ABUSE TRACKER

OREGON
News Times

[Rev. Maurice R. Grammond—Assignment Record: BishopAccountability.org]

PORTLAND, Ore. (AP) — A man has filed a $6.35 million lawsuit against the Archdiocese of Portland, alleging he was sexually abused decades ago by the Rev. Maurice Grammond, Oregon’s most notorious pedophile priest.

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

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.

CANADA
Montreal Gazette

BY SUE MONTGOMERY, GAZETTE JUSTICE REPORTER OCTOBER 31, 2013

MONTREAL — After paying $19 million in damages and issuing a lukewarm apology to the men they abused as children in their schools, the Congrégation de Ste-Croix may have to dip into its funds again.

Lawyers representing more alleged victims of the congregation filed a motion Thursday in Quebec Superior Court asking permission for a class-action suit on behalf of people abused in six other institutions run by the congregation’s priests and brothers, including the iconic St-Joseph’s Oratory.

Lawyer Alain Arsenault said 25 people have already come forward since the first lawsuit, which was settled earlier this year.

That class-action suit, which began with just one former student, compensated 206 victims of sexual abuse at the hands of the brothers, each receiving on average $60,890 in damages. The abuse took place in Collège Notre Dame, Collège de St-Césaire and Notre-Dame-de-Pohénégamook, and involved 80 perpetrators who were members of the religious order.

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OREGON
The Oregonian

By Helen Jung | hjung@oregonian.com
on October 31, 2013

A 47-year old Washington County man is suing the Archdiocese of Portland for more than $6.3 million, saying it failed to prevent or rein in a known pedophile priest from raping and assaulting him as a boy in the 1970s.

The lawsuit, filed Thursday in U.S. District Court in Portland, is one of dozens that have been lodged over the years against the archdiocese regarding alleged sexual abuse by Father Maurice Grammond, who served as a priest for more than 40 years in Oregon. The archdiocese has paid out more than $33 million in settlements with 54 victims of Grammond — more than for any other of its priests.

Grammond was suspended from the priesthood in 1991 and died 11 years later at a Gresham care home for Alzheimer’s patients.

“The archdiocese knew for 20 years before my client was abused that Father Grammond was molesting boys, and yet that whole time it did nothing,” said Kristian Roggendorf, the attorney for the plaintiff, who is named only by pseudonym. “It’s unfortunate that the only recourse he has now is a civil lawsuit for his broken life.”

The archdiocese did not immediately comment on the suit.

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MINNESOTA
The Worthy Adversary

Posted by Joelle Casteix on October 31, 2013

First, let’s talk about compliance.

Since 2002, Catholics and the public have been “assured” time and time again that dioceses across the United States are “in compliance” with the Charter for the Protection of Children and Young People, a set of rules created by the US Conference of Catholic Bishops after the scandals in Boston more than 11 years ago.

As recently as 2012, the Archdiocese of Minneapolis/St. Paul was in “full compliance” with the Charter to Protect Children and Young People.

So says the Archdiocese’s website:

The Archdiocese is grateful to everyone in parishes, Catholic schools and other locations who work to ensure that the Charter requirements are implemented. We appreciate your efforts and your continued cooperation to help create and maintain safe environments in local Church ministry.

The problem? Well, since the implementation Minnesota’s three-year civil window for adult victims of child sexual abuse, the public has learned that Archdiocese officials have very recently kept perpetrators in ministry and hid a cache of child porn in the chancery basement.

If THIS is compliance in Minnesota, what is going on in other dioceses nationwide? And what else is hiding in the bowels of chancery buildings across the state of Minnesota?

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FLORIDA
Fox 13

BRANDON (FOX 13) –
Hillsborough County Sheriff’s investigators say in between music lessons and Sunday school, a church volunteer was able to molest a girl for three years without anyone noticing a thing.

It all started in 2010 when the girl was 9 years old. Investigators say William A. Richardson II, 47, of Brandon molested the girl when she was 9 years old, and then sexually battered her when she was 11.

It ended last week when another young girl told an adult. It was not immediately clear whether that girl was also a victim.

During a court appearance Thursday morning, the judge told Richardson that detectives have pretty good evidence against him.

Now, investigators are trying to figure out if there are more victims out there.

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FLORIDA
Tampa Bay Times

Times staff
Thursday, October 31, 2013

BRANDON — A youth minister was arrested Wednesday on charges he sexually battered a girl several times during Sunday school classes.

The Hillsborough County Sheriff’s office said the abuse began when the girl was as young as 9 and continued until she was 11.

William A. Richardson II, 47, of Brandon first molested the girl in 2010 during Sunday school at First Baptist Church of Mango in Seffner, deputies said. The abuse happened again at least once this year during Sunday school, deputies said.

Richardson is the assistant youth ministries and choir director at the church, according to the Sheriff’s Office.

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FLORIDA
WTSP

[with video]

Seffner, Florida — A man is facing charges of sexually abusing a girl during Sunday school classes, detectives said.

Hillsborough County Sheriff’s deputies arrested 47-year-old William A. Richardson II at his home on Lakewood Drive in Brandon.

He’s facing the death penalty for charges he sexually battered an 11-year-old girl during Sunday school at First Baptist Church of Mango in Seffner.

Richardson is also accused of molesting the girl when she was 9 or 10 years old and sheriff’s spokesman Larry McKinnon said fondling may have happened multiple times during the past three years.

Detectives say Richardson said things that made it clear he had committed the sexual battery during a phone call with the victim that deputies were listening in on.

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.

FLORIDA
Christian Post

By Morgan Lee
October 31, 2013

A Florida man has been accused of repeatedly sexually molesting a girl over the course of several years during church Sunday school sessions, Hillsborough County detectives have alleged.

Hillsborough County Sheriff’s deputies arrested 47-year-old William Richardson II on charges that between 2010 and October 2013 he molested a girl who was nine-years-old at the time the alleged abuse began at First Baptist Church of Mango.

In a news release, law enforcement also claimed that the most recent attack came this month, when “at 11 years old, Richardson on at least one occasion sexually battered [the girl.]”

Richardson is currently facing the death penalty for his actions because of the ages of himself and the alleged victim. Under Florida law, sexual battery is a capital felony when the victim is under the age of 12 and perpetrator over the age of 17.

Richardson has also been charged with felony molestation.

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PENNSYLVANIA
San Francisco Chronicle

HOLLIDAYSBURG, Pa. (AP) — A judge has given an attorney six months to settle claims on behalf of seven former students who allege they were molested by a Franciscan friar who helped as an athletic trainer at a Roman Catholic high school in Johnstown from 1992 to 2001.

The Blair County judge said the deadline should be long enough for Altoona attorney Richard Serbin to determine whether his clients’ claims can be settled without the actual filing of lawsuits.

Serbin is one of several attorneys representing more than 50 former students at Bishop McCort High School in Johnstown, and schools in Ohio and Michigan, who have said they intend to sue or seek out-of-court settlements for the actions of Brother Stephen Baker.

Most of the plaintiffs are targeting Pennsylvania’s Altoona-Johnstown diocese or school officials at Bishop McCort High School, where Baker taught and assisted with athletic training from 1992 to 2002. The school is about 60 miles east of Pittsburgh.

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.

PENNSYLVANIA
WJAC

Updated: Thursday, October 31 2013

BLAIR COUNTY, Pa. — Five alleged sex abuse victims of a former athletic trainer at Bishop McCort High School in Johnstown will have more time to negotiate settlements in their cases.

Blair County Judge Jolene Kopriva granted attorney Richard Serbin six additional months so file civil lawsuits related to claims of sexual abuse made by his clients against the late Brother Stephen Baker.

Baker was a Franciscan friar and a former athletic trainer at Bishop McCort and was the subject of child abuse investigations in Ohio, Minnesota and Pennsylvania, Baker lived at St. Bernadine Monastery in Hollidaysburg when he committed suicide Jan. 26. Serbin asked for the additional time after the Bishop of the Diocese of Altoona-Johnstown Mark Bartchak announced earlier in October that the Altoona-Johnstown Diocese wanted to try to settle claims against Baker rather than litigate them.

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.

MINNESOTA
Minnesota Public Radio

[the document]

by Madeleine Baran, Minnesota Public Radio
October 31, 2013

ST. PAUL, Minn. — The Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis did not require an abusive priest to give the church the names of every child he sexually assaulted, according to a document obtained by MPR News.

Top church official Rev. Kevin McDonough revealed the archdiocese’s decision while responding to a man who reported in 2002 that he had been sexually abused by the Rev. Robert Thurner years earlier.

“I have no record that Father Thurner reported you as a victim, but we have not recently asked him to provide an exhaustive list,” McDonough wrote in the letter, dated June 6, 2002. There is no indication that McDonough reported the man’s allegation to police. Archdiocesan policy does not require church officials to report abuse to police if the victim is no longer a child.

“I do not know that my search of our records is going to be very satisfying to you,” McDonough wrote in the letter. “There may be many things we will never know.”

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PERU
Correo

09:29 | AYACUCHO –
Una nueva denuncia se suma en Ayacucho contra la iglesia católica. En esta ocasión un sacerdote identificado como Luis Alejandro Bazalar García fue acusado de violación.

Un menor de edad, quien era seminarista, denunció a Bazalar García de haberlo violado al interior de una parroquia ayacuchana, según informó RPP.

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PERU
RPP

[Summary: The vicar general of the Ayacucho diocese has denied the facts of an allegation that priest Luis Alejandro Bazalar Garcia raped a former seminarian.]

Ante la apertura de la investigación por la Séptima Fiscalía Penal de Huamanga, debido al presunto abuso sexual de parte del sacerdote Luis Alejandro Bazalar García contra un exseminarista menor de edad, el vicario general de la Arquidiócesis de Ayacucho, Javier Obón, negó los hechos.

El hombre religioso manifestó que son patrañas de parte de la familia del joven contra el sacerdote.

Además, manifestó que el muchacho dijo ante la Fiscalía que fue violado por otro seminarista.

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PERU
RPP

[Summary: Archbishop Salvador Pineiro, Metropolitan Bishop of Ayacucho, so far as not commented on the new sexual abuse allegation made against priest Luis Alejandro Bazalar Garcia. The victim’s aunt made the accusation public following a medical examination of the 17-year-old victim which confirmed the act of rape. The victim is a former seminarian. The case is being investigated by the prosecutor and a lawyer for the family.]

Hasta el momento, el arzobispo metropolitano de Ayacucho, Salvador Piñeiro, no se ha pronunciado sobre la nueva denuncia de abuso sexual que recae contra otro sacerdote, Luis Alejandro Bazalar García.

Este miércoles, la tía del joven de 17 años, exseminariasta, Magaly de la Cruz Roca, hizo público el hecho tras conocer los resultados del examen médico que confirmó el acto de violación.

Por lo pronto, el caso es investigado por la Séptima Fiscalía Penal de Huamanga y por la Fiscalía de Familia.

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CANADA
Montreal Gazette

WINNIPEG – A Winnipeg man who as a boy befriended an Orthodox archbishop says allegations that he sexually assaulted two brothers are “crazy.”

Jason Rodgers told court that he first met Seraphim Storheim in 1985 when he was 10 years old.

Rodgers says Storheim befriended him and used to entertain neighbourhood children at his parish home in Winnipeg’s north end.

Rodgers says he confided in Storheim about problems he was having.

Storheim is accused of sexually assaulting two pre-teen boys when they visited him in Winnipeg three decades ago.

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IRELAND
The Journal

SINN FÉIN’S MARY Lou McDonald is calling on the Minister for Justice and Equality to make a public statement on the delay in issuing redress payments and promised supports to the surviving women of the Magdalene Laundries.

She said that over eight months have now passed since the Taoiseach apologised to the surviving women of the Magdalene Laundries, but that not a single redress payment has been made.

Supports

“In fact none of the vital supports provided for in Mr Justice Quirke’s report have been delivered on,” she said, adding, every week she receives receives phone calls from surviving women “desperately upset and confused” by the government’s failure to provide the redress and supports promised months ago.

She stated:

This failure is set against the government’s recent denial of widespread brutality and forced detention in the Laundries in response to very serious concerns raised by the United Nations Committee Against Torture with the state.

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MINNESOTA
Jeff Anderson and Associates

JEFFREY R. ANDERSON

It’s Halloween and you should be scared in Minnesota. There are dozens of credibly accused clerical offenders of children whose names are only known to the Catholic bishops and kept secret. You don’t know who they are, and you don’t know where they are. What we do know is that they could harm our children and that the hierarchs in Minnesota from Duluth to St. Cloud to New Ulm, to Winona and the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis know and have already determined the clerical offenders to be “credibly accused” of abuse of minors. But with only the desire to protect themselves, the Catholic hierarchs in Minnesota continue to worry more about their reputation than the well-being of the children. I wish we could say this was just a Halloween hazard, but this is a hazard that has been ongoing for a long time and will continue until these names are disclosed and made known to the communities in which these people are living and working. Our firm is working vigorously with survivors to force the disclosure of these names and of these lists across the state. Until they do, there is every reason to be scared on Halloween and on every day until there is a full and open disclosure.

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VATICAN CITY
Vatican Information Service

Vatican City, 31 October 2013 (VIS) – The director of the Holy See Press Office, Fr. Federico Lombardi S.J., made the following declaration this morning:

“On the occasion of the meeting of the ‘Council of Cardinals’ scheduled for early next October (1-3 October) and the subsequent meeting of the Synod Council (7-8 October), the Pope has informed the participants of his intention to convoke a Consistory for the creation of new cardinals on the occasion of the Feast of the Cathedral of St. Peter, 22 February. Pope Francis has decided to communicate his decision to convoke February’s Consistory in advance in order to facilitate the planning of other meetings involving the participation of cardinals from different parts of the world.

“Indeed, it is foreseen that the Pope, like his predecessors on other occasions, intends for the Consistory to be preceded by a meeting of the College of Cardinals.

“Before this meeting – scheduled for the 17 and 18 February – there will take place the third meeting of the ‘Council of Cardinals’ (the so-called ‘Eight Cardinals’), while after the Consistory, on 24 and 25 February, there will be the meeting of the Synod Council.

“The next meeting of the Council of Cardinals for economic and organisational matters of the Holy See (the so-called ‘Council of Fifteen’) is expected to be scheduled as in previous years for the month of February, probably during the preceding week”.

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VATICAN CITY
Vatican Information Service

Vatican City, 31 October 2013 (VIS) – Today, the Holy Father: …

– accepted the resignation from the office of auxiliary of the archdiocese of Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic, presented by Bishop Pablo Cedano Cedano, upon having reached the age limit.

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WEST VIRGINIA
Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests

For immediate release: Oct 31, 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)

West Virginia Mormon church officials credibly accused of concealing and neglect regarding a predator are now refusing to accept responsibility.

[Herald Mail]

We are disappointed that Berkeley County Mormon church officials won’t acknowledge their involvement with Christopher Michael Jensen, who is currently in prison for child sexual abuse and assault. These officials should be held accountable for ignoring accounts of abuse that were seen, heard or suspected by their congregation.

We urge anyone who was hurt by someone in a position of authority to step forward, speak up and get help to both recover personally and help others.

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HARTFORD (CT)
The Hartford Courant

by BERNIE DAVIDOW

The morning after Toledo Bishop Leonard P. Blair was named to take over the Hartford Archdiocese, a Connecticut representative of the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests was on the front steps of the Cathedral of Saint Joseph in Hartford to air the organization’s concerns about the appointment.

The SNAP member, Gail Howard of Redding, said she was there with her husband Wednesday in part to draw attention to Blair’s behavior regarding the nationally publicized case of the Rev. Gerald Robinson, a Toledo diocesan priest, who ultimately was convicted in 2006 of killing a nun 26 years earlier.

SNAP has asked why Blair, bishop at the time of the trial, wasn’t more forthcoming with documents that the group says might have helped prosecute the case. The organization has also argued that Blair should have worked harder to get the priest, the Rev. Gerald Robinson, defrocked. The organization has called on Blair to explain his actions.

Attempts to reach two spokeswomen for the Toledo Diocese were unsuccessful Wednesday.

Howard said SNAP was also asking the Hartford Archdiocese to work harder to reach out to victims of sexual abuse by priests. One way, she said, would be to have parish priests read, from the altar, a list of all offending priests who have served in the archdiocese and to ask any of their victims to report the abuse.

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.

MINNESOTA
Huffington Post

[with video]

There have been 18 lawsuits filed against members of the Minnesota Catholic clergy since May, when state law was changed to give abuse victims a three-year window to bring lawsuits that were previously barred by a statute of limitations. Many of the suits also point the finger at the archdiocese, which has a lot to explain when it comes to the alleged cover-ups that took place.

It’s not just the victims who are speaking out about this issue. The Rev. Stephen O’Gara, a popular priest from St. Paul, stepped up to demand accountability from the diocese, criticizing Archbishop Nienstedt for his handling of sex abuse scandals in the clergy in a scathing sermon, which you can listen to above.

O’Gara said on Sunday:

He needs to stand before us and explain himself. Only then will we have the respect called to his office. It’s about arrogance, and we all fall victim to arrogance in some degree or in some place in our lives. But this is more. This is not some small matter. This is a big deal. It’s the first time, I must say, in 69 years that I’m embarrassed to be Catholic.

On Tuesday an unnamed Minnesota woman sued the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis for allegedly “failing to protect her from an abusive priest, reports Minnesota Public Radio.

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UNITED STATES
Music News

Bad Religion are now streaming Christmas Songs, which was released on Monday via Epitaph and features the LA veterans takes on Christmas standards, including ‘Hark! The Herald Angels Sing’, ‘White Christmas’ and ‘O Come All Ye Faithful’.

Bad Religion will contribute 20% of proceeds from Christmas Songs to SNAP, Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests. For more information visit: http://www.snapnetwork.org/.

Bad Religion have threatened to record an album of seasonal classics for years, and now they’ve gone and done it, tackling eight chestnuts in their classic punk rock style. From ‘White Christmas’ with its nod to pioneers The Ramones, to the glorious choirboy intro to ‘Hark! The Herald Angels Sing,’ ‘Christmas Songs’ is the record you need to get your holiday household’s toes tapping.

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MINNESOTA
WCCO

[with video]

Reporting Esme Murphy

MINNEAPOLIS (WCCO) — A video statement obtained exclusively by WCCO shows a Minnesota woman describing alleged abuse by a Catholic priest.

Her case is part of a growing scandal accusing a cover-up by top officials of the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis.

“You started rubbing my back and you put your hand under my shirt and you were rubbing the skin, skin against skin,” she said in the video.

She’s now suing him.

The woman told WCCO’s Esme Murphy she wanted to make the video public so that people could hear her story in her own words. She made the video in 2006 to present to the archdiocese panel that was investigating her claim of abuse from Keating. In the video she details the abuse, and addresses Keating.

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MISSOURI
KMBZ

A nationally known religious columnist says Pope Francis should fire Bishop Robert Finn. Bill Tammeus, a veteran Kansas City religious columnist, wrote an open letter to Pope Francis in the National Catholic Reporter.

He likens what happened in the Kansas City-St. Joseph Diocese to Watergate and says Finn should be removed.

“I see no way for him to stay and have this Pope be taken serious to fix this scandal and so that’s what led me to write this piece,” says Tammeus.

Finn was convicted last year for failure to report suspected child abuse by ex-priest Shawn Ratigan, who is now in prison.

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UNITED STATES
Catholic League

Bill Donohue comments on the latest attack on a bishop:

Last week, I defended St. Paul and Minneapolis Archbishop John Nienstedt when he was being attacked by left-wing Catholics, and ex-Catholics, from the Catholic Coalition for Church Reform; the group, which rejects the Church’s teachings on sexuality, called for the Vatican to remove Nienstedt from office.

Yesterday, another open letter was sent to the Vatican seeking the ouster of a bishop; Pope Francis is being asked to remove Kansas City-St. Joseph Bishop Robert Finn from office. The request is coming from another person who is not in communion with the Church—he never was—Presbyterian journalist Bill Tammeus. His letter is being featured by the National Catholic Reporter, a left-wing dissident weekly.

Tammeus claims that Bishop Finn was not duly protective of children in his diocese. Not only is he wrong about this, he has no moral standing to be pointing fingers at anyone. For years, Tammeus wrote for the Kansas City Star, yet in all of his columns on sexual abuse, he never took on the teachers’ unions for their obstructionist policies that contribute to child rape in the public schools.

Kansas is one of only two states where there are no laws requiring criminal history checks for public school teachers. In 2011, when an attempt was made to strengthen current regulations by mandating fingerprinting of prospective public school employees, the Kansas teachers’ unions fought it. Tammeus said nothing.

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MINNESOTA
MDST 485 Class Blog

Once again, the Catholic Church is making headlines for its continued mishandling of abuse covered up over many years. What brought these issues to light this time, is a woman who filed who filed a sexual abuse lawsuit against the Rev. Michael Keating, a professor at the University of St. Thomas. The article can be seen here. As a whole, the Archdiocese is under the microscope. Since this lawsuit has been filed, Keating has taken a leave and former Archbishop Harry Flynn recently resigned from the St. Thomas Board of Trustees. Prior to this, the Rev. Kevin McDonough also resigned his position as vice chairman of the St. Thomas Board also. Essentially, they did not want their positions within the board and the Catholic Church to interfere with ongoing investigations. So many high-profile positions in such a short time makes one contemplate such actions.

Now, one man in St. Paul has started a petition on change.org calling for the resignation of Archbishop Neinstedt. The Petition is here. I urge you to read the articles in this blog post and sign the petition if you feel. The petition is short and to the point in calling for Neinstedt’s resignation. As Neinstedt himself states he is not stepping down, perhaps the popular voice of the public may change his mind. This may be a necessary step to show members of the Catholic church they have been heard and continued change is happening.

Perhaps now, with Pope Francis as the head of the Catholic Church, a new kind of change that has already been noticed with him will continue to filter throughout the church world-wide. Some of the changes and Francis’s demeanor can be seen in this article.

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IRELAND
Irish Independent

BENJI WILSON – 30 OCTOBER 2013

As one of Britain’s acting greats, Judi Dench is probably best known for playing Queen Victoria in Mrs Brown or ‘M’, head of M16, in the Bond films.

But the classically trained actress had no problem switching on an earthy Dublin accent for her latest movie, Philomena, the true story of Philomena Lee who was banished to a convent, for the ‘sin’ of having a child out of wedlock in 1952.

Then again, Judi has been studying the lilt from a young age. “[Philomena] is older than me but not much, so I can identify with her past and I can identify with Ireland.

“My Ma and her family were from Dublin.”

Based on the book The Lost Child of Philomena Lee by Martin Sixsmith, the film, out on Friday, tells the story of Philomena’s 50-year search for her son, Anthony, who was bundled into the back of a car aged three-and-a-half and never came back.

With the help of journalist Sixsmith (played by Steve Coogan in the film), she finally discovered her child, renamed Michael, had been adopted by a middle-class Catholic couple from St Louis, Missouri.

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SCOTLAND
Herald Scotland

Philomena (12A)
Dir: Stephen Frears
With: Judi Dench, Steve Coogan, Sophie Kennedy Clark
Runtime: 98 minutes

SCOTS director Peter Mullan tackled the sins of the Magdalene laundries against those deemed “fallen women” in his searing 2002 drama, The Magdalene Sisters. Enraged and implacable, Mullan’s film was a war cry from the heart.

Stephen Frears’s Philomena comes at the subject in a gentler fashion, even managing to leaven the sadness with laughter. What sacrilege is this, one might wonder? What way is this to treat the subject of young women torn from their sons and daughters?

As it turns out, it is the best kind of irreverence, the kind that illuminates as it indicts, that takes no prisoners but does not go for the easy answers either. It is a difficult line to walk, and with anyone other than Judi Dench, Steve Coogan and Frears (The Queen, Dangerous Liaisons) it might have stumbled. While not without a misstep, Philomena links its arm into the audience’s and chums them along the road. By the end, one would happily spend another hour in the company of the titular Philo-mena. Plus, and here is the clever part, one leaves the picture just as stirred as after Mullan’s film.

Philomena is based on the investigative book The Lost Child of Philomena Lee by Martin Sixsmith, a former BBC newsman turned Labour Government spin doctor turned ex-spin doctor. When the film opens, Sixsmith, played by Coogan (who also wrote the screenplay with Jeff Pope) has recently been unfairly “resigned” by his minister boss and is feeling rather sorry for himself, despite eventually winning the argument and a nice chunk of change in compensation.

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VATICAN CITY
Vanity Fair

As rumors of a powerful “gay lobby” within the Vatican make headlines and a new Pope promises reform, Vanity Fair contributing editor Michael Joseph Gross interviews dozens of current and former priests, gay monks, veteran Vatican journalists, Italian aristocrats, and gay men at Roman gyms, bars, nightclubs, sex clubs, and restaurants and finds that “to be gay in the Vatican is no guarantee of success, mark of belonging, or shortcut to erotic intrigue. Most basically it is a sentence of isolation,” a life “in a closet that has no door.”

According to Gross’s piece in the December issue of Vanity Fair (on stands today), a significant number of gay clerics at the Vatican are in positions of great authority, but they inhabit a secretive netherworld because homosexuality is officially condemned. The principal requirement of their power and priesthood is silence about who they really are—at least in public. According to Gross, “Clerics inhabit this silence in a variety of ways. A few keep their sexuality entirely private and adhere to the vow of celibacy. Many others quietly let themselves be known as gay to a limited degree … sometimes they remain celibate and sometimes they do not. A third way, perhaps the least common but certainly the most visible, involves living a double life.

Gross goes on to describe the codes and signals by which gay priests navigate life in the Vatican. “Camp is perhaps the most powerful and pervasive” code, with ironic, effeminate self-mockery allowing priests to “exercise some limited rebellion against their own isolation and invisibility.” One former gay priest describes clerical camp to Gross as “a natural way of expressing [gay identity] while celibate.” Yet in the Church, as in Italian society, Gross writes, “the right appearance—la bella figura­—is all…. Parties celebrating appointment to the Vatican and other high Church offices can be lavish … with many clerics in attendance being ‘gay men wearing everything handmade, perfect, queer as it comes,’” as a prominent figure in the Roman art world tells Gross. Still, Gross finds an every-man-for-himself dynamic in Rome’s gay clerical culture: gay clerics often fail to help one another, says a gay former seminarian who was robbed one night in a park while numerous men stood by, because solidarity entails the risk of being outed.

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PENNSYLVANIA
Tribune-Democrat

Kathy Mellott
kmellott@tribdem.com

EBENSBURG — The board of directors of Bishop McCort Catholic High School is attempting to force a Greensburg attorney to provide more information regarding three former students who allege they were sexually molested by Brother Stephen Baker.

A request filed at the Cambria County Courthouse seeks to have attorney Susan Williams file the detailed lawsuit regarding plaintiffs who to date have been listed only as victims 1, 2 and 3.

The document is asking that Williams be given 20 days to file the complaint outlining details of the allegations made against Baker, a Franciscan friar who worked at Bishop McCort from the early 1990s through 2000.

Williams said she has received a copy of the request.

“I haven’t decided yet what I will do,” she said Wednesday.

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PENNSYLVANIA
Altoona Mirror

October 31, 2013
By Phil Ray (pray@altoonamirror.com) , The Altoona Mirror

HOLLIDAYSBURG – President Judge Jolene G. Kopriva has given the Altoona attorney representing five alleged sexual abuse victims of Brother Stephen Baker another six months to determine if the cases can be resolved without filing civil lawsuits.

Attorney Richard Serbin has filed notice of seven possible lawsuits in the Baker case, but in early October, the judge notified Serbin that in five cases the 120-day limit had expired for the filing of civil complaints.

She gave Serbin 30 days to file the complaints that list the Roman Catholic Diocese of Altoona-Johnstown, Bishop McCort High School, where Baker served as an athletic trainer, St. Bernardine Monastery of Hollidaysburg, the Franciscan Friars of the Third Order Regular and retired Bishop Joseph Adamec as defendants.

On Oct. 11, Bishop Mark Bartchak issued a statement saying, “The parties believe that it would serve everyone’s interest to devote time and resources to resolving the claims as opposed to engaging in formal litigation.”

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NEW YORK
NY1

[with video]

A Brooklyn rabbi wanted for allegedly sexually abusing boys was arrested Tuesday in California.

Menachem Tevel, who goes by the name Mendel Tevel, was arrested at the Jem Community Center in Beverly Hills, where he worked.

Four men are accusing Tevel of abusing them between 1995 and 2004 when they were minors.

A Jewish activist group warned the center about Tevel’s past.

“People were notified,” said Ilanit Glucosky of Jewish Community Watch. “The rabbis in Los Angeles were notified by Jewish Community Watch that he is a threat to children, that he has been accused of being a sexual predator.”

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PERU
RPP

[Summary: Another priest has been accused of rape in the Ayacucho region. Luis Alejandro Bazalar García is alleged to have molested his nephew, a 17-year-old former seminarian. After a medical examination confirmed the act of rape, the priest then asked the youth to get into a taxi where he would take him to another place. The victim’s aunts saw what was happening and foiled the attempt. It is said that in the struggle the youth went into the kitchen, grabbed a knife and cut his wrist. He is now hospitalized. An aunt said her nephew was a seminarian but was removed two months ago and request of Bazalar Garcia.]

Un segundo caso de violación involucra a un sacerdote en la región Ayacucho. Esta vez, Luis Alejandro Bazalar García fue denunciado por Magaly de la Cruz Roca de abusar sexualmente de su sobrino, un exseminarista de 17 años.

Tras conocerse los resultados del examen médico que confirmó el acto de violación, el sacerdote acudió la tarde del miércoles al domicilio del menor y lo obligó a subir a un taxi para trasladarlo a otro lugar, pero fue sorprendido por las tías de la víctima y se frustró su intento, reveló De la Cruz.

Asimismo, contó que en el forcejeo, el sacerdote indujo al menor a suicidarse, por lo que el menor acudió a la cocina, cogió un cuchillo y se cortó la muñeca, motivo por el cual ahora está internado en un centro médico, añadió. En ese momento, una familiar también terminó con los brazos fracturados al caer sobre la vereda, dijo De la Cruz a RPP Noticias.

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PENNSYLVANIA
Times-Tribune

SCRANTON – A suspended Diocese of Scranton priest accused of performing sex acts with a minor waived his right a preliminary hearing Wednesday.

The Rev. William Paulish, 56, 450 Third St., Blakely, was arrested in September after he was caught in his car with a 15-year-old boy in the parking lot at Penn State Worthington Scranton campus.

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WEST VIRGINIA
Herald Mail

Posted on October 30, 2013
mumstead
by Matthew Umstead

MARTINSBURG, W.Va. — The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in a statement released Wednesday adamantly denied claims made in a lawsuit that it covered up sexual abuse of 12 children in Berkeley County by a member who has since been excommunicated and imprisoned.

The lawsuit filed Sept. 16 names Mormon church officials and excommunicated member Christopher Michael Jensen and his parents as defendants. It was filed in Berkeley County Circuit Court on behalf of five families and 12 children among them.

“The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints has zero tolerance for abuse of any kind,” the church said in its statement, which was released by Martinsburg attorney William J. Powell, who is representing the church in this case.

The church also said it had reached out to all known victim families and has offered to provide counseling. The families were members of various wards of the Martinsburg, W.Va., Stake of the Mormon church at the time of the abuse, according to the lawsuit.

“Our hearts go out to victims and their families,” the church said in the statement.

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MINNESOTA
Sleepy Eye Herald Dispatch

Posted Oct. 31, 2013

Sleepy Eye, Minn.

Archbishop John Nienstedt, who served as Bishop of the Diocese of New Ulm from 2001 until 2007, when he was appointed Coadjutor Archbishop of St. Paul and Minneapolis, is under scrutiny over how he handled clergy misconduct in the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis.

A Minnesota Public Radio news investigation found that church officials disregarded concerns over priest misconduct over the past 10 years.

In an e-mail response to that investigation, Nienstedt denied any abuse cover-up and expressed regret that some parishioners and priests have lost confidence in him over these concerns.

“As head of this local church, I accept responsibility for addressing the issues that have been raised and am completely committed to finding the truth and fixing the problems that exist,” Nienstedt wrote. “My highest priorities are to ensure the safety of our children and to restore the trust of Catholics and our clergy. I will do everything in my power to do so.” 

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PENNSYLVANIA
Mercury

Editorial

Two weeks shy of his 27th birthday, the tortured life of Sean Patrick McIlmail reportedly ended with an accidental drug overdose.

The Montgomery County resident died four days shy of facing in courtthe man allegedly responsible for his torment.

The preliminary hearing of the Rev. Robert L. Brennan was scheduled for Oct. 17 in Philadelphia on charges of rape, involuntary deviate sexual intercourse and aggravated indecent assault for allegedly abusing McIlmail between 1998 and 2001 when he was an altar boy at Resurrection of Our Lord parish in Northeast Philadelphia. He was 11 when Brennan allegedly began assaulting him.

According to one of two Philadelphia Grand Jury reports on clerical sexual abuse, officials in the Archdiocese of Philadelphia under Cardinal Anthony Bevilacqua were notified that Brennan had sexually or inappropriately touched more than 20 boys. One of those officials was the Rev. Monsignor William Lynn who was secretary of clergy for most of Bevilacqua’s tenure from 1988 to 2003.

On June 22, 2012 a Philadelphia jury found Lynn guilty of one felony count of endangering the welfare of children. Lynn was sentenced to three to six years in prison.

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LOUISIANA
Daily World

LAKE CHARLES — A former Calcasieu Parish priest accused of molesting young parishioners is out of jail on bond.

Mark Anthony Broussard, 57, walked out of the Calcasieu Correctional Center Monday on a $1.5 million cash bond.

Broussard is accused of molesting boys while a priest in Calcasieu Parish between 1986 and 1991. Broussard served at Our Lady Queen of Heaven and St. Henry Catholic Church. He also served at St. Eugene in Cameron Parish.

He is charged with five counts of sexual abuse — two counts of aggravated rape, one count of aggravated oral sexual battery, one count of oral sexual battery and one count of molestation of a juvenile.

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BEVERLY HILLS (CA)
Jewish Journal

BY JARED SICHEL

Menachem Mendel Tewel, who goes by the name Mendel Tevel, remains in a Los Angeles jail awaiting extradition to Brooklyn. The rabbi and youth worker arrested Tuesday afternoon at the JEM Center in Beverly Hills is expected to be charged in New York with three counts of sexual abuse, according to officials in the Brooklyn District Attorney’s office and the New York Police Department.

Although Tevel’s indictment is sealed, Lt. Lincoln Hoshino, a spokesman for the Beverly Hills Police Department, told the Journal that the arrest warrant his department received from New York charges Tevel with three counts of criminal sexual acts in the first degree, five counts of criminal sexual acts in the third degree and three counts of sexual abuse in the first degree.

Tevel, 30, is currently being held without bail at Los Angeles County’s inmate reception center in downtown L.A.. He is scheduled for an extradition hearing as early as the morning of Thursday, Oct. 31, during which he can either fight the Brooklyn DA’s extradition request, or waive opposition to it, giving New York law enforcement officials 30 days to transport him to Brooklyn to be arraigned..

In an article in the Journal in August, four men said they had been victims of Tevel when they were minors (ranging from ages 6 to 14 at the time of the alleged abuse). They claimed Tevel performed acts that included spanking on bare skin, to sexually suggestive rubbing. The instances described by those who spoke with the Journal took place as early as around 1995 and as recently as around 2004.

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BEVERLY HILLS (CA)
CBS Los Angeles

[with audio]

BEVERLY HILLS (CBSLA.com) — The arrest of a rabbi in Beverly Hills on sex abuse charges from New York City has shaken those at the community center where he worked.

KNX 1070′s Ed Mertz reports Menachem Tewel will go back to New York following his arrest at the JEM Community Center on Santa Monica Boulevard.

Tewel, 30, was taken into custody Tuesday afternoon on a warrant charging sexual abuse against four boys between 1995 and 2004.

“He will waive extradition and try to get back to New York as swiftly as possible,” attorney Dana Cole said.

JEM Community Center founder and director Rabbi Hertzel Illulian, who is also Tewel’s father-in-law, said the allegations were false.

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VATICAN CITY
Headlines from the Catholic World

Vatican City, Oct 30, 2013 / 12:31 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- Pope Francis’ reform of the Roman Curia is expected to produce a new document regulating the body, and to reduce the number of Pontifical Councils, while increasing the number of Congregations.

The group of eight cardinals advising Pope Francis on the reform and on the government of the Church will have their second meeting at the Vatican Dec. 3-5, following their Oct. 1-3 meeting.

“The cardinals are not thinking about an adjustment of Pastor Bonus; they are mostly thinking about sketching out a brand new pastoral constitution,” Fr. Federico Lombardi, Holy See press office director, said in a media briefing Oct. 2.

Pastor Bonus is the apostolic constitution issued by John Paul II in 1988 which regulates and defines charges, duties and composition of the offices of the Roman Curia.

Composing a new apostolic constitution is a tricky challenge: Pastor Bonus was finally issued after 16 years of studies and discussion. Nevertheless, the new apostolic constitution should re-design the Roman Curia.

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GEORGIA
Associated Baptist Press

After a Southern Baptist leader said there is no place in the church for whistleblowers, an independent Baptist pastor in Georgia resigned his pulpit after 18-year-old abuse allegations in another state surfaced on the Internet.

By Bob Allen

An independent Baptist pastor has resigned his church in Georgia after allegations of sexual abuse 18 years ago in Michigan resurfaced on the Internet.

Leaders at King’s Way Baptist Church in Douglasville, Ga., confirmed in a letter dated Oct. 18 that Bill Wininger has resigned after more than 15 years as pastor. Another letter dated Oct. 27 acknowledged that church leaders were aware of allegations and charges surfacing recently on the Internet.

Wininger’s troubles started when a woman who is now 25 years old alleged serial abuse that began when she was 3 at North Sharon Baptist Church in Grass Lake, Mich. A Facebook group titled Justice for the Victims of Bill Wininger went online Oct. 23 and in the first week grew to 466 members.

“The beauty of the technological age we are in today is that perps cannot hide any longer,” Julie Silvestrone, an Iowa resident who studied at Hyles-Anderson College, posted Oct. 25. “We are forming an army that will not be silenced and powerful in-roads are being made behind the scenes.”

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OHIO
The Plain Dealer

By Rachel Dissell, The Plain Dealer
on October 30, 2013

CLEVELAND, Ohio — A judge sentenced the former pastor of St. Helena Romanian Byzantine Catholic Church to two years in prison for siphoning money from parish coffers and stealing from an elderly churchgoer.

Andre Matthews, 54, had already pleaded guilty to charges that he stole $176,000 from the church and more than $100,000 from an 89-year-old woman.

Matthews, a longtime pastor at St. Helena on Cleveland’s West Side, was suspended from his duties as a priest on July 18, which bars him from celebrating sacraments or representing himself as a priest.

Cuyahoga County Common Pleas Judge Richard McMonagle, after hearing from the elderly victim, Aurelia Papp, and a man representing parishioners, who packed the courtroom, said, “I know people want a little more blood out of this, but I can’t do it.”

McMonagle also ordered Matthews to pay restitution to the victims in the case.

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OHIO
Fox 8

[with video]

October 30, 2013, by Melissa Reid

CLEVELAND — Father Andre Matthews, 54, of Cleveland, was sentenced Wednesday to two years in prison for stealing money from his parish.

Matthews was a reverend at St. Helena Church on W. 65th Street in Cleveland.

In June, he plead guilty to stealing more than $175,000 from the church over a six-year period. The defense brought up a witness at his sentencing to testify how sick Matthews is.

“In my opinion, Father would fare very very badly, if at all, with penal incarceration,” said Dr. John Conomy.

Church members packed the courtroom. Through a translator, one of the church council members said Matthews betrayed their trust.

“I came here today to say that our faithful, our very own church, is suffering,” said Fabian Barbolovici, a parishioner.

Another one of his victims, an 89-year-old parishioner, wheeled herself forward to say Matthews broke her heart.

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PENNSYLVANIA
PA Homepage

A Catholic priest from Lackawanna County who is accused of having sexual contact with a teenage boy was in court Wednesday morning.

Both prosecutors and an attorney for Father W. Jeffrey Paulish confirm a plea deal is in the works.

When he was arrested last month, Father Paulish was charged with a number of crimes including indecent assault, indecent exposure and unlawful contact with a minor.

A plea deal could spare the 15-year-old boy from ever having to testify in a courtroom.

With the possible plea deal in the works, Father Paulish gave up his right to a preliminary hearing to challenge the evidence against him.

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HARTFORD (CT)
Spiritual Politics

Mark Silk
Oct 30, 2013

Pope Francis’ choice as the next archbishop of Hartford, Toledo Bishop Leonard Blair, is cut from the same episcopal cloth as most of John Paul II’s and Benedict XVI’s American appointees.

Describing the appointment as a “countersign,” National Catholic Reporter blogger and Connecticut native Michael Sean Winters grumped, “This was a missed opportunity to send a signal to all the bishops in the United States that the Holy Father is calling for a different style of pastoral leadership in the Church.” Lauding Blair for his managerial skills, Whispers in the Loggia’s Rocco Palmo Blair called him “a figure none would mistake for being part of the USCCB’s centrist or progressive blocs.”

A longtime Vatican apparatchik, in Toledo Blair has been notable for standing with the forces of doctrinal control and hierarchical enforcement. In 2009, he was one of those bishops condemning Notre Dame for inviting President Obama to speak at commencement. The same year, he was tapped by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF) to head its “doctrinal assessment” of the Leadership Conference of Women Religious (LCWR), the organization representing most American nuns. His two reports set the stage for the CDF’s current project of subordinating the LCWR more closely to “the teachings and discipline of the Church.”

In a video made last year, Blair looks and sounds like he’s been sucking on a lemon as he defends the effort “to remedy significant and longstanding doctrinal problems connected with the activities and programs of the LCWR.” In his bill of particulars, he attacks the organization for giving its 2012 Outstanding Leadership Award to Sr. Sandra Schneiders, retired professor of New Testament studies and Christian spirituality at Santa Clara University. Schneiders, said Blair, “has expressed the view that the hierarchical structure of the church represents an institutionalized form of patriarchal domination that cannot be reconciled with the Gospel.”

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AUSTRALIA
Christian Today

By: Truth Justice Healing Council
Thursday, 31 October 2013

CEO of the Truth Justice and Healing Council has written to more than 1,500 Catholic priests and women and men from religious orders across Australia encouraging support for the activities of Blue Knot Day and the possibility of recovery for the victims of child sexual abuse.

Blue Knot Day and other activities will conclude this Sunday (3 November). The week’s activities are part of an annual awareness campaign coordinated by the victims of child sexual abuse group, Adult Survivors of Childhood Trauma.

Mr Sullivan said Blue Knot day is an important event that focuses on the damage done to victims of child sexual abuse.

“This year’s Blue Knot activities are focused on recovery and spreading the message to both survivors and all community members that with the right care and support, recovery is possible,” Mr Sullivan said.

“It is important all members of the community, and particularly members of the Catholic Church, do whatever we can to help victims and survivors.

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AUSTRALIA
The Australian

Pia Akerman
From: The Australian
October 31, 2013

RELIGIOUS orders and child safety advocates have called for the federal government to establish a national agency to oversee child protection standards, describing existing state-based measures as an “untenable” approach that increases the risk of sexual abuse.

A broad range of groups have demanded the new regulatory body in submissions to the royal commission investigating institutional responses to child sexual abuse, released yesterday as the commission continued public hearings in Sydney.

The Catholic Church’s Truth, Justice and Healing Council says organisations dealing with children need a “substantial overhaul” of their policies and practices, and the absence of a mandatory national accreditations scheme backed by an external audit system is “a major limitation that increases risk”.

“There is a strong moral and ethical imperative to commit to ending the sexual abuse of children within organisations,” the council submission says. “A major shift is required to ensure that organisations become child-safe organisations.”

The council acknowledged such reforms would increase costs and administrative workloads for organisations which dealt with children, including those which operated on a small scale and were staffed by volunteers.

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IRELAND
National Catholic Reporter

Sarah MacDonald Catholic News Service | Oct. 30, 2013

DUBLIN A new review of the work of the Murphy Commission that investigated clerical sexual abuse in the archdiocese of Dublin charges that priests did not get even-handed treatment and that the process it followed was unfair.

Undertaken by the 1,000-member Association of Catholic Priests, the review also said the commission’s work exceeded its announced plans to investigate institutions rather than individuals.

The review poses a challenge to Dublin Archbishop Diarmuid Martin, who defended the commission’s findings in a statement Tuesday.

The commission published a scathing 814-page report in November 2009 in which diocesan officials in Ireland’s largest diocese, including bishops, were roundly condemned for covering up and mishandling reports of sexual abuse of children.

The priest association’s review was conducted by Fergal Sweeney, a retired Hong Kong High Court judge. The association represents about one-third of Ireland’s priests.

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CANADA
The Record

MONTREAL – A Roman Catholic priest says his attempt to raise the issue of sexual abuse with colleagues resulted in him being ostracized and eventually fired from a famous Montreal church.

The story told by Rev. Andre Samson suggests that the Vatican’s promises of a new, more open approach to dealing with sexual crimes has not necessarily translated through the church rank-and-file.

Samson says his troubles at St. Joseph’s Oratory began in June, when a distraught young man confided in him about being sexually assaulted by a priest from another parish.

He says he now wants to go public about what happened next, in order to break the “code of silence” that he says endures in an era when Pope Francis is taking concrete steps to increase transparency about sexual violence and crack down on guilty priests.

“I had confidence in the church, I had confidence in St. Joseph’s Oratory,” Samson, a veteran priest of 30 years and a university professor, said in an interview.

“Perhaps I am naive, but I never would have believed that it would go this far.

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OHIO
NewsNet5

By: Kristin Byrne, newsnet5.com

CLEVELAND, Ohio – A former Cleveland reverend was sentenced to serve two years in prison Wednesday for stealing over $170,000 from a church.

Andre Matthews, 54, a former reverend at St. Helena Catholic Church, stole the money from the church’s bingo events.

He is also accused of stealing over $100,000 from a parishioner.

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UNITED STATES
Public Catholic

October 30, 2013 By Rebecca Hamilton

How many times have you heard a bishop try to explain away his actions concerning a child-molesting priest by saying “But we got him counseling. It was what the experts advised?”

And how many times, when you heard that, did you think, “Mr Bishop, nobody’s that dumb?”

There appears to be a growing move to legitimize child sexual abuse in our culture. It started a long time ago with the book Lolita and moved forward through lots of movies, books and plays such as American Beauty and others. I remember quite clearly the outrage in certain quarters when the government took a stab at holding Roman Polanski accountable for raping a 13-year-old girl.
In the words of one famous comedienne “It wasn’t rape-rape.”

It is increasingly becoming a fact rather than a conjecture that the sexual abuse of children is only really terrible in our society when it is committed by a Catholic priest, or occasionally, a referred football coach.

Now, my colleague Dr Gregory Popcak has published a post raising the question of whether or not the DSM has moved pedophilia into the gray area of “orientation.” Since the phrase “orientation” is loaded up to the top with political correctness, it has become something of a synonym in the popular imagination for an inborn trait or illness, like, say, Down’s Syndrome.

Dr Popcak makes clear that, the DSM has not changed its definition. The gray area was there all along and it comes outside the DSM, from the dilemma of how to define people who are sexually attracted to children but don’t molest them.

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UNITED STATES
The Worthy Adversary

Posted by Joelle Casteix on October 30, 2013

Why would a vowed celibate man have pictures of naked or semi-naked children on his computer? Why, when given the evidence of these photos, would this man’s supervisors do little or nothing, even when the crime is federal and one of the easiest to report?

Since, in this case, the supervisor is a Catholic bishop and the man with the pornography is a priest, the inaction of the bishop is a window into the fetid, rotten soul of hierarchy of the church.

This situation above reflects scandals that have rocked two midwest dioceses: St. Paul/Minneapolis and Kansas City/St. Joseph. In both instances, priests were in possession of evidence or photographs of naked or semi-naked children. The bishops, when finding out about the images, didn’t report. Instead they hid (or allegedly hid) evidence in order to protect the church.

The soul of the hierarchy of the church cannot get any more rotten than that.

In the real world, child pornography is a federal crime. It’s also one of the easiest crimes to report. The evidence is apparent and obvious. In the case of priests, the line is even more distinct: there is no reason whatsoever that an ordained and celibate cleric should have anything even remotely resembling child pornography is his possession. And if there is any question, a supervisor should report the photographs to law enforcement anyway.

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UNITED KINGDOM
Croydon Advertiser

By Gareth_Davies | Posted: October 30, 2013

CATHOLIC church leaders have still to decide whether to allow a priest accused of sexually assaulting a teenage boy to return to work.

Francis Moran has been withdrawn from St Andrew’s Roman Catholic Church, in Brook Road, Thornton Heath, since being arrested last September.

He was questioned by police after a man in his 30s made allegations that he had been abused when he was in his early teens.

In July police told Canon Moran there was insufficient evidence to charge or caution him and so he would face no further action.

However, the Archdiocese of Southwark, for which Canon Moran was a safeguarding officer, said it would conduct its own investigation before deciding whether he should return to St Andrew’s.

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CALIFORNIA
The Worthy Adversary

Posted by Joelle Casteix on October 30, 2013

In honor of Halloween, let’s ask some scary questions.

– How many California Bishops personally met with California Governor Jerry Brown (or spoke to him on the phone uninterrupted) to discuss the now-defeated Child Victims’ Act?

– How many victims were able to personally meet with Jerry Brown?

Considering Brown’s SB 131 veto letter, the answer is apparent. It is quite sad when high-powered tax-exempt religious leaders get greater access to our elected officials than tax-paying crime victims.

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CALIFORNIA/NEW YORK
The Jewish Week

Police in Beverly Hills yesterday arrested Rabbi Mendel Tevel, a member of the Chabad-Lubavitch Chasidic community who is accused of committing acts of sexual abuse on minors in New York over a 20-year-period beginning in the mid-1990s, the Los Angeles Jewish Journal reported.

According to the Journal, Rabbi Tevel, who has worked at the JEM youth center in Los Angeles, was taken into custody at the center, and will be extradited back here to face charges. The paper reported in August that the rabbi, who is about 30 years old, had “performed acts that included spanking on bare skin, to sexually suggestive rubbing,” while he earlier lived in Brooklyn.

The Journal article cited charges by “four men” whose ages ranged “from ages 6 to 14 at the time of the alleged abuse.

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NEW YORK
New York Post

By Natasha Velez
October 30, 2013

A rabbi accused of sexually molesting boys in Brooklyn has been arrested in Beverly Hills, where he was working at a Jewish community center, authorities said.

Rabbi Mendel Tevel faces extradition after he was arrested Tuesday by authorities acting on a warrant issued in New York charging the rabbi with criminal sexual acts. Tevel was a youth worker in Brooklyn, New York City, at the time.

The indictment against Tevel involves a complaint from a Brooklyn man who accused the rabbi of performing oral sex on him several times in his car when Tevel was 22 and the alleged victim was 14.
The rabbi moved to Los Angeles and had recently been working at the JEM Center, a Jewish youth community center in Beverly Hills.

The JEM Center’s director, Rabbi Hertzel Illulian, is Tevel’s father-in-law.

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BEVERLY HILLS (CA)
KABC

[with video]

Darsha Philips
More: Bio, Recent Stories, News Team

BEVERLY HILLS, Calif. (KABC) — A rabbi, who worked at a Beverly Hills youth center, is accused of child sex abuse in New York. Some say his alleged crimes were known in the community, but they were just swept under the rug.

The 30-year-old rabbi was arrested on Tuesday on charges of sexual criminal acts. In the grand jury Indictment out of Brooklyn, Tevel is accused of performing an oral sex act on one victim several times in the past. The incidents occurred about eight years ago. Tevel was 22 at the time and the victim was 14.

Authorities say the victim was abused several times in Tevel’s car starting in 2005. The victim was not sure if he should come forward to report the abuse, since so much time had passed. He finally alerted police on Sept. 12.

Though only one victim is mentioned in the indictment, authorities are investigating other possible allegations as well.

“He was arrested for child molestation allegations, on child endangerment allegations. Everything will, I’m sure, be publicized as soon as the official charges are made in New York,” said Ilanit Gluckowsky with the Jewish Community Watch, an organization that focuses on child abuse prevention.

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BEVERLY HILLS (CA)
JTA

October 30, 2013

(JTA) — A rabbi was arrested at the Jewish youth center where he works in Beverly Hills, Calif., on child sex abuse charges from New York.

Menachem Tewel, known also as Mendel Tevel, was arrested Tuesday at the JEM Center, the Jewish Journal of Los Angeles reported.

A spokesman for the Beverly Hills Police Department told the Jewish Journal that Tewel would be extradited to New York under an outstanding warrant for his arrest charging criminal sexual acts there. The charges date back as far as the mid-1990s and as recently as 2004.

Tewel is married to the daughter of Rabbi Hertzel Illulian, director and founder of the JEM Center.

“God will help that it will show that it’s all false and will clear up, and people will see while we will still continue our good job for the community,” Illulian told KABC TV.

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CALIFORNIA
Wall Street Journal

Associated Press
BEVERLY HILLS, Calif. — A rabbi wanted in New York on sex-related crimes has been arrested in Beverly Hills.

City News Service reports 30-year-old Menachem Tewel was arrested late Tuesday at the request of the New York Police Department.

Police had an arrest warrant for investigation of two counts of criminal sexual acts and one count of sexual abuse.

Tewel is awaiting extradition to New York.

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NEW YORK
New York Daily News

Brooklyn rabbi arrested in Beverly Hills on sexual abuse charges after man comes forward to allege abuse when he was 14-years-old

BY ROCCO PARASCANDOLA AND TINA MOORE / NEW YORK DAILY NEWS
PUBLISHED: WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 30, 2013

Beverly Hills cops busted a New York rabbi this week on a sex abuse warrant for allegedly molesting a child for one year in the Chabad community in Brooklyn, police said Wednesday.

Rabbi Menachem Tewel, 30, was arrested Tuesday on accusations that he abused a boy between 2005 and 2006, cops said in a statement.

A 22-year-old man reported the abuse on Sept. 12, telling cops that Tewel performed oral sex on him beginning in July 2005 when he was 14, police sources said.

Tewel, who was 22-years-old at the time, was his religious advisor.

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CALIFORNIA/NEW YORK
Daily Mail (UK)

Married rabbi, 30, arrested at Jewish youth centre in Beverly Hills for ‘sexually molesting boys’ in New York

A rabbi accused of sexually abusing boys in New York was arrested Tuesday afternoon at a Jewish community center in Beverly Hills, California.

Menachem Tewel, 30, also known as Mendel Tevel, was handcuffed and led away from the JEM Community Center at 9930 S. Santa Monica Boulevard, at around 1.30pm, where he was working a youth worker.

He is suspected of abusing four boys between 1995 and 2004 on two counts of criminal sexual acts and one count of sexual abuse.

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CALIFORNIA
Los Angeles Times

By Ari Bloomekatz
October 30, 2013

A rabbi working at a community center in Beverly Hills was arrested this week on suspicion of child sex abuse on a warrant from New York City.

The 30-year-old rabbi who reportedly goes by Menachem “Mendel” Tevel was arrested Tuesday about 1:30 p.m. in the 9900 block of South Santa Monica Boulevard. He was booked under the name Menachem Tewel, Beverly Hills police Sgt. Max Subin said.

Subin said the rabbi was taken into custody at the request of the New York Police Department, which advised Beverly Hills about an outstanding warrant for his arrest.

The warrant, Subin said, was for charges of criminal sex acts in the first and third degree, as well as sexual abuse in the first degree.

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CANADA
APTN

30. OCT, 2013

APTN National News
About a hundred people took part in a protest in Battleford, Sask., this week.

The group marched to the courthouse to express anger at former residential school supervisor Paul Leroux.

Leroux is on trial before a judge on charges of indecent assault of over a dozen children under his care in the 1960s.

The group’s speakers included former residential schools survivors and their families. They called on Prime Minister Stephen Harper to honour the apology for residential school abuses.

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CANADA
News-Optimist

October 30, 2013

By John Cairns
Staff Reporter

A trial for a man accused of several indecent assaults involving former residential school students has wrapped up in Battleford.

Closing arguments in the case against Paul Leroux wrapped up Tuesday at Queen’s Bench Court.

The trial, which ran from Oct. 15, was conducted by judge alone. A decision in the case is expected to come down Nov. 5.

Leroux was a dormitory supervisor with the Beauval Indian Residential School and faced over a dozen counts of indecent assault, with the allegations stemming back to the 1960s. The incidents were alleged to have taken place over a period of about seven years.

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TOLEDO (OH)
Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests

For immediate release: Wednesday, Oct. 30, 2013

Statement by Gail Howard of SNAP, the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests ( 203 644 0387, Pennyq99@aol.com )

We are members of two organizations: a support group called the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests (SNAP), and a reform group called Voice of the Faithful (VOTF)

We are here to challenge Hartford’s new Catholic Archbishop Leonard Blair to

1) explain his actions during the investigation of a priest who murdered a nun,

2) use his influence to try and get the priest defrocked, and

3) post on the archdiocesan website the names, photos and whereabouts of current and former Hartford area priests, nuns, seminarians and other child molesting clerics.

First, let’s be clear: neither Blair nor his staff have been formally charged with wrongdoing in the case of Fr. Gerald Robinson, who was convicted of brutally murdering Sister Margaret Ann Pahl. But there remain a number of troubling unresolved questions about how Blair and his top aides behaved before and during that investigation.

Initially Bishop Blair’s staff provided police with three pages of documents about Fr. Gerald Robinson, who had long been a suspect in the 1980 slaying of Sr. Margaret Ann Pahl. Believing church officials were withholding records, Toledo police twice executed “no knock” search warrants on Blair’s diocesan offices. They found scores and scores of more documents, some of which implicated Fr. Robinson.

[BishopAccountability.org]

Blair’s lawyers (and the prosecutors) went to court to block the release of what was found. Church officials won. To date, those files have never been released.

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AUSTRALIA
ABC = Late Night Live

Thursday 24 October 2013

The sexual abuse of young children by parish priests employed to take them into their pastoral care was something many people once considered inconceivable. The Catholic Church in Australia has been engulfed in this scandal, but it wasn’t until members of Victoria’s police refused to continue to stand back and let the Church deal with their paedophile priests that this ticking bomb was unleashed. Now there are at least two state parliamentary inquiries and a Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse. Cardinal George Pell has played a key role in the greatest challenge to face his church for centuries, and David Marr has investigated the man and his career, and his response to the issue of paedophile priests.

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UNITED STATES
National Catholic Reporter

Bill Tammeus | Oct. 30, 2013 A small c catholic

Dear Holy Father:

I write as a brother in Christ to say — in words echoing what John Dean, former counsel to President Richard Nixon, once told Nixon in the midst of the Watergate scandal — that there’s a cancer growing on your remarkably hopeful papacy.

Radically unlike Nixon’s mess, this one is not of your making, but only you can fix it.

You must remove Robert W. Finn as bishop of the Kansas City-St. Joseph, Mo., diocese. His continued presence there mocks the good-faith efforts the church is making to respond to the crisis of priests sexually abusing children.

As you’re aware, Finn was convicted in court of failure to report to government authorities a priest suspected of child sex abuse. It was classified as a misdemeanor, but that label belittles the magnitude of Finn’s failure.

Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI should have told Finn to resign immediately upon conviction, if not before. His failure to do so means the ball is in your court. And the longer it stays there without your response, the more it damages the church both Finn and you love.

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LOUISIANA
Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests

For immediate release: Wednesday, Oct. 30, 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 )

A credibly accused serial predator priest has made bail.

[Greenwich Time]

We are terribly afraid that Fr. Broussard may hurt more kids now that he’s no longer locked up.

We beg the Catholic bishop of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Lake Charles to do everything he can to warn his flock about this dangerous predator. If he refuses, we beg every single Catholic church employee and member in the Lake Charles area to spread the word about Broussard.

Catholic officials recruited, educated, ordained, trained, transferred and protected Broussard for years. They still have a duty now – regardless of Broussard’s clerical status – to safeguard their flock and the public from him. The church hierarchy can’t suddenly wash their hands of a criminal cleric when it’s convenient for them, while doing little or nothing to alert parents, parishioners and the public about his history of child sex crimes.

The members of Broussard’s family who helped bail him out are taking an enormous risk. Every single relative who chipped in for his bail has a moral obligation to watch him and keep him away from kids. If he sexually assaults a niece or nephew, it will be very hard for that child to forgive his or her parents for enabling that horrific crime by helping to spring Broussard from jail.

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VATICAN CITY
Sydney Morning Herald

October 31, 2013

Nick Squires

The American spy agency monitored telephone calls made to and from the clerical residence in Rome where the then Archbishop Jorge Mario Bergoglio stayed during the conclave, the secret election at which cardinals chose him as pontiff.

The claims were made by Panorama, an Italian weekly news magazine, which said that the NSA monitored the telephone calls of many bishops and cardinals at the Vatican in the lead-up to the conclave, held in the Sistine Chapel.

The information gleaned was then reportedly divided into four categories – “leadership intentions”, “threats to financial system”, “foreign policy objectives” and “human rights”.

The allegations follow a report on surveillance website Cryptome which said the United States intercepted 46 million telephone calls in Italy between Dec 10 2012 and Jan 8 January 2013.

At the time, Benedict XVI was Pope, suggesting that the Vatican may also have been monitored during the last few weeks of his papacy, which came to an end when he announced his historic resignation from the Seat of St Peter.

“It is feared that the great American ear continued to tap prelates’ conversations up to the eve of the conclave on March 12 2013,” the weekly magazine said, adding that there were “suspicions that the conversations of the future Pope may have been monitored”.

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VATICAN CITY
National Catholic Register

by Edward Pentin Wednesday, October 30, 2013

The National Security Agency has been listening into telephone calls of the Pope and senior Vatican officials, an Italian magazine has claimed.

In an article in Panorama which will appear on newsstands tomorrow, the NSA is reported to have tapped the phonecalls of Vatican officials and senior prelates before and during the Conclave, as well as incoming and outgoing calls from the Domus Sanctae Marthae where the Pope is living.

Panorama also says there are suspicions that the conversations of the Pope were even monitored before he was elected. The magazine refers to the Wikileaks files which, it says, revealed that Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio had been under surveillance since 2005.

According to the Italian weekly, incoming and outgoing calls from the Vatican were classified into four categories: “leadership intentions”, “threats to the financial system”, “foreign policy objectives”, and “human rights”.

There are also suspicions that calls surrounding the election earlier this year of the new President of the IOR (Vatican Bank), Ernst von Freyberg, were monitored. The IOR has been implementing a number of transparency measures over the past few years, one of which is aimed at eliminating the possibility of terrorist organisations using the Vatican Bank to launder money.

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MISSOURI
St. Louis Post-Dispatch

St. Louis Archbishop Carlson implicated in child sex abuse claim in Minnesota

By Jesse Bogan jbogan@post-dispatch.com 314-340-825513

Archbishop Robert J. Carlson conducts the Anointing of Hands rite on the Rev. Joseph Xiu Hui Jiang during a ceremony at the Cathedral Basilica in St. Louis to ordain eight men into the priesthood on May 29, 2010. Photo by David Carson, dcarson@post-dispatch.com

St. Louis Archbishop Robert Carlson didn’t report a clergy sex abuse claim to police in the 1980s when he was a leader with the Roman Catholic Church in Minnesota, according to a lawsuit filed there Tuesday. And the same priest in question allegedly went on to do more harm.
Carlson “went along to get along, and he got along quite well,” attorney Jeff Anderson, who is representing the most recent alleged victim, said of the St. Louis archbishop.

The lawsuit filed by “Jane Doe 23” claims the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis was negligent for allowing the Rev. Robert M. Thurner to work as a priest — with access to children — after he admitted to then-Archbishop John Roach that he bought a 16-year-old boy alcohol and sexually abused him.

Carlson, who came to St. Louis in 2009 from Saginaw, Mich., previously served as an auxiliary bishop in Minnesota, where he grew up. Carlson is named in the lawsuit as one of four church leaders who “learned or should have learned that Thurner had abused at least one child.”

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AUSTRALIA
NEWS.com.au

Commissioner for Victims’ Rights Michael O’Connell wants stringent checks on people who work with children

CHECKS on people who work with children should extend to door-knocking their neighbours if necessary, Commissioner for Victims’ Rights Michael O’Connell says.

In a submission to the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse, he also warns that to avoid having a “checklist of empty promises”, any requirements that come out of the commission must be properly implemented.

“For example, if a child-care centre is required to have two people present when changing a child’s clothes/nappy the centre must be adequately resourced to ensure they have sufficient staff to meet this requirement,” he writes.

TELL US: Would you support such measures?

Asked whether he thought there should be two people present for nappy changes, he said there were situations with adults where the law required a third person to be present – such as a police investigation of a sexual crime.

“It seems to me we owe no lesser obligation to young, vulnerable children,” he said.

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AUSTRALIA
Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse

The Royal Commission’s third issues paper on Creating Child Safe Institutions has attracted more than 50 submissions*, including from the Salvation Army, Australian Human Rights Commission and the Truth Justice and Healing Council.

Royal Commission Chief Executive Officer, Janette Dines, said the Commission was pleased with the breadth of organisations who contributed their ideas.

“Submissions have been received from around Australia, from organisations which provide advocacy and support services for survivors of child sexual abuse, religious institutions, government agencies and individuals.

“Identifying what makes an institution safe for children is a key objective of this Royal Commission. A recurring theme in the submissions is the need for nation-wide accountability, monitoring and oversight of organisations with a responsibility for children,” said Ms Dines.

“There was strong support for establishing a clear statement of the requirements for child safe institutions. The need to include the views of children on what would make them feel safe and comfortable in reporting abuse was also identified”.

The public has until 8 November 2013 to comment on the Royal Commission’s fourth issues paper on preventing the sexual abuse of children in out-of-home care.

All issues papers and public submissions* can be found here:

http://www.childabuseroyalcommission.gov.au/our-work/issues-papers/

*Public submissions received by the Royal Commission for Issues Paper No.3 on Creating Child Safe Institutions that discuss principles and procedures are listed on our website in order of receipt. Information has been withheld in accordance with the advertised conditions.

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HARTFORD (CT)
Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests

Priest was convicted of killing a nun on his watch
SNAP says Catholic officials hurt police investigation
Even in prison, murderer remains a priest & hasn’t been defrocked
New Hartford archbishop should post names of predators on website

WHAT
Holding signs and childhood photos at a sidewalk news conference, a clergy sex abuse victim and a concerned Catholic will challenge Hartford’s new Catholic archbishop to

–explain his actions during the investigation of a priest, who murdered a nun,
–use his influence to try and get the priest defrocked, and
–post on the archdiocesan website the names, photos and whereabouts of current and former Hartford area priests, nuns, seminarians and other child molesting clerics.

They will also urge Connecticut Catholics and citizens to report known and suspected clergy sex crimes and cover ups to police and prosecutors, not to church officials.

WHEN
TODAY, Wednesday, Oct. 30, at 11:30 a.m.

WHERE
On the sidewalk outside the Cathedral of St. Joseph, 140 Farmington Avenue (corner of Sigourney) in Hartford, Connecticut

WHO
A child sex abuse victim who belongs to a support group called the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests (SNAP), and two Catholic parishioners who belong to a reform group called Voice of the Faithful (VOTF)

WHY
The new head of the Hartford Catholic archdiocese ran the Toledo diocese for a decade – before, during and after a diocesan priest was convicted of brutally and ritualistically murdering a nun. Clergy sex abuse victims say Archbishop Leonard Blair, the newly-elevated leader of the Hartford archdiocese, impeded a police investigation and should explain his actions in the case.

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LOUISIANA
Greenwich Times

LAKE CHARLES, La. (AP) — A former Calcasieu Parish priest accused of molesting young parishioners is out of jail on bond.

The American Press reports (http://bit.ly/cseYHv ) 57-year-old Mark Anthony Broussard walked out of the Calcasieu Correctional Center Monday on a $1.5 million cash bond.

Broussard is accused of molesting boys while a priest in Calcasieu Parish between 1986 and 1991. Broussard served at Our Lady Queen of Heaven and St. Henry Catholic Church. He also served at St. Eugene in Cameron Parish.

Defense attorney Tom Lorenzi asked Judge David Ritchie in May to reduce Broussard’s bond from $3.42 million to $200,000, an amount Broussard’s family could make.

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MINNESOTA
MinnPost

By Barbara Dorris

Professionally accomplished people have been appointed to a new Minneapolis-St. Paul archdiocesan task force to look at local church abuse policies. But there are just a few things that they lack.

Objectivity

Most of the panel’s members are Catholic. That means they’ve been taught since birth to respect and revere priests and bishops, and consider these ordained men as “God’s representatives on earth.” Wouldn’t a tad less bias be helpful as this body does its work looking how church officials deal with abuse?

Victim’s viewpoint

None of the task force members has identified him- or herself as having endured childhood victimization, either at the hands of a cleric or any other trusted adult authority figure. Again, wouldn’t having at least one person on this panel with that perspective be beneficial?

Credibility

Many Catholics, and certainly most victims, will be highly skeptical of a panel whose first member is a lawyer and whose first chair is a lawyer. Each panel member was chosen by Fr. Reginald Whitt, who is a lawyer himself. And Whitt was chosen by the now-embattled and widely criticized Archbishop John Nienstedt, whose actions and inaction led to the current scandal in the archdiocese. Given all this, how can people really trust this body?

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GEORGIA
Douglas County Sentinel

Mitch Sneed / Editor

A well-known local minister with more than 15 years service at his church is no longer at his post. A reason for his departure has not been made public, but in recent weeks, allegations of child molestation from more than a decade ago in Michigan recently surfaced on the web.

Rev. Bill Wininger, who had served as minister at King’s Way Baptist Church in Douglas County for more than 15 years, is no longer the minister and any mention of him is no longer on the church’s website. All previously recorded messages or sermons that were on the site have also been taken down.

King’s Way officials were cordial and understanding when contacted, but did not provide a statement on the matter in time for this report. Calls to a number listed for Wininger were not returned Tuesday. The home listed as his private residence is for sale and no one answered the door Tuesday.

Officials did inform parents at King’s Way Christian School about Wininger’s departure in a letter dated Oct. 18 and that they were aware of the allegations in a second letter dated Oct. 27.

“We want to prayerfully inform everyone that we have been informed that our pastor has resigned and will be submitting his formal resignation immediately,” Dr. Ray Conway, King’s Way Christian School administrator, wrote in the Oct. 18 letter. “Pastor Wininger will no longer be involved in the ministry of The King’s Way Baptist Church and King’s Way Christian School. As many of you already know, our pastor has inflicted life-threatening harm upon himself and we would prayerfully ask that you pray for his well-being.”

The letter went on to offer counseling to any of those who needed it in wake of the developments. The Oct. 27 letter addressed the abuse allegations.

“I have been receiving a few inquiries regarding the allegations against our former Pastor, Bill Wininger. As most of you know, we have accepted Bro. Wininger’s resignation,” Conway wrote in the letter. “Regardless of these events, the church and school leadership are committed to doing what is right and Godly.

“The allegations and charges that are surfacing on the Internet today were events that occurred while Bill Wininger pastored in Michigan 18 years ago. As administrator, I am not aware of any accusations, by students or minors, made against The King’s Way Baptist Church or any of the ministries. Moving forward, the safety and well-being of every child in the ministries of the King’s Way Baptist Church and Christian School has been and will continue to be our highest priority.

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HARTFORD (CT)
The Hartford Courant

By DANIELA ALTIMARI, altimari@courant.com
The Hartford Courant
10:06 p.m. EDT, October 29, 2013

BLOOMFIELD — A decade ago in his first year as bishop of Toledo, Ohio, Leonard P. Blair faced a number of flashpoints: priest sex abuse scandals, parish mergers and closings and the arrest of one of the diocese’s priests in the murder of a nun decades earlier.

But Blair, appointed Tuesday as the fifth archbishop of Hartford, said the best way for the Catholic Church to heal from the “very sad, tragic things that have happened in recent years” is to be faithful to its mission, stay close to Christ and address people’s material and spiritual needs.

“I am very struck by Pope Francis’ image of the church being a field hospital for the wounded in today’s world,” Blair said. “There are so many people that are hurting, spiritually as well as materially.”

The archbishop-designate joined Hartford church officials at a mid-morning press conference at St. Thomas Seminary in Bloomfield, about three hours after the Vatican formally announced his appointment to lead the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Hartford. He was introduced by the man he will succeed, Archbishop Henry J. Mansell, who, at 76, has passed the retirement age for archbishops.

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TOLEDO (OH)
The Blade

BY TK BARGER
BLADE RELIGION EDITOR

Until Pope Francis names a new bishop for the Diocese of Toledo — an announcement that could be many months away — a diocesan administrator will be the top man in northwest Ohio’s Roman Catholic Church, and his main duty will be to not to change things.

The impending change comes after Tuesday’s papal announcement of Toledo Bishop Leonard P. Blair’s appointment to lead the Archdiocese of Hartford, Conn., succeeding retiring Archbishop Henry J. Mansell, 76.

The papal nuncio to the United States, Archbishop Carlo Maria Vigano, informed Bishop Blair, 64, of his appointment while the bishop was in Rome on Oct. 17, a day before he met with Pope Francis.

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CANADA
CBC News

A three-week long trial of a former supervisor of an Indian residential school in Beauval, Sask., has concluded with the accused denying the allegations.

Paul Leroux is facing multiple counts of sexual abuse involving 14 young boys. The incidents are alleged to have occurred in the 1950s and 60s.

Leroux defended himself at the trial and, in his final arguments in court Tuesday, he denied all the charges.

The judge on the case will provide a decision in one week.

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CANADA
Ottawa Citizen

BY THE CANADIAN PRESS OCTOBER 29, 2013

BATTLEFORD, Sask. – A Saskatchewan judge will rule next week on whether a former supervisor at a residential school molested several students in the 1960s.

Paul Leroux, who is 72, has pleaded not guilty to indecent assault involving about a dozen former students at the Beauval Indian Residential School in the 1960s.

Leroux, who represented himself at his trial, denied all the charges against him in his final arguments on Tuesday.

He said one incident of sexual abuse couldn’t possibly have happened because the room one complainant alleges he was molested in didn’t exist at the time.

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PENNSYLVANIA
Cecil Daily

By Carl Hamilton cahamilton@cecilwhig.com

PHILADELPHIA— Less than a month after police arrested him at his Perryville home, prosecutors have announced that they will dismiss their case against a former Philadelphia priest who allegedly sexually abused an altar boy numerous times more than a decade ago because the victim died recently, according to the Philadelphia District Attorney’s Office.

Perryville Police Department officers arrested Robert Lee Brennan, 75, on Sept. 25 after Philadelphia authorities contacted the agency and informed officials of the outstanding arrest warrant naming Brennan.

Brennan remained in the Cecil County Detention Center briefly on the sole charge of fugitive from justice in Pennsylvania before he was taken to Philadelphia, processed and then released on bond, prosecutors said, adding that he has since returned to Maryland.

Because of the death of 26-year-old Sean McIlmail – the alleged victim and the key witness for the prosecution – Philadelphia District Attorney Seth Williams had no choice but to drop the case against Brennan, explained Tasha Jamerson, director of communications for that office.

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CANADA
The Globe and Mail

SUNNY DHILLON
VANCOUVER — The Globe and Mail
Published Tuesday, Oct. 29 2013

On the same day former Vancouver Olympics CEO John Furlong announced he was dropping one lawsuit, his lawyer threatened to file another, sending a letter to a Danish sports institute in which he requested a freelance journalist not be permitted to speak at a conference.

Mr. Furlong, who had avoided the spotlight for months following claims he assaulted several former students when he was a physical education teacher in Burns Lake, B.C., four decades ago, spoke at length with The Globe and Mail on Monday.

It was then he announced he was dropping his lawsuit against the Georgia Straight, the weekly newspaper that last year published a story in which eight former students signed affidavits alleging physical abuse. Mr. Furlong said he would continue and escalate his lawsuit against the story’s author, freelance journalist Laura Robinson.

Ms. Robinson, who is in Denmark to give a talk about Mr. Furlong at the Play the Game conference, released a letter Tuesday that was sent to the organization by Mr. Furlong’s lawyer one day earlier. It asked that she not be given “an opportunity at your conference to make further defamatory statements about Mr. Furlong.”

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CANADA
The Province

The Canadian Press

John Furlong continues counter-offensive as writer Laura Robinson rejects ‘just about everything’ he’s saying

TORONTO — The man who organized the Vancouver Olympics is seizing a “pivotal moment” in a sexual abuse allegation scandal and holding it out for all Canadians to see in a bid to clear his name.

But, not content with leaving behind the “pain and suffering” over allegations that he vehemently denies, John Furlong is firing back with an offensive of his own against what he says is one reporter’s hateful “campaign.”

The sex abuse allegations surfaced following a newspaper article by freelance journalist Laura Robinson. It suggested Furlong physically and verbally abused First Nations students at Burns Lake while teaching at a Catholic school there in the late 1960s.

Three people, two women and one man, have filed lawsuits against Furlong alleging sexual abuse. The RCMP investigated a complaint by one of the women and found nothing to substantiate it.

Furlong, armed with the RCMP’s conclusion, went on a round of media interviews Monday and Tuesday to proclaim vindication.

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CANADA
Vancouver Sun

BY GORDON HOEKSTRA
OCTOBER 29, 2013

Former 2010 Vancouver Olympic CEO John Furlong is trying to halt a speech by Laura Robinson, a journalist and author of a controversial article alleging he abused former First Nations students.

Robinson is slated to give the speech today at a Danish sport conference called Play the Game. The title of the speech is Truth, Lies and History: John Furlong and Canadian Sport’s Moral Vacuum.

More than 300 journalists, scientists and sports officials from 30 to 40 countries are expected to take part in the eighth iteration of the world communication conference on sport and society, which has tackled such issues as doping and corruption.

Furlong and Robinson are locked in a series of lawsuits related to the original article published last fall in the Georgia Straight. He claims her allegations are false and libellous. She, in turn, filed a countersuit defending her story, claiming it was true and in the public interest.

In an interview Tuesday, Furlong said he is speaking out to defend himself against her speech in front of an international audience.

“This campaign of harassment – and making false allegations has continued and continued and continued,” he said Tuesday afternoon.

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POLAND/DOMINICAN REPUBLIC
The News

30.10.2013

A deacon in the Dominican Republic has claimed he procured boys for a Polish archbishop recently suspended from his position as the Vatican’s representative in the country.

“This is a man who is sexually ill – this is about much more than just molesting children,” Deacon Francisco Xavier Reyes has told the TVP Polish public broadcaster about the charges facing Archbishop Jozef Wesolowski.

“It was anything that would satisfy his sexual appetite,” the deacon, who is himself facing charges of molesting minors, added.

“He told me that there was a particular type of sexual preference that he favoured.”

Deacon Francisco Xavier Reyes revealed that he had had a sexual relationship with the archbishop.

“He kept me [financially] although he was not lavish. Once he gave me 40,000 pesos, as I had a problem at home.”

Charges

It has emerged that the charges facing the archbishop include accusations even more serious than first reported when the case broke in the media in September.

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BEVERLY HILLS (CA)
Jewish Journal

BY JARED SICHEL

Mendel Tevel, a local rabbi and youth worker accused by multiple people in the New York Jewish community of sexual abuse, was arrested Tuesday, October 29, at the JEM Center in Beverly Hills.

The arrest was reported to the Jewish Journal by Lt. Lincoln Hoshino, a spokesman for the Beverly Hills Police Department. Calls to Tevel’s cell phone and to the JEM Center were not answered Tuesday afternoon.

The arrest warrant was issued for a Menachem “Mendel” Tewel by authorities in Brooklyn, N.Y., and was signed with an order for extradition by a Kings County judge, according to Hoshino. The man known as Mendel Tevel worked at the JEM center, and, according to Hoshino, despite the difference in spelling of the name is the same as the man arrested.

“He’s in custody,” Hoshino told the Journal Tuesday afternoon. “We have an outstanding warrant for his arrest charging criminal sexual acts out of New York.”

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BEVERLY HILLS (CA)/NEW YORK
Failed Messiah

Shmarya Rosenberg • FailedMessiah.com

Rabbi Menachem Mendel Tevel (Tewel) was arrested today at the JEM Center in Beverly Hills, The L.A. Jewish Journal reported. Tevel will be extradited to New York City where he will stand trial for allegedly sexually abusing children in the Chabad community of Crown Heights, Brooklyn.

The arrest was reported to the L.A. Jewish Journal by Lieutenant Lincoln Hoshino, a spokesman for the Beverly Hills Police Department. The arrest warrant was reportedly issued in Brooklyn, N.Y. for “Menachem ‘Mendel’ Tewel.”

Hoshino told the Jewish Journal that despite the difference in spelling of Tevel’s name, the right person was arrested.

Tevel works at the JEM center – a Beverly Hills Orthodox Jewish community center run by Chabad rabbis that primarily serves non-Chabad Iranian Jewish teens.

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BEVERLY HILLS (CA)
Patch

Posted by Matthew Sanderson (Editor) , October 29, 2013

A man suspected of sex-related offenses in New York City was arrested in Beverly Hills Tuesday.

Menachem Tewel, 30, was arrested around 1:30 p.m. at the JEM Community Center at 9930 South Santa Monica Boulevard at the request of the New York Police Department, said Beverly Hills police Lt. Lincoln Hoshino.

Tewel had a warrant for his arrest on suspicion of two counts of criminal sexual acts and one count of sexual abuse, Hoshino said.

He is awaiting extradition to New York, according to Hoshino, who referred questions about the case to New York police.

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BEVERLY HILLS (CA)
CBS Los Angeles

BEVERLY HILLS (CBSLA.com) — A rabbi accused of sexually abusing boys in New York was arrested Tuesday afternoon at a Jewish community center in Beverly Hills, according to the Jewish Journal of Greater Los Angeles.

Menachem Tewel, who goes by the name Mendel Tevel, was taken into custody at the request of the New York Police Department around 1:30 p.m. at the JEM Community Center, 9930 S. Santa Monica Boulevard, said Beverly Hills police Lt. Lincoln Hoshino.

An arrest warrant had been issued for Tewel, who is suspected of abusing four boys between 1995 and 2004, on two counts of criminal sexual acts and one count of sexual abuse.

All of the boys Tewel is accused of abusing are now adults, the Jewish Journal reported.

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BEVERLY HILLS (CA)
Beverly Hills Courier

Posted Wednesday, October 30

On October 29 at approximately 1:30 p.m. Beverly Hills Police officers and detectives responded to the 9900 block of S. Santa Monica Blvd. at the request of the New York Police Department to arrest Menachem Tewel, 30, of New York. Tewel was taken into custody for charges of “Criminal Sexual Act in the First Degree,” “Criminal Sexual Act in the Third Degree” and “Sexual Abuse in the First Degree.” Tewel is awaiting extradition to New York. No charges will be filed in California, said Lt. Lincoln Hoshino of the BHPD.

Tewel is a local rabbi and youth worker who works at the JEM Center in Beverly Hills,a Jewish Community Center featuring sports facilities and offering Jewish community education and services, reports the Jewish Journal. He was known locally as Mendel Tevel, confirmed Hoshino.

In August, Jewish parents held an event organized by Meyer Seewald, director of Jewish Community Watch, for residents to express their concerns about the rabbi’s alleged sexual abuse in Beverly Hills. In attendance was an alleged victim from New York who agreed to speak anonymously of abuse by Tewel. Tewel’s name is on the Jewish Community Watch as a perpetrator of child sexual abuse.

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NEW YORK
WABC

[with video]

BROOKLYN (WABC) — A rabbi who used to work in Brooklyn was arrested in California Tuesday over allegations of child sex abuse in our area.

Rabbi Menachem Tewel is expected to return to Brooklyn as early as Wednesday to face a series of criminal sex act charges.

He was taken into custody by police at the JEM Center, a Jewish youth community center on Santa Monica Boulevard in Beverly Hills, where he now works.

The Kings County District Attorney’s Office confirmed that an arrest warrant was issued earlier this month for 30-year-old Rabbi Tewel.

“Mendel Tevel has been accused by many people of being a child molester,” said Ilanit Gluckosky, of Jewish Community Watch, an organization that focuses on child abuse prevention. “It was brought to the attention of Jewish Community Watch.”

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CALIFORNIA/NEW YORK
PIX

Beverly Hills Police officers and detectives have arrested a former Brooklyn man accused of molesting boys back in New York.

Cops responded to the 9900 block of S. Santa Monica Boulevard Tuesday afternoon at the request of the New York Police Department to execute an arrest warrant on Menachem Tewel, 30.

He was taken into custody without incident for the warrant charging New York statutes of “Criminal Sexual Act in the First Degree,” “Criminal Sexual Act in the Third Degree” and “Sexual Abuse in the First Degree”.

Tewel, who was arrested at a Beverly Hills community center, is awaiting extradition to New York.

There are no charges pending in California.

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CALIFORNIA
KABC

Amy Powell

BEVERLY HILLS, Calif. (KABC) — A rabbi has been arrested and faces charges of child sexual abuse.

Rabbi Mendel Tevel was arrested Tuesday afternoon at the Beverly Hills youth center where he had been working. Authorities were acting on a warrant issued in New York charging the rabbi with criminal sexual acts.

“Mendel Tevel has been accused by many people of being a child molester. It was brought to the attention of Jewish Community Watch,” said Ilanit Gluckosky with Jewish Community Watch, an organization that focuses on child abuse prevention.

According to the organization, the charges against Tevel go back to the mid-1990s and as recently as 2004.

The watchdog group reported on four men who accused Tevel of molesting them when they were boys. Tevel was a youth worker in Brooklyn, New York City, at the time.

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NEW YORK
The Jewish Daily Forward

By Paul Berger
Published October 30, 2013.

It was a seminal moment in the long-running Yeshiva University sexual abuse case. For the first time, former Y.U. high school students who say they were abused confronted lawyers for Y.U. in court as their attorney argued against a motion to dismiss their case.

Flanked by family members, about a dozen of the former students filed into the Manhattan courtroom on the afternoon of October 27 to witness arguments that hinged on one key point: Should these students have filed suit decades before the Forward published its first article about their abuse, in December 2012.

Y.U. lawyers said the students, who were abused during the 1970s and ’80s, should have launched their own investigation or reported their abuse to the police before the statute of limitations expired. In New York State, child victims of sexual abuse have until they turn 23 to report abuse.
Click to see the rest of the section, Click for more stories about abuse at Y.U.

Kevin Mulhearn, who represents 34 former Y.U. high school students, including all those present in court, said that because Y.U. ignored student complaints and maintained that George Finkelstein and Macy Gordon were men of good character — even after the university was warned of abuses — the students had no way of knowing that they had a chance of bringing a successful claim.

The students are now suing Y.U. for $380 million.

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WEST VIRGINIA
Your4State

[with video]

Bejoy Joseph

BERKELEY COUNTY, W.Va. – A Berkeley county man is behind bars, and now several local families are suing the Mormon Church alleging that church officials could have stopped the sexual abuse of 12 children.

Christopher Jensen is serving a 35 to 75 year prison sentence in West Virginia’s prison. Earlier this year, Jensen was convicted of sexually abusing 12 children ages three to 12 between 2006 and 2012 in Berkeley County.

Now the families of his victims have filed a lawsuit against the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, saying the church covered up his actions.

“All of my clients are young children. The perpetrator who was an elder of a Mormon church, was held up by the Mormon church as somebody who was trustworthy, safe, was in fact a sexual predator of children,” said Tim Kosnoff, attorney for the victims’ families.

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IRELAND
Irish Central

[Commissions of Investigation and Procedural Fairness – Association of Catholic Priests]

[Murphy Report – via BishopAccountability.org]

By PATRICK COUNIHAN, IrishCentral Staff Writer

Ireland’s Association of Catholic Priests is to release a damning report into the findings of the tribunal set up to examine the church’s reaction to clerical sex abuse.

An ACP review of the Murphy commission report into the Catholic church’s handling of clerical sex abuse cases in Ireland says it ‘fell far short’ of meeting the requirements of natural and constitutional justice.

The review commissioned by the ACP says that the ‘practices and procedures’ of the Murphy commission left a lot to be desired where Catholic clergy called before it were concerned.

The Irish Times reports that the ACP review says the Murphy commission ‘veered off the tight rails imposed by the 2004 Commissions of Investigation Act and wandered into an adversarial arena that concentrated, to an alarming degree, on naming and shaming those clerics whom the Commission found wanting in child protection at that time.’

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MINNESOTA
WCCO

MINNEAPOLIS (WCCO) – Another victim came forward on Tuesday, alleging she was sexually abused by a Twin Cities Catholic clergy member.

St. Paul attorneys Jeff Anderson and Mike Finnegan announced a new lawsuit, claiming that the Rev. Robert Thurner sexually abused the woman, identified as Jane Doe 23, when she was a child in the 1984-85 school year.

The lawsuit also alleges that the archdiocese was negligent in allowing Thurner to continue to have access to children after he admitted to then-Archbishop Jon Roach that he sexually abused a 16-year-old boy and purchased alcohol for him in 1982.

“The archdiocese and its top officials made a choice — they chose to protect their own reputation and protect Father Thurner’s reputation rather than looking out for the well-being of a child,” Finnegan said.

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