

Peter Hedge, 51, was locked up for 14 years in 2009 after a jury found him guilty of raping and sexually abusing six youngsters. But Judge Peter Benson yesterday extended that sentence after the Oxford University graduate admitted offences against two other boys.

Sophie Drake, prosecuting, told Bradford Crown Court that one of two new complainants had been interviewed during the initial police inquiry, but denied anything had happened as he wanted to get on with his life. However, in 2011 he contacted police and revealed how Hedge had sexually abused him on three occasions.

At the time the abuse began in the 1990s, Hedge was the curate of St Margaret’s Church, Thornbury, Bradford, but he continued to target youngsters after becoming the vicar at Holy Trinity Church, Queensbury.

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AUSTRALIA
The Australian

A PEDOPHILE was able to successfully apply for a teenage boy to live with him despite a previous screening check found that he posed a risk to children, the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse has heard.

Steven Larkins was employed at the time as chief executive of the Hunter Aboriginal Children’s Service, with court-appointed parental responsibility for some of the most vulnerable children in NSW.

A previous Working With Children Check conducted by the state government had found Larkins posed a “medium risk” to children, the commission heard.

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AUSTRALIA
ABC News

By court reporter Jamelle Wells, Rebecca Armitage and staff

The royal commission into child sex abuse has heard a paedophile was employed by a welfare agency just two months before the ‘working with children’ check was introduced.

The commission is examining how a number of agencies responded to allegations against former scoutmaster and CEO of the Hunter Aboriginal Children’s Service (HACS) Steven Larkins.

The Children’s Guardian Kerryn Boland told the hearing that Larkins was employed by the children’s service in May 2000, but the current ‘working with children’ check came into affect in July that year.

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AUSTRALIA
Herald Sun

BY ANNETTE BLACKWELL AAP SEPTEMBER 18, 2013

IT should have raised suspicions at the NSW Department of Community Services when one name appeared three times on forms checking someone’s suitability to work with children.

Steve ‘Skip’ Larkins was listed as subject, applicant and contact, effectively approving himself to work with children from his position as principal officer of the Hunter Aboriginal Children Services (HACS).

But Larkins is now serving time for child pornography and indecent assault of children, and the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse was told on Wednesday that no one who came into contact with his forms checked their veracity with anyone else at HACS.

Maree Walk, chief executive of community services for NSW Department of Family and Community Services, said she believes “it was an error” not to look more closely at the man who had legal parental responsibility for a number of Aboriginal children from 2003.

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AUSTRALIA
The Age

Paul Bibby
Court Reporter

A combination of bureaucratic bungling and document forging allowed a suspected paedophile Scout leader to continue working with children after leaving the Scouts movement in disgrace, the royal commission on child sexual abuse has heard.

The commission is investigating the case of former Stockton Scouts leader Steven Larkins, who indecently assaulted two young Scouts in the early 1990s but remained part of the organisation for much of the next decade. He was convicted over these and other offences in 2011.

In 2000, after leaving the Scouts, he took up a role with the Hunter Aboriginal Children’s Services (HACS), reaching a management position with court-ordered responsibility for up to 19 children, which he maintained until 2011.

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CANADA
The Province

BY ELAINE O’CONNOR, THE PROVINCE SEPTEMBER 17, 2013

As a child, Vancouver Aboriginal educator Dallas Yellowfly recalls hearing the story of a wild woman who lurks in the forest ready to snatch children.

It’s a traditional First Nations story used to discourage children from wandering. Sadly, it’s more than allegorical.

In a very real way, it came to pass, when an estimated 150,000 First Nations children were ripped from families, sent to residential schools, stripped of their language and culture and often abused.

“The story of the wild woman is the segue into the real story of the Indian agents who would take children to residential schools,” Yellowfly explained.

On Wednesday, the public school cultural facilitator will re-enact that story at the University of the Fraser Valley’s Indian Residential Schools Day of Learning. His presentation includes a theatre piece, “Qualena”, plus testimony from two survivors of St. Mary’s residential school in Mission — Cyril Pierre and Joe Ginger — detail the abuse they endured and what they’ve had to go through for compensation.

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SOUTH AFRICA
Legalbrief

A German Catholic priest on trial for child abuse in SA could face extradition over 36 more counts of sexual offences against children in Germany, says a report on the IoL site.

Georg Kerkhoff appeared in the Brits Magistrate’s Court in connection with the German offences, after Interpol arrested him at the same court last week. Kerkhoff had been on trial in SA for five years on charges relating to alleged sexual assault of boys during a church camp in Gauteng in 2008. The court heard that German authorities would seek Kerkhoff’s extradition after his SA trial was complete. The report adds the matter was postponed to tomorrow (19 September) for a bail application.

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MICHIGAN
Patch

Posted by Christy Arboscello (Editor) , September 17, 2013

A senior retired priest, who served in Clinton Township, has been restricted from public ministry following an allegation of sexual misconduct with a minor, according to the Archdiocese of Detroit.

The allegation dates back to Rev. Louis Grandpre’s early years with the Detroit archdiocese. Civil authorities were notified and the Archdiocesan Review Board deemed the allegation substantive. Therefore, the 79-year-old is banned from all public ministry, the Archdiocese of Detroit stated in a news release.

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DEUTSCHLAND/SUDAFRIKA
Kapstadt

Ein katholischer Priester aus Deutschland steht in Südafrika vor Gericht und könnte bald ausgeliefert werden.

Georg Kerkhoff musste sich am Montag vor dem südafrikanischen Gericht Vorwürfen der sexuellen Belästigung und Missbrauchs stellen. Nachdem der Geistliche von Interpol aufgrund deutscher Anklagen festgenommen wurde, könnte er nach Deutschland ausgeliefert werden.

In Südafrika wird dem Geistlichen vorgeworfen, junge Männer während eines Kirchentreffens in der Provinz Gauteng 2008 sexuell belästigt zu haben. Obwohl bereits vor zehn Jahren in Deutschland Anschuldigungen gegen Kerkhoff wegen sexuellen Missbrauchs von Kindern und Jugendlichen vorlagen, konnte der Priester im Jahr 2007 problemlos nach Südafrika einreisen. Wie dies möglich war und vor allem warum er erneut dazu befähigt wurde, mit Kindern zu arbeiten, kann die katholische Kirche Südafrikas Berichten zufolge auch nicht erklären.

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SOUTH AFRICA
The New Age

Itumeleng Mafisa and Dudu Dube

The father of a 15 year old boy who was allegedly abused by Fr Georg Kerkhoff during a St Bonifatius Catholic Church retreat at Haartebesport in the North West, claims that the church had punished his son and other victims for alerting the authorities of their abuse.

The father who cannot be identified to protect his son, said the youngster was so traumatised that he eventually moved to Germany while some of the other four alleged victims moved to other parts of Europe.

And instead of support the church accused his son and Kerkhoff’s four other alleged victims of making up stories.

The father also claimed that the five families were isolated by the Church and made to feel like trouble makers until eventually they all left the church.

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SCOTLAND
BBC News

Police officers investigating allegations of sexual and physical abuse at Fort Augustus Abbey School have identified 20 possible victims.

Abuse at the school featured in a BBC Scotland programme in July.

The police started their own investigation into Fort Augustus and its prep-school, Carlekemp, in March, following a former pupil’s complaint.

BBC Scotland has been contacted by more than 50 people making allegations of abuse at the schools.

A joint statement by Police Scotland and the Crown Office said: “The investigation has so far identified more than 20 possible victims and extends to liaison with a number of law enforcement agencies across and outwith the UK.

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IDAHO
Idaho Statesman

By KATIE TERHUNE — kterhune@idahostatesman.com

Four more former Boy Scouts have joined a lawsuit against the Boy Scouts of America and the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, alleging that both organizations covered up sexual abuse and allowed known pedophiles to remain in leadership positions.

Both organizations have responded to the allegations in federal court, denying that any wrongdoing or responsibility falls on them.

The lawsuit, filed in June, claims Boy Scout leaders in Idaho sexually abused the plaintiffs in various incidents in the 1970s and ’80s. The plaintiffs seek monetary damages, the amount of which would be determined by a jury, said Boise attorney Andrew Chasan, one of the lawyers representing the men.

The case is still in its early stages and a scheduling hearing is set for Oct. 9.

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IOWA
Des Moines Register

Written by
Rekha Basu

Two years ago, a youth minister at the Pentecostal Victory Fellowship Church in Council Bluffs pleaded guilty to sexually abusing four young men while he was a church elder. He did it under the pretext of helping rid them of any homosexual thoughts they might have.

Brent Girouex admitted having sexual relations with at least four young men before 2009, though as many as eight have claimed abuse by him. One was 14 when it began. In emotional statements at sentencing, he and the others talked of how the man had gained their trust and manipulated them.

Girouex’s idea of what some describe as “praying away the gay” involved having his subjects lie down while he touched their genitals and made them ejaculate, and sometimes oral sex. Girouex is said to have told detectives that would rid them of evil thoughts.

His arrest was reported in Des Moines media at the time. But a recent flurry of national online media outlets have revived the story, some wrongly reporting that the sentencing had just taken place.

At the urging of some readers, I took a closer look and was appalled at the upshot of the case. What began with 89 counts of sexual abuse and 60 counts of sexual exploitation against Girouex ended with a smaller confession to felony sex abuse with a minor, and an Alford plea to two counts of sexual exploitation by a counselor or therapist, which concedes there is enough evidence to convict him.

For that, he got probation.

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UNITED STATES
Bilgrimage

William D. Lindsey

In the thread discussing Dennis Coday’s National Catholic Reporter article noting the sentencing of Father Shawn Ratigan for possession and production of child pornography–I discussed this thread yesterday–Colleen Baker responds to Becca Robinson’s surmisal that “no doubt” Ratigan took pictures of boys by stating,

No, they were females, some younger than two. One of the saddest aspects of this abuse crisis is the under reporting of attacks on girls. There was more speculation about this earlier in the crisis, and one reason given for the discrepancy was that the sexual violation of boys was considered far more egregious, so it was far more likely to eventually be reported. Of course this has it’s alternative assumption for girls–as in oh well, it’s to be expected to some extent. In any event, the girls as victims aspect of the crisis got totally buried by the ‘it’s a gay priest’ meme, since it was the easiest explanation for the discrepancy in victims.

In the meantime female victims were revictimized by being purposely ignored for the sake of the ‘gay priest’ meme, and many have still not come forward.*

As Colleen astutely suggests, the malicious intent of some Catholics like Becca Robinson and Purgatrix Ineptiae, aided and abetted by Father Joseph O’Leary (see the first link above for a discussion of this), to spin the abuse crisis as all about gay men molesting boys diverts attention from the fact that those abused by priests include girls. That’s what Ratigan’s case is all about–and this is what makes the attempt of the aforementioned folks to slip the meme of gay priests abusing boys into the discussion of the Ratigan story mind-boggling.

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LITTLE ROCK (AR)
Arkansas Times

Posted by Max Brantley on Tue, Sep 17, 2013

David Koon reports from the county courthouse, where Kathy Griffin, a former Mount St. Mary Academy employee, is being retried on a charge of failing to report sexual abuse of a student by a sometime partner, Kathy O’Rourke, who was also a Mount St. Mary teacher.

A jury couldn’t reach a verdict in Griffin’s first trial in January. She insists she didn’t know about O’Rourke’s relationship with the student until after she was no longer a student at Mount St. Mary. Her defense is that she had no legal obligation to report the relationship, though she ultimately did.

O’Rourke testified today that Griffin had suspicions about the relationship. Her testimony was part of a plea deal she reached before pleading guilty to a charge of abusing the teenager. She got a 15-year sentence, with all but 120 days suspended, and was ordered not to have contact with the girl for 15 years, plus fined $5,000. Yesterday, she was sent to jail for violating the terms of her probation by calling the girl from jail 56 times and connecting on 46 of them. She’ll be resentenced next month.

KELLY O’ROURKE: Said Griffin questioned her repeatedly about relationship with teen.
O’Rourke testified today in a prison jump suit. O’Rourke said her relationship with the victim began in the victim’s junior year of high school and lasted until O’Rourke broke it off in January 2012. At the time, O’Rourke was in a relationship and living with Griffin, as she had been “off and on” since 2003,

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UNITED STATES
Bilgrimage

William D. Lindsey

So, in case you doubt the intent of a certain contingent of homophobic Catholics to keep alive the meme that the Catholic abuse crisis is all about gay priests abusing boys, regardless of the findings of the John Jay report and regardless of whether the topic of conversation is a priest sent to prison for producing pornographic pictures of little girls, I submit the conversation above. It’s from the discussion thread following Dennis Coday’s “Morning Briefing” column in National Catholic Reporter today. If you click on the picture, it should expand to make the dialogue readable.

Cestusdei begins the thread by stating that Pope Benedict wanted homosexuals banned from the seminaries to protect children. Bumblebee demurs, and Cestusdei then doubles down, stating,

The problem was that many homosexuals and liberal allies infiltrated the seminaries (see Goodbye Good Men). . . . I am so glad that you support the ban on the ordination of homosexuals. That is why the number of new offenses is so low.

Never mind that the John Jay study, the most extensive study of the abuse crisis in the American church to date, found precisely the opposite, as I noted this morning: it found that, in the words of Father James Martin, “the rise in the number of gay priests from the late 1970s onward actually corresponded with ‘a decreased incidence of abuse—not an increased incidence of abuse.'”

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MICHIGAN
The Macomb Daily

By Mitch Hotts, The Macomb Daily
POSTED: 09/17/13

A retired pastor of St. Paul of Tarsus Parish in Clinton Township has been sanctioned by the Archdiocese of Detroit after he was accused of sexual misconduct with a minor, according to a news release.

The Rev. Louis Grandpre, 79, a senior retired priest, has been restricted from all public ministry as a result of the allegation, the release stated.

Archdiocese officials said the incident dated back to Grandpre’s early years of service. The Archdiocese Review Board has determined the accusation to be “substantive.”

The Archdiocese said civil authorities have been notified, but the release did not specify what city or agency that involved.

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DETROIT (MI)
Detroit Free Press

By Niraj Warikoo
Detroit Free Press Staff Writer

A Catholic priest has been removed from public ministry after a board determined that sexual misconduct allegations against him have substance, the Archdiocese of Detroit said today.

The allegations were forwarded to the Wayne County Prosecutor’s office, said Joe Kohn, spokesman for the Archdiocese.

Rev. Louis Granpre, 79, a senior retired priest with the Archdiocese of Detroit, is now prevented from serving as a priest or presenting himself as a priest, said Kohn.

“The Archdiocesan Review Board has deemed the allegation substantive,” said the Archdiocese of Detroit in a statement today.

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ARGENTINA
El Dia

[Summary: A group of women who said they were abused by a priest held a demonstration today in front of his home in Los Hornos. Ricardo Gimenez was convicted ofr abusing five children in 1996 but was granted extraordinary release by a court in La Plata.]

Un grupo de mujeres que fue víctima de abuso por parte de un sacerdote, realizó hoy un escrache frente a su casa, en Los Hornos.

El cura, Ricardo Giménez, había sido condenado por el abuso de cinco menores en 1996, pero luego la Cámara Penal de La Plata le concedió la excarcelación extraordinaria, bajo caución juratoria.

Desde entonces, el religioso estuvo en una capilla de Berisso, luego pasó a la del Hospital Italiano de La Plata y, más tarde, recaló en la del Hospital San Juan de Dios, donde se desempeña actualmente. Durante la protesta, de la que participaron diferentes organizaciones como Las Rojas, la Casa de la Mujer Azucena Villaflor, Pan y Rosas, y la Unión por los Derechos Humanos, se pidió que el sacerdote “no dé más misa”, que “se le revoque la excarcelación” y que “se haga justicia”.

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ARGENTINA
La Noticia1

[Summary: A group of women who said they were abused by priest Ricardo Gimenez held a demonstration today at the cleric’s home. He was convicted by a court in La Plata and was released on bail. He later went to a hospital where he is currently staying.]

Un grupo de mujeres, víctimas de abuso por parte del sacerdote Ricardo Giménez, realizaron hoy un escrache en el domicilio del clérigo.

Giménez fue condenado pero la Cámara Penal de Apelaciones de La Plata le concedió la excarcelación extraordinaria bajo caución juratoria. El curo estuvo en la Capilla de Berisso y luego pasó al Hospital Italiano de La Plata. Más tarde fue trasladado al Hospital San Juan de Dios, donde se desempeña actualmente.

Participaron organizaciones como Las Rojas, la Casa de la Mujer Azucena Villaflor, Pan y Rosas, y la Unión por los Derechos Humanos. Se pidió que el sacerdote “no dé más misa”, y que “se le revoque el beneficio de la excarcelación”.

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ARGENTINA
Telam

Mujeres víctimas de un cura abusador lo escracharon en su domicilio y pidieron justicia en La Plata

Un grupo de personas que fueron víctimas de abuso por parte de Ricardo Giménez realizaron un escrache en el domicilio del clérigo, en el barrio de Los Hornos, en las afueras de La Plata.

Giménez había sido condenado por el abuso de cinco menores en 1996, pero luego la Cámara Penal de Apelaciones de La Plata le concedió la excarcelación extraordinaria bajo caución juratoria.

“El era el único adulto responsable que estaba con nosotras y los demás chicos en el medio del campo. Nos miraba cuando nos bañábamos y nos enjabonaba”
Julieta Añazco, impulsora del escrache Desde entonces, el cura estuvo en una capilla de Berisso, luego pasó a la del Hospital Italiano de La Plata y, más tarde, recaló en la del Hospital San Juan de Dios, donde se desempeña actualmente.

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ARGENTINA
El Neuvo Herald

AFP BUENOS AIRES

BUENOS AIRES — Un grupo de mujeres protestó el martes en La Plata (62 km al sur) frente a la vivienda de un sacerdote acusado de abusos sexuales, dijeron los organizadores.

“La protesta se realizó frente a la casa del cura (católico) Ricardo Giménez (80 años), quien fue condenado a siete años de cárcel por abuso de cinco menores en 1996, pero fue excarcelado y sigue dando misas”, dijo una fuente de la organización “Las Rojas”, una de las convocantes.

La Justicia lo liberó bajo palabra de no volver a delinquir y la “Iglesia se hizo cargo de su conducta”, según la fuente que pidió reserva de identidad,

Las manifestantes exigieron que el religioso “deje de oficiar misas en una capilla de un hospital de La Plata” y que “se le revoque el beneficio de la excarcelación”, agregó.

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AUSTRALIA
Christian Today

Counsel assisting the Royal Commission into institutional responses to child sexual abuse, Gail Furness, has laid out the timetable for public hearings this year and early next year with the Catholic Church’s Towards Healing likely to be examined in December.

The Commission started public hearings in Sydney on Monday (16 September) by looking into the “case study” of Steven Larkins, a former Scouts leader who was recently convicted of child abuse in the NSW Hunter Valley.

In her opening statement to the Commission Ms Furness listed the public hearings for this year and forecast for next year:

In 2013 the Commission will look at:
• The institutional responses to the conduct of Steven Larkins, once a Scout leader and formerly General Manager of Hunter Aboriginal Children’s Services (HACS) in New South Wales. Five institutions are the focus of this hearing: Scouts Australia, New South Wales, HACS, two State agencies who had responsibility for checking people who worked with children, together with the NSW Police Force.
• Jonathan Luke Lord, formerly a child care worker employed by the YMCA Sydney, who is now incarcerated following his conviction for child sexual abuse.
• Compensation and litigation of child sexual assault cases on NSW North Coast in the Anglican Diocese of Grafton
• The establishment, operation and review of Towards Healing, including how the process works in practice

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DETROIT (MI)
Detroit News

Mark Hicks

A retired area priest has been restricted from public ministry after an allegation of sexual misconduct with a minor dating back to the early years of his service in the Archdiocese of Detroit, officials said Tuesday.

Details of the allegation involving Rev. Louis Grandpre, 79, were not released Tuesday, but the archdiocese said its review board deemed the report “substantive” and authorities were notified.

Grandpre has been retired since 2003, the archdiocese said. Ordained in 1961, he was on the faculty at Sacred Heart Seminary in Detroit; served at Detroit’s Epiphany Parish and Dearborn’s St. Alphonsus Parish in the 1960s; and was a longtime pastor at St. Ives Parish in Southfield as well as St. Paul of Tarsus Parish in Clinton Township, according to biographical information the archdiocese released.

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DETROIT (MI)
Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Detroit

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Sep 17, 2013

For more information contact:
Joe Kohn, Director of Public Relations
Kohn.Joseph@aod.org
313-237-5802

Father Louis Grandpre Fr. Louis Grandpre, 79, a senior (retired) priest of the Archdiocese of Detroit, has been restricted from all public ministry as the result of an allegation of sexual misconduct with a minor dating back to the early years of his service in the Detroit archdiocese.

Civil authorities have been notified. The Archdiocesan Review Board has deemed the allegation substantive.

Archdiocesan policies and procedures regarding these matters are available online at the Protecting Children page on www.aod.org. To inform the archdiocese of complaints involving sexual abuse of minors by clergy or church personnel and/or speak to the Victim Assistance Coordinator contact: 866-343-8055.

Biographical information
Education: Sacred Heart Seminary, Detroit
University of Detroit, Detroit
Georgetown University, Washington, D.C.
St. John Provincial Seminary, Plymouth
Catholic University of America, Washington, D.C.

1961 Ordained
1961 Associate Pastor, Epiphany Parish, Detroit
1965 Weekend Assistant, St. Alphonsus Parish, Dearborn
1965 Faculty, Sacred Heart Seminary, Detroit
1966 Weekend Assistant, St. Catherine of Alexandria Parish, Algonac
1971 Weekend Assistant, St. Ives Parish, Southfield
1974 Pastor, St. Ives Parish, Southfield
1990 Pastor, St. Paul of Tarsus Parish, Clinton Township
2003 Senior Priest Status
2013 Administrative Leave of Absence

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DETROIT (MI)
WXYZ

DETROIT (WXYZ) – The Archdiocese of Detroit has announced that a retired priest has been restricted from all public ministry following an allegation of sexual misconduct with a minor.

A news release about the allegations says the Archdiocesan Review Board has deemed that the allegation is substantive.

The Archdiocese says the allegation against 79-year-old Fr. Louis Grandpre concerns the early years of his service in the Detroit archdiocese.

The news release says civil authorities have been notified.

The Archdiocese says Fr. Louis was educated at the Detroit’s Sacred Heart Seminary, the University of Detroit, Georgetown University in Washington, DC, St. John’s Provincial Seminary in Plymouth and Catholic University of America in Washington, DC.

He was ordained in 1961. That was also the year he became the Associate Pastor and Epiphany Parish in Detroit.

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CHICAGO (IL)
Chicago Tribune

By Manya Brachear Pashman
Tribune reporter
5:58 p.m. CDT, September 17, 2013

A Cook County judge acquitted a 79-year-old Roman Catholic priest of sexually abusing a traveler who stopped to worship at the chapel inside Midway Airport before boarding a flight to Kansas City.

According to the priest’s attorney Irv Miller, the Rev. Bede Jagoe arrived at the Leighton Criminal Court Building on Monday in an ambulance and watched from a gurney as his accuser testified that the priest touched him inappropriately and tried to kiss him in an elevator back in December 2011.

Judge Nicholas Ford said surveillance video didn’t corroborate the accuser’s testimony, Miller said.

Since the alleged incident in December 2011, Jagoe suffered several strokes, said Bill Skowronski, a spokesman for the Chicago-based Dominican Friars Central Province, who added that the province was pleased the priest lived long enough to see his name cleared in court.

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MINNESOTA
Mankato Free Press

By Dan Nienaber
dnienaber@mankatofreepress.com

NEW ULM — Another child sexual abuse lawsuit has been filed against the Catholic Diocese of New Ulm, this time against a dead Willmar priest who faced accusations in the past of sexually assaulting young girls.

In addition to seeking money for damages, the lawsuit is asking a judge to require the diocese to release what is described as a “secret list that contains the names of those with credible accusations of sexual abuse in the Diocese of New Ulm.”

In a different matter, an attorney for a man who filed a lawsuit against the diocese in June, accusing another dead priest of sexually assaulting his client while he was a boy attending a church in Henderson, is highlighting documents he says prove the Roman Catholic Church knew that priest was a child molester before he was assigned to that church.

The new lawsuit was filed Monday in Brown County District Court by Lori Stoltz of Northfield and Kim Schmit of Willmar. Both are claiming they were sexually assaulted by David Roney while he was a priest at St. Mary’s Catholic Church in Willmar during the late 1960s and early 1970s. Roney, who died in 2003, was a priest at the church from 1967 to 1980. He later served as a priest at the Church of St. Gregory the Great in Lafayette from 1980 to 1993.

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CANADA
Sun News

MEGAN GILLIS | QMI AGENCY

OTTAWA — A dead and defrocked Catholic priest accused of raping an altar boy decades ago preyed on him as a family member, not a man of the cloth, the archdiocese of Ottawa said Tuesday.

But the lawyer for the victim, “John,” says the brutal abuse happened in the context of their faith and is angry that the diocese revealed his client is a relative of Jean Gravel’s.

“They did it in a vindictive way to punish him for coming forward, I believe,” Robert Talach said.

“I’m really disappointed in the archdiocese.”

Monsignor Kevin Beach was reacting to reports about a lawsuit filed against the archdiocese over abuse the man says he suffered from age eight to 15 in the 1950s and 1960s.

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CINCINNATI (OH)
WCPO

[with video]

Rev. Robert Poandl: Mother testifies she sent son on trip where priest sexually abused him

Greg Noble
gregory.noble@wcpo.com

CINCINNATI – Crying on the witness stand, a mother said she pleaded with her 10-year-old son to go on an overnight trip with a priest who had given their struggling family $800.

The woman testified that her son at first refused to go with Rev. Robert Poandl, but she persisted.

“Father Bob has been so good to us,” she recalled telling her son during the priest’s sexual abuse trial in federal court Tuesday.

Poandl, of Fairfield-based Glenmary Home Missioners, is accused of sexually assaulting the boy on that trip to a West Virginia church in 1991.

The accuser’s fiancée also testified Tuesday and said the attack led to their temporary breakup. The alleged victim is scheduled to testify Wednesday.

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PHILADELPHIA (PA)
National Catholic Reporter

Brian Roewe | Sep. 17, 2013 NCR Today

Update: Arguments in the appeals process for Msgr. William Lynn have concluded.

The Philadelphia Inquirer reported that the arguments in Pennsylvania Superior Court lasted 30 minutes, and as expected, Lynn’s defense lawyer Thomas A. Bergstrom challenged the priest’s conviction on the grounds of the 2007 revision to Pennsylvania’s child endangerment law.

Bergstrom argued that Lynn was a “supervisor of a supervisor” and that by the time the revision took effect, Lynn was already three years removed from his position as secretary of clergy for the Philadelphia archdiocese. Assistant District Attorney Hugh Burns countered that the endangerment law allows for broader interpretation that extends to areas of not just supervising a child, but “supervising the welfare of children,” according to the Inquirer.

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CANADA
Sylvia’s Site

Posted on September 17, 2013 by Sylvia

I’m just home from Pembroke – the Father Daniel Miller sentencing.

First, the judge has reserved his decision until 28 November at 9:30 am.

Second, there were 35 to 40 people in the courtroom. A good turnout.

Third, the victim impact statements were excellent – heartbreaking, but excellent.

Finally – just for now – I had actually tried to post a comment from my iPhone at lunch. I thought I had posted it but it didn’t make it through 🙁 Another learning curve begins!

There is lots to tell you. I need a few moments to get supper on and clear my mind. I find that these are invariably difficult and frustrating days. If I feel that way, how in the name of goodness do the victims feel?

Anyway, one more little note for now. Robert Carew (Father Miller’s lawyer) actually cross-examined the first few victims after they gave their victim impact statements. He honest to goodness did. It was cruel. It was terrible. Yet another re-victimization for those poor souls. I didn’t expect that. I don’t think they did either.

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IRELAND
Association of Catholic Priests

The treatment by the Vatican of the Irish Redemptorist priest Fr Tony Flannery is disgraceful, and the scant regard shown by Rome for due process procedures is more in keeping with the modus operandi of Stalinist regimes than a Church supposedly wedded to the gospel of Jesus Christ.

This is a Church that preaches justice and purports to defend the dignity of human beings and individual human rights. Yet when it comes to one of its own, all of these norms are violated. The point is well made by our former president, Mary McAleese, in a foreword to a book Fr Flannery has written about his case.

She quotes a passage from a homily by Pope Francis at a Mass in Rome in April in which he said the Church was not a bureaucratic organisation but a mother. “The imagery is beautiful and heartening,” writes Ms McAleese. “But I ask myself what mother treats a son as Tony Flannery has been treated?”

Equally distressing is the evasiveness of the Irish Catholic Bishops on the whole matter, hiding behind the very thin excuse that Fr Flannery’s predicament is not an issue for them as he is a member of a religious order and not a diocesan priest.

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CANADA
Sun News

SEAN CHASE | QMI AGENCY

PEMBROKE, Ont. – A local priest who pleaded guilty to fondling boys decades ago not only took away his victims’ innocence but their faith, court heard Tuesday.

The five men who Father Daniel Miller abused read victim impact statements. The boys, some from broken or impoverished homes, were between the ages of nine and 13 when their trust in the priest was violated.

“For the last 43 years I have kept a dark secret which I couldn’t have told anyone,” said one of the victims, whose identity is protected by a publication ban.

Miller earlier pleaded guilty to five counts of gross indecency and indecent assault against a male. Ordained in Renfrew in 1969, Miller served in parishes in Arnprior, Deep River, Eganville and Petawawa before 1999. The abuse involving the boys occurred between 1969 and 1980.

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PHILADELPHIA (PA)
GlobalPost

PHILADELPHIA (Reuters) – Attorneys for the highest-ranking U.S. Catholic church official convicted in a child sex abuse scandal asked an appeals court on Tuesday to overturn the ruling because the law he was prosecuted under was not in place at the time of his crimes.

An attorney for Monsignor William Lynn said the Philadelphia District Attorney’s office acknowledged in its brief to the court that Lynn’s conviction was “ex post facto,” Latin for after the fact.

“They have to use the new statute in order to have this court confirm his conviction,” attorney Thomas Bergstrom told a three-judge Pennsylvania Superior Court panel.

The child endangerment statute in effect when Lynn was secretary of clergy for the Philadelphia Archdiocese, from 1994 to 2004, applied to “a parent, guardian or other person supervising the welfare of a child under 18 years of age.”

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UNITED STATES
The Worthy Adversary

Posted by Joelle Casteix on September 17, 2013

The latest news from New Mexico, California, Minnesota, Hawaii, Missouri and more …

New Mexico

It’s only a matter of hours before the Diocese of Gallup, NM files the official paperwork to declare Chapter 11 bankruptcy. Why only hours? The diocese is not reeling in debt, but Gallup Bishop James Wall and Fr. Alfred Tachias are scheduled to be deposed TOMORROW in the case of the Route 66 priest, Clement Hageman. The diocese’s own documents show that Hageman was a bad dude, and the last thing that Bishop Wall wants to do is sit in a videotaped deposition and talk about what church officials knew about abuse, hush money, and the transfer of predators across state lines (to small towns where poor Latino and Native American kids wouldn’t complain).

California

In California, victims are waiting for Governor Jerry Brown to sign SB 131, the California Child Victims’ Act. According to the Huffington Post, opponents have spent more than $250K to block the legislation. In a particularly insulting move, Rep. Diane Harkey said that the bill only “opened old wounds” and “feed[s] trial attorneys.”

As I told the Huffington Post:

The only way that old wounds are opened is when abuse is kept secret and wrongdoers are allowed to continue in abuse and cover-up. Victims are re-traumatized when lawmakers with no knowledge of the subject spout hurtful and incorrect rhetoric about the victims’ rights movement in an attempt to keep more victims silent and disenfranchised.

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CANADA
Straight

by ROBIN LAURENCE on SEP 17, 2013

Witnesses
At the Morris and Helen Belkin Art Gallery until December 1

In Chris Bose’s video SavageHeathen, the voice of Stephen Harper sounds over altered historical footage of First Nations children in the “care” of white priests, nuns, doctors, nurses, and teachers. Images break up, overlap, and dissolve into brain-busting colours, while Harper delivers, in flat, businesslike tones, the federal government’s 2008 apology to the victims of the Indian Residential School program. Maybe it’s my personal bias (I’m not exactly a fan of our prime minister), but I had the impression that Harper would have brought more sincerity and depth of feeling to a reading of the 1954 Regina telephone directory. Still, the ghastly facts he alludes to—the abuses and deprivations, the deaths both physical and spiritual, the government’s stated intention to “kill the Indian in the child”—are undeniable. In Canada, for over a century, a campaign of cultural genocide was waged against the First Nations through their youngest and most vulnerable members.

Bose is one of 21 artists from across the country who are represented in Witnesses: Art and Canada’s Indian Residential Schools. Organized by the Morris and Helen Belkin Art Gallery, this is one of several shows intended to coincide with the Vancouver events of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada (September 18 to 21). Most of the works on view are recent and contemporary, but a few were made in the 1970s and ’80s, when First Nations artists had begun to raise their voices politically through “nontraditional” means such as painting, printmaking, installation, video, performance, and photography. Some of the artists here experienced the residential-school system directly; others know of it through their own research or the stories painfully revealed by their elders.

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AUSTRALIA
The Australian

DAN BOX
From: The Australian
September 18, 2013

A SENIOR NSW government executive has said she deeply regrets the “inappropriate administrative error” in which a warning about the pedophile boss of an Aboriginal children’s service was sent confidentially to the man himself.

The Working With Children Check, which warned Steven Larkins posed a “medium risk”, was marked “private and confidential” and sent to Larkins himself as the general manager of the Hunter Aboriginal Children’s Service.

Evidence before the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse shows Larkins was later able to challenge this finding with false claims and fraudulent documents, and continue in a role where he had court-appointed parental responsibility for 19 Aboriginal children.

A report last year by the NSW Ombudsman, tendered to the commission, quotes the chief executive of the state’s Department of Community Services, Maree Walk, as saying her department “acknowledges this was an inappropriate administrative error”.

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AUSTRALIA
Telegraph

MIRANDA DEVINE THE DAILY TELEGRAPH SEPTEMBER 18, 2013

IN the lavish corporate environment of a brand new, no-expenses-spared federal bureaucracy on the 17th floor of one of the city’s most prestigious office buildings, the harsh reality of child abuse seems even more surreal.

This is the setting of the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse which began its first days of hearings in Sydney this week.

The clear voice of the first witness rang out in the hushed hearing room like a whipcrack from another world, in which pedophile monsters prey on helpless children while cowardice, uncertainty, or something else prevents the adults in charge from stepping in.

Witness AA told of being sexually assaulted by pedophile Scoutmaster Steven Larkins at age 12 in 1992. He suffers depression, bipolar disorder, and sexual dysfuntion as a result. Witness AC became Larkins’ victim at 11, and became a hard, angry person who trusts nobody, “a shell of the person I was.”

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AUSTRALIA
Perth Now

JANET FIFE-YEOMANS THE DAILY TELEGRAPH SEPTEMBER 17, 2013

A PAEDOPHILE Scout leader escaped charges as long ago as 1998 because of a police mix-up, the royal commission into child sex abuse was told yesterday.

Steven Larkins was the leader of the Stockton Scout group when an 11-year scout went to Newcastle police in 1997 with his mother and said he had been indecently assaulted during a sleepover at Larkins’ house.

A solicitor with the state’s Director of Public Prosecutions told police to lay a charge of aggravated indecent assault against Larkins, 47.

But a note on the police’s COPS – Computerised Operational Police System – by the officer in charge of the investigation, Sergeant Nigel Turney, on July 7, 1998, stated that he had been told by a fellow officer, Senior Constable Panela Amloh, that the advice from the DPP was that “no prosecution will proceed.”

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AUSTRALIA
Maitland Mercury

A disgraced Scout leader was urged to quietly resign from the organisation and warned if he appealed the decision it could jeopardise his full-time job working with Aboriginal children.

Former regional commis­sioner of the Hunter Scouts, Allan Currie, told the second day of the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse in Sydney the suggestion was made to Steve “Skip” Larkins that he should resign from the movement in 2003.

Larkins had been suspended three years previously after a ­former Scout, known as AA, came forward and said he had been sexually assaulted by Larkins in 1992.

Before that, Larkins had been removed from face-to-face ­contact with Scouts in 1997 after complaints were made about him giving lollies to children at a swimming pool.

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UNITED KINGDOM
Halifax Courier

A disgraced vicar has had five years added to his long prison sentence after he admitted having sex with two more vulnerable young boys.

Former Queensbury vicar Peter Hedge, 51, was locked up for 14 years in October 2009 after a jury found him guilty of raping and sexually abusing six youngsters, but Judge Peter Benson today (TUES) extended that sentence after the Oxford University graduate admitted similar offending against two other boys.

Prosecutor Sophie Drake said one of the two new complainants had been spoken to during the original police inquiry, but at the time he denied anything had happened because he wanted to get on with his life.

But in 2011 he contacted the police and revealed how Hedge had abused him.

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CALIFORNIA
Pope Crimes & Vatican Evils…

Paris Arrow

Updated September 15, 2013

Dear Governor Jerry Brown,

You are our final hope for the whole truth and true justice…and May the Almighty God help you and give you the courage to do the right thing.

Today is the feast of the Seven Sorrows of Our Lady of Guadalupe, the Patroness of California and the Americas and She inspires us (again) to write you to please sign bill SB 131 for her sake because she is the true Lady of Justice as she prayed in her Magnificat. The Roman Catholic Church claims to be the sole interpreter of the Bible, and therefore, likewise, they should be fully included the new “Bible of Pedophiles” (priests) that can only become more complete with bill SB 131 in California. The historical unique chapter of California — including the Archdiocese of Los Angeles that history in 2003 has proven to have the most numbers of pedophile priests — must come forth again in bill SB 131.

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CALIFORNIA
Huffington Post

John Hrabe
Investigative Journalist

You’d think that a bill to give victims of childhood sexual abuse more time to file a lawsuit would be the sort of non-controversial legislation that politicians would rush to champion. Well, you’d be wrong.

A California bill to let a small group of sexual abuse victims bring forward lawsuits has faced intense opposition from the Catholic Church. Senate Bill 131 by State Senator Jim Beall, D-San Jose, passed the state Senate without a single vote to spare. It now awaits a decision by former Jesuit seminarian Gov. Jerry Brown.

Why would state lawmakers block an effort to aid sexual abuse victims? Money.

Organizations that harbored abusers are fearful that they will be held civilly liable for their role in covering up cases of childhood sexual abuse. Catholic dioceses in California have already paid out $1.2 billion in abuse settlements. Instead of facing a new round of lawsuits and more settlements, the church decided that it was better to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on a lobbying campaign to block SB 131.

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SCOTLAND
STV

The man who will take over from disgraced Cardinal Keith O’Brien has dismissed claims his exile from Scotland is an “ongoing punishment”.

Monsignor Leo Cushley was named as the Cardinal’s replacement as the Archbishop of St Andrews and Edinburgh in July and will be ordained on Saturday.

Cardinal O’Brien stood down at the end of February amid allegations of “inappropriate behaviour”. He has since left Scotland for “spiritual renewal, prayer and penance” after discussion with the Vatican.

MSP Margo MacDonald, a friend of the Cardinal, told the Scotsman his exile was an unfair “ongoing punishment”.

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ITALY
Washington Post

By Eric J. Lyman| Religion News Service, Updated: Tuesday, September 17

ROME — An illicit relationship that began in the confessional between an elderly Italian priest and a Gypsy woman from Romania nearly 50 years his junior resulted in more than $460,000 in blackmail payments to keep the woman quiet, Italian newspapers reported Tuesday (Sept. 17).

The reports say the relationship started four years ago with shared personal revelations in the confessional before evolving into a sexual affair and then an extortion racket that cost the priest at least 350,000 euros ($462,000).

At one point, the priest is reported to have handed over his entire monthly stipend to the woman, as well as an inheritance he received years earlier.

The payments reportedly began with the aim of helping the family of the cash-strapped woman but were soon made in order to prevent her from revealing evidence of the affair.

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UNITED STATES/AFRICA
BishopAccountability.org

Summary of Case: A priest of the African Foreign Missions, or “White Fathers” ordained in 1971, Phelan’s ministry took him from Ghana in West Africa to the archdioceses of Chicago IL, Newark NJ and Los Angeles, CA. His whereabouts beyond 1992 are unknown. Phelan was accused of child sexual abuse in a lawsuit settled in May 2013.

Ordained: 1971

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DEUTSCHLAND
Sueddeutsche

Hamburg – Im Ermittlungsverfahren gegen den Limburger Bischof Franz-Peter Tebartz-van Elst wegen falscher eidesstattlicher Versicherung rechnet die Staatsanwaltschaft Hamburg nicht vor Ende September mit einem Ergebnis. Die Staatsanwälte hätten nun zwar eine vorläufige Einschätzung vorgenommen, derzeit habe die Verteidigung des Bischofs Akteneinsicht, um Stellung zu nehmen. Über den Inhalt gibt es derzeit keine Auskunft. Im Kern geht es um die Berichterstattung des Magazins Der Spiegel über einen Indienflug des Bischofs in der Ersten Klasse im vergangenen Jahr. In einer eidesstattlichen Versicherung vor dem Hamburger Landgericht bestritt der Bischof, gegenüber einem Spiegel-Redakteur den Erste-Klasse-Flug geleugnet zu haben.

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ROME
International Business Times

By Esther Tanquintic-Misa | September 17, 2013

Monsignor Nunzio Scarano, a suspended Vatican official who was arrested in June on money-laundering charges, told prosecutors that his office, the Administration of the Patrimony of the Apostolic See (APSA), has handled and provided financial services for outside clients.

Based on a transcript copy of questioning, Monsignor Scarano told Italian prosecutors that APSA had indeed “acted as a bank.”

“As APSA, we were not allowed to have outside clients, but, despite this, in reality, we acted as a bank,” he told the magistrates, according to a copy of the transcript of the questioning obtained by Reuters.

“We took in money, used it, and paid out interest to depositors,” he said.

APSA’s main mandate is to pay Vatican salaries, fund its departments and manage its real estate. It also acts as the Vatican’s purchasing office and human resources department. It also handles financial portfolio management and stock management for the Holy See.

Arrested in Rome on June 28, Monsignor Scarano was alleged to have been plotting to smuggle 20 million euros ($26 million) into Italy from Switzerland. An Italian secret service agent and a financial broker were likewise arrested relative to these allegations.

Monsignor Scarano’s lawyers had denied that their client laundered or plan to launder the money.

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AUSTRALIA
lewisblayse.net

The Royal Commission into child sexual abuse has been rather selective in which organisations it has chosen to investigate with regards to their association with paedophile, Steven Larkins, the subject of its first public hearings. It is considering only Scouts Australia, Hunter Aboriginal Children’s Service, NSW police and the NSW government Department of Community Services.

Yesterday, former Scouts official, Armand Hoitink, gave evidence indicating his concerns about Larkins. Oddly, he was not asked about a previous media article in which he is quoted as saying that he had discovered Larkins was working at Kendall Grange, a school for troubled boys run by the St John of God brothers, as a live-in house master. He said he had warned police, who told him they were ”keeping an eye” on Larkins.

The Catholic St. John of God order has been the subject of many cases of child sexual abuse at its institutions, both in Australia and in New Zealand (see previous posting). The Kendall Grange facility, located in the Hunter Region of NSW, has been the subject of several cases. Recently, former principal, Brother Bernard McGrath was extradited to Australia for offences at the school (see previous posting). Larkins was working at the school at the time he was forced to resign from the Scouts.

It was revealed last year that more than a dozen former students have alleged they were sexually abused by St John of God brothers at Kendall Grange School. Two of the brothers who worked at the school were convicted of serious abuse relating to work at homes run by the order in New Zealand in the 1960s. This is the springboard from which Larkins obtained his position with the Hunter Aboriginal Children’s Services organisation.

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PHILADELPHIA (PA)
Philadelphia Inquirer

Joseph A. Slobodzian, Inquirer Staff Writer LAST UPDATED: Tuesday, September 17, 2013

The legal theory underlying the prosecution of the first Catholic church official convicted in the clergy sex-abuse scandal came under attack Tuesday in an appeal hearing before Pennsylvania Superior Court.

Arguing before a three-judge panel in Philadelphia, the lawyer for Msgr. William J. Lynn told the court that Lynn’s 2012 conviction cannot be affirmed under the state’s original child endangerment statute or the amended version enacted in 2007.

The pre-2007 version requires direct, personal supervision of a child, said Lynn’s attorney, Thomas A. Bergstrom. But as the Archdiocese of Philadelphia’s secretary of clergy – responsible for investigating complaints against priests and recommending discipline – Lynn was only a “supervisor of a supervisor,” Bergstrom said.

Bergstrom said the post-2007 law, which enabled prosecution of church officials for crimes committed by priests they supervise cannot be applied to Lynn because he left the secretary of clergy post three years earlier.

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MINNESOTA
Star Tribune

Article by: ROSE FRENCH , Star Tribune Updated: September 16, 2013

Archbishop John Nienstedt is expected to discuss church finances and a proposed $165 million capital campaign at a meeting with priests on Monday, and a group of Catholics calling for greater financial transparency from church leaders thinks they should be allowed in, too.

Members of the Catholic Coalition for Church Reform asked to attend the Priest Finance Day at Pax Christi church in Eden Prairie but were told by Nienstedt in a letter dated Aug. 21 that the meeting is “intended to be a professional gathering for those who have been duly ordained to the Catholic priesthood.”

Robert Beutel, a St. Paul attorney and co-chair of the board of the Catholic Coalition for Church Reform, said the group of lay Catholics argues that issues dealing with parish and archdiocesan finances should be open to Catholics in the pews, not just clergy.

“It’s our money,” Beutel said. “It’s like taxation without representation. … We want the lay people to be a part of all of this, the budgeting, decisionmaking, the oversight.”

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MINNESOTA
Catholic Culture

A lay group pressing for change in the Minneapolis-St. Paul archdiocese is voicing disappointment at being excluded from a meeting in which Archbishop John Nienstedt will discuss finances with members of the archdiocesan clergy.

The Catholic Coalition for Church Reform asked the archbishop for an invitation to attend the Priest Finance Day, but received a negative response. Archbishop Nienstedt explained that the meeting was open only to priests.

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