ABUSE TRACKER

IRELAND
Irish Times

Member of child abuse commission says documents from vaccine trials inquiry still available

Patsy McGarry

Tue, Jun 10, 2014

A member of the Commission to Inquire into Child Abuse has said that a significant amount of work had been done and documentation collated when its vaccine trials inquiry was suspended in 2003 due to legal action.

The inquiry, set up as a module of the commission by government order in June 2001, was to investigate the use of children from mother and baby homes, orphanages, reformatories and industrial schools in three such trials.

Dr Kevin McCoy had been chief inspector of the Inspectorate of Social Services in Northern Ireland, before his appointment to the commission in 2000.

Last night, he told The Irish Times that before the vaccine trials inquiry “ran into the ground” due to legal action, “a lot of information had been collected and work done”.

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MEXICO
Milenio

[Summary: The San Luis Potosi archdiocese has sought to confuse public opinion by saying there is only one complaint of sexual abuse against priest Eduardo Cordova, according to attorney Armando Martinez but there are actually 19 complaints. He is representing the victims.]

MILENIO DIGITAL
09/06/2014
México
La Arquidiócesis de San Luis Potosí pretende confundir a la opinión pública al afirmar que solo existe una denuncia contra el sacerdote Eduardo Córdova, por abuso sexual, como lo afirma el abogado Armando Martínez, toda vez que hay 19, afirmó Martín Faz, representante de las víctimas.

“Hay una denuncia por parte de 19 víctimas de abuso sexual, esa es la verdad legal, no sola una como asegura el abogado (de la Arquidiócesis). Se está generando una estrategia de confusión por parte de la iglesia”, aseguró.

En entrevista con Azucena Uresti, para Milenio Televisión, el abogado señaló que el clero potosino está creando una estrategia “perversa” para proteger al presunto padre pederasta, quien se encuentra desaparecido.

“En 2012 iniciaron una investigación interna por la denuncia de una familia, en ese entonces pidieron silencio a la familia afectada. Hoy la Arquidiócesis alega que no puede dar más datos a la procuraduría porque supuestamente la familia le ha pedido secrecía. Esa es una estrategia perversa de encubrimiento”, insistió.

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UNITED STATES
Bilgrimage

William D. Lindsey

Footnote to Story About Irish Mass Grave: Story Appears Only to Grow Worse

Another footnote today to previous discussions on this blog: last week, in the thread discussing the story of the mass grave of babies and young children found being a former Catholic home for unwed mothers in Tuam, Ireland, both Marco and Conrad suggested that it was possible that the bodies of these children were treated shockingly callously because they had not been baptized due to the circumstances of their birth. I replied by noting that I had never heard of denying baptism to children because they were illegitimate, and that I doubted this was a factor in the Tuam story.

But according to Antonia Molloy in the Irish Independent today, “Babies born inside the institutions were denied baptism and, if they died from the illness and disease rife in such facilities, also denied a Christian burial.” Mary Elizabeth Williams cites Molloy’s article at Salon, noting that Michael Dwyer of Cork University has found what appears to be evidence that children in a number of similar Irish care facilities in the 1930s were subjected to illegal drug trials.

Williams’s heart-rending conclusion:

What Ireland is only now beginning to fully investigate and understand is a story involving potentially thousands of children who were almost certainly neglected and mistreated, and whose deaths were addressed as a mere trash disposal issue. It is now believed a total of upward of 4,000 children were similarly disposed of in other homes across the country. It’s a story of untold even higher numbers of children who were unwitting subjects in a vaccine test that further refused to see them as human beings, capable of fear and pain. And an interesting insight into why so many children may have been so casually treated and tossed away was revealed in a recent feature on the scandal in the Independent. Babies born to unwed mothers – and this, let it be noted, would have included mothers who were raped – “were denied baptism and, if they died from the illness and disease rife in such facilities, also denied a Christian burial.” In other words, the Catholic institutions that these women and their children were forced to turn to as their only refuge viciously turned their backs on them — treating them, quite literally, as garbage.

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AUSTRALIA
ABC News

By Ewan Gilbert

During the 1970s and 80s the Marist College and Daramalan College in Canberra were home to at least five known paedophiles.

Four have since been convicted and one took his own life shortly after making his confession.

Now, decades on, it is the task of the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse to investigate who knew what, when they knew it and what, if anything, they did about it.

The commission will spend the next two weeks examining the response of the Marist Brothers to allegations of child sexual abuse in schools across the ACT, New South Wales and Queensland.

Someone who will be watching the Canberra hearings closely is lawyer Jason Parkinson.

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AUSTRALIA
The Guardian (UK)

Helen Davidson
theguardian.com, Tuesday 10 June 2014

A suppression order hiding the identity of Greg Sutton, a convicted paedophile and former Marist brother and teacher, has been lifted after nearly 20 years, as the royal commission begins examining how the religious order failed to prevent two members sexually abusing young children in their care for decades.

The royal commission into institutional responses to child sexual abuse began its 13th public hearing in Canberra on Tuesday, focusing on the cases of two former Marist brothers – Sutton and John Chute.

The two men were shifted from school to school across Queensland, NSW and the ACT throughout their teaching careers, despite – and in some cases because of – multiple complaints against them alleging child sexual abuse and inappropriate behaviour.

Sutton was convicted in 1996 after pleading guilty to 67 charges of sexual assault against 15 children. He was sentenced to 18 years in prison, with a minimum term of 12 years, and was released in 2008.

On Tuesday the commission heard an application by Sutton’s legal representative, Greg Walsh, to continue a suppression order placed on Sutton’s identity at the time of his conviction, and which had been left in place by his parole board in 2009.

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UNITED STATES
WBUR

Tue, Jun 10, 2014
by Aine Greaney

I once met a fellow Irish expatriate who had spent more than 40 years living in Australia, where she had married, divorced, had kids and become a grandmother.

“You must like it there,” I said.

She shook her head. “No. It’s hard to like a country where so many bad things have happened to you.”

Her “bad things” included her marriage and ex-marriage to a nasty man.

These days, I feel the same way about my native Ireland. It’s hard to like or be proud of your own country, a country where bad things have happened: church-concealed child sexual abuse, women’s labor camps, a.k.a. Magdalene Laundries, and, now, 796 unconsecrated and unmarked baby graves. No, not ‘happened.’ These atrocities were perpetrated, ignored and criminally concealed. The victims? Women, children and the poor. The atonement? Little to none.

What does it take for a country to have or to acquire the morality, the humility and the will to atone for collective cruelties to its most vulnerable citizens?

Even if the national will or means were there, even if it could be orchestrated, how would Ireland carry out a reconciliation process? What does it take for a country to have or to acquire the morality, the humility and the will to atone for collective cruelties to its most vulnerable citizens?

I don’t know. But I do think that a formal separation of church and state would be a very good start. So would an end to the hypocritical set of laws that still mandates that 21st-century Irish women must travel overseas for legal, safe abortions.

As an Irish school girl and college student and, later, a young working woman, I did not get pregnant or have to abort or bear or give up an “illegitimate” child. This was not because I was pure or demure or had access to legal contraception. (A 1935 law banning the importation and sale of contraception in Ireland was on the books until 1980 for married people and until 1985 for single people over the age of 18. For married and single, access was at the discretion of the individual prescribing doctor (married) and individual pharmacist (condoms for single people).

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NEW JERSEY
Morris News Bee

Posted: Tuesday, June 10, 2014

By PHIL GARBER

It took 30 years but William P. Wolfe can finally speak openly about the time he was sexually abused by a priest at the Delbarton School.

“I feel like I’m walking on air,” Wolfe, 44, said on Friday after the school agreed to lift a gag order on Wolfe stemming from a 1988 settlement with the school.

“I’m absolutely thrilled to have the ability not to live secretly about what happened to me,” said Wolfe, an information technology specialist who is married with no children and lives in Boulder, Color. “Nobody who has gone through abuse should be prevented from talking about it.”

The agreement was announced on Friday in Superior Court in Morristown. Wolfe, who was raised in Morristown, spoke about his reactions in the office of his lawyer, Gregory Gianforcaro of Phillipsburg.

Wolfe was 14 when he was sexually abused by the Rev. Timothy Brennan, who pleaded guilty in 1987 to criminal sexual contact. Brennan was given a six month sentence at a facility for clergy sex offenders.

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AUSTRALIA
Newcastle Herald

By JOANNE McCARTHY June 10, 2014

HUNTER Catholic priest Des Harrigan has resigned from his Taree parish after controversy over his appearance at the NSW Special Commission of Inquiry in Newcastle.

Father Harrigan declined to comment on Monday, but a spokeswoman for Maitland-Newcastle Bishop Bill Wright confirmed the resignation.

It followed an angry response from Taree parishioners after the bishop wrote a letter urging them to forgive the “repentant” priest because “there is more joy in heaven over one repentant sinner than 99 just people”.

Bishop Wright, named as a possible replacement for Cardinal George Pell in the Sydney archdiocese, reinstated Father Des Harrigan to Taree parish in September last year despite noting the likelihood of “concern and distress” among some parishioners about the priest’s conduct.

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IRELAND
Irish Times

Maria Luddy

Tue, Jun 10, 2014

It is difficult now to imagine how it must have felt to be a young woman in Ireland in the 19th or 20th century and to find yourself pregnant and unmarried. Your news would not be greeted with joy, by anyone.

You would feel the anger and disappointment of your family. If you were desperate, you might try and hide your pregnancy and attempt to give birth without assistance and then dispose of the infant’s body.

In the early 20th century, a local priest might be informed of your situation and would recommend placement in a mother and baby home. You might enter the workhouse to have your baby. If your family had money they might pay for a place in a private home where your shame could be hidden. Or you could go to England and have your baby there.

Imagine the anxiety of having to tell your parents you were pregnant, the accusations, the arguments, the tears, the shame, the fear the neighbours might find out, the loss of face that would follow, the gossip and the scandal.

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UNITED STATES
1st Feline Battalion

In the early 200s, the Roman Catholic world suffered what turned out to be a major earthquake: for decades, many clergy committed acts of sexual abuse against both children and adults. The extent of the abuses was global. Worse, many Archdioceses were complicit in covering up the abuses. This was a huge black eye for Catholics.

When the Catholic scandals hit the fan, many Protestants decried–with some merit–the institutional problems within the Catholic Church that permitted the culture of abuse to fester: notably (a) celibacy requirements for clergy and (b) a severe lack of transparency and accountability.

Still, Protestants had issues of their own on this front, and–while Protestants don’t require clergy to be celibate–many congregations have a deep-seated culture of hypocrisy that nurtures coverups of abuses, including sexual abuses.

During my seminary days, I had a friend–ND (not her real initials)–who spilled the beans:

She was raised in a Baptist Church.
She was in an outwardly “good, Christian family”.
Her father started having sex with her when she was 13.
The abuses continued for about four years.

She finally decided to do the right hing: she moved out of the house, reported her father to the police, and he was promptly arrested.

He was sent to prison, and ND found herself abandoned by her family and effectively made persona non grata at her church.

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IRELAND
Irish Examiner

By Fiachra Ó Cionnaith and Juno McEnroe

An independent commission of investigation must be set up into deaths at religious-run mother-and-baby homes, should examine claims of illegal adoptions at the facilities, and needs to be completely independent of Church and State.

Archbishop of Dublin Diarmuid Martin issued the call for action — which goes far further than existing Government plans for an inter-departmental “review” of already available files — after a week of revelations surrounding the deaths of 796 children in Tuam between 1925 and 1961.

Speaking on RTÉ radio yesterday, the senior Catholic Church official said any commission must be given “full judicial powers” and involve the gardaí so individuals can be compelled to provide all records.

He said it should be led by someone “of the calibre” of Ian Elliott, the former head of the National Board for Safeguarding Children in the Catholic Church, and must be independent of both Church and State to ensure transparency, as Church and State were “entangled” with each other in the past.

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IRELAND
Irish Examiner

By Susan Lohan

Amidst the tsunami of speculation about the whereabouts of the bodies of almost 800 children from the former Tuam mother-and-baby home, some sceptics have settled on the belief that 796 bodies could not be contained in this small plot of land.

This is a cynical distraction from the core issue of ‘illegitimate’ children dying at such homes at a rate five times higher than that for ‘legitimate’ children, and not just from readily curable common childhood diseases but also, more sinisterly, from malnutrition.

It is a distraction from the real point that no one knows where exactly the remains of these children are; a distraction from the question of why the State funded such homes “to care for” these children whilst they actively prevented their own mothers from doing so; and a distraction from the scandals that State inspection reports from these homes were not acted upon.

It is, above all else, a distraction from the dawning realisation on the public’s part that all of these facts have been known by successive governments and have all been communicated to every single minister for children since the post came into existence in 2000.

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MINNESOTA
Wonkette

You know how when you are being deposed or whatever, you are supposed to only answer the question put to you and never volunteer anything? And you know how also sometimes people on trial for shit or being questioned for something give super-comical totally not-disingenuous answers where they “don’t recall”?

Well, Archbishop Robert Carlson — formerly of Minneapolis/St. Paul, and now presiding over the souls of Good St. Louis — took that to its logical extreme in a deposition about priests under his command raping children, when he told his deposers that he does not recall whether he knew doing sex to children was against the law.

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IRELAND
Slugger O’Toole

Mick Fealty, Mon 9 June 2014

Whenever a society attempts to impose without exception an impossible abstraction on fallible human beings, such cruelty will always be necessary.

Andrew Sullivan on the Tuam Mother and Baby home…

Now we understand that the high mortality rates at Tuam may have been the norm for such homes across the post independence state. A few years back similarly high rates at the evangelical Protestant Bethany Homes were reported in detail.

And there was (to our modern eyes) a remarkable consensus on the pretty awful way unwed mothers should be treated. Shane Harrison reporting one remembered experience:

“I grew up with starvation, was treated more or less as a dog,” he said.

“I was that hungry that I remember going into a farmer’s field and picking spuds so that we could have a meal and putting the roots back in. Well-off people in the area knew the state we were in but they walked around as if it never happened.”

Tuam closed in 1960 or 61, around about the time contraception became available in the UK. Although it didn’t arrive in the Republic till much later, it was technological change that killed the force of the abstraction Sullivan cites above rather than some spiritual sea change.

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IRELAND
Washington Post

BY HENRY FARRELL
June 9

Over the last week, there has been international outrage over reports of mass deaths of babies at a former home for unwed mothers in western Ireland. The story is dreadful, it’s but also more complicated than many of these reports suggest. Here’s a rundown:

Is it true that the skeletons of nearly 800 babies and children have been discovered in a septic tank in Ireland?

No. Contrary to a great deal of reporting, including two stories published by The Washington Post, it doesn’t appear that there are 800 skeletons in a disused septic tank. Many of the early stories appear to have conflated two different sources of information. One comes from a local historian, Catherine Corless, who has discovered death certificates for nearly 800 babies and children at the home, which was run by the Bon Secours order of nuns from the 1920s to the 1960s. The other comes from two local men, who say that they found some kind of crypt beneath a concrete slab in the area containing a number of skeletons when they were playing as boys in the early 1970s. One of the men estimates that 20 skeletons were contained in the space. These two different sources have been conflated into the claim that a mass grave of babies and children was found in a septic tank. Corless, who appears to have been the crucial initial source of information, has since claimed: “I never said to anyone that 800 bodies were dumped in a septic tank. That did not come from me at any point. They are not my words.”

So it’s all a big misunderstanding?

Not so fast. No one is challenging Corless’s archival research, which appears to show that nearly 800 babies and children died at the home over a period of 40 years, without burial records. Locals believe that they are buried in an unofficial graveyard at the back of the building, where they have built a small grotto and placed flowers. One expert on health and mortality in Ireland believes that the death rates are much higher than they ought to have been and deserve further investigation. Contemporary debates in Ireland’s parliament reveal that children born out of wedlock in Ireland in the 1920s had a mortality rate five times higher than normal, in part because of semi-deliberate neglect. In some years in some institutions, the mortality rate for such children seems to have been above 50 percent.

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MINNESOTA
KAAL

[with video]

By: Jennie Olson

Yet another deposition was released Monday in the ongoing clergy sex abuse case within the Archdiocese of Saint Paul and Minneapolis.

Archbishop Robert Carlson heads the Archdiocese of St. Louis, Missouri, but was ordained in the Archdiocese of Saint Paul and Minneapolis in 1970. He was in charge of handling child sex abuse allegations and reports here in Minnesota for 15 years.

Carlson was deposed on May 23 as part of a civil lawsuit in Minnesota.

In the four-hour deposition, Carlson said under oath that he couldn’t recall details about how he handled allegations of abuse against a Minnesota priest years ago, but he did say he never went to authorities after that priest admitted in 1984 that he engaged in criminal sexual contact with a minor.

Watch clips from the May 23 deposition here.

Attorneys Jeff Anderson and Mike Finnegan say the documents show that Carlson made a conscious choice to protect accused sex offenders and conceal crimes. Anderson says Carlson uses the words “I don’t remember” 193 times under oath when asked of his knowledge of cases of child sex abuse in the church.

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MINNESOTA
MinnPost

By Brian Lambert

Do they also take a vow of forgetfulness? At MPR, Madeleine Baran writes, “St. Louis archbishop Robert Carlson — who served in the Twin Cities for 24 years — testified last month that he wasn’t sure whether he knew it was illegal for priests to have sex with children when he served as chancellor of the Twin Cities archdiocese in the 1980s, according to a transcript released Monday. The former chancellor also said he couldn’t recall reporting abuse to police while here from 1970 to 1994.”

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ST. LOUIS (MO)
KMOX

[via Jeff Anderson & Associates:
Watters Deposition 3-17-86 p. 55 for Carlson
Carlson Ex. 301 – Adamson meeting 11-25-80
Carlson Ex. 304 – Statute of Limitations 6-29-84
Carlson Ex. 305 – Meeting with McDonough 7-9-84]

ST. PAUL, Minn. (KMOX/AP) – The head of the Archdiocese of St. Louis said under oath he couldn’t recall details about how he handled allegations of abuse against a Minnesota priest years ago.

But Archbishop Robert Carlson did say he never went to authorities after that priest admitted in 1984 that he engaged in criminal sexual contact with a minor.

Carlson was deposed last month in a case against the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis, where Carlson served for years and had a role in investigating allegations of abuse from 1979 to 1994.

When asked if he knew it was a crime for an adult to engage in sex with a child, the Archbishop says, “I’m not sure whether I knew it was a crime or not. I understand today it’s a crime.”

He says he’s also not sure when he did discern that it was a crime for an adult to engage in sex with a child.

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ST. LOUIS (MO)
St. Louis Post-Dispatch

[with video]

By Lilly Fowler lfowler@post-dispatch.com 314-340-822118

1984 Archbishop Robert J. Carlson memo

Archbishop Robert J. Carlson claims to be unsure that he was aware a priest sexually abusing a child constituted a crime when he was auxiliary bishop in the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis, according to a deposition released Monday.

During the deposition, attorney Jeff Anderson asked Carlson whether he knew it was a crime for an adult to engage in sex with a child.

“I’m not sure whether I knew it was a crime or not,” Carlson replied. “I understand today it’s a crime.”

Anderson went on to ask Carlson whether he knew in 1984, when he was an auxiliary bishop in the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis, that it was crime for a priest to engage in sex with a child.

“I’m not sure if I did or didn’t,” Carlson said.

Yet according to documents released by the law firm Jeff Anderson & Associates in St. Paul, Carlson showed clear knowledge that it was a crime when discussing sexual abuse incidents with church officials during his time in Minnesota.

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MINNESOTA
Roman Catholic Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis

On May 23, 2014, Archbishop Robert Carlson, who serves as the archbishop of the Archdiocese of St. Louis, was deposed in the Doe 1 case in St. Paul. The case is a civil lawsuit against the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis, the Diocese of Winona, and Thomas Adamson for allegations of abuse between 1976 and 1977.

Archbishop Carlson was a priest of Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis between 1970 and 1994, serving as chancellor from August 10, 1979 through July 1, 1987 and as auxiliary bishop from January 11, 1984 through February 21, 1994. We offer his deposition–of which selected portions were redacted to protect victims–as part of our renewed commitment to transparency and disclosure.

PDF:
Deposition of Archbishop Robert Carlson

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MINNESOTA
Pioneer Press

By Emily Gurnon
egurnon@pioneerpress.com
POSTED: 06/09/2014

A former Twin Cities bishop who now leads the St. Louis archdiocese responded 193 times in a court-ordered deposition that he could not remember details about priest child sexual abuse during his tenure.

The Rev. Robert James Carlson served from 1979 to 1994 as a top handler for priest abuse cases in the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis, according to attorney Jeffrey Anderson.

Anderson represents victims of childhood sexual abuse, including Doe 1, a man who sued last May alleging that he was molested by former priest Thomas Adamson while he served in St. Paul Park.

“He doesn’t remember anything about what he did,” Anderson said about Carlson at a Monday press conference in his St. Paul office.

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MINNESOTA
Press & Dakotan

Associated Press

ST. PAUL, Minn. (AP) — The head of the Archdiocese of St. Louis said under oath he couldn’t recall details about how he handled allegations of abuse against a Minnesota priest years ago.

But Archbishop Robert Carlson did say he never went to authorities after that priest admitted in 1984 that he engaged in criminal sexual contact with a minor.

Carlson was deposed last month in a case against the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis, where Carlson served for years and had a role in investigating allegations of abuse from 1979 to 1994.

Messages left with the St. Louis archdiocese weren’t immediately returned. The St. Paul-Minneapolis archdiocese had no comment.

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UNITED STATES
Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests

For immediate release: Monday, June 09, 2014

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

The brave mothers and children of another Irish Catholic center for unwed mothers are calling for truth and justice. We applaud their courage and perseverance.

[Irish Times]

Bessborough mother and baby home in Cork is one of several homes across Ireland that treated the mothers that came to them and their babies with deplorable callousness. We believe that healing and reconciliation can only begin when victims come together and seek justice.

That is exactly what these protesters in Cork are doing and we praise them for demanding action and giving a voice to the innocent children who did not survive.

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IRELAND
Irish Examiner

By Claire O’Sullivan
Irish Examiner Reporter

Women who gave birth at the notorious Bessborough mother-and-baby home in Cork were not allowed pain relief during labour or stitches after birth, and when they developed abscesses from breast-feeding they were denied penicillin.

One nun who ran the labour ward in 1951 also forbid any “moaning or screaming” during childbirth. Girls in poverty, who could not afford to make donations to the Sacred Heart order, had to spend another three years after their babies were born cleaning and working on the lands around the Cork city home to ‘make amends’ for their pregnancy.

Such work often included cutting the home’s “immaculate lawns” on their hands and knees — with a pair of scissors.

Before they left the home, their three-year-olds, with whom they would have established a strong emotional bond, were removed from them and fostered, put up for adoption, or sent to an orphanage — often with only hours’ notice.

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IRELAND
Irish Examiner

By Sean O’Riordan

Children adopted from a mother-and-baby home run by the Sacred Heart Sisters in Cork have called for an independent public inquiry to find out how many babies died at the centre and where the bodies are buried.

The adoptees have also called on the Government to provide them with counselling and to support surviving mothers who gave birth at Bessborough House.

The call was made yesterday after members of the Bessborough Mothers and Babies Group gathered at the site in Mahon-Blackrock, commemorating the babies who died there.

BMBG spokeswoman Helen Murphy, who was adopted out of Bessborough in 1963, said the group had no idea how many babies died there, but said the number was higher than the near 800 buried in a mass grave at a similar facility also operated by the Bon Secours Sisters in Tuam, Co Galway.

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IRELAND
Irish Examiner

By Sean O’Riordan

Children adopted from a Sacred Heart Sisters’ mother-and-baby home in Cork have called for an independent public inquiry to find out many babies died at the centre and where on the site they are buried.

They also want the government to immediately provide counselling for themselves, surviving mothers who gave birth at Bessborough and their families.

The call was made yesterday after members of the Bessborough Mothers and Babies Group gathered at the site in Mahon, where they brought flowers, teddy bears and candles to a vigil where they remembered the babies who died there.

Helen Murphy, who was adopted out of Bessborough in 1963, said the group had no idea how many babies died there, but believe the number was higher than the near 800 buried in a mass grave at a home operated by the Bon Secours Sisters in Tuam, Co Galway.

It is claimed that many of their deaths were due to starvation and neglect.

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IRELAND
Irish Independent

Ralph Riegel
Published 09/06/2014

TEDDIES and toys were carefully tied to the gates of the notorious former Bessborough mother and baby home in Cork as potent symbols of stolen innocence.

Mothers who lost babies and endured the cruelty of the regime wept openly.

Children who were adopted by other families away from their birth mothers sobbed as they struggled to imagine the horrors suffered inside the grim gates.

Now, mothers, children and relatives are united with one purpose – for the truth.

“This isn’t a protest … it is a campaign. We want the truth. We want justice to be done and we want Bessborough to be included in any inquiry,” Helen Murphy said.

Helen was born at Bessborough and left the home when she was seven months old.

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IRELAND
Irish Times

Olivia Kelleher

Mon, Jun 9, 2014

Mothers who lost babies at the former Bessborough mother and baby home in Cork tied teddy bears and toys to the gates of the building yesterday as they stated their hope to be included in any inquiry the Government is going to order.

The founder of the Bessborough Mother and Baby Support Group, Helen Murphy, who was born at the home and left when she was seven months old, said yesterday’s vigil at the site was part of a larger campaign.

“We want the truth to be known. We want justice to be done, and we want Bessborough to be included in any form of inquiry the Government is now going to order.

“We founded the Bessborough Mother and Baby Support Group as an outlet for all those whose lives were affected by this place. The purpose of it is to remember the people who were there, and especially the babies who died.

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.

IRELAND
Irish Independent

Eimear Phelan
Published 09/06/2014

Minister for Education Ruairi Quinn this morning supported the idea of an enquiry in to the Tuam babies scandal.

On RTÉ’s Morning Ireland Education Minister Quinn claimed that many of the headlines about the Tuam babies were “simply untrue”.

“The sensationalism and the way it has been reported is different to the facets that are known,” he said.

The Minister said that the case is not as is being reported around the world and “some of the headlines that went around the world were quite horrendous and gave a very mistaken impression of what really happened.”

This incident “is not the same as the abuse that was done in the residential institutions” he clarified said we have to remember that the mother and baby homes have “been know about and written about for quite some time.”

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IRELAND
RTE News

The Chief Executive of Tusla, the child and family agency, has said records for the mother-and-baby homes in Tuam, Bessborough in Cork, and St Patrick’s on the Navan Road in Dublin have been transferred to the agency.

Gordon Jeyes told RTÉ’s News At One there are nine registers dating between 1921 and 1961 as well as quarterly returns that went to county councils that date back to 1919.

He said there is no difficulty in making these available to the cross-departmental investigation due to be established by Minister for Children Charlie Flanagan.

Mr Jeyes said it is his understanding that Tusla is in possession of all the available records.

He said some of the publicity surrounding these events is unfortunate in terms of the way it has been misreported, causing distress.

Mr Jeyes said that Tusla plans to digitise them and make them accessible to the individuals concerned, any relevant inquiry and to social historians to provide an accurate knowledge about Ireland in the past.

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IRELAND
Herald

BY ALAN O’KEEFFE AND RALPH RIEGEL – 09 JUNE 2014

DEATH rates at a Dublin mother-and-baby home were almost as high as mortality rates at the Bon Secours home in Tuam, recently released records held by church authorities have revealed.

The Dublin death rates are coming to light as official inquiries by gardai and a number of Government departments get underway into the deaths of almost 800 children at the Tuam home in a 36-year period ending in 1961.

Documents that belonged to former Dublin Archbishop John Charles McQuaid, who died in 1973, show that St Patrick’s mother and baby home at Pelletstown in Cabra also had high death rates in at least one year. The records show that one in every three babies died in the home on the Navan road in 1933.

Convent

The Pelletstown death rate was 34pc in that year while, at the same 
time, the annual death rate in the County Galway convent-run home in Tuam was 35pc. The Dublin deaths may also come under official scrutiny now.

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MINNESOTA
Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests

For immediate release: Monday, June 9 2014

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

Three disturbing facts jump out from St. Louis Archbishop Robert Carlson’s deposition – taken last month but released today – in a clergy sex abuse and cover up case.

1) Carlson admits that he never called the police about known or suspected clergy sex crimes at any point in his 24 years as a priest, bishop and other top church official in Minnesota.

2) Carlson testified under oath that he wasn’t sure whether he knew it was illegal for priests to have sex with children when he served as chancellor of the Twin Cities archdiocese in the 1980s.

[Minnesota Public Radio]

3) And another Catholic bishop testified under oath – in a different deposition – that Carlson advised him to claim memory loss if he were deposed in clergy sex abuse cases.

In a 1986 deposition, then-Winona Bishop Loras Watters said that Carlson told him “the best thing you can say (in depositions) is, ‘I don’t remember.'”

This is why Catholic officials fight so hard against victims in court and do all they can to prevent themselves from being deposed – because embarrassing truths surface through the justice process, truths that show many bishops are deeply complicit in horrific child sex crimes.

According to BishopAccountability.org, there are now 53 publicly accused child molesting Twin Cities clerics. And Carlson was in that archdiocese for almost 25 years. But not once did he call the police, he admits. Shame on him.

Finally, in a deceitful and self-pitying claim, Carlson blames therapists for decisions he made and other bishops made to quietly keep pedophile priests in parishes, saying “in many ways, we (bishops) were the victims of those we sent people to for treatment.”

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IRELAND
Newstalk

The Justice Minister Frances Fitzgerald has requested a report from An Garda Síochána on information relating to the Tuam babies case.

In a statement, the Department of Justice said “It is very important that we address these disturbing issues as sensitively as possible. There is no doubt that coverage over the last few days will have inevitably evoked very painful memories for people, many of whom are now quite elderly”.

“There is now an interdepartmental process under way to examine how this complex, disturbing and tragic situation can be best addressed”.

The Department says it has also been liaising with the gardai “so that the information available to them can feed into the interdepartmental process”.

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IRELAND
Irish Times

Conor Lally

Sat, Jun 7, 2014

Minister for Justice Frances Fitzgerald has sought a report from the Garda on all of the information available to the force about the burial of children’s remains over a period of five decades at a site in Tuam, Co Galway.

She said while there was no Garda criminal investigation into the deaths of babies at a mother and baby home near the burial site where, it is alleged, the children’s remains were dumped in an unmarked communal plot, the Garda was involved in the Government review of what had taken place.

However, Colm Keaveney TD (FF), in whose Galway East constituency the plot is located, called for more decisive action. He urged the closing off of the site and for a team of experts led by State Pathologist Prof Marie Cassidy to examine it.

Mr Keaveney said there was now considerable media interest in the story, with reporters from around the world having arrived in Tuam.

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MINNESOTA
Jeff Anderson & Associates

[with deposition videos]

Watters Deposition 3-17-86 p. 55 for Carlson
Carlson Ex. 301 – Adamson meeting 11-25-80
Carlson Ex. 304 – Statute of Limitations 6-29-84
Carlson Ex. 305 – Meeting with McDonough 7-9-84

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MINNESOTA
Minnesota Public Radio

Madeleine Baran St. Paul, Minn. Jun 9, 2014

St. Louis archbishop Robert Carlson — who served in the Twin Cities for 24 years — testified last month that he wasn’t sure whether he knew it was illegal for priests to have sex with children when he served as chancellor of the Twin Cities archdiocese in the 1980s, according to a transcript released Monday.

The former chancellor also said he couldn’t recall reporting abuse to police while here from 1970 to 1994.

Carlson, 69, testified as part of a lawsuit that alleges the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis and the Diocese of Winona created a public nuisance by keeping information on abusive priests secret. The man who filed the suit claims he was sexually abused by the Rev. Thomas Adamson in the 1970s.

The case has already forced the depositions of Archbishop John Nienstedt, former Archbishop Harry Flynn and other top officials. It also required church officials to make public the names of abusive priests and turn over more than 60,000 pages of internal documents to the plaintiff’s attorneys.

Carlson also faces a massive clergy abuse lawsuit in the Archdiocese of St. Louis, where he’s served since 2009. The case, set for trial in July, involves a similarly aggressive fight over the release of documents and the names of offenders dating back decades. One document made public in the case shows that more than 100 priests and church employees have been accused of abuse, and the Missouri Supreme Court has ordered the archdiocese to turn over the names of abusers under seal.

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IRELAND
Salon

New revelations about unauthorized vaccine trials

MARY ELIZABETH WILLIAMS

It gets worse. One week after revelations of how over the span of 35 years, a County Galway home for unwed mothers cavalierly disposed of the bodies of nearly eight hundred babies and toddlers on a site that held a septic tank, new reports are leveling a whole different set of charges about what happened to the children of those Irish homes.

In harrowing new information revealed this weekend, the Daily Mail has uncovered medical records that suggest 2,051 children across several Irish care homes were given a diphtheria vaccine from pharmaceutical company Burroughs Wellcome in a suspected illegal drug trial that ran from 1930 to 1936. As the Mail reports, “Michael Dwyer, of Cork University’s School of History, found the child vaccination data by trawling through tens of thousands of medical journal articles and archive files. He discovered that the trials were carried out before the vaccine was made available for commercial use in the UK.” There is no evidence yet – and there may never be – that any family consent was ever offered, or about how many children had adverse effects or died as a result of the vaccinations. Dwyer told the Mail, “The fact that no record of these trials can be found in the files relating to the Department of Local Government and Public Health, the Municipal Health Reports relating to Cork and Dublin, or the Wellcome Archives in London, suggests that vaccine trials would not have been acceptable to government, municipal authorities, or the general public. However, the fact that reports of these trials were published in the most prestigious medical journals suggests that this type of human experimentation was largely accepted by medical practitioners and facilitated by authorities in charge of children’s residential institutions.” In a related story, GSK revealed Monday on Newstalk Radio that 298 children in ten different care homes were involved in medical trials in the sixties and seventies that left “80 children ill after they were accidentally administered a vaccine intended for cattle.”

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UNITED STATES
Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests

For immediate release: Monday, June 09, 2014

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

Like millions across the world our hearts ache for the families who have suffered and are suffering because of the stunning callousness and deceit by Catholic officials who ran the now infamous Tuam center for unwed mothers. We simply can’t imagine the horrors they have endured and the lifelong trauma that suffering has caused.

The horror at Tuam will be dealt with adequately, we believe, only if the women who suffered there can overcome their grief enough to band together and seek justice. We hope they will do so.

History shows that healing, justice and truth-telling happens best when those who are hurt move beyond their pain and shame and organize.

As Frederick Douglass once said, “Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will.”

We beg the women whose babies and toddlers were taken from them at Tuam to first and foremost take good care of themselves, by sharing their pain with others they love and trust, and by seeking professional help from independent sources.

But we also beg them to reach out to one another, and to independent sources of help, and use their voices to advocate for themselves and other mothers who have been exploited by Catholic officials.

Then, we call on every single Irish priest to reach out to as many of the moms of these horrible homes and beg them to share their stories, get help and start healing.

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MINNESOTA
Star Tribune

Article by: JEAN HOPFENSPERGER , Star Tribune Updated: June 9, 2014

St. Louis Archbishop Robert Carlson investigated priest abuse in Twin Cities, but testifies he cannot remember much.

A former auxiliary bishop who was a key figure in the Twin Cities archdiocese’s response to priest sex abuse from the 1980s to mid 1990s, testified in a court deposition that he did not report to police the charges of child sex abuse that crossed his desk over the years and that he no longer remembers them.

The deposition of St. Louis Archbishop Robert Carlson was released Monday as part of a lawsuit making its way through the courts filed by an alleged victim of clergy sex abuse.

A news conference is scheduled for Monday at 11 a.m. to discuss the deposition.

Carlson had been a point person behind the chancery’s investigation of Tom Adamson, a former priest accused of more than a dozen cases of child sex abuse who is the subject of the lawsuit. However, when asked about his interactions with Adamson — a high-profile case even back in the 1980s — or any actions he took against him, Carlson said he didn’t recall.

“I don’t remember with any accuracy what I did or didn’t do, but there are memos that would explain that,” said Carlson.

The Carlson deposition is the latest testimony of a high-ranking church official to be made public, following former Archbishop Harry Flynn and current Archbishop John Nienstedt and others. The depositions come in response to a lawsuit filed in 2013 on behalf of a man who claimed Adamson abused him in the 1970s at his St. Paul Park church.

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MINNESOTA/MISSOUR
Jeff Anderson & Associates

[live stream of the news conference]

What: At a news conference Monday in St. Paul, MN attorneys Jeff Anderson and Mike Finnegan will:

• Release video clips and the deposition transcript of the current Archdiocese of St. Louis Archbishop Robert Carlson taken on May 23, 2014 as part of a civil lawsuit in Minnesota. Carlson was ordained in the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis in 1970 and rose to the position of Auxiliary Bishop until 1994.

• Discuss the disturbing and alarming sworn testimony given by Carlson who chose not to recall important events he was personally involved in including advising former Winona Bishop Loras Watters “not to remember” when Watters’ gave his own testimony.

• Demonstrate how the documents show a conscious choice, made by then Bishop Carlson, to protect offenders and conceal crimes.

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UNITED STATES
World

By DANIEL JAMES DEVINE
Issue: “Day of reckoning,” June 14, 2014
Posted May 30, 2014

A criminal conviction has stoked the embers in a smoldering, two-year controversy surrounding Sovereign Grace Ministries (SGM), an association of about 80 Reformed, charismatic churches. Victims of childhood sexual abuse have claimed their pastors failed to report abuse allegations to police during years their families attended former SGM churches. The May trial of Nathaniel Morales offered legal confirmation of at least some of those victims’ claims.

In Montgomery County (Md.) Circuit Court on May 15, a dozen jurors convicted Morales, 56, of repeatedly molesting three teenage boys in the late 1980s and early ’90s. At the time, Morales was a member of Covenant Life Church in Gaithersburg, Md., where popular author C.J. Mahaney served as senior pastor, and from where Mahaney launched SGM. Morales led Bible studies, participated on worship teams, and attended sleepovers with teenage boys during his years at Covenant Life. He later moved away, married a woman with five boys from a previous marriage, and became a pastor in Las Vegas.

After hearing the verdict, victim Jeremy Cook told local ABC affiliate WJLA, “I started crying. It was … overwhelming to know that the struggle, the fight, the 25 years of trying to bring this forward, was worth it.” Morales’ sentencing is scheduled for Aug. 14. He faces up to 85 years in prison.

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VATICAN CITY
The Fiscal Times

BY ROB GARVER,
The Fiscal Times
June 9, 2014

When he took over as head of the Roman Catholic Church last year, Pope Francis made it clear that he meant to be the leader of a “poor church” – meaning that the Vatican would focus less on its own splendor and more on finding ways to use its vast financial resources to benefit the world’s poor.

It’s turning out to be more of a struggle than Francis may have expected; last week he found it necessary to fire all five directors of the Vatican’s Financial Information Authority – essentially the primary financial watchdog over the Papal State’s considerable financial operations.

The announcement on Thursday was only the most recent in a series of firings, replacements, and arrests that have rocked the Vatican’s financial hierarchy. It turns out that for Francis, casting the moneychangers out of the Temple has proven to be a time-consuming task.

Last summer, a number of senior officials with the Vatican Bank resigned around the time that one of its senior accountants, Monsignor Nunzio Scarano, was arrested and charged with conspiring to smuggle more than $20 million from Italy to Switzerland. Scarano, reportedly known in Rome as “Monsignor 500” for his habit of displaying a wallet full of €500 notes, has since been charged with multiple other offenses, including money laundering.

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AUSTRALIA
Newcastle Herald

By Kieran Tapsell June 9, 2014

THE Catholic Church for some 1500 years recognised that simply stripping a priest of his status as a priest was not a sufficient punishment for the sexual abuse of children.

Canon law from the 12th century decreed that he should be dismissed from the priesthood and handed over to the civil authority for punishment in accordance with the civil law.

A commission set up by Pope Pius X in 1904 drafted a uniform code of canon law by discarding papal and council decrees that were no longer relevant, modifying others and creating new ones.

The 1917 Code of Canon Law discarded the decrees requiring priests who sexually assaulted children to be handed over to the civil authorities.

Five years later, Pope Pius XI issued his 1922 decree, Crimen Sollicitationis, imposing the “secret of the Holy Office”, a “permanent silence” on all information the Church obtained through its canonical investigations of clergy sex abuse of children. There were no exceptions allowing the reporting of these crimes to the civil authorities.

In 1962, Pope St. John XXIII reissued Crimen Sollicitationis. In 1974, Pope Paul VI, by his decree, Secreta Continere renamed ‘‘the secret of the Holy Office’’ ‘‘the pontifical secret’’, and it continued to apply to the sexual abuse of children under the new 1983 Code of Canon Law.

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UNITED STATES
Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests

For immediate release: Monday, June 09, 2014

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

A North Carolina man, who was born in a now-infamous Irish orphanage – in the news now because of a just discovered mass grave of 800 infants and toddlers – is speaking up about the pain it caused him. We applaud this brave man for investigating his past and speak up about what happened to him.

[Washington Post]

Peter Ferris Cochran was adopted by an American family from the Taum center for unwed mothers in Ireland. We are grateful to Cochran for speaking publicly about his story. We hope it gives courage to others who suffered unimaginable cruelty in Catholic institutions.

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UNITED STATES
The Worthy Adversary

Posted by Joelle Casteix on June 9, 2014

Last week, Pope Francis sacked his entire Vatican “watchdog” board, replacing them with an international “who’s who” list of financial reform and investigation gurus.

One of the names on the list surprised me: Juan Zarate. Zarate shot to prominence as the member of George Bush’s Treasury Department. He was a tenacious investigator who went after America’s enemies and other global terrorists where it hurt the most: their bank accounts. But that’s not the surprising part.

The surprising part is this: Juan Zarate was a year behind me at Mater Dei High School in Orange County, California. The Vatican probably knew that, since Mater Dei gave Juan its “Ring of Honor” award in 2002. But did the Vatican vet Mater Dei?

I didn’t know Juan very well in high school. But I did know this: he was an all-around awesome guy. He was friendly, outgoing, nice to everyone, smart and funny. In a school where it was very easy to fall into “cliques,” everyone seemed to know and like Juan. In fact, as he became more and more successful, everyone rooted for him. There was not a better, more hard-working or nicer guy out there. He has deserved every accolade he has received.

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OHIO
Think Progress

BY IAN MILLHISER JUNE 9, 2014

Last March, the Catholic Archdiocese of Cincinnati, Ohio revealed a new contract imposing sweeping limits on the speech and conduct of the schoolteachers it employs. Among other things, the contract forbids teachers from engaging in “improper use of social media/communication, public support of or publicly living together outside of marriage; public support of or sexual activity out of wedlock; public support of/or homosexual lifestyle; public support of/or use of abortion; public support of/or use of a surrogate mother; [and] public support or use of in vitro fertilization or artificial insemination.”

At least some of these restrictions are likely violations of various laws prohibiting discrimination. The ban on “use of in vitro fertilization or artificial insemination,” for example, violates the Pregnancy Discrimination Act according to at least one federal appeals court. Similarly, while Cincinnati’s ban on anti-gay discrimination exempts “any religious corporation, organization, or association,” should a state or federal law be enacted which does not contain this broad exemption, the contract’s ban on a “homosexual lifestyle” would also violate the law.

Which probably explains why, as CNN recently reported, the contract also contains a clause adding “the title ‘ministers’ to all teachers — from geography to gym class.” In a 2012 called Hosanna-Tabor Evangelical Lutheran Church and School v. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, the Supreme Court held that the Constitution “bar[s] the government from interfering with the decision of a religious group to fire one of its ministers.” Thus, the school in that case was able to fire one of its teachers, despite the fact that this firing allegedly violated the Americans with Disabilities Act, because the teacher was also a formally commissioned “Minister of Religion.”

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IRELAND
The Journal

THE CHURCH MUST begin ordaining women and allow priests to marry if it is to survive, the Association of Catholic Priests has warned.

The ACP has made a number of recommendations to deal with the low number of vocations within the Church that will be discussed at the Irish Catholics Bishop Conference in Maynooth this week.

Fr Sean McDonagh of the ACP said that ordaining women as deacons “nothing unusual as they were ordained in the past”.

“It’s fairly clear historically that women have served in the Church, despite every effort to silence their voices since the 4th century.”

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UNITED KINGDOM
Get Hampshire

Jun 09, 2014 14:07 By Stephen Lloyd

A jury at Reading Crown Court returned their final verdicts on nine counts of indecent assault shortly after 1pm today

A 74-year-old retired vicar has been jailed for four years after being convicted of indecently assaulting four girls.

A jury at Reading Crown Court returned their final verdicts on nine counts of indecent assault shortly after 1pm on Friday June 6

Brian Spence, of Nursery Close, Hook, stood trial for nine indecent assault charges involving four girls aged between 10 and 15.

The jury of nine men and three women returned unanimous guilty verdicts on four counts on Thursday June 5 before delivering three majority guilty verdicts the next day.

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AUSTRALIA
Newcastle Herald

By JOANNE McCARTHY June 9, 2014

MORPETH man Bob O’Toole would like Maitland-Newcastle Bishop Bill Wright to walk in the shoes of Hunter Catholics for a day or two.

They were confused, devastated and horrified by the findings of the NSW Special Commission of Inquiry, Mr O’Toole said.

Adverse findings against two former bishops, the general secretary of the Australian Bishops Conference, and a number of Hunter priests, along with shocking news that a senior Australian Catholic official could be charged with a conceal-type offence relating to the late child sex offender priest Jim Fletcher, had stunned many into silence, he said.

But there’s growing anger about the Catholic Church’s, and Bishop Wright’s, muted response to those findings, and the failure to stand down Father Bill Burston and Monsignor Allan Hart as Newcastle parish priests.

Commissioner Margaret Cunneen, SC, found Monsignor Hart had known since 1993 that paedophile priest Denis McAlinden had sexually abused a young girl. McAlinden died in 2005 with his ‘‘good name protected’’ by the Catholic Church.

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PHILADELPHIA (PA)
Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests

For immediate release: Sunday, June 8

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

Another alleged predator priest – accused of both molesting kids and ignoring the molestation of a kid – is being put back on the job with no no explanation whatsoever.

[The Morning Call]

Msgr. Joseph Logrip faced allegations, according to the archdiocese, of sexually violating “minors.” Notice the plural. Few bishops in recent years have put priests facing multiple allegations back into parishes.

He also faced allegations, according to the Philly Inquirer, of knowing of an “attack” on a child by a priest but doing “nothing.”

[BishopAccountability.org]

So despite allegations of wrongdoing that first surfaced publicly in 2005 and 2011, Archbishop Charles Chaput is recklessly putting Msgr. Logrip back around children. Regarding the “enabling” abuse charge, Chaput says nothing. Regarding the abuse charges, Chaput says virtually nothing (except one word: “unsubstantiated).

Catholics, citizens and children deserve better. Whatever became of Chaput’s repeated pledges to be “open and transparent” about clergy sex cases? Where’s a real explanation of what Msgr. Logrip did and didn’t do?

We hope every single person who saw, suspected or suffered clergy sex crimes in Philly – by Logrip or other clerics – will step forward, find help, call police, protect kids, expose wrongdoers and start healing.

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UNITED STATES
Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests

For immediate release: Sunday, June 8

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

It sounds harsh but must be said: It sure looks like the Pope cares more about cash than kids.

Last week, Pope Francis fired the entire Vatican financial watchdog board.

[The Guardian]

He’s made a number of other moves towards better church finances. And months ago, he ousted Germany’s so-called “Bishop of Bling,” Franz-Peter Tebartz-van Elst of the Limburg diocese, for spending $43 million to renovate his home.

Yet as of today, 14 months into his papacy, Francis has ousted no prelate who is protecting predators and endangering kids (not even one who has been convicted – Bishop Robert Finn of Kansas City Missouri).

He’s not done anything else that’s helpful or substantive on the abuse and cover up crisis.

In fact, Francis has taken the absolute wrong steps and sent the absolute wrong signals on this crisis, by;

–meeting with disgraced Cardinal Bernard Law within hours of becoming pope,

–meeting with disgraced Cardinal Roger Mahony earlier this year and saying mass in public with him,

–refusing to extradite a Polish archbishop wanted by law enforcement officials for alleged crimes, and

–claiming, just a few weeks ago, that “the Catholic Church is perhaps the only public institution to have acted with transparency and responsibility. No one else has done more. And yet the church is the only one attacked.”

So under Pope Francis, better children’s safety gets discussion and further delay (punting it to a panel that hasn’t even been fully set up yet), while better money management gets action and top priority.

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IRELAND
Irish Times

Patsy McGarry

Mon, Jun 9, 2014

The investigation into a vaccine trial on children in mother and baby homes, which politicians and Catholic Church leaders are now calling for, has previously been dealt with by the High Court, which declared one invalid in June 2004.

The Archbishop of Dublin, Dr Diarmuid Martin, yesterday called for a properly constituted commission to examine issues raised by the discovery of mass baby deaths at St Mary’s mother and baby home in Tuam, Co Galway – including allegations that medical trials were carried out on children.

The 2004 court ruling followed a challenge to a government order directing an investigation into such vaccine trials, under the aegis of the Commission to Inquire into Child Abuse. The challenge was brought by retired UCD professor of microbiology Irene Hillary.

Professional reputation

Prof Hillary had expressed concern about the implications for her professional reputation of the establishment of an inquiry into the vaccination trials under the aegis of a commission set up to inquire into the issue of child abuse.

Previously, in July 2003, a unanimous judgment by the Supreme Court upheld an appeal by the late UCD professor Patrick Meenan against a High Court decision which had directed him to give evidence before the vaccine trials division of the Commission to Inquire into Child Abuse.

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IRELAND
Irish Times

Tim O’Brien, Tim O’Brien, Patsy McGarry

Mon, Jun 9, 2014

Child safeguarding expert Ian Elliott has welcomed a suggestion that he be part of any investigation which may be set up by the State into mother and baby homes in Ireland.

“Absolutely. I’d be very, very interested,” he told The Irish Times last night. “If there’s anything useful I can contribute, I’d be delighted.”

Chief executive of the Catholic Church’s National Board for Safeguarding Children until June of last year, his name was mentioned yesterday by the Catholic Archbishop of Dublin, Diarmuid Martin, as the sort of person who ought to be on such an investigation team.

Dr Martin said it was very important that any investigation should be separated from the church and State or any other organisation that was involved “because there is an entanglement there that goes right through a period of Irish history. It is only an independent person who would be able to that.”

Such a commission should “perhaps be headed by a judicial personality” and he thought a person of the calibre of Ian Elliott, whom he described as a “very strong” person in the investigation of child abuse in the Catholic Church, would be a very interesting addition to any such commission, he said.

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IRELAND
Washington Post

BY TERRENCE MCCOY

Peter Ferris Cochran is a tall, tanned North Carolina man who likes his blazers colorful, his trucks big and, if conditions are to his liking, his head shielded by a baseball hat. He speaks in a slow drawl that immediately identifies him as a Southerner, and once owned a successful business called Cochran & Associates in the North Carolina beach town of Emerald Isle.

Nothing about Cochran would alert those around him of the unusual circumstances under which he came into this world. That his name was once Andrew Michael Gallagher. That, by birth, he’s not a Southerner or even an American. That he’s Irish, born in 1957 in the now-infamous Tuam center for unwed mothers in western Ireland, where the remains of nearly 800 babies–796 according to one historian’s estimates– may have been discarded in a massive septic tank. The full extent of what happened is now the subject of investigation, with authorities using ground sensor equipment to explore the tank.

“This was the information I’ve grown with over the last 50 years, and of every bit I knew was that this was a very evil orphanage,” he said Sunday afternoon in a phone interview. “It was evil for the orphans and it was evil for the unwed mothers. My mother was persecuted for out-of-wedlock sex, and the Catholic Church was just adamant about celibacy before marriage.”

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IRELAND
Irish Mirror

Averil Power

The Government is rightly under pressure now to investigate the circumstances in which these children died

Once again, Ireland is being forced to face up to another element of our dark and shameful past.

The discovery of hundreds of children buried in a septic tank on the site of a former “mother and baby home” in Tuam has served as a horrifying reminder of the abuse Irish women and children were subjected to for decades.

Women who were stigmatised and forced into institutions just because they became pregnant outside of marriage.

Children who were branded “illegitimate” from birth, treated as second-class citizens, and forced to live in conditions that put their health and lives at risk.

As the discovery of the mass grave in Tuam has so starkly reminded us, thousands of children died in these homes.

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IRELAND
ABC News (Australia)

By Europe correspondent Philip Williams, wires
Updated Mon 9 Jun 2014

The Archbishop of Dublin has called for a full inquiry into the deaths of almost 800 children at a home for unmarried mothers and their children.

Death records suggest 796 children – from newborns to eight-year-olds – were dumped in a septic tank near a Catholic-run home for unmarried mothers, turning it into a mass grave.

The St Mary’s home at Tuam in County Galway, run by the Bon Secours Sisters, was one of several “mother and baby” homes in early 20th century Ireland.

The search has started for the bodies on the site, with ground sensor equipment used to look for the disused septic tank.

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IRELAND
The Tablet

09 June 2014 by Fr Seán McDonagh, SSC

On the day that the papal nuncio to Ireland, Archbishop Charles Brown, told the US-based Catholic News Service that he saw “that Irish Catholicism had entered a new springtime,” representatives of the Association of Catholic Priests (ACP) were trying to convince a group of Irish bishops that the Irish Catholic Church was facing, among other things, a vocational crisis of enormous magnitude.

Archbishop Brown said that young Irish seminarians he met at St Patrick’s College, the national seminary in Maynooth, and in Rome, showed a “renewed enthusiasm for their faith”. That may well be true, but the numbers are miniscule.

Figures on the bishops’ own website show the age profile of Irish priests. Over 65 per cent of Irish priests are aged 55 or over. There are only two priests under the age of 40 in the Archdiocese of Dublin. A priest in Killala diocese, Fr Brendan Hoban, pointed out that there has been a priest and celebration of the Eucharist in his parish –Moygownagh – since the eighth century. But he believes he will be that last priest in that parish. At the moment there is a priest in every parish in Killala. Within 20 years there will be seven serving 22 parishes spread out over a wide area. The situation is much same in other dioceses.

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IRELAND
Belfast Telegraph

BY RALPH RIEGEL – 09 JUNE 2014

The Irish government will include all major mother-and-baby homes in an independent inquiry commission after the dramatic intervention of the Archbishop of Dublin, Diarmuid Martin.

Dr Martin said that only an independent inquiry led by a senior judicial figure could now provide the answers required from Ireland’s escalating mother-and-baby home scandal.

The move will be confirmed once gardai have concluded preliminary investigations into claims that 796 babies were buried in a septic tank near the Tuam, Co Galway, home, which was run by the Bon Secours nuns.

Justice Minister Frances Fitzgerald has appointed two senior gardai and they will immediately begin work examining the Tuam mass grave claims.

A government source said last night that any wide-ranging commission of inquiry cannot interfere with garda investigations.

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IRELAND
Irish Times

Steven Carroll

Mon, Jun 9, 2014

Minister for Education Ruairí Quinn has backed calls for the establishment of an independent inquiry into mother and baby homes, saying it was important to find out the facts while also considering the context of the time.

Mr Quinn said he “broadly” supported comments made yesterday by Archbishop of Dublin Diarmuid Martin, who said it was important that any investigation was independent and separate from the Catholic Church, the State or any other organisation involved in the homes.

Dr Martin said such a commission should “perhaps be headed by a judicial personality” and he said he would like to see Ian Elliott, a child safeguarding expert, involved.

Archbishop of Dublin Diarmuid Martin said it was very important that any investigation should be separated from the church and StateArchbishop Martin calls for full inquiry into mother and baby homes

Mr Quinn told RTÉ’s Morning Ireland programme he felt it was important to show this generation of Irish people what those who came before them did to “young women who got into to trouble, so to speak”.

“They didn’t get into trouble on their own [when they became pregnant],” he said, adding that many had their children taken away.

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IRELAND
Irish Times

Una Mullally

Mon, Jun 9, 2014

I’m sure I’m not the only one who, upon seeing the dramatic splash screaming “800 BABIES” in the Irish Daily Mail, stared at it incredulously. It took days for it to sink in, as I tried to find out more. I think it’s a version of this personal process that unfolded as a collective, national one.

Journalists who stuttered on this “story” will contextualise it on a news agenda that was coming out the other side of a rollicking election, and the implosion of the Labour Party leadership. The news came from an unfamiliar source, a local historian compiling research. The initial break came in a local newspaper, not a blockbuster Prime Time or an Irish Times front page.

It all happened so long ago. The facts were scant. They were allegations. Tread softly, I’d imagine news editors thought, because this seems so big – surely we would have known about it before? We still don’t know all of the facts, but we know the context. We all know by osmosis the horrors committed in this State. It’s oral history. We all heard our parents talk about dodgy priests, creepy buildings at the top of the town and babies not deserving of burial in consecrated ground, its soil fertilised with hypocrisy.

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IRELAND
MSN News

DUBLIN (AP) — Ireland should investigate the Catholic Church’s mistreatment and burial of babies who died decades ago in nun-operated homes for unmarried mothers, a senior church official declared Sunday as the country confronted another shameful chapter of its history of child abuse.

Dublin Archbishop Diarmuid Martin made his appeal following revelations that hundreds of children who died inside a former church-run residence for infants were buried in unmarked graves at the site in western Ireland.

Martin said the probe should have no church involvement, be led by a judge and examine the treatment of children in “mother and baby homes” for unwed mothers and their newborns. These mostly operated in Ireland from the 1920s to 1960s, when Catholic policy and control of social services reached their zenith in post-independence Ireland.

Typically, the women’s families and wider society had shamed and rejected them because of their pregnancies. Babies born inside the institutions were denied baptism and, if they died from the illness and disease rife in such facilities, also denied a Christian burial.

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IRELAND
Spiked

BRENDAN O’NEILL
EDITOR

The obsession with Ireland’s dark past has officially become unhinged.

For proof of the maxim that ‘A lie will go round the world while truth is pulling its boots on’, look no further than the Tuam 800 dead babies story. Courtesy of a modern media that seems more interested in titillating readers with gorno than giving us cool facts, and thanks to a Twittermob constantly on the hunt for things it might feel ostentatiously outraged by, the story about babies being dumped in an old, out-of-use septic tank by nuns at a home for ‘fallen women’ in Tuam in Galway made waves in every corner of the globe. Then, a few days later, having finally strapped its boots on, the truth – or at least a more sober analysis of what might have really happened in Tuam – staggered on to the stage. And it was a very different story to the fact-lite, fury-heavy tale that had already gone round the world.

The speed with which the work of one local researcher in Tuam became a global story was amazing. Catherine Corless has been looking into the Mother and Baby Home run by nuns in Tuam for years. The home, which was active between 1925 and 1961, took in single women who were pregnant, which was considered a terribly sinful state to be in in early to mid-twentieth century Ireland. Corless discovered two things during her research: first, that between 1925 and 1961, the deaths of 796 children were registered by the nuns who ran the Tuam home; and secondly that in 1975 two boys in Tuam discovered an old septic tank on the grounds of the then-closed home, smashed through the concrete covering and saw skeletal remains inside. A fairly vague posting about these findings was put on to a Facebook page, and then all hell broke loose.

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MASSACHUSETTS
The Sun Chronicle

Schools locally, across country dealing with teacher-student sex abuse allegations

Posted: Monday, June 9, 2014

BY RICK FOSTER SUN CHRONICLE STAFF

Three area schools have been rocked by allegations of sex between students and teachers or staff over the past six months: the principal of an Attleboro Christian academy in January, a North Attleboro Middle School guidance counselor last month, a former Attleboro High School science teacher just last week.

What, you might ask, is going on?

Whatever it is, it seems to be happening everywhere.

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CANADA
VOCM

The Roman Catholic Diocese of Antigonish, N.S., says it will hold a special service to acknowledge the pain of victims of sexual abuse. Father Donald MacGillivray says he hopes the victims of the abuse by members of the clergy will attend the service, which is being held at 3 p.m. Sunday at St. Joseph’s Church in Port Hawkesbury.

MacGillivray says the service was agreed upon as part of a class-action lawsuit against several priests dating back more than 50 years.

The diocese paid out $16 million in compensation for the 125 confirmed and alleged victims of sexual abuse.

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PHILADELPHIA (PA)
Philadelphia Daily News

WILLIAM BENDER, DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITER BENDERW@PHILLYNEWS.COM, 215-854-5255
POSTED: Monday, June 9, 2014

ARCHBISHOP Charles Chaput announced yesterday that a monsignor could return to ministry because allegations that he sexually abused minors 20 years ago were “unsubstantiated.”

Chaput said that Monsignor Joseph L. Logrip is “suitable for ministry,” although archdiocese spokesman Ken Gavin said that his “return to active ministry is not immediate.”

Logrip, 67, had been placed on administrative leave following the February 2011 grand-jury report on sexual abuse by local priests. At the time, he was chaplain at St. Mary Manor, a health-care facility, and living at St. Stanislaus Parish. Both are in Lansdale.

Logrip was among 26 priests placed on leave as a result of the grand-jury report. Fourteen were found unsuitable for ministry; 10 were found suitable for ministry; one priest died before the investigation concluded.

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PHILADELPHIA (PA)
WPVI

[with video]

Monday, June 09, 2014
PHILADELPHIA — The Archdiocese of Philadelphia has reinstated a priest suspended after a scathing 2011 grand jury report on child sexual abuse.

The archdiocese said Sunday that Archbishop Charles Chaput decided Monsignor Joseph Logrip is suitable for ministry.

It cited “unsubstantiated allegations that he sexually abused minors over 20 years ago.”

It says Logrip’s case is the last to be decided out of 26 priests put on leave after the grand jury report was unsealed.

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IRELAND
Irish Times

Lorna Siggins

Mon, Jun 9, 2014

Archbishop of Tuam Dr Michael Neary made no specific reference to the controversy surrounding the former Bon Secours mother and babies home when he celebrated the ordination of a Castlebar man as priest yesterday.

Dr Neary, who stated last week that the archdiocese would co-operate with any inquiry, has said that it did not have any involvement in the running of the home in Tuam and had no records in its archives.

“There exists a clear moral imperative on the Bon Secours sisters in this case to act upon their responsibilities in the interest of the common good,” Dr Neary said.

A spokesman for the archbishop said Dr Neary would not be commenting further yesterday, as his statement of last week “still stood”.

Speaking at the ordination Mass in the Church of the Holy Rosary for Seán Flynn from Keelogues, Co Mayo, who formerly worked at a funeral undertakers in Castlebar, Dr Neary spoke of how the priest today “must be an agent of hope in what often might seem a hopeless situation”.

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PHILADELPHIA (PA)
CBS Philly

Dan Wing

PHILADELPHIA (CBS) – The Archdiocese of Philadelphia has reinstated a priest that was one of 26 priests suspended following 2011′s grand jury report into the sexual abuse of children in the church.

In a written statement, the Archdiocese says Archbishop Charles Chaput has decided that 67-year-old Monsignor Joseph Logrip is suitable for ministry, citing “unsubstantiated allegations that he sexually abuse minors over 20-years ago.”

Logrip’s case was the last to be decided after 26 priests were put on leave when the grand jury report was unsealed.

Out of the 26 cases, eleven priests, including Logrip, were reinstated, while 14 were permanently removed from ministry. One priest died during the investigation, and one was charged.

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IRELAND
Sunday Independent

Majella O’Sullivan
Published 08/06/2014

THE body of a 15-year-old boy who was brutally beaten and died a few days later in hospital lies in a communal unmarked grave. John Pyke had no family to claim his remains or ask why he died days after he was beaten with a leather strap at an industrial school in Tralee, Co Kerry.

Historian, author and columnist Ryle Dwyer, who grew up within a mile of St Joseph’s Industrial School or Christian Brothers’ Monastery, which was demolished in the eighties, said he wasn’t surprised to hear about the discovery of a mass grave near Bon Secours Mother and Baby Home in Tuam, Co Galway.

He says when the murder of a child in Tralee went uninvestigated it was not any surprise to hear the burial of children in an unmarked mass grave had been covered up.

John Pyke’s death certificate states: ‘Bilateral Pleural Effusion. Senility Certified.’ This was later amended to read: ‘Bilateral Pleural Effusion. Septicaemia Certified.’

The teenager was first brought up by nuns in Dublin and then sent to the monastery, aged seven.

In February 1958, Pyke was suffering double pneumonia, had lost his appetite and was beaten by Br Conor Lane in the dining hall in front of the other boys for not eating.

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IRELAND
Sunday Independent

Jerome Reilly
Published 08/06/2014

“We wouldn’t allow a girl to take her baby to bed with her unless it was at least two months old. Then she is probably fond of it. Before then there might be accidents.” – Reverend Mother of Bon Secours mother-and-baby home in Tuam

THE year was 1955 and the nun was speaking to Dr Halliday Sutherland, a Scottish doctor, author and TB treatment pioneer who visited both the Tuam home run by the French sisters, and the infamous Magdalene Laundry in Galway City as he was researching his book, Irish Journey.

To gain access to the Magdalene Laundry, Dr Sutherland had to accept interrogation by the fearsome Bishop of Galway, Michael John Browne – one of the most senior Catholic clerics and a noted supporter of the notorious sectarian boycott of Protestants in Fethard-on-Sea.

Dr Sutherland’s original 1955 manuscript kept by his grandson Mark (hallidaysutherland.com) is a remarkable contemporary account of what he found at the Tuam mother-and-child home 59 years ago.

He wrote: “At Tuam I went to the old workhouse, now the Children’s Home, a long two-storied building in its own grounds. These were well-kept and had many flowerbeds. The home is run by the Sisters of Bon Secours of Paris and the Reverend Mother showed me round. Each of the sisters is a fully trained nurse and midwife. Some are also trained children’s nurses. An unmarried girl may come here to have her baby. She agrees to stay in the home for one year. During this time she looks after her baby and assists the nuns in domestic work. She is unpaid.

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IRELAND
Sunday Independent

Niamh Horan
Published 08/06/2014

‘The mother went absolutely hysterical. There was a big picture of the Sacred Heart on the wall, she pulled it off the wall and danced on the glass of it … ‘

‘Good! I have another bloody PFI … ! She came to us this morning! How soon can you take her?”

PFI stands for ‘pregnant from Ireland’ and this was the typical late-night call picked up by Fr James Good in the Fifties.

Now one of Ireland’s most eminent and outspoken theologians, Fr Good had been appointed as the head of an adoption agency to bring back babies who had been left by their mothers in England for adoption.

“They were normal, happy girls,” he recalls from his home in Douglas, Co Cork. “But ‘get rid of the baby’, that was the main idea. It was such a shame. All of ours [mothers in crisis] would have gone to England for one purpose only and that was to cover the pregnancy.

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MISSOURI/MINNESOTA
Jeff Anderson & Associates

Media Advisory

June 8, 2014

St. Paul Press Conference Monday

What: At a news conference Monday in St. Paul, MN attorneys Jeff Anderson and Mike Finnegan will:

· Release video clips and the deposition transcript of the current Archdiocese of St. Louis Archbishop Robert Carlson taken on May 23, 2014 as part of a civil lawsuit in Minnesota. Carlson was ordained in the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis in 1970 and rose to the position of Auxiliary Bishop until 1994.

· Discuss the disturbing and alarming sworn testimony given by Carlson who chose not to recall important events he was personally involved in including advising former Winona Bishop Loras Watters “not to remember” when Watters’ gave his own testimony.

· Demonstrate how the documents show a conscious choice, made by then Bishop Carlson, to protect offenders and conceal crimes.

WHEN: Monday, June 9, 2014 at 11:00AM CDT

WHERE: Law Office of Jeff Anderson & Associates
366 Jackson Street Suite 100
St. Paul, MN 55101

Notes: The press conference will live stream from our website www.andersonadvocates.com and copies of the video testimony will be available in our office. The entire video, clips and transcript will be posted tomorrow on our website and YouTube page, AndersonAdvocates.

Contact: Jeff Anderson: Cell: 612.817.8665 Office: 651.227.9990
Mike Finnegan: Cell: 612.205.5531 Office: 651.227.9990

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IRELAND
BBC News

Mari Tatlow-Steed lives in Philadelphia, but was born at the Bessborough home run by Sacred Heart sisters in County Cork.

She said there were two categories of children in the home.

“Children that were earmarked to go over to the United States for adoption or even remain in Ireland, we were fattened up, we were given the better food,” she said.

‘Neglect’

“And I have no doubt there were probably children who might have had difficulties when they were born, congenital problems, weaknesses whatever it may be, that the nuns just decided, ‘well we know this one is not going to be earmarked for adoption’, so they’re not going to get the same level of decent care.”

She described it as a form of “benign neglect”.

“They (nuns) felt these children were not going to thrive or be as marketable, ‘well, we’re just not going to spend as much effort or time’,” she said.

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IRELAND
BBC News

One of the most senior figures in the Catholic Church in Ireland has said a full inquiry is needed into the deaths of almost 800 children at a convent-run mother and baby home.

The remains were found in a disused septic tank in County Galway.

The children, one as old as nine, died between 1925 and 1961. The grave in Tuam was initially thought to date to the 1850s when discovered 40 years ago.

Archbishop of Dublin Diarmuid Martin said the truth must come out.

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IRELAND
Daily Mail (UK)

‘My granny delivered the Tuam babies’: Michelle Fleming grew up hearing stories about the ‘abandoned children’

By MICHELLE FLEMING

What happened at Tuam, at the Mother and Child Home run by the Bon Secours nuns, shocked everyone.

But for me, it feels personal – for my Granny Nora delivered many of those babies.

Michelle Fleming’s granny, Nora Burke, who was a midwife at the Tuam Mother and Child Home
I grew up hearing stories about these abandoned children, the ‘Home Babies’, with whom my mother Mary and her sister Eleanor played as children.

I think I was about 10 when my mother first told me about the Home Babies. She told me how she was in fifth class at the Mercy Convent when Sister Lawrence attempted to teach the girls the ‘facts of life’.

Puzzled by Sister Lawrence constantly prefacing every statement with ‘when you get married’, she shot up her hand.

‘No Sister, that can’t be right,’ she said. ‘What about the Home Babies, Sister? Their mammies and daddies aren’t married.’

The flustered nun accused my mother of being disruptive and sinful.

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IRELAND
Daily Mail (UK)

We need to dig ‘babies graves’: Ground Penetrating Radar reveals two ‘anomalies’ beneath Tuam Home site

By ALISON O’REILLY and NEIL MICHAEL

An expert survey of what is thought to be the burial site of 796 babies in Tuam has uncovered two areas of interest where anomalies in the soil indicate likely human activity beneath the surface.

The survey recommends further investigation and experts say if we are to find out anything more a dig would be necessary.

The Irish Mail on Sunday can also reveal that the Sisters of Bon Secours, who are at the centre of the scandal, had the remains of 12 members of the order exhumed and re-buried in a cemetery in Knock before they abandoned their base in Galway in 2001 – after selling property to the Western Health Board for a reported €4m.

Meanwhile, Government sources say that an inquiry into the scandal is inevitable and will probably be announced within the next few days.

The ground penetrating radar survey carried out by a top engineering company on behalf of the MoS revealed there are ‘two anomalies’ on the site at the centre of the Tuam babies scandal.

The specialised radar showed two areas at the site which are likely to be man-made or unnatural structures; one a box-like structure and another a wide area of up to 48 square metres which has been covered over and which contains items of denser material than the surrounding soil.

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IRELAND
RTE News

The Catholic Archbishop of Dublin, Dr Diarmuid Martin, has called for an independent commission of investigation with judicial powers into all mother-and-baby homes.

His comments come after reports of a mass grave of infants and children found in the grounds of a convent run by the Bon Secours order of nuns in Tuam, Co Galway.

The home operated from the 1920s to the 1960s.

The Government has established an initial inquiry, the results of which will determine the nature of a more thorough investigation.

In an interview with RTÉ’s This Week, the Archbishop said the issue of adoption should also be included in any inquiry.

Any investigation should be independent of Church and State, he said.

He said: “The indications are that if something happened in Tuam it probably happened in other mother-and-baby homes around the country.

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AUSTRALIA
The Canberra Times

June 9, 2014

David Ellery
Reporter for The Canberra Times.

Brother Alexis Turton, the former Provincial of the Marist Brothers who supported Brother Kostka Chute at his trial in 2008, is one of several senior members of the order who will give evidence at the royal commission hearing in Canberra that begins on Tuesday.

Three former students of Brother Kostka (aka William John Chute) from Marist College Canberra will also testify before the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse.

The hearings, set down for nine days, will also take evidence from former teachers from Canberra and Lismore and past and present high-ranking Catholic church and Marist Brothers officials.

Brother Alexis was the head of the Marist Brothers in 1993 when, after repeated complaints to the Marist College Canberra hierarchy from parents about sexual abuse, the decision was made to end Brother Kostka Chute’s teaching career.

Chute was transferred to Sydney and no public mention was ever made of the allegations that had prompted his departure. The matter was not referred to the police.

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AUSTRALIA
Herald Sun

EXCLUSIVE JANET FIFE-YEOMANS THE DAILY TELEGRAPH JUNE 09, 2014

THE 40-year cover-up by the hierarchy of the Marist Brothers, of one of the state’s most notorious paedophiles, is at the centre of the child sex abuse royal commission’s latest investigation.

The Catholic order moved Brother Kostka Chute around at least 12 schools across NSW, Canberra and Queensland until he was finally jailed for two years in 2009 after admitting to abusing six of the boys he was teaching.

That was only the tip of the iceberg, lawyer Jason Parkinson said yesterday.

Mr Parkinson represented 90 students from the Marist College Canberra who were victims of Brother Kostka and after initially denying they owned the school, the Marist Brothers has settled almost all of the claims in out of court ­settlements.

“This was the first case where the Australian public got to see the ugly side of the Catholic Church,” Mr Parkinson said. “It was also the first time so many people came forward on the one occasion to sue a school.”

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CHILE
Terra

[Summary: The story of Juan Carlos Cruz is painful. Abused by priest Fernando Karadima, his voice still breaks when he tries to tell what happened to him.]

La historia de Juan Carlos Cruz es a ratos dolorosa. Tanto, que a pesar de la fortaleza que intenta mostrar, su voz se quiebra y sus ojos reflejan los abusos de los que fue víctima, cuando formaba parte del séquito de jóvenes que mantenía el párroco de la iglesia de El Bosque, Fernando Karadima.

Un periodo de su vida, que por mucho que lo intenta, reconoce le ha costado superar, no sólo porque fue víctima de abusos sexuales y sicológicos, sino porque constantemente se siente revictimizado producto de la falta de apoyo recibida por parte de la jerarquía de la
Iglesia chilena, la que según dice, le ha cerrado las puertas y le ha dado la espalda.

Juan Carlos Cruz, es uno de los que se atrevió en 2010 a denunciar junto a Fernando Batlle, James Hamilton y José Murillo los abusos sufridos más de veinte años atrás en la parroquia del Bosque y ahora se atreve a revelar con más detalles en el libro “El fin de la inocencia. Mi testimonio”.

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PHILADELPHIA (PA)
Daily Journal

THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
First Posted: June 08, 2014

PHILADELPHIA — The Archdiocese of Philadelphia has reinstated a priest suspended after a scathing 2011 grand jury report into child sexual abuse.

The diocese said Sunday that Archbishop Charles Chaput decided Monsignor Joseph Logrip is suitable for ministry. It cited “unsubstantiated allegations that he sexually abused minors over 20 years ago.”

It says Logrip’s case is the last to be decided out of 26 priests put on leave after the grand jury report was unsealed.

Including Logrip, 11 were reinstated while 14 were removed from ministry. One died during the investigation and one, the Rev. Andrew McCormick, was charged.

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PHILADELPHIA (PA)
Philadelphia Inquirer

DYLAN PURCELL, INQUIRER STAFF WRITER
LAST UPDATED: Sunday, June 8, 2014

Archbishop Chaput has restored Monsignor Joseph L. Logrip to ministry after concluding that allegations that he sexually abused minors over two decades were unsubstantiated.

Logrip was among 26 priests placed on administrative leave following a February 2011 grand jury report on sexual abuse by Archdiocesan priests. His is the last case to be resolved by the Archdiocese.

Of the priests placed on leave, fourteen were found unsuitable to return to the ministry, ten were permitted to return. One died before the investigation concluded. The investigation resulted in the arrest of one priest.

Logrip, 67, served in parishes in Philadelphia, Norristown, Plymouth Meeting and most recently, Saint Stanislaus, Lansdale.

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AUSTRALIA
Brisbane Times

June 9, 2014

Ben Doherty
South Asia correspondent for Fairfax Media

George Pell, the Catholic Church’s new finance tsar, has tapped the manager of the Sydney archdiocese’s finances to help clean up the Vatican’s accounts, which have been plagued by corruption and cronyism scandals.

Cardinal Pell, former archbishop of Sydney and now Prefect of the Secretariat for the Economy in Vatican City, has appointed the archdiocese business manager, Danny Casey, to his office. The pair will work out of Saint John’s Tower in the Vatican, a building usually reserved for VIP guests or the Pope if his apartments are unavailable.

Mr Casey told priests in Sydney his office ”will be central to the establishment of new policies, systems and practices”.

Mr Casey’s abilities as a financial manager were revealed before the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse earlier this year when it held hearings on the Catholic Church’s handling of child sex abuse complaints.

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IRELAND
Sunday Independent

Ralph Riegel
Published 08/06/2014

ARCHBISHOP of Dublin Dr Diarmuid Martin has warned that only an independent inquiry led by a senior judicial figure can provide the answers required from Ireland’s escalating mother and baby home scandal.

The move will be confirmed once gardai have concluded preliminary investigations into claims 796 babies were buried in a septic tank near the Tuam, Co Galway home run by the Bon Secours nuns.

Justice Minister Frances Fitzgerald has appointed two senior gardai and they will immediately begin work examining the Tuam mass grave claims.

The operation of mother and baby homes from the 1920s to 1960s is regarded as the last of Ireland’s Church-linked scandals.

Dr Martin warned that it was vital for modern Irish society the issue be independently investigated with controversial issues such as secret adoptions and vaccine trials included.

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PENNSYLVANIA
The Morning Call

Paul Muschick, Of The Morning Call
1:43 p.m. EDT, June 8, 2014

Allegations of sexual abuse against a priest who served two parishes in Lansdale are unsubstantiated and he is suitable for ministry, the Archdiocese of Philadelphia announced Sunday.

Monsignor Joseph L. Logrip was among 26 priests placed on administrative leave following a 2011 report by a Philadelphia grand jury that investigated sexual abuse of minors by clergy and archdiocese employees. His case is the final one to be resolved.

Logrip had most-recently served the St. Mary Manor and St. Stanislaus parishes in Lansdale from 2010 to 2011. Announcements about the disposition of his case were made at those parishes this weekend and counselors were made available, the archdiocese said in a statement.

The district attorney’s office had declined to press criminal charges and Logrip was investigated by the archdiocese.

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PHILADELPHIA (PA)
Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Philadelphia

Archbishop Chaput makes final decision in last remaining case of priests placed on
administrative leave following the February 2011 Grand Jury Report

The Archdiocese of Philadelphia announced today that Archbishop Charles J. Chaput, O.F.M. Cap. has made a final decision in the last remaining case of priests placed on administrative leave following the February 2011 Grand Jury Report. While on administrative leave, priests are not permitted to exercise their public ministry, administer any of the Sacraments, or present themselves publicly as priests.

Archbishop Chaput has decided that Monsignor Joseph L. Logrip is suitable for ministry based on unsubstantiated allegations that he sexually abused minors over 20 years ago.

Announcements were made at Saint Stanislaus Parish and Saint Mary Manor, both in Lansdale, when Monsignor Logrip was placed on administrative leave in March of 2011. Follow up announcements were made at those locations this weekend regarding the final decision in this case. Counselors were also made available.

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PHILADELPHIA (PA)
CatholicPhilly

BY MATTHEW GAMBINO

Msgr. Joseph L. Logrip, whose case was the last to be resolved among the 26 priests placed on administrative leave following the 2011 Philadelphia Grand Jury report on clergy sexual abuse of minors, has been found suitable for ministry based on unsubstantiated allegations that he sexually abused minors over 20 years ago.

Archbishop Charles Chaput made the decision on the priest and it was announced by the Philadelphia Archdiocese in a statement June 8. Announcements about the decision were made at St. Stanislaus Parish and St. Mary Manor, both in Lansdale, this weekend and when Msgr. Logrip was placed on leave in March 2011.

All such priests were not permitted to exercise their public ministry, administer the sacraments or present themselves publicly as priests.

The archdiocese did not indicate when or in what capacity Msgr. Logrip, 67, will return to priestly ministry. Ordained in 1972, he served in the following assignments: St. Ignatius, Yardley (1972-1974); St. Rose of Lima, North Wales (1974-1975); Bishop Kenrick High School (1974-1983); Epiphany of Our Lord, Plymouth Meeting (1975-1981); St. Gabriel’s Hall (1981-1983); Archbishop Carroll High School (1983-1990); St. Francis of Assisi, Norristown (1990-1992); St. Monica, Philadelphia (1992-1994); Mater Dolorosa, Philadelphia (1994-2000); Immaculate Conception, Levittown (2000-2007); SS. Philip and James, Exton (2007-2008); Mother of Divine Grace, Philadelphia (2008-2010); Chaplain, St. Mary Manor (2010-2011) and St. Stanislaus, Lansdale (2010-2011).

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TEXAS/ARIZONA
Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests

For immediate release: Friday, June 06, 2014

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

An Arizona priest is facing a civil complaint over allegations that he abused a mentally disabled person. We are grateful to the brave victim for stepping forward and working to expose the truth.

The complaint also alleges that the Diocese of Tucson and the Diocese of El Paso were aware of the risk the priest posed and did nothing. We hope church officials come clean about what they knew about this dangerous priest.

[Courthouse News Service]

Fr. Richard Zamorano, a former teacher at Salpointe Catholic High School in Tucson, allegedly befriended the victim and then sexually assaulted him. We want church officials in Tucson and El Paso to come clean about everything they know about this priest. It is not enough to simply suspend him.

Bishop Gerald Kicanas of Tucson and Bishop Mark Seitz should visit every parish Zamorano worked and beg witnesses, whistleblowers, and victims to come forward and report to secular officials. They should post Zamorano’s name, photo, and work history on parish bulletins and websites.

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TEXAS
KTSM

EL PASO, TX (KTSM) — An El Paso priest is under fire and facing a civil complaint for allegedly sexually assaulting a mentally disabled man.

“He has not been in the Diocese of El Paso since 2002 and he will not be re-instated until this is resolved,” said El Paso Bishop Mark Seitz.

Father Richard Zamorano was ordained by the El Paso Diocese in 1993 and served as priest at San Elizario Parish, according to Bishop Seitz.

In 2002, he took a leave of absence to move to Tucson, Arizona and care for his mother.

“Around that time in 2002, when he left the Diocese, he adopted 2 boys from Mexico,” said Bishop Seitz.

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IRELAND
Irish Times

Sun, Jun 8, 2014

Breda O’Brien

In the film Calvary, there is a scene where two airport workers are waiting to load a coffin onto an aircraft. They are having a chat and one of them is leaning his elbows on the coffin, as if it were any old piece of freight.

A young French woman, who is in the appalling situation of having to transport her husband home in a coffin after a car crash, witnesses this as she waits to board the aircraft along with Fr James Lavelle, the central character in Calvary (played brilliantly by Brendan Gleeson.)

Without wishing to give away the plot, the casual disrespect and the disregard for the grief of the bereaved shown by the workers triggers an important turning point in the film.

We Irish pride ourselves on doing death well, on having healthy rituals that help both to make sense of grief and to build a sense of community.

It seems that it all depends on who you are. Yet again, we see that if you are small and powerless, even the most basic respect of having a marked grave may be denied you.

We have witnessed this already in the long struggle of the survivors of the Bethany Home for recognition.

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IRELAND
Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Dublin

The Archbishop of Dublin, Diarmuid Martin has urged those responsible for running any of the Mother and Baby homes in Ireland, or any other person having information about mass graves, to give that information to the authorities.

Archbishop Martin said, “The Gospel message is that authentic faith is measured by how we treat children who represent Jesus Christ.” He said the details emerging from Tuam, and perhaps elsewhere, were sickening.

Several months ago, Archbishop Martin asked the Dublin Diocesan Archivist to compile information in the archive concerning Mother and Baby homes in Dublin. Hundreds of documents have already been collated. The Archbishop has said he will share this information with any inquiry the government will establish. He expressed the hope that a full bodied inquiry will be set up, examining all aspects of life in the homes and crucially how adoptions were organised.

Over the past number of years Archbishop Martin has met with representative groups and some people who were born in Mother and Baby homes. He said the story of the homes was not simply one from another time or era, but the personal story of hundreds of men and women alive today, living here and abroad. He said every effort should be made, by all parties who were involved in setting up, running and overseeing these homes to ensure the mothers and children who were sent there, have an accurate account as possible of their own life stories.

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IRELAND
Irish Times

Tim O’Brien, Elaine Edwards

Sun, Jun 8, 2014

The Catholic archbishop of Dublin Diarmuid Martin has called for a properly constituted commission to examine issues raised by the discovery of a mass babies’ grave in Tuam, Co Galway – including the allegation that medical trials were carried out on children.

Archbishop Martin also said the commission should investigate whether similar burials took place at other mother and baby homes throughout the State.

He suggested the commission be independent of the Catholic Church and State agencies with a chairman possibly taken from the judicial profession. He suggested membership should include people such as Ian Elliott former chief executive officer of the National Board for Safeguarding Children in the Catholic Church in Ireland.

Gardaí have begun to examine the circumstances around the discovery of a large quantity of human remains at a site in Tuam, Co Galway beside a former mother-and-baby home run by the Bon Secours order between the 1920s and the 1960s.

Archbishop Martin said the indications were that “if something happened in Tuam it probably happened in other mother and baby homes around the country”.

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IRELAND
Sunday Independent

Maeve Sheehan and Niamh Horan
Published 08/06/2014

TWO senior gardai are to conduct a “fact-finding” mission into the deaths of 796 babies believed to be buried in a mass grave in Tuam, the Sunday Independent has learned.

The officers were appointed on Friday, on foot of a request by Justice Minister Frances Fitzgerald to gather the “facts” behind reports that almost 800 children were buried near a disused septic tank at a mother and babies home that was run by the Bon Secours nuns.

They have been asked to gather all surviving records, including death certificates and the ledgers kept by the mother and baby home until it closed in 1961. Crucially, the officers are also expected to carry out preliminary tests on the site of the suspected mass grave, which lies on the edge of a housing estate in the Galway town.

The exploratory inquiry marks the first step in an official Garda response to the revelations, as yet another religious scandal that was overlooked by Irish authorities for years hit the international headlines.

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IRELAND
Sunday Independent

Caroline Crawford
Published 08/06/2014

THE full extent of the horrendous conditions children were forced to live in at the Tuam mother-and-baby home, where up to 300 infants are buried, are revealed in an official inspector’s report obtained by the Sunday Independent.

The damning 1947 report, compiled after a visit to the home, paints a picture as grim as the harrowing accounts of starved children that emerged from Romanian orphanages after the fall of Ceausescu in the early 1990s.

It tells how children were suffering from malnutrition and in many instances were pot-bellied – a sign of starvation. The report records children as having wizened limbs, with many described as being ‘mentally defective’.

One child is described as ‘a miserable, emaciated child with a voracious appetite and no control over bodily functions’, while another is reported to be ’emaciated, with flesh hanging loosely on limbs’.

It also reveals that the home was crowded with 271 children and 61 mothers living there at the same time. This number exceeded the ‘desirable’ level of 243, according to the inspector.

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IRELAND
Daily Mail (UK)

‘I thought I’d seen it all. Then I found nuns’ secret grave for 800 babies’: By Philomena writer MARTIN SIXSMITH

SPECIAL REPORT BY MARTIN SIXSMITH
PUBLISHED: 7 June 2014

In nearly two decades as a foreign correspondent, I covered stories of mass graves in far-flung locations in Eastern Europe and Russia. The thought of them has remained lodged in my memory.

But never did I expect to be covering a mass grave from modern times on my own doorstep; I thought Western and Northern Europe was immune from such horrors.

Yet that is exactly what I came across in January this year in the small Irish town of Tuam in County Galway, an ugly place with its rundown streets and council estates.

On a grey, rainy afternoon, I was taken to a patch of land in the centre of one such estate. Surrounded by houses built in the 1970s, on the edge of a scruffy playground, I found a plaster statue of the Madonna on a pile of stones, incongruously sheltered by an old enamel bathtub. Beneath it were the bodies of nearly 800 babies.

The remains of a forbidding 8ft wall nearby were a clue to the place’s history. Until 1961 this had been the site of a Catholic religious community run by the Sisters of Bon Secours.

They had bought the workhouse in the 1920s and converted it into a home for unmarried mothers. For the next 36 years, the nuns took in thousands of women. In those days, sex outside marriage was proclaimed a mortal sin.

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PHILADELPHIA (PA)
Catholics4Change

JUNE 8, 2014

OFFICIAL PRESS RELEASE

The Archdiocese of Philadelphia announced today that Archbishop Charles J. Chaput, O.F.M. Cap. has made a final decision in the last remaining case of priests placed on administrative leave following the February 2011 Grand Jury Report.

While on administrative leave, priests are not permitted to exercise their public ministry, administer any of the Sacraments, or present themselves publicly as priests. Archbishop Chaput has decided that Monsignor Joseph L. Logrip is suitable for ministry based on unsubstantiated allegations that he sexually abused minors over 20 years ago.

Announcements were made at Saint Stanislaus Parish and Saint Mary Manor, both in Lansdale, when Monsignor Logrip was placed on administrative leave in March of 2011. Follow up announcements were made at those locations this weekend regarding the final decision in this case.

Counselors were also made available. Monsignor Logrip’s case followed the same procedure as all other cases of priests placed on administrative leave following the February 2011 Grand Jury Report. Prior to any investigation, the case was submitted to the appropriate local district attorney’s office. After the district attorney declined to press charges, investigations were conducted by the MultiDisciplinary Team and the Archdiocesan Office of Investigations.

The results of this process were submitted to the Archdiocesan Professional Responsibility Review Board (APRRB). The APRRB is comprised of twelve men and women, both Catholic and nonCatholic, with extensive professional backgrounds in the investigation and treatment of child sexual abuse. It functions as a confidential advisory committee to the Archbishop, which assesses allegations of sexual abuse as well as allegations of violations of The Standards of Ministerial Behavior and Boundaries. This body provided a recommendation as to suitability for ministry to the Archbishop, who made the final decision.

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IRELAND
Breaking News

Up to one-third of infants died in homes in Dublin, Tipp and Cork in 1933

Up to a third of infants died in mother and baby homes in Dublin, Tipperary and Cork in 1933.

Newly released archive material from the Dublin Archdiocese, show mortality rates in Tuam were either matched or exceeded, by homes elsewhere in the country.

Pelletstwon in Cabra, Sean Ross Abbey in Roscrea and Bessborough in Cork had death rates of up to one-third in 1933.

The General Registration Office is to carry out a trawl of death certificates in the hope of establishing the exact number of deaths in all seven mother and baby homes.

The GRO was the source used by historian and genealogist Catherine Corless, who revealed the fact that 796 babies died in Tuam.

Conor Mulvagh is a lecturer in Irish History in UCD, he published the latest findings in today’s Sunday Business Post.

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IRELAND
Irish Central

Cahir O’Doherty @randomirish June 06,2014

Christopher Quirin, 63, was born to a single mother in Ireland in 1950, a time when such a thing was considered an unspeakable disgrace. Back then Quirin’s mother was sent by her parents to the now notorious Sean Ross Abbey in Roscrea, Co. Tipperary, the same mothers and babies home as Philomena Lee. Lee is the woman whose shocking life-story inspired the recent Academy Award-nominated movie starring Judi Dench.

Lee and Quirin’s mother had children just two years apart, and Quirin says he imagines he must have played in the same rooms as Michael, Lee’s boy who was later adopted by the American couple Doc and Marge Hess.

Unlike Lee, however, after beginning his new life in America Quirin was left to piece together the details of the one he had left behind with no help from a dedicated senior journalist or the nuns at Sean Ross Abbey.

Because of the shame attached to their origins and the desire to prevent the birth mother from ever tracing her offspring at a later date, to this day adoption records have been closely guarded by the religious orders and the Irish state.

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IRELAND
Daily Mail (UK)

‘A miserable, emaciated child with a voracious appetite and no control over his bodily functions’: Documents which reveal the tragic story of a short life at St Mary’s

By ALISON O’REILLY
PUBLISHED: 7 June 2014

It is the harrowing certificate that shows how 16-month-old John Desmond Dolan was described as being a ‘congenital idiot’ at the time of his death in St Mary’s Mother and Baby home.

John is one of the 796 children whose remains were left in a mass grave on the grounds of St Mary’s, which was run by the Sisters of Bon Secours.

Documents given to the Irish Mail on Sunday by the boy’s sister reveal how he had a healthy birth and weighed 8lbs 9oz when he was born at the Tuam home on February 22, 1946.

His mother Bridget Dolan, a farmer’s daughter from Clonfert, Co. Galway, gave birth to him in the presence of a woman known as Bina Rabbitte.

There are no details given of his father. Records from the home show how a health inspection was carried out in April 1947 by a man known as Mr Humphreys.

Despite being born a healthy baby, a year later John was described as a ‘miserable emaciated child with a voracious appetite and no control over his bodily functions’.

Doctors referred to John as ‘probably mental defective’.

That year there was an outbreak of measles in the home, which John contracted.

He died on June 11, 1947. On his death certificate it showed how Ms Rabbitte was again present at the time of John’s death.

It is understood she had been born in the home and remained on, assisting the nuns with the children.

John’s cause of death was recorded as ‘congential idiot and measles’.

His sister said: ‘He was born healthy and yet he died less than two years later. What is a congenital idiot? How could anyone call a child that?

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