ABUSE TRACKER

CANADA
Daily Courier

CRANBROOK, B.C. – Two leaders of an isolated religious commune in British Columbia have been charged for the second time with practising polygamy, more than two decades after allegations of multiple marriage, sexual abuse and cross-border child trafficking first attracted the attention of the outside world.

Winston Blackmore and James Oler, who lead separate factions in a community known as Bountiful, were each charged Wednesday with one count of polygamy. Blackmore is accused of having 24 marriages, while Oler is accused of four.

Oler is also charged along with two others — Brandon Blackmore and Emily Crossfield — with unlawfully removing a child from Canada for sexual purposes.

The charges are the latest step in a series of investigations and failed attempts at prosecutions dating back to the early 1990s involving Bountiful, which follows a fundamentalist form of Mormonism.

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TEXAS
KVUE

ORANGE – Day two of testimony is under way in the sentencing of a former youth pastor who pleaded guilty to sexual assault of a child.

Joshua Luke McDonald, 37, of Bridge City, was indicted in February on six counts of aggravated sexual assault. He pleaded guilty in June, admitting to having sexual relations with two victims under the age of 17.

McDonald asked that he be sentenced by a jury.

The state has rested and the defense began its side Tuesday morning. McDonald’s attorney told jurors about his client, saying, “in his short young life he’s helped a lot of people but made a mistake.”

Some supporters of McDonald cried as they heard testimony from a sex offender treatment counselor.

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CANADA
The Catholic Register

BY MICHAEL SWAN, THE CATHOLIC REGISTER

August 13, 2014

Two months after the OPP seized a computer from St. Patrick’s parish in Caledonia, Ont., looking for child porn, police have returned the computer and closed the investigation — no child porn, just annoying pop-up advertising the computer’s firewalls were not equipped to block.

St. Patrick’s pastor Fr. Mario Fernandes lived and ministered under a cloud for two months while the Ontario Provincial Police’s Child Sexual Exploitation Section investigated.

“It was very stressful,” Fernandes told The Catholic Register. “When people label you for no reason when you’re not involved in that sort of thing, and here the whole town is concerned about that.”

But two months is lightning fast when it comes to computer crimes and sexual exploitation, said investigating officer Doug Rees.

“Usually an investigation goes 12 to 18 months,” he said. “Because it’s computers and it’s forensics.”
The OPP went out of its way to let Caledonia residents know they had cleared Fernandes.

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NORTH CAROLINA
ABC 13

A Yancey County man is out on bond after being arrested over the weekend on a felony charge of taking indecent liberties with a minor.

Sheriff’s Detective Brian Shuford says Brandon Wayne Bailey, 49, paid the $25,000 bond he was being held on. Last week, Shuford says a minor came forward alleging he was inappropriately touched by Bailey during a private music lesson at his home along Highway 197 in Green Mountain.

Bailey was formerly employed at Higgins Memorial United Methodist Church, where he helped lead musical worships. Lead Pastor Wes Sharp says Bailey resigned from his position Friday, before being arrested Saturday.

“I would like to say my personal prayers and those of our people here at Higgins are for Brandon, a very valued person, employee and servant, for the alleged victim and for his or her family,” says Sharp.

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MINNESOTA/WASHINGTON
Fox 9

Updated: Aug 13, 2014

posted by Shelby Capaci

Authorities in the state of Washington may be closing in on a cult leader who was charged with 59 counts of criminal sexual conduct involving minors after two victims came forward to say he raped them.

According to the Washington State Patrol, a credible tip on the location of 52-year-old Victor Barnard came in on Wednesday. Police say Barnard was apparently spotted leaving a McDonald’s restaurant on SR 101, and additional information leads them to believe he has been in the Aberdeen and Raymond areas of Grays Harbor County recently. Now, they’re hoping members of the public will help find him.

Troopers say the car Barnard is believed to be traveling in is a dark blue, 2-door Audi with tinted windows and a spoiler. He apparently departed toward Aberdeen with a young white woman in the vehicle. Anyone with information on his whereabouts is urged to call 911.

A nationwide warrant was issued for his arrest on April 11 after he was charged with 59 counts of criminal sexual conduct involving minors. The case had been inactive until a Fox 9 Investigation brought the stories of Lindsey Tornambie and Jess Schweiss to light at the end of February.

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MONTANA
Ravalli Republic

By LISA BAUMANN Associated Press

HELENA – Settlement talks earlier this month between the Ursuline Sisters of the Western Province and hundreds of people who claim they were sexually abused by priests and nuns have failed, attorneys said Wednesday.

Molly Howard, an attorney for some of the plaintiffs, filed a report Tuesday in Lewis and Clark County District Court saying the parties were unable to resolve the case through discussions ordered by Judge Jeffrey Sherlock in June. It was the third attempt at a settlement between the parties with a mediator involved, Howard said.

“We didn’t have a lot of confidence,” Howard said of the talks. “This was unsuccessful.”

Ursulines attorney Thomas Johnson said the two sides remain fairly far apart although the nuns were able to bring more money to the table after a lender said they’d put up money against the Ursulines property.

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NEW YORK
Fox 23

[with video]

CLIFTON PARK, N.Y. – A guilty plea was entered in Clifton Town Park Court Wednesday by a priest accused of endangering the welfare of a child.

James Michael Taylor, 30, also known as Father Michael, will not serve jail time nor be placed on probation as part of the plea.

Saratoga County Assistant District Attorney Jennifer Buckley said the DA’s office only asked for a five-year order of protection in court Wednesday. She said it was per the victim’s family’s request.

The Saratoga County Sheriff said Taylor was having an inappropriate relationship with a 15-year-old Clifton Park girl since October 2013. The behavior allegedly included physical contact, telephone calls, text messages and photos.

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DELAWARE
The New Journal

Beth Miller, The News Journal August 14, 2014

The Catholic Diocese of Wilmington paid $15.8 million in fees and expenses to lawyers, financial advisers and other professionals involved in its 2011 bankruptcy, according to its final report filed in U.S. Bankruptcy Court this week.

As other dioceses have done around the nation, the Diocese of Wilmington sought Chapter 11 protection in 2009 after a flood of civil lawsuits were filed by survivors of clergy sexual abuse under provisions of Delaware’s 2007 Child Victim’s Act.

The 2007 law opened a two-year window for child sexual abuse cases that would otherwise have been barred by the statute of limitations.

The diocese emerged from bankruptcy in 2011, paying $77.4 million into a trust fund to resolve all claims by abuse survivors and another $10 million into a pension fund for lay employees that was found to be underfunded during financial disclosures.

Several religious orders throughout the diocese – the Oblates of St. Francis de Sales, the Brothers of the Holy Cross, the Capuchins – also settled cases by adding to the trust fund, which eventually totaled about $110 million.

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MINNESOTA
Fox 9

Documents made public Monday by attorneys attempting to make the case that the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis is a public nuisance suggest Archbishop John Nienstedt gave false statements under oath about a priest who was accused of abusing minors.

The documents released by St. Paul attorney Jeff Anderson show that each year, Nienstedt was updated on Father Kenneth LaVan’s continuing work and approved of it as recently as one year ago. Yet, in a sworn deposition on April 2, Nienstedt claimed he did not know until March of this year that the priest accused of sexually assaulting at least one 16-year-old girl in the 1980s was still active in ministry.

“I was not aware that he was publicly in ministry,” Nienstedt said of LaVan, “and as soon as I realized it, I had his faculties removed.”

While Nienstedt contends he learned of LaVan’s continuing ministry during a review of clergy files ordered by the archdiocese, attorneys at Anderson’s law office tell a different story — one that alleges LaVan was removed to keep the case from surfacing amid increased media attention on the growing clergy sexual abuse scandal. Memos from 20 years ago show top church officials took steps to ensure the problem would not “blow up.” In fact, some of the documents released Monday expose conversations between top church officials over allegations of harassment, sexual misconduct with married parishioners, “lavish” expenditures on lovers, and a diagnosis of “compulsive sexuality.”

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NEW YORK
Niskayuna

Probation awaits the Rev. James Michael Taylor after he admitted child endangerment — a charge stemming from sexual contact he had with a 15-year-old girl while serving as a youth minister at Corpus Christi Church in Clifton Park.

Taylor, 30, pleaded guilty to the one misdemeanor count in Clifton Park Wednesday afternoon with the understanding that he won’t face any jail time. Instead, he will have a five-year order of protection placed on him that will prevent him from having any contact with the girl.

Taylor, who was suspended by the Albany Roman Catholic Diocese after being charged in April, did not make any statement following the plea and will face sentencing Oct. 8. Defense attorney Daniel Stewart said his client admitted to the count in part to prevent the girl from having to testify.

“The purpose [of this plea] obviously is to accept responsibility for his conduct, to minimize the impact on the victim and to move on with his life,” Stewart said after the proceedings.

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UNITED STATES
PopeCrimes& Vatican Evils.

Paris Arrow

The Redemptorist Order (founded by St. Alphonsus Ligouri) who administers the famous shrine of St. Anne de Beaupre (built in 1926) near Quebec City is to pay $20 million dollars to the victims of its bestial pedophile priests (see news below). “It’s a landmark settlement,” said Robert Kugler, the lawyer representing victims in a class-action lawsuit. “It’s the most that has ever been paid in the settlement of a sexual abuse class action in the history of Quebec.”

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IRELAND
Huffington Post

By Antonia Blumberg

Irish singer Sinead O’Connor has no faith in Catholic Church reforms under Pope Francis, she told Billboard in an interview for the August 16 issue.

“I find it quite laughable that they’re talking about revolutionizing the church when, in fact, they’re equating female ordination and pedophilia,“ the singer said. “When you consider that, it shows you how little they think of children and the rape of children.”

In July 2010 the Vatican added a provision to what was intended to be a sweeping reform that would once and for all address the ongoing sex abuses in the church. The new rules included procedures for defrocking priests for sex abuses under canon law and extended the period during which trials could take place in a church court from 10 to 20 years after the 18th birthday of his victim.

Much to the dismay of many Catholics, the Vatican added a provision to the document that made the “attempted ordination” of women one of the “gravest offenses a priest can commit” — essentially putting it on par with sexual abuse.

O’Connor has criticized the Catholic Church over the years for sex abuses and coverups, but she said she doesn’t blame the incumbent pope personally.

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NEW YORK
CBS 6

[with video]

Updated: Wednesday, August 13 2014

CLIFTON PARK – A local priest has pleaded guilty to endangering the welfare of a child after having inappropriate contact with a Saratoga County teen.

Prosecutors say James Michael Taylor exchanged phone calls, text messages and pictures with a 15-year-old girl between October 2013 and April 2014.

Taylor met the victim while serving as Deacon and Youth Minister for the Corpus Christi Church in Round Lake. The Albany Catholic Diocese says that Taylor will remain on leave, pending a review from Roman Catholic Diocese of Albany’s Sexual Misconduct Review Board.

While that process is ongoing, a spokesperson from the Diocese tells CBS6, “While on administrative leave, he is not permitted to publicly present himself as a priest, celebrate the sacraments or wear clerical garb.”

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NEW YORK
Time Warner Cable News

SARATOGA COUNTY, N.Y. — An area priest accused of texting and having physical contact with a 15-year-old girl pleads guilty in Saratoga County Court.

James Michael Taylor, 30, who went by Father Michael, plead guilty to endangering the welfare of a child.

Deputies say the incidents happened between October 2013 and April of this year while he was a Deacon and youth minister for the Corpus Christi Church in Clifton Park.

Investigators say Taylor’s relationship with the girl involved physical contact, text messages, and photos.

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NEW YORK
Albany Times Union

By Robert Gavin
Updated 4:42 pm, Wednesday, August 13, 2014

CLIFTON PARK — A Roman Catholic priest pleaded guilty Wednesday to a misdemeanor endangerment charge and will not have to serve jail time.

The Rev. James Michael Taylor appeared in Clifton Park Town Court. He is to be sentenced in October.

Taylor was accused of engaging in physical contact and shared phone calls, text messages and pictures with a 15-year-old girl he met when he served as a deacon and youth minister at Corpus Christi Church in Clifton Park.

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CHILE
New York Daily News

Wednesday, August 13, 2014

BY CAROL KURUVILLA

The Chilean Catholic church is punishing an alleged baby-stealing priest by sending him to Spain for a period of “reflection.”

The church confirmed Tuesday that Father Gerardo Joannon “actively participated” in the forced adoptions of at least two babies, who were snatched from their unwed single mothers more than thirty years ago and handed off to married couples who raised them in traditional Catholic families. Joannon was also allegedly engaged in an “inappropriate relationship” with one mother.

But since so much time has passed, church officials have chosen to send Joannon to Madrid in October “to initiate a process of psychological and spiritual accompaniment,” the Catholic News Service reports. Joannon will not have any pastoral responsibilities during his time in Spain.

Officials from Chile’s child protection agency have urged the Chilean church to keep the priest inside the country to “clarify the truth in this case.”

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FLORIDA
News 13

By Amanda McKenzie, Reporter
Last Updated: Wednesday, August 13, 2014

ORLANDO —
A 52-year-old Orange County man has filed a legal complaint against the Catholic Diocese of Orlando, claiming he was sexually abused by a priest in Seminole County over 35 years ago.

The victim’s 13-page complaint, dated Monday, details years of sexual abuse at the hands of Father William Authenrieth, then an associate pastor at All Souls Catholic Church in Sanford, where the plaintiff served as an altar boy.

According to the plaintiff, identified only as “GS Doe” in the complaint to protect his privacy, the alleged abuse took place between January 1976 and July 1978, while he was in sixth- to eighth-grade. The incidents happened in the church’s sacristy and the priest’s living quarters.

The complaint said Father Authenrieth convinced the victim that “sexual contact between a child and a priest was completely normal.”

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AUSTRALIA
The Australian

AUGUST 14, 2014

Dan Box
Crime Reporter
Sydney

THE Catholic Church’s decision to renounce its support for unlimited financial compensation for child sexual abuse has ­provoked a furious response from victims, with the national lawyers’ body also describing the proposals as “bullying”.

In a submission to the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse this week, the church contradicted its previous calls for an ­independent national body able to award uncapped payments to victims.

The Australian Lawyers Alliance criticised the submission, which said payments should be capped “in line with community standards” and that victims who accept such compensation should surrender their right to sue the church, describing it as “extremely flawed”.

National president Andrew Stone was concerned about the suggestion that any scheme could reduce the role played by lawyers.

“No lawyers is code for church power over victims,” Mr Stone said.

“This is exactly the sort of bullying behaviour that occurred in the past.”

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CHILE
Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests

For immediate release: Wednesday, August 13, 2014

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

A Chilean priest who Catholic officials say stole babies from their mothers (claiming that the infants were dead) says he’ll return from Spain to face criminal charges if they are filed against him. We believe Father Alex Vigueras is lying.

We also think this Chilean priest is lying when he says he was trying to stop abortions. We believe he was motivated by greed. Evidence in Spain suggests that priests and nuns there stole babies from mothers for financial gain.

We suspect this was true in Chile too.

Catholic officials in either Spain or Chile should insist that this abusive priest live in a treatment center until he is quickly defrocked and harshly denounced by the church hierarchy.

We hope that every single person who has seen, suspected or suffered crimes or misdeeds by Fr.Gerardo Joannon or his church colleagues or supervisors will contact law enforcement, get help, expose wrongdoers, and start healing.

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NEW YORK
The Jewish Week

08/13/14
Amy Sara Clark
Staff Writer

When Kenneth Thompson unseated longtime Brooklyn District Attorney Charles Hynes last November, advocates for Jewish victims of sex abuse were jubilant.

But, despite Thompson’s release last week of the names of 20 defendants in sex abuse cases that his predecessor had refused to unveil, in the months since Thompson has taken office the optimism advocates and victims initially felt has, for some, turned to disappointment.

Thompson campaigned on a platform of reform, including promising to more vigorously prosecute sex abuse cases than his predecessor, who is accused of dragging his feet on those cases to win the support of Brooklyn’s charedi leaders, who prefer to handle the claims internally.

But survivors and their advocates have decidedly mixed reviews of Thompson so far.

Ben Hirsch, co-founder of Survivors for Justice, an organization that advocates and educates on issues related to child safety, has been critical of Thompson’s tenure to date. He points to the DA’s plea bargain that led to no jail time for a man who threw bleach in the face of a prominent victim’s advocate as sending a message that he’s not going to go after people who try to intimidate victims and their advocates into not testifying.

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NEW YORK
Frum Follies

The blogger, Jewish Whistleblower stopped posting in 2005. But he’s continued to monitor abuse in the orthodox world, assiduously scouring press reports and court records. On a regular basis he shares important facts by commenting on Frum Follies and other blogs. His reporting of facts is consistently accurate and he’s alerted me to many things I did not know. — Yerachmiel Lopin

Guest Post by Jewish Whistleblower

Earlier this week Brooklyn DA Kenneth Thompson’s office released 20 names (of defendants in cases where former DA Hynes refused to divulge the names because they involved Orthodox Jewish suspects and/or victims) to Sue Edelman of the New York Post. 14 of those names have yet to be publicly reported.

[New York Post]

Today we learned from the NY Jewish Week that the DA’s office claims that “Since January, Thompson’s office has arrested seven people accused of sexual abuse in the Orthodox Jewish community”.

[The Jewish Week]

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CHILE
Catholic Sentinel

Catholic News Service

SANTIAGO, Chile — The Catholic Church in Chile announced that Father Gerardo Joannon, a prominent Chilean priest, will be sent to a community in Madrid “to initiate a process of psychological and spiritual accompaniment” after his alleged involvement in a scandal of stolen newborn babies.

Father Alex Vigueras, provincial superior of the Congregation of the Sacred Hearts of Jesus and Mary in Chile, said Aug. 12 that an internal investigation conducted by the Archdiocese of Santiago concluded there is credible evidence that Father Joannon was involved in irregular adoptions during Augusto Pinochet’s dictatorship.

The case is already being investigated by Chilean Judge Mario Carroza, who is working to establish the extent of the network that stole newborn babies from single mothers to give them to married couples during the 1970s and 1980s.

The victims were unmarried women, generally from well-off families, who were pressured by their relatives to give up their child for adoption to avoid the social stigma of unmarried motherhood. If they refused to do so, they were led to believe that their baby had died during childbirth.

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AUSTRALIA
The Courier

By ALEX HAMER Aug. 14, 2014

A COUNCIL representing the Catholic Church has outlined a new scheme to help victims of sex abuse, while also apologising for its past actions.

The Truth Justice and Healing Council submitted the plan to the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse on Tuesday, and expects it would be rolled out nationally for any institution in which a child had been sexually abused.

The move would see capped compensation, counselling and more general support available to victims, even if they have already received money from the church in the past.

Ballarat abuse victim and advocate Andrew Collins said the plan was heartening, but it needed to be put in place as soon as possible.

“I think it’s very positive, definitely a turnaround from the church, but it needs to happen soon. There are still survivors out there whose lives are ending prematurely,” he said.

Mr Collins said the federal government should step in and put in the redress scheme before the Royal Commission handed down its report in 2017. While feeling positive of the idea, Mr Collins was critical of the council for putting a cap on payments, which it had previously rejected. “The cap on payments was the clincher. Previously they said they shouldn’t be there. (But) as long as those caps were in line for what people could expect, from what they could get from the courts, it would be acceptable,” he said.

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FLORIDA
Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests

For immediate release: Wednesday, August 13, 2014

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

A new child sex abuse lawsuit has been filed against Fr. William Authenrieth who is apparently still alive and living in Massachusetts.

We urge Orlando Bishop John Noonan to urge his colleagues in Massachusetts to warn the public and their parishioners about Fr. Authenrieth, who has been accused of or sued for child sex crimes at least five times. That’s the least Noonan can do to protect children. (After all, Florida Catholic officials recruited, educated, hired, trained, shielded and transferred Fr. Authenrieth. They can’t simply suspend him from parish work and do nothing more to seek out those he has hurt and safeguard those he may hurt.)

Some might argue that, given his age (about 80), Fr. Authenrieth isn’t likely assaulting children now. They would be wrong.

It takes only seconds for a man to shove his hands down a boy’s pants or his tongue down a girl’s throat. And who would parents or kids trust more than an elderly, balding, stoop-shouldered, grandfatherly-looking figure?

It’s irresponsible for anyone to assume that because a child molester is older, he’s somehow safer.

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UNITED STATES
The Other Journal

by David Cramer & Jenny Howell & Jonathan Tran & Paul Martens on Monday, July 7, 2014

In the years following, some say preceding, the 1972 publication of his monumental The Politics of Jesus, the celebrated Christian ethicist John Howard Yoder emotionally manipulated and sexually violated numerous women.[1] Yoder’s conduct troubles us on multiple levels. Because these behaviors strike us as profoundly dissonant with the ways in which his thought has deeply influenced us, we spent the last year attempting to find out all we could about his actions and to reflect theologically on what we found. In this essay, we first report what we know about Yoder’s manipulations and violations and their histories at Anabaptist Mennonite Biblical Seminary and the University of Notre Dame. Next we consider inconsistencies and consistencies between those behaviors and his theology. Finally, we utilize one aspect of his thought—his account of the fallen powers—to reevaluate his legacy in the terms of his theology.

Saying what we know is easy enough, because what we know with certainty remains minimal. Here is what we know, and we share it because it is important that readers of Yoder’s theology are aware of his conduct so that they can judge for themselves how to take his vision of Christian discipleship.

Initial reports put the number of women involved at around ten, but subsequent estimates have gone as high as one hundred. Yoder’s actions toward these women, including students, ranged from verbal sexual innuendo to physical sexual acts, including intercourse. Some commentators are convinced that these behaviors took place over most of his decades-long teaching career, whereas others believe they occurred during a fixed and much shorter period of time. In his interactions with these women, we understand that Yoder saw himself involved in a “grand noble experiment” with them even though some women use “harassment” and “abuse” to describe what he did to them.[2]

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NEW ZEALAND
The Tablet

13 August 2014 by Katherine Backler

The Vatican’s lead prosecutor on abuse cases has praised the media for keeping sex abuse cases in the public eye.

Mgr Robert Oliver, Promoter of Justice for the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, told New Zealand’s Sunday Star-Times: “It’s hard for any group over time to keep up the kind of energy that’s needed to do this work. What the media has been doing was to keep that energy up.”

Mgr Oliver said that the Church had “much to seek reconciliation for … particularly in not listening to victims.”

He spoke of how meeting survivors of sex abuse reminds him of the importance of his work. “You realise what this does to people… how deeply harmed they are.”

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POLSKA
Gazeta Wyborcza

Michał Wilgocki 12.08.2014

SNAP (Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests – dosłownie sieć współpracy ocalonych, którzy padli ofiarą nadużyć seksualnych ze strony księży) zrzesza ofiary księży pedofilów. Powstała w 1989 r., w USA ma swoich przedstawicieli w 56 krajach, m.in. w Australii, Peru, Kanadzie, Argentynie. Zbiera informacje na temat osób molestowanych przez księży. Walczy też o odszkodowania. Skutecznie. Za jej sprawą w USA zbankrutowało 11 diecezji. Ostatnia w Los Angeles na początku tego roku.

Wypłacane przez nią odszkodowania idą w setki milionów dolarów. Organizacja współpracowała także z ONZ podczas przesłuchań przedstawicieli Watykanu w Genewie w 2014 r., kiedy tłumaczyli się z pedofilii w szeregach Kościoła – przed Komitetem przeciwko Torturom i Komitetem ds. Praw Dziecka.

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POLAND
The News

The largest international organisation devoted to aiding victims of Church child abuse and exposing paedophile priests is setting up branches in Poland.

SNAP (Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests), which was founded in the US in 1989, currently has representatives in 56 countries.

“We want to appoint a local [SNAP] leader in every diocese or region,” said Maria Mucha, who is setting up the organisation’s Polish network, in an interview with the Gazeta Wyborcza daily.

She added that each leader will “gather information about victims and perpetrators.
“You have to collect it locally, as that is the most effective method,” she argued.

In recent years, SNAP campaigns have led to the bankruptcy of 11 US dioceses owing to compensation cases involving child abuse victims.

This June, leading Polish archbishops held a penitential mass in Krakow for the sins of clergymen guilty of child abuse.

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LOUISIANA
KATC

Following a KATC investigation piece last night, a support group for those abused by priests is calling for Lafayette’s bishop to release the names of those priests with credible accusations against them.

According to David Clohessy, Executive Director of SNAP (Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests), releasing the names would both protect the vulnerable and heal the wounded. He argues that parents will be able to better protect their children from predators if they know who the predators are.

“We are disappointed in Lafayette’s Catholic bishop and its district attorney. The bishop won’t release the names of 15 credibly accused predator priests and the D.A. won’t even ask the bishop for them. What an irresponsible decision by both men,” says Clohessy.

He says after a pledge by bishops to be more open and transparent, roughly 30 U.S. bishops posted names of suspected abusive priests on their websites.

“If even one of these 15 credibly accused sex offenders is alive, let’s err on the side of safety. If he is too dangerous to put on the job in a parish, then he’s too dangerous to live among unsuspecting single mothers in an apartment complex, teach piano lessons in his home, be a volunteer tutor, coach basketball, or babysit his nieces,” says Clohessy.

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LOUISIANA
The Advertiser

Claire Taylor August 13, 2014

A national group of priest sex abuse victims is calling on Bishop Michael Jarrell and District Attorney Mike Harson to release the names of 15 credibly accused priests.

The Daily Advertiser was first to report that Jarrell, bishop of the Diocese of Lafayette, refused to release the names of the 15 priests.

Jarrell acknowledged in 2004 and again to The Advertiser on July 31 that the Diocese and its insurers had paid $26 million in settlements to the victims of 15 priests. But he told The Advertiser he “sees no purpose” in releasing the priests’ names.

The Advertiser asked Harson last week if he would request, demand or subpoena the names from the Diocese. In a response Monday, Harson said he would not investigate unless a victim stepped forward who was willing to pursue the case.

“What an irresponsible decision by both men,” David Clohessy, director of the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests, said in a statement today. “We hope both men will reconsider.”

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TENNESSEE
Road to Recovery

August 13, 2014

MEDIA RELEASE

Advocacy organization to shed light on sexual abuse by nuns during annual convention

New York-based nun organization ignores pleas of sexual abuse victim

What: A demonstration and leafleting regarding the sexual abuse of a young girl by a nun and the injustice of the religious order of nuns toward the sexual abuse victim.

Where: On the sidewalk outside the Courtyard by Marriott at Opryland Hotel, 125 Music City Circle, Nashville, TN.

When: Thursday, August 14, 2014 from 8:00 AM until dark

Friday, August 15, 2014 from 8:00 AM until Noon

Who: Robert M. Hoatson, Ph.D., co-founder and President of Road to Recovery, Inc., anon-profit charity that assists victims of sexual abuse and advocate for Cecilia Springer, a sexual abuse victim of a nun who has been ignored by the nuns in whose school she was sexually abused.

Why: American Catholic nuns have done little to address and resolve cases of sexual abuse by nuns. They have refused to allow victims to address them at their annual conventions, and the 2014 convention is no different. The demonstration and leafleting will shed light on one claim that is emblematic of all the others. A young girl, Cecilia Springer, was sexually abused by a nun at a New York City Catholic girls’ high school, reported the abuse to the school and the nuns who run the school, and they told Cecilia Springer to take a hike. Cecilia Springer is over 80 years of age, spent time as a nun, taught at the school where she was abused, and now demands justice from the Sisters of Saint Ursula and Notre Dame School, New York City. The leaders of the Sisters of Saint Ursula most likely are in Nashville this week and must come to their moral senses in dealing with the sexual abuse claim of Cecilia Springer.

Contacts: Robert M. Hoatson, Ph.D., Road to Recovery, Inc., 862-368-2800
Attorney Mitchell Garabedian, Boston, MA – 617-523-6250

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UNITED STATES
Road to Recovery

SHAME ON THE SISTERS OF SAINT URSULA OF NEW YORK CITY

The Leadership Conference of Women Religious (LCWR), a national organization of nuns, is meeting this week here in Nashville, TN. The LCWR will once again ignore a critical issue during its convention; namely, the sexual abuse of children, teenagers, and vulnerable adults by nuns.

One such case of sexual abuse by nuns comes out of New York City. The Sisters of Saint Ursula is a religious community of nuns with a regional center in Manhattan, New York City. For the past few years, the Sisters of Saint Ursula have ignored the pleas for help from a former nun from their religious order. Her name is Cecilia Springer, and she is nearly 85 years old. She was a nun for decades, and she was sexually abused by her high school Principal as a minor child.

In 1946, Cecilia Springer was a high school sophomore at Notre Dame School in Manhattan, New York City, when her Principal, Sister Mary Andrew, SU (aka Sr. Frances Doyle) followed her up the staircase from the lunch room and sexually assaulted her by embracing and kissing her on the lips on more than once occasion. At least one other classmate of Cecilia has reported a similar assault. Cecilia reported the sexual abuse to the leaders of Notre Dame School and the Sisters of Saint Ursula, who are most likely here this week in Nashville, but they have refused to help Cecilia Springer heal by acknowledging her claim of sexual abuse or providing her with resources that will help her live a more stress-free life.

Over a year ago, Cecilia Springer and her attorney met with representatives of Notre Dame School, the Sisters of Saint Ursula, and their attorney and told the story of having been sexually abused by Sister Mary Andrew, SU (aka Sister Frances Doyle). Following the meeting, Notre Dame School and the Sisters of Saint Ursula told Cecilia Springer to take a hike.

It is probable that leaders of the Sisters of Saint Ursula and Notre Dame School are here this week to partake in the deliberations of the Leadership Conference of Women Religious. It is ironic that Sister Mary Dolan, SU, the regional superior (Provincial) of the Sisters of Saint Ursula, would be here among leaders because she has ignored Cecilia Springer. Sister Mary Dolan, SU, was an elementary school student of Cecilia Springer many years ago when Cecilia Springer was a teacher. Sister Mary Dolan is urged this week to come to her moral senses and respond to the sexual abuse claim of Cecilia Springer.

Sister Virginia O’Brien, SU, is the President of Notre Dame School. Perhaps she is here this week as well, and she has the opportunity to do the right thing and care for a former Notre Dame School student, teacher, alumna, and nun. It is our hope that Sister Mary Dolan and Sister Virginia O’Brien will be impressed by the discussions on topics such as justice and truth and act compassionately toward Cecilia Springer.

CONTACTS: Robert M. Hoatson, Advocate for Cecilia Springer, and President of Road
to Recovery, Inc., Livingston, NJ – 862-368-2800
Attorney Mitchell Garabedian, Boston MA – 617-523-6250

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FLORIDA
WFTV

ORLANDO, Fla. — A new clergy sex abuse lawsuit was filed against the Diocese of Orlando.
The plaintiff claims he was abused in a parish in Sanford in the 1970s.

The alleged victim is an adult. His attorney said he’s lived with the shame his entire life and is looking for justice.

This week, the unnamed plaintiff filed a lawsuit against the Diocese of Orlando for the alleged abuse that happened when the victim was a teenager.

Attorney Adam Horowitz said this is the fifth lawsuit he’s filed against Father William Authenrieth, who is living in a retirement community in Massachusetts. However it’s the seventh lawsuit filed against Authenrieth in all.

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FLORIDA
ClickOrlando

[with video]

ORLANDO, Fla. –
A new sex abuse and coverup lawsuit was filed Wednesday against Bishop John Gerard Noonan and the Diocese of Orlando.

According to the lawsuit, a now 52-year-old man was sexually abused by Fr. William Authenrieth at All Souls in Sanford Parish in the mid- to late 1970s. The plaintiff was a 13-year-old altar boy when the sex abuse began, the lawsuit alleges.

The lawsuit claims that Authenrieth engaged the boy in various types of sexual activity and gave him money, threatening him if he ever told anyone.

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FLORIDA
Orlando Sentinel

By Jeff Kunerth, Orlando Sentinel
11:50 am, August 13, 2014

Following Pope Francis’ statement last month that it’s time for the Catholic Church to make reparations to its victims, a 52-year-old Orlando man has filed a lawsuit against the Orlando Catholic Diocese for sexual abuse by a priest in the 1970s.

The Pope’s statement is important only if it is carried out by the local diocese, attorney Adam Horowitz said at a press conference this morning.

The lawsuit, filed against the Orlando Catholic Bishop John Noonan, alleges that the Orlando man was sexually abused by Father William Authenrieth as a 13-year-old altar boy at All Souls Catholic Church in Sanford.

Horowitz said he believes this is the seven lawsuit against the Diocese based on the actions of Authenrieth, who has admitted he molested boys while a priest.

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ST. LOUIS (MO)
Berger’s Beat

…”Find a suitable cover story and get him into an in-patient program. . . so that this thing doesn’t blow up.” That was then-Bishop Robert Carlson’s advice to his boss about predator priest Fr. Kenneth LaVern [LaVan], according to Minnesota Catholic church records. . .

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TEXAS
Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests

For immediate release: Wednesday, August 13, 2014

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

We applaud Cedar Park Chief of Police Sean Mannix for clarifying the Greg Kelley case.

It’s rare that a law enforcement official takes the time to explain the evidence and court process so thoroughly.

We understand why that’s rare: the job of the police is to catch those who commit crimes, not ”win over” those who side with criminals.

But this case is somewhat different, and very troubling.

It’s somewhat different because family and friends of an admitted, convicted child molester are vocally supporting him, even after a court of law found him guilty.

And it’s very troubling because this public rallying around him.

So we’re grateful to Chief Mannix for shedding more light on this case and explaining why Kelley’s backers are making the job of catching and prosecuting child sex offenders much tougher.

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CHILE
Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests

For immediate release: Wednesday, Aug. 13, 2014

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

Chilean Catholic officials admit that a priest who “was instrumental in the forced adoption of at least two babies without the knowledge of their mothers” will not be punished. Shame on them.

Let’s put this as clearly and simply as possible: Fr. Gerardo Joannon stole children from their mothers through deceit, and Catholic officials acknowledge this fact.

As depraved as this is, it’s every bit as depraved that Catholic officials are doing nothing to punish Fr. Joannon. Shame on every member of the Catholic hierarchy who made or is silently tolerating this irresponsible, hurtful decision.

Fr. Joannon should be loudly and promptly drummed out of the priesthood.

Instead, Catholic officials are simply moving Fr. Joannon to Spain where, presumably he’ll be around unsuspecting and vulnerable families. (Catholic officials also admit that the priest had an “inappropriate relationship” with one mother.)

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CHILE
Chilevision

[con video]

La Congregación de los Sagrados Corazones dio a conocer una declaración pública sobre la actuación del sacerdote Gerardo Joannon en el caso de dos adopciones ilegales, las cuales fueron denunciadas en un reportaje de Ciper.

En el texto, que revela las principales conclusiones de la investigación canónica que realizó el Superior Provincial Alex Vigueras, sobre este tema, se sostiene que “Joannon participó activamente en ambos casos de adopciones irregulares. No es verosímil afirmar que el Dr. Monckeberg actuó por iniciativa propia en el caso de la hija de Andrés Rillón”.

Descarta que la motivación primera en ese caso fue evitar un aborto y que Joannon siempre supo que ambas guaguas no murieron al nacer.

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CHILE
IOL

Santiago – Chile’s Catholic church confirmed on Tuesday that a priest was instrumental in the forced adoption of at least two babies without the knowledge of their mothers, and had also maintained an “inappropriate relationship” with one mother.

Gerardo Joannon is being investigated judicially for illegally handing over an undetermined number of babies for adoption in the 1970s and 1980s, born to single mothers who were told the infants had died.

The priest has said the babies were removed mainly from middle-class women due to the stigma attached to unmarried mothers at that time in Chile’s Catholic society.

“The preliminary investigation has established the truth of the accusations… he always knew that both babies did not die,” said Alex Vigueras, a regional church head who is in charge of the probe into Joannon.

The priest even led masses for the supposedly dead children who he knew to still be living, Vigueras said.

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UNITED STATES
Christian Catholicism

Set forth below is Fr. Thomas P. Doyle, O.P.’s extremely important address on August 2, 2014 at SNAP’s 25th Anniversary Convention in Chicago.
______________________________________________________

A letter sent by the Vicar General of the Diocese of Lafayette, Louisiana to the papal nuncio in June, 1984, was the trigger that set in motion a series of events that has changed the fate of the victims of child sexual abuse by Catholic clergy and clergy of all denominations. The letter informed the nuncio that the Gastel family had decided to withdraw from a confidential monetary settlement with the diocese. It went on to say they had obtained the services of an attorney and planned to sue the diocese.

This long process has had a direct impact on much more than the fate of victims and the security of innocent children and vulnerable persons of any age. It has altered the image and role of the institutional Catholic Church in western society to such an extent that the tectonic plates upon which this Church rests have shifted in a way never expected or dreamed of thirty years ago.

I cannot find language that can adequately communicate the full import of this monstrous phenomenon. The image of a Christian Church that enabled the sexual and spiritual violation of its most vulnerable members and when confronted, responded with institutionalized mendacity and utter disregard for the victims cannot be adequately described as a “problem,” a “crisis” or a “scandal.” The widespread sexual violation of children and adults by clergy and the horrific response of the leadership, especially the bishops, is the present-day manifestation of a very dark and toxic dimension of the institutional Church. This dark side has always existed. In our era it has served as the catalyst for a complex and deeply rooted process that can be best described as a paradigm shift. The paradigm for responding to sexual abuse by clergy has shifted at its foundation. The paradigm for society’s understanding of and response to child sexual abuse had begun to shift with the advent of the feminist movement in the early seventies but was significantly accelerated by the mid-eighties. The paradigm of the institutional Church interacting in society has shifted and continues to do so as the forces demanding justice, honesty and accountability by the hierarchy continue their relentless pressure. The Catholic monolith, once accepted by friend and foe alike as a rock-solid monarchy, is crumbling.

The single most influential and forceful element in this complex historical process has not been the second Vatican Council. It has been the action of the victims of sexual abuse.

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ILLINOIS
BishopAccountability.org

Summary of Case: John D. Fitzgerald was a priest of the Chicago archdiocese, ordained in 1933. His early career was spent in the Chancery, as a Metropolitan Tribunal official. In 1951 Fitzgerald settled into a pastorship of Ascension parish in Oak Park IL, where he spent the remainder of his career. One source notes his death to have been in 1984, but he is listed in the Official Catholic Directories through 1986. In 2005 a woman reported to the archdiocese that Fitzgerald sexually abused her in 1964, when she was a teenager and Ascension parishioner. The information was kept quiet until the woman spoke to the media in July 2014. The archdiocese acknowledged paying for the woman’s therapy.

Ordained: 1933
Died: Nov. 4, 1984?

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OHIO
Vindicator

Published: Wed, August 13, 2014

Staff report

Leaders of SNAP, Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests, said they have written Bishop George V. Murry of the Diocese of Youngstown about having a public discussion on the issue of abuse by clergy.

David Clohessy of St. Louis, executive director of SNAP, indicated that the request was motivated in part by an email sent last week by SNAP, noting it had discovered a former deacon and teacher at two parochial schools in the diocese had lost his teaching license.

Ernest Formichelli, who taught at Cardinal Mooney High School from 1976-2013 and St. Christine School, 1971-76, had lost his teaching license, according to September 2013 minutes of the Ohio Board of Education.

Formichelli is no longer a deacon, and the state board “revoked permanently the five-year professional high school teaching license and permanent non-tax teaching certificate” of Formichelli.

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TEXAS
Fox 7

Cedar Park Police Chief Sean Mannix is not holding back when it comes to his feelings about the conviction of Greg Kelley and the movement to get that conviction overturned.

Mannix called Kelley supporters cult-like in an internal letter to his officers and said with each rally they are causing the victims’ families to be victimized all over again. That letter has since been made public.

The fight for GK supporters have held multiple rallies since Kelley’s conviction including one over the weekend and they will gather back here at the courthouse Wednesday.

Mannix, whose department handled the case, cautioned his officers not to be discouraged by critics of their work.

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IRELAND
Commonweal

David Carroll Cochran
August 12, 2014

For an Irish Catholic Church desperate for good news, the bad keeps coming. Most recent are the revelations about a mother-and-child home run by the Bons Secours sisters in the town of Tuam, County Galway, which operated from 1925 to 1961. While some early, highly sensationalized media reports about hundreds of dead babies dumped into a septic tank have turned out to be false, details about the treatment of children—their living conditions, mortality rates, and burial after death—unleashed a fresh round of shock and outrage in a nation that has seen plenty of both during two decades of reports detailing a history of physical and sexual abuse in Catholic settings.

This string of revelations has obviously sparked blistering criticism of the church in Ireland. Much of it is deserved, but it is also important to understand the multiple dimensions of the calamity that Irish Catholicism finds itself in.

The abuse crisis in Ireland is really two crises. The first is the sexual abuse of minors by priests. This crisis has followed a now-familiar pattern. For decades, a small number of priests used their position to abuse vulnerable children. Some continued undetected for years; others were discovered at the time. When this happened, church leaders, especially bishops, consistently hushed up the crimes, transferring offenders to new and unsuspecting communities while pressuring victims and their families into silence. The need to “avoid scandal” produced scandalous behavior, allowing abuse to continue and the abused to suffer in shame and silence.

This dimension of the crisis, then, is not unique to Irish Catholicism; we continue to see similar revelations from around the world. If given access to minors, a small percentage of men will sexually abuse them. While this percentage is not higher among Catholic priests than ministers in other denominations or those in secular positions such as coaches, teachers, or counselors, it is the historical response by Catholic leaders (as well as the church’s size, longevity, and practice of keeping detailed personnel records) that has produced an abuse crisis in country after country. From the United States to Germany to Australia to Ireland, it is the cover-up as much as the crime that has sparked outrage.

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UNITED KINGDOM
North Devon Journal

A RETIRED NFU officer has denied sexually abusing a 14-year-old boy at his Devon farm more than 40 years ago.

Philip Huxtable is a lay preacher, former Captain of the Braunton Boys Brigade, governor of two primary schools in North Devon and clerk to three parish councils.

He is on trial at Exeter Crown Court accused of abusing a boy who he met while running a youth club and whom he employed with a Saturday job for three months on his farm at Shirwell in 1973. …

The jury were read two testimonials detailing Huxtable’s work in the community as an elder of the Christ Church Methodist and United Reform Church in Braunton and the associated Boys Brigade, where he was Captain for 18 years.

He was also chair of governors at Shirwell Primary School for eight years and a governor at North Molton school for 20 years. He has also been clerk to the Pilton, Shirwell and Fremington parish councils and chairman of the Dexter Cattle Group.

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AUSTRALIA
The Guardian (UK)

Helen Davidson
theguardian.com, Tuesday 12 August 2014

The Catholic church has joined calls for a national redress scheme for victims of child sexual abuse, with mandatory participation by the institutions concerned, but wants to retain some of its controversial gag orders to prevent victims suing.

In its submission to the royal commission into institutional responses to child sexual abuse, the church also altered its previous position by proposing a cap on financial compensation.

The Truth Justice and Healing Council, which represents the Catholic church in dealings with the royal commission, said the legally binding deeds of release, which many victims of abuse signed in order to get redress under the church’s Towards Healing program, should remain in place to prevent civil litigation against the church.

But the releases should not prevent victims making a second claim under an official national scheme. The submission said that while there are “strong policy arguments” against allowing someone to reopen a claim, “where an individual can show that there was something manifestly inadequate about the process in which they reached their settlement, they ought to be entitled to reopen the matter”.

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AUSTRALIA
SBS

AAP

The government should run a mandatory compensation scheme for victims of institutional child sex abuse, the Catholic Church says.

But Archbishop Philip Freier, the newly installed Anglican Primate of Australia, said talks were still going on about the best model for a compensation scheme.

He said there were “active discussions” on Tuesday about the issue in the wake of the Victorian parliamentary committee inquiry into child sex abuse.

“I think there were a couple of models that the Victorian policymakers are putting forward so settling on one might be a bit premature for me yet,” Archbishop Freier told reporters on Wednesday.

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AUSTRALIA
Christian Today

By: Rachel Ford
Wednesday, 13 August 2014

The Catholic Church has called for a national victims’ redress scheme in a bid to alleviate the suffering of child abuse victims.

A submission to the child abuse Royal Commission by the Truth Justice and Healing Council proposed the scheme be operated by the government, but funded by the institutions responsible for the abuse.

“The days of the Catholic Church investigating itself are over,” Francis Sullivan, CEO of the Council, said.

He also expressed hope that the redress scheme would be a ‘giant step forward’ in providing justice for victims continuing to suffer from the ‘devastating impacts of child sexual abuse, and added that a non-adversarial approach would be needed to ensure ‘just, compassionate and fair’ compensation was provided.

A spokeswoman for the Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests approved of the proposed scheme, but said that ultimately “actions speak louder than words.”

“Our experience has been that they make big promises but, when it comes down to it, what they deliver is nothing like the PR message,” she told the Sydney Morning Herald.

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MASSACHUSETTS
New England Public Radio

[with audio]

by: Henry Epp
AUGUST 12, 2014

The Catholic Diocese of Springfield installed its new leader in a service Tuesday. Bishop Mitchell Rozanski now leads the estimated 200,ooo Catholics in western Massachusetts.

About 900 people filled St. Michael’s Cathedral in Springfield to welcome the new Bishop. Judith Kennedy of Chicopee sat in the pews nearly an hour before the service. She says she’s excited for Rozanski’s leadership.

“We’re like lost sheep, and he being our new shepherd, we’re anxious to follow him,” says Kennedy. “He seems like an open fellow, just have to convert him to the Red Sox fan.” …

A national group representing survivors of sexual abuse by priests says it’s “not optimistic” about Rozanski’s ability to address victims of abuse. Rozanski was asked after the service how he plans to approach victims.

“I believe that as bishop, I show the way, to reach out to victims of sexual abuse, to bring God’s pastoral love and care, to show them that nothing is their fault, and that this was perpetrated upon them, and that the bishop has to be there as an agent of reconciliation,” said Rozanski.

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MASSACHUSETTS
The Republican

By Jim Kinney | jkinney@repub.com
on August 12, 2014

SPRINGFIELD – Bishop Mitchell T. Rozanski was asked Tuesday if he has a message for those in the Springfield Diocese who suffered sexual abuse at the hands committed by priests.

The topic came up at a brief news conference just after the installation ceremony at the Cathedral of St. Michael the Archangel.

Rozanski said:

“I believe that as bishop I show the way to reach out to victims of sexual abuse, to bring God’s pastoral love and care, to show them that nothing is their fault. This was perpetrated upon them and that the Bishop has to be there as an agent of reconciliation.”

Earlier in the news conference, Rozanski spoke of feeling at peace as he walked into the cathedral Tuesday. He felt at peace because he found a people at prayer.

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CANADA
The Globe and Mail

INGRID PERITZ
MONTREAL — The Globe and Mail
Published Tuesday, Aug. 12 2014

The Redemptorist religious order is probably best known in Canada for its association with the Sainte-Anne-de-Beaupré shrine near Quebec City, a major tourist attraction and holy pilgrimage site for devout Catholics. Now the congregation is in the spotlight for a dark chapter in its past.

The Catholic community has agreed to pay $20-million to people who were once schoolboys in its care in what is described as a record sexual-abuse settlement in Quebec.

In a deal announced on Tuesday, the order approved settling a class-action lawsuit brought on behalf of abuse victims at the school during a 27-year span beginning in 1960. The students, all boys, were aged 12 to 16 at the time.

“This is a landmark case,” said Robert Kugler, a Montreal lawyer who represents the victims. “This is the highest amount that has ever been paid by a religious congregation in Quebec to settle a class action dealing with sexual abuse.”

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AUSTRALIA
Yahoo! News

By Kate Stowell and staff | ABC

The leadership of the Catholic Church has formally proposed a major shake-up of its compensation scheme for survivors of clergy child sexual abuse.

In a written submission to the Royal Commission into Institutional Child Sexual Abuse, the church said it wanted the Government to set up a national scheme to determine claims and compensation.

The scheme would be independently run, but would be funded by institutions where abuse occurred.

Abuse survivors who had already received money under the Towards Healing and Melbourne Response programs would be allow to apply.

Francis Sullivan from the Catholic Church’s Truth, Justice and Healing Council told AM the church did not want to wait for the Royal Commission’s findings.

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LOUISIANA
KATC

[with video]

District Attorney Mike Harson tells KATC without victims coming forward, he can’t prosecute old cases of alleged sexual-abuse by priests.

The priest sex-abuse scandal was brought back in the spotlight after a sweeping investigation by Minnesota Public Radio last month.

The Diocese of Lafayette has acknowledged “credible accusations” against 15 priests, but is refusing to release their names. “The Bishop sees no purpose in releasing their names,” wrote diocese spokesman, Monsignor Richard Greene.

Msgr. Greene adds that none of those 15 priests are still in the church here, or elsewhere. Of those 15 only one, Father Gilbert Gauthe, ever faced criminal charges in Lafayette.

“Put out the 15 names,” says Abbeville attorney Tony Fontana, who represented a number of priest sex-abuse victims and their families. “Start showing that you care more about protecting kids than you do about protecting the pervert priests.”

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CANADA
Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests

For immediate release: Tuesday, Aug. 12

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 $20 million clergy sex abuse settlement means one thing: Catholic officials were incredibly scared of the evidence about complicity that would have emerged in court.

[Toronto Sun]

That’s almost always the motive when the church hierarchy pays this much money to abuse victims.

We applaud these brave men and women for having the strength to report these crimes, the wisdom to seek justice in court and the tenacity to endure needless legal delays by Redemptorist officials. Kids are safer today because of the courage of these victims. We hope their action will prevent future abuse and cover ups. And we are confident that their healing will be helped by this resolution.

No amount of money can restore the stolen childhoods and shattered trust of these once-innocent and trusting children. Those who committed or concealed these heinous crimes should be in jail. But the civil justice system can help validate those who have been severely and needlessly harmed, and that’s what we believe happened here.

We hope the bravery of these victims will inspire others who saw, suspected or suffered clergy sex crimes and cover ups in Canada to speak up, get help, expose wrongdoers, protect kids and start healing.

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NEW YORK
The Journal News

Steve Lieberman
slieberm@lohud.com 3:47 p.m. EDT August 12, 2014

A prominent Monsey rabbi who runs a boys school pleaded not guilty Tuesday morning to charges he sexually assaulted a 7-year-old male student repeatedly in his yeshiva office.

Gavriel Bodenheimer, 71, principal of Yeshiva Bais Mikroh for decades, stood shackled at the waist during his arraignment on three counts of first-degree criminal sexual act and one count of first-degree sex abuse.

Judge William Nelson set Bodenheimer’s bail at $25,000 cash or bond. The rabbi’s lawywer, Deborah Wolikow-Loewenberg, said he would be able to post bail and be released later Tuesday.

“We are going to fight the allegations because they are not true,” Wolikow-Loewenberg said after the court session.

Ramapo police arrested Bodenheimer Monday based on a sealed grand jury indictment. He was kept overnight at the Rockland County jail in New City pending his court appearance, when the indictment was unsealed.

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IRELAND
Irish Independent

Sarah MacDonald
PUBLISHED 12/08/2014

The Vatican’s heresy case against Irish priest Fr Tony Flannery is built on shaky ground, according to a new book by a leading Irish theologian, who also accuses the Vatican’s Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith of being “tyrannical”.

‘The Church: Always in Need of Reform’, by Augustinian Fr Gabriel Daly, is due to be published by Dominican Publications before Christmas.

It deals with the need for reform of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF), Rome’s doctrinal watchdog which was formerly known as the Inquisition.

Discussing the plight of Redemptorist priest Fr Tony Flannery, who was silenced by the Vatican in 2012 and threatened with excommunication, as well as the treatment of three other censured Irish priests, Fr Daly accuses the CDF of being “theologically inept”.

He focuses on an article Fr Flannery wrote for the journal ‘Reality’ which was cited by the CDF as one of the reasons for its decision to censure the Redemptorist.

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CANADA
Montreal Gazette

BY GEOFFREY VENDEVILLE, THE GAZETTE AUGUST 12, 2014

Victims of sexual abuse at the hands of Redemptorist priests at the St-Alphonse Seminary in Ste-Anne-de-Beaupré, east of Quebec City, have reached a $20-million, out-of-court settlement with the Catholic order.

“It’s a landmark settlement,” said Robert Kugler, the lawyer representing victims in a class-action lawsuit. “It’s the most that has ever been paid in the settlement of a sexual abuse class action in the history of Quebec.”

The agreement will be submitted to a judge within the next 30 days for final approval.

On July 10, Quebec Superior Court judge Claude Bouchard awarded the victims between $75,000 and $150,000 each in compensation. The parties reached the settlement at the last minute before the deadline to appeal the decision expired the afternoon of Aug. 11. Kugler was only able to reveal the sum of money included in the agreement after meeting with a judge Tuesday morning.

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CANADA
Toronto Sun

QUEBEC CITY — A Catholic order has agreed to pay $20 million to at least 100 former students molested by priests between 1960 and 1987.

Nine priests were accused of abusing children at Saint-Alphonse college east of Quebec City. Some of the priests have since died.

The college is associated with the internationally revered shrine at the Sainte-Anne-de-Beaupre Basilica, located northeast of the city.

A lawyer for the Redemptorist order at the centre of the scandal confirmed the cash settlement Tuesday.

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CANADA
CBC News

The Redemptorist Order of Catholic Priests will pay $20 million to victims of sexual abuse at its St-Alphonse Seminary near Quebec City during the 1970s and ’80s.

Robert Kugler, the lawyer representing former students at the seminary, said the landmark out-of-court settlement is the largest ever paid in a class-action sexual abuse lawsuit in Quebec.

In July, Superior Court Judge Claude Bouchard ordered the Redemptorist Order, the St-Alphonse Seminary and Rev. Raymond-Marie Lavoie to pay at least $75,000 to each of the lawsuit’s 70 claimants.

Other victims have since come forward, bringing the number of total claimants to more than 100 — and counting.

“That number is likely to go up by a lot… We have tried to simplify the process to ensure that a maximum number of victims present claims,” Kugler told Radio-Canada.

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NORTHERN IRELAND
Derry Journal

by Andrew Quinn
Twitter: @AndrewEQuinn

Published on the 12 August 2014

Derry man, Brian Doherty, has a message for Pope Francis.

“Don’t forget about Northern Ireland,” said Brian.

Brian Doherty was born in 1947 and when he was three weeks old he was placed into the care of the Sisters of Nazareth in the St. Joseph’s Home in Termonbacca. Brian remained there until he was 14 years-old.

Brian has spoken very openly about the abuse he suffered at the hands of the Sisters of Nazareth in the 1940s and 50s and within the last 12 months he has sent six letters to Pope Francis asking him to meet with survivors of clerical abuse from Northern Ireland.

“The Pope met with clerical abuse victims from Ireland and mainland United Kingdom last month but there was no one there to represent the victims from Northern Ireland. Do we not matter simply because we are from Northern Ireland? It’s as simple as this, child abuse is wrong no matter what part of the world you are from.

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TEXAS
Watch Keep

I am posting with permission of the Cedar Park, Texas Chief of Police Sean Mannix, his statement on the Greg Kelley child sexual assault case emailed on July 30, 2014 to his police department, a matter of public record.

All,

As you are all aware, on July 15, 2014, Greg Kelley was convicted of two counts of Super Aggravated Sexual Assault of a small child and sentenced to 25 years in prison with no eligibility for parole or appeal, through a plea agreement. In most cases the next step would be a quiet departure to a state prison with little fanfare. Not in this case. I know that you are all in tune with the fact that Mr. Kelley has garnered much support from his old classmates and others and a movement was established called “Fight for GK”. This group has been very vocal in their support of Mr. Kelley and very critical of the police department and the DA’s office. The Fight for GK movement has taken on a cult-like appearance, as it is mostly high school kids that have only been exposed to the news reports and what fellow supporters have told them, with no interest in seeking the truth. This movement, in my opinion, has been fueled by what I can only characterize as some of the most biased news coverage of a trial that I have ever encountered in three decades of doing this work. In this case there was tremendous coverage of the defense case and Mr. Kelley’s support group and very little coverage of the substance of the trial itself. I have not been able to figure out if the bias was intended or just lazy reporting.

You all saw Detective Dailey take a beating by the Defense with no coverage of his testimony to the Prosecution. A picture was painted that he did something improper by entering the interview room and asking the child to tell them what the child had told his mother. This was irregular, but not improper. In a perfect world the child would have been subject to a deep forensic interview, but at the time the CAC had lost their only staff member qualified for such interviews. We have a luxury of having a child advocacy center available to us. Many investigators around the country do not have access to these resources and are forced to do the child interviews themselves. While that is not ideal, it is anything but improper.

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MINNESOTA
Catholic League

Bill Donohue comments on Minnesota Public Radio’s (MPR) latest attempt to discredit St. Paul and Minneapolis Archbishop John Nienstedt:

Those waging war on Archbishop Nienstedt are losing ground, and they know it. In a contrived attempt to keep the flame alive, MPR is now charging that “New Documents Show Falsehoods in Nienstedt Testimony.” But as with previous efforts, this one comes up lame.

The story involves Rev. Kenneth LaVan. Here is the relevant timeline.

Some thirty years ago, two teenage girls made accusations against LaVan. About the same time, he was also charged with “boundary violations” with adult females.
In 1998 he retired.
In 2008 Archbishop Nienstedt is installed.
In 2013, after accusations that not enough was being done about accused priests, an outside firm is hired to investigate this issue. In December, Nienstedt is apprised of LaVan’s history and he is formally and permanently removes him from ministry.

MPR is saying that Nienstedt should have known about this priest when he allegedly approved a limited assignment for him earlier last year. But inconveniently for MPR, the documents it references never mention child sexual abuse. What Nienstedt approved was a monitoring plan based on the priest’s inappropriate conduct with adult women. Moreover, when MPR finds it necessary to cite the fact that Nienstedt “spent time socially with LaVan,” and that he even wrote a letter to him thanking him for a gift, it shows how utterly desperate it is.

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ITALY
Malta Independent

The 60-year old archpriest of Taormina, Don Salvatore Sinito”, has been abruptly removed by the Archbishop of Messina.

The case has raised a scandal in the Italian press.

On the one hand, the priest was commended for restoring and reopening the many small and historic chapels of the town but on the other hand he was criticised for turning the whole into a big money-making enterprise especially anything to do with weddings, which are very popular there.

He had given new life to the saint of the town after the feast had fallen into neglect but he was criticised widely for the decision not to accompany dead persons to the cemetery but only to the church’s porch.

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NEW YORK
Post-Standard

By Douglass Dowty | ddowty@syracuse.com
on August 12, 2014

Syracuse, NY — An Onondaga County Court judge today warned a Syracuse priest that if he continues to fight child pornography charges and loses, he could wind up behind bars.

Robert Ours, 65, was charged in May with six counts of possessing a sexual performance by a child. The retired priest, who led churches in the Southern Tier, lives at a residence for priests in Syracuse.

The Syracuse Diocese alerted authorities to the allegations against Ours earlier this year, and the diocese cooperated with the investigation, prosecutors have said.

Plea negotiations have gone on all summer, but Ours is still contesting the charges.

Today, County Court Judge Joseph Fahey set a hearing for Sept. 4 to determine whether authorities properly investigated the computer with the child porn.

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AUSTRALIA
Sydney Morning Herald

August 12, 2014

Rachel Browne
Social Affairs Reporter

Advocates for survivors of child sex abuse have cautiously welcomed the Catholic Church’s proposed compensation scheme for victims of institutional abuse.

The Catholic Church’s Truth, Justice and Healing Council has called for a national redress scheme to be administered by the federal government but funded by the institutions responsible for the harm, in a recommendation to the royal commission into child sex abuse.

Its submission, lodged on Tuesday, also recommends that victims who have already received compensation be able to access the new scheme for an independent review of past settlements.

Care Leavers Australia Network executive officer Leonie Sheedy said many survivors had just received “breadcrumbs” to compensate them for the abuse they suffered, saying a fair redress scheme was well overdue.

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UNITED STATES
MintPress News

By Jason Berry | August 12, 2014

When Leadership Conference of Women Religious, the superiors who represent 80 percent of American nuns, open their four-day summer convention Tuesday in Nashville, key members of the US Catholic hierarchy will be on hand, notably the Vatican-assigned overseer of the sisters’ group, Seattle Archbishop Peter Sartain.

The big question will be whether one side blinks.

Vatican officials and certain US bishops are in a standoff with the liberal leadership of the mainstream communities of American religious sisters.

The rift between the two sides opened in 2012 when the Vatican’s Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF) ordered the nuns to revise their statutes and work under the supervision of a bishop for their alleged tilt toward “radical feminism” and for promoting theological positions at odds with the magisterium, or teaching office at the CDF.

As GlobalPost reported in 2013, key cardinals and bishops behind the Leadership Conference of Women Religious (LCWR) investigation had been publicly tarnished for their concealment of pedophile priests.

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UNITED KINGDOM
Northern Echo

A ROMAN Catholic priest arrested on suspicion of fraud has been granted police bail for a further two months.

Father John Reid, 66, was arrested earlier this year and was bailed by police until today (Tuesday, August 12)

Detectives were called in after an audit by officials of the Hexham and Newcastle Diocese revealed that cash was missing from St Cuthbert’s Church in Ropery Lane, Chester-le-Street, County Durham.

Police later obtained an order from magistrates at Peterlee to keep £1,770-worth Euros and £675 Sterling they had found at his home.

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AUSTRALIA
The Australian

AUGUST 13, 2014

Dan Box
Crime Reporter
Sydney

CARDINAL George Pell will give evidence by video-link from the Vatican to a royal commission next week after the Catholic Church yesterday said it would abandon the process by which it investigates claims of child abuse committed by its priests.

Key among these is the Melbourne Response, introduced by Cardinal Pell in 1996, and which will be the focus of the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse hearing, beginning on Monday.

The Melbourne Response, as well as the Towards Healing process operated elsewhere within the church, have dealt with hundreds of victims, many of whom have criticised a lack of independence during the handling of their case.

Cardinal Pell, who now is responsible for the Vatican’s finances, has previously defended both schemes, describing the Melbourne Response as “first and foremost about helping victims”.

The commission is expected to question him over three cases dealt with under the Melbourne Response. He has already given evidence about Towards Healing and the church’s use of civil litigation to respond to claims.

“The days of the Catholic Church investigating itself are over,” the head of the church’s ­national Truth, Justice and Healing Council, Francis Sullivan, said yesterday, after formally calling for an independent victims’ redress scheme to handle abuse claims. In a 47-page submission, the council called on the commission to recommend the federal government establish such a body, funded in part by the church, to investigate claims and determine the compensation victims receive.

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LOUISIANA
IND

District Attorney Mike Harson says unless a victim comes forward, his office will not launch an investigation into recently uncovered allegations of sexual abuse by a priest from the Diocese of Lafayette.

“To engage in an investigation without their commitment would appear to be a fruitless endeavor since I would certainly have to have their involvement in order to have any chance of success and it could unnecessarily revisit their trauma and open wounds that they thought were long dealt with, all without their request or desire,” says Harson in an interview with The Daily Advertiser.

Harson also says he has no plans to ask for a list cited by Bishop Michael Jarrell of 15 priests whose victims received settlements from the diocese. He also doesn’t plan on looking into allegations against the Rev. Gil Dutel.

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CAMADA
Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests

For Immediate Release: Tuesday, Aug. 12, 2014

Contact: David Clohessy of St. Louis MO 314 566 9790,SNAPclohessy@aol.com, Brenda Brunelle of Windsor, Canada 519 800 3492, windsor@SNAPnetwork.org

Ottawa man pleads guilty in sex case
He was former head of Catholic youth group
He was indicted for 1984 child sexual assault
In 2002, a civil case against him & Knights of Columbus was settled
Victims urge others who were hurt to “come forward, get help, call police”

An Ottawa man who was the provincial director of a national Catholic youth organization admitted guilt in a criminal case stemming from an August 1984 child sexual assault.

Steve Fagan pleaded guilty yesterday to sexual assault and will face a sentencing hearing on October 17. The Crown is seeking a six month jail sentence, two years’ probation, and that Fagan be listed on the sex offender registry.

Fagan was arrested in November or December of 2013 for the sexual assault of a boy. At the time of the assault, Fagan was a member of the Knight of Columbus and State Chairman for the Ontario Columbian Squires. The Knights are a 1.8 million member Catholic men’s organization and the Squires are the Knights’ youth auxiliary.

Fagan used his position as provincial director to target and molest a boy who was a member of the organization. That individual, now in his 40s read a ‘victim impact statement’ at the hearing in Kingston.

Members of SNAP, the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests (SNAPnetwork.org), are saluting the victim’s bravery and tenacity. They also applaud prosecutors, who pursued the case when many others might have passed.

“It takes real courage to step forward, report abuse and seek justice when you’ve been sexually violated as a child,” said Brenda Brunelle of Windsor, Canada. She’s a SNAP leader for Windsor. “This courageous young man has successfully stepped forward twice – in both criminal and civil court – and children are safer because of him.”

“All too often, victims hear that they cannot use the criminal courts because too much time has passed,” said David Clohessy of SNAP. “The fact that prosecutors pursued this case shows that’s not always the case. Smart and determined police and prosecutors can often successfully pursue even older child sex crimes. But first, victims must find the courage and strength to speak up.”

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NORTHERN IRELAND
Northern Ireland Historical Institutional Abuse Inquiry

Media Release

12th August 2014

The Northern Ireland Historical Institutional Abuse Inquiry will focus on a migration scheme which involved the transport of children to Australia when it recommences its public hearings at the beginning of September.

Public hearings for the Inquiry’s second module of evidence will commence at 11am on Monday, 1st September at Banbridge Courthouse, Banbridge, Co Down, Northern Ireland.

A team from the Inquiry and its confidential Acknowledgement Forum has already made two trips to Australia, during which a total of 66 applicants, now residing in Australia, were interviewed. All these individuals had applied to participate in the statutory Inquiry and/or Forum processes.

The witnesses being asked to provide evidence to the oral hearings have been chosen because they can describe the events which occurred to them before they left Northern Ireland when they were sent as child migrants to Australia. The majority of these witnesses will provide their oral evidence via video-link. The module is scheduled to last three weeks.

Documentation examined by the Inquiry has revealed that, between 1946 and 1956, children were sent from various institutions in Northern Ireland to institutions in Australia (primarily Western Australia), as part of a UK government policy of child migration.

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NORTHERN IRELAND
UTV

Published Tuesday, 12 August 2014

The next hearings of the Historical Institutional Abuse Inquiry will focus on a migration scheme which involved the transport of children to Australia.

A team from the inquiry has made two trips to Australia and interviewed 66 people who applied to give evidence.

“The witnesses being asked to provide evidence to the oral hearings have been chosen because they can describe the events which occurred to them before they left Northern Ireland when they were sent as child migrants to Australia,” a spokesperson explained.

“The majority of these witnesses will provide their oral evidence via video-link.”

The inquiry, which was set up to examine allegations of abuse over a 73-year period up to 1995, said documents it has seen have revealed that children were sent from NI institutions to Australia between 1946 and 1956 as part of a UK government policy of child migration.

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NORTHERN IRELAND
BBC News

A migration scheme that transported children to Australia will be the focus of the next public hearings of the Historical Institutional Abuse Inquiry.

The inquiry (HIA) is examining the extent of child abuse in the Catholic church and state-run institutions in Northern Ireland from 1922 to 1995.

Public hearings began in January. They ended in May and will resume on 1 September at Banbridge courthouse.

A team from the inquiry has already made two trips to Australia.

Sixty-six people living there have applied to take part in the inquiry or give statements to the confidential acknowledgement forum.

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NORTHERN IRELAND
News Letter

Sixty-six people have applied to give evidence about the alleged abuse of child migrants from Northern Ireland, the Historical Institutional Abuse Inquiry has said.

More than 100 children were sent to Australia in the 1940s and 1950s. Most were transferred by Catholic religious orders, like the Sisters of Mercy and the Christian Brothers, who ran care homes.

Witnesses will address chairman Sir Anthony Hart’s public hearings or a private acknowledgement forum. Most will speak using a video-link.

A spokeswoman for the inquiry said: “The witnesses being asked to provide evidence to the oral hearings have been chosen because they can describe the events which occurred to them before they left Northern Ireland when they were sent as child migrants to Australia.”

The treatment of young people, orphaned or taken away from their unmarried mothers, in houses run by nuns, brothers or the state is a key concern of the retired High Court judge’s inquiry which is being held in Banbridge, Co Down, and was ordered by ministers.

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CANADA
The Telegram

Rosie Mullaley
Published on August 12, 2014

An Anglican priest and his wife have pleaded guilty to swindling money from their parish.
John and Catherine Dinn are in provincial court in St. John’s this morning.

John Dinn, 55, pleaded guilty to two counts of fraud under $5,000 and one count of theft under $5,000, while Catherine Dinn, 52, pleaded guilty to three counts of fraud under $5,000.

The incidents happened between May 2012 and November 2012.

According to the facts of the case, read out by Crown prosecutor Sheldon Steeves, the couple took cheques at St. Evangelist Church in Conception Bay South meant for various charities, forged John Dinn’s name on them and deposited them into the couple’s joint bank account.

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UNITED KINGDOM
The Press

12 August 2014

THE Archbishop of York has said he is “deeply ashamed” of the Church of England’s failure to protect vulnerable children.

A national newspaper has reported that Dr John Sentamu has written to a number of men who were abused as children by the Very Rev Robert Waddington, the former dean of Manchester Cathedral, who preyed on schoolboys in Britain and Australia over a 60-year period.

Dr Sentamu is preparing to publish an independent report by Judge Sally Cahill, QC, in to Waddington, who died in 2007, and the mishandling of abuse allegations in 1999, 2003 and 2005 against him from former choirboys and students in England and Australia.

It also investigated the former archbishop of York, now Lord Hope of Thornes who last year expressed regret at not reporting the allegations to police or other child protection agencies.

Archbishop Sentamu wrote in his letter to Waddington’s victims that “we in the Church of England should face up to the wrong which has been allowed to be done to those children who were abused by the late Robert Waddington’’.

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IRELAND
Irish Examiner

By John Breslin

Brendan Gleeson has revealed he was molested as a child by a Christian Brother who “dropped the hand” on him in primary school.

But Gleeson, in an interview on National Public Radio in the US, said he was not “traumatised” in any way by the incident.

“It was just one of those things where something odd happened,” said Gleeson, speaking following the US release last week of his latest film Calvary, in which he plays a priest in a small town in Ireland.

“Yeah, it’s odd, I remember a particular Christian Brother dropped the hand on me at one point. It was not very traumatic and it was not very, it was not at all sustained, it was just one of these things where something odd happened,” Gleeson said.

“I remember that was in primary school and, frankly, I was not traumatised by it at all. It was just a bit weird and obviously the vibe was that he never came at me again.

“The same guy was in secondary school and I remember a couple of us starting trading stories and really that he was a bit off.

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IRELAND
Irish Mirror

Aug 12, 2014 By Claire Healy

Veteran Irish actor made the startling revelation during a US radio interview alongside Calvary director John McDonagh

Actor Brendan Gleeson has revealed that he was molested by a Christian Brother as a child.

Promoting his latest flick Calvary – which is on a limited US release – Gleeson appeared on NPR’s Bob Edwards Weekend alongside director John Michael McDonagh to chat about the film.

In the film Gleeson plays a good priest who is confronted by one of his parishioners about sexual abuse he suffered at the hands of a Catholic priest when he was a child.

The radio presenter then asked the pair did either of them know anyone who had been abused by priests during their childhood.

Gleeson revealed: “Yeah, it’s odd. I remember a particular Christian Brother dropped the hand on me at one point.

“And it wasn’t very traumatic and it wasn’t at all sustained – it was just one of these things where something odd happened.”

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IRELAND
Irish Times

Patsy McGarry

Mon, Aug 11, 2014

The work of a priest is “almost impossible unless there is humour, humanity, honesty”, a member the Association of Catholic Priests (ACP) leadership team has commented.

Augusinian priest Fr Séamus Ahearne was expressing his support for a recent observation by the Catholic Archbishop of Dublin Diarmuid Martin, who said the willingness of Pope Francis “to break away from accepted traditions” was a cause of disquiet among some priests.

In an address last month at the Catholic Leadership Centre in Melbourne, Archbishop Martin spoke of a curate in Dublin who was “not at all happy with some of the utterances of Pope Francis, which he felt were not in line with what he had learned in the seminary, and he felt that this was making the faithful insecure and even encouraging those who do not hold the orthodox Catholic belief to challenge traditional teaching”.

Fr Ahearne said the archbishop’s observations were “apt”.

He said younger priests were “very few and some embrace a very traditionalist view of Church. It is understandable too because there is great insecurity among the young. They need certainties. We don’t have them.”

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CANADA
CHCH

[with video]

It is one of societies most abhorrent crimes. Possession of child pornography. Charges can lead to prison time, destroying the lives and reputations of convicted felons.
It was back in June when police seized computers at a Catholic church in Caledonia following a tip that they contained inappropriate pornographic images. The incident shocked residents and devastated the parish priest, wrongfully linked to such a heinous allegation.

Father Mario Fernandes has spent his life devoted to helping others. A native of India, Father Mario worked as an addiction counsellor in Vancouver’s east side before moving to Ontario where he was appointed pastor of St. Patrick’s Roman Catholic Church in Caledonia.

In June of this year, Father Mario’s life was shattered when police seized computers at the church after receiving a complaint that they contained inappropriate pornographic images. But a thorough check by the OPP’s technical crime unit found the images in question were advertising pop ups, that the computer’s firewall was unable to block. Today the computers were returned, and the case was closed. Still the incident has shocked the community and shattered the life of an innocent man.

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POLAND
The News

A progressive priest who apparently said that the older generation of Polish bishops needs ‘to die out’ has been given a ‘final chance’ by his superiors.

Father Wojciech Lemanski was banned from leading occasional masses at his former parish of Jasienica, near Warsaw, following controversial remarks made at the Prystanek Woodstock rock festival.

However, head of the Warsaw-Praga diocese Archbishop Henryk Hoser has told Catholic weekly Gosc Niedzielny that he hopes that Father Lemanski will uphold “the unity” of the Church.

“This is the last attempt and the last chance,” Hoser said. “My decisions are designed to save his priesthood,” the archbishop argued.

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MALTA
Malta Independent

Tuesday, 12 August 2014 by Neil Camilleri

The former Mgarr Parish Priest has hit out at his “unfair dismissal” by Archbishop Paul Cremona and Auxiliary Bishop Charles Scicluna and said the two top Curia officials had succumbed to undue pressure by a small group of extreme traditionalists who wanted him out of their parish. In doing so, the Curia is exposing its “leadership crisis”, he said.

In exclusive comments to The Malta Independent, Fr Emanuel Camilleri reacted to a report in L-Orizzont about his dismissal, which claimed he had set out on the wrong foot with parishioners over a ban on unauthorised statues in the Via Sagra procession. The report also claimed that Mgr. Scicluna had personally gone to Mgarr to deliver the bad news and that the parish priest had decided on his own when to be formally appointed as parish priest. But speaking to this newspaper, Dun Emanuel gave his version of the story.

“I did not decide when to appoint myself. The ceremony was due to be held on Saturday 16h August with the Archbishop’s blessing.”

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AUSTRALIA
The Age

August 10, 2014

Konrad Marshall
Senior Reporter for The Age

Manny Waks knows all too well the backlash the coming week will bring, but he is ready.

Since Waks first went public in 2011 with personal accusations of repeated sexual abuse and cover up from his time as a young boy at Yeshivah College, he has become all too familiar with the pattern of fallout.

In the three years since his bombshell, as other survivors came forward, as government inquiries listened to the list of crimes, as abusers were exposed and jailed, Waks continued to face a fate known well to whistleblowers.

First came shunning from some segments of the ultra-orthodox Chabad community in which he was raised. Then the bullying and outright ostracism of his parents, Zephaniah and Chaya, who uprooted their lives and moved to Israel to escape harassment and isolation. And finally the no-less-painful suggestions that Waks, 38, simply “move on” and leave his pain behind.

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UNITED STATES
Waiting for Godot to Leave

Kevin O’Brien

Has anyone ever commented on the fact that, not only is it shocking that bishops have been covering for, lying for, and enabling abusive priests – but that when a priest is sexually active at all (even with consenting adults), this seems to be no big deal to bishops?

In the case of Fr. LaVan in St. Paul, who was kept in ministry until very recently (in violation of the Dallas Charter), not only was he (by the admission of the archdiocese) “credibly accused” of raping two teenage girls and yet allowed to serve in parishes for 25 years after these rapes, but over that period of time, he also had a series of affairs with adults – who were married parishioners.

As early as 1986, LaVan admitted to having affairs with at least four married women (up to that time) who were parishioners of his. He bragged to the woman whose husband he threatened to murder that he had several “woman lovers” from his parishes that he kept in contact with even after he would be sent to a new parish.

Now, it’s bad enough that LaVan was allowed to continue to function as a priest, even after the archdiocese was convinced he had raped two teenage girls.

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NEW YORK
News 12

[with video]

MONSEY – A Monsey rabbi, who is also a principal at a local yeshiva, was arrested Monday for alleged sexual abuse.

Gavriel Bodenheimer, 71, was arrested for alleged criminal sex acts and sex abuse, but prosecutors have been tight-lipped about who the rabbi allegedly abused and when. He is principal of Yeshiva Bais Mikroh, a boys’ yeshiva.

Bodenheimer’s lawyers say they have not seen the charges yet and won’t see them until the indictment is unsealed in court. They say Bodenheimer has been active in many charities in his community for decades.

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AUSTRALIA
The Age

August 11, 2014

Aisha Dow
City Reporter for The Age

The Catholic Church found a Melbourne paedophile priest accused of interfering with young girls during confession guilty of child sex abuse, more than a decade before Cardinal George Pell denied a cover up, it has been revealed.

The ABC’s Four Corners program has obtained a confidential draft report that shows former Doveton parish priest, Father Peter Searson, was found guilty of sexual abuse by the church during an internal hearing in 1997.

That is despite the fact former Archbishop of Melbourne Cardinal Pell previously denied the church ignored complaints about Searson, in what victims described as an attitude of “hear no evil, see no evil, say nothing”.

“No conviction was recorded for Searson on sexual misbehaviour,” Cardinal Pell told the Victorian inquiry into child sexual abuse last year. “There might be victims. He was convicted for cruelty. But speaking more generally, I totally reject the suggestion.”

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AUSTRIA
The Raw Story

By Katie Halper
Monday, August 11, 2014

A woman filmed herself exposing her breasts and touching herself in an Austrian parish, in June. She also was holding a bible and rosary, in case you were worried about her going to hell. A church-going-porn-fan was trying to enjoy some secular online porn, when he recognized the interior of his church. Like any church-going-porn-watching-upstanding-tattle-tale, he informed his local priest, in what I imagine must have been an uncomfortable discussion.

In a compliment to the woman’s handwork, the church expressed outrage that, in addition to her sneaking herself in, she had snuck in a crew and cameras. According to the Austrian Times, “Local police confirmed that no permission had been requested or given for the church to be used to shoot the movies….” I’m sure the church would have been more than happy to sign a release form authorizing the woman to shoot a porn in their house of worship. The Austrian Times also reported that The ”Diocese of Linz said police are still investigating how the crew and actors were able to get into the church.” Then, the police realized that the quality and angles suggested this had been a DIY project, in a few aspects, actually.

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AUSTRALIA
Yahoo! News

By Quentin McDermott and Peter Cronau | ABC

The Catholic Church’s spokesman on child sexual abuse has questioned its stance on the sanctity of the confessional when it is used by priests who make admissions of abuse.

Francis Sullivan, the chief executive of the Truth, Justice and Healing Council, has told the ABC’s Four Corners program in an extended interview that in his mind, “the child’s safety is paramount and it’s incumbent upon the church to explain to the Catholic community and beyond why the confessional and information in it is sacrosanct”.

Wayne Chamley from Broken Rites, an organisation which researches the alleged cover-up of abuse in the Catholic Church, told Four Corners that “a deviant paedophile priest may use the confessional as a way to lock in his superior”.

“It may be that tactically these people – because they’re incredibly clever paedophiles, and they’re incredibly devious – at times were able to use the confessional as a way of locking in the people who did have some authority over them, so that the person just didn’t go near them because it was signed and sealed by the confession that had been made.”

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MARYLAND
BishopAccountability.org

By Robert A. Erlandson and Joe Nawrozki
The Baltimore Sun
August 10, 1994

Baltimore City detectives investigating sex abuse allegations against a Roman Catholic priest dug up a van load of confidential records yesterday the priest had ordered buried four years ago in Brooklyn’s Holy Cross Cemetery.

City police were accompanied by the two Baltimore County homicide detectives assigned to the revived investigation of the unsolved 1969 slaying of Sister Catherine Ann Cesnik.

A high-ranking county police official said investigators were there because the name of the priest — the Rev. A. Joseph Maskell — had come up during their probe of the 25-year-old crime.

Father Maskell and Sister Catherine were both on the faculty of the all-girls Archbishop Keough High School in Southwest Baltimore in the late 1960s.

Father Maskell, 55, stepped down as pastor of St. Augustine’s Church in Elkridge on July 31 amid allegations that he had sexually abused students at Keough during his tenure as chaplain and counselor from 1967 to 1975.

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MARYLAND
Websleuths

Baltimore, City Paper
By Tom Nugent | Posted 1/5/2005

snipped
The body of the 26-year-old nun was found Jan. 3, 1970, in southwest Baltimore County. The circumstances surrounding the case were mysterious and disturbing at the time; in the wake of a City Paper investigation, those circumstances seem even more disturbing now.

Years after Cesnik’s murder, a lawsuit documented numerous findings of sexual abuse at the Catholic high school for girls where Cesnik taught shortly before her death. City Paper’s investigation also reveals that a second young murder victim (killed only four days after Cesnik vanished, and only a few miles from where the nun died) attended the same Catholic church where the alleged sex-abuser had been serving as parish priest.

snipped
…Cesnik had vanished on Nov. 7 during a brief, early evening trip to a shopping center about a mile from the Westgate apartment she shared with another Notre Dame nun, Sister Helen Russell Phillips.

snipped
Talking fast, the officer told the M Squad captain that two hunters had just called to report what looked like a “woman’s body” lying near a garbage dump off Monumental Avenue, in an isolated, wooded area in the southwest Baltimore County community of Lansdowne.

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MARYLAND
Open Salon

The body of Sister Catherine Ann Cesnik, Sister Cathy to those who knew her, was found on January 3, 1970 covered in snow near a garbage dump in Lansdowne, Maryland, about twenty minutes outside the city of Baltimore. The 26-year-old Roman Catholic Nun had been beaten to death, her skull crushed with an unknown blunt object. Her body was too decomposed and mauled by animals and insects for the coroner to determine whether she had been sexually assaulted or not. To this day her murderer has never been found.

Catherine Ann Cesnik was born in the small community of Lawrenceville, Pennsylvania across the River from Pittsburg to a postal worker father and a homemaker mother in a deeply devout Roman Catholic family.

When they were old enough, Cathy and her sisters attended St. Mary’s Assumption elementary school connected to the Church of the same name where she was taught by the Sisters of Notre Dame. When Cathy entered St. Augustine Catholic High School she was sure of her Vocation and shortly after she graduated in 1960 she entered Convent of the School Sisters of Notre Dame in Baltimore as a candidate for Sisterhood. After seven years as a Postulant, Cathy Cesnik took her final vows on July 21, 1967, taking the new name, Sister Joanita.

The Sisters of Notre Dame are a teaching Order and in 1965, while still a Postulate, Cathy Cesnik began to teach at the newly opened, all-girls Archbishop Keough High School.

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MARYLAND
The Baltimore Sun

August 11, 2014

This week in ‘Crime Scene,’ former TV police reporter and Baltimore City Police spokesman Matt Jablow brings you a case that has gone unsolved for nearly 45 years.

In November 1969, a 26-year-old nun, Catherine Cesnik, disappeared after leaving her Southwest Baltimore apartment to go shopping. Two months later, her beaten body was found in a frozen field in Baltimore County.

No suspect was named in the original investigation, but in 1994, sensational allegations arose that re-opened the case. However, those leads ultimately went cold and Sister Catherine Cesnik’s murder remains unsolved.

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MASSACHUSETTS
The Republican

By The Republican Editorials
on August 11, 2014

On Tuesday, Mitchell Rozanski will be installed as the region’s ninth bishop since the diocese was created in 1870 and the first bishop with Polish roots. To date, at least seven of the region’s eight bishops have had Irish background. The product of Catholic schools, he graduated from the Catholic University of America and its Theological College in Washington, D.C. …

Rozanski has been part of the solution in terms of the dark past of priest abuse of children.

He has been involved with minor revisions of the United States Catholic Conference of Bishops’ Charter for the Protection of Children and Young People. He warns of constant vigilance – at every level and institution to protect children.

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MINNESOTA
Minnesota Public Radio

Madeleine Baran St. Paul, Minn. Aug 11, 2014

Documents made public Monday in a lawsuit against the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis show that Archbishop John Nienstedt made false statements under oath in April about his knowledge of a priest accused of child sexual abuse.

Nienstedt said in an April 2 deposition that he didn’t know until March that a priest accused in the 1980s of sexually assaulting at least one teenage girl and “sexually exploiting” several women was still in ministry, a violation of church policy.

“I was not aware that he was publicly in ministry,” Nienstedt said, referring to the Rev. Kenneth LaVan. “And as soon as I realized it, I had his faculties removed.” Though retired, LaVan continued to assist with Masses at Twin Cities parishes until he was formally removed from all ministry in December 2013. Nienstedt said he learned of LaVan’s continuing ministry as part of a review of clergy files conducted by the Kinsale Group, a firm hired by the archdiocese.

However, documents released Monday show that, year after year, the archbishop received updates on LaVan and approved his continuing work at Twin Cities parishes, as recently as Aug. 15, 2013.

For example, Nienstedt received an annual report on LaVan in 2013 from a church official who monitors abusive priests. The monitor described “two face to face contacts” with LaVan over the past year and noted that LaVan assists at “a few parishes in the metro area when asked,” primarily St. Olaf in Minneapolis.

Nienstedt reviewed the information and approved the arrangement for another year.

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MINNESOTA
Roman Catholic Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis – via KSTP

In February 2014, we disclosed that there were substantiated claims of sexual abuse of a minor against Kenneth LaVan. Then in March, 2014, we publicly released the following additional information, which was reported in the media at the time:

(T)he archdiocese received reports in 1988 that he had abused two girls between 1958 and 1970. In 1989 and 1992, the archdiocese settled civil suits brought by the two victims. The archdiocese removed LaVan from ministry in early 1989 and required him to undergo treatment. After completion of treatment he was returned to parish ministry at St. Joseph in Lino Lakes with monitoring. LaVan retired in January 1998, but continued to provide limited assistance at St. Olaf in Minneapolis (and other parishes as requested) until December 2013. LaVan has also been accused of inappropriate sexual relationships with adult women.

Under today’s standards and protocols, if we were to receive similar allegations regarding a priest, police would immediately be notified.

In addition, we have changed the way we use psychological treatment for priests. We consider it a way to get an understanding of their mental health. A priest who has sexually abused a child may indeed receive treatment, but would not be considered again for ministry, no matter what progress he
might make in treatment.

I apologize for the harm caused by some of our priests, and ask for forgiveness from sexual abuse victim/survivors, their families and their friends.

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MINNESOTA
KSTP

By: Megan Matthews

A file publicly released Monday, accuses the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis of ignoring the fact that a priest, Father Kenneth LaVan, was accused of inappropriate behavior multiple times. He continued in ministry until 2013.

The files, released by Jeff Anderson and Associates, say LaVan was first accused of inappropriate sexual behavior in the 1980s. He was sent for treatment twice and was diagnosed with compulsive sexuality disorder in 1989.

According to Anderson, LaVan’s history was reviewed in 1995, and despite the allegations and a lawsuit, the Clergy Review Board recommended LaVan continue in ministry. It wasn’t until December 2013, when Kinsale Management reviewed LaVan’s files, that he was removed from ministry.

LaVan’s name was not part of the original list of credibly accused priests released by the Archdiocese last December; however, LaVan’s name was later added.

The Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis released a statement Monday saying it made public that there were “substantiated claims of sexual abuse of a minor against Kenneth LaVan” in February 2014. A month later it released a statement saying LaVan was removed from ministry in 1989 to undergo treatment. He was only allowed to return to parish ministry at St. Joseph in Lino Lakes with monitoring, after he finished treatment.

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MINNESOTA
Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests

For immediate release: Monday, August 11, 2014

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

One bishop writes another bishop about an accused cleric who abused three girls and several women and even “mentioned a threat about possibly burning down the house” or “have your husband murdered.”

Yet the bishops keep it all secret and let the accused cleric stay on the job for another 25+ years.

That’s what newly disclosed, long secret St. Paul Catholic Archdiocese records show.

Then-Bishop Robert Carlson wrote an incriminating memo to then-Archbishop Harry Flynn that detailed Fr. Kenneth LaVan’s abuse of women and girls. But Carlson or Flynn aren’t responding to these disturbing revelations. Instead, Archbishop John Nienstedt trots out a spokesman who claims church officials would have handled the case differently these days. Frankly, we don’t believe that. And we find that insulting. Where’s the outrage? Where’s a single Catholic church employee who has the courage to say “I’m disgusted that Carlson would urge Flynn to lie and that Flynn took this advice and that LaVan was able to spend another quarter century on the church payroll around unsuspecting families.”

Carlson also admits in one memo that he did “not confront” Fr. LaVan about “the financial misdealing or the other girlfriends as he readily admitted.”

Other phrases in just that one Carlson memo are illustrative:

“the lavish ways that Father LaVan would retain . . .his woman lovers”

“from the very beginning, there were sexual overtones to Father LaVan’s conversation with her”

“it sounds like Father LaVan has a real sexual addiction problem”

“He apparently also is doing a lot of gambling and a fair amount of drinking.”

When will it ever end? When powerful, dishonest prelates like Flynn, Carlson and others are punished, both by church officials and secular authorities. And not until then.

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