ABUSE TRACKER

VATICAN CITY
Catholic Herald (UK)

Cardinal Karl Lehmann of Mainz said the rejection of lists of names showed ‘intolerable disrespect’ for a country’s Church

A German cardinal has said names of candidates submitted to the Vatican as potential bishops are being vetoed by “unauthorised people” in Rome.

Cardinal Karl Lehmann of Mainz, who was president of the German bishops’ conference from 1987 to 2008, said: “In the name of the law, these unlawful outside influences must be set aside and a proper voice given to those who’ll be living with the chosen candidate.”

“If there really is something against a candidate, then the nuncio or Rome must talk about it with the cathedral chapter. Rome cannot just reject names without any comment,” he said.

The cardinal made his criticisms in a German-language book, published by Freiburg-based Herder-Verlag. Extracts were published on May 3 by the German Catholic news agency, KNA.

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NEW ZEALAND
New Zealand Herald

Under fire dean of Napier Cathedral, Dr Michael Godfrey, has denied accusations of a long term affair with an underage girl, as he vowed to clear his name.

Dr Godfrey was suspended for a year from his job as a priest at the Diocese of Waiapu after revelations of two extra marital affairs he had 25 years ago were made public yesterday.

The Diocese of Waiapu said Dr Godfrey’s conduct had fallen short of that expected of an Anglican priest, adding that it was a “historic matter of behaviour” related to church law.

In an interview with Rachel Smalley of Newstalk ZB, Dr Godfrey said the 25-year-old issue had resurfaced because the Royal Commission in Australia, who were looking into institutional responses to child abuse, had been given his name. It was later thrown out, he said.

“They look at it and said look it is immoral but we are not moral judges, it is not criminal, it is not predatory flick past it. The church picked it up and said look it is a lapse in moral standards.

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AUSTRALIA
Herald Sun

May 4, 2016

Shannon Deery
Herald Sun

A YOUNG orphan boy who was publicly flogged after reporting sexual abuse at the hands of a Christian Brother suffered years of torture because he wasn’t believed.

The nine-year-old was abused almost immediately after having the misfortune of being assigned to the St Augustine’s Boys’ Home dormitory monitored by Br William Stuart Houston in 1963.

So fearful during his first attack, that saw Houston gag him and lie in bed with him, the young boy wet himself.

It earned him a series of strappings by Houston who wanted to punish the boy for wetting the bed.

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RHODE ISLAND
Naples Herald

BY MICHELLE R. SMITH

PROVIDENCE, R.I. (AP) — Between cocktails, campus tours and squash games, alumni visiting St. George’s School for their annual reunion weekend will find something different this year: discussions about what has unfolded at the elite boarding school since December, when leaders acknowledged dozens of students were sexually abused in the past.

St. George’s is the most extreme example of abuse scandals that have bubbled up recently at New England boarding schools, which are handling reunion weekends this month with different approaches.

Many St. George’s alumni have struggled with whether to attend the reunion, which runs Friday through Sunday. They are upset by what happened to them or fellow alums, and by how the school handled it when told of abuse. Some say they will not attend. Others say they want to be among friends as they work to understand what has happened.

One said she was relieved that the school has finally acknowledged the abuse, is investigating what happened and is paying for therapy. She was one of at least 17 people the school acknowledges was abused by athletic trainer Al Gibbs.

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NEW YORK
Times of Israel

NEW YORK – A second hidden video from inside the largest yeshiva in the Satmar Hasidic village of Kiryas Joel shows a principal holding a school-age boy between his legs while kissing him in what sex-abuse watchdogs are describing as another case of abuse.

The video follows the release of a previous hidden-camera recording that seems to show the same Hasidic man in the same school office kissing, caressing and rubbing up against another boy the man holds between his legs. That video has prompted an inquiry by police.

While the man in the film, said to be a principal at United Talmudical Academy, a K-12 school with some 6,000 students in the Satmar village in Orange County, New York, has not responded to requests seeking comment, some community members who say they know him are rallying to his defense.

One such man, Joseph Waldman, told a local cable station, News 12, that the principal is a well-known rabbi who is highly respected in the community.

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PARAGUAY
La Conferencia Episcopal Paraguaya

Los Obispos del Paraguay ante denuncias que involucran a eclesiásticos, en casos de abusos de menores y otros hechos punibles y, en particular del caso Carlos Ibáñez, manifestamos que:

1) Sentimos un inmenso dolor por el escándalo de quienes han causado graves consecuencias en personas vulnerables. Estos hechos no los aceptamos y los condenamos, porque contradicen el mensaje cristiano y la misión de la Iglesia, y pedimos perdón por todos ellos.

2) Rechazamos la acusación de encubrimiento de los hechos y reafirmamos nuestro compromiso con la verdad, la transparencia y la acción firme. Por eso, proseguiremos con las oportunas investigaciones, según las prescripciones previstas en el Protocolo para investigar denuncias contra clérigos sobre abuso sexual de menores (julio 2015) hasta que se diluciden los casos y los que resulten culpables sean severamente sancionados como corresponde.

3) Mientras aseguramos nuestro compromiso sincero y determinado en la búsqueda de la verdad, valoramos el papel que cumplen los medios de comunicación en la formación de la opinión pública y entendemos que la población tiene derecho a recibir información veraz, responsable y ecuánime.

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PARAGUAY
La Nacion

[The Paraguayan Episcopal Conference (CEP) met in special session yesterday and released a statement asking forgiveness for the acts of sexual abuse committed against minors.]

La Conferencia Episcopal Paraguaya (CEP) se reunió en asamblea extraordinaria y dio a conocer ayer un comunicado en el que piden perdón por los hechos de abuso sexuales cometidos contra menores de edad. “Condenamos estos hechos porque contradicen el mensaje cristiano y la misión de la Iglesia, y pedimos perdón por todos ellos”, señala parte del comunicado que prosigue asegurando que existe un compromiso “sincero y determinado de la búsqueda de la verdad”.

Asimismo, expresaron su cercanía con los afectados por los graves delitos y “asumiendo nuestra responsabilidad de pastores nos comprometemos a luchar decididamente para evitar que hechos de esta naturaleza produzcan el incalculable daño a todos los que confían en la Iglesia y sus pastores”.

Los obispos del Paraguay aseguran que continuarán con las investigaciones relacionadas a las denuncias de abuso sexual en menores y niegan que estén encubriendo a los sacerdotes pederastas y pedófilos. Sostienen que la población tiene derecho a recibir información veraz, responsable y ecuánime.

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AUSTRALIA
3AW

Tom Elliott says it’s “disgusting” the Catholic church is planning a memorial mass for disgraced former Ballarat Bishop Ronald Mulkearns.

Bishop Mulkearns died of cancer early last month.

He had previously confessed to covering up the sexual abuse of children by priests under his watch.

3AW Drive host Tom Elliott said the planned tribute showed the church still “didn’t get it” when it came to admitting its wrongs of the past.

“If a serial killer died in jail and that person just happened to have been a Catholic earlier in life, would the church have a mass in his name? I don’t think so…” Tom Elliott said on Friday.

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UNITED STATES
Baptist Press

by Diana Chandler, posted Thursday, May 05, 2016

NASHVILLE (BP) — Southern Baptists were represented among many groups planting pinwheels in gardens across America this spring to spotlight child abuse prevention and spread awareness of the 700,000 children in the U.S. who are maltreated each year.

Accepted as symbolic of the innocent whimsy of childhood, more than 5 million pinwheels have been distributed nationally during the annual April Pinwheels for Prevention emphasis since Prevent Child Abuse America (PCAA) adopted the symbol in 2008.

The pinwheel garden at Calvary Baptist Church, a Southern Baptist congregation in Chapmanville, W.Va., marked the church’s fourth straight year of participation, pastor John Freeman told Baptist Press.

“We just have a great burden for kids, children at our church and especially those who go through the awful experience of being abused,” Freeman said of the church that draws about 100 Sunday worshippers. “It just seems like each year it grows and grows.” Following a special service April 3, the church planted perhaps 200 pinwheels on its grounds and in flower pots inside the church, Freeman estimated.

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TENNESSEE
WBRC

Reported by Liz Lohuis

NASHVILLE, TN (WSMV) –
A Nashville megachurch has been slapped with a $10 million lawsuit connected to a rape that happened nearly a decade ago.

Brian Lance Mitchell has been in prison since 2012, convicted of multiple sex crimes against children.

Mitchell worked for Cornerstone Nashville church.

Attorneys for the victim said the church’s negligence led to the sexual abuse of a 10-year-old boy back in 2007.

The victim is being represented by Ozment Law.

The lawsuit says Mitchell was part of the youth staff at the church, and the victim’s mentor.

Pastor Maury Davis declined an on-camera interview and told Channel 4 to reference comments he made during last Sunday’s service.

“Though he (Mitchell) attended our church he was not a volunteer in Cornerstone Nashville’s children or youth ministry at any time,” Davis said.

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MINNESOTA
The Legal Examiner

Posted by Mike Bryant
May 5, 2016

There is less than a month and just over two weeks for Survivors to come forward and right so many past wrongs. There is still much more to do. Time is running out. Survivors of sexual abuse have until May 25th, 2016 to seek justice against their attackers. The Window is limited by the statute of limitation that was expanded by the Child Victims Act. Anyone who was sexually abused by an employee of the diocese, or who believes the diocese is liable for their abuse have until May 25, 2016.

Those with claims must act within that time.

Abuse of children and the continued silence by the offenders needs to be prevented. If you suffered, saw, or suspected such events, it is important to know that there is help out there.

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IRELAND
The Irish Times

Editorial

The publication of the final tranche of current reviews by the National Board for Safeguarding Children in the Catholic Church in Ireland has tended to be overshadowed by another appalling case of church cover-up and mishandling of clerical child sexual abuse.

In this instance it involved serial abuser Fr Paddy McDonagh and his Salvatorian congregation superiors. It should not be forgotten that this came to national attention because the board published its stark review of that case.

It was the latest example of a robust integrity which has characterised the board’s work since it was set up in 2006.

Based at Maynooth and funded by the Irish Bishops’ Conference, the Conference of Religious of Ireland, and the Irish Missionary Union, it has operated with a studied independence of those bodies. This has been so even as tensions developed but also, as proven repeatedly, in its published reviews. These, frequently, have been unsparing of relevant church personnel and institutions.

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NEW ZEALAND
Radio New Zealand

The Anglican church is justifying its decision to stand down a senior priest over two affairs he had 25 years ago.

Reverend Michael Godfrey, 56, said he was sexually assaulted just days before the affairs, which were a misguided attempt to find comfort after the attack.

Reverend Michael GodfreyReverend Michael Godfrey Photo: Facebook
The highly-ranked priest said he had two separate extramarital affairs during a 10-day period while working in Australia in 1991. He was assaulted by a man just 10 days before the first affair.

In a statement, the Anglican Church said Reverend Michael Godfrey was removed from his position as Dean of Waiapu Cathedral for a historic matter that – while not illegal – breached the church’s rules.

Dr Godfrey, 56, thinks the church made the wrong decision, but the church said he had been removed because his affairs breached church rules and were not reported to the right people at the time.

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MASSACHUSETTS
Canton Citizen

By Jay Turner

Editor’s note: The name of the victim who was interviewed for this story has been changed in order to protect his privacy.

When reports first surfaced in late 2012 that Father Thomas H. Maguire had been removed from public ministry in Norwell following allegations of inappropriate sexual conduct, Mark L., a Canton native and former St. John the Evangelist parishioner, felt a complex flood of emotions ranging from anger to regret to disgust.

Then he picked up the telephone and made a call that he felt was long overdue.
Contacting the Norwell police and speaking to an investigator, Mark would go on to recount his own experiences with Father Maguire in Canton in the early 1990s, back when Mark, his brother and their friends were students at Canton High School and members of the St. John’s CYO leadership board. Maguire, who was assigned to the parish during those years, worked directly with the CYO, and Mark recalled multiple instances where Maguire both supplied and consumed alcohol with the teens, along with one or more instances of inappropriate behavior and alleged sexual misconduct during “off-site” CYO meetings.

Ultimately, police determined that none of the alleged offenses could be prosecuted because they all fell outside of the criminal statute of limitations. However, the Archdiocese undertook its own investigation into the matter, and on March 31, 2016, following a lengthy probe and a church process undertaken under canon law, Maguire was found “guilty of abuse of a minor” and removed from the priesthood by order of the Holy See.

According to a public database of accused priests provided by the Archdiocese on its website, Maguire is the first Boston area priest since 2009 to be defrocked due to allegations of abuse and just the seventh in the last decade. And it was the reports of inappropriate conduct from the “mid 1990s and before” — coinciding with his years at St. John the Evangelist (1989-1996) — that appeared to carry the most weight in the decision.

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NEW YORK
New York Daily News

GLENN BLAIN, MICHAEL O’KEEFFE, LARRY MCSHANE NEW YORK DAILY NEWS Thursday, May 5, 2016

It’s his pizza party, and he’ll cry if he wants to.

Powerful state Senate Republican John DeFrancisco whined Thursday after the Daily News reported he served pizza pies to the Syracuse women’s basketball team while three child sex abuse survivors stood nearby in his office.

“It’s ridiculous,” DeFrancisco said just before the Senate went into session in Albany. “If you think that’s good reporting, then we have a difference of opinion.”

DeFrancisco said he was willing to meet with the trio to discuss their support for the pending Child Victims Act (CVA). But he said the timing of Wednesday’s pop-in was just wrong.

“I just think there is some basic office management that you have to do, no matter who happens to come in,” the Syracuse senator said.

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UNITED STATES
Huffington Post

Nikki DuBose
Former Model, Commercial Actress & Host turned Author, Speaker & Mental Health Advocate

I am a survivor of child abuse. Starting at age four, I was repeatedly beaten and called names that no child or adult should ever be called. Then from eight through thirteen years of age, the abuse escalated to sexual victimization by a close male figure and my mother, who suffered from mental health issues. At nineteen and through my early twenties, I was re-victimized as an amateur model and again as a professional model. Now at thirty-one, I have been in strong recovery for a few years, am an author (my memoir, Washed Away: From Darkness to Light hits stores Summer 2016), speaker and mental health advocate. I understand the long-lasting effects of abuse and how it can trigger other serious mental health conditions, yet I am also a believer that full recovery is possible. On the other side of the coin, I grasp the concept that hurting people hurt people and that forgiveness is a powerful force in this world – for ourselves and others.

But when I read an article in the New York Times about John Mackey, the co-CEO of Whole Foods, and his relationship with Marc Gafni, an admitted child-sexual-abuser-turned-spiritual-leader, I couldn’t turn a blind eye and continue to shop at my once-favorite store. I’ll admit it, I used to love Whole Foods, and most people do. It carries an enormous variety of overly priced organic foods that are appealing to the senses; basically it’s like the Saks Fifth Avenue of grocery stores. However, I refuse to support any company that openly backs a pedophile and doesn’t use their platform to take a stand against something as important as child sexual abuse – an issue that affects more than 42,000,000 Americans.

So on May 25th I will be at the Whole Foods 365 launch in Los Angeles to protest co-CEO John Mackey’s link to Marc Gafni; if you live in NYC, there is a planned coordinated protest underway. Mackey’s ignorance as a leader to publicly evade the issues at hand enables the perpetrator, allows the stigma to continue, and brings up another question: what percentage of child sexual abuse survivors shop at Whole Foods? Bill Murray, founder and CEO of NAASCA, the National Association of Adult Survivors of Child Abuse, believes that the government-reported 1 in 3 girls and 1 in 5 boys who are sexually victimized before they turn eighteen equates to roughly 20 to 25 percent of adults who will shop at the newly launched Whole Foods 365. “365 is comparable to Trader Joes, so (Whole Foods) is most likely banking on the fact that the prices will appeal to the classes represented by child sexual abuse survivors,” Murray says. However, statistically victims of child sexual abuse have a harder time in life holding down jobs, are more likely to run away from home, attempt suicide, develop fatal eating disorders, get involved in the sex industry, work as dancers, or act in pornographic films.

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UNITED STATES
Huffington Post

Stephen H. Dinan
Author, CEO of The Shift Network

I’m writing to bring attention and sound a serious warning about what are, in my opinion, deceptions taking place around the movie RiseUp, which has been enrolling many trusted leaders and has begun a major fundraising campaign at Generosity.

I strongly urge you to educate yourself and others and consider boycotting this movie due to the participation of Marc Gafni, who appears to be using credible authors, speakers, musicians, and business leaders to establish a socially-acceptable front.

Gafni has been the subject of more than 35 recent articles in the press that describe a very troubling history, some of which are included below.

In January, more than 100 of the most respected rabbis and cultural leaders in the Jewish world came together in a Change.org petition to give a very strong warning of the danger Gafni poses. They said, “Marc Gafni has left a trail of pain, suffering, and trauma amongst the people and congregations who were unfortunate to have trusted him.” As further support to their statement, more than 3400 other signatories from all periods of Gafni’s life signed as well, many with extensive comments.

I strongly recommend reading the petition, as well as 75 of the comments on the petition that share many terrible first-hand accounts. It’s also valuable to watch the video testimony of Gafni’s third wife, and Rabbi Ingber.

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NEW MEXICO
KRQE

ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. (AP) – A bankruptcy judge in New Mexico has scheduled a confirmation hearing on the Diocese of Gallup’s reorganization plan, signaling the possible end of a case that has spanned more than two years.

The Gallup Independent reports that attorneys for the diocese filed amended copies of the reorganization plan and a disclosure statement Tuesday. U.S. Bankruptcy Judge David T. Thuma scheduled the confirmation hearing for June 21.

Clergy sex abuse claimants will have to accept or reject the plan by June 10.

The abuse claimants have also been promised that they will be able to electronically access a read-only personnel file of their abuser. An attorney representing the claimants expressed concern that the provision will go away because the security details haven’t yet been worked out.

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MALTA
Times of Malta

Just one of the 27 complaints forwarded to the Church’s Safeguarding Commission last year was substantiated, statistics released today revealed.The commission investigates any cases of emotional, physical and sexual abuse and neglect by members of the Church, including clergy and lay people.

The other concluded cases either not proven or the allegations were false, were malicious in intent, or did not involve minors.

Until last December, seven cases were undergoing an assessment and in five cases, the persons concerned had their pastoral activity restricted.

The government should set up an authority to protect minors and vulnerable adults, the Church’s Safeguarding Commission has recommended.

The authority would establish a structure to share information between organisations and tasked with the revision of existing procedures through which the names of perpetrators are placed in the Register for the Protection of Minors.

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UNITED KINGDOM
International Business Times

By Paul Wright
May 5, 2016

The former deputy head of a leading independent Catholic school has been jailed for just over two-and-a-half years after pleading guilty to possessing hundreds of child porn images and the illegal drug ecstasy (MDMA). Peter Allott, 37, taught at the prestigious £15,000-a-year St Benedict’s Catholic Independent Day School in Ealing when he was targeted by officers from a child abuse unit.

His arrest in December 2015, which saw his phone and hard drive confiscated, came following intelligence that an individual had been using video conferencing facilities to share indecent images of children with others around the UK. He was found with more than 200 illegal child abuse pictures and videos in his possession.

Allott, of Marchwood Crescent in Ealing, appeared at Blackfriars Crown Court on Thursday (5 May) where he was sentenced to 33 months in prison. He had admitted three charges of possessing, showing and making indecent images of children, one charge of possessing extreme pornography and another of possession of the class A drug ecstasy at a court hearing in March.

Matt Sutton, from the National Crime Agency, said: “Every indecent image of a child is an image of a child being abused. Peter Allott had images of the worst category in his possession and it is appropriate that he is now serving a custodial sentence.

“While there is no evidence that Allott abused his position of trust at his place of work, we consider he posed a significant risk due to nature of the images he was sharing.

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UNITED KINGDOM
Mirror

BY SAM WEBB

The deputy head of a scandal-hit Catholic private school became hooked on child abuse images after getting embroiled in a drug-taking paedophile ring that met on gay dating app Grindr.

Pervert Peter Allott, 37, was introduced to child sex images and became addicted to Class A drugs – spending up to £600-a-week – at ‘chemsex’ parties.

He kept child abuse images on his iPhone and on a hard drive found in his office at the £15,000-a-year St Benedict’s School, which includes comedian Julian Clary, former Hong Kong governor Chris Patten and Lord Of The Rings actor Andy Serkis amongst its former pupils.

Cambridge University graduate Allott was a teacher at the scandal hit school in Ealing, west London, where one priest is on the run from a child abuse charge and another was convicted of nearly four decades of abuse.

The school was heavily criticised in a report into its protection of children from abuse.

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UNITED KINGDOM
Daily Mail

By REBECCA CAMBER, CRIME CORRESPONDENT FOR THE DAILY MAIL

The deputy head of a scandal-hit Catholic private school was jailed today after admitting getting hooked on child pornography blowing £600 a week on paedophile drug parties.

Peter Allott, 37, led a double life working as a high-flying devout Christian headteacher, while at the weekends he indulged in drug-fuelled sex orgies, swapping sickening images of children with other perverts.

The Cambridge–educated deputy headteacher became addicted to child sex images and Class A drugs after being introduced to both at ‘chemsex’ parties organised on gay dating app Grindr.
He amassed nearly 400 horrific images of children as young as two, which he kept on his iPhone and on a hard drive in his office at the £15,000-a-year St Benedict’s School.

Investigators also found the Class A drug MDMA, otherwise known as ecstasy, in a raid of his home, a property owned by the school.

The private school in Ealing, West London, which counts comedian Julian Clary, Tory peer Chris Patten and actor Andy Serkis amongst its alumni, has been dogged by scandal after one teacher was convicted of nearly four decades of sexual abuse of children and another priest is still on the run from a child abuse charge.

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UNITED KINGDOM
BBC News

The deputy head of a fee-paying Catholic school in London has been jailed for 33 months for possessing extreme images of child abuse.

Peter Allott, 37, who taught at St Benedict’s in Ealing admitted possessing, showing and making category A indecent images of children.

Allott, of Marchwood Crescent, Ealing, was caught using video conferencing to share images with others in the UK.

Blackfriars Crown Court heard him admit possessing a controlled drug, MDMA.

Matt Sutton of Child Exploitation and Online Protection Command (CEOP) said: “Every indecent image of a child is an image of a child being abused. Peter Allott had images of the worst category in his possession and it is appropriate he is now serving a custodial sentence.

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ILLINOIS
Central Illinois Proud

[with video]

BLOOMINGTON

The statute of limitations for child sex abuse cases could be eliminated in Illinois.

State senator Scott Bennett of Champaign recently introduced a bill that would do just that, after former U.S. House Speaker Dennis Hastert was sentenced in a hush-money case, where he admitted to sexually abusing teenagers decades ago. Hastert could not be prosecuted because of the current statute, which gives a victim until they turn 38 to open a criminal case.

Both Bennett and Attorney General Lisa Madigan have both called for the change. Local prosecutors say they will use whatever tools they can to prosecute offenders.

“If there are statute of limitations on cases, we work with in those limitations. If they change the laws to extend those, then we will use that like any other tool available to us, if it unlimits us in some of those cases,” said McLean County State’s Attorney Jason Chambers.

Lawmakers in Massachusetts, New York and Pennsylvania are considering similar proposals.

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NEW YORK
WXXI

By BETH ADAMS

Current law in New York State gives victims of sexual abuse until the age of 23 to pursue either criminal charges or a civil lawsuit against their alleged abuser.

Child advocates are pushing to change that during the current legislative session in Albany.

Mary Whittier, executive director of Bivona Child Advocacy Center in Rochester, says child sexual abuse is cloaked in secrecy and shame, and many victims don’t come to terms with what happened until they are well into their adult years.

“I’ve done presentations before, where people who are 45, 50..I had a 64-year-old woman come up to me who said, ‘I was the victim of childhood sexual abuse and I never told anybody. I’m telling you for the first time, and I wish there was something I could do about it.’ ”

Whittier says lifting the statute of limitations on felony sex crimes is the number one item on the legislative agenda for the New York State chapter of the National Children’s Alliance, but she says there is strong opposition from the Catholic Church and other organized groups, and it will take an army of supporters to bring about change.

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NEW YORK
Riverdale Press

Posted May 5, 2016

There is a bill now being considered in the State Senate’s Codes Committee that deserves wider support.

The proposed law would eliminate the statute of limitations that now prevents victims who are 23 or older from filing claims of sexual abuse against individuals or private institutions.

Current law limits when a criminal or civil action can be taken against someone accused of certain kinds of sexual acts with children under 18. Accusers must file charges or claims before they turn 23. After that, regardless of what they later say was done to them, victims can find no justice in a New York court.

The Senate bill would eliminate the age limit and enable victims to bring actions against public institutions, like public schools, without a time limit. Now, unless they file a notice of claim against a public entity within 90 days of the injury, it is dismissed. That requirement would end.

The proposed law would also permit a one-year opportunity for victims to demand an examination of cases that had been denied review because the age limit of 23 had precluded action. So older victims could seek — for one year after the bill became law — a hearing on their sexual abuse claims.

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ILLINOIS
WGN

Associated Press

SPRINGFIELD, Ill. — An Illinois lawmaker is responding to the Dennis Hastert hush-money case with a proposal to give prosecutors the right to pursue child sex abuse charges no matter how long ago the crimes occurred.

The former U.S. House Speaker was sentenced to 15 months in prison last week in a hush-money case that revealed accusations he sexually abused teenagers decades ago while coaching high school wrestling in Yorkville, Illinois. Hastert was prosecuted for breaking federal banking rules but not on the sex-abuse allegations because of a statute of limitations.

Democratic Sen. Scott Bennett says time should not prevent child molesters from being prosecuted.

Lawmakers in Massachusetts, New York and Pennsylvania are also considering proposals that would remove statutes of limitations for child sex crimes.

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NEW YORK
Haaretz

A bill to lift the statute of limitations in New York has failed to pass mainly due to the concerns of certain members of the Jewish community and Catholic Church. If we give them a little, the rest of us might gain a lot.

Rabbi Yehoshua Looks May 05, 2016

Since arriving in Israel 20 years ago, I have watched my home state of New York in shock and disgust as allegations have been brought against certain yeshivas, day schools and synagogues there that they shelter and protect employees, often rabbis, who sexually abused children, at the expense of the victims who were entrusted to their care.

While mental health experts have shown that it can take decades for a victim of child sexual abuse to overcome the fear, shame and trauma of abuse to come forward, New York’s current law allows people abused in their childhood to pursue criminal or civil justice only until the age of 23, under a statute of limitations.  

New York ranks among the very worst in the United States, alongside Alabama, Michigan and Mississippi, for how the courts and criminal justice system treat survivors of child sexual abuse.

There is no statute of limitations in halakha (Jewish law). In Judaism, an eye for an eye (Exodus 21:24) is understood by the rabbis as providing monetary damages, not exacting revenge. Culpable Jewish organizations must be held accountable, along with the perpetrators, in order to send a clear message that there is zero tolerance in our community for sexual abuse. Effective accountability requires a steep price to be paid for these heinous crimes.

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IRELAND
Religion News Service

By Rosie Scammell

(RNS) A religious order covered up the sexual crimes of an Irish priest who abused more than 100 children, some as young as 6, according to a new report.

The failures of the Salvatorian order to act on the crimes of a priest named “Father A” were outlined in a report released Wednesday (May 4) by Ireland’s National Board for Safeguarding Children in the Catholic Church.

During a career spanning more than 50 years, the priest sought out girls between the ages of 6 and 9 and abused them while visiting their family homes.

“Fr. A would stop visiting families when their daughters turned 10 years of age, as they were then outside his preferred target age group,” the report said.

The priest has been named in Irish media as the Rev. Patrick McDonagh, who was convicted in 2007 of sexually abusing several girls and died two years later.

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MINNESOTA
Crux

By Crux Staff
May 5, 2016

Archbishop John Nienstedt of St. Paul-Minneapolis, who resigned in June 2015 amid controversy over his handling of sexual abuse allegations, now has been accused of failing to act when a member of his own extended family was molested by a fellow priest.

The charge comes in a May 4 report from a local television station in the Twin Cities, Fox9, and is based on an interview with the alleged victim, Mike Hinske, whose mother is a former Dominican nun and Nienstedt’s cousin.

According to Hinske, the molestation occurred in 1974, when Nienstedt was a newly ordained priest and a frequent guest at the Hinske family home in Michigan. One of the friends Nienstedt brought along was a fellow priest named Father Samuel Ritchey, introducing him to Hinske, who was 16 at the time.

Hinske told a reporter that Ritchey once asked him to give him a ride to a retreat, then invited the teenager to his room and turned off the lights. He described Ritchey removing his clothing, and said, “He did molest me, without a shadow of a doubt.”

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MALTA
The Church in Malta

The Church’s Safeguarding Commission is recommending that the State create an authority for the protection of minors and vulnerable adults, with the purpose of establishing a structure for the sharing of information between organisations that work with children and vulnerable adults. Furthermore, this authority would be charged with the revision of existing procedures through which the names of perpetrators are placed in the Register for the Protection of Minors.

The Commission believes that safeguarding children and vulnerable adults is everyone’s responsibility and it is also recommending that every organisation that works with minors and vulnerable adults, should have a designated person that is responsible for the safeguarding of vulnerable persons.

Speaking at a Press Conference at the Archbishop’s Curia, in Floriana, Mr Andrew Azzopardi, the Head of Safeguarding, put forward these recommendations following the Commission’s experience in the first year since its inception. During the past year, two thirds of reported complaints involving minors were concluded in less than six months. Of the 27 complaints received by the Commission between February and December 2015, one case was substantiated and accordingly, the Commission recommended that the necessary steps be taken. The other concluded cases were either not proven or the allegations were false or were malicious in intent or did not involve minors. Until December 2015, seven cases were undergoing an assessment, and in five cases the persons concerned had their pastoral activity restricted.

As regards to complaints involving vulnerable adults, 70% of them were concluded in less than 6 months. Of these 14 complaints, the allegations concerning 3 cases were substantiated and therefore the Commission advised a course of action. The other complaints either were not proven or the allegations were false, or did not involve abuse and thus were referred. At the end of last year, five cases were undergoing an assessment, and in one case the person concerned had one’s pastoral activity restricted.

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MINNESOTA
BishopAccountability.org

Summary of Case: Ordained for the Crookston diocese in 1982, “Fr. Pat” Sullivan worked in parishes East Grand Forks, Nebish, Bemidji, Wilton, Warroad, Falun, Red Lake, Bagley, Dilworth and Hawley. He also served as a campus minister and on the diocesan Priests Council and the Priests Retirement Board. On April 29, 2016, the diocese was informed that Sullivan was accused of having sexually abused a 15-year-old boy in Red Lake in 2008. Sullivan was placed on Administrative Leave pending an investigation. He denied the accusation.

Ordained: 1982

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MALTA
Independent

Neil Camilleri
Thursday, 5 May 2016

Only one out of 24 complaints assessed by the Church’s safeguarding commission between February and December 2015 was substantiated.

Details about the number of complaints and other works and plans by the commission were given to the press this afternoon.

Andrew Azzopardi, the Head of Safeguarding & Director of Children’s Homes, said the commission received a total of 27 complaints last year. The commission also inherited another 4 pending cases.

24 risk assessments were concluded while the other seven are ongoing.

Mr Azzopardi explained that these cases are not limited to sexual abuse but could also deal with physical, and emotional abuse, neglect, bullying and poor practice.

Until December there were restrictions on pastoral activities imposed against five people – a diocesan priest, three religious persons (priests, brothers or nuns) and a lay person while their assessments were ongoing. One diocesan priest had their pastoral activity restricted as a result of the assessment.

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NEW YORK
Daily Messenger

New Yorkers who were molested as children joined lawmakers and advocates in a two-day rally for lifting the state’s statute of limitations on suing abusers, saying the law closing the window at age 23 guarantees many more young victims. Their effort has faced years of opposition from the Catholic Church and other institutions.

By News partner, News10NBC

Posted May. 5, 2016

New Yorkers who were molested as children joined lawmakers and advocates in a two-day rally for lifting the state’s statute of limitations on suing abusers, saying the law closing the window at age 23 guarantees many more young victims.

Their effort has faced years of opposition from the Catholic Church and other institutions.

Lawmakers said prospects are improving with a recent change in legislative leadership in Albany. They also cited Massachusetts’ passage two years ago of a similar measure and the recent Academy Award-winning film “Spotlight” about priests sexually abusing boys in Boston.
The film was being shown Wednesday near the Capitol.

“I think we have some movement on the bill,” Assemblywoman Margaret Markey said Wednesday. The Queens Democrat has repeatedly introduced legislation that hasn’t advanced, but which currently has 61 co-sponsors in the 150-seat Assembly.

Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie, a Bronx Democrat, has said the bill will be discussed in the majority Democratic Conference this year, a spokesman said Wednesday. The legislative session ends in June.

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NEW YORK
New York Daily News

BY MICHAEL O’KEEFFE NEW YORK DAILY NEWS Wednesday, May 4, 2016

ALBANY — Not every Catholic believes efforts to reform New York’s statute of limitations on child sex abuse cases are driven by anti-church bias.

While Catholic League president Bill Donohue argues that’s the case, advocates of the Child Victims Act said Wednesday that their only interest was aiding the victims of predatory adults.

“This is an effort to show the other side of the Catholic Church, and to let legislators know that there are Catholics who are very much for passage of the Child Victims Act,” said Joann Venek, who traveled from Manhattan to lobby lawmakers to pass the bill.

The church’s lobbying group has long opposed the legislation, arguing it would be unfairly targeted by such a law.

But Maryanne Perseo, an attorney who also came from Manhattan to Albany, said she is shamed by the church’s opposition to statute of limitations reform.

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MINNESOTA
Canonical Consultation

[Family members say Nienstedt hid priest abuse of cousin – Fox 9]

05/04/2016

Below is a redacted copy of the letter sent by Archbishop Nienstedt to the victim/survivor featured in today’s Fox 9 news story:

[copy of letter follows]

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IRELAND
Irish Independent

Tim Healy
PUBLISHED
05/05/2016

Gardaí are entitled to keep a computer record relating to allegations of historic child sex abuse against a former priest, the High Court has ruled.

The court refused the former priest’s wife orders seeking the removal of the material concerning her and her two children from the garda PULSE database.

He had left the priesthood in 1995 and later married. The abuse allegations, involving sex with two children, dated back to 1981. The PULSE record states that historical abuse allegations were made against the former priest and as he now has two children, there “may be child protection issues”.

It also states the former priest is considered to be of such a low risk level that the HSE would be entitled to close its file on him.

The wife claimed the refusal to erase the material breached her and her children’s constitutional and European Convention privacy and family rights.

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NEW JERSEY
Fox 29

[with video]

By: Jeff Cole

CAMDEN, N.J. – The Diocese of Camden has opened an investigation of one its priests after FOX 29 Investigates raised questions about his actions.

The probe has been under way for nearly three weeks. How did this story get started?

Investigative Reporter Jeff Cole explains that a parishioner of his former church urged us to take a look at where Father Joel Arciga-Camarillo spends his time away from the church. Here’s what we saw.

It’s just past 2 p.m. on Wednesday, April 13, and we’re keeping an eye on a light-green, four-door Volkswagen tucked behind this multistory, bright-yellow home in Camden.

We sit and watch for about an hour and see a man in a T-shirt and ball cap emerge from the back of a van with a female driver and small children, some in Catholic school uniforms. They go in the home.

We return in the early evening, and there’s the green Volkswagen again, along with the guy in the cap. This time, he’s working on a vehicle in back and moving about the yard.

Why are we looking? Because we’ve seen the VW before, parked in the lot of the Devine Mercy Catholic Church in Vineland, N.J.

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NEW YORK
News 12

KIRYAS JOEL – A second video has surfaced showing alleged child sex abuse at a yeshiva in Kiryas Joel.

Anti-abuse activists leaked the surveillance tape. It shows a man who police describe as the principal of United Talmudical Academy with a young boy between his legs. Some believe that the video shows the man appearing to kiss the boy and give him candy at the end of their encounter.

On Monday, another video surfaced that allegedly shows the same man holding and caressing an elementary school boy between his legs for 15 minutes.

While police have begun a joint sex-abuse investigation, residents within the extremely religious and private Hasidic community are coming to the principal’s defense.

Joseph Waldman says the rabbi-principal seen on tape is well-known and respected within the ultra-Orthodox community for having what he calls a “fatherly” approach with kids.

“This person is such a loving person that instead of taking out a belt and beating up a child, he’d rather give an extra kiss or an extra show of love,” he said.

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NEW YORK
New York Daily News

BY MICHAEL O’KEEFFE, LARRY MCSHANE NEW YORK DAILY NEWS Wednesday, May 4, 2016

One of the state Senate’s most powerful Republicans served up a piping-hot slice of “get lost” to three sex abuse survivors on Wednesday.

Instead of meeting with the trio, Senate Deputy Majority Leader John DeFrancisco opted for an afternoon pizza party with the Syracuse women’s basketball team. Steve Jimenez, Kathryn Robb and her sister Dorothy Robb Farrell wanted to talk to the conservative lawmaker about the Child Victims Act.

“I can’t see you now,” DeFrancisco (R-Syracuse) told them. “I am sorry.”

The three advocates for the pending bill arrived in DeFrancisco’s Albany digs in hopes of securing his support for legislation to change New York’s statute of limitations on child abuse cases.

DeFrancisco appeared shortly after an aide emerged to say the senator typically meets only with those who make an appointment — and the advocates didn’t have one.

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IRELAND
Headlines from the Catholic World

Dublin, Ireland, May 5, 2016 / 12:08 am (CNA/EWTN News).- The Salvatorians have offered their “deepest apology” for failing to stop a priest who sexually abused children in Ireland until his 2004 arrest.

“The Salvatorians express their deep sorrow for the prolific abuse carried on by a particular member of our Order in Ireland and elsewhere over a long number of years,” Father Alex McAllister S.D.S., provincial superior of the Salvatorians’ British Pro-Province, said May 3.

“We acknowledge that the response of the provincial superior at the time was completely inadequate and that it was a clear failure of the duty of our order to protect children.”

The case of a priest, called only “Father A,” was described in a child safety audit of religious congregations by Ireland’s National Board for Safeguarding Children in the Catholic Church.

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FRANCE
Eglise Catholique en Haute-Garonne

[Archbishop Le Gall, archbishop of Toulouse, on Tuesday made a statement in which he described the decisions taken in the fight against pedophilia in the diocese of Toulouse.]

Mgr Le Gall, archevêque de Toulouse, a fait ce mardi 3 mai 2016 une déclaration dans laquelle il expose les décisions qu’il a prises en matière de lutte contre la pédophilie dans le diocèse de Toulouse.

Depuis quelques semaines, de nombreuses victimes d’actes de pédophilie de la part de prêtres s’expriment. Ces victimes nous font entendre leur souffrance et leur difficulté à se reconstruire après toutes ces années. Savoir des prêtres coupables d’actes de pédophilie encore en exercice les blessent et les scandalisent. J’entends ces victimes et je tiens à leur témoigner ma proximité. Les actes qu’elles ont subis sont extrêmement graves, d’autant plus de la part de prêtres. Je condamne fermement ces crimes.

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FRANCE
Rene Poujol

[Sexual abuse: The evil at its roots. Despite initiatives of the bishops conference, doubt remains on determination of the bishops to eradicate pedophilia and sectarianism.]

Malgré les initiatives de la Cef, le doute demeure sur la détermination des évêques à éradiquer la pédophilie et les dérives sectaires.

Cet article a été rédigé pour l’hebdomadaire catholique la Voix de l’Ain et publié dans son édition du 6 mai 2016
_______

Avec les affaires de pédophilie qui touchent le diocèse de Lyon et son archevêque, le cardinal Philippe Barbarin, l’Eglise de France est entrée dans une période de turbulences dont on ne saurait fixer ni l’amplitude ni le terme. Sans doute le succès mérité du film Spotlight, sur des affaires de pédophilie dans le diocèse de Boston, a-t-il servi d’amplificateur au dépôt de plainte de l’association La parole libérée, à l’origine de l’affaire lyonnaise.

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DEUTSCHLAND
Deutschlandfunk

[A long overdue step.]

Wenn es um die Aufarbeitung sexuellen Missbrauchs gehe, sei die Politik viel zu lange untätig gewesen, kommentiert Christiane Habermalz. Die jetzt vom Bundestag beschlossene Unabhängige Kommission sei immerhin einer erster Schritt. Leider habe es an der Konsequenz gefehlt, die Kommission mit einem stärkeren Mandat auszustatten, etwa um Zeugen vorzuladen oder Akteneinsicht zu verlangen.

Von Christiane Habermalz

Zahlen sind bei dem Thema Kindesmissbrauch, dass sich in den dunkelsten Ecken unserer Gesellschaft abspielt, naturgemäß schwer zu bekommen. Doch stimmen die Berechnungen der Weltgesundheitsorganisation auch nur annähernd, dann haben wir es mit Verbrechen zu tun, die längst nicht nur einzelne Unglückliche treffen. Danach leben in Deutschland eine Million Kinder und Jugendliche, die schon mindestens einmal in ihrem Leben sexuell missbraucht wurden. Eins ist klar: Diese Dimension kann nur erreicht werden, wenn es für die Täter ein gesellschaftliches und institutionelles Umfeld gibt, das ihnen Rückendeckung gibt, sprich: Sie damit rechnen können, dass systematisch weggeguckt, bagatellisiert und verdrängt wird.

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DEUTSCHLAND
Weser Kurier

[Reprocessing of child abuse and taking a look into the darkest corners.]

Berlin. Sechs Jahre ist es her, dass Mat­thias Katsch dem Leiter des Canisius-Kollegs über den sexuellen Missbrauch berichtete, den er dort als Schüler erfahren musste. Katsch war 46, als er sein Schweigen brach. Die Berichte über das katholische Gymnasium in Berlin lösten 2010 eine Welle der Enthüllungen aus, die der Debatte über Missbrauch in Deutschland eine neue Dimension gaben. Sechs Jahre später sitzt Katsch nun als ständiger Gast in der Unabhängigen Kommission für die bundesweite Aufarbeitung von Kindesmissbrauch. Das neue Gremium aus sieben ehrenamtlichen Experten hat am Dienstag auf der Bundespressekonferenz in Berlin sein Arbeitsprogramm bis 2019 vorgestellt.

Bereits im Jahr des Missbrauchsskandals hatte die Bundesregierung einen Runden Tisch eingerichtet und die Stelle eines Unabhängigen Beauftragten für Fragen des sexuellen Kindesmissbrauchs geschaffen. Amtsinhaber Johannes-Wilhelm Rörig sagte am Dienstag, es sei ein besonderer Tag: „Jetzt endlich ist eine Tür geöffnet, um Täter, Verharmloser und Unterstützer zu erkennen und den Opfern Genugtuung zu geben.“ Aufgrund der Zahlen der Weltgesundheitsorganisation (WHO) für Europa gehe man pro Jahr von einer Million betroffener Kinder und Jugendlicher in Deutschland aus – und es gebe keine Anzeichen für einen Rückgang der Fälle, so Rörig.

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IRELAND
Irish Examiner

Thursday, May 05, 2016

By Conall Ó Fátharta
Irish Examiner Reporter

The McAleese report is “neither accurate nor respectful” in the suffering women endured in Magdalene laundries, it has been claimed.

The comments were made by Claire McGettrick of Justice for Magdalenes Research, accepting a Dublin Lord Mayor Award on behalf of the Magdalene women.

She said survivors felt vindicated by an apology from Taoiseach Enda Kenny, but repeated the group’s claim the McAleese report did not disclose the full story with regard to the Magdalene laundries.

“On the surface, the women have been vindicated since Enda Kenny’s emotional apology in 2013.

“Beneath, however, there is the inescapable reality that the official State record on the experiences of Magdalene women is neither accurate nor respectful of what they endured.

“The State’s official position is that a very small level of physical abuse took place in the laundries and we absolutely refute this assertion,” said Ms McGettrick.

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AUSTRALIA
Herald Sun

May 4, 2016

Shannon Deery
Herald Sun

A YOUNG orphan boy who was publicly flogged after reporting sexual abuse at the hands of a Christian Brother suffered years of torture because he wasn’t believed.

The nine-year-old was abused almost immediately after having the misfortune of being assigned to the St Augustine’s Boys’ Home dormitory monitored by Br William Stuart Houston in 1963.

So fearful during his first attack, that saw Houston gag him and lie in bed with him, the young boy wet himself.

It earned him a series of strappings by Houston who wanted to punish the boy for wetting the bed.

When the child reported the sexual abuse to the Highton orphanage’s head brother, he was promised the matter would be looked into.

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AUSTRALIA
9 News

AAP

A former Christian Brother could die in jail over sex crimes against underprivileged, vulnerable boys in Victoria more than 40 years ago.

William Stuart Houston, 77, abused six boys when he was their supervisor at the St Augustine’s Orphanage, Highton, in the 1960s.

He prowled around some victims after lights went off in the dorm, rubbing his bristly face on theirs, kissing them, sticking his tongue in their mouths and lying on top of them.

Houston exposed and rubbed himself on other victims, and touched boys’ crotches.

He told one boy: “Don’t tell anyone. That’s right, you can’t tell anyone because you’ve got no one.”

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AUSTRALIA
The Age

May 5, 2016

Adam Cooper

Boys who were sexually assaulted by a Christian Brother at a Victorian orphanage were strapped by other men of religion after reporting the abuse, a court has heard.

When one boy reported William Stuart Houston, the head Brother declared: “This is what we do to boys who fabricate stories about us”, and strapped the child every morning for five days in front of the entire St Augustine’s orphanage.

That victim, now in his 60s, told the County Court on Thursday of the anger that still consumed him at being accused of lying and punished by the two Brothers he had approached separately about Houston.

“I am still angry to this day and the anger will be there because as a ward of the state I was let down by the system. I will never forgive William Houston for what he did to me,” he said. The court heard another victim was also punished after reporting Houston.

Houston, 77, was last month found guilty at trial of four charges of buggery, one of attempted buggery and three of indecent assault, related to attacks on three boys at the Geelong orphanage in the 1960s.

He was to face three more trials, but on Thursday pleaded guilty to 12 charges of indecent assault, related to assaults on three other boys.

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GUAM
Pacific News Center

Written by Janela Carrera

Professor Giuseppe Gennarini, however, emphasizes that the declaration of deed restriction does not give the property away.

Guam – Giuseppe Gennarini disclosed on K57 with host Patti Arroyo this morning that the declaration of deed restriction signed in 2011 was done in order to protect the Redemptoris Mater Seminary from any potential lawsuit.

Gennarini is considered a key leader in the Neocatechumenal Way and is on Guam to teach courses at the Redemptoris Mater Seminary. He has received a lot of animosity from some local catholics, many of whom are frustrated with the alleged conveyance of the Redemptoris Mater Seminary, a multimillion dollar property, to the Neocatechumenal Way.

But Gennarini has vehemently denied these allegations, pointing out that the declaration of deed restriction does not give away control from the Archbishop.

Gennarini denied any involvement in drafting of the papers and told Patti that the deed restriction was created at the suggestion of former Archdiocese of Agana legal counsel, Attorney Ed Terlaje.

“He was asking the seminary and the archbishop that in order to protect the estate of the diocese in case there is lawsuit … this was five, seven years ago, six or seven years ago. In order to protect the estate, it was better to do what they do in many diocese of America, which is somehow to assign the property to the different corporation of the diocese,” explained Gennarini.

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MINNESOTA
Fox 9

By: Tom Lyden
POSTED:MAY 04 2016

(KMSP) – When John Nienstedt resigned as Archbishop of the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis last June, he left the Archdiocese in bankruptcy and under a criminal investigation that continues to this day. The criminal investigation stems from the cover-up of sexual abuse in the church. But of all the secrets Nienstedt is accused of keeping, there is one that has never been revealed: the secret in his own family.

More than 40 years ago, as a young priest, John Nienstedt, knew of an allegation involving one of his best friends and it was Nienstedt who introduced him to his victim.

Mike Hinske is from a family of devout Catholics living in Michigan. His mother, a former Dominican nun, is John Nienstedt’s cousin.

“Oh my God he was the Pope,” Hinske said of Nienstedt. “[My parents] looked up to him like there was no tomorrow.”

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GUAM
Pacific News Center

Written by Janela Carrera

Callers were able to call into K57 to ask some tough questions of Professor Giuseppe Gennarini.

Guam – Things got pretty heated on K57 this morning as the Gennarinis were the guests on Mornings with Patti show. Halfway through the show a number of callers began asking some tough questions forcing the leaders of the Neocatechumenal Way to go on the defensive.

Some local Catholics who have been openly frustrated with Giuseppe Gennarini had a chance to openly ask questions of the Neocatechumenal Way professor, first on The Big Show with Travis Coffman yesterday and this morning on Mornings with Patti.

Gennarini and his wife, Claudia, start off explaining the motivation behind the Neocatechuman Way, especially with today’s youth.

“The youth is in a very serious situation and this is why so many pastors, so many bishops, the popes have always supported the Neocatechumenal Way–as one way, not the only one,” explains Gennarini.

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SOUTH CAROLINA
Baptist News

BOB ALLEN | MAY 4, 2016

A 20-year-old youth group volunteer at the nation’s largest Southern Baptist church has been arrested on a charge of sexually assaulting a minor.

Leo LaSalle Comissiong III is accused of kissing and fondling a 15-year-old boy in February at the Florence, S.C., location of NewSpring Church, a multi-site congregation based in Anderson, S.C. The church is ranked No. 1 on a LifeWay Christian Resources list compiled by LifeWay head Thom Rainer of the 500 largest Southern Baptist churches with an average attendance of 31,215 in 2014.

Suzanne Swift, chief public relations and marketing officer for NewSpring Church, released a statement saying a NewSpring Church staff member saw Comissiong enter an unoccupied room with a 15-year-old, violating a policy that forbids adults from being alone with children or teens while on a NewSpring campus.

Swift said Comissiong denied any wrongdoing at that time but after questioning him a second time church leaders removed him from volunteering at the church in any capacity. After talking separately to the student, Swift said NewSpring staff contacted law enforcement and have since then fully cooperated with the investigation.

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TENNESSEE
Nashville Post

Cari Wade Gervin

Cornerstone Church, the evangelical megachurch located in Madison, has been sued by a former member who alleges its negligence led to his molestation by a volunteer on the youth staff in 2008.

Brian Lance Mitchell was convicted of the abuse in 2012. At the time, the church said Mitchell had been pretending to be a volunteer to obtain access to the victim.

However, the lawsuit alleges that isn’t true. It states:

Mitchell had been vetted by Cornerstone for the Youth Staff in 2007, at which point he disclosed that he had been convicted of contributing to the delinquency of a minor in 2003, when he provided alcohol to three minor children. Yet Cornerstone still let him volunteer with children, along with operating a sound board. After the victim’s mother asked pastor Dana Lawson for advice in finding a male role model for her son — whose father had committed suicide when he was an infant — Lawson recommended Mitchell. Throughout 2007, the suit claims, Mitchell regularly spent unsupervised time with the victim, both on and off the church’s campus, and in the summer of 2008 was appointed his “official mentor.” Later that summer, the lawsuit alleges, Mitchell fondled and raped the victim and also took nude pictures and videos of him. Shortly thereafter, the victims’ mother found inappropriate text messages from Mitchell to her son, referring to himself as “Daddy.” She told the church administration about the messages, and they promised to “take care” of the situation. But the next Sunday, Davis allegedly used the situation in his sermon, publicly blaming her for letting her son be alone with an older man. Meanwhile, Mitchell continued to attend Cornerstone on occasions until at least 2010.

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NEW YORK
WHEC

New Yorkers who were molested as children joined lawmakers and advocates in a two-day rally for lifting the state’s statute of limitations on suing abusers, saying the law closing the window at age 23 guarantees many more young victims.

Their effort has faced years of opposition from the Catholic Church and other institutions.

Lawmakers said prospects are improving with a recent change in legislative leadership in Albany. They also cited Massachusetts’ passage two years ago of a similar measure and the recent Academy Award-winning film “Spotlight” about priests sexually abusing boys in Boston.

The film was being shown Wednesday near the Capitol.

“I think we have some movement on the bill,” Assemblywoman Margaret Markey said Wednesday. The Queens Democrat has repeatedly introduced legislation that hasn’t advanced, but which currently has 61 co-sponsors in the 150-seat Assembly.

Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie, a Bronx Democrat, has said the bill will be discussed in the majority Democratic Conference this year, a spokesman said Wednesday. The legislative session ends in June.

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AUSTRALIA
Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse

5 May, 2016

The Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse has invited submissions from individuals and organisations about any factors which may have contributed to the occurrence of child sexual abuse in Catholic institutions, or affected the institutional response to child sexual abuse within the Catholic Church.

The Royal Commission’s Issues Paper 11: Catholic Church Final Hearing was released today, giving all interested parties the chance to provide input prior to a final public hearing into the Catholic Church in February 2017.

Royal Commission Chief Executive Officer Philip Reed said the Royal Commission case studies have considered a number of Catholic Church institutions, including the Archdioceses of Melbourne and Adelaide, the Dioceses of Ballarat, Wollongong and Rockhampton, Catholic Education Offices, and the Marist Brothers, the Christian Brothers, and the Sisters of Mercy. Case studies have also considered the Towards Healing process and the Melbourne Response.

“The Royal Commission is inviting submissions on a number of factors identified through our work including canon law, mandatory celibacy and the selection, screening, training and ongoing support and supervision of working priests and religious,” Mr Reed said.

“We wish to examine to what extent these and other factors have contributed to the occurrence of child sexual abuse in Catholic institutions, or whether these issues have affected the institutional response to child sexual abuse,” Mr Reed said.

The Royal Commission is also seeking comment and submissions on the current and future proposed approaches of Catholic Church authorities to responding to survivors of child sexual abuse, individuals subject to allegations of child sexual abuse and the prevention of child sexual abuse.

To access a copy of Issues Paper 11: Catholic Church Final Hearing, please visit the Royal Commission’s website at http://www.childabuseroyalcommission.gov.au/research/issues-papers-submissions.

Submissions should be made by 1 July 2016 in writing to GPO Box 5283, Sydney, NSW, 2001 or via email to catholic@childabuseroyalcommission.gov.au. Submissions can be anonymous.

If individuals have participated in a private session and would like their session to be recognised as a formal, confidential submission to this Issues Paper, please contact the Royal Commission at catholic@childabuseroyalcommission.gov.au.

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AUSTRALIA
Newcastle Herald

JOANNE MCCARTHY
May 5, 2016

THE Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse will hold a final public hearing into the Catholic Church in February 2017.

The commission has called for submissions until July about any factors which may have contributed to why thousands of children were sexually abused within the church, including the role of canon law and mandatory celibacy, and the processes by which priests and other religious were selected.

It is also considering factors contributing to how the church responded to allegations of abuse.

Royal Commission chief executive officer Philip Reed said previous case studies and hearings had considered Catholic institutions including the Archdioceses of Melbourne and Adelaide, the Dioceses of Ballarat, Wollongong and Rockhampton, Catholic Education offices, the Marist Brothers, the Christian Brothers, and the Sisters of Mercy. Case studies had also considered the Towards Healing process and the Melbourne Response.

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AUSTRALIA
7 News

By Megan Neil – AAP on May 5, 2016

The Catholic Church has produced some of Australia’s worst pedophiles, and the child sex abuse royal commission wants to know why.

The commission’s numerous investigations into child abuse in a number of Catholic institutions throughout Australia will culminate in a final hearing into the Catholic Church in February, 2017.

The commission is seeking submissions about any factors that may have contributed to child sex abuse in Catholic institutions or affected the church’s response.

The structure and governance of the Catholic Church and the Vatican’s role are among the issues that will be examined, along with what the church has done and plans to do to protect children and prevent abuse.

Other issues identified by the commission include canon law, mandatory celibacy and the selection, screening, training and ongoing support and supervision of working priests.

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TENNESSEE
Nashville Scene

POSTED BY CARI WADE GERVIN ON WED, MAY 4, 2016

Madison’s Cornerstone Church, helmed by the controversial pastor Maury Davis, has been sued by a former member, who alleges the church’s negligence led to a volunteer on the youth staff molesting him. The lawsuit, filed two weeks ago in Davidson County, asks for a jury trial and that damages over $10 million be awarded.

The abuse itself is not in question. The plaintiff is now 19, but in 2008, when he was 11, he was molested by Brian Lance Mitchell. Police charged Mitchell with aggravated sexual battery and rape in 2012, and he is currently incarcerated for the crime. At the time of his arrest, Cornerstone stated Mitchell had been impersonating a youth volunteer — a claim the lawsuit flatly denies.

According to the filing, Mitchell had been vetted by Cornerstone for the Youth Staff in 2007, at which point he disclosed that he had been convicted of contributing to the delinquency of a minor in 2003, when he provided alcohol to three minor children. Yet Cornerstone still let him volunteer with children, along with operating a sound board. After the victim’s mother asked pastor Dana Lawson for advice in finding a male role model for her son — whose father had committed suicide when he was an infant — Lawson recommended Mitchell. Throughout 2007, the suit claims, Mitchell regularly spent unsupervised time with the victim, both on and off the church’s campus, and in the summer of 2008 was appointed his “official mentor.”

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IOWA
Daily Nonpareil

Derek Sullivan
dsullivan@nonpareilonline.com

A former head of the Sidney Cowboy Church is heading to prison.

On Thursday afternoon, Roger Kissel, 68, of Sidney, was sentenced to 25 years in prison on sexual abuse charges.

Before being arrested in February of 2014, Kissel was head of the Sidney Cowboy Church, located in the town that boasts Iowa’s oldest continuously operating rodeo. The church is listed as a member of the International Cowboy Church Alliance Network, which combine a love of “Jesus and the cowboy way,” according to the alliance’s website. Kissel had been in a pastor in southwestern Iowa for at least 25 years.

On March 7, a jury after four days of testimony and three hours of deliberation found Kissel guilty of second-degree sexual abuse and two counts of felony lascivious acts with a child. The charges stemmed from a trio of criminal complaints, which accused Kissel of performing sex acts with the child on multiple occasions, touching or fondling a 5-year-old child and exposing himself to the child from January of 2013 through September of that year.

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RHODE ISLAND
Virtue Online

By Mary Ann Mueller
VOL Special Correspondent
www.virtueonline.org
May 4, 2016

The Boston Globe made headlines in 2002 for uncovering a massive pedophile priest scandal within the Catholic Archdiocese of Boston. Uncovering the archdiocese’s cover up eventually brought Bernard Cardinal Law to his knees, shed light on the pedophilia priest problem in the Catholic Church and earned the Massachusetts’ newspaper a coveted Pulitzer. The Globe’s journalistic achievement was also turned into an Academy Awarding movie — Spotlight.

Now The Globe is shining its investigative laser on St. George’s School, an elite Episcopal boarding-day school in Middletown, Rhode Island. The story, which ferreted out a decades-long abuse by clergy and teachers, broke in December, making St. George’s one of a growing list of Episcopal educational institutions to be recently entangled in sex scandals; some alleged abuse dating back decades.

A partial list of prestigious educational institutions with now tarnished reputations with or without Episcopal Church ties, includes: St. Paul’s School, Concord, New Hampshire; Phillips Exeter Academy, Exeter, New Hampshire; St. John’s Military Academy, Salina, Kansas; Milton Academy, Milton, Massachusetts; Horace Mann School, the Bronx, New York; Deerfield Academy, Deerfield, Massachusetts; Hotchkiss School and the Indian Mountain School both in Lakeville, Connecticut; as well as St. George’s.

The first inkling that St. George’s was keeping a deep dark secret slowly started to come to light a year ago. On April 7, 2015, Headmaster Eric F. Peterson and Board of Trustees Chairman Francis S. Branin, Jr. wrote to the members of the St. George’s Community: “We write to you today to share a sad and difficult matter with all members of the St. George’s community. In response to information provided by alumni who attended the School in the 1970s and 1980s, we have come to believe that at least one former employee of the School may have engaged in sexual misconduct with students in those years. Though the events in question took place many years ago, it is tragic and deeply troubling that anything like this could have occurred in our community.”

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UNITED KINGDOM
BBC News

By Justin Parkinson
BBC News Magazine

George Bell was one of the most influential Anglican bishops of the last century. But, almost 60 years after his death, he was accused of having been a child abuser. Now campaigners are battling to defend his reputation.

Until last autumn George Bell was a widely respected figure within the Church of England. The former Bishop of Chichester – the diocese covering East and West Sussex – was best remembered for his work to help refugees fleeing Hitler’s Germany. He had an Anglican Holy Day – 3 October – named after him.

But on 22 October last year the Church revealed it had made a payment to someone who had made a complaint against Bell. The current Bishop of Chichester, Martin Warner, had made a formal apology for allegations, dating from the late 1940s and early 1950s, of “sexual offences against an individual who was at the time a young child”.

The Church said it had carried out a “thorough” investigation, including the use of “expert independent reports”. “None of those reports,” it added, “found any reason to doubt the veracity of the claim.”

The statement shocked the Anglican world. One newspaper headline went further than the Church, saying: “Revered Bishop George Bell was a paedophile.” Another’s read: “Church of England bishop George Bell abused young child.”

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AUSTRALIA
Herald Sun

May 5, 2016
Shannon Deery
Herald Sun

THE Catholic Church will hold a memorial mass for disgraced bishop Ronald Mulkearns in a move that has angered victims of child sexual abuse.

After giving him a pauper’s funeral last month the church will now pay respects to the man who facilitated the abuse of hundreds of innocent children while Bishop of Ballarat.

Current Ballarat bishop Paul Bird will celebrate the mass.

“This will be an opportunity for priests and people from around the diocese to come together to offer Mass for Bishop Mulkearns,” an announcement on the Ballarat diocese’s website said.

Many priests who worked under Bishop Mulkearns were instructed not to attend his modest funeral.

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IRELAND
Irish Examiner

Thursday, May 05, 2016

By Claire O’Sullivan
Irish Examiner Reporter

A senior priest, who later admitted to abusing 100 children, was allowed unfettered access to minors for two years in the 2000s despite allegations against him.

The revelation emerged in the latest and last batch of reports published by the NBSCCCI (National Board for Safeguarding Children in the Catholic Church in Ireland) as part of its audit of child protection in dioceses and religious orders.

The NBSCCCI report noted that “the seniority of Fr A seemed to impede clear thinking by the congregational leadership” and, as a result, the allegations were not believed. Clear church guidelines on how to deal with sexual abuse allegations had been put in place in 1996.

The report revealed that Father A, a Salvatorian or member of the Society of the Divine Saviour, would befriend the family of girls aged 6 to 9 and abuse the children in their home. He served as a priest in Dublin, the UK, Rome and Australia from the time of his ordination in the 1950s until his death seven years ago.

“Fr. A is still esteemed by some members of his congregation for his work and personal piety, and they seem to be able to separate this out from his admitted behaviour as an abuser of small children. This ability to dissociate — or split off — is a source of genuine concern to the NBSCCCI,” its report said.

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IRELAND
Irish Independent

Sarah MacDonald
PUBLISHED
05/05/2016

A priest who abused up to 100 children was allowed to act “with impunity” and without any restrictions on his access to children by his religious order, which concealed his behaviour from

Salvatorian priest Fr Patrick McDonagh was convicted in 2007 by the Dublin Circuit Criminal Court on eight counts of sexual and indecent assault on four girls in Dublin, Limerick and Roscommon between 1965 and 1990, and was sentenced to four years in jail. He died in 2009.

The serious mismanagement and concealment of his crimes by his order was one of the findings published by the National Board for Safeguarding Children in the Catholic Church in Ireland (NBSCCCI), the Church’s own safeguarding watchdog.

The audit of 30 religious orders revealed that the Salvatorians failed to monitor Fr A, as Fr Patrick McDonagh is referred to, from 2002 – when one of his own relatives accused him of having abused her as a child – to 2004, when he underwent treatment for his behaviour and admitted the extent of his abuse.

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SOUTH CAROLINA
Salisbury Post

In the movie “Spotlight,” journalists from the Boston Globe start out investigating sexual abuse reports involving a priest. The reporters come across a victim’s advocate who urges them to keep digging, using these words:

“If it takes a village to raise a child, it takes a village to abuse them.”

In other words, when people know about abuse and fail to report it, they are complicit in the crime. They allow it to go on.

Likewise, it takes a village to stop child abuse — as it did recently in the case of a local infant. …

North Carolina law requires all adults who believe a child has been abused to report those suspicions to authorities. You don’t have to have proof. If you have reasonable cause to suspect abuse, you are compelled to report it, and you don’t need anyone’s permission to do so. Contact the Department of Social Services in the county where the child lives and share any information you have.

The law requiring people to report suspected abuse is essential to the protection of children in North Carolina. Abusers tend to dominate family members and isolate them from others. If you suspect abuse, you could be that child’s only lifeline. In 2013, some 25 children in the state did not get help in time; they died at the hands of a parent or caregiver. It would be better to take a chance and report abuse you might be wrong about than to wait and find out you were right all along.

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IRELAND
Irish Times

Patsy McGarry

The review by the church’s National Board for Safeguarding Children did not name the Salvatorian priest who abused in excess of 100 children up to 2004.

However, the priest in question was the late Fr Paddy McDonagh, also known as Fr Aloysius. He was aged 78 in December 2007 when he was jailed for sexually abusing several girls over a 25-year period. He was given a four-year sentence at the Dublin Circuit Criminal Court by Judge Patrick McCartan, all but 18 months of which was suspended.

In December 2002 he was withdrawn by his then Provincial from Sallynoggin parish in Dublin where he had been serving, after he had been accused by a female relative of abusing her when she was a child.

Abuse allegations

But, in informing the then Archbishop of Dublin Cardinal Desmond Connell of this, the Provincial said Fr McDonagh found “that with advancing years [73 years] he is no longer able to do many things that would need to be done and doing relatively minor things has become more stressful. In the New Year Father McDonagh will join our Generalate Staff in Rome where he will assume less onerous duties.” There was no reference to child abuse allegations.

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FRANCE
The Irish Catholic

A French cardinal being investigated for his handling of allegations of clerical sexual abuse has admitted mistakes and introduced new anti-abuse measures.

Following a three-hour meeting with 220 priests, during which testimony from at least one abuse survivor was heard, Lyon archdiocese issued a statement on behalf of Cardinal Philip Barbarin.

“The cardinal has accepted the archdiocese committed errors in managing and nominating certain priests and has reiterated how important it is for victims of sexual abuse by clergy to see their right to truth and justice recognised,” the statement said.

According to the statement the assembled clergy had “unanimously determined to reinforce the struggle against paedophilia in the Church” by strengthening clerical formation and “establishing new criteria” for future appointments, as well as a “college of experts” to meet twice monthly to analyse the cases of accused priests.

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NEW ZEALAND
Dominion Post

TALIA SHADWELL
May 5 2016

The dean of Napier Cathedral has been stood down by the Anglican Church – for an affair he had 25 years ago.

Michael Godfrey says he confessed his adultery years ago, and felt the church had not offered him redemption.

However the Church claims it was the first the New Zealand clergy had heard of it.

He was a 30-year-old married priest when he had an affair in 1991 with an 18-year-old woman in Australia.

“What I have been is always upfront about my feet of clay,” he said on Thursday, after being banned from performing priestly duties by the Bishop of Waiapu, Andrew Hedge.

“I’ve counselled people who have done the same thing that I’ve done. I’ve never in my time as priest claimed that I’m faultless.

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MICHIGAN
MLive

By Leanne Smith | lsmith12@mlive.com

JACKSON, MI – Lumen Christi Catholic School is taking the name of one of its long-serving priests off a society that recognizes school donors.

The decision to remove the Rev. Joseph Coyle’s name from the Father Coyle Society is being done out of respect for victims who gave testimonials in the recent sentencing of James Rapp, a former priest convicted of criminal sexual conduct, Lumen Christi President Elaine Crosby said.

“We do not feel that it is appropriate to keep his name associated with something when he was in some way complicit in this situation,” Crosby said.

Rapp was assigned to Lumen Christi from 1980-86, while Coyle was president of the school. In testimonials at Rapp’s sentencing on Friday, April 29, two former Lumen Christi students said they went to Coyle after being abused by Rapp but nothing was done about their allegations.

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IRELAND
Irish Mirror

A paedophile priest who admitted abusing more than 100 children was allowed unfettered access to youngsters for more than two years after allegations were first made against him.

The filthy cleric, who served in Ireland, England, Australia and Rome, abused children up until at least 2004 despite his seniors being warned about him in 2002, the Catholic Church’s own watchdog has found.

After one of his own relatives came forward to say she was molested, the priest’s senior moved him on from his Dublin parish without telling then Archbishop Desmond Connell the “real reason” for his move.

The then provincial of The Salvatorians congregation also failed to notify police, health chiefs and parishioners about the allegations – despite being duty-bound to under guidelines issued eight years previously.

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UNITED KINGDOM
Manchester Evening News

A teacher with a secret addiction to child porn stole a hard drive from a classroom and used it to download sick images from the internet.

Jonathan Horenfeld’s double life was exposed after police raided his home in May last year.

By day the Manchester University graduate was a trusted geography teacher at Harrytown Catholic High School in Romiley, Stockport. By night he downloaded vile images of child abuse onto peer-to-peer sites where they could be viewed by other perverts.

Two laptops and two hard drives containing nearly 2000 child porn images were recovered after police investigating these sites followed an electronic trail which led them to Horenfeld’s door.

Prosecutor Simon Barrett told a Manchester Crown Court sentencing hearing that Horenfeld had stolen one of the hard drives he was using from a colleague who had left it in a classroom.

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MINNESOTA
DL-Online

By Archie Ingersoll

A Catholic priest accused of sexually abusing a 15-year-old boy on the Red Lake Reservation in 2008 has been removed from his present assignment as a pastor at St. Elizabeth Church in Dilworth and St. Andrew’s Church in Hawley, according to a Crookston Diocese official.

An attorney for the alleged victim, now an adult, notified diocese officials Friday, April 29, of a sexual misconduct allegation against the Rev. Patrick Sullivan and of plans to sue the diocese, said Monsignor Mike Foltz, vicar general of the diocese.

Foltz said Sullivan has been placed on administrative leave. “That means he cannot function as a priest until this is resolved,” Foltz said, adding that the diocese plans to investigate the matter.

Sullivan denies any wrongdoing, Foltz said. Sullivan has been a pastor in Dilworth and Hawley for seven years, and he previously spent 12 years as a priest in Red Lake, the vicar general said.

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WISCONSIN
BishopAccountability.org

Summary of Case: Richard L. Thomas was ordained for the Diocese of Green Bay WI in 1966. He assisted in a number of parishes throughout the diocese until 1992, then served as Administrator for an Oneida Township parish for a decade. Thomas also held the position of Port Chaplain for the diocese’s Apostleship of the Sea. From 2002-2010 he was on an unspecified “Special Assignment,” residing most of that time at St. Francis Xavier Cathedral. He retired in 2010 and went to live at the Grellinger Hall priests’ retirement facility in 2012. In April 2016 Thomas was arrested and charged with four felony counts of exposing himself to a minor. A 16-year-old boy reported that on several occasions in March 2016, as he was walking to school past Grellinger Hall, Thomas stood naked in a window and “flashed him.” Thomas was restricted from public ministry pending a police investigation. He reportedly told police he was “already seeking treatment.”

Ordained: 1966
Retired: 2010

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FRANCE
National Catholic Reporter

Kieran Tapsell | May. 4, 2016 Examining the Crisis

Cardinal Philippe Barbarin of Lyon, France, — who last week admitted to “errors in managing … certain priests” — is being investigated by French police for failing to report in 2007 and 2009 allegations of sexual abuse by his priests, in contravention of French law. There have been calls for his resignation or sacking.

Central to every coherent legal system based on the rule of law is that people can only be punished for disobeying the law, not for obeying it. The calls for Barbarin’s resignation or sacking raise the issue of how he breached canon law.

In failing to report the allegations, Barbarin was complying with the pontifical secret imposed by Sacramentorum Sanctitatis Tutela of Pope St John Paul II which applies Article 1(4) of the 1974 Instruction of Pope Paul VI, Secreta Continere. It has no exceptions for reporting allegations of child sexual abuse to the civil authorities. In 2002, the Holy See granted to the United States a dispensation from the pontifical secret with a direction to report where there were civil reporting laws, but that direction was not extended to the rest of the world until 2010. Whatever Barbarin’s culpability under French civil law, canon law in 2007 and 2009 forbade him from reporting the allegations to the police.

In 2001, Bishop Pierre Pican of Bayeux-Lisieux, France, was given a three-month suspended jail sentence for failing to inform authorities about a serial paedophile priest. Pican is now bishop emeritus, retiring in 2010 at the mandatory age of 75. In September 2001, Cardinal Dario Castrillón Hoyos, at the time the prefect of the Vatican’s Congregation for Clergy, wrote to Pican congratulating him for the cover up. He said that he was sending a copy of his letter to all the bishops of the world, holding up Pican as a model to follow. He also said his congratulatory letter was approved by Pope St John Paul II. Similar statements condemning the reporting of paedophile priests to the police by bishops were made in 2002 by high ranking prelates in the Roman Curia and Church leaders in France, Germany, Belgium and Honduras.

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ILLINOIS
Chicago’s Real Law Blog

by Michael Helfand

Dennis Hastert is rightfully going to jail for 15 months (although he’ll only serve a little more than a year) for lying to the FBI. The fact that he tried to frame someone who he molested a long time ago played no small part in his sentence which was more than double what the prosecutors were asking for.

It appears he sexually abused at least four of his minor students when he was a wrestling coach. It’s unfortunate that they can’t sue the school because reports are that Hastert would sit in a chair and watch the boys shower. We had a similar teacher at my high school who everyone knew was molesting kids or at the least acting creepy with him. Sadly after I graduated it was confirmed that he did in fact abuse kids and he abruptly resigned. This guy was grabbing the crotches of kids as part of “basketball drills” in plain sight of other coaches who did nothing to stop him.

Hastert didn’t end up with a longer jail sentence because the worst crime he’s committed in his life, sexual abuse of a minor, can no longer be prosecuted. It’s one of the many felonies that has a time limit for bringing charges. The only one that doesn’t that I’m aware of is murder.

So because he was a big deal in his town and at his school and because the boys he abused didn’t have the support, ability or courage to report him to press charges within the three year time limit (and I don’t blame him one bit), Hastert was able to lead the life of the world’s biggest hypocrite.

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NEW YORK
Fox News

May 04, 2016 Associated Press

ALBANY, N.Y. – New Yorkers who were molested as children joined lawmakers and advocates in a two-day rally for lifting the state’s statute of limitations on suing abusers, saying the law closing the window at age 23 guarantees many more young victims.

Their effort has faced years of opposition from the Catholic Church and other institutions.

Lawmakers said prospects are improving with a recent change in legislative leadership in Albany. They also cited Massachusetts’ passage two years ago of a similar measure and the recent Academy Award-winning film “Spotlight” about priests sexually abusing boys in Boston.

The film was being shown Wednesday near the Capitol.

“I think we have some movement on the bill,” Assemblywoman Margaret Markey said Wednesday. The Queens Democrat has repeatedly introduced legislation that hasn’t advanced, but which currently has 61 co-sponsors in the 150-seat Assembly.

Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie, a Bronx Democrat, has said the bill will be discussed in the majority Democratic Conference this year, a spokesman said Wednesday. The legislative session ends in June.

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UNITED STATES
Los Messiah

from Eric Aiken

Dear Rabbi Dratch,

I write this letter to you out of great concern for what I perceive to be a lack of any meaningful action on the part of the RCA to protect Orthodox children from the plague of sexual abuse. The RCA is the largest Orthodox rabbinical organization in the world with over 1,000 members in 18 countries. It has close ties to Yeshiva University, the Orthodox Union, the Beis Din of America, the Chief Rabbinate of Israel and the Conference of European Rabbis.

With the RCA’s enormous power and influence comes a concomitant responsibility to protect Orthodox children and support the survivors of sexual abuse in ways that have never been done before.

I tried to address this issue with you when I drafted an email that was sent to you in November of 2015. In it, I asked you to consider doing 3 specific things to protect Orthodox kids. Unfortunately, you would not commit to doing any of them.

1) Implement and enforce the 4 separate sets of child protection resolutions that the RCA has adopted over the last 23 years.

I am not aware of a single rabbi or Orthodox institution that has implemented these important child safety procedures.

The RCA doesn’t even have a list of its own child protection rules on its website. It took me half a day of reviewing every RCA resolution for the last 50 years just to find these 4 sets of child protection resolutions.

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IRELAND
The Journal

A CATHOLIC PRIEST who abused more than 100 children continued to have access to young people for two years after the first allegation against him came to light.

The Salvatorian Order has come under fire for allowing the abusive priest to live ”without intervention or restrictions” between 2002 and 2004, despite it being known he had abused a female relative as a child.

The priest later admitted to abusing more than 100 children and was convicted in 2007 of sexually abusing several girls over a 25-year period.

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IRELAND
Irish Independent

A paedophile priest who admitted abusing more than 100 children was allowed unfettered access to youngsters for more than two years after allegations were first made against him.

The cleric who served in Ireland, England, Australia and Rome, abused children up until at least 2004 despite his seniors being warned about him in 2002, the Catholic Church’s own watchdog has found.

After one of his own relatives came forward to say she was molested, the priest’s senior moved him on from his Dublin parish without telling the Archbishop the “real reason” for his move.

The then provincial of The Salvatorians congregation also failed to notify police, health chiefs and parishioners about the allegations – despite being duty-bound to under guidelines issued eight years previously.

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.

NEW YORK
Catholic League

Bill Donohue comments on the scene in Albany today:

Today is the day when those who claim to be concerned about the sexual abuse of minors show up in Albany to lobby for a bill that would lift the statute of limitations on such offenses. Many are genuinely well-meaning, but others are not.

The latter are populated most conspicuously by phonies and mean-spirited activists whose only goal is to stick it to the Catholic Church. SNAP, BishopAccountability, Call to Action, and Catholic Whistleblowers are about as representative of Catholics as the bigots from the Westboro Baptist Church are of Protestants.

These four groups are not really organizations: SNAP has no central office or day-to-day employees, and is headed by a guy who admits to lying to the media; BishopAccountability is nothing but a website, and a dishonest one at that; Call to Action is a rag-tag assembly of dissident Catholics, some of whom have been ex-communicated; and Catholic Whistleblowers could fit all of its members into a phone booth.

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

PENNSYLVANIA
Roman Catholic Diocese of Altoona-Johnstown

Story Date:
2016-05-03

The Diocese of Altoona-Johnstown is committed to publishing on its website a list of Diocesan priests who were the subject of credible allegations of sexual abuse of minors and the current status of each. Click here to view the list. Please note: the list is a working document and will be updated as more information becomes available and is confirmed.

The list below identifies Diocesan priests who were the subject of credible allegations of sexual abuse of minors and the current status of each.

Ackerson, Francis – deceased
Bender, Joseph – deceased
Boyle, John J. – removed from public ministry
Bunn, James – removed from public ministry
Carroll, Thomas M. – deceased
Coleman, Dennis – laicized
Crouse, William – deceased
Fabbri, Mario – deceased
Figurelle, Elwood F. – deceased
Gaborek, Joseph – laicized
Grattan, Bernard V. – laicized
Koharchik, George D. – laiczed
Kovach, William – removed from public ministry
Lemmon, Thomas (Deacon) – deceased
Luddy, Francis – laicized
Maurizio, Joseph D. – incarcerated
McCaa, Francis – deceased
McCamley, Martin D. – removed from public ministry
O’Friel, Daniel, deceased
Rosensteel, William A. – deceased
Skupien, James – deceased
Strittmatter, Joseph – deceased

The list below identified Diocesan priests who have been suspended from ministry by the Bishop of the Diocese of Altoona-Johnstown as a result of an allegation of sexual abuse of a minor.

Arsenault, Fr. David
Bodziak, Fr. Charles
Cingle, Fr. Martin
Coveney, Fr. James
Kelly, Fr. Robert
Little, Msgr. Anthony

None of the individuals listed above is permitted to serve in ministry or function as a priest.

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NEW YORK
Forward

Jane Eisner
May 4, 2016

Sara Kabakov had never done this before. Never driven three hours from her home in Ithaca, N.Y., to the state capitol in Albany nearly 200 miles away, never tried to enter the mosh pit of lobbying lawmakers, never thought of herself as a political activist.

But there she was yesterday at the capitol, seeking an audience with her state senator, meeting with other legislators, learning from other advocates, all in service of persuading them to protect victims of child sexual abuse.

She was moved to do this by a simple act of bravery: Last January, Kabakov shared her own story of sexual abuse at the hands of Marc Gafni, the former rabbi and spiritual guru. “I am the woman Gafni molested when she was 13 years old,” she wrote in an exclusive essay for the Forward . “This is the first time I am telling my story in my own name.”

Gafni was a Yeshiva University rabbinical student five or six years her senior, who regularly molested her at night in her bed when he would stay at the Kabakov family home for Shabbat. The abuse continued for months; the pain and confusion lasted for many years, exacerbated by the refusal of an array of Jewish leaders to take Kabakov’s story seriously. By the time she was able to fully address what happened, she was 38 years old.

And in New York State, that was 15 years too late.

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

IRELAND
Irish Times

Patsy McGarry

A priest was allowed to have contact with children for at least two years after a female relative accused him in 2002 of abuse as a child, according to a report released today.

The Salvatorian priest later admitted that he had abused in excess of 100 children up to 2004.

The details are contained in the latest and final tranche of its reviews of child protection in Catholic institutions on the island of Ireland the church’s National Board for Safeguarding Children.

Following a complaint in 2002 by a relative that he abused her when she was a child , this priest was withdrawn from ministry in Dublin. However the reason given to the Archbishop of Dublin was the stress of his responsibilities. He was moved to Rome. There was no evidence that the then Provincial of the day complied with Church guidelines on handling the case, the review found.

In 2004, on a visit to Ireland, the priest was reported to gardaí by a family for the abuse of a daughter. He was arrested and convicted in 2007 in relation to the admitted abuse of “several girls” over a 25 year period. Sentenced to four years, all suspended except for 18 months, he left prison in 2009 and died later that year.

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IRELAND
Breaking News

[the full report]

04/05/2016

The National Board for Safeguarding Children in the Catholic Church has said there have been 10 criminal convictions from 288 allegations against 90 priests.

The allegations relate to the period between 1950 and 2002, with one additional incident in 2013.

The board said in two orders – Salvatorians and the Blessed Sacrament Fathers – they have seen little evidence that new standards have been properly implemented.

In the case of Father A from the Salvatorian order, he was allowed to continue contact with children for at least two years after 2002 when a relative told his order he had abused her.

The priest later admitted to abusing more than 100 children in Ireland. A relative accused him in 2002 of having abused her as a child, and he began a course of treatment in 2004. he was convicted in 2007.

Speaking on RTÉ’s News at One, CEO of the National Board for Safeguarding Children Teresa Devlin said: “It seems as if the priest was allowed to go around his business with impunity, without restrictions” in spite of the fact it was known in 2002 that he was abusing children.

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.

ARIZONA
Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests

Victims want action on abuse
Three Arizona predator priests ‘outed’ elsewhere
All of them worked/lived in the Tucson Catholic diocese
But allegations against them have attracted little/no attention here
Group prods Catholic staff to “reach out to others still trapped in pain ”

WHAT
Holding signs and childhood photos at a sidewalk news conference, clergy sex abuse victims and their supporters will

–disclose names and key information about three predator priests who worked in the Tucson Diocese, abused kids and were “outed” elsewhere but have gotten little – or no – attention in the local media,
– or no – attention in the local media,
–prod church officials to add the names, photos and whereabouts of these clerics on the diocese’s list of “credibly accused clerics,” and
https://www.diocesetucson.org/our-call-to-protect/credibly-accused.html

WHEN
Wednesday, May 4 at 11:00 a.m.

WHERE
Outside the Tucson Catholic Diocese headquarters, 111 South Church Avenue (between West Broadway Boulevard and West Jackson Street) in Tucson

WHO
Three-four members of a support group called SNAP, the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests (SNAPnetwork.org) including a Missouri woman who is the organization’s long time outreach director

WHY
SNAP has discovered three proven, admitted or credibly accused predator priests who assaulted kids elsewhere also spent time in the Tucson diocese. Although the allegations against these men generated mainstream media coverage in other states, the clerics remain largely “under the radar” locally.

SNAP wants Tucson Catholic officials to warn the public about these clerics and aggressively seek out anyone who may have seen, suspected or suffered their crimes.

The three “under the radar” predator priests who worked spent time in Tucson are: Father Louis Wayne Ladenburger, Father Francis W. Callan and Father Robert Bruce Thompson.

Fr. Ladenburger was criminally convicted. Fr. Callan was identified by the Jesuit Province of Oregon as a credibly accused abuser. Fr. Thompson was sued although the case was dismissed on the grounds it was beyond the statute of limitations.

Additional information about all of these men, as well as a photo of Fr. Ladenburger, is available at BishopAccountability.org.

SNAP wants Tucson Bishop Gerald F. Kicanas (520-838-2500) to “aggressively reach out” to anyone who may have been abused by any current or former Tucson area church employee – especially Fr. Callan, Fr. Ladenburger or Fr. Thompson – and beg them to call police and prosecutors and other independent sources of help.

The group fears that “there may be more victims who are suffering in shame and silence.”

Parish bulletins, church websites and pulpit announcements.

“We’re concerned because, based on our experience, these men will likely have more victims right here in Arizona,” said David Clohessy of SNAP. “Predators rarely hurt just one child. Church officials have a moral duty to reach out to anyone who may be hurting.”

The survivors’ group also wants church officials to use all the means at their disposal— pulpit announcements, church bulletins and parish websites, and diocesan or order publications—to reach out to Catholics who may have been abused.

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

IRELAND
Newstalk

4 May 2016
Jack Quann

The National Board for Safeguarding Children in the Catholic Church in Ireland (NBSCCCI) says two religious orders have failed to properly implement child safeguarding measures.

A final tranche of reports from five religious orders have been reviewed, as they are active in ministry and have some contact with children.

A further four that were reviewed under a smaller set of standards – as they have no contact with children – did have allegations made against them in the past.

The remaining 21 orders have no contact with children and no allegations, and so were assessed against a limited number of standards.

“The vast majority of these reports are positive and reflect orders that have taken on the goals of child safeguarding and made it integral to what they do,” said Teresa Devlin – CEO of the NBSCCCI.

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

IRELAND
National Board for Safeguarding Children in the Catholic Church

30 Reports completed by the National Board for Safeguarding Children in the Catholic Church, these include 13 male, 16 female Orders and Congregations and 1 Personal Prelature.

See Review reports of congregations reviewed;

Alexian Brothers

Benedictine Monks – Stamullen

Blessed Sacrament Fathers

Brothers of Charity

Comboni Missionaries

Conventual Franciscans – ( Greyfriars)

Franciscan Friars of the Renewal

Hospitaller Order of St John of God

Marianists of Irleand

Marist Brothers

Prelature of the Holy Cross & Opus Dei

Salvatorian – Society of the Divine Saviour

Sons of Divine Providence

Adorers of Sacred Heart of Jesus of Montmartre

Blessed Sacrament Sisters

Carmelite Sisters for the Aged and Infirm

Carmelites, Association of – 10 Branches

Clarissan Missionary Sisters of the Blessed Sacrament

Daughters of the Cross of Liege

Franciscan Missionaries of Mary

Franciscan MIssionaries Our Lady

Franciscan Missionary Sisters of Littlehampton Community

Handmaids of the Sacred Heart of Jesus

La Retraite Sisters

Missionaries of Charity

Missionary Sisters of St Peter Claver

Order of the Poor Clares

Sisters of Providence – Rosminians

Sisters of St. Joseph of Lyon

Society of St Paul

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IRELAND
National Board for Safeguarding Children in the Catholic Church

Final Group of 30 Reports Completed By NBSCCCI

(May 4th 2016)

The final tranche of reports includes 5 orders reviewed under the full set of standards as they are active in ministry and would have some contact with children. A further four that were reviewed under a smaller set of standards as they have no contact with children but did have allegations made against them in the past – necessitating an examination of how they handled them. The remaining 21 Orders have no contact with children and no allegations, and so were assessed against the limited number of standards that apply.

“The vast majority of these reports are positive and reflect orders that have taken on the goals of child safeguarding and made it integral to what they do,” said Teresa Devlin, CEO, NBSCCCI (National Board for Safeguarding Children in the Catholic Church in Ireland). “Unfortunately, in two cases, the Salvatorians and the Blessed Sacrament Fathers, we have seen little evidence that the standards have been properly implemented. The Salvatorians were particularly poor in relation to the monitoring of an accused priest. And in a number of cases poor record-keeping took place. ”

Of the reviews undertaken four congregations cannot be reported on or published, as they are included in the statutory review currently being undertaken as part of the Historical Inquiry into Child Abuse in Institutional Care in Northern Ireland (HIA). The NBSCCCI reports of these congregations will be publicly available following publication of the HIA report in 2017.

In the aggregate there have been 288 allegations made against 90 priests, brothers or sisters with just 10 criminal convictions arising therefrom. The allegations relate to the period between 1950 and 2002 with one incident in 2013.

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IRELAND
RTE News

Two orders of priests have been criticised by the Irish Catholic Church’s child safeguarding watchdog for their attitude to clerical child sexual abuse.

The National Board for Safeguarding Children in the Catholic Church has said its review of the Salvatorians and the Blessed Sacrament Fathers produced “little evidence that the church’s own standards of child protection have been properly implemented”.

It said the Salvatorians were particularly poor in relation to the monitoring of an accused priest. And in a number of cases there was poor record-keeping.

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 STATES
Hamilton and Griffin on Rights

Abolitionist and former slave Harriet Ann Jacobs knew something about tough times. But writing about spring, she noted “when Nature resumes her loveliness, the human soul is apt to revive also.”

Thankfully, it is indeed springtime. So let’s focus on some good news:

–A concerned parent tipped off SNAP leader Joelle Casteix that a priest who sexually assaulted a San Diego teenager was working in an Oklahoma parish. Within hours, in a rare but encouraging burst of public parishioner courage, Catholics were picketing and Archbishop Paul Coakley quickly reversed himself and sent Fr. Jose Alexis Davila packing.

–Ex-House Speaker Dennis Hastert, the highest ranking government official to admit molesting kids, will got a more severe prison sentence and will soon be behind bars longer than prosecutors had recommended. His horrific wrongdoing – child sex abuse, financial shenanigans, lying to the FBI and trying to frame a victim as an extortionist – has rightly led to one of his pensions being yanked and his name being taken off buildings and programs.

–One Hastert victim who is suing him has won the right to protect his privacy. (Shame on Hastert for trying to force the survivor into publicly revealing his name.)

–In the wake of the Hastert scandal and others (Bill Cosby, Jerry Sandusky, campus rapes etc.), the admirable efforts of brave Pennsylvania victims and their advocates are paying off. Progress is being made to pass a “civil window” bill that will stop more child sex crimes and cover ups by exposing and deterring those who commit and conceal them, thanks largely to the incredible courage of Rep. Mark Rizzo and the admirable persistence of survivors like John Salveson, Tammy Lerner, and others.

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GUAM
Pacific News Center

Written by Janela Carrera

Former Senator Bob Klitzkie details in his letter how he came to the conclusion that a cover-up occurred.

Guam – Former Senator Bob Klitzkie has written yet another letter to the Attorney General’s Office and to the Department of Land Management on the issue of the certificate of title for the disputed Redemptoris Mater Seminary, but this time, he alleges a full-on cover up.

In his letter, Klitzkie questions the actions and motives of all the key players involved in the certificate of title mess. They include Msgr. David C. Quitugua, the vicar general of the Archdiocese of Agana; Attorney Jacque Terlaje, who initiated the request for the certificate of title from Land Management; Mike Borja, Land Management director; Andrew Santos, deputy registrar; Assistant Attorney General Kristan Finney; and others.

When the certificate of title was published last October in the Archdiocese’s newspaper, it was missing a deed restriction.

That deed restriction is the point of contention because many Catholics believe it gave the property away to the Neocatechumenal Way, but the Archdiocese contends that it does not.

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CONNECTICUT
Courthouse News Service

By NICK RUMMELL

HARTFORD, Conn. (CN) — A prominent Connecticut rabbi raped and sodomized a teenage boy at the yeshiva where he was principal dozens of times over a four-year period, the former student claims in a federal complaint.

Now a resident of New Jeresy, Eliyahu Mirlis says the abuse began in 2002 when he was a 15-year-old sophomore boarding at the Gan School in New Haven.

Along with Rabbi Daniel Greer, The school and its yeshiva are also named as defendants in the suit.

Mirlis says Greer was in his 60s hen he “forced the minor Eli to engage in acts of sex with him, including forced fellatio, anal sex, fondling, and masturbation.”

Greer frequently plied Mirlis with alcohol before raping him and occasionally showed him pornographic films, the complaint states.

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.

NEW YORK
Forward

Josh Nathan-Kazis
May 3, 2016

Police are looking into a video circulating widely among Orthodox social media users that shows a teacher at an Orthodox school kissing a young male student, the Journal News reported .

The video, which emerged from Orthodox groups on the social networking service WhatsApp on Sunday before being posted by various advocates on Facebook, appears to be a surveillance video shot in an office at an Orthodox yeshiva.

According to the Journal News, the video shows an adult man holding and kissing a boy in what appears to be a school office over more than ten minutes. Neither the face of the man or the face of the boy were blurred in the version of the video distributed over social media.

The Journal News reported on May 3 that the commander of New York State Police Troop F confirmed that authorities had seen the video and were examining it.+

“We have received the video. We have looked at it,” Major Joseph Tripodo told the paper.

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.

NEW YORK
Haaretz

Uriel Heilman May 04, 2016

JTA – The story is an all-too-familiar horror tale: An adult in a position of power – in this case a Hasidic school principal – is accused of sexually abusing a child in his care.

But one thing makes this episode very different: The encounter was captured on a hidden camera and posted online this week for all to see.

Difficult to watch, the 11-minute clip offers a rare glimpse of what an incident of this sort actually looks like rather than as it may be refracted through memory days, weeks or years later in court, in the media or in the privacy of a therapy session.

The video, which is now being probed by police, was first widely circulated Saturday night on the messaging service WhatsApp and later posted on Facebook in an abridged form before being removed by administrators. It shows an older, bearded Hasidic man taking his seat in a small office and then pulling a young boy with peyos sidecurls between his legs.

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.

NEW YORK
The Journal News

Jonathan Bandler, jbandler@lohud.com May 3, 2016

A video “similar in nature” to the one posted on the Internet this weekend showing a Kiryas Joel principal in close physical contact with a young boy was investigated months ago but did not result in criminal charges, state police said Tuesday.

The new video has sparked an investigation by state police, Orange County prosecutors and the county’s Child Abuse Unit amid claims from anti-abuse activists that it was posted online because school officials and law enforcement authorities had done nothing regarding complaints about the principal’s behavior.

The posting of the video came just before Tuesday’s start of a two-day lobbying effort in Albany by child abuse victims and their advocates to get state lawmakers to finally pass the Child Victims Act, which would end the state’s statute of limitations for civil claims by those sexually abused as children.

New York State police Major Joseph Tripodo, commander of Troop F in Middletown, said the current investigation began early Monday after state police were notified of a complaint to the child abuse hotline in Albany.

He said the caller was from out of state and reported that a young boy had been abused at the Kiryas Joel school, United Talmudical Academy. That led police to the video that was posted first on WhatsApp over the weekend and had been viewed more than 20,000 times on Facebook by Monday afternoon.

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NEW YORK
JTA

By Uriel Heilman
May 3, 2016

NEW YORK (JTA) – The story is an all-too-familiar horror tale: An adult in a position of power – in this case a Hasidic school principal – is accused of sexually abusing a child in his care.

But one thing makes this episode very different: The encounter was captured on a hidden camera and posted online this week for all to see.

Difficult to watch, the 11-minute clip offers a rare glimpse of what an incident of this sort actually looks like rather than as it may be refracted through memory days, weeks or years later in court, in the media or in the privacy of a therapy session.

The video, which is now being probed by police, was first widely circulated Saturday night on the messaging service WhatsApp and later posted on Facebook in an abridged form before being removed by administrators. It shows an older, bearded Hasidic man taking his seat in a small office and then pulling a young boy with peyos sidecurls between his legs.

Over the course of several minutes, the bespectacled man wearing a black hat caresses the boy, jerks him back and forth, and appears to kiss him repeatedly and rub against him. At one point the boy tries to escape the man’s clutches but is grabbed back. Both remain fully clothed throughout the encounter. A volume of Deuteronomy, a book of Psalms and other religious tomes lie on the nearby desk.

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NEW YORK
News 12

KIRYAS JOEL – Authorities in Orange County have launched an investigation into allegations of child sex abuse after a leaked video from inside an ultra-Orthodox yeshiva.

The investigation is focusing on the principal at the United Talmudical Academy in Kiryas Joel.

The video, reportedly recorded inside the yeshiva last year, shows a man that police have identified as the principal, holding and caressing an elementary school boy between his legs for 15 minutes.

Some say it appears the principal, who is reportedly a rabbi, may be kissing the boy while the child tries to pull away.

State Police Major Joseph Tripodo said Tuesday that investigators launched a joint investigation with the Orange County District Attorney’s Office and Child Abuse Unit.

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AUSTRALIA
Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse

4 May, 2016

The Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse has published submissions from individual victims and survivors, service providers, statutory bodies, government agencies and peak bodies to its issues paper on advocacy and support and therapeutic treatment services.

Royal Commission Chief Executive Officer Philip Reed said 178 submissions have been received which is the highest number of submissions received for an issues paper, reflecting the importance of this topic.

“The responses have shown that victims and survivors have diverse and complex needs where their life stage can influence the type of support they need,” Mr Reed said.

“We have also heard how important advocacy services are for victims and survivors enabling them to have a strong voice for influencing positive change,” he said.
Mr Reed said the Royal Commission’s terms of reference require it to look into what institutions and governments should do to address or alleviate the impact of past and future child sexual abuse in institutional contexts.

“Access to a range of therapies and support is important for victims and survivors to have a choice in the service they need,” Mr Reed said.

“Our Redress and Civil Litigation Report recommends counselling and psychological care provided through redress should supplement, and not compete with, existing services. Further, the Royal Commission took the view that greater public funding for the provision of counselling and psychological care for survivors was warranted,” he said.

Mr Reed said the submissions have revealed that effective services are the ones that provide a seamless experience where victims and survivors are believed, feel safe and do not need to retell their story, however these needs aren’t always being met.

“Currently services are disjointed and often lack expertise in child sexual abuse, trauma and its impacts, resulting in an ineffective response to the needs of victims and survivors,” he said.

“Submissions to the issues paper will be considered alongside the relevant case studies, the personal experiences shared by survivors of abuse in private sessions, and our broader policy work on support services,” Mr Reed said.

Submissions to Issues Paper 10 are available on the Royal Commission website.

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NEW YORK
New York Daily News

BY MICHAEL O’KEEFFE, LARRY MCSHANE NEW YORK DAILY NEWS Wednesday, May 4, 2016

Queens mom Ana Wagner saw the Daily News front page urging New York politicians to hold child predators accountable — and took off for Albany.

“The whole day just changed,” said Wagner, 35, who brought a roomful of abuse survivors and Child Victims Act advocates to tears Tuesday afternoon with her tale of a predatory adult from her past.

Wagner made the trip north because she knew the people at the round table on child sexual abuse would believe her long-suppressed story.

And Wagner, assaulted by a friend of her father at age 9, made a point about the importance of changing the state’s statute of limitations when it comes to child molesters.

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