ABUSE TRACKER

AUSTRALIA
Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse

21 March, 2016

The Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse has released a consultation paper on best practices in responding to complaints of child sexual abuse in institutions.

Royal Commission Chief Executive Officer Philip Reed said the Commission’s terms of reference require it to look at identification, reporting and investigating allegations of child sexual abuse in institutions.

“A theme identified from our 4,874 private sessions and 38 case studies to date is that there have been institutional failings when responding to complaints of child sexual abuse,” Mr Reed said.

“The Royal Commission is keen to ensure that all complaints of child sexual abuse in institutions are dealt with in an appropriate, timely and responsible manner no matter what the scenario or institution,” he said.

Mr Reed said that child sexual abuse should never happen, however, when it does it should be dealt with in a manner that protects the child, provides justice to the victim and holds perpetrators to account.

The consultation paper is seeking submissions on the best-practice principles, matters that should be canvassed in a model complaint handling policy and how these matters might be addressed.

The consultation paper is available here.

All interested parties are encouraged to make written submissions responding to the paper. Written submissions should be made by Tuesday, 26 April 2016 and can be submitted in the following ways:

* Email response@childabuseroyalcommission.gov.au

* Complete the online form at www.childabuseroyalcommission.gov.au/policy-and-research/complaint-handling-and-response/have-your-say

* Mail to GPO Box 5283, Sydney, NSW 2001.

Submissions can be anonymous.

Feedback on the issues outlined in the consultation paper will help inform recommendations the Royal Commission may make in order to better protect children in an institutional context from child sexual abuse.

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UNITED KINGDOM
Daily Mail

By STEVE DOUGHTY FOR DAILY MAIL

A high-powered group of lawyers, politicians and police officers yesterday accused the Church of England of smearing one of its own heroes.

They declared that an allegation that former Bishop of Chichester George Bell was a child abuser ‘cannot be upheld’ and called for an inquiry into how the CofE came to make it.

The protest, by well-placed figures including Anglican Labour MP Frank Field, leading lawyer Desmond Browne QC, and former police chief Lord Geoffrey Dear, threw the Church into a fresh difficulty over its handling of sex abuse allegations.

Last week the Church declared that a number of senior Anglican figures had failed to act on allegations of historic sex abuse of a teenager by a paedophile priest. It declined, however, to publish the report.

The scandal over Bishop Bell broke out last autumn, when the cleric, who died in 1958, was labelled a paedophile who had sexually abused a child.

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NEW YORK
PIX 11

[with video]

MARCH 20, 2016, BY MAGEE HICKEY

CROWN HEIGHTS, Brooklyn — The school buses were lined up along the service road on Eastern Parkway to block protesters from being seen by people going to the yeshiva’s fundraiser. But their voices can clearly be heard.

“Call the cops, not your rabbi,” protesters chanted, carrying signs saying “sexual abuse of little boys and girls is soul murder.”

Dozens of survivors of child sexual abuse, former students, advocates and parents rallied in front of Oholei Torah.

They are protesting what they say is the continued coverup of child sexual and physical abuse that they say occurs in the boys’ yeshiva.

We’re demanding accountability,” Chaim Levin, the rally organizer, told PIX11. “Two teachers who have physically abused students are still here. One teacher threw a student out a window. The principal been here for all the cover ups,” Levin claimed.

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SCOTLAND
Scottish Child Abuse Inquiry

Wednesday 23 March 2016, Radisson Blu Hotel, 301 Argyle St, Glasgow G2 8DL

The Chair of the Inquiry, Ms Susan O’Brien QC, is to launch a formal Call for Evidence on Wednesday 23 March in Glasgow.

The event will take place at the Radisson Blu Hotel, 301 Argyle St, Glasgow G2 8DL.

Since the Inquiry was formally established on 1 October 2015, it has engaged with a range of individuals and organisations with an interest in its work. The Inquiry has already started taking evidence from people who are elderly or seriously ill and this will continue.

Ms O’Brien – supported by the other Panel Members Mr Glenn Houston and Professor Michael Lamb – will set out the ways in which individuals and institutions with information that may be of interest to the work of Inquiry can provide their evidence.

Members of the public are welcome to attend the launch of the Call for Evidence, however seating capacity is limited and will be allocated on a first come, first served basis.

Those wishing to attend are asked to come to the main reception of the Radisson Blu hotel for 10.30am where they will be directed to the meeting room.

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SCOTLAND
Daily Record

BY MARION SCOTT

SUSAN O’Brien, head of the Scottish Child Abuse Inquiry, will hold a summit in Glasgow on Wednesday to give more details on the probe and meet victims.

INVESTIGATORS leading a huge inquiry into child abuse are to urge witnesses and victims to come forward.

Susan O’Brien QC, who is chairing the Scottish Child Abuse Inquiry , will encourage individuals and institutions to contact the probe.

At a meeting in Glasgow on Wednesday, she will detail how evidence can be given.

Some sick and elderly victims who have lodged complaints have already been interviewed for the inquiry, which is expected to take several years.

The investigation will cover sexual, physical, psychological and emotional abuse at children’s homes, residential schools, secure care units, schools, borstals and young offenders’ institutions until December 2014.

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AUSTRALIA
Newcastle Herald

By Joanne McCarthy
March 21, 2016

A FORMER Hunter Marist Brother who was jailed in 2001 for child sex offences, but was selling comic books and school resources on the Marist Schools Australia website until June last year, has been charged with child pornography offences.

Brother Terry Gilsenan, 60, who taught at the Marist St Francis Xavier College at Hamilton in 1995-96, was refused bail after he was charged with making child abuse material at the order’s Provincial House at Drummoyne.

He was charged nine months after the Marist Brothers removed contact details and references to Brother Gilsenan from its schools website after a complaint from Hunter victims’ group, Clergy Abuse Network, and questions from the Newcastle Herald.

Brother Gilsenan was identified only as “Brother Terry” on the website as contact for sales of “cards, posters and publications” and the “Champagnat Comic Book”, about the order’s founder. The website included his email address, land line and mobile phone numbers.

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IOWA
Iowa State Daily

By Michael Heckle
michael.heckle@iowastatedaily.com

Recent comments by high-ranking officials of the Catholic Church have painted a terrifying picture of the attitudes and policies the church holds toward the most atrocious actions committed by its own clergy: the sexual abuse of children. While allegations of sexual assaults have plagued the church since the 1970s, that Vatican has done little to discipline those responsible.

In a recent report published by the Catholic news site Cruxnow.com, new Catholic bishops are being told they are neither legally nor morally obligated to report sexual abuse by clergy to the proper authorities.

A new church training document for newly ordained bishops created by French Monsignor Tony Anatrella, a consultant for the Pontifical Council for the Family and the Pontifical Council for Health Care Workers, states, “According to the state of civil laws of each country where reporting is obligatory, it is not necessarily the duty of the bishop to report suspects to authorities, the police or state prosecutors in the moment when they are made aware of crimes or sinful deeds.”

Rather, Anatrella makes it a responsibility of victims and families of victims to report any allegations of sexual abuse.

While sources in the Vatican say that these comments are purely Anatrella’s personal opinion, the church has not released any documentation criticizing or clarifying his statements.

Complicating the situation further are fears that reports of sexual abuse in countries with more hostile attitudes toward the church will make a fair trial nearly impossible, especially in the case of false accusations.

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AUSTRALIA
National Catholic Reporter

Chris McGillion | Mar. 21, 2016

SYDNEY In some respects, the story of the Australian government inquiry into institutional responses to child sexual abuse is a story that can be told in numbers.

Since its first hearing three years ago, the inquiry — the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse — has received 29,223 telephone calls from victims and other interested parties, as well as 16,171 letters and emails. It has conducted 4,874 sessions in private (to provide, where requested, a safe and confidential environment for those testifying) and made 961 referrals to authorities, including police, many of which have resulted in arrests and charges.

The commission has also conducted nearly 40 public hearings around Australia looking into particular case studies of abuse — such as the one in early March that saw the questioning via video link from Rome of the Australian church’s highest-ranking cleric, Cardinal George Pell.

It has produced more than a dozen research reports covering such subjects as the history of child sexual abuse legislation in Australia, and investigations into why institutions may have failed to identify and report child abuse.

Based on modeling undertaken by actuarial consultants, the commission estimates there may be as many as 60,000 surviving victims of child abuse in Australia. It has found that the most common decade in which abuse occurred was the 1960s (28 percent) followed by the 1970s (23 percent).

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UNITED KINGDOM
Kent Online

by Tom Acres
tacres@thekmgroup.co.uk

Former residents of a Gravesend children’s home are pursuing legal action against the Church of England for allegedly covering up years of drug abuse.

A claim is being prepared by lawyers for Teresa Cooper, 48, a campaigner who says she was forcibly tranquilised at Kendall House between 1981 and 1984.

The mother-of-three hopes the claim can help give a voice to those who are said to have fallen ill as a result of their treatment at the home, as well as their children and grandchildren, many of whom suffered birth defects.

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AUSTRALIA
Eureka Street

Frank Brennan | 21 March 2016

In light of the publication of his new book Australian Religious Thought, the polymath Wayne Hudson has asked me to offer a few reflections on post-secular consciousness in my capacity as a religious person regularly involved in the public square of a pluralist democratic polity.

Wayne Hudson’s Australian Religious ThoughtLike many of you, I have had cause to reflect these last few weeks on why Cardinal Pell evokes such a visceral reaction from so many Australians who profess to have no religious commitment whatever, especially some in the media.

Of course Pell is often portrayed as the embodiment of tradition and authority of institutional religion. But whatever his shortcomings in relation to dealing with child sexual abuse, this does not fully explain the deep passion of so many of the anti-religious and non-religious factions.

He is also perceived by many of his critics as lacking the empathy, the compassion, and the insight of one who is supposed to tap into the religious sensibility or the secular moral consciousness of the average Australian who never darkens the door of a church but who often enjoys the benefit of hindsight.

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PENNSYLVANIA
Bucks County Courier Times

Posted: Monday, March 21, 2016

By REP. THOMAS P. MURT

First, it was Penn State, then it was the Archdiocese of Philadelphia. Now, just when you think that scandals involving the sexual abuse of children can’t get any worse, we learn about yet another one.

After a prolonged and extensive investigation, law enforcement professionals have uncovered literally mounds of evidence of countless cases of child sexual abuse and a multi-year cover-up by Roman Catholic Church officials.

In Western Pennsylvania, the Roman Catholic Diocese of Altoona-Johnstown has been found to have knowingly protected priests who were known child molesters. The diocese, through church connections and pathetic public officials, protected the child-molesting priests from law enforcement and prosecution.

Perhaps the worst crime they committed is never taking subsequent action to protect children from these child-molesting priests. When a priest was found to have sexually abused a child, the normal protocol was to simply move the priest to another parish, offer a cash payment to the family and/or to send the child-molesting priest on retreat, only to have him returned to ministry in the future.

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MINNESOTA
Winona Daily News

Jerome Christenson Daily News

It’s a syllogism that continues to haunt the Roman Catholic Church:

Some people sexually molest children.

Some people are Roman Catholic priests and religious.

Therefore, some Roman Catholic priests and religious sexually molest children.

For centuries, this was a reality spoken of in diocesan chanceries in hushed tones behind closed doors, spoken of in whispers at priestly retreats, and that haunted the dreams and blighted the lives of victims until it burst into public view and public consciousness.

What had been the deepest, darkest of secrets is now the subject of an Academy Award-winning film, the basis of legal actions that have driven diocese after diocese into bankruptcy and cast a dark shadow over all the Church does and says.

“Out of darkness has come a great light” resonates through the Christian tradition, and may well speak to the most lasting impact of the revelations of clerical abuse. With the October 2014 settlement of a suit brought against the Diocese of Winona and the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis, the Diocese of Winona committed itself to a specific set of protocols to defend children against abuse in the future and make amends to those who suffered abuse in the past.

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UNITED STATES
The Open Tabernacle: Here Comes Everybody

Posted on March 20, 2016 by Betty Clermont

Fr. Alessandro De Rossi, 46, pastor of a parish in Rome, was arrested on Dec. 31, 2014, charged with aggravated sexual abuse. An Argentine judge had issued the international arrest warrant on December 26 and transmitted it to Interpol.

De Rossi, born in Rome and sent to Argentina by Church authorities, was accused specifically with corrupting and sexually abusing minors, and “causing also the practice of group sex,” while he was a missionary in the Province of Salta from 2008 to 2013 working with young drug addicts.
On Dec. 23 and 24, 2014,

Salta police officers carried out several raids to seize computers, photographs and some other information that could be used as evidence of the alleged ties between De Rossi and the sexual abuse cases that had been reported by minors.

Prosecutor Pablo Paz explained to local media that there was enough evidence to charge the priest. Paz explained that he did not only have the depositions from the victims but also e-mails that De Rossi sent to the young man who filed a complaint. According to the prosecutor, De Rossi has to face charges for aggravated sexual abuse.

The Buenos Aires Herald also reported that “Judge Diego Rodríguez Pipino of Salta did not just request that Interpol arrest De Rossi but he also requested the assistance of the Foreign Ministry, the Border Guard, the Federal Police and the Airport Security Police. The Foreign Ministry is expected to play an important role to seek the extradition of the priest.”

The article noted that Italy had recently rejected Argentina’s request for extradition of two men connected to the atrocities committed during that country’s 1976-1983 military dictatorship. One “was charged with the kidnapping and torture of more than 60 people.” He had fled to Italy “trying to take advantage of his dual nationality” and “had taken refuge in a chapel in Genoa.” The other “was said to have witnessed torture in a clandestine detention centre.”

In January 2013, De Rossi had been hospitalized after he said he was attacked by a young man who had asked him for money and food. “I will not return to Italy,” he told a provincial newspaper.

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FRANCE
Fdebranche

Lors du traditionnel pélerinage de Saint-Joseph, qui a réuni plus de 3.000 personnes ce samedi à Cotignac, l’évêque du diocèse de Toulon-Fréjus n’a pas fui la « tourmente » qui secoue actuellement l’église catholique.

Au contraire même, Monseigneur Dominique Rey a, dans son allocution, a tenu des propos très clairs, et fermes, sur ces affaires. «On ne peut admettre que les mêmes mains qui donnent le corps du Christ, touchent le corps d’un enfant… La messe sera un office de réparation», a-t-il ainsi déclaré aux fidèles.

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FRANCE
Le Figaro

[A majority of French people – 63 percent – pwant the resignation of Cardinal Philippe Barbarin, who is accused of non-reporting of sexual assaults, according to a survey relayed by Le Parisien on Saturday. The Archbishop of Lyon is accused of having reacted too late in case Preynat Bernard, the priest indicted for pedophiles assaults on scouts in Lyon between 1986 and 1991.]

Une majorité de Français souhaitent la démission du cardinal Philippe Barbarin, visé par plusieurs plaintes pour non-dénonciation d’agressions sexuelles, selon un sondage relayé par Le Parisien ce samedi.

L’archevêque de Lyon est accusé d’avoir réagi trop tard dans l’affaire Bernard Preynat, du nom d’un prêtre mis en examen pour des agressions pédophiles de scouts lyonnais entre 1986 et 1991. Une nouvelle plainte touchant l’archevêque a été déposée en février, concernant des atteintes sexuelles commises par un autre prêtre lyonnais, suspendu mardi.

“Des problèmes passés sous silence” pour 88% des Français

Même si le cardinal s’est défendu d’avoir couvert “le moindre acte de pédophilie” dans son diocèse de Lyon, 63% des Français estiment qu’il devrait renoncer à ses fonctions en attendant que la justice soit rendue. À l’inverse, une majorité de catholiques pratiquants, qui représentent 10 % de l’échantillon interrogé, pensent qu’il devrait rester. 38 % d’entre eux suggèrent tout de même une mise en retrait.

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FRANCE
BFM

[A majority of French people – 56 percent – have a poor opinion of the Catholic Church, according to a survey after the recent controversy over cases of pedophilia.]

Une majorité de Français a une mauvaise image de l’Église catholique, selon un sondage réalisé après les récentes polémiques sur les affaires de pédophilie.

“Trop conservatrice” pour 83% des Français, et “pas transparente” pour 81% d’entre eux: le jugement est sans appel. Selon un sondage Odoxa pour Le Parisien-Aujourd’hui en France publié ce dimanche, les Français sont une majorité à avoir une opinion négative de l’Eglise catholique, après la révélation de nouvelles affaires de pédophilie par des prêtres.

Quelque 63% des sondés estiment que le cardinal Barbarin, accusé par plusieurs victimes d’avoir tu les agissements pédophiles de prêtres de son diocèse de Lyon, devrait démissionner. Une position partagée au sein même du gouvernement par Juliette Méadel, secrétaire d’Etat de l’aide aux victimes.

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DEUTSCHLAND
BR

[Former former choristers of the Regensburg cathedral choir are only now breaking their silence and cannot bear delays in processing complaints of abuse and physical violence.]

Von: Thomas Muggenthaler
Stand: 18.03.2016

Die Aufarbeitung kommt zu spät und sie kommt nur zäh voran, sagt Ludwig Faust. Der ehemalige Redakteur der Mittelbayerischen Zeitung und Inhaber eines Werbebüros hat nie öffentlich über seine Zeit bei den Domspatzen gesprochen. Jetzt tut er es. Der Grund: Er ist schlicht darüber empört, wie Bistum und Domspatzen in den letzten sechs Jahren mit den Opfern sexueller und körperlicher Gewalt umgegangen sind, und wie auch ehemalige Schüler schweigen, die es besser wissen müssten.

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AUSTRALIA
SoCAA

A study to determine the veracity of the statement that the Catholic clergy is filled with the best educated men and women of action and compassion and are capable of providing support, guidance and assistance to survivors of childhood sexual abuse by their fellow clergy men and women.

SoCAA is inviting Catholic clergy to contact us on 0756412311 or ClergyStudy@MolestedCatholics.com with whatever offers of support and assistance they can provide.

Each survivor assisted will be noted publicly to acknowledge the compassion, knowledge and understanding of Catholic clergy of this issue. We will provide opportunities to distribute via Social Media and Internet technologies each and every endeavour.

Your role should you choose to engage with us is to make contact with a Catholic or Catholic clergy and advise them of our offer. You may inform that we have an extensive inventory of survivor contacts who have an even greater range of immediate to urgent needs to be taken care of.

Visit us on Facebook or online

contact@molestecatholics.com
Australia 0756412311
SKYPE: TFYQA1

Prepared, written and distributed by John A Brown

Please distribute to any know survivors of clergy abuse in Australia.

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UNITED KINGDOM
The Mail on Sunday

By Martin Beckford for The Mail on Sunday

The troubled historic child abuse inquiry is so wide-ranging and costly it risks ‘breaking the system’, one of Britain’s most senior ex-judges has warned.

Lord Woolf said he feared Dame Lowell Goddard faces a ‘huge task’ chairing the five-year investigation into Establishment sex abuse and cover-ups, and predicted that he would not live to see its final report.

The former Lord Chief Justice added that the £18million-a-year probe is ‘sucking huge amounts of resources’ out of the system and questioned the Government’s priorities at a time of austerity.

He told a solicitors’ conference last week: ‘She [Goddard] has more and more on her plate.

‘I don’t believe I will see the results of her work. There is a danger that the task is so great that it might break the system.’

Lord Woolf went on: ‘If we have got the money to conduct these inquiries then I can see that they perform a service.

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UNITED KINGDOM
BBC News

Churches are being asked to check records for any evidence that a convicted paedophile bishop may have taken services in the 1990s.

Former Bishop of Gloucester Peter Ball was jailed last year after he admitted sexually abusing teenagers and young men.

The Diocese of Truro is working to find out what evidence it has that Ball conducted services in the area.

Bishop Ball’s brother, Michael, was a former Bishop of Truro in the 1990s.
An independent review is under way into the way the Church of England responded to the case.

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AUSTRALIA
ABC News

By Emilie Gramenz

Tasmania’s new Anglican Bishop has met with a survivor of child sexual abuse in preparation for new complaints, and there are calls for other institutions nationally to follow his lead.

Bishop Richard Condie was consecrated on Saturday and is now the highest clergy member in Tasmania.

The Anglican Church reached out to abuse survivor and long-time campaigner Steven Fisher to invite him to meet with the Bishop.

It was an invitation Mr Fisher was pleased to receive.

“I believe it’s a huge step for them to reach out and ask a victim to come down and actually talk to them,” he said.

“It’s something we’ve been campaigning for for 15 years.”

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UNITED KINGDOM
The Mail on Sunday

By Jonathan Petre for The Mail on Sunday

Senior Anglicans are urging the Archbishop of Canterbury to apologise for an ‘astonishingly inadequate’ Church inquiry into a celebrated bishop whose reputation has been ‘carelessly destroyed’ by allegations of sex abuse.

The 12-strong group, whose members include a former police chief and a retired judge, said Church authorities had leaped to judgment without speaking to key witnesses, such as Bishop George Bell’s former chaplain.

Ex-naval officer Canon Adrian Carey, who lived at the Bishop’s Palace at Chichester when the sex abuse is alleged to have taken place, said he found it impossible to imagine how such incidents could have occurred.

Bishop Bell, who served in Chichester for 30 years until his death in 1958, was a renowned opponent of appeasement and Nazism before and during the Second World War.

But last year an unnamed woman said he had sexually abused her while she sat on his lap as he read her stories at the Bishop’s Palace.

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UNITED KINGDOM
The Guardian

Harriet Sherwood Religion correspondent
@harrietsherwood
Sunday 20 March 2016

A group of academics, lawyers, politicians and church figures has challenged the Church of England over an apology it issued last year for sexual abuse allegedly perpetrated by one of its most revered figures, George Bell.

Bell’s supporters say his “condemnation as a paedophile” by the church has irreparably damaged the reputation of the former bishop of Chichester and has resulted in the renaming of schools and institutions dedicated to his memory.

Members of the George Bell Group include Desmond Browne QC, historian and Bell’s biographer Andrew Chandler, Labour MP Frank Field, and Martyn Percy, dean of Christ Church Oxford.

They say the C of E failed to make adequate inquiries before apologising and paying compensation over Bell’s alleged abuse in the 1940s and 50s. The church’s statement, according to the group, “appears to accept the allegation as true”.

In a statement accompanying a report of its own investigations, the group said: “The valuable reputation of a great man, a rare example of self-sacrificing human goodness, has been carelessly destroyed on the basis of slender evidence, sloppily investigated.”

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UNITED KINGDOM
BBC News

The naming of a bishop as an alleged paedophile has been criticised by a group of lawyers, academics, politicians and senior Church figures.

The Church of England settled a civil claim in October made by a woman who says she was abused by the late Rt Rev George Bell in the late 1940s and early 1950s.

The Church said its “overriding goal” had been to search out the truth.

But defenders of Bishop Bell say its inquiries were “inadequate”.

The bishop’s supporters, known as the George Bell Group, say the inquiry had not provided details of any corroboration to enable the complainant’s story to be judged.

‘Much admired’ bishop

The BBC’s religious affairs correspondent Caroline Wyatt said supporters of the late bishop had been angered by the way the Church dealt with the historical allegation of sexual abuse against a man who was no longer alive to defend his reputation.

In a statement, the George Bell Group says Bishop Bell – Bishop of Chichester from 1929 until his death in 1958 – was “much admired” and noted for being one of the first to speak out in the 1930s against the dangers Adolf Hitler posed.

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ALABAMA
ABC 11

Washington Co., Ala. A court date has been set for a pastor at a Buckatunna church, who was indicted by a Washington County grand jury for sexual abuse of young boys.

The Washington County grand jury indicted Tommy Newberry in February, alleging he sexually abused seven children. Newberry was a pastor at the Red Creek Church of God near the Alabama/Mississippi state line. Authorities believe the abuse started as early as 2003. Newberry’s court date is set for Oct. 18.

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MAINE
Portland Press Herald

BY RACHEL OHM MORNING SENTINEL
rohm@centralmaine.com | @rachel_ohm | 207-612-2386

CANAAN — Community members said Saturday that they were shocked and saddened to learn that a local youth ministry director allegedly sexually abused a young girl at his home in Clinton.

Lucas Savage, 37, co-director of Youth Haven Ministry on Easy Street, is charged with unlawful sexual contact and was arrested Friday by state police.

“I trusted him with my daughter,” said Kristine Rice, a Canaan resident who said her 11-year-old daughter used to attend ministry programs at Youth Haven. Savage was also her daughter’s soccer coach through the Canaan Community Sports program, Rice said.

“I talked to him in church and he was my daughter’s soccer coach. He never gave me any indication that there was anything to be concerned about, but if police are arresting him, they must have proof. The whole thing is very sad,” said Rice, 34.

She said she and Savage both attend Canaan Calvary Church. The church has supported Youth Haven Ministry financially in the past, but the two organizations are separate and have different boards of directors, according to a news release Saturday from the church’s elder board.

The Maine Department of Public Safety originally reported Friday that Savage was a youth pastor at the church, but the statement Saturday from the church said he never has been a youth pastor there, though he is a member of the church.

“The church leadership will be doing everything in our ability to support and minister to all families involved. We are making ourselves available to anyone involved or affected by the situation,” the release said. “Our ultimate desire is to see that the truth is brought forth. That being said, we will do everything in our ability to completely cooperate with the ongoing investigation, and we hope and believe that all involved will do the same.”

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CONNECTICUT
Hartford Courant

THE REV. BILL KEANE

Thirty-two years in the pulpit have shown me that ministry isn’t based on what you plan, it’s expressed in how you stand up to what can’t be foreseen. That’s why, after wrestling with futile internal protest, and seeing no definitively informative and positive change, I decided to make public the failure of my church hierarchy to expose one of its long-term ministers as a pedophile.

On the contrary, last April, the annual report of the American Baptist Churches of Connecticut included praise and gratitude for Eli Echevarria, convicted four months before and sentenced to prison for possessing child pornography involving young girls down to toddlers. The printed endorsement nearly sucked the life out of my soul.

More than a year earlier, the same man began visiting my congregation in Branford. We welcomed him, and in the following months he mixed with the congregation, including the children.

Then, after he had been with us for several months, when I had returned from a summer holiday, it was brought to my attention that Echevarria had been recently arrested for possessing child pornography. The arrest was for behavior when he was still preaching in New Haven, well before he crossed our threshold. I then discovered he had been convicted before on charges of illegal sexual contact in 2006, put on three years’ probation and registered as a sex offender.

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TEXAS
San Antonio Express-News

By Elaine Ayala
March 19, 2016

More than 1,000 people filed into St. Rose of Lima Catholic Church on Saturday morning and at least 100 more stood behind those packed pews to say goodbye to one of the Archdiocese of San Antonio’s best-known and most-beloved priests.

Father Virgilio Elizondo, 80, died Monday from a self-inflicted gunshot wound.

The church parking lot was filled an hour before the 11 a.m. memorial service, attended by dozens of brother clergy who wore the customary white vestments of funerals.

Archbishop Gustavo García-Siller presided over the Mass, and Father David Garcia, a longtime friend of Elizondo, delivered a sorrowful homily in the parish where Elizondo served for 20 years while traveling back and forth to teach at the University of Notre Dame.

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MINNESOTA
Duluth News Tribune

By Tom Olsen on Mar 19, 2016

HOYT LAKES — In a small cemetery on the eastern edge of the Iron Range, one gravestone sticks out.

Literally.

A granite headstone honoring the Rev. Thomas Stack, who founded the Catholic church across the street, sits atop a hill near the entrance of the Hoyt Lakes Memorial Cemetery. The stone is the only one permitted to stand above ground in the municipal cemetery.

It would seem to be an unremarkable site in an off-the-beaten-path graveyard, but one Grand Rapids woman is fighting for the stone’s removal.

Pat Helms, who grew up in a devout Catholic family and came to the mining boom town as a teenager in the 1950s, says she believes her brother was sexually abused by the priest.

“It’s always bothered me to see that headstone,” she said. “To go and visit the cemetery, the way this man looms over my family, it makes me absolutely sick.”

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PENNSYLVANIA
The Times

By Tom Davidson tdavidson@timesonline.com

PITTSBURGH — On behalf of the Catholic church, Pittsburgh Bishop David A. Zubik wants to say “I’m sorry.”

They’re simple words, and it will be at a simple Service of Apology that starts at 7 p.m. Monday at St. Paul Cathedral in Oakland, where Zubik will say them.

“It’s to anybody who’s felt in their lives that they have been hurt by the church,” Zubik said.

It could be for something as simple as harsh words from a priest at confession or being offended by a homily at Mass, or as complex as the lingering hurt rendered by the Catholic sexual abuse scandal, Zubik said.

“I think the element of hurt is determined by the person who feels they have been hurt,” he said. “I think one of the biggest damages we do in terms of our relationships with other people is to be presumptive.

“We do have to say it. As human individuals we need to be convinced that someone is really sorry and asking for forgiveness,” he said. “There’s something in asking for forgiveness that can be very healing on both sides.”

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UNITED KINGDOM
Telegraph

19 Mar 2016

The Church of England’s decision to name the former Bishop of Chichester, George Bell, as a paedophile has been strongly criticised by a group of senior Church leaders, academics, politicians and retired police officers.

The group claims that the internal inquiry which found Bishop Bell guilty of abuse committed a “grave miscarriage of justice” after failing to interview key witnesses or examine documents which could have cleared his name.

Before he was condemned as a child sex abuser, in October last year, Bishop Bell had previously been one of the most revered figures in the Anglican church, praised for his work in speaking out against Hitler during the 1930s, welcoming refugees from Germany and later condemning the Allied destruction of German cities.

But his reputation was destroyed after the church accepted the claims of a woman who came forward to say she was sexually abused by him during the late 1940s and early 1950s, when she was aged between five and nine.

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PENNSYLVANIA
The Morning Call

Bill White

Child sex statute reform opponents spend millions on lobbying

I was in Harrisburg on Monday, and The Morning Call’s Capitol correspondent, Steve Esack, helped me with some research while I attended a rally for child sex abuse statute-of-limitations reform and waited for a medical marijuana bill to finally hit the state House floor.

Here’s what he came up with: The Pennsylvania Catholic Conference, the umbrella group for every diocese and archdiocese in the state, spent $3.5 million on lobbying in Harrisburg between 2010 and 2015, according to Department of State records.

That breaks down to an annual average of $58,890. It includes payments to three of the state’s leading lobbying firms, which in turn send individual lobbyists to advocate before lawmakers and state officials the Catholic position on 32 topics, including “children’s issues,” “liability reform” and “prevention of child abuse.”

The expense reports list three types of expenses, direct and indirect communication and “gifts, hospitality, transportation and lodging for state officials or employees or their immediate families.”

The Insurance Federation of Pennsylvania, one of several insurance industry lobbying organizations operating here, spent about $10.3 million on lobbying between 2015 and 2010, which comes to an annual average of about $1.7 million. The federation’s lobbying disclosure forms do not break out topics lobbyists discussed with lawmakers and other state officials, but it’s safe to say that this much spending gives the insurance industry a lot of clout.

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UNITED KINGDOM
International Business Times

By Tom Mendelsohn
March 19, 2016

A Canadian law professor has settled for £40,000 ($57,900) in damages from the Church of England for abuse she suffered at the hands of a vicar 40 years ago. Julie Macfarlane, who teaches at the University of Windsor, Ontario, was preyed upon by a priest at the age of 16 in the mid-1970s while undergoing a religious crisis in Chichester. The abuse continued for a year, before she left for university.

She made a complaint to the Australian branch of the church in 1999, as the minister had moved there. He resigned when he discovered he would be subject to a disciplinary hearing.

However she did not make her legal claim until 2014, once she heard about the abuse scandal in the diocese. This initially led lawyers representing the CofE to claim that she could not make her claim as it the abuse had happened so long ago.

She claimed that she was “ripped to shreds” by a psychiatric expert appointed to assess her claim when she did eventually come forward in a gruelling two-hour examination. She also said that the church had tried to claim that she had consented to the relations.

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DEUTSCHLAND
WDR

Muss die Kirche ihre Verkündigung angesichts von Missbrauch überdenken? Ein Interview mit Erika Kerstner. Erika Kerstner / Barbara Haslbeck / Annette Buschmnann, Damit der Boden wieder trägt. Seelsorge nach sexuellem Missbrauch, Schwabenverlag (Ostfildern), 2016, 240 Seiten. Autor: Christoph Fleischmann

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NETHERLANDS
Dutch News

One third of the sexual abuse cases involving the Dutch Catholic church have been dealt with behind closed doors, the NRC said on Saturday.

In total, 342 of the 1,045 proven cases were dealt with outside the official complaints procedure and the amount of financial compensation paid to the victims was kept secret, the paper said. The paper bases its claim on church documents. T

he official committee set up to investigate the abuse claims had called for total transparency. Officially, 703 cases have been closed, with total compensation payments of €21.3m. According to the NRC, the secret cases – settled either with or without a mediator – involved further payments of €10.6m.

Abuse victims who went through the ‘secret’ procedure had to sign a contract pledging to keep quiet about their case and to refrain from making negative comments about the church and the perpetrators, the NRC said.

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FRANCE
La Vie

[Two truths about Barbarin case. The first truth. Across the whole of the Catholic Church, the fight against the abuse of authority was faulty or amateur. They refused to believe complaintants and the church feared scandal. They moved the aggressors instead of moving them out of the church.]

JEAN-PIERRE DENIS, DIRECTEUR DE LA RÉDACTION

Plusieurs personnes ont porté plainte contre le cardinal Barbarin pour sa gestion d’affaires anciennes impliquant des prêtres ayant commis des abus sur mineurs. Les actes eux-mêmes semblent prescrits. Mais l’époque fait remonter à la surface des souffrances qui ont cheminé de manière insidieuse. Si ce décalage temporel semble étrange, il faut admettre que dans de telles situations la victime se contraint souvent à un silence prolongé et destructeur, au point que certains plaident pour un rallongement de la prescription. Sur le plan proprement ecclésial, sans la culture du secret qui a longtemps prévalu, nombre de ces affaires seraient purgées depuis belle lurette.

Première vérité. À l’échelle de l’ensemble de l’Église catholique, la lutte contre les abus d’autorité a été défectueuse. Soit par amateurisme. Soit par refus de croire les plaignants. Soit par peur du scandale. On s’est contenté de déplacer les agresseurs au lieu de les mettre dehors, et on a fait passer victimes ou lanceurs d’alerte pour de mauvais chrétiens. En voulant protéger l’institution, on a trahi les innocents et bafoué l’Évangile. Les choses ont changé grâce à Benoît XVI et au travail des journalistes, comme le montre le film Spotlight, même s’il reste, comme l’a reconnu le président de la conférence épiscopale, Mgr Georges Pontier, « des cas épars qui apparaissent chaque année ». Je suis fier d’avoir supervisé, il y a longtemps déjà, la première grande enquête, qui portait sur plusieurs communautés religieuses.

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NEDERLAND
NOS

The 73-year-old Marcel Roomans was sexually abused in his boyhood on a Roman Catholic boys school in Maastricht. Roomans reached a settlement with the Brothers of Our Lady Immaculate.]

De 73-jarige Marcel Roomans werd in zijn jongensjaren seksueel misbruikt op een rooms-katholieke jongensschool in Maastricht. Roomans trof een schikking met de Broeders van onze lieve vrouw onbevlekt ontvangen uit Maastricht, een congregatie die scholen en internaten had. Hij zat op de Aloysiusschool in Maastricht.

Toen Roomans in de derde klas zat, smeerde een broeder zijn geslachtsdeel in met zalf. Later werd hij door een andere broeder misbruikt in een pikdonkere kast op school. Na tien minuten was het voorbij. “Hij is klaargekomen, neem ik aan”, zegt Roomans in NRC Handelsblad, dat aandacht besteedt aan alle geheime schikkingen in zaken van seksueel misbruik binnen de kerk.

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ESPANA
Diario Sur

[Miguel Angel Hurtado, the victim of a pederast priest, has initiated a collection of signatures for amendment of statute of limitation laws in Spain.]

Su nombre es Miguel Ángel Hurtado, víctima de un cura pederasta, y ha iniciado una campaña que se ha convertido en la de mayor crecimiento por minuto en la historia de Change.org. En menos de cuarenta y ocho horas ha conseguido reunir más de 200.000 firmas. Su objetivo -también por la historia de Miguel Ángel -han calado hondo: que el delito por abusos sexuales a menores no prescriban nunca, al menos, en España.

#Nohayperdón reza la campaña en Twitter. El Mundo habla con Miguel Ángel, víctima de abusos sexuales cuando tenía 16 años. El pederasta fue un sacerdote. Cuando lo denunció a los 22 años, el crimen ya había prescrito. «El motivo que me llevó a lanzar esta acción fue la indignación que sentía al ver cada vez más casos de abusos sexuales a menores en España y que estos quedaran impunes por el tiempo que había transcurrido tras ser cometidos», afirma en un tiempo en el que el escándalo de los Maristas en Barcelona y la petición fiscal de archivar por prescripción trece denuncias ponen de actualidad su caso.

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PARAGUAY
Paraguay.com

[The Paraguayan Episcopal Conference (CEP) issued a statement which confirmed that priests Francisco Javier Bareiro and Gustavo Ovela, of the Oblates of Mary Congregation, Villarrica, were removed from office. The departure occurs after the religious be accused of molesting minors.]

La Conferencia Episcopal Paraguaya (CEP) emitió un comunicado en donde confirman que los sacerdotes Francisco Javier Bareiro y Gustavo Ovelar, de la Congregación Oblatos de María, de Villarrica, fueron separados del cargo. El alejamiento se produce luego de que a los religiosos se los acusara de abusar sexualmente de menores.

La CEP considera importante el proceso de investigación que está llevando acabo la fiscalía en Villarrica. Además piden al obispo de la ciudad, Monseñor Ricardo Valenzuela, a que sigan de cerca el caso y que se mantengan en comunicación con las víctimas y familiares.

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ESPANA
El Confidencial

[The judge uncovers sexual abuse and profit in the sect of the Miguelianos]

PABLO LÓPEZ. VIGO

Durante una década Miguel Rosendo campó a sus anchas. Primero desde una pequeña herboristería de Vigo y, después, en un lujoso chalé de Oia (Pontevedra), fue formando una comunidad que llegó a alcanzar los 400 fieles a los que manipulaba con sus ínfulas. No sin levantar sospechas, pero igualmente sin oposición del Obispado de Tui-Vigo, que autorizó su orden como asociación privada de fieles y después la ascendió a asociación pública de derecho diocesano. Pero en 2014, los familiares de sus víctimas lograron que todo saltara por el aire. Un demoledor informe de un despacho de detectives detalló los abusos sexuales, físicos y psicológicos que ejercía el brujo con sus miguelianos. La juez acaba de concluir la primera fase de su investigación, con la citación de una decena de imputados a los que se les atribuye los presuntos delitos de asociación ilícita, contra la Hacienda Pública y abuso sexual.

Esta misma semana, el juzgado de instrucción número 1 de Tui (Pontevedra) alzaba el secreto de las actuaciones del caso de la Orden y Mandato de San Miguel Arcángel. Una vez completadas las diligencias de investigación previstas, y recibido el informe de la Agencia Tributaria, la titular del juzgado ha llamado a declarar a los imputados, en un caso que no ha parado de crecer desde que comenzó a aparecer en los medios de comunicación. Finalmente es más dinero presuntamente ilícito el que manejaban los miguelianos del que inicialmente se sospechaba, pero también son más las víctimas de los supuestos abusos sexuales que las que suponía la Guardia Civil cuando detuvo a Rosendo, el 11 de diciembre de 2014.

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FRANCE
CathoBel

[Karlijn Demasure: “The Church of France has not really changed in the prevention of sexual abuse”.]

18 mars 2016 par Pierre Granier

Alors que l’Eglise de France est secouée par de nouveaux scandales de pédophilie, mettant en cause la gestion du cardinal Barbarin dans l’archidiocèse de Lyon, le travail au Vatican concernant la prévention des abus sexuels sur les mineurs se poursuit. Sous la houlette de la théologienne belge Karlijn Demasure.

A Rome, le Centre pour la protection de l’enfant a été inauguré le 16 février 2015 à l’Université Pontificale Grégorienne. Il est composé de 13 experts venus du monde entier, et présidé par le père jésuite Hans Zollner, doyen de l’institut de psychologie de l’université grégorienne et membre de la commission pontificale pour la protection des mineurs créée par le pape François en 2014.

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DEUTSCHLAND
Zeit

[The true reward of our work.]

Er war Chefredakteur des “Boston Globe” und drängte seine Reporter, sexuellen Missbrauch in der katholischen Kirche aufzudecken. Der Film “Spotlight” feiert den Mut der Enthüller – und gewann dafür einen Oscar. Kleine Dankesrede

Ein Gastbeitrag von Martin Baron
18. März 2016

Bevor der Film einen Oscar bekam, wurde ich gefragt: Gibt es etwas, was Sie darin vermissen? Eine wahre Begebenheit, die nicht vorkommt, aber sich in Ihr Gedächtnis eingebrannt hat? Ich bekenne, es gibt eine Szene, die im Film fehlt. Der Zorn, den ich damals empfand, wird noch lange brauchen, um zu verlöschen.

Es geschah am 4. November 2002, bei einer Rede der Harvard-Professorin Mary Ann Glendon. Die Juristin sagte auf einer Konferenz vor Katholiken: “Ein Pulitzerpreis für die Reporter vom Boston Globe wäre wie ein Friedensnobelpreis für Osama bin Laden.” Damit machte Glendon unsere monatelange Recherche über sexuellen Missbrauch von Kindern durch katholische Priester nieder. Ich war damals Chefredakteur des Boston Globe und hatte unser Investigativteam massiv gedrängt, die Vertuschung einer ganzen Serie von Missbrauchsfällen in der Erzdiözese Boston aufzudecken. Das gelang den Kollegen auch, und wir bekamen dafür einen Pulitzerpreis für den Dienst an der Öffentlichkeit. Der Angriff der Professorin ging also ins Leere, aber er sagte viel über jene Unkultur der Verleugnung und Vertuschung, die die ganze katholische Kirche vergiftete – lange bevor wir begannen zu recherchieren und auch noch lange danach.

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FRANKREICH
Aargauer Zeitung

[The cardinal, who did nothing for once.]

von Stefan Brändle, Paris

Kardinal Philippe Barbarin soll mehrere fehlbare Geistliche gedeckt und geschont haben. Der französische Premierminister Manuel Valls fordert, dass der Kardinal seine Verantwortung wahrnehmen müsse. Barbarin selber betont, er habe «nie pädophile Akte gedeckt».

Barbarin gilt als der höchste Würdenträger der französischen Kirche: Der 65-jährige Erzbischof von Lyon trägt zugleich den aus dem Mittelalter stammenden Titel «Primas von Gallien». Bekannt ist er als «Monseigneur 100 000 Volt», da er ebenso schnell zu sprechen wie zu agieren pflegt.

In einer Hinsicht soll Barbarin allerdings sehr langsam oder gar nicht gehandelt haben. Von mehreren Seiten wird ihm vorgehalten, er habe pädophile Geistliche gedeckt. Ein 55-jähriger Priester seiner Diözese soll zwischen 1986 und 1991 mehrere Pfadfinder sexuell missbraucht haben. Die Opfer verstehen nicht, warum er nicht seines Amtes enthoben wurde, ist er doch geständig und Gegenstand eines Ermittlungsverfahrens.

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NEDERLAND
Trouw

[One in three cases abuse in the Roman Catholic Church in the Netherlands has been dealt with secretly with a cash settlement, according to NRC Handelsblad on Saturday. This is not prohibited, but is against the advice of the Deetman committee who adviced transparency. It is not clear how much money the church has paid out.]

Een op de drie misbruikzaken in de Rooms-Katholieke Kerk in Nederland is in het geheim afgehandeld met een geldbedrag. Dat meldt NRC Handelsblad zaterdag. Dat is niet verboden, maar gaat in tegen het advies van de commissie-Deetman, die juist transparantie adviseerde. In 342 van de 1045 zaken is nu niet duidelijk wat er is gebeurd en hoeveel geld de Kerk heeft betaald.

Tot 1 januari dit jaar zijn 342 misbruikzaken in beslotenheid afgehandeld: 210 keer via mediation en 132 keer via een schikking, zonder mediator. Op basis van interne documenten schrijft de krant dat in deze gevallen 10,2 miljoen euro is betaald als compensatie. In ruil daarvoor moeten slachtoffers van seksueel misbruik hun mond houden over wat er zich heeft afgespeeld en mogen ze zich niet meer negatief uitlaten over de daders.

Een groot deel van de compensatieregelingen is wel openbaar te vinden, bij de Stichting Beheer & Toezicht. Tot 1 januari is via deze procedure de compensatie voor 703 slachtoffers afgehandeld. Zij kregen 21,3 miljoen euro.

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NEW HAMPSHIRE
Portland Press Herald

BY LYNNE TUOHY
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

CONCORD, N.H. — A graduate of a New England prep school who was convicted of sexually assaulting a younger student was taken into custody Friday after acknowledging that he violated conditions of his bail agreement by missing curfew multiple times.

A judge in Merrimack County Superior Court said Owen Labrie would begin his one-year jail sentence immediately.

“You are unlikely to abide by any conditions,” Judge Larry Smukler said. “I don’t relax conditions because you can’t comply with them.”

Labrie, 20, was stoic as he was handcuffed and led from the courtroom. His mother appeared to sob quietly.

Labrie was arrested in 2014 days after graduating from St. Paul’s School, an elite prep school in Concord.

He was 18 at the time of the encounter in a near-deserted building on the St. Paul’s campus. Prosecutors linked the assault on a 15-year-old freshman to a competition at St. Paul’s known as the “Senior Salute” in which seniors seek to have sex with underclassmen.

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NEW HAMPSHIRE
Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests

For immediate release: Friday, March 18

Statement by David Clohessy of St. Louis, Director of SNAP, the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests (314 566 9790, 314 645 5915 home,davidgclohessy@gmail.com)

We are grateful that Owen Labrie is behind bars and believe his probation violation may have three positive impacts.

[Portland Press Herald]

First, we hope Labrie’s jailing will prod law enforcement officials to look more often and more closely at other sex offenders and whether they are honoring their parole or probation requirements. Many sex offenders are narcissistic and believe, deep down, that “the rules” don’t really apply to them. So many of them, we fear, are ignoring those restrictions and getting by with it. This case should encourage police and prosecutors to more closely monitor sex offenders and take advantage of chances to revoke their probation or parole.

Second, we hope Labrie’s jailing will bring some comfort to the thousands of victims of sexual violence whose perpetrators are on probation or parole. There’s always a chance that rapists or molesters can be imprisoned if they’re caught overstepping their boundaries, as they are sadly wont to do.

Third, we believe Labrie’s jailing will bring some consolation to his victim and her family.

Finally, we are confident that Labrie’s jailing makes women safer.

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FRANCE
International Business Times

By Mary Papenfuss
March 14, 2016

In a ground-breaking case, a court in France has launched a criminal investigation into allegations that the French Catholic hierarchy protected a priest who admitted sexually abusing at least 40 boys. Cardinal Philippe Barbarin, the archbishop of Lyon, has denied any culpability in the sex abuse of young scouts by Father Bernard Preynat from 1986 to 1991.

Preynat, who told authorities he committed the crimes, was finally kicked out of the priesthood by Barbarin in 2015, at least 25 years after the assaults began. After the parents of Preynat’s victims first came forward in 1991, a former archbishop in charge at the time removed the priest from parish work where he had access to boys — temporarily. After Preynat “repented” for his crimes he was allowed to work again with children.

In 2007 he was promoted by Archbishop Barbarin to an administrative post where he helped run six dioceses and had access to even more children. The cardinal claims he did nothing wrong because the crimes didn’t happen when he was archbishop, and he eventually booted Preynat from the priesthood in 2015 — when French civil authorities finally launched an investigation into the priest’s activities.

Barbarin says he first heard of the abuse sometime in 2007 and was convinced Preynat had reformed, reports Associated Press. But Preynat’s lawyer says Barbarin knew of the charges for decades.

The French court could levy charges of “failing to report a crime” and “endangering the life of others,” which carry a maximum three-year prison sentence and fines up to €45,000 (£35,000). Ironically, the cardinal has taken a particularly harsh stand against gay marriage, arguing that same-sex unions would lead to polygamy and possibly incest.

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CALIFORNIA
My News LA

POSTED BY KEN STONE ON MARCH 18, 2016

(NOTE: This is an updated story that includes a statement from the archdiocese saying the lawsuit wrongly identified a school with a similar name to the one with which the late coach was affiliated. In addition, the archdiocese said the coach was a volunteer, not a school employee. An attorney for the plaintiffs, in a phone interview, declined to discuss the discrepancy.)

The Archdiocese of Los Angeles and a school were sued Friday by a teenage girl and her father, who allege those entities bear responsibility for her sexual abuse at the hands of a coach who killed himself after being confronted by her dad.

The plaintiffs are identified in the Los Angeles Superior Court lawsuit as John and Jane Doe, who are seeking damages of $10 million and $5 million, respectively.

The suit erroneously named St. Lucy’s Priory High School in Glendora as a defendant instead of St. Lucy Catholic School in Long Beach, according to the archdiocese, which released the following statement:

“The lawsuit appears to incorrectly name St. Lucy’s Priory High School and the Benedictine Sisters as defendants,” the statement read. “It appears that the lawsuit refers to St. Lucy’s School in Long Beach since it also names the late Scott Landerville, a former volunteer (coach). The complaint contains a number of claims, including an allegation of misconduct involving a former student, which the complaint states to have occurred, after the student was at our school. We will be investigating the matter and have not been served in the litigation.”

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PENNSYLVANIA
Tribune-Review

BY BRAD BUMSTED | Friday, March 18, 2016

A state legislator and former law enforcement officer is asking the Justice Department and the FBI to start an investigation of child sexual abuse by priests under a federal law designed to prosecute corrupt organizations.

State Rep. Mike Vereb, R-Montgomery County, said such an investigation should focus on cover-ups by bishops, as outlined this month in a statewide grand jury report.

Vereb wants federal investigators to use the Racketeering Influenced Corrupt Organizations Act, which was established by Congress in 1970 to target organized crime. It has since been used against abusive police departments, gangs and corrupt judges. The law allows leaders of an organization to be targeted for telling others to commit crimes or for assisting subordinates’ efforts.

U.S. Attorney David Hickton declined to comment.

The statewide grand jury alleged that nearly two dozen priests in the Roman Catholic Diocese of Altoona-Johnstown molested hundreds of victims during a 40-year period. None was charged because some people had died, statutes of limitation had expired or victims were reluctant to testify.

“RICO is one of those incredibly broad statutes,” said Bruce Antkowiak, a former federal prosecutor who teaches law at St. Vincent College.

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UNITED STATES
Orthodox Outpost

More good, more often.

Orthodox Christian writers are often called upon to author articles that focus on positive aspects of life in the Church. Mission trips, fasting recipes, and ethnic customs are all topics that make for a friendly encounter with Orthodox Christianity.

But what if the calling to do more good, more often was much more difficult?

What if doing more good, more often meant being unpopular? What if doing more good, more often meant being cast out by those around us?

The movie Spotlight recently won the Oscar for Best Picture. It tells the story of how a dedicated group of reporters fought a culture of denial and uncovered decades of abuse in the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Boston along with efforts by its leaders to suppress accountability. Spotlight is a movie that every Orthodox Christian should watch during Great Lent. Child abuse, misuse of authority, and clericalism are not limited to the Roman Catholic Church. They are present in the Orthodox Church as well. Spotlight is a powerful reminder that genuine repentance means coming to understand reality as it is -not reality as one would like it to be. “Servants of the Truth must speak the truth.” writes St. Hilary of Poitiers.

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

UNITED KINGDOM
The Times

Sean O’Neill Chief Reporter
March 19 2016

A law professor described yesterday how she was “ripped to shreds” by the Church of England when she made a legal claim over sexual abuse by a vicar when she was a teenager.

Julie Macfarlane said that the church tried to rule her claim out of date, suggested that she had consented to sex with her abuser and put her through a gruelling psychiatric examination before settling her claim last month.

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CALIFORNIA
CBS Los Angeles

LOS ANGELES (CBSLA.com) —A teenage girl and her father are suing the Archdiocese of Los Angeles alleging they bear responsibility for the female’s sexual abuse at the hands of a coach who killed himself when he was confronted by the dead.

St. Lucy’s Priory High School, an all-girls school in Glendora, was also named in the suit.

The suit erroneously named St. Lucy’s Priory High School in Glendora as a defendant instead of St. Lucy Catholic School in Long Beach, according to the archdiocese, which released the following statement:

“The lawsuit appears to incorrectly name St. Lucy’s Priory High School and the Benedictine Sisters as defendants,” the statement read. “It appears that the lawsuit refers to St. Lucy’s School in Long Beach since it also names the late Scott Landerville, a former volunteer (coach). The complaint contains a number of claims, including an allegation of misconduct involving a former student, which the complaint states to have occurred, after the student was at our school. We will be investigating the matter and have not been served in the litigation.”

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CALIFORNIA
Patch

By ALEXANDER NGUYEN (Patch Staff) – March 19, 2016

LOS ANGELES, CA – The Archdiocese of Los Angeles and a Glendora Catholic all-girls high school were sued Friday by a teenage girl and her father, who allege those entities bear responsibility for her sexual abuse at the hands of a coach who killed himself after being confronted by her dad.

The plaintiffs are identified in the Los Angeles Superior Court lawsuit as John and Jane Doe, who are seeking damages of $10 million and $5 million, respectively.

The suit erroneously named St. Lucy’s Priory High School in Glendora as a defendant instead of St. Lucy Catholic School in Long Beach, according to the archdiocese, which released the following statement:

“The lawsuit appears to incorrectly name St. Lucy’s Priory High School and the Benedictine Sisters as defendants,” the statement read. “It appears that the lawsuit refers to St. Lucy’s School in Long Beach since it also names the late Scott Landerville, a former volunteer (coach). The complaint contains a number of claims, including an allegation of misconduct involving a former student, which the complaint states to have occurred, after the student was at our school. We will be investigating the matter and have not been served in the litigation.”

Also named are former St. Lucy principal Diane Pedroni, who according to the school’s Facebook page retired last June, and Patrice Landerville, the ex- wife and special administrator of the estate of the late coach.

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MAINE
WLBZ

CANAAN, Maine (NEWS CENTER) — Maine State Police have arrested the youth pastor of a Canaan church and charged him with sexual abuse of a young girl.

Detectives have charged 37-year-old Lucas Savage of Clinton with unlawful sexual contact. Savage is the youth pastor of the Canaan Calvary Church and was arrested Friday evening in Mercer and taken to the Kennebec County Jail.

Detectives said the abuse took place at Savage’s home on Mutton Lane in Clinton. State Police have been investigating the allegations for the past month.

Detectives do not know if there are additional victims and their investigation will remain open.

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GEORGIA
Gainesville Times

By Nick Watson
nwatson@gainesvilletimes.com
@NickWatsonTimes

A former Gainesville Scoutmaster is the target of a civil lawsuit alleging sexual abuse that brought a 22-year-old closed investigation into the light.

Royal Fleming Weaver Jr. is accused of raping Robert William Lawson III on a scouting event in 1985, according to a civil action filed Thursday in Fulton County State Court.

Multiple attempts to reach Weaver for comment Friday were unsuccessful.

A criminal investigation was conducted at the time but no charges were brought due to the alleged incident falling outside the statute of limitations.

Weaver served as the scoutmaster for Troop 26 from 1969 to 1981, which was sponsored by the First Baptist Church of Gainesville

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MAINE
CentralMaine.com

State police arrested the youth pastor of a Canaan church Friday evening and charged him with sexual abuse of a young girl, according to Steve McCausland, spokesman for the Department of Public Safety.

Detectives have charged Lucas Savage, 37, of Clinton with unlawful sexual contact, McCausland said in a news release. Savage, the youth pastor of Canaan Calvary Church, was arrested in Mercer and taken to the Kennebec County jail.

Detectives said the abuse took place at Savage’s home on Mutton Lane in Clinton. State police have been investigating the allegations for the past month. Detectives do not know whether there are additional victims, and their investigation will remain open.

Anyone with information about the case is asked to contact state police in Augusta at 800-452-4664.

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MAINE
WCVB

CANAAN, Maine —Maine State Police arrested a youth pastor Friday, charging him with unlawful sexual contact.

State police spokesman Steve McCausland said Lucas Savage, 37, of Clinton, is the youth pastor at the Canaan Calvary Church.

Investigators allege the reported abuse involving a young girl happened at Savage’s home on Mutton Lane in Clinton. McCausland said police have been investigating the allegations for the past month.

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UNITED KINGDOM
Lexology

March 11 2016

Cox v Ministry of Justice Mohamud v WM Morrison Supermarkets Plc Supreme Court 2 March 2016

As the opening sentence of Lord Reed’s judgment in Cox says, “vicarious liability is on the move” and the conjoined appeals of Cox v Ministry of Justice and Mohamud v WM Morrison Supermarkets Plc provided the UK Supreme Court with “an opportunity to take stock of where it has gone so far”.

Recent years have seen the courts extend the scope of the doctrine of vicarious liability and these appeals presented the UK’s highest court with an opportunity to either rein it in, or allow its further expansion and, crucially, outside the arena of child abuse claims. The growing theme in recent years has seen a loosening of the criteria such that it is easier for claimants to pursue cases against those more likely to have the financial means to pay compensation.

The Supreme Court has continued that onward trajectory deciding that the defendants in both cases were vicariously liable for the personal injuries suffered by the two claimants. Paul Donnelly and Andrew Cousins look at the development of the doctrine of vicarious liability and where these judgments take us.

Vicarious liability

Vicarious liability is the doctrine through which a person or organisation can be held strictly liable for tortious acts or omissions committed by others i.e. without a breach of any duty of care owed by, or fault on the part of, that person or organisation. The doctrine’s roots can be traced back to the Middle Ages but, as a legal principle, came to the fore in the Victorian era when the industrial society was developing. A useful explanation of the purpose of the doctrine can be taken from Ward LJ’s judgment in JGE v The Trustees of the Portsmouth Roman Catholic Diocesan Trust (2012). He noted a growing acceptance that “the existence of the master/servant relationship was itself enough to impose liability on the master if the servant was acting within the scope of his employment” and quoting Lord Brougham in 1839: “The reason I am liable is this, that by employing him I set the whole thing in motion; and what he does, being done for my benefit and under my direction, I am responsible for the consequences of doing it”.

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PENNSYLVANIA
The Guardian (UK)

Joanna Walters
@Joannawalters13
Saturday 19 March 2016

Bringing criminal charges against church leaders for covering up abuse is almost unprecedented in the US despite the serial scandals that have engulfed the church since widespread abuse and concealment of the crimes began being exposed by the media in Boston in 2002.

But on Friday, three Catholic friars appeared in district court in Hollidaysburg, near Altoona, accused of allowing a known predator in their midst to have access to children.

Friars Robert D’Aversa, 69, Anthony Criscitelli, 62, and Giles Schinelli, 73, were arraigned in court on child endangerment and conspiracy charges, felonies that carry a maximum sentence of seven years in prison.

“My son is dead because of your poor decision-making,” Barbara Aponte of Poland, Ohio, shouted as the three men, wearing traditional clerical collars and black outfits, entered court.

The woman’s son, Luke Bradescu, had been abused while the predator previously worked at the high school he attended in Ohio. Bradescu killed himself in 2003 at the age of 26.

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PENNSYLVANIA
PA Homepage

By Adam McGahee | amcgahee@pahomepage.com
Published 03/18 2016

(WBRE/WYOU) ALTOONA Three Franciscan friars accused of covering up sexual abuse in the Altoona-Johnstown Diocese have been removed from their religious assignments.

Charges against Giles Schinelli, Robert D’Aversa and Anthony Crisitelli turned themselves in on Friday morning. They’re accused of allowing Brother Stephen Baker to remain at Bishop MCCort High School in Johnstown and covering up the sexual abuse of more than one hundred students.

Baker spent decades working as a bishop in high schools before committing suicide in 2013.

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PENNSYLVANIA
Pocono Record

By Michael Rubinkam
The Associated Press

HOLLIDAYSBURG — Three Franciscan friars charged with allowing a suspected sexual predator to hold jobs where he molested more than 100 children surrendered Friday in western Pennsylvania, where they were confronted by the mother of one of his victims.

Robert D’Aversa, 69, Anthony Criscitelli, 62, and Giles Schinelli, 73, are free on unsecured bond until an April 14 preliminary hearing on child endangerment and conspiracy charges. Each is a third-degree felony carrying up to seven years in prison.

The friars served successively as ministers provincial who headed a Franciscan religious order in western Pennsylvania from 1986 to 2010. In that role, each assigned and supervised the order’s members, including Brother Stephen Baker, who authorities say molested scores of children, most of them at Bishop McCort High School in Johnstown, where he was assigned from 1992 to 2000.

Baker killed himself at the Franciscan monastery near Hollidaysburg by plunging two knives into his heart in January 2013. That occurred nine days after Youngstown, Ohio, church officials announced settlements involving 11 students who accused Baker of molesting them at schools there in the late 1980s.

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PENNSYLVANIA
Morning Times

HARRISBURG, Pa. (AP) — Throughout the 1990s, priests across Philadelphia and Altoona were molesting hundreds of children.

Grand jury investigation reports have detailed the horrific crimes of sodomy, rape, and countless other acts of depravity carried out in confessionals, sacristies, rectory bedrooms, locker rooms and cars on altar boys, members of choirs and legions of other children across parishes.

Across Catholic communities, few parents suspected such an unthinkable travesty, investigators concluded, but there were some who did.

Scores — if not hundreds — of parents and individuals in the state’s Catholic Church communities called Pennsylvania’s ChildLine hotline throughout those years to report that they suspected a priest of molesting a child, according to former Childline staffers.

Restricted by weak laws, the clerks and counselors who staffed the hotline could do little to help the callers or the possible victims. All they could do was to alert local law enforcement officials — the very people who, according to a recent state grand jury report, often ignored or colluded with church officials to hide the abuse.

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OREGON
KATU

[with video]

BY KELLEE AZAR, KATU NEWS FRIDAY, MARCH 18TH 2016

Portland, Ore — A local priest is still on the job weeks after a civil complaint was filed alleging he sexually abused a Portland boy for over 10 years.

The man claims he was sexually abused by Father Vogt at Holy Rosary Church in Northeast Portland when he was an altar boy.

Bill Crane and David Clohessy work for Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests (SNAP) helping victims of abuse in the Catholic Church. The recent complaint in Portland against Holy Rosary brought them to the steps of the church.

“It says that there were at least 10 times Father Vogt physically molested a boy and fondled him — at least 50 times kissed the boy on the mouth,” SNAP Director David Clohessy said.

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UNITED STATES
Brain Blogger

by Richard Kensinger, MSW | March 18, 2016

I am prompted to compose this article for two primary reasons. First, I live in a Catholic Diocese (Altoona-Johnstown, PA) where a grand jury report very recently exposed that over four decades, over 50 priests and other church officials have harbored, protected, and enabled the victimization and mortification of hundreds of innocent children and youth in our community. Second, an article appearing in the New York Times written by Frank Bruni and published this past week, explores the impact of child sex predators in the Boston, Mass. Archdiocese.

These incidents are revealed in the searing and troubling movie Spotlight. This movie’s focus is on the very courageous efforts of investigative journalists to expose the wide complicity of many in that community who protected these predators. The article is entitled “The Catholic Churches Sins Are Ours”.

In Bruni’s article, he highlights how “churches benefit from the American Way of giving religion a free pass”. He ends his article by indicating that “if it takes a village to raise a child, it takes a village to abuse one”!

My intent here is to discuss the clinical impact of this type of abuse by focusing what happens to these innocent victims. In a previously published article appearing on BrainBlogger, I offer a profile of a serial preferred predator in my area: Jerry Sandusky and the Penn State Scandal still rocking our community.

I am guided in my clinical focus by Erik Erickson’s stages of psychosocial development, Abraham Maslow’s needs hierarchy, and Judith Herman who published a book in 1992, Trauma and Recovery. I present here the accumulative damage of lifelong development of this kind of trauma.

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GUAM
Guam Daily Post

Jasmine Stole | Post News Staff

The Department of Land Management corrected recording errors pointed out by former Sen. Robert Klitzkie three months ago and issued new certificates of titles for the Yona seminary property this week.

However, Klitzkie said the corrections were not done the right way. “The memorial is correct but the way it was done is not correct,” Klitzkie said.

In a news release, DLM officials said their department and the legal counsel for the archbishop of Agana settled on canceling the four certificates of title issued on Oct. 30, 2015 and issuing four new certificates of title to include the Declaration of Deed Restriction, in favor of the Redemptoris Mater Seminary, a non-profit organization.

The certificates of title issued on Oct. 30 were printed in the U’ Matuna Si Yu’os and were shown as evidence supporting that Archbishop Anthony Apuron is the “owner of the seminary property,” according to the article in the U’Matuna.

In the Oct. 30 2015 certificates of title, there is no Declaration of Deed Restriction listed under memorials. In the certificates of title for the same property Klitzkie obtained in December 2015, the Declaration of Deed Restriction is listed under the Memorials section. They were also listed in favor of Archbishop Anthony Apuron.

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MASSACHUSETTS
WCVB

Editorial

BOSTON —Sometimes an Oscar win for Best Picture is cause for celebration beyond Hollywood, not just limited to those individuals involved in making the movie. Such is the case with, “Spotlight,” the now Academy Award-winning film about the Boston Globe’s investigation into the city’s clergy sex abuse scandal.

The headlines first appeared over 15 years ago, and many of the abuses themselves go back for decades, even 40 to 50 years ago. So it’s easy to imagine public attention to what these innocent, young victims endured might easily have begun to fade. The film and its attendant publicity assures it won’t, re-focusing attention where it belongs – on the continuing struggles of survivors, many of whom carry lifelong scars. They continue to need support, if only to know they’ve been heard, and will not be forgotten.

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CHICAGO (IL)
Religion News Service

Emily McFarlan Miller | March 18, 2016

CHICAGO (RNS) Bill Gothard’s Institute in Basic Life Principles has lost its membership in the Evangelical Council for Financial Accountability, which gives accreditation to leading Christian nonprofit organizations.

Its membership was terminated last Friday (March 11) for failure to comply with its standards for governance, according to the ECFA website.

The loss of accreditation is yet another setback for the Institute in Basic Life Principles. Eighteen people are suing the Oak Brook, Ill.-based institute, and Bill Gothard, its 81-year-old founder, for sexual harassment.

Christianity Today noted ECFA’s explanation of its governance standards on its website:

“When a ministry encounters failure—or even worse, scandal—its difficulties can almost always be traced to a breakdown in governance. For this reason, ECFA places much emphasis on strong, effective governance.”

Those standards require organizations to be governed by a majority-independent board that must include at least five people and meet at least semiannually to establish policies and review accomplishments.

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UNITED STATES
Deseret News

By David Gibson, Religion News Service
Published: Friday, March 18

The headline was eye-catching, and most likely that was the goal:

“Pope fires Vatican ambassador to U.S. over Kim Davis,” shouted the story this week in the left-leaning Daily Kos.

Pretty amazing, if it were true.

In reality, Pope Francis’ current ambassador, or nuncio, to the U.S., Archbishop Carlo Maria Vigano, was still in his job, though that could change at any minute.

Church sources say that the pontiff has chosen French-born Archbishop Christophe Pierre, now the Vatican’s representative to Mexico, to be his next envoy to the U.S., a move that has generated widespread speculation about what Pierre will do when he arrives, in part because the man he is replacing has been so controversial.

Vigano gained notoriety last September when it emerged that he set up a secret meeting between Francis and Kim Davis, the Kentucky clerk who briefly went to jail for refusing to sign marriage certificates for gay couples.

The encounter took place at the Vatican Embassy in Washington when the pontiff was visiting the nation’s capital. When news leaked a few days after Francis returned to Rome, it caused an uproar because it made it seem the pope had quietly been giving support to an icon of the very culture wars that he had spent his visit preaching against.

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NEW HAMPSHIRE
Boston Globe

By Kathy McCabe GLOBE STAFF MARCH 18, 2016

CONCORD, N.H. — Owen Labrie was sent to jail Friday after a judge found he had violated the terms of his bail by missing curfew.

Labrie, who was free on bail as he appealed his conviction for sexually assaulting a 15-year-old girl who was a fellow student at the elite St. Paul’s School, showed no emotion as he was led away in handcuffs to begin his one-year sentence.

“You made the decision,” Merrimack Superior Court Judge Larry Smukler told Labrie as he revoked his bail.

Prosecutors said Labrie had thumbed his nose at his bail conditions by traveling to Boston several times to visit his girlfriend at Harvard University.

Under his bail conditions, Labrie was supposed to be at his home in Vermont between 5 p.m. and 8 a.m. each night, but on some trips to Boston he left earlier and returned later.

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VATICAN CITY
Irish Times

Paddy Agnew in Rome

The Vatileaks 2 trial in a Vatican City court took a bizarre turn yesterday when Italian media reported one of the chief defendants, Spanish Msgr Lucio Ángel Vallejo Balda, had given false medical documents about Pope Francis to the Chinese secret service in Dubai in 2014.

During a raid on Msgr Vallejo’s apartment last autumn, Vatican police discovered emails and other documents which showed the monsignor had travelled to Dubai and allegedly gave a confidential medical report on the pope to Chinese agents

However, the document handed over to the Chinese instead contained detailed information on the health of Msgr Vallejo’s 82-year-old mother. Msgr Vallejo allegedly removed his mother’s name from the medical files, replacing it with that of the pope.

Retired policeman and former Italian secret service operative, Giuseppe Di Donno has confirmed he accompanied Msgr Vallejo during his visit to Dubai. Mr Di Donno , who now works for a private “security and intelligence” company called “G-Risk”, was, however, unable to confirm that the senior Vatican official met with Chinese agents.

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UNITED STATES
Christianity Today

Sarah Eekhoff Zylstra [ POSTED 3/18/2016

Bill Gothard’s former ministry has lost its seal of approval from the leading group that sets the standards for evangelical ministries.

The Evangelical Council for Financial Accountability (ECFA) terminated the membership of the Institute in Basic Life Principles (IBLP) last Friday, citing “failure to comply” with its governance standard.

ECFA requires member organizations to have a board of at least five people (mostly independents) that pray, chart long-range strategy, and identify potential conflicts of interest, among examples of other duties.

“When a ministry encounters failure—or even worse, scandal—its difficulties can almost always be traced to a breakdown in governance,” states ECFA’s explanation of Standard 2. “For this reason, ECFA places much emphasis on strong, effective governance.”

ECFA declined to specify to CT how IBLP failed to meet its governance standard. IBLP did not respond to CT’s request for comment by press time.

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NEW YORK
Newsweek

BY LUCY WESTCOTT ON 3/18/16

Hundreds of people are expected to attend a protest in Brooklyn on Sunday following a Newsweek exposé on the alleged sexual and physical abuse of students by rabbis at a Crown Heights school.

Survivors of sexual abuse and survivor advocacy groups will meet in front of Oholei Torah, a yeshiva on Eastern Parkway, at 6 p.m. on Sunday, according to a press release. The protest is timed to take place during an annual fundraising gala for the boys’ yeshiva, attended by roughly 2,000 students.

“For too long, teachers and principals in this school have ignored children being abused physically and sexually. There is evidence to suggest that in most of these cases the school knew about these crimes and chose not to act,” reads a statement on the Facebook page for the protest, which is being organized by Chaim Levin, whose story of abuse at Oholei Torah was chronicled in the Newsweek article.

“Furthermore, three of the people mentioned in the Newsweek article, people who either abused children themselves or oversaw it, are still employed by the school,” the statement said.

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AUSTRALIA
9 News

AAP

A centre working with child sex abuse survivors has received a $110,000 grant from the Victorian Government.

The government said it was matching the funds remaining from crowd funding efforts that sent survivors to Rome for the evidence of Cardinal George Pell to the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse.

It means the Ballarat Centre Against Sexual Assault will receive more than $200,000 to work with survivors in Ballarat and Western Victoria.

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PENNSYLVANIA
NBC 10

[with video]

Three Franciscan friars charged with allowing a suspected sexual predator to hold jobs where he molested more than 100 children have surrendered in Pennsylvania on child endangerment and conspiracy charges.

State prosecutors say Schinelli assigned Brother Stephen Baker to Bishop McCort High School in Johnstown, where he molested students from 1992 to 2000.

D’Aversa and Criscitelli also headed Baker’s Franciscan order based near Hollidaysburg. They are charged with continuing to allow Baker to teach or have access to the school and its students.

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PENNSYLVANIA
WJAC

BY RON MUSSELMAN FRIDAY, MARCH 18TH 2016

HOLLIDAYSBURG — Three Franciscan Friars facing criminal charges were arraigned Friday morning in Blair County.

The men are accused of enabling a serial sexual predator to continue to prey on children by a grand jury.

Robert J. D’Aversa, Anthony M. Criscitelli and Giles Schinelli are facing one count each of endangering the welfare of children and criminal conspiracy. All of the charges are felonies.

They appeared before Magisterial District Judge Paula Aigner.

D’Aversa, Schinelli and Criscitelli all received $75,000 unsecured bail.

They do not have to remain in the jurisdiction, but are required to make weekly check-ins with court personnel.

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MINNESOTA
KARE

Associated Press and KARE Staff , KARE

HOLLIDAYSBURG, Pa. – A Minnesota parish leader is one of three Franciscan friars arraigned Friday morning in Pennsylvania after being charged with allowing a suspected sexual predator to hold jobs where he molested more than 100 children.

Anthony Criscitelli, Robert D’Aversa, and Giles Schinelli are free until an April 14 preliminary hearing on child endangerment and conspiracy charges. Each carries up to seven years in prison.

State prosecutors say Schinelli assigned Brother Stephen Baker to Bishop McCort High School in Johnstown, where he molested students from 1992 to 2000.

Criscitelli and D’Aversa also headed Baker’s Franciscan order based near Hollidaysburg. They are charged with continuing to allow Baker access to the school and students.

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ROME
Commonweal

Robert Mickens
March 16, 2016

The pandemic of clergy sex abuse of children and adolescents has not abated. But you wouldn’t know that by reading some of the statements coming out of the Holy See Press Office lately. You’d think the Church has already rounded the corner on this issue and all it needs to do now is continue reinforcing a basically sound program and various protocols it’s implemented over the past several years.

The press office director, Fr. Federico Lombardi SJ, must have been instructed to at least defend the church’s cardinals any time one of them is accused of covering up abuse or shuffling around known priest abusers.

Back on March 4 he issued a long statement on Vatican Radio following the four nights of testimony that Cardinal George Pell gave from Rome via Internet to Australia’s Royal Commission on institutional responses to the sexual abuse of minors. At times it sounded bitter and defensive.

Among other things it offered praise for the cardinal’s testimony, calling it “dignified and coherent,” and for his willingness to meet victims who had come to Rome from Australia to be present at his hearing. Now Fr. Lombardi has rushed to the defense of French Cardinal Philippe Barbarin who is under intense scrutiny for allowing at least two, but most likely three and perhaps even more priests with histories of abusing minors to remain in ministry.

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PENNSYLVANIA
Orlando Sentinel

HOLLIDAYSBURG, Pa. (AP) — Three Franciscan friars — including two from Central Florida — have surrendered in Pennsylvania on child-endangerment and conspiracy charges, accused of allowing a suspected sexual predator in that state to hold jobs where he molested more than 100 children.

Robert D’Aversa, Giles Schinelli and Anthony Criscitelli were arraigned Friday morning.

D’Aversa is the head pastor at St. Patrick Catholic Church in Mount Dora and Schinelli is the director at San Pedro Center, a Catholic retreat in Winter Park.

Anthony Criscitelli is a priest at St. Bridget parish in north Minneapolis.

Both have been placed on administrative leave pending the outcome of the investigation, according to the Diocese of Orlando.

All three are free until an April 14 preliminary hearing on child endangerment and conspiracy charges. Each carries up to seven years in prison.

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UNITED KINGDOM
North Devon Journal

A DEVON man who claims to have been sexually assaulted by a Church of England priest has said police failed to investigate his complaint more than a decade ago.

Last year priest Vickery House was jailed for six and a half years for five sexual offences against boys. The youngest of House’s victims was 14.

BBC News has reported a victim informed Devon and Cornwall Police about being abused by the priest in 2001 – 11 years before an investigation was launched.

The victim who cannot be named, contacted police with his story in 2001. The investigation that led to House’s conviction was started by Sussex Police in May 2012.

“I reached a point when I couldn’t function properly as a human being,” he told the BBC.

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UNITED STATES
aka Catholic

By Randy Engel

ntroduction

February 23rd on the traditional Roman Catholic calendar is the feast day of one of the greatest saints in the Church, Saint Peter Damian (1007 – 1072), an Italian Benedictine monk and hermit, Cardinal-Bishop of Ostia, a precursor of the Hildebrandine reform in the Church, a key figure in the moral and spiritual reformation of the lax and incontinent clergy of his time and a Doctor of the Church.

I first made the acquaintance of Saint Peter Damian in 2002 when I was researching the history of sodomy and pederasty in the Church in the Middle Ages for The Rite of Sodomy. When I obtained Damian’s treatise Liber Gornorrhianus (The Book of Gomorrah) written sometime between 1049 and 1054, as an inter-loan acquisition from Catholic University of America, I thought I had died and gone to heaven. Indeed, heaven or Paradiso was where Dante has placed the saintly Peter Damian near the end of his Canto XXI (Seventh Heaven: Sphere of Saturn) in his epic literary masterpiece, the Divine Comedy.

So impressed was I with Peter Damian’s work, that I took two months off from my research to pen a two-part series for Catholic Family News (June/July 2002) titled, “St. Peter Damian’s Book of Gomorrah – A Moral Blueprint for Our Times.” Later, I expanded the article for inclusion in The Rite of Sodomy. Today, fourteen years later, this article continues to be the most popular reprint on the New Engel Publishing website.

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AUSTRALIA
ABC – Lateline

Australian Broadcasting Corporation
Broadcast: 17/03/2016
Reporter: Steve Cannane

Lateline’s exclusive report as a former Catholic Church co-ordinator reveals former Melbourne Archbishop George Pell prevented her from helping victims of abuse in Doveton, a parish devastated by a notorious paedophile priest.

Transcript

TONY JONES, PRESENTER: A former pastoral care co-ordinator with the Catholic Church in Melbourne has called on the royal commission and police to subpoena all of the Church’s secret files on sexual abuse by clergy. Helen Last has told Lateline that until all the secret documents known internally as the “red files” are made available, the public’s only getting part of the truth about the scope of the crimes committed against children. She also says that former Melbourne Archbishop George Pell preventing her from helping victims of abuse in Doveton, a parish devastated by the notorious paedophile priest Peter Searson. Steve Cannane has our exclusive report.

STEVE CANNANE, REPORTER: Do you still have the support of the Pope, Cardinal?

GEORGE PELL, CARDINAL: Counsel, this was an extraordinary world, a world of crimes and cover-ups.

HELEN LAST, FMR CO-ORDINATOR, PASTORAL RESPONSE OFFICE: It was surprising for me to hear him say that it was a world of crimes and cover-ups, whereas in days before he’d been saying he knew nothing, he saw nothing, he was never told anything, and then he called it a world of crimes and cover-ups.

STEVE CANNANE: In 1997, Helen Last was the co-ordinator of the Pastoral Response Office for the Melbourne Archdiocese. She says then Archbishop Pell personally stopped her from going to Doveton parish to investigate and provide care to the victims of the notorious paedophile priest Father Peter Searson.

HELEN LAST: They did not want our pastoral work on that professional level to start in that area because it was so full of sexual crimes and terrible trauma and terrorisation of altar boys. They did not want us to be working there to be uncovering it and to helping people specifically who had suffered that.

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PENNSYLVANIA
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

By Peter Smith / Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

A Pittsburgh lawyer is blasting the Altoona-Johnstown bishop, saying his public silence about a sexually abusive friar wrongly shifted blame to his client — a high school principal — and contributed to his leaving his job in 2013.

The comments about Bishop Mark Bartchak by George Bills, attorney for former Bishop McCort Catholic High School principal Ken Salem, came days after a state grand jury report that led to criminal charges against three Franciscan priests. They are charged with endangering the welfare of children and criminal conspiracy for allowing Brother Stephen Baker to work at the Johnstown school and elsewhere despite warnings about his behavior.

The priests, the Very Rev. Giles Schinelli, Robert J. D’Aversa and Anthony Criscitelli — who between 1986 and 2010 led the Hollidaysburg-based religious province that Baker belonged to — were placed on leave from ministry by the order after the charges were announced. D’Aversa had been a pastor in Florida, Schinelli had led a retreat center in that state, and Criscitelli was a pastor in Minnesota. They are expected to be arraigned today.

Baker committed suicide in January 2013 at the province’s Hollidaysburg monastery when the enormity of his crimes began to become public with news of legal settlements with his victims. Soon afterward, the school’s board suspended Mr. Salem. He resigned in mid-2013.

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NEW ZEALAND
Scoop

Friday, 18 March 2016, 2:22 pm
Press Release: Clan NZ

Shining the Light on New Zealand’s Historic Institutional Child Abuse

Comment by CLAN NZ (a branch of Care Leavers Australasia Network)

The Oscar winning film Spotlight is easily one of the most important, powerful films of the last few years.

Spotlight is the factual drama of how in 2002 a Boston Globe team of investigative reporters exposed more than 200 paedophile clergy in that city alone. It was the first major newspaper reporting on clerical abuse worldwide. It shocked the USA, indeed the world, and brought to public attention the protection of abusers by senior clerics and the silencing of victims and their families by the church and its lawyers.

The Spotlight epic has worldwide implications, including within New Zealand.

For many viewers the most disturbing and shocking moment of the film is when the list of cities from around the world, where this kind of clerical abuse had occurred, is screened. Numerous Australian and New Zealand cities are featured. To the uninitiated that list of cities is horrifying.

Pope Francis has been quoted as saying that reliable data indicates that “about 2%” of clergy in the Catholic Church are paedophiles. Without quibbling over the exact number of paedophile priests involved, any reasonable person would have to agree that even one is too many.

A 2014 study commissioned by the U.S. Catholic Church showed that more than 4,000 U.S. priests have faced sexual abuse allegations in the last 50 years. Bearing in mind that most research suggests that only a third of abuse cases are ever reported, it is patently obvious that this is a problem of gigantic and worldwide proportions.

Unbelievably no official N.Z. Catholic Church figures have been kept on the total number of clergy to have faced abuse allegations here. The Church has acknowledged only “38 substantiated” cases of clerical abuse in the past 50 years. (That is men against whom they believe abuse has been proven). So it seems in N.Z. that we have so far only seen “the tip of the iceberg”.

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AUSTRALIA
7 News

By Annette Blackwell – AAP on March 18, 2016

The pendulum of public awareness about child sexual abuse has swung so far in one direction that those accused of abuse are in danger of not getting a fair trial, a senior defence lawyer says.

Peter Morrissey SC, who is head of the Criminal Bar Association in Victoria, told the child sex abuse commission on Friday it needed to be extremely cautious about recommending changes to rules of evidence when it came to abuse trials.

Mr Morrissey was on a panel giving evidence to the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse, which is exploring if changes need to be made with regard to the admissibility of evidence about the character and past conduct of defendants.

Courts usually take a cautious approach to admitting such evidence because of the danger of prejudicing jury decisions.

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UNITED KINGDOM
The Times

Sean O’Neill Chief Reporter
March 18 2016

An order to senior bishops to end all contact with a victim of clerical sexual abuse came from an insurance company that was established “to protect the Anglican Church”, The Times can disclose.

The instruction was given by the Ecclesiastical Insurance Group (EIG), which was set up in the 19th century to insure the Church of England and states on its website that it remains “committed to doing this today”.

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VATICAN CITY
Vatican Information Service

Vatican City, 17 March 2016 – The director of the Holy See Press Office, Fr. Federico Lombardi, S.J., announced this morning that following the presentation by the counsel for the defendant Francesca Immacolata Chaouqui of medical certification pursuant to a hospital visit requiring “total bedrest” for twenty days, the President of the Tribunal has ruled that the next hearing will take place on 6 April at 10.30 a.m.

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UNITED KINGDOM
Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse

The preliminary hearings into allegations of child sexual abuse involving the Anglican Church and allegations of child sexual abuse involving Cambridge House, Knowl View and Rochdale were held today in Court 73 of the Royal Courts of Justice.

Applications for Core Participant status, submissions on the timetable and broadcast of future proceedings were heard during each hearing.

Preliminary hearings are not broadcast, but they are open to the press and public. Seats are allocated on a first come, first served basis.

A preliminary hearing is a legal hearing which considers procedural issues relating to the conduct of future public hearings and the Inquiry’s investigations. The issues that will be decided at preliminary hearings will include the timetable for public hearings, naming individuals and institutions as core participants and other procedural matters.

Transcripts are available – see the investigation pages for Anglican Church and Rochdale on our website for the relevant transcript of each hearing.

The preliminary hearing on allegations of child sexual abuse involving children in the care of Lambeth Council will take place at 10.30 am on Thursday 24 March, in Court 73 of the Royal Courts of Justice.

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UNITED KINGDOM
Church Times

by Gavin Drake

Posted: 18 Mar 2016

A PROPER investigation into the abuse carried out by the disgraced former Bishop of Gloucester, Peter Ball, was delayed for 20 years because the former Archbishop of Canterbury, Lord Carey, failed to act on a “very detailed complaint” sent to him in 1992, Justice Goddard, the head of the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse (IICSA), heard on Wednesday.

Bishop Ball finally faced justice last year, and was sentenced to just under three years in October 2015, after he admitted a string of indecent assaults and the abuse of 18 young men.

The allegation against Lord Carey was made by the national manager for abuse claims at the law firm Slater and Gordon, Richard Scorer. Mr Scorer represents 14 victims of abuse who have been given core-participant status at the IICSA. He made his comments at a preliminary hearing of the inquiry’s investigation into the Church of England and Church in Wales, which was heard at the Royal Courts of Justice on Wednesday.

Mr Scorer was making a renewed application for three of his other clients to also be made core participants. The three, identified as A10, A11, and A13, had had their previous applications for core-participant status rejected on the grounds that they were over 18 at the time they were abused.

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PENNSYLVANIA
Observer-Reporter

AP

HOLLIDAYSBURG – Three Franciscan friars charged with allowing a suspected sexual predator to hold jobs where he molested more than 100 children were removed from their religious assignments in Florida and Minnesota.

Robert D’Aversa, 69; Anthony Criscitelli, 61; and Giles Schinelli, 73, are scheduled to surrender today, said Jeffrey Johnson, a spokesman for the Pennsylvania attorney general’s office. They’re charged with child endangerment and criminal conspiracy.

The friars served successively as ministers provincial who headed a Franciscan religious order in Western Pennsylvania from 1986 to 2010. In that role, each assigned and supervised the order’s members including the late Brother Stephen Baker, who allegedly molested scores of children, most of them at Bishop McCort High School in Johnstown, where he was assigned from 1992 to 2000.

Schinelli was removed as pastoral administrator at the San Pedro Center, a Catholic retreat in Winter Park, Fla., while D’Aversa likewise was removed as pastor of St. Patrick Catholic Community in Mount Dora, Fla., according to the Orlando Diocese.

The Archdiocese of Saint Paul and Minneapolis said Anthony Criscitelli was removed is pastor of St. Bridget Parish Community in Minneapolis.

Orlando Bishop John Noonan issued a statement Wednesday saying he supported the decision of the Rev. Patrick Quinn, the current minister provincial of the Hollidaysburg-based Franciscan order, to remove D’Aversa and Schinelli from their Florida assignments.

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UNITED STATES
Verdict

18 MAR 2016 JOHN DEAN

No Academy Award was more surprising this year than that for Best Picture, which went to the film “Spotlight”—the dramatized account of the investigative team at the Boston Globe in uncovering sexual abuse by Catholic priests in the Boston school system. The award was surprising because it has been known since the film’s release that the story defamed (merely for dramatic purposes) one of those involved in uncovering sexual abuse by the clergy, not to mention the film has distorted the roles of others as well.

When Jack Dunn, the director of public affairs at Boston College, went to see “Spotlight” at its release last November, he came out of the theatre to vomit—his reaction to the way he had been falsely portrayed. He hired a lawyer. But there was little they could do to prevent further damage by the film that had already been released nationally.

“We spent enormous time researching in depth what happened in Boston—interviewing individuals, reviewing e-mails, poring over court documents. The movie is based on real events and uses, by necessity, scenes and dialogue to introduce characters, provide context, and articulate broad themes. That is true of every movie ever made about historical events,” Tom McCarthy, the film’s co-writer and director, explained to Boston Globe columnist Kevin Cullen. According to Cullen, Dunn was not alone in being falsely depicted; legendary Globe reporter Steve Kurkjian is portrayed in the film as a curmudgeon dismissive of the sex abuse story, which was flat-out untrue. In fact, Kurkjian had been a key member of the team that won the 2003 Pulitzer Prize for the Globe by exposing the cover-up. In addition, other reports reveal that former Globe publisher Richard Gilman, and a sex abuse victim’s attorney, Eric MacLeish, also were falsely represented in the film. Cullen called for apologies but all anyone got was a slap in the face from the Academy Awards. “Spotlight” received six Academy Award nominations and was awarded Best Original Screenplay and Best Picture.

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AUSTRALIA
Who

Louise Talbot – Who on March 18, 2016

After the second night of Cardinal George Pell’s testimony in Rome’s Quirinale Hotel on March 1, Anthony Foster was heading towards his Quirinale room when he ran into Pell on the lobby staircase.

Foster, whose daughters were sexually abused by a priest, had flown to Italy to hear Pell’s evidence for the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse.

He called Pell’s name and then pleaded with the cardinal to discuss the Catholic Church’s dealings with child abuse in Melbourne.

But Australia’s most senior Catholic, “said something negative, like ‘I can’t do that,’” Foster tells WHO. “I looked him in the eye … I said, ‘You are looking at a broken man.’ I don’t know where the words came from.” Pell then walked off. Adds Foster: “There was no offer at all to do anything.”

Foster is on a crusade to end that familiar response. From 1987, Foster and wife Chrissie’s daughters Emma and Katie were raped by priest Kevin O’Donnell at Sacred Heart Primary School in Melbourne’s Oakleigh, when they were 5 and 6.

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PHILADELPHIA (PA)
Philly.com

by Charles J. Chaput

Adults have a duty to love and protect children. Yet not a day goes by when we don’t hear a story about children abused by someone they know and trust. Perpetrators cover a very wide spectrum, from parents to coaches to teachers to clergy. But especially bitter for the statewide Catholic community is a March 1 grand jury report detailing historical abuses that took place in Western Pennsylvania’s Diocese of Altoona-Johnstown.

This news brings back ugly feelings for so many within our archdiocese, which learned its own lessons about child sexual abuse the hard way. The most important lesson is that the persons who suffer most in these tragedies are the survivors and their families. I’ve met personally with many survivors over the years. Their stories and experiences are intensely painful. I am deeply sorry for all they’ve endured, for the past failures of the Church, and for the role it has played in their suffering.

When I arrived here more than four years ago, we committed the archdiocese to do all it can to support survivors on their path toward healing and to create Church and school environments to protect our young people and keep them from harm.

My predecessor, Cardinal Justin Rigali, had already started by hiring respected professionals – experts from the victim-services and law-enforcement communities – to establish and implement best practices. Their charge was based on two simple requirements: Law-enforcement authorities must be notified immediately and properly when any allegation of abuse is made; and survivors need to be cared for professionally and with compassion.

We’ve made progress. Today, the archdiocese has a zero-tolerance policy for clergy, lay employees, and volunteers who engage in misconduct with children, and it takes immediate action when an accusation is made. Any allegation of abuse must be reported immediately to law enforcement, and any substantiated allegation against a member of the clergy results in immediate removal from ministry.

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PHILADELPHIA (PA)
Catholics4Change

MARCH 17, 2016 BY SUSAN MATTHEWS

In today’s Philadelphia Inquirer, Archbishop Chaput shares his reaction to a recent grand jury report that details the historical clergy sex abuse and cover up that took place in the Diocese of Altoona-Johnstown.

Chaput doesn’t mention that an alleged predator priest mentioned in the report was sent to St. John Vianney in Downington. During the approximate timeline of his stay, Kathy Kane raised concerns about safety at Bishop Shanahan High School and in the surrounding community. The Philadelphia Archdiocese assured her and the press that there weren’t any child predator priests there. And the alleged child predator from Altoona was hardly the only out-of-towner. Vianney seems to have become a destination for problem priests from Cardinal Dolan’s Diocese in New York.

Why would the archdiocese risk housing them? We hear predator priest “patients” like these bring in about $13,000 a month. Call me cynical but I’m beginning to think a profit center like this might help underwrite the cost of victims’ settlements.

You may be wondering why they aren’t in jail. They can’t be criminally charged because of the cover up hid them until the PA statutes of limitations expired. Some are laicized and disappear into our communities. They aren’t on any lists. Those who remain priests go into the prayer and penance program paid for by the Church (your donations). But where are they housed?

For some, the prayer and penance program takes them to St. John Vianney or St. Luke’s in Maryland. There is no cure for child sex abuse according to the majority of psychiatrists. So while they are at Vianney, what is the safety protocol? Admittance is voluntary and it’s not a lock-down facility. It’s not associated with a legally-enforced program.

Although, when we ask questions, they do make them use the back door. We are also told unofficially that they will now be driven into the neighboring shopping centers and movie theater and dropped off rather than having them walk over. Who watches these priests with grounds-only privileges while they are out? When Kathy asked if priests who have child pornography issues are allowed off the grounds, she was told “not necessarily.” So some are? Do we really need more of this in our Archdiocese? These priests have admitted themselves to an inpatient facility. Why the endless hours of recreation out in the community unattended?

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FRANCE
Worldcrunch

Tribune de Lyon, March 17, 2016

“Can Barbarin fall?” asks French-language weekly Tribune de Lyon on its cover this week, in reference to Archbishop of Lyon Philippe Barbarin, who is accused of covering up acts of paedophilia.

Cardinal Barbarin, one of France’s top Catholic clerics, is accused of failing to take action against 70-year-old priest Bernard Preynat in 2009, when he became aware that Preynat had sexually abused children between 1986 and 1991. Preynat, who was removed from duty in May, has been under official investigation since January.

“I have never, never, never covered up acts of paedophilia,” Barbarin told journalists at a press conference in Lourdes earlier this week.

Although the Vatican is backing Barbarin, French Prime Minister Manuel Valls has asked Barbarin to “take responsibility” in the child sex abuse case that Tribune de Lyon likens to the Boston scandal depicted in the movie Spotlight.

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MINNESOTA
Star Tribune

By Pat Pheifer Star Tribune MARCH 17, 2016

A Twin Cities Catholic priest who had been on leave for seven months after allegations of past sexual abuse of a minor surfaced, was reinstated to public ministry Thursday in the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis, church officials said.

The allegations against the Rev. Robert J. Fitzpatrick were from the 1980s.

Fitzpatrick was pastor of St. Rose of Lima and Corpus Christi parishes in Roseville when he took a volunteer leave of absence last August, pending an investigation.

Archdiocese spokesman Tom Halden said St. Paul police investigated the allegations. In a prepared statement, interim Archbishop Bernard Hebda said police “completed their investigation and closed their case based on lack of evidence and the statute of limitations.

The Archdiocesan Ministerial Review Board also did its own investigation and “determined that there was not a reasonable basis to find that the alleged abuse occurred,” the statement said.

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TEXAS
San Antonio Express-News

By Mark D. Wilson Updated
Thursday, March 17, 2016

SAN ANTONIO — Officers who found Father Virgilio Elizondo dead inside his West Side home Monday discovered a suicide note near his body and his finger still on the trigger, according to an incident report obtained by MySA.com.

The report said Elizondo, who was pronounced dead at the scene, was slumped over in a chair and still had his finger on the trigger of a loaded revolver when officers arrived to his home. Elizondo had placed paperwork for his attorney on a desk in his room, the report said.

Police interviewed a woman at the scene who had originally found Elizondo, 80. The woman, who is not named in the report, told officers that the priest had never mentioned being suicidal.

Elizondo, a religious scholar and author, was named in a lawsuit filed in Bexar County last year accusing him of sexually abusing an unidentified boy more than 30 years ago. The woman interviewed by police at the scene mentioned the allegations to police, the report said.
Elizondo has denied the allegations.

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MINNESOTA
Pioneer Press

By ELIZABETH MOHR | emohr@pioneerpress.com
March 17, 2016

A Roseville priest has been reinstated after investigations by St. Paul police and the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis showed no evidence of a crime.

The Rev. Robert Fitzpatrick, pastor at Corpus Christi parish and St. Rose of Lima parish and school, went on leave in August following an allegation that he sexually abused a minor in the 1980s. He denied the allegation.

“Law enforcement completed their investigation and closed their case based on a lack of evidence and the statute of limitations,” a statement from the archdiocese said Thursday. “With authorization from law enforcement, the archdiocese commenced its own investigation of the allegation.”

The Archdiocesan Ministerial Review Board, composed primarily of laypersons, reviewed the case and determined “there was not a reasonable basis to find that the alleged abuse occurred.”

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MINNESOTA
CBS Minnesota

MINNEAPOLIS (WCCO) — A Twin Cities priest can return to his parishes after a sex abuse allegation was found to be unsubstantiated, according to the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis.

Rev. Robert Fitzpatrick was reinstated Thursday, and will transition back into his roles at St. Rose of Lima and Corpus Christi churches in Roseville.

Officials say an investigation by the Archdiocese Ministerial Review Board, which covered Fitzpatrick’s 42 years of service in the Twin Cities, cleared him of any wrongdoing.

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MINNESOTA
Minnesota Public Radio

Mukhtar Ibrahim Mar 17, 2016

A Roseville priest who was put on leave pending investigations into an allegation that he sexually abused a minor will return to the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis, Archbishop Bernard Hebda announced Thursday.

Rev. Robert Fitzpatrick will be reinstated to public ministry in the archdiocese after the completion of two investigations by law enforcement and the archdiocese.

In August last year, the archdiocese contacted the police after it received an allegation that Fitzpatrick had sexually abused a minor in the 1980s. Fitzpatrick, a pastor at Saint Rose of Lima and Corpus Christi churches, denied the allegation and took a leave of absence.

“Law enforcement completed their investigation and closed their case based on a lack of evidence and the statute of limitations,” Hebda, who serves as temporary head of the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis, said in a statement.

The archdiocese also said it launched its own investigation. It turned investigative materials over to the Archdiocesan Ministerial Review Board, which “determined that there was not a reasonable basis to find that the alleged abuse occurred,” according to the statement.

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UNITED STATES
Catholic Culture

By Phil Lawler Mar 17, 2016

John Allen has a useful suggestion on how the Vatican can close out the “Vatileaks II” scandal and avoid another public-relations debacle.

Msgr. Lucio Vallejo Balda has already admitted leaking the confidential documents, and his explanation– that a woman had lured him into a compromising situation and then threatened him– doesn’t constitute an excuse. He betrayed his office, and he’s subject to Vatican law; he should be punished.

But the other three prominent defendants are Italian citizens; it is not clear that the Vatican could enforce a criminal sentence, even if one or more are convicted. Nor is it clear that the Vatican should want a conviction.

Two of those “name” defendants, Gianluigi Nuzzi and Emiliano Fittipaldi, are journalists. A strong case can be made that they were doing their job by publishing the material that was given to them. An even stronger case can be made that it’s losing proposition for any goverment to prosecute journalists who expose corruption. These two journalists, Allen notes, are setting themselves as martyrs for the cause of press freedom.

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