ABUSE TRACKER

PITTSBURGH (PA)
Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests

For immediate release: Thursday, June 19, 2014

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 person has disclosed having been molested at a Pittsburgh Catholic school and we’ve learned the name of another credibly accused child molesting Catholic cleric.

That means that in just three months, nine clerics have been publicly accused of sexually assaulting Pittsburgh kids.

[Tribune-Review]

We are deeply grateful to every single former North Catholic student who has reported having been hurt by Marianist clerics there. Now, we hope that others who saw, suspected or hid this wrongdoing will speak up too.

It’s possible that at least one or two of the school staff who committed or concealed crimes at North Catholic can be criminally charged, convicted and kept away from kids. It’s possible that they might also be sued in civil cases or punished by church officials.

But only if those who have been so deeply hurt contact police and prosecutors, not church figures. And it’s more likely only if those who knew of or suspected abuse also step forward.

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SCOTLAND
Daily Record

Jun 17, 2014 10:00 By James Moncur

PROFESSOR Alan Miller says it’s vital to find out what the state knew about abuse that went on at residential homes – particularly allegations of child deaths and the destruction of documents.

A LEADING human rights expert has called on the Scottish Government to launch a “forensic” inquiry into historical abuse in Scotland.

Professor Alan Miller, chairman of the Scottish Human Rights Commission, wants an independent ­investigation into crimes committed against children in the 1960s, 70s and 80s.

He believes it is vital to find out what the state knew about abuse that went on at residential homes – particularly allegations of child deaths and the destruction of documents and records.

Speaking to the Record on the eve of today’s publication of abuse victims’ ­consultation findings, Miller called for a “national, ­judge-led” inquiry.

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BALTIMORE (MD)
The Baltimore Sun

By Danae King, The Baltimore Sun
June 19, 2014

Baltimore Auxiliary Bishop Mitchell T. Rozanski will soon move to Springfield, Mass., to serve as bishop of that diocese, the Archdiocese of Baltimore announced Thursday.

Rozanski, 56, has been a priest and bishop in the Archdiocese of Baltimore for almost 30 years and served at several churches in the area.

“I will remain forever grateful for the privilege to have ministered as priest and bishop in the Archdiocese of Baltimore,” Rozanski said. “The formation and guidance that I have received from the dedicated archbishops, bishops, priests, religious men and women and laity of this wonderful church leave me humbled, yet hope-filled in answering the call to be Bishop of Springfield.”

Rozanski will be the ninth bishop of the Diocese of Springfield, succeeding Bishop Timothy A. McDonnell, and will start Aug. 12.

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NEW JERSEY
Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests

For immediate release: Thursday, June 19, 2014

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

Church lawyer says that priest is defrocked
Victims blast Myers for violating church policy
SNAP to Newark archdiocese: “Stop the secrecy”
Catholic officials let pedophile legally change his name
Then, they sent him from NJ to “unsuspecting families” in MO

A lawyer for the Newark archdiocese disclosed yesterday that a twice-convicted predator priest who pled guilty this week to sexually assaulting three Missouri boys has been formally defrocked by the Vatican.

A support group for clergy sex abuse victims is blasting Newark archdiocesan officials for keeping this news secret for almost two years and begging them to “aggressively seek out” others who may have “seen, suspected or suffered” the cleric’s crimes.

In an email to the director of SNAP, the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests, attorney Charles Carella of Roseland (973 994 1700, CMCarella@carellabyrne.com) said Fr. Carmen Sita (Jerry Howard) was permanently ousted from the priesthood in September of 2012 by then-Pope Benedict.

(Here’s a link to the actual defrocking

[SNAP]

“Catholic officials – in both New Jersey and Missouri – callously kept this fact hidden from parents, police, parishioners and the public, which essentially rubbed even more salt into the already-deep wounds of this serial predator’s victims and their families,” said David Clohessy of SNAP. “It would have been a real comfort to many victims and to many concerned Catholics to know that Fr. Howard was off the payroll and kicked out by the Vatican. But instead of sharing this information, two prelates – Archbishop John Myers and Bishop John Gaydos – hid it.”

SNAP also charges that the bishops’ secrecy “clearly violates the U.S. bishops formal and allegedly binding national abuse policy, which mandates ‘openness and transparency’ in clergy sex abuse cases.”

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CANADA
The Globe and Mail

GLORIA GALLOWAY
OTTAWA — The Globe and Mail
Published Thursday, Jun. 19 2014

The head of the process for compensating survivors of Canada’s aboriginal residential schools is going to court to ensure that their private testimonies of physical, sexual and emotional abuse are never made public.

Dan Shapiro, the chief adjudicator of the Independent Assessment Process (IAP), will ask a judge of the Ontario Superior Court to order that hundreds of thousands of documents related to the cases of native claimants be destroyed when the process is ended.

Mr. Shapiro will outline his arguments Thursday in Edmonton in a speech to a conference of privacy and access experts, a copy of which was obtained in advance by The Globe and Mail.

“The history and legacy of residential schools must never be forgotten. But the price of remembering must not be the betrayal of those who were abused as children in those schools,” Mr. Shapiro will tell the crowd. “Our goal is to ensure that the information claimants entrust to us in confidence is protected for all time.”

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NEW YORK
JTA

June 19, 2014

(JTA) — A rabbi who advocates against child sex abusers refused to accept an apology from a Hasidic man, the son of an accused abuser, who threw bleach in the rabbis’s face.

Rabbi Nuchem Rosenberg told Brooklyn state Supreme Court Judge Joseph Gubbay, who asked Meilech Schnitzler to make the apology in court on Wednesday, that he would not accept the apology because “you didn’t harm me. You harmed all the children I represent,” the New York Post reported.

In December 2012, Rosenberg on his blog for sexual abuse victims accused Schnitzler’s father of being a child sexual molester. As Rosenberg walked past Schnitzler’s Brooklyn fish market, Schnitzler ran toward him with a cup of bleach and threw it in his face. Rosenberg, of the same Williamsburg neighborhood in Brooklyn, was treated for burns on his face, around his eyes and in his left eye.

The incident came a day after Nechemya Weberman, a Satmar Hasidim leader, was convicted on 59 counts of sexual abuse of a then-18-year-old woman when she was between the ages of 12 and 15 and went to Weberman for counseling. Rosenberg supported and assisted the victim throughout the judicial process.

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MASSACHUSETTS
Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests

For immediate release: Thursday, June 19, 2014

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

We know little about Springfield’s new Catholic bishop and we wish him well. But we rarely see new bishops take stronger steps to protect kids, so we caution Springfield area parents and parishioners against being complacent about children’s safety.

[WWLP]

It’s always tempting to assume that the new prelate will automatically somehow be “better” than his predecessor when it comes to the church’s on-going clergy sex abuse and cover up crisis. But that’s rarely the case.

So we beg victims, witnesses and whistleblowers to continue reporting what they hear, see, know and suspect about clergy misdeeds and crimes to secular authorities, not church authorities.

That’s how to best safeguard the vulnerable – rely on the unbiased, independent professionals in law enforcement, not the biased, self-serving church officials in chancery offices.

There are 48 publicly accused Springfield child molesting Catholic clerics. We urge Bishop Rozanski to disclose their whereabouts and post their photos and work histories on the diocesan website. That’s the quickest and cheapest way he can help parents protect their kids – by providing facts about who and where these proven, admitted and credibly accused predators are now and have been.

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OHIO
Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests

For immediate release: Thursday, June 19, 2014

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

Youngstown Catholic officials are being sued by a day care center owner who married a convicted sex offender.

[Vindicator]

It’s ironic that in this case, Youngstown Catholic officials seemed to take a hard line against abuse perpetrated by a lay person when those same Catholic officials coddle their own predator priests.

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MASSACHUSETTS
Boston Globe

By Catalina Gaitan | GLOBE CORRESPONDENT JUNE 19, 2014

Pope Francis has appointed a new bishop in Springfield, according to the US Conference of Catholic Bishops.

Auxiliary Bishop Mitchell Rozanski, 55, of Baltimore will replace Bishop Timothy McDonnell, 76, who has been serving in that position since 2004, church officials said.

The announcement was made today by Archbishop Carlo Vigano in Washington.

Rozanski became an ordained priest for the Baltimore archdiocese in 1984 and was named auxiliary bishop of Baltimore in 2004, officials sai

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VATICAN CITY
Buenos Aires Herald

Pope Francis will not walk in a traditional religious procession through the streets of Rome tonight in order to save his strength for coming engagements, the Vatican said.

It said there was no reason for alarm over the health of the 77-year old Argentine pope, who is known to suffer from sciatica, or leg pain caused by a pinched nerve.

The procession of over a kilometer (0.7 miles) in which the pope holds up a gold monstrance – a case containing a communion host – marks the day that the Roman Catholic Church in Italy celebrates the feast of the Most Holy Body and Blood of Christ.

“The pope saw it opportune to not do the long route by foot … with a view towards his upcoming commitments,” the Vatican said, noting that he will travel to southern Italy on Saturday.

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MASSACHUSETTS
WWLP

By Anthony Fay
Published: June 19, 2014

SPRINGFIELD, Mass. (WWLP) – Baltimore Auxiliary Bishop Mitchell Thomas Rozanski is Pope Francis’s new choice to lead the Catholic Church in western Massachusetts. But who is this man who will soon be in charge of a diocese serving more than 230,000 Catholics?

Here’s what we know:

* He’s young. Rozanski is currently 55 years old, and will turn 56 in August. That makes him far younger than many American bishops. Bishop Timothy McDonnell, who he will be replacing, is 76 years old; one year past the mandatory retirement age of 75. Given his age, Rozanski could theoretically lead the Springfield Diocese for about 20 years.

*He’s from Maryland. Rozanski was born in Baltimore, attended schools in the Baltimore area, served as a priest in the Archdiocese of Baltimore, and was made an auxiliary bishop of the archdiocese in 2004.

* He’s focused on ministry to the Latino community. Bishop Rozanski was Vicar of Hispanics in the Archdiocese of Baltimore, and in that position had been vocal in support of laws benefiting immigrants.

* He’s proud of his heritage. Bishop Rozanski’s personal coat-of-arms includes the colors of the Polish Flag, and a picture of a rose, which is a play on the translation of his last name, which means “rose flower” in Polish.

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NEW JERSEY
Star-Ledger

By Star-Ledger Staff and Wire Reports
Follow on Twitter
on June 18, 2014

BOONVILLE, Mo. — A former Catholic priest has been sentenced to two concurrent 12-year sentences after admitting that he molested three teenage boys in the 1980s.

Gerald J. Howard, who also was known as Carmine Sita, admitted Tuesday that he forced two 14-year-olds and a 15-year-old boy into sex acts between May 1984 and September 1987 in Boonville. He also admitted that he gave his victims drugs and alcohol.

The Columbia Daily Tribune reports Howard was a priest at Saints Peter and Paul Catholic Church in Boonville.

More than 30 years ago, Sita was convicted of sexually assaulting a 17-year-old boy and also convicted of drug dealing while serving at St. Aloysius in Jersey City. He served there from 1976 to 1982.

In January 1983, he was sentenced in Hudson County to five years probation and ordered to undergo treatment. By August 1983, he joined SS Peter and Paul Church in Boonville after a short stay at a treatment center in New Mexico.

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AUSTRALIA
SBS

AAP

An inquiry’s heard the Marist brothers were advised a too-honest brother jailed for child sex charges should be kept “out of the legal arena” on his release.

A Church lawyer advised the Marist Brothers to keep a jailed pedophile brother out of the legal arena when he was released, because he was so honest he was likely to “dump on others”.

Brother Alexis Turton, the former head of the Marist Brothers Order in Australia, was copied into an email to the current head of the order Brother Jeffrey Crowe from a church lawyer in May, 2009.

Br Turton was under intense cross examination on day two of his evidence to a royal commission hearing into how the order handled allegations of sexual abuse against two brothers jailed for pedophilia.

The solicitor representing Damien De Marco, who was abused by John Chute (known as Brother Kostka), challenged Br Turton as to what knowledge he had of the abuse.

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OHIO
Vindicator

YOUNGSTOWN

The former owners of a child day-care center at St. Paul the Apostle Church in New Middletown have sued the church and church officials.

They allege the officials breached the center’s lease and wrongly evicted the center’s owners because the center’s administrator married a man who was convicted of an attempted sex offense against a minor.

Besides the church, defendants are the Rev. Stephen Popovich, church pastor, and Bishop George Murry of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Youngstown.

The civil lawsuit was filed in Mahoning County Common Pleas Court by Atty. David L. Engler on behalf of St. Paul’s Childcare Center and its former owners, Linda Davis, and her daughter, Nicole Davis Fairchild, both of Austintown.

The complaint, which demands a jury trial, seeks damages in excess of $75,000.

Father Popovich terminated the child-care center’s lease and barred Davis and her daughter from the premises Oct. 25, 2013, forcing the sale of the business “at a distressed cost,” and causing Davis Fairchild to lose her job as child-care administrator, the suit says.

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IRELAND
Amnesty International

The Irish government’s establishment of an independent Commission of Investigation into ‘mother and baby homes’ must result in an effective and comprehensive investigation that is fully compliant with Ireland’s human rights obligations, Amnesty International said today in a letter to Taoiseach (Prime Minister) Enda Kenny.

“Ireland’s obligation to ensure truth, justice and reparations for victims of past human rights abuses must be central to the work of this pending Commission of Investigation,” said John Dalhuisen, Europe and Central Asia Programme Director at Amnesty International.

“The commission must be mandated to investigate the causes of high infant mortality rates at ‘mother and baby’ homes around the country, as well as other reported concerns including alleged illegal adoption practices, vaccine trials conducted on children without consent, forced labour, and that women were denied adequate medical care.

“Confronting, acknowledging and dealing with this legacy of past human rights abuses are essential if Ireland is to move forward as a rights-respecting society.”

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IRELAND
Galway Advertiser

Ronnie O’Gorman Galway Advertiser, Thu, Jun 19, 2014

Most families, most adults, and most communities have secrets; past indiscretions they would rather forget about, and usually not very serious. But some of them can be very painful, and are kept hidden, in a sort of a Secrets Box, long after they need to be.

It took an artist like Patricia Burke Brogan, to prise open the heavy doors of the Magdalene Laundry, which had remained a sad, and neglected, community secret for generations. The marginalisation of unmarried mothers was so embedded in our psyche that we were afraid to look inside ourselves.

There were no whistleblowers in the Ireland of the early 1990s; yet Patricia deeply felt that the stories of the ‘Maggies’ had to be told. Not in a sensational headline-grabbing way, but in such a way that the lives of the women involved would be remembered as part of our shared humanity.*

Patricia, a former Mercy novice, who had worked as a supervisor in the laundry, originally wrote the story as a one-act play. Single-mothers, Cathy, Brigit, Mandy and Nellie-Nora, whose children are either dead, or have been taken away for adoption, or were enclosed in orphanages, were condemned to work in humiliating conditions in a laundry. The women are ‘disgraced and forgotten’ by the community outside the gates; while their lovers, the fathers of their children, are not held responsible. Having read the play, Fintan O’Toole, the literary editor and drama critic with The Irish Times, encouraged Patricia to enlarge the story into a full-length play, and send it to Irish theatre companies for production.

After several rejections, Punchbag Theatre Company, agreed to do it. Eclipsed opened in a converted garage near the Spanish Arch, on St Valentine’s Day, February 14 1992 (the irony of the date was not lost on Patricia). It was an immediate success. ** There were some objections, which probably helped its promotion. One evening people stood outside the theatre objecting that nuns were depicted in a bad light. Yet the crowds kept coming. People openly wept in the audience. It went on tour of Irish theatres receiving excellent reviews. But when Punchbag took the play to the Edinburgh Theatre festival, and it won the major Fringe award, it attracted the mother and father of all the publicity that you can imagine.

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SPRINGFIELD (MA)
WGGB

SPRINGFIELD (WGGB) – Springfield’s Catholic Diocese has a new Bishop this morning. Bishop Mitchell Thomas Rozanski of Maryland has been named the 9th Bishop of Springfield by Pope Francis.

Bishop Rozanski will succeed current Bishop Timothy McDonnell, who submitted his resignation 18 months ago.

The change was announced in Washington, D.C. by Archbishop Carlo Maria Vigano. Bishop Rozanski will be installed on Tuesday August 12 at St. Michael’s Cathedral in Springfield.

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MASSACHUSETTS
The Republican

By Conor Berry | cberry@repub.com
on June 19, 2014

SPRINGFIELD — Pope Francis on Thursday named Bishop Mitchell Thomas Rozanski, auxiliary bishop of the Archdiocese of Baltimore, to succeed retiring Bishop Timothy Anthony McDonnell as head of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Springfield.

Rozanski, 55, is the ninth bishop of the 144-year-old Springfield diocese, which spans all four Western Massachusetts counties and caters to the region’s roughly 230,000 Catholics spread over 81 parishes.

Rozanski’s appointment was simulatneously announced in Washington, D.C., by Archbishop Carlo Maria Vigano, apostolic nuncio to the United States, and by the Vatican Press Office. An installation date is scheduled for Aug. 12 at St. Michael’s Cathedral in Springfield.

After more than half a century as a priest, McDonnell submitted his letter of resignation almost 18 months ago, as required by church law, when he turned 75 on Dec. 23, 2012.

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SPRINGFIELD (MA)
Berkshire Eagle

SPRINGFIELD — An auxiliary bishop of the Archdiocese of Baltimore, Md., has been named the ninth bishop of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Springfield.

The Most Rev. Mitchell Thomas Rozanski will be installed as bishop on Tuesday, Aug. 12 at St. Michael’s Cathedral in Springfield, the diocese said in a statement. He will succeed the Most Rev. Timothy McDonnell, bishop of the Diocese of Springfield, who submitted his resignation on his 75th birthday – Dec. 23, 2012 – as required by canonical law.

Rozanski’s appointment by Pope Francis came early today, with the announcement made simultaneously by the Vatican Press Office and in Washington, DC by Archbishop Carlo Maria Vigano, apostolic nuncio to the United States.

McDonnell was appointed as bishop of Springfield on March 4, 2004 and was installed on April 1, 2004. He came to Springfield from the Archdiocese of New York, NY. He has indicated that he will retire in Western Massachusetts.

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SPRINGFIELD (MA)
iobserve

SPRINGFIELD — Pope Francis today named Bishop Mitchell Thomas Rozanski, currently an auxiliary bishop of the Archdiocese of Baltimore, as the Ninth Bishop of Springfield, Mass.

He will succeed Bishop Timothy A. McDonnell who submitted his letter of resignation almost 18 months ago, as required by church law, on his 75th birthday, Dec. 23, 2012.

Bishop McDonnell was appointed March 4, 2004 as bishop of Springfield and installed April 1, 2004. He came to Springfield from the Archdiocese of New York. He has indicated that he will retire here in western Massachusetts.

The acceptance of Bishop McDonnell’s resignation and the appointment of Bishop Rozanski were announced in Washington, D.C. by Archbishop Carlo Maria Vigano, apostolic nuncio to the United States and simultaneously by the Vatican Press Office. An installation date has been set for Tuesday August 12 at St. Michael’s Cathedral in Springfield.

He will be the first bishop for the Diocese of Springfield with Polish roots.

Bishop Rozanski will be introduced this morning at a 10 a.m. press conference scheduled for the Bishop John Marshall Center. The press conference will be available via live streaming on the diocesan website www.diospringfield.org and the diocesan news website www.iobserve.org.

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SPRINGFIELD (MA)
WWLP

By Lynn Barry
Published: June 19, 2014

SPRINGFIELD, Mass. (WWLP) -Pope Francis on Thursday named Bishop Mitchell Thomas Rozanski, currently an auxiliary bishop of the Archdiocese of Baltimore, Maryland as the Ninth Bishop of Springfield.

He will succeed Bishop Timothy Anthony McDonnell who submitted his letter of resignation almost 18 months ago, as required by Church law, on his 75th birthday, December 23, 2012.

Bishop McDonnell was appointed March 4, 2004 as Bishop of Springfield and installed April 1, 2004. He came to Springfield from the Archdiocese of New York, NY. He has indicated that he will retire in western Massachusetts.

The acceptance of Bishop McDonnell’s resignation and the appointment of Bishop Rozanski were announced in Washington, DC by Archbishop Carlo Maria Vigano, apostolic nuncio to the United States and simultaneously by the Vatican Press Office. An installation date has been set for Tuesday August 12 at St. Michael’s Cathedral in Springfield.

Bishop Rozanski will be introduced this morning at a 10am press conference scheduled for the Bishop John Marshall Center.

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VATICAN CITY
Vatican Information Service – Bolletino

[Summary: Pope Francis has accepted the resignation of Bishop Timothy Anthony McDonnell as bishop of the Springfrield, Mass., diocese under canon 401, 1, of the Code of Canon Law. The new bishop is Mitchell Thomas Rozanski, auxiliary bishop of the Baltimore, Md., diocese.]

Il Santo Padre Francesco ha accettato la rinuncia al governo pastorale della diocesi di Springfield in Massachusetts (U.S.A.), presentata da S.E. Mons. Timothy Anthony McDonnell, in conformità al can. 401 §1 del Codice di Diritto Canonico.

Il Papa ha nominato Vescovo di Springfield in Massachusetts (U.S.A.) S.E. Mons. Mitchell Thomas Rozanski, finora Vescovo titolare di Walla Walla ed Ausiliare dell’arcidiocesi di Baltimore (U.S.A.).

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IRELAND
Sunday World

PADDY MURRAY

t’s hard to believe. 769 babies dumped in a septic tank.

And do you know why it’s hard to believe? Because it’s not true. It’s made up. It’s fantasy.

Of course, there is going to be an inquiry and there probably should be.

And it should ask not just what role the nuns or others running mother and baby homes had in the dire conditions, but what role the State had and, indeed, what role was played by the families which clearly abandoned these young, pregnant and very often abused girls.

But if there is going to be an inquiry perhaps it should not start with utter gibberish dreamed up by English newspapers.

Right now, there is not a single shred of evidence that 769 babies were ‘dumped’ in a septic tank in Tuam.

Indeed, a respected historian pointed out this week that, whatever about the behaviour of the nuns, it was all but certain they didn’t “dump babies in septic tanks”.

Finbar McCormick, a professor of geography at Queen’s University Belfast, said: “The structure as described is much more likely to be a shaft burial vault, a common method of burial used in the recent past and still used today in many parts of Europe.”

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AUSTRALIA
Sydney Morning Herald

June 19, 2014

David Ellery
Reporter for The Canberra Times.

The Marist Brothers made no attempt to locate Gregory Sutton’s other victims after Canadian psychotherapists told them in 1990 he had possibly abused multiple children, a royal commission has heard.

Brother Alexis Turton, the then head of the order who has been accused of shipping Sutton out of the country on August 18, 1989, to foil a police investigation, is adamant he was aware of only one victim at the time.

“Certainly with today’s wisdom we would have done things differently,” he told Thursday’s hearing of the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse.

Another former Marist Brother, Denis Doherty, has previously told the commission that he told his superiors of concerns about Sutton decades before his crimes were exposed.
Advertisement

Mr Doherty’s lawyer, Timothy Kernaghan, put it to Brother Alexis on Thursday that he had committed a criminal act.

“Do you think today that your decisions of how to deal with the matter in August 1989 and in the times that followed amounted to you concealing the commission of a serious crime upon a child?” he asked.

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INDIANA
Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests

Victims blast church over 2 predator priests
They’re worried about where accused clerics are now
Bishop should visit every parish where the men worked
And he should beg “victims, witnesses & whistleblowers” to “speak up”
Group also wants diocese to post names of child molesting clerics on websites

WHAT
Holding signs and childhood photos at a sidewalk news conference, advocates for clergy sex abuse victims will blast church officials for their apparent inaction about two recently revealed predator priest. They will urge Ft. Wayne church officials to;
–reveal where two recently suspended predator priests are now,

–put them in remote treatment centers so kids area safer, and
–post the names of all credibly accused clerics.

The victims will also beg current and former church members and staff to contact independent sources (like therapists, police, prosecutors or their group) with any suspicions or information about clergy sex crimes and cover ups in the Ft. Wayne-South Bend diocese.

WHEN
Thursday, June 19, at 10:30 am

WHERE
Outside of the Fort Wayne Catholic diocese headquarters, 915 S. Clinton St (corner of Washington) in Fort Wayne, IN

WHO
Two members of a self help group called SNAP, the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests (SNAPnetwork.org)

WHY
Two Fort Wayne area Catholic priests were recently revealed to have credible child abuse allegations against them. They are Fr. Cornelius J. Ryan (of the Holy Cross order) and Fr. James F. Seculoff (of the Ft. Wayne-South Bend diocese cleric).

Fr. Ryan spent roughly twenty years working in Africa, where the alleged abuse took place.

[BishopAccountability.org]

In January, Fr. Seculoff was removed from his position as pastor of St. Patrick’s parish (260-744-1450, st.patrick.f.w@gmail.com), after an allegation of sexual abuse of a minor was found credible. Since then three more victims of his have come forward.

Church officials have said little or nothing about where the priests are now. SNAP believes parents, parishioners and the public deserve to know this, and that such transparency is mandated by a 2002 US bishops abuse policy. SNAP also says that the clerics belong in “remote, secure, independent treatment centers so that kids will be safer.”

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MISSOURI
Boonville Daily News

By Edward Lang, Managing Editor
Posted Jun. 18, 2014

Boonville

Gerald Howard plead guilty to three of the six current counts of forcible or attempted forcible sodomy against him Tuesday afternoon at the Cooper County Courthouse.

Howard was being held for charges of sexual misconduct against minors during the early to mid-1980s at Saints Peter and Paul Catholic Church in Boonville. Before coming to Boonville, he had already been in trouble for this sort of crime in Jersey City, New Jersey; therefore causing him to change his name from Carmine Sita to Gerald Howard.

During the hearing yesterday, Howard was asked repeatedly by Honorable Judge Robert Koffman if he understood the plea he was presenting to the court. He repeatedly said he did. The guilty plea was entered for counts one (forcible sodomy), five (forcible sodomy) and six (attempted forcible sodomy). Cooper County Prosecuting Attorney Doug Abele agreed to the plea. The motion was granted to dismiss all other charges.

Howard also waived his right to a trial and appeal with this plea, which he told Koffman, he understood.

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NORTHERN IRELAND
Derry Journal

A retired judge leading a public inquiry into historical child abuse at kids’ care homes in Derry has requested a one-year extension to his work.

Stormont’s first and deputy first ministers say Sir Anthony Hart made a persuasive and compelling case and they will recommend that the Executive agrees to lengthen the investigation.

The inquiry has already heard a series of allegations from former residents of two Derry care homes run by nuns.

St Joseph’s Boys’ Home, Termonbacca, and Nazareth House Children’s Home, at Bishop Street, were both run by the Sisters of Nazareth.

Former residents pf the Derry homes have told the inquiry that children were made to eat their own vomit and bathe in disinfectant.

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MASSACHUSETTS
The Republic

THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
June 18, 2014

BOSTON — The Massachusetts House has approved a bill to extend by more than 30 years the statute of limitations for victims of childhood sex abuse to file lawsuits against their alleged attackers or the institutions that employed them.

The measure passed Wednesday on a unanimous vote and now goes to the Senate.

Current state law only gives victims until age 21 to file civil actions against alleged abusers. The bill would raise that age up to 53.

The proposal would also increase from three years to seven years the period in which a lawsuit can be filed after the recovery of so-called repressed memories of childhood abuse.

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CALIFORNIA
San Gabriel Valley Tribune

By Ruby Gonzales, San Gabriel Valley Tribune
POSTED: 06/18/14

EL MONTE >> A church volunteer is accused of molesting five children at a local school and church.

On Wednesday, El Monte Police asked for the public’s help in finding other possible victims.

“We’ve exhausted our leads,” Lt Chris Williams said. ”We’re concerned there may be more (victims).”

Prosecutors charged 20-year-old Johnny Beserra of El Monte with three counts of sodomy by use of force, two counts continuous sexual abuse, two counts oral copulation of a person under 18, two counts of sodomy of a person under 18, child molesting, oral copulation of a person under 14, oral copulation or sexual penetration with a child 10 or younger, forcible oral copulation and lewd acts upon a child.

He pleaded not guilty to the charges at his May 28 arraignment, said Ricardo Santiago, a public information officer with the District Attorney’s Office.

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MASSACHUSETTS
MassLive

By State House News Service
on June 18, 2014

BOSTON — After years of trying to strike a compromise, the House voted unanimously on Wednesday to extend the statute of limitations for victims of child sexual assault to bring civil claims against their abusers.

The bill (H 4126) would allow victims of child sexual abuse to file civil lawsuits up until the time they turn 53 years old, an extra 35 years on top of what is currently allowed.

Rep. John Lawn, a Watertown Democrat who worked with victims, advocates and groups like the Catholic Church to reach the compromise, said the bill struck a balance between allowing victims the time to come to terms with their abuse while also respecting the rights of institutions that might become involved in lawsuits stemming from decades-old incidents.

Lawn got involved with the issue after a constituent came to him seeking assistance after she was raped, drugged and impregnated as a young teenager by her uncle, Lawn said the woman was in her 40s before she was fully ready to confront her abuser, but it was too late to seek justice.

The new statute of limitations would be applied retroactively to cases against the alleged perpetrator of the abuse, but not for institutions who may have “negligently supervised” the abuser. The bill would also extend from three years to seven years the limit for a civil lawsuit to be brought against either class of defendant from the time the victim “discovered or reasonably should have discovered that an emotional or psychological injury or condition was caused” by the sexual abuse.

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CALIFORNIA
CBS Los Angeles

[with video]

EL MONTE (CBSLA.com) —A 20-year-old Christian school volunteer has been accused of molesting at least five children.

Johnny Beserra III was arrested in late May at his home on more than a dozen counts of felony lewd acts with a child, including oral copulation and sodomy.

He pleaded not guilty to the charges and is being held on $9 million bail.

The incidents, which occurred at the United Pentecostal Church & El Monte Christian Academy, date back four years, police said.

“We have identified five victims,” El Monte police Lt. Christopher Williams said. “We’re concerned also because the victims are not specific to any sex or any age range. Everything from elementary school to junior high to high school.”

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CALIFORNIA
KTLA

[with video]

JUNE 18, 2014, BY MELISSA PAMER AND NERISSA KNIGHT

Investigators believe there may be additional child molestation victims of a 20-year-old El Monte man charged with 14 criminal counts, police said Wednesday.

Johnny Beserra III was arrested May 24 in connection with an investigation in which five alleged victims had been identified, according to a news release issued by the El Monte Police Department.

He was charged by the Los Angeles County District Attorney’s Office with 14 counts of lewd acts with a child, sodomy and oral copulation, according to police.

The alleged crimes took place at the United Pentecostal Church, where Beserra was a volunteer, or at El Monte Christian Academy, according to police Lt. Christopher Williams.

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AUSTRALIA
Courier-Mail

Mediation begins between Catholic Church and St Ann’s sex abuse victims seeking compensation

BEN HYDE THE ADVERTISER JUNE 19, 2014

OUT-OF-COURT negotiations have begun to settle compensation claims over the St Ann’s Special School sexual abuse case.

A father of one of the abuse victims, Peter Mitchell, said this morning that the Catholic Church had entered talks with the victims’ families who are seeking compensation.

“We’re grateful to Archbishop (Philip) Wilson that we’re entering mediation to settle our claims,” he said.

“But we can’t provide any further comment as we don’t want to jeopardise the mediation process.”

The mediation could end 12 years of legal battles over paedophile Brian Perkins’ molestation of 36 students at St Ann’s Special School more than 20 years ago.

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UNITED STATES
Associated Baptist Press

By Ken Camp

Stephanie Henry — a survivor of childhood sexual abuse — became a stripper when she saw her body as a “commodity” that could provide relief from financial desperation. Today, she devotes her life to combating human trafficking and attitudes that objectify girls and women.

“I am doing this so I can heal, too,” Henry recently told a group of professionals and volunteers who work with teenagers.

Trafficking treats girls and women as commodities when they are forced or coerced into renting out their bodies, often for diminishing returns the more “used” they are, she notes.

Henry, who leads the Activism for Empowerment Foundation, has worked to combat trafficking in Kenya, Nigeria and Cambodia. But she emphasizes trafficking occurs in American communities as well.

That places a heavy responsibility on the faith community, she said.

“Churches are where people often go for help. Every single solitary church should go through trafficking education,” she insists.

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PENNSYLVANIA
Tribune-Review

By Bobby Kerlik

Published: Wednesday, June 18, 2014, 11:06 p.m.

The sexual abuse scandal at Cardinal Wuerl North Catholic High School has widened to at least 22 alleged victims, as the Diocese of Pittsburgh said on Wednesday that three more have come forward.

The latest allegations implicate Marianist Brother William Kiefer, who was at the school from 1956 to 1962 and is now deceased, said diocese spokesman the Rev. Ron Lengwin. The number of accused Marianists is now nine, he said.

The oldest allegation dates to the 1940s, Lengwin has said.

“When we speak to (the victims) we let them know we’re willing to help, if we can,” Lengwin said. “Of course, we also turn it over to the Marianists and the District Attorney’s Office.”

Mike Manko, a spokesman for the Allegheny County DA, said the office has not received any information that would allow it to move forward with a prosecution.

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NEW YORK
New York Post

By Josh Saul

A Brooklyn judge ​forced an Orthodox Jewish man who threw bleach into the face of an anti-child abuse advocate to apologize in court Wednesday — but the advocate refused to forgive his attacker.

Meilich Schnitzler, 38, was sentenced to five years probation for the December 2012 bleach attack on ​Rabbi Nuchem Rosenberg in Williamsburg.

“The conduct is the kind that resonates viscerally. By the grace of God the rabbi wasn’t blinded,”​ Brooklyn Supreme Court Justice Joseph ​Gubbay said before ​ordering Schnitzler to make amends.

“I want to say I’m sorry for what I did and I regret what I did,” Schnitzler said.​ ​“Can you please forgive me?”

But Rosenberg, standing in the gallery, shook his head.

“No, because you didn’t harm me, you harmed the thousands of children I represent,” Rosenberg said.

Rosenberg – who criticized District Attorney Ken Thompson for the no-jail plea deal Schnitlzer received – said he was targeted for his child advocacy work.

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SCOTLAND
Herald Scotland

Gerry Braiden
Senior reporter

LAWYERS for the Catholic Church have been accused of moving to block court action by an alleged victim of a priest dismissed by the Vatican over sexual abuse allegations.

The Archdiocese of St Andrews and Edinburgh’s legal team has applied for a court hearing in an attempt to have the compensation case against Thomas Mullen time-barred from proceeding.

Although an out-of-court ­settlement remains likely, it is expected the lawyers will essentially use the preliminary hearing to try to argue that because the abuse took place some years ago they are unable to investigate the allegations against Mr Mullen.

However, representatives of his alleged victim have claimed that since the Vatican investigated and disciplined Mr Mullen, it was “odd” that similar inquiries could not take place in a civil action in Scotland.

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AUSTRALIA
Sydney Morning Herald

Marist Brother Kostka Chute allowed to teach for years after first sexual assault complaints, royal commission told

June 19, 2014

David Ellery
Reporter for The Canberra Times.

The Marist Brothers did not remove serial child molester Kostka Chute from teaching in Canberra until the ACT’s youth advocate, Brian McLeod, was alerted in December 1993.

This was despite a history of complaints about the now disgraced former Marist Brother at the Canberra college dating back to at least 1986, the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse has heard.

Chute first offended in 1959 and was given a canonical warning about admissions of repeated child sex abuse offences in 1968.

Former Canberra Marist Brothers student, Damian De Marco, first complained of abuse by Chute in 1986 when he was in Year 12. This was ignored, the commission heard.

He complained again in September 1993 after learning Chute, who had assaulted him in 1981, was still teaching at the school.

Then-headmaster, Brother Christopher Wade, referred the complaint to the head of the order, Brother Alexis Turton, who returned to the stand to give evidence at Thursday’s hearing.

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AUSTRALIA
Echo Netdaily

The former head of the Marist brothers in Australia has denied he made a hasty decision to put a prolific child sex abuser on a plane to Canada three days after it became known police were investigating him.

Brother Gregory Sutton subsequently pleaded guilty to abusing children in schools in NSW, Qld and the ACT and had taught at Trinity Catholic College in Lismore.

Although he knew Brother Sutton had confessed to molesting a boy who later committed suicide, Brother Alexis Turton, the order’s provincial in 1989, thought it best to get him therapy at a Canadian centre for priest sex offenders.

Br Turton denied repeatedly at a child sex abuse royal commission hearing in Canberra on Wednesday that he sent Sutton to the Southdown centre near Toronto because police had begun asking questions.

Sutton was extradited from Canada and jailed for 12 years in 1996 after pleading guilty to multiple charges of assaulting school children from 1975 to 1986.

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NORTHERN IRELAND
BBC News

The founder of a campaign group has said victims “cannot wait” for compensation after a request was made to extend the Historical Institutional Abuse (HIA) inquiry.

Margaret McGuckin, of Survivors and Victims of Institutional Abuse, said the inquiry should not be “prolonged”.

The first minister and deputy first minister are to recommend a one year extension to the NI Executive.

A decision is not expected until the autumn.

The extension request was made by Sir Anthony Hart, chairman of the HIA inquiry.

If the extension is granted, the HIA report may not be published until January 2017.

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ST. LOUIS (MO)
TheMediaReport

David Pierre

Media outlets – both secular and religious – have been falling over themselves to tout the dramatic front-page story in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch by Lilly Fowler that St. Louis Archbishop Robert J. Carlson testified in a recent deposition that he was unaware that the sexual abuse of a child was a crime.

As one might imagine, however, even a cursory look at the actual facts reveals that the entire story is just plain silly at best and malicious at worst.

The Archbishop is obviously well aware that sex abuse of a child is, and always has been, a crime, and to suggest otherwise simply demonstrates how deeply ingrained the mainstream media’s animus is against the Catholic Church and its leaders.

Fowler’s selective facts

Fowler’s story is based entirely on selected excerpts from a deposition that Archbishop Carlson recently sat for in a lawsuit by the hyperbolic contingency lawyer Jeff Anderson. And no doubt the story was another plant by Anderson to pump up the value of his lawsuit by using useful idiots in the media like Fowler to put public pressure on the Church to settle the case on favorable terms to Anderson.
However, even a cursory review of the actual deposition (pdf) clearly illustrates that Archbishop Carlson was not claiming that he did not know that the sexual abuse of a child was a crime.

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UNITED STATES
PopeCrimes& Vatican Evils.

Paris Arrow

OMG. Oh my God! Are we seeing a parallel universe… or are we seeing the one-and-only Vatican universe (like those timeless wealthy ancient pyramids of Egypt, there’s the Vatican Pyramid)? On June 17, the Vatican Insider published Pope Francis’s homily on Vatican Radio from his papal abode at Santa Marta proudly tooting that he “thundered again” (an Opus Dei Beast PR stunt word for their third Opus Dei Beast puppet pope creation). But what Pope Francis was really doing was describing – in papal pompous style – exactly what we have been saying about him as the world’s Biggest Thief of Mankind – read here http://pope-francis-con-christ.blogspot.ca/2014/02/hidden-heist-in-holy-see-biggest-heist.html via the secret Vatican Swiss Banks that hoard the wealth of the world’s 1% wealthiest, and the Vatican Concordats that usurp billions of dollars from poor countries already buried in debt. Pope Francis sums it best in this phrase: “The corruption of the powerful is paid by the poor. There are three types, three groups: the corrupt politician, corrupt businessman and the corrupt clergy. All three hurt the innocent, the poor, because it is the poor who pay for the festivities of the corrupt! The bill goes to them”.. Pope Francis is quite right because these three groups are the three sides of the Vatican Pyramid that runs the Vatican State and the secret Vatican Swiss Banks and the Vatican Concordats.

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ST. LOUIS (MO)
Waiting for Godot to Leave

Kevin O’Brien

In this case, she focuses on Archbishop Carlson, who shocked normal people (though, sadly, not enough Catholics) when he said, in a sworn deposition, that he wasn’t sure if he knew that child rape was a crime or not when he was 40 years old and auxiliary bishop of St. Paul, and who has since insisted that he misunderstood the question put to him, a claim that a simple reading of the relevant part of the deposition does not support.

I’ve tried to be fair to Archbishop Carlson, who is my archbishop, and who (ironically) was actually waving red flags about the abusive priest in question back in St. Paul, and who did more than most others in the chanceries at the time, though certainly not enough. That he should compound his bad testimony (which amounts, in Christian terms to bad “witness”) with a denial that should rather have been an apology, is a shame. That he should go so far as to attempt damage control by distributing a letter to every parish in the archdiocese (when he’s never done that here on any doctrinal or moral issue), repeating his rather far-fetched denial while boasting of his own value as a bishop, is sad.

Hamilton reminds her readers – rightly enough – that we are not to put our trust in princes or in the sons of men (Ps. 146:3), but in the Son of Man; that we are all sinners, including our bishops, and that we must therefore avoid a kind of clericalism that serves only to bring us down when our clergy lets us down (as they inevitably do).

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NEW YORK
Frum Follies

Breaking- Nuchem Rosenberg Curtailed By Judge in Lashing Out at DA for No-Jail Deal for His Bleach Assailant

Today (6/18/14) was the sentencing of Meilech Schnitzler for throwing bleach into Rabbi Nuchem Rosenberg’s face and almost blinding him. In return for his guilty plea, the office of the DA allowed Schnitzler off without a single day in jail.

Below is the prepared text of Rabbi Rosenberg’s Victim Impact Statement delivered this morning. Rabbi Rosenberg was not allowed to share the entire contents of this statement.

Judge Joseph Gubbay restricted some of the text relating to the issue of sex abuse and the impact of this attack and plea deal on the community. Judge Gubay missed the fact that this attack sent shock waves through the community of anti-abuse activists. It signaled that even as we won a conviction for Weberman, others would attack activists with impunity. The no-jail plea bargain confirmed that fear. I fully expect a celebration for Schnitzler in Williamsburg.

Your Honor,

Good Morning.

My legal name is Nathan Rosenberg but I am known in Hasidic Williamsburg as Rabbi Nuchem Rosenberg.

Defendant Meilech Schnitzler, with premeditation, threw a cup of bleach in my face and almost blinded me.

For over nine years I have publicly fought for protecting my community’s children from sexual abuse. I operate a Yiddish language hotline with recorded weekly lectures about how to prevent and prosecute child molestation. My hotline draws several thousand listeners each week from all over the world.

My assault was not a random event and its timing was not an accident. Schnitzler threw that cup of bleach into my face one day after the fifty-nine-count jury conviction of a Satmar Hasid, Rabbi Nechemya Weberman, for sexually assaulting a girl for two and half years, starting when she was twelve. I supported the victim who testified against Weberman, something that made me very unpopular in my Hasidic community.

In spite of what the defendant’s attorney [Israel Fried] claimed in an interview with the New York Times, his attack did not grow out of a heated exchange between me and Schnitzler.

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VATICAN CITY
The Blaze

Jun. 18, 2014 Billy Hallowell

Rumors over Pope Francis’ health are beginning to swirl after the Vatican released a dramatically curtailed list of summer appearances — a radical departure from the full event schedule the pontiff typically holds.

The amended event announcement, which was posted Monday on the Vatican’s official news portal, noted that all Wednesday general audiences will be suspended until August.

Morning mass at Domus Sanctae Marthae, Francis’ residence, has also been canceled for the summer and is scheduled to begin again in September.

Despite these changes, the Angelus devotional prayer is scheduled to continue every Sunday during the summer, aside from select dates on which Francis, who is 77 and only has one fully functional lung, is scheduled to travel.

According to the Daily Beast’s Barbie Latza Nadeau, the fact that people already had tickets to the July audiences made it seem as though the scheduling changes were spontaneous.

“Several Vatican insiders also have noted that the pope is gaining weight and breathing harder than usual, which has caused some of his close associates to warn him to slow down,” Nadeau wrote.

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VATICAN CITY
CNN

By Daniel Burke, CNN Belief Blog Editor

(CNN) A Vatican spokesman denied reports on Wednesday that Pope Francis is ill, saying that the curtailment of his public summer schedule is common for popes.

“There is no sickness whatsoever,” said the Rev. Thomas Rosica, a consultant to the Vatican press office. “If there was, we would be open about that and asking people to pray for him.”

Francis made his usual public appearance in St. Peter’s Square on Wednesday morning and is planning a trip to South Korea from August 13 to 18.

But the Pope will curtail public appearances in St. Peter’s Square during July, as he did last year, and will scale back his daily celebration of Masses at Casa Santa Marta for the summer.

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SOUTH CAROLINA
Aljazeera America

[with video]

by Claire Gordon

Raised in a conservative Mennonite home in rural Ohio, Katie Landry was a sheltered kid. She hadn’t even held hands with a boy when, at age 19, she says her supervisor at her summer job raped her.

Two years later, and desperate for help, she reported the abuse to the dean of students at her college.

“He goes, ‘Well, there’s always a sin under other sin. There’s a root sin,’” Landry remembers. “And he said, ‘We have to find the sin in your life that caused your rape.’ And I just ran.”

Landry ended up dropping out of college, and didn’t tell anyone else for five years.

Her college was Bob Jones University in Greenville, S.C., the flagship campus of American fundamentalism, which teaches a literal interpretation of the Bible and separation from the world. Last year, BJU hired a watchdog group to investigate how it may have failed victims of sexual abuse. The so-called “fortress of faith,” one of the most closed-off Christian colleges in America, was finally opening itself up.

In an America Tonight investigation, five former students detailed similar and scarring treatment at the hands of BJU faculty. They spoke of a larger culture that heaped on shame and pushed them to silence — one focused on purity and reputation, and insistent on unquestioning obedience. But most damaging was how, through the language of Scripture, victims say they were told that their sins had brought on their rapes, that their trauma meant they were fighting God and that healing came from forgiving their rapists.

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NORTHERN IRELAND
BBC News

The first minister and deputy first minister are to recommend a one-year extension to the Historical Institutional Abuse (HIA) inquiry.

Sir Anthony Hart, chairman of the inquiry, has requested the extension from Peter Robinson and Martin McGuinness.

The HIA inquiry is currently due to deliver its final report to the NI Executive in January 2016.

A decision on the request is not expected before the autumn.

OFMDFM said they would recommend the extension to the executive. If granted, the HIA inquiry report may not be published until January 2017.

Sir Anthony Hart said the request was made with “considerable reluctance” and only after “detailed consideration of the implications”.

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NEBRASKA
Wahoo Newspaper

Posted: Wednesday, June 18, 2014

By Kris Byars

WAHOO – Monday was moving day for Fr. Christopher Goodwin, as he celebrated his final mass at St. John Nepomucene Church in Weston that morning.

“It was interesting, actually, because I was expecting it to be a typical Monday morning mass with maybe 10 people in attendance,” he said. “But there were probably a few dozen people there who came to see me off. The support I’ve received from the parishioners has been overwhelming.”

Goodwin, who has served the Weston and Touhy parishes and has acted as the superintendent of St. John Nepomucene Grade School in Weston for the last four years is now moving on to a very different position.

“I’m going to be serving as an administrative secretary at the Vatican Embassy in Washington D.C.,” explained Goodwin.

Each week, there are literally hundreds of letters that pass between the more than 200 American Catholic Diocese and the Holy See in Rome. Goodwin will be one of about five priests who help to handle that correspondence and the administrative work that goes with it.

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NEW YORK
Failed Messiah

Anti-abuse activist Rabbi Nuchem Rosenberg asked the judge, Justice Joseph Gubbay (who called the attack “very disturbing” in one brief nod to Rosenberg’s suffering), to sentence Schnitzler to some jail time or, at the very least, to speak out against the very lenient plea deal. Gubbay did neither. Instead, he reportedly tried to get Rosenberg – who still suffers pain and discomfort every day from Schnitzler’s attack, which took place 18 months ago – to accept an “apology” from Schnitzler Gubbay asked Schnitzler to make. And when Rosenberg refused, Gubay lectured Rosenberg on the Jewish concept of forgivness.

A Day Of Shame In Brooklyn
Shmarya Rosenberg • FailedMessiah.com

Satmar hasid Meilech Schnitzler ran across a busy street and threw a cup of bleach in the face of Rabbi Nuchem Rosenberg. Rosenberg is a well-known anti-child-sex-abuse activist. Schnitzler damaged Rosenberg’s face and eye and almost blinded him.

Nevertheless, the attack – carried out 18 months ago because of Rosenberg’s activism and the Satmar hasidic movements’ vehement objection to it – took place in Brooklyn, a place where corruption and obstruction of justice is the norm.

And therefore Schnitzler, who was sentenced today after pleading guilty to “intent to cause physical injury with a weapon” – a Class D Felony – will serve no prison time for almost blinding Rosenberg, whose sight was saved by a non-Jewish store owner who witnessed the attack and ran to the stricken rabbi with clean water to help Rosenberg flush out his eyes.

Brooklyn District Attorney Kenneth Thompson defended this awful plea deal by claiming Rosenberg wasn’t really hurt and had no permanent damage. And this, Thompson pointed out, was Schnitzler’s first arrest.

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NEW YORK
New York Daily News

BY OREN YANIV
NEW YORK DAILY NEWS Published: Wednesday, June 18, 2014

A Brooklyn judge’s attempt to broker peace Wednesday between a rabbi who advocates against child sex abuse and a Hasid who threw bleach in his face resulted in bupkis.

Justice Joseph Gubbay asked Meilech Schnitzler to apologize to Rabbi Nuchem Rosenberg, before he got sentenced to five years’ probation for the December 2012 Clorex attack.

“I want to say sorry for what I did,” Schnitzler, 38, a Williamsburg fishmonger, said awkwardly. “Can you please forgive me?”

But the eccentric activist was having none of it.

“No,” he replied in Brooklyn Supreme Court, “because you didn’t harm me. You harmed all the children I represent.”

Outside the courtroom, Rosenberg, 64, said he “felt very awful” about the jurist’s unexpected olive branch.

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NEW YORK
Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests

For immediate release: Wednesday, June 18, 2014

Statement by Mary Caplan of New York City, SNAP Leader, the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests ( 917 439 4187, mcaplan682@aol.com )

We wish the man who threw a cup of bleach in an anti-abuse activist’s face would be jailed. The sentencing today of Meilech Schnitzler was a disappointment.

We share Rabbi Nuchem Rosenberg’s frustration with the outcome. A more harsh sentence would have done more to deter those who would assault abuse victims and their advocates.

[New York Daily News]

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KENTUCKY
Lex 18

A Wayne County minister who admitted to sexually abusing two girls will spend five years in prison.

Gerald Dishman was originally indicted on 13 counts of rape, but a deal was reached in which he received ten years – five of those, on probation.

He is accused of raping two young girls in the 1980’s and early 90’s.

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CANADA
Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests

For immediate release: Wednesday, June 18, 2014

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

A former Canadian orthodox archbishop, who was convicted of child sexual abuse, will receive his sentencing July 9. We are glad he will soon be sentenced and hope the judge goes with the harshest option.

[CBC News]

Archbishop Seraphim Storheim was accused of abusing two brothers in the 1980s and he was found guilty of abusing at least one of them. Supporters of Storheim have been rallying around him and hurting victims since the accusations against him were made public. We praise the prosecutors in this case who pointed out that Storheim’s supporters prove he has “good skill{s} in developing trust in others.”

Predators are often skilled at hiding their true nature. When parishioners and other supporters publically support child molesters they intimidate victims and hurt those who are already suffering in silence and self blame.

The Orthodox Church in America should take immediate action and defrock Storheim. Defrocking Archbishop Seraphim would send a clear message that child sexual abuse is not tolerated in the OCA.

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CANADA
Winnipeg Free Press

By: James Turner

A former high-ranking Orthodox archbishop should serve a year in jail for violating his position of trust and sexually molesting an altar boy in Winnipeg in the 1980s.

That’s the view of Manitoba prosecutors as Seraphim (Kenneth) Storheim, 68, appeared for sentencing in the Court of Queen’s Bench this morning.

“The hallmarks of this case are the abuse of trust, the abuse of a child and the historical nature,” Crown attorney Breta Passler told Justice Christopher Mainella.

The Crown is seeking the term of real jail in hopes of sending a firm message to the general public that any child-sexual abuse cases will be seriously punished.

That’s even when the allegations date back decades and the perpetrator is of otherwise good conduct.

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NEW YORK
Failed Messiah

Meilech Schnitzler, the Satmar hasid who threw a cup of bleach in face of anti-child-sex-abuse activist Rabbi Nuchem Rosenberg in Williamsburg, Brooklyn in December 2012, is being sentenced in a Brooklyn criminal court this morning.

[Rabbi Nuchem Rosenberg’s victim’s impact statement is posted in full at the bottom of this post]

Meilech Schnitzler, the Satmar hasid who threw a cup of bleach in face of anti-child-sex-abuse activist Rabbi Nuchem Rosenberg in Williamsburg, Brooklyn in December 2012, is being sentenced this morning in a Brooklyn court.

Schnitzler pleaded guilty earlier this year to one felony count of “intent to cause physical injury with a weapon” in a plea deal that is supposed to net Schnitzler – who ran across a busy street carrying the cup of bleach, ran up behind Rosenberg, tapped Rosenberg on the shoulder and threw the bleach in Rosenberg’s face when Rosenberg turned around – a no-jail sentence.

This is a travesty of justice that calls the ability of new Brooklyn DA Ken Thompson to do his job into serious question.

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PENNSYLVANIA
Philadelphia Inquirer

LAURA MCCRYSTAL, INQUIRER STAFF WRITER
LAST UPDATED: Wednesday, June 18, 2014

Five Catholic churches slated to close at the end of the month, together totaling more than 13,000 parishioners, have filed appeals with Archbishop Charles J. Chaput.

Though their chances of winning are minimal, and the process is costly and lengthy, some parishes already are preparing for a second step: sending their cases to Rome.

Any appeals will not delay parish mergers, set to take effect July 1. So, as they prepare to shut their doors, a few parishes are also hiring lawyers familiar with church law, holding meetings, and raising money.

By Tuesday’s deadline to file appeals with the archbishop, the archdiocese had received letters from the five parishes, in Montgomery, Delaware, and Bucks Counties. Church law allows Chaput 30 days to respond. Parishioners can then appeal to the Vatican.

“We’re ready,” said Ralph DiGuiseppe, a parishioner at St. Ann Church in Bristol Township, Bucks County. “The appeal process is being formulated now. So, if this request is turned down, we’ll file the appeal to Rome.”

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VATICAN CITY
National Catholic Reporter

Josephine McKenna Religion News Service | Jun. 18, 2014

VATICAN CITY Pope Francis’ abrupt decision to cancel his popular morning Mass and general audiences for the month of July has provoked fresh speculation about the health of the 77-year-old pontiff.

The Vatican has announced the pope will give no midweek general audiences in St Peter’s Square during July, and the intimate Mass he celebrates every day inside the chapel at the St. Martha residence will be suspended from July until September.

“There is no sickness whatsoever,” the Rev. Thomas Rosica, a consultant to the Vatican press office, said, according to CNN. “If there was, we would be open about that and asking people to pray for him.”

Francis will continue to lead the Angelus blessing at the Vatican every Sunday except when he travels to South Korea from August 13-18.

The pope has worked intensely since he was elected in March 2013 and has also made two demanding official visits, to Brazil last year and the Middle East last month. On Saturday (June 21), he is planning to go to Cassano All’Jonio, a mafia stronghold in the southern region of Calabria to pray for 3-year-old Nicola “Coco” Campolongo who was burned to death as he sat in a baby seat when his grandfather was shot dead in front of him.

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IRELAND
Irish Times

Sydney diocese behind senior Vatican appointment rejects McAleese claim of ‘old boys’ club’

Joe Humphreys

Wed, Jun 18, 2014

Claims by former president Mary McAleese that a recent senior appointment in the Vatican was evidence of an “old boys’ club” has been rejected by a spokeswoman for the Australian cardinal involved.

In a public interview at UCD on Monday, Ms McAleese criticised the way in which Cardinal George Pell, Australia’s highest ranking Catholic, had appointed the business manager of his archdiocese to a new financial oversight post in Rome.

“That job was not openly advertised,” she said. “I am making no point about the man’s qualifications; I understand he is exceptionally well qualified. That is not the point.

“Here was an opportunity to introduce a process in which people who had necessary qualifications could put themselves forward and we would get – through a transparent process – the best person for the job, who might have been a man, or a woman, it could have been somebody from Kurdistan or somebody from Ireland, or it could have been a gentleman from Sydney.

“But it just looks to me like the gravitational pull of old boys’ clubs is going to need more than mere words which say ‘we have to do something about it’.”

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CANADA
CBC News

A Manitoba judge has reserved his decision in sentencing a former Orthodox archbishop convicted of sexual assault against an altar boy in Winnipeg during the 1980s.

After listening to sentencing submissions on Wednesday, Court of Queen’s Bench Justice Christopher Mainella said he will provide a decision on July 9 in the case against Seraphim Kenneth Storheim, 68.

The Crown is seeking a 12-month jail sentence while the defence is calling for a conditional sentence with no jail time.

Storheim had been accused of sexually assaulting two pre-teen brothers in 1985. He had faced two counts — one for each boy.

Earlier this year, he was found guilty in one case but not the other.

A number of Storheim’s supporters were in the courtroom for Wednesday’s hearing, and some appeared upset by the Crown’s remarks, the CBC’s Nelly Gonzalez reported.

The Crown said Storheim may have many friends and admirers, but that shows he has a “good skill in developing trust in others.”

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CANADA
Winnipeg Sun

A judge has reserved sentencing in a high-profile sex abuse case involving a former archbishop.

Court of Queens justice Christopher Mainella said Wednesday he will deliver a sentence to Kenneth (Seraphim) Storheim on July 9 after the former archbishop in the Orthodox Church in America was convicted in January of sexually abusing a young altar boy in the ’80s.

The Crown is seeking a 12-month jail term, while the defence argued a conditional sentence is adequate.

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CANADA
CJOB

Sean Leslie
June 18, 2014

The judge has reserved a decision on sentencing for an orthodox archbishop who sexually assaulted an altar boy in Winnipeg nearly 30 years ago.

Prosecutors want one year of jail time for Seraphim Storheim. Two brothers accused him of the assault but he was only convicted of assaulting one of them.

During the trial, he denied touching the boys but admits they may have seen him naked during sleepovers.

The defence is asking for a conditional sentence that would allow Storheim to avoid jail time.

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CANADA
Metro News

By Steve Lambert
The Canadian Press

WINNIPEG – A former Orthodox priest facing possible jail time for molesting an altar boy expressed empathy Wednesday toward his victim.

“Having read the victim impact statement, I felt extreme sadness and pain in my heart that he was feeling those things,” Seraphim Kenneth Storheim said in a brief address at the end of his sentencing hearing.

Storheim also said he will pray for the victim “even more” from now on.

The 68-year-old former cleric was dressed in simple black clothing that contrasted with his long white beard. He sat quietly throughout the hearing before making his statement.

The Crown requested a 12-month jail sentence for Storheim, who was convicted in January of one count of sexual assault on a boy who was living and working with him in Winnipeg in 1985. The boy had been sent to live with Storheim by his family who lived in another community.

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UNITED STATES
News 24 (South Africa)

An extraordinary report has emerged from the US about a court case where a person who was abused by a Catholic priest as a child is claiming redress from the church.

Incredibly, St. Louis Archbishop Robert Carlson testified that he wasn’t sure whether it was illegal for priests to have sex with children while he served as chancellor of the St. Paul and Minneapolis archdiocese.

[Ring of Fire Radio]

Q. Archbishop, you knew it was a crime for an adult to engage in sex with a kid?
A. I’m not sure whether I knew it was a crime or not. I understand today it’s a crime.
Q. When did you first discern that it was a crime for an adult to engage in sex with a kid?
A. I don’t remember.
Q. When did you first discern that it was a crime for a priest to engage in sex with a kid who he had under his control?
A. I don’t remember that either.
Q. Do you have any doubt in your mind that you knew that in the ’70s?
A. I don’t remember if I did or didn’t.

How can any adult, let alone an archbishop, not know that it is wrong, that is is a crime, to have sex with children?

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MISSOURI
Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests

For immediate release: Wednesday, June 18, 2014

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

Missouri prosecutors apparently now have a chance to pursue charges against some child molesters even in cases that are decades old. We hope they’ll take advantage of this opportunity.

We urge Missouri prosecutors to look long and hard at the successful prosecution (which ended yesterday) of a serial predator priest in Cooper County for crimes he committed in the 1980s.

All too often, law enforcement officials quickly tell victims “You’re too late. The statute of limitations has run.” That’s not necessarily the case. Time and time again, over the last 25 years, we in SNAP have seen that “where there’s a will, there’s a way.” We’ve seen that if they are determined and creative, police and prosecutors can charge and convict older sex offenders.

That’s what the Cooper County prosecutor has done. Parents and child sex abuse victims across Missouri owe him a debt of gratitude.

We are not lawyers, but our understanding is that Fr. Jerry Howard is behind bars now for two basic reasons. First, Abele argued that Missouri’s statute of limitations stopped “ticking” when Fr. Howard left the state. And second, Abele argued that because lawmakers have repeatedly changed the statute of limitations, Fr. Howard’s crimes in the 1980s could still be prosecuted.

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CANADA
Metro News

WINNIPEG – The Crown is seeking a 12-month jail sentence for a former Orthodox priest who sexually assaulted an altar boy in Winnipeg.

Crown attorney Breta Passler told a sentencing hearing that Seraphim Kenneth Storheim abused a young person and betrayed a position of trust.

The defence is expected to ask that Storheim be spared any jail time.

Passler says the fact that Storheim, who is 68, has no criminal record is a mitigating factor.

The altar boy, now in his 30s, testified that he was made to fondle Storheim and Storheim touched him inappropriately as well.

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AUSTRALIA
Newcastle Herald

A FEELING of deja vu might be affecting some minds in the wake of the report of the NSW special commission into allegations surrounding child sex abuse cases in the Catholic Church.

The sense that the Church will not look squarely into the face of its past sins seems troublingly familiar, as does the impression it might have more empathy for its own men of the cloth than it does for its parishioners – even those who have been victims of abuse.

Perhaps these sensations are unfair. Perhaps they are mistaken. They are, however, becoming more widespread with each passing day.

These feelings are gaining traction and becoming widely discussed and shared because of a perception – originating chiefly among members of the Church itself – that the organisation’s response to the damning findings of the commission of inquiry are weak, inadequate, patronising and self-serving.

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AUSTRALIA
Newcastle Herald

By JOANNE McCARTHY June 18, 2014

A HUNTER group has called on Prime Minister Tony Abbott to show ‘‘Catholic leadership’’ after the Church’s response to an extraordinary broadside from former premier Barry O’Farrell over the Hunter’s damning history of child sexual abuse.

Mr O’Farrell accused Maitland-Newcastle Bishop Bill Wright of ‘‘spin’’, and slammed former bishop Michael Malone and Australian Bishops Conference general secretary Brian Lucas for their ‘‘criminal inaction’’ over Hunter paedophile priest Denis McAlinden, in a speech to NSW Parliament on Tuesday night.

It came after the tabling of the NSW Special Commission of Inquiry report into NSW Police and Catholic Church handling of allegations involving McAlinden and a second Hunter paedophile priest, Jim Fletcher.

The failure of Father Lucas and Bishop Malone to report McAlinden to police from 1993 was ‘‘inexcusable and unacceptable in anyone, but I find it unbelievable, abominable and, frankly, un-Christian when it is found amongst so-called ‘men of the cloth’,’’ Mr O’Farrell said.

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VATICAN CITY
The Tablet

17 June 2014 by Hannah Roberts in Rome

Pope Francis has revealed that he plans to follow in the footsteps of Pope Benedict XVI and retire when he is “no longer able to go on”.

Benedict “opened a door and created an institution” when he became the first pope in 600 years to step down last year, Francis said. In a wide-ranging interview with a Spanish newspaper he explained: “As we are living longer, we tend to reach an age where we cannot carry on. I will do the same as him, ask the Lord to send me a sign when I reach that time and tell me what to do and he will certainly tell me.”

Before he was elected Pope, he had already handed in his resignation as archbishop of Buenos Aires and picked out his retirement home: a foundation for elderly priests, he said.

The candid disclosures came during a hard-hitting interview with La Vanguardia newspaper, published in Barcelona, in which Francis also elaborated on his political views.

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VATICAN CITY
Yahoo! News

By Barbie Latza Nadeau
The Daily Beast

No one can argue that Pope Francis deserves a little break. Since taking office in March 2013, the 77-year-old Argentinian has been on the move almost nonstop greeting his adoring public and reforming the Vatican’s many troubled institutions.

But an announcement by the Vatican’s news service on Monday that the pope will be drastically curtailing his schedule by suspending his popular Wednesday audiences in July and skipping his daily Mass at the Casa Santa Marta, where he lives, has many in Rome wondering if the pope is really OK.

Many people already have tickets for the July audiences, which implies that the decision to suspend them was spontaneous, not preplanned. Several Vatican insiders also have noted that the pope is gaining weight and breathing harder than usual, which has caused some of his close associates to warn him to slow down. “Some in the Holy See are beginning to openly discuss concerns about Francis’ condition and asking if the Holy Father is overtaxing himself,” longtime Vatican correspondent Edward Pentin wrote after the surprising changes to the pope’s schedule.

The worries began last week, when the pope spontaneously canceled his Monday and Tuesday engagements after his historic trip to the Holy Land and Peace prayer with leaders from Israel and Palestine, sending the Vatican press corps in Rome into a minor moment of panic. This week’s announcement of his amended schedule has only added to the speculation that the pope’s health is suffering.

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CANADA
The Vanguard

By Eric Bourque

THE VANGUARD
www.thevanguard.ca

Five years after going public with his story of being sexually abused by a priest when he was a boy, Del Boudreau has put his story in a book, one he hopes will encourage others with a similar story to talk about it.

In the book, Deliver Us From Evil, Boudreau talks about growing up in Wedgeport and about the prominent role of the church in the community at that time.

Among other things, he recalls being chosen to be an altar boy – considered an honour at the time – and recounts how the abuse began.

He was about 10 years old when it started, he said, but it wasn’t until more than a half-century later, when he was 65, that he shared details of the abuse with his family before going public.

In early 2009 Boudreau saw a story in the Vanguard about two Wedgeport natives – including his younger brother – who said they had been abused when they were boys by Adolphe LeBlanc, the parish priest in Wedgeport for about a decade in the 1950s and 60s. After reading the article Boudreau contacted this newspaper and told his own story, saying he had been abused by the same priest. (Adolphe LeBlanc died in 1971.)

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AUSTRALIA
Newcastle Herald

FORMER NSW premier Barry O’Farrell has called for a high-ranking Catholic priest to be sacked from a key leadership position for not reporting child sexual abuse to police.

Mr O’Farrell in a speech to parliament on Tuesday night called for Father Brian Lucas, general secretary of the Catholic Bishops Conference, to be stood down.

The former leader made the comments while criticising the church’s response to Commissioner Margaret Cunneen’s damning report in late May into an alleged cover-up of child sexual abuse in the Catholic diocese of Maitland-Newcastle.

Father Lucas gave evidence on Tuesday at the royal commission into institutional responses to child sexual abuse in Canberra.

‘‘He is also a lawyer, which is a relevant fact because he, more than anyone involved in the sorry, squalid and scandalous saga, should have respected the law and reported illegal activities to police,’’ Mr O’Farrell said.

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IRELAND
irish Central

Sheila Langan @SheiLangan June 17,2014

The names, ages, and causes of death of all 796 children who died at St. Mary’s Home, in Tuam, Co. Galway from 1925 to 1960 have been published in full, below.

The list is long, and reading it is a horrifying, heartbreaking experience – though nowhere near as horrifying as the short lives of the children who died, or as heartbreaking as the sheer number of lost little lives.

When she began her research, Catherine Corless, the local historian who set out to uncover the truth about the bones buried at the site of the former Mother and Baby Home, had no idea the number of deaths would be that high.

As she told IrishCentral’s Cahir O’Doherty, she was simply looking for records – something neither the Order of the Bon Secours nuns, who ran the home, nor the Western Health Board, were able to help her with.

“Eventually I had the idea to contact the registry office in Galway. I remembered a law was enacted in 1932 to register every death in the country. My contact said give me a few weeks and I’ll let you know,” she recalled.

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NORTHERN IRELAND
UTV

Published Tuesday, 17 June 2014

A Belfast woman has told UTV how she has only now discovered that her brother, who was born at a mother and baby home 40 years ago, was buried in an unmarked mass grave at Milltown Cemetery.

Fionnuala McGoldrick was born in Marianville Mother and Baby Home in the south of the city, as was her older brother Paul, after her young unwed mother was sent there.

Paul died in another home from pneumonia seven months after he was born in August 1972.

Fionnuala, who was adopted into a new family, began the search to find her brother four years ago and a fortnight ago she obtained records that confirmed he was buried at the Bog Meadows on the edge of Milltown Cemetery in west Belfast.

The mass grave is believed to be the final resting place for so-called ‘limbo babies’ – unbaptised children denied a Christian burial.

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IRELAND
Irish Independent

Children’s Minister Charlie Flanagan has set-up a dedicated phone line and counselling service for former residents of mother and baby homes.

The move follows the establishment of a Commission of Investigation into the high-rate of infant mortality in Catholic Church run mother and baby homes.

There was widespread public outrage when it emerged almost 800 babies were allegedly buried in a mass grave beside a home in Tuam, Co Galway.

“There are a number of services available to those affected by the matters being considered in the context of mother and baby homes,” the minister said.

“In particular, I am conscious that there is a demand for information and my Department has worked with the HSE in relation to arrangements for the provision of information,” he added.

An update on the inquiry announced by the Minister today includes:

• An information & counselling service for former residents.

• New email address for submissions on Terms of Reference of Commission of Investigation (motherandbabyhomes@dcya.gov.ie).

• Dedicated telephone information line for people seeking information or details of support available.

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IRELAND
Journal

A NEW EMAIL address for submissions on the terms of reference for the Commission of Investigation into mother and baby homes has been launched.

Children’s Minister Charlie Flanagan announced this morning that anyone who wishes to make a submission should contact motherandbabyhomes@dcya.gov.ie.

Flanagan said that submissions could relate to the institutions or locations that should be considered for inclusion or the general matters that the commission should examine.

“The Government is anxious to have the Commission of Investigation established before the Dáil recess and has set a tight deadline. I am urging those who wish to make submissions to act without delay in availing of this opportunity to inform the considerations now underway.”

The Minister will meet with a number of advocacy groups and members of other political parties in the coming weeks to discuss the terms of reference.

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IRELAND
Breaking News

Connect Counselling is expanding its opening hours for the next six weeks to open seven days a week.

The move is being made in response to the recent public attention on the Tuam Babies revelations and subsequent plans for a Mother and Baby Homes Inquiry.

Connect offers a free telephone-based counselling service to victims of abuse, trauma or neglect at institutions.

It normally opens Wednesday to Sunday, but until the end of July it will operate from 6pm to 10pm seven nights a week.

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AUSTRALIA
Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse

18 June, 2014

People living in Central West New South Wales who experienced child sexual abuse while in the care of an institution are encouraged to share their story with the Royal Commission.

Royal Commission staff are in the region from today meeting with local service providers and community organisations who are working with survivors of child sexual abuse in an institution.

Royal Commission CEO Philip Reed said the three day visit was focused on the towns of Orange, Bathurst and Lithgow, with future visits to nearby communities planned.

“This is a national Royal Commission hearing stories of child sexual abuse in institutions from across Australia, including regional communities,” Mr Reed said.

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AUSTRALIA
Broken Rites

By a Broken Rites researcher (article updated 18 June 2014)

The Marist Brothers sent a paedophile Brother (Gregory Joseph Sutton) away from Australia immediately after learning that he was being investigated by police, the national child-abuse Royal Commission has been told.

Brother Greg Sutton (born 19 March 1951) was sent by the Marist headquarters (in Sydney) to teach primary school children, from the early 1970s until the late 1980s, in Catholic schools in Queensland, New South Wales and the Australian Capital Territory.

In June 2014, the Royal Commission began holding a two-weeks public hearing (Case Study 13) which includes the question of how the Marist Brothers administration responded (or failed to respond) to the crimes of Brother Gregory Sutton, plus another Marist (Brother John “Kostka” Chute).

The public hearing was told that Gregory Sutton was finally convicted in New South Wales in 1996 on 67 charges relating to his 15 of his NSW victims (but this NSW court could not deal with any of his Queensland or Canberra offences). He served 12 years of his 18-year NSW sentence behind bars and was released in 2008.

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AUSTRALIA
The Canberra Times

June 18, 2014

David Ellery
Reporter for The Canberra Times.

The second highest ranking member of the Marist Brothers would have needed specialist legal advice to determine if an adult touching a child on the genitals was a criminal offence in 1985.

Brother Alexis Turton, the vice-provincial of the order at the time, told Wednesday’s hearing of the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse, he would have also needed specialist advice to determine if it was criminal for an adult to make a child touch them on the genitals or to masturbate a child.

He did know what a paedophile was at the time and was aware sexual intercourse between an adult and a child was a criminal offence.

Brother Turton, who became the provincial of the order in 1989 and later served as its first professional standards director, said when he was made vice-provincial in 1983 he was not briefed on any sex offenders within the order.

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AUSTRALIA
Courier-Mail

Marist brother Alexis Turton told royal commission he wasn’t sure if touching children was a crime

A MARIST brother who held high positions in the order up to 2012 has said he would have had to get expert advice about whether intimately touching a child was a crime.

Alexis Turton who has been vice-provincial, then provincial and was until 2012 head of the orders’ professional standards office has told the Royal Commission into Institutional Handling of Child Sexual abuse, he knew sexual intercourse with a child was a crime in the 80s.

He was giving evidence in the case of former brother Gregory Sutton who was jailed in 1996 for 67 counts of sexual abuse against boys and girls in NSW, Queensland and the ACT.

Br Turton became involved in 1985, when as vice-provincial he visited St Carthage’s school in Lismore where the principal had raised concerns about Sutton’s behaviour with primary school girls. He told the commission he was not aware in 1985 that Sutton had a history of abuse at other schools, specifically at a primary school in far North Queensland where the principal had told the order Sutton was interfering with boys.

As far as he knew, there were no files the order had that would record his history.

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AUSTRALIA
The Canberra Times

Former Marist Brother provincial Alexis Turton denies shipping paedophile Greg Sutton to Canada to foil police investigation

June 18, 2014

David Ellery
Reporter for The Canberra Times.

Former Marist Brother provincial Alexis Turton has denied shipping a known paedophile out of the country on three days notice in order to foil a police investigation.

According to a memo presented in evidence to the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse, Brother Turton had learnt on August 13, 1989, that police were investigating claims Greg Sutton had molested students at St Thomas Moore Primary School in Sydney in 1984.
Sutton was put on a plane to a counselling centre in Canada on August 18.

Brother Turton did not deny he first spoke to the manager of the centre, known as Southdown, on August 15.

He denied writing the incriminating memo which refers to Sutton as ‘Bart’, but accepted that Bart was Sutton.

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IRELAND
Irish Times

Dr Sean Lucey

Wed, Jun 18, 2014

In 1925, the medical officer of the Kerry County Home recommended 22 of the institution’s “unmarried mothers” receive two extra eggs daily because they were “required to perform work of an objectionable nature”.

When the department of local government and public health inquired further, the religious matron of the home, Sr Gerard, described the women’s harsh work regimes.

She informed the department there were no paid ward maids and the women were “engaged from 12 to 14 hours” in labour every day. The institution housed up to 400 patients: the majority were elderly and those suffering from long-term chronic sickness, mental illness and intellectual disabilities, and in need of frequent care.

In turn, the “unmarried mothers” carried out much of the manual labour in the home including cleaning, washing and laundry. The matron highlighted that much of this work was “so filthy and unhealthy” it was “almost inhuman” – particularly as the institution had no laundry machine and many of the patients were incontinent – and that some of the women were “almost physical wrecks”.

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IRELAND
Irish Times

Wed, Jun 18, 2014

STEVEN CARROLL

Almost 80 per cent of the 796 children who died in the Bon Secours mother and baby home in Tuam did not live to see their first birthday.

Figures provided by the General Register Office, via the Department of Social Protection, show measles, whooping cough and influenza were some of the most common causes of death among the children who passed away in the Co Galway home between 1925 and 1961.

Candles are lit during a march from the Department of Children and Youth Affairs, Mespil Road to the Dáil, in solidarity with the babies and mothers from Tuam and all other homes. Photograph: Colin KeeganCounty homes took harsh toll on ‘unmarried mothers’

The children who died in the home did so at an average age of about 7.7 months. Some 126 of them did not live for more than one month. Some 630 of the 796 (79.1 per cent) did not make it to their first birthday.

The records show that Kathleen Cloran, who passed away on March 27th, 1932, had the longest life of any of the 796. She lived for nine and a half years before succumbing to what the records cite as “ulceration of larynx”.

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IRELAND
Irish Times

Kathy Sheridan

Wed, Jun 18, 2014

A visit from the sincerely unloved parish priest was the last thing we needed after a hellish winter’s night holding a bellowing, colicky newborn by her armpits to quell the pain. I cowered nearby while my husband diverted him. But the sonorous voice travelled over several rooms: “There’s nothing as evil as an evil woman,” he boomed, about a case that was making the papers at the time.

His next visit was to acknowledge the birth of a second girl-child. In the bafflingly long, uncomfortable silence, he peeled an orange before heading for the door, signing off with a prayerful: “Ah shur mebbe it’ll be a little boy the next time.”

Yes, I have baggage where the institutional church is concerned. Most of us do, back through multiple generations. Vile misogyny is only the half of it. But as the media gallops away on another Dan Brown- style Angels and Demons blockbuster, it is all starting to sound a little too convenient.

When the kneejerk response to honest reporters or objective historians is a snorted “the cover-up begins”; when it requires real bravery to mildly suggest that perhaps critics might look at historical context, it starts to look a lot like bullying. To see this directed at Irish Times journalists – usually unfairly cast as the cheerleaders of the anti-church regiments – is almost amusing. Is it possible to ask for reflection without risking condemnation as a fellow-traveller?

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AUSTRALIA
Sky News

The former head of the Marist brothers in Australia has denied he made a hasty decision to put a prolific child sex abuser on a plane to Canada three days after it became known police were investigating him.

Although he knew the brother had confessed to molesting a boy who later committed suicide, Brother Alexis Turton, the order’s provincial in 1989, thought it best to get Gregory Sutton therapy at a Canadian centre for priest sex offenders.

He denied repeatedly at a child sex abuse royal commission hearing in Canberra on Wednesday that he sent Sutton to the Southdown centre near Toronto because police had begun asking questions.

Sutton was extradited from Canada and jailed for 12 years in 1996 after pleading guilty to multiple charges of assaulting children in schools in NSW, ACT and Queensland from 1975 to 1986.

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CANADA
CTV News

The Canadian Press
Published Wednesday, June 18, 2014

WINNIPEG — A former high-ranking Orthodox priest convicted of sexually assaulting an altar boy in Winnipeg faces a sentencing hearing today.

Seraphim Kenneth Storheim was found guilty earlier this year of assaulting a boy who lived and worked with him in 1985.

At the time, Storheim was a priest for the Orthodox Church in America, and he would later rise to become archbishop — the church’s top cleric in Canada.

The former altar boy, now in his 30s, testified Storheim made him fondle him and that the cleric inappropriately touched the boy as well.

Storheim’s lawyer has indicated he may ask that Storheim be spared jail time, in part because the cleric has no criminal record.

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NEBRASKA
National Catholic Reporter

Robert McClory | Jun. 18, 2014

CRISIS OF CATHOLIC AUTHORITY: FAITH AND POWER IN THE DIOCESE OF LINCOLN, NEBRASKA
By Rachel Pokora
Published by Paragon House, $19.95

Crisis of Catholic Authority is a kind of ecclesiastical horror story. It relates what can happen when an autocratic hierarch chooses to exercise his supreme, punitive power over some of his subjects. No one on this earth will restrain him, neither the priests of his diocese, nor his fellow bishops in the U.S., nor the high authorities in Rome, not even the pope himself. And like some ancient gothic curse, this awesome penalty has acquired a life of its own, continuing in full force for 18 years, outliving the resignation of the bishop who pronounced it, still in effect to this day and into the foreseeable future.

The bishop is Fabian Bruskewitz, who ruled the diocese of Lincoln, Neb., from 1992 to 2012. Those immediately affected by excommunication in 1996 were some 45 members of the Nebraska chapter of the Call to Action organization who happened to live in the Lincoln diocese. They were given one month to resign from the accursed group, at which time the penalty would automatically go into effect. Also presumably affected were any other Call to Action members who would move to Lincoln in the future without renouncing their membership.

It should be noted that no other U.S. bishop has followed Bruskewitz’s lead in all these years, though the bishop himself has become a kind of folk hero to supporters of Mother Angelica’s EWTN television station and other far-right conservative Catholic organizations.

Author Rachel Pokora narrates the story clearly, without rancor or bitterness. She is a professor of communications at Nebraska Wesleyan University who moved to Lincoln after Bruskewitz struck. She chose to join CTA’s Nebraska chapter after experiencing the rigidity and extreme conservatism that marked parish life in the diocese, and she later served for several years as the chapter’s president.

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PARAGUAY
ABC Color

[Summary: The Vatican has been asked to suspended from ministry priest Carolos Urrutigoity of the Diudad del Este diocese who has been accused of pedophilia.. Excatequista Javier Miranda has forwarded Information on the cases has been sent to the Vatican and to the public ministry so that each can act according to their functions.]

Las informaciones sobre el caso han llegado tanto al Vaticano como al Ministerio Público, de tal manera que cada uno actúe conforme a su funciones, comentó a ABC Color el excatequista Javier Miranda, quien remitió la carta a la Santa Sede.

Miranda contó que hace algunos días, pidió nuevamente intervención del Vaticano en la Diócesis de Ciudad del Este. Además, se solicitó que tanto el titular de la diócesis, Liveres, y el cura argentino Carlos Urrutigoity, sean suspendidos.

El primero, por proteger al religioso, quien arrastra desde hace décadas y por diferentes países, denuncias de abuso sexual y pedofilia.

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OHIO
Vindicator

By LINDA M. LINONIS
linonis@vindy.com

YOUNGSTOWN

On the day two appointments drew objections by the Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests, Bishop George V. Murry named someone to oversee child protection in the Youngstown Diocese.

Judy Jones, Midwest associate director of SNAP, along with Jerry Arnal, SNAP Youngstown leader, and Steven Spaner, SNAP Australia coordinator, talked to the media Tuesday afternoon near the diocesan office at 144 W. Wood St.

SNAP criticized the appointments of Monsignor John Zuraw as chancellor, replacing Nancy Yuhasz, who is retiring; and Joseph Kenneally, who was principal of John F. Kennedy High School Lower Campus in Warren, to principal of the high school.

Jones claimed Monsignor Zuraw, director of the Permanent Diaconate program in the diocese, had to know about allegations of sexual abuse against a teacher who became a deacon and previously was at Cardinal Mooney High School. Arnal asserted last August he had been abused by this deacon, who has since left the school. SNAP also said another person has accused the deacon of abuse.

Jones said Monsignor Zuraw, in the role of chancellor, should not be the one who oversees the diocese’s Child Protection Policy.

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AUSTRALIA
Central Queensland News

Rae Wilson | 18th Jun 2014

THE final submissions on child sexual abuse at a boy’s home at Riverview will begin on Monday.

The Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse will hear oral submissions in Sydney related to the Salvation Army case studies heard in January.

The commission is investigating child sexual abuse at various homes, including the Riverview Training Farm – formerly known as the Endeavour Training Farm.

It is also looking at movement of officers and staff accused of or found to have engaged in child sexual abuse between the homes.

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IRELAND
Evening Echo

WEDNESDAY, JUNE 18, 2014

A CAMPAIGN is under way to find out who is buried in an unmarked grave next to one of Cork city’s former Magdalene laundries.

The campaign, by a group of survivors of the Good Shepherd Magdalene Laundry, is also seeking the development of a memorial park at the cemetery adjoining the Good Shepherd convent in Sundays Well.

Maureen Considine, who is working with the group of survivors on the issue, said one grave in the tiny cemetery adjoining the laundry has the names of 30 women who had been sent to work there. But a second grave on the site has no gravestone and there is no indication who is buried there.

She said the site was owned by Cork City Council and she had contacted each of the councillors to get their support for a project to have those buried on the site identified and the creation of a memorial park at the cemetery.

She said: “This project was born out of the frustration of many Magdalene survivors who have not been able to visit the Magdalene grave which is located behind Cork City Gaol and adjacent to the site of the former Good Shepherd Convent, laundry and orphanage.

‘‘The area known as ‘the gym’ is adjacent to the grave. and is directly behind the Cork City Gaol. Currently the site can only be accessed via the steep embankment behind the College View housing estate and the grave cannot be accessed at all due to the high walls and locked gates surrounding it.”

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AUSTRALIA
news.com.au

PARENTS have become so anxious about their children being molested or abducted they could be making it easier for sex offenders to strike.

That is the fear of some child safety advocates who are worried about ultra-protective parents and caregivers, and urging them to think carefully about the messages they are sending to their children.

The Royal Commission into child sexual abuse, and crimes like the murder of Queensland 13-year-old Daniel Morcombe, means there has never been more attention on paedophiles and child sex offenders in our community.

Everyone is looking over their shoulders and it seems no one is above suspicion — statistics show many offenders are the people closest to children, such as neighbours or a family member or friend.

But too much paranoia that can counter what is really needed to keep children protected and informed.

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AUSTRALIA
ABC News

A senior Catholic Marist Brother said it never occurred to him that kissing and cuddling children in a locked room amounted to sexual abuse.

Brother Anthony Hunt has given evidence at the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse in Canberra.

He was the deputy principal of a school at Lismore in northern New South Wales during the 1980s and was also in charge of the the local Marist Brothers Community.

The community included the now convicted paedophile Brother Gregory Sutton.

Brother Hunt said he received allegations of inappropriate behaviour by Brother Sutton during the 1980s but did not report them, in part, because he did not think the sexual assault of children was a crime.

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AUSTRALIA
Sydney Morning Herald

June 17, 2014

John Warhurst

We are going through very dark times indeed, observing the dark side of too many institutions and individuals on a regular basis. It is no exaggeration to say that almost no institution in Australian society, public or private, left or right, big or small has been left untouched.

My focus is the current major inquiries into aspects of Australian life by royal commissions and/or the Australian Broadcasting Corporation. The list is a long one, including five major subjects of investigation. Each of the inquiries is broad. Most have called numerous witnesses to public hearings. No final reports have yet been issued but the preliminary findings and the content of public hearings all point towards damning conclusions.

The Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse is currently sitting in Canberra. Previous inquiries have been held in Melbourne and Newcastle. Its focus has been on the Marist Brothers in particular and the Catholic Church in general. But previous hearings have focussed on the shortcomings of government-run institutions as well as other churches. There have been hearings on the Salvation Army, the Scouts and the YMCA among other organisations. Police and the legal profession have also been implicated. Half or more of the Australian community has an association and/or identification with these institutions.

The NSW Independent Commission against Corruption has been sitting in Sydney to examine a number of cases involving criminal and/or unethical behaviour in public life. It has implicated both sides of major party politics, probably more so the previous state Labor government but Liberals, too. Several former ministers have been implicated in large-scale corruption and many others, including MPs, lobbyists, fund-raisers and party officials have been condemned for their association with dubious if not criminal behaviour. A dark underside to public life has been revealed.

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AUSTRALIA
Daily Mail (UK)

Second church official admits he didn’t know that touching a child ‘intimately’ was a crime just a day after fellow brother said he wasn’t aware paedophilia was illega

By SARAH DEAN

A second Marist church official, who held high positions in the order up to 2012, has said he didn’t know touching a child ‘intimately’ was a crime and would need to get legal advice to find out.

Alexis Turton, who was until 2012 head of the orders’ professional standards office, has told the Royal Commission into Institutional Handling of Child Sexual abuse, he only knew sexual intercourse with a child was a crime in the 80s.

He was giving evidence in the case of former brother Gregory Sutton who was jailed in 1996 for 67 counts of sexual abuse against boys and girls in NSW, Queensland and the ACT.

On Wednesday, it was also revealed that three days after it became known that police were investigating Sutton, Turton put the paedophile on a plane to Canada.

Turton denied repeatedly that he knew police were involved when he sent Sutton for ‘intensive therapy’ to the Southdown clinic in Canada.

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AUSTRALIA
ABC News

[with video]

Royal commission into child sexual abuse: Former Marist Brothers provincial denies shipping paedophile overseas to avoid police investigation

By Ewan Gilbert

Damning evidence suggesting the Catholic Church was complicit in allowing a serial paedophile to flee the country and avoid arrest has been shown to the royal commission in Canberra.

Brother Gregory Sutton was extradited from the United States in 1996 to face 67 counts of child sexual abuse.

But today the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse heard Brother Sutton was “urgently” sent to Canada six years earlier for “therapy”.

Under cross-examination, the head of the Catholic Marist Brothers at the time, Brother Alexis Turton, was repeatedly forced to deny that the decision was made to thwart a police investigation and avoid sinking the church into scandal.

“I will ask you again, did you understand in or about 13 August 1989 that there was a police investigation into Brother Gregory Sutton?” counsel assisting Simeon Beckett asked.

“I don’t recall that, no,” Brother Turton replied.

But Brother Turton was shown a number of documents and reports suggesting that he was aware of trouble with Brother Sutton before the decision was made to send him overseas.

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AUSTRALIA
Echo Netdaily

A senior Catholic official who was found to be protecting the church from legal action by not taking notes in interviews with alleged sex abusers has defended his actions.

Father Brian Lucas, the general secretary of the Australian Catholic Bishops Conference told the child abuse royal commission he could not remember a meeting in 1993 with child sex abuser John Chute and the Australian provincial of the Marist Brothers, Alexis Turton.

Fr Lucas, a lawyer, said he accepted the meeting had taken place but, as was his practice, he had not taken notes.

The commission is looking at how the Marist Brothers handled accusations against two men later jailed for multiple child sex abuse offences – Chute and Gregory Sutton.

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AUSTRALIA
Echo Netdaily

AAP – The former superior of Lismore’s Marist Brothers community and deputy principal Trinity Catholic College the told the child abuse royal commission on Tuesday (June 17) he did not associate child sexual abuse with crime in the ’80s.

The commission is looking at how the Marist Brothers handled accusations against two men later jailed for multiple child sex abuse offences – brothers John Chute and Gregory Sutton.

Brother Anthony Hunt, who led the community to which multiple child abuser Gregory Sutton was attached, said he thought Sutton’s behavior was ‘innocent’.

Br Hunt admitted he had not reported Sutton to authorities despite repeated indications that his behaviour with children at a primary school was ‘inappropriate’.

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