ABUSE TRACKER

GUAM
KUAM

Posted: Jun 06, 2016

By Sabrina Salas Matanane

Local blogger Tim Rohr says it’s a “complete insult” for Archbishop Anthony Apuron to claim that he was the one who requested Rome to appoint an apostolic administrator for the Archdiocese of Agana. Rohr has been reporting on the controversies in the local Catholic Church for several years on his blog, JungleWatch.

He issued a video statement to KUAM today detailing his thoughts on the matter.

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.

GUAM
Pacific Daily News

[with video]

Haidee V Eugenio, Pacific Daily News June 7, 2016

A 52-year-old man on Tuesday accused Archbishop Anthony Apuron of raping him when he was a boy in 1977.

The man’s accusation is the third allegation of sexual abuse against the archbishop in recent weeks. It is the second recent accusation by an alleged victim.

Speaking to media outside the Dulce Nombre de Maria Cathedral Basilica in Hagåtña, Walter Denton, 52, of Casa Grande, Arizona, said that Apuron raped him when he was a boy while sleeping over in the Rectory of the Our Lady of Mount Carmel Church in Agat.

A man in his early 50s, Roy Quintanilla, recently came forward to say that Apuron molested him when he was an altar boy in the 1970s. Apuron, at the time, was a parish priest at Our Lady of Mount Carmel Parish in Agat.

Quintanilla inspired Doris Y. Concepcion to also come forward days later to say that, before her son passed away 11 years ago, he told her that he was molested by Apuron when he was an altar boy in Agat, also in the 1970s.

Pope Francis named on Monday night (Guam time) a new apostolic administrator “sede plena” for the Archdiocese of Agana, pending investigation of allegations of sexual abuse against Apuron.

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.

GUAM
Pacific News Center

[with video]

Written by Janela Carrera

This brings the number of alleged victims to three.

Guam – Explosive details from another man who says Archbishop Anthony Apuron raped him when he was 13 years old. Now 52, Walter Denton is the third victim to come forward with sex abuse allegations against the archbishop.

“It hurts so much just thinking about it. It’s like it just happened yesterday,” says Denton as he holds back tears.

Denton says it happened on April 16, 1977 at the rectory of Mt. Carmel Catholic Church in Agat. He slept over at the request of Apuron who was a priest at the time. Here are excerpts from his statement, some of which are graphic in nature.

“I said I was going to sleep on the lazy boy chair. He said no and he insisted I sleep in the bedroom with him,” he describes. “Sometime late that evening or early morning I woke up feeling something–.”

At this point, Denton is struggling to maintain his composure.

“I felt something penetrating me. I was pinned down to the bed on my stomach with my legs spread apart. I could not move my arms or my legs. I was crying out to him asking him to please stop. I kept saying that it hurt so much,” he recalls as he wiped away tears.

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.

GUAM
Jungle Watch

This is the full statement of Walter Denton. An abbreviated version was read to the press on June 7, 2016, on the steps of the Agana Cathedral Pastoral Center. This full statement was delivered to Archbishop Apuron via a Cathedral office staff member.

For 38 years I have carried a heavy burden. This tragic incident that I experienced totally changed the direction of my life and what I wanted to be. I was raped by Archbishop Anthony Sablan Apuron, who at that time was a priest in Agat, and whom I trusted. I worshiped the ground he walked on. He was my mentor, my teacher. He was like a father to me, so I thought. He was the PRIEST I wanted to become but, he took that all away from me.

My name is Walter G. Denton of Agat, Guam. At the young age of 8 years, I did something I have always wanted to do and that was to be an Altar Boy for my church in Agat, Guam. I always attended church services every Sunday morning with my parents. Watching the Alter Boys perform their duties during church service motivated my desires to serve God and to become a priest. I attended Mount Carmel Catholic School and also attended Confraternity of Christian Doctrine (CCD) Classes on the weekends to learn more about God and his teachings. I may have been young but, I knew that was my calling. Going to Church and attending CCD classes was a priority for me. Fast forward to Friday April 15, 1977 on or about 5:30 pm. Father Anthony Apuron (ARCHBISHOP) was to give the Friday evening service. I was on the schedule to assist Father Anthony Apuron during Mass. After Mass, Father Tony asked me to stay at the Rectory on Saturday evening. I told Father Anthony I had to ask my Dad. My Dad told me I could.

When it came to the Church and my duties as an Altar Boy, my Dad never stood in the way. On or about Saturday evening April 16, 1977, I went to the Rectory where Father Anthony was waiting for me. I asked if anyone else was spending the night and Father Anthony said no. I didn’t think anything of it but, in a way I felt kind of weird being there by myself. I have never spent the night there alone in Rectory with Father Anthony let alone any other priest. It’s always been with the other Alter Boys.

We ate dinner and talked a little bit. After dinner I helped Father Anthony wash the dishes. After cleaning up the dirty dishes I went into the living room and sat on the lazy boy chair and watched TV for a little bit. I started to feel tired and sleepy. I pulled the handle of the lazy boy and got it to recline. As I was laying on the lazy boy chair Father Anthony came into the living room and asked me if I was ready to go to sleep. I told yes and that I was going to sleep on the lazy boy chair. He said no and he insisted I sleep in the bedroom with him. I said okay Father. At the same time I did not feel comfortable but, I did anyways. We went into the bedroom and I went straight to bed. I remember feeling so tired and the next thing I was fast asleep.

Please forgive me for what I am about to say. It hurts so much just thinking about it. Whenever I talk about it, I start to break down and cry. It’s like it just happened yesterday.

Sometime late that evening or early morning, I woke up feeling something or someone on top of me smothering me and I felt something going in my ass-hole and it was hurting me. I was pinned down to the bed on my stomach with my legs spread apart. I could not move. I could not move my arms or my legs. I was pinned down. I felt something going into my ass and it hurt so much. I shouted out to Father Anthony to stop. I kept shouting and I tried to move but, all I could feel was him on top of me thrusting something into my ass.

He told me it will be alright. He said he will take care of me and give me straight A’s in Theology. It seemed like forever that Father Anthony stayed on top of me. I was crying out to him asking him to please stop. I kept saying that it hurts and to please stop. I could hear him moaning and him thrusting his penis in me. He finally stopped and he laid down on me like he was resting. He got off me and I immediately got off the bed. I was crying and breathing hard. I can feel my butt was all wet. I asked him why he did that to me. I kept asking why. He said if I said anything to anyone, no will believe me.

I got my clothes and I went out to the living room and I stood by the front door. I opened the door but, I had nowhere to go. It was so dark outside and I was so scared. I remember looking at the clock and it was about 1or 2 in the morning. It was Sunday morning and I remember I couldn’t wait for the sun to come up. I wanted to go home so bad but I couldn’t. If I went home I know my DAD would figure that something was wrong. I was afraid to go home. If my DAD knew what had happen to me, he would have come down and Kill Father Tony. Nobody messed around with my DAD. So I stayed at the Rectory. I stayed in the living room. I could not go back to sleep. I was so afraid of Father Tony.

I remember he came out to the living room and he tried to talk to me. I don’t remember what he was saying to me. All I know is that I wanted to leave. Finally, the sun came up and it was Sunday morning and it was time to go to mass. I did not serve in the mass with Father Tony. I went walking around the school till church ended and then I went home. I remember being distant from my family. I never went back to church as an Altar Boy. I quit serving as an Altar Boy but, I still went to Church. I attended Mass every Sunday so that my DAD wouldn’t know that something was wrong. He knew I wanted to be a Priest. I went to Church during the times Father Anthony wasn’t giving Mass. If he gave the 7:00 am Mass, then I would attend the 9:00 am Mass. It was hard to go back to school because Father Tony was my Theology teacher. I sat in the back of the room and I never made eye contact with him again. He never called on me for anything during class. He just left me alone. I felt so sick every time I went to class.

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.

CANADA
Metro

By: Sue Bailey The Canadian Press Published on Mon Jun 06 2016

ST. JOHN’S, N.L. — There is one thing the elderly man most remembers about living at the Mount Cashel orphanage more than 60 years ago: fear.

“They had complete control over you,” he said of the Irish Christian Brothers, a Roman Catholic order that ran the once-iconic institution in St. John’s, N.L. “You were beaten continually.

“They’d come to your bed at night,” said the man, now in his ’70s, who can’t be identified under a court-ordered publication ban.

“They’d masturbate you and lie on top of you, rub you and kiss you and all of that. I used to try and say a prayer and, you know, it didn’t work.”

He was in court Monday as a civil trial resumed in provincial Supreme Court involving about 60 claimants. They’re arguing the Roman Catholic Episcopal Corp. of St. John’s should compensate victims for alleged abuse dating back to the 1940s.

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GUAM
Guam Daily Post

Walter Denton, with family and friends behind him in Hagåtña on Tuesday, June 7, describes to members of the media how Archbishop Anthony Apuron allegedly raped him in 1977 when he was 13 years old. Denton, 52, was an altar server under Apuron when he served as a priest at Our Lady of Mount Carmel Church in Agat. Tony Azios/Post

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GUAM
Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Agana

Concerning the Group So-Called “Concerned Catholics of Guam”
For the People in and of the Archdiocese of Agana
In the Territory of Guam

Prot. N. 2016-028

June 5, 2016

WHEREAS The group calling itself Concerned Catholics of Guam, established within the Archdiocese of Agana and purporting to be an association of the faithful therein, has, as an organization conducted itself in the following way:

Setting itself to recruit, by membership or other representation, members of the faithful of this Archdiocese, under the guise of promotion of public worship, Christian virtue, and charitable endeavor without having been erected by competent ecclesiastical authority (c.301 §1);

Assuming the name and usage of the term “Catholic” without the consent of competent ecclesiastical authority, as required by law (c. 300);

Actively promoting opposition, both ad hoc and organized, public and private, to legitimate acts of ecclesiastical governance placed by the Ordinary or those acting in his name (c. 1373);

Instigating manifest and public opposition to the Ordinary, with whom they are obliged to preserve communion (c. 209);

Soliciting and disseminating fraudulent or otherwise malicious allegations against the person of the Ordinary (c. 220);

AND WHEREAS Membership, promotion, or direction of such a society is manifestly detrimental to the communion of the faithful in this archdiocese, the good of souls, and to ecclesiastical discipline;

AND WHEREAS The law provides the general principle that membership of such societies is constituted a delict (c. 1374);

AND WHEREAS It is proper to the office of the Ordinary, as the competent ecclesiastical authority, that this above cited canon be applied to such societies within the territory as seems prudent and necessary to the Ordinary, by means of particular law

BE IT THEREFORE KNOWN, EX DECRETUM GENERALIUM, The group calling itself Concerned Catholics of Guam is, hereby, established as a prohibited society under the particular law of this archdiocese.

CONSEQUENTLY All members of the faithful in and of this archdiocese, clerical or lay, are to:

Avoid association with this organization;
Refrain from signing, or otherwise promoting, acts or other measures of that organization;
Renounce membership, or any other position, within that organization;
Refrain from speaking, publicly or privately, on behalf of that organization.

THIS IS ESTABLISHED AS PARTICULAR LAW IN AND FOR THIS DIOCESE by means of this Decree and shall take effect on midnight on Tuesday, June 14, 2016 (cc. 8, 29).

Such members of the faithful in and of this archdiocese who have heretofore retained membership in this group are paternally and pastorally urged to renounce such membership and avoid the organization, until such time as it be reconciled to competent ecclesiastical authority and this law be repealed.

Given on the 5th day of June, 2016.

Servus tuus,
/s/ Most Rev. Anthony Sablan Apuron, OFM Cap., D.D.
Archbishop of Agana

/s/ Rev. Adrian Cristobal
Chancellor

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NEW YORK
WHEC

Under the current state law, people who have been sexually abused cannot file charges or sue after they turn 23. This bill would change that if passed.

Several religious groups oppose state legislation that would allow people who were sexually abused as children to file a lawsuit after age 23. Republican lawmakers in Albany have blocked the bill.

The Catholic Church as well as other religious groups (including some members of the Orthodox Jewish community) are against the bill, claiming that if it is passed it would put these religious groups in financial jeopardy and open a flood of lawsuits.

The Executive Director at Bivona Child Advocacy Center says this legislation needs to pass. “Most kids who have been sexually abused don’t tell until they are an adult, so if they’re 27 and want to disclose what happened to them when they were 13 and do something about that, they would have no recourse because the statute of limitations has expired,” says Mary Whittier.

The bill has been blocked in the Senate but has support in the assembly. There are 10 days left in the session to pass this bill. Those fighting for the bill to be passed are hoping Governor Cuomo gets involved. They’re calling on him to support the proposal and work to pass a last minute plan to change this law.

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AUSTRALIA/ISRAEL
Herald Sun

June 7, 2016

Shannon Deery
Herald Sun

FUGITIVE principal Malka Leifer could still be extradited to Australia after a fresh bid by prosecutors to force her to face justice.

Ms Leifer is in hiding in Israel where she fled after allegations of child sexual abuse were levelled at her in 2008 while principal of Elsternwick’s Adass Israel School.

Police have been told the mother of eight molested up to 10 girls, and they say she will be charged with more than 70 child sex offences if she returns to Melbourne.

Last week an Israeli judge lifted a home detention condition, halted extradition proceedings, and placed Ms Leifer on a psychiatric treatment regimen that could last 10 years. It came after Ms Leifer failed to appear at court on almost a dozen occasions citing mental illness and anxiety.

While not appealing the decision, prosecutors want a travel ban placed on Ms Leifer to stop her from leaving Israel. They say they want to ensure extradition proceedings can be resumed once she is deemed mentally fit for trial.

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GUAM
KUAM

[with video]

Posted: Jun 07, 2016

By Krystal Paco

It’s the latest of allegations made against Archbishop Anthony Apuron. Early Tuesday afternoon, former Agat resident and altar boy Walter G. Denton publicly accused then-priest Anthony Apuron of rape. Denton is the third alleged victim to surface in the last few weeks. Roy Quintanilla and Joseph “Sonny” Quinata were also Agat altar boys.

“I was raped by Anthony Sablan Apuron, who at that time was a priest in Agat,” said a teary-eyed Denton before island media on the steps of the Agana Cathedral Basilica. Like other alleged victims, Denton was an altar boy at Mount Carmel Church in Agat. Surrounded by dozens of family and friends, he addressed media on a secret he’s been keeping since he was 13 years old.

“Please forgive me for what I’m about to say. It hurts so much,” he said, struggling to hold back tears. It hurts so much just thinking about it. It’s like it just happened yesterday.” It was in April 1977 when then-Father Apuron allegedly asked Denton to sleep over at the rectory. “I told Father Anthony I had to ask my dad. And my dad told me I could,” he recalled.

That night, there were no other boys staying over, just Denton and Apuron. Denton wanted to sleep on the couch. Apuron insisted they sleep together on the bed. Denton recalls waking up pinned down on his stomach, legs spread apart and the Apuron on top of him from behind. “It seemed like forever Father Anthony stayed on top of me. I was crying out to him asking him to please stop. I kept saying that it hurt so much, to please stop. I could hear him moaning and him thrusting himself in me. He finally stopped and he laid down on me like he was resting,” said Denton.

“I kept asking why? He said if I said anything to anyone, no one would believe me.”

The alleged incident was life changing, and spoiled Denton’s dream of becoming a priest. Instead, he joined the US Army and would later come face-to-face with his alleged perpetrator while in Washington State. The confrontation left both men in tears. “I told him he ruined my life and my dreams. I said to him that he raped me. And took something away from me. I told him I would never forgive him for what he did to me. I broke down and cried, and he started to cry as well, but that didn’t matter to me. I was so angry,” he said.

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UNITED KINGDOM
Catholic Herald

by Fr Alexander Lucie-Smith
posted Monday, 6 Jun 2016

The Pope’s new set of canons are significant because they locate the epicenter of the abuse crisis in the episcopacy

The Pope has approved a new set of canons that will facilitate the swift removal of bishops who fail to deal with child abuse in their dioceses, this magazine reports.

The learned Dr Ed Condon has some commentary on this website, that can be read here. He makes the very interesting point that this latest legislation is a sign of centralisation in the Church, and thus runs counter to the perceived decentralising tendencies of the current papacy. Moreover, both the Daily Telegraph and the Guardian have reported on the same story. Their reports make instructive reading about the way the world sees the Church’s handling of the abuse crisis.

I am not a canon lawyer (some readers may wish to stop reading at this point) but the new canons strike me as highly significant, and at the same time perhaps not making much difference. Let me explain.

This move is significant because it locates the epicenter of the abuse crisis in the episcopacy. This is where the heart of the problem lies. It is not in abusive priests and laity per se, but rather in the way abusive priests and laity can get away with their crimes thanks to the failure of bishops to oversee their dioceses properly.

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PHILIPPINES
UCA News

Joe Torres, Manila
Philippines June 6, 2016

The head of the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of the Philippines underscored the “virtue in silence” amid renewed attacks made by incoming President Rodrigo Duterte against church leaders.

“Mine is the silence of respect for those who consider us their enemies but whose good we truly pray for and whose happiness we want to see unfold,” said Archbishop Socrates Villegas of Lingayen-Dagupan, the conference’s president.

The prelate made the statement June 5 after Duterte accused Philippine bishops and priests of corruption, child abuse, and of breaking their vows of celibacy.

The incoming president said the country’s Catholic bishops, whom Duterte claimed campaigned against him during the elections, are hypocrites for receiving luxury cars as charity from a state lottery.

In his message titled “Understanding Silence,” Archbishop Villegas defended his refusal to answer the allegations of Duterte.

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VATICAN CITY/AUSTRALIA
Sky News

Australia’s most senior Catholic cleric Cardinal George Pell will tender his resignation to Pope Francis on Wednesday.

But this does not mean the controversial churchman, who has given evidence three times at the child abuse royal commission, will leave his job as the Vatican’s Prefect of the Secretariat for the Economy – Vatican treasurer – any time soon.

Protocols introduced by the Pope in 2014 oblige cardinals to present their resignations at 75, and Dr Pell reaches this age on June 8.

However, the Pope does not have to accept Dr Pell’s resignation.

Observers say it is a high probability the Australian cardinal will stay on for another few years, given his crucial role in reforming the Vatican’s medieval financial structure.

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.

VATICAN CITY/GUAM
Guam Daily Post

In a video message from St. Peter’s Basilica in the Vatican on Tuesday, June 7, Anthony Apuron, archbishop of the Archdiocese of Agaña, responds to Pope Francis’ decision to appoint Archbishop Savio Tai Fai Hon as apostolic administrator – a temporary administrator of the archdiocese while Apruin remains archbishop pending results of an investigation into allegations of sexual abuse.

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GUAM
KUAM

By Nestor Licanto

Archbishop Anthony Apuron continues to deny the accusations lobbed against him. In a message from Rome, Apuron says he remains the Archbishop of Agana, but it was he who requested the Pope appoint a temporary replacement.

“The appointment of an apostolic sede plena means that while the administrator will discharge the archdiocesan pastoral duties, I remain your bishop,” Apuron announced. The Vatican announced Monday that Archbishop Savio Tai Fai Hon will serve as temporary apostolic administrator of the Guam Archdiocese.

Apuron says this allows for an independent investigation of the sexual abuse accusations against him to proceed. “I reaffirm my innocence and I’m victim to these horrible calumnies, and I welcome the assistance provided by the Holy Father in sending us Archbishop Hon. I urge you, my dear people, to pray for me, your shepherd, and for our church.”

Meanwhile, the archdiocese also struck back at its main critics. It issued a decree against the Concerned Catholics of Guam organization, declaring it a prohibited group that church members should renounce and avoid. It accused them of actively promoting opposition to the archdiocese, and soliciting and manifesting fraudulent and malicious allegations.

The decree is set to take effect on June 14.

In response. Concerned Catholics of Guam vice president Dave Sablan issued the following statement:

I read the “Decree”.

First, our organization was organized under Guam corporate law.

Secondly, the word “Catholic” in our title refers to the Faithful people who call themselves “Catholic”; the Laity of the Church, if you will. We are not an organization of the Archdiocese of Agana, otherwise, we would have to have the blessing and sanction of the Archbishop. We know that.

We could have easily called ourselves “Concerned Christians of Guam”; or Concerned Laity of Guam. Our organization has no connection to the Archdiocese. If we formed an organization called the “Graduates of Father Duenas High School Corporation”, should I need the permission of the principal of the school to use the name of the school from which we graduated in this instance? Same difference with “Concerned Catholics of Guam.”

Now, if we are to call ourselves the “Catholic Society of Guam” or the “Catholic Organization of Guam”, then the use of the term “Catholic” would need the approval of the Archbishop. But that is not how we are using that term. We are identifying ourselves as Catholics–persons who are baptized Catholics, bound together for a common purpose which is not related to associations needing the approval of the appropriate ecclesiastical authority (the Archbishop of Agana) as defined in Canon Law.

Thirdly, CCOG, last year, had requested to officially meet with the Archbishop on at least a couple of occasions. He never granted us the audience. So, what are we to do, if he does not seem to want to talk to us to understand our purpose and objectives, which we outlined in our bylaws and articles of incorporation, filed with the Department of Revenue and Taxation?

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MINNESOTA
Star Tribune

By Wallace R. Johnson JUNE 6, 2016

Jeff Anderson, the lead attorney representing many, if not all, of the plaintiffs in the sexual-abuse cases involving the Catholic Church, insists that the church hierarchy is hiding well more than a billion dollars in assets that should be made available to the victims he is representing. The church has claimed in its bankruptcy filing approximately $65 million in assets. Anderson believes that amount to be totally inadequate for his clients. He insists that the value of individual parishes, schools, cemeteries, etc., be included in the assets available for determining just compensation, despite the fact that these entities are all legally structured as separate corporations.

I certainly do not know if those entities will be legally exempt from inclusion or not. I expect that to be determined by the courts. What I do know is that the parishes, schools and cemeteries were created and paid for primarily by parishioners who had absolutely no responsibility for the sexual abuse but who are emotionally hurting and deeply offended victims. Parishioners had little or no choice as to who would be assigned to their parishes and schools. They had absolutely no knowledge of their assigned leaders’ prior history of improper sexual behavior.

Parishioners are additional victims who have been devastated by the sexual abuse. Humiliation, embarrassment, confusion and disruption to their religious way of life have permeated the entire Catholic community through no fault of their own. Anderson continuously demonstrates his implied sympathy for his clients’ need for increased compensation (currently estimated at $145,000) knowing full well those additional assets would be taken from the thousands of completely innocent Catholic victims. That quest is both shameful and appalling.

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TEXAS
KENS

[with video]

Roma Villavicencio and Kens5.com staff

SAN ANTONIO — A San Antonio youth sports coach has been arrested and charged with sexual abuse of a child, according to the Bexar County Sheriff’s Office.

Investigators said Jeffrey Ramos, 48, is charged with continuous sexual abuse of a child.

BCSO investigators were called to the victim’s school last Tuesday after being contacted by Child Protective Services.

James Keith with BCSO said, “We don’t believe that this is a false claim. There’s evidence that supports that in fact did happen.”

The victim told BCSO investigators that Ramos sexually assaulted her on multiple occasions during the summer of 2015 through December 2015.

Ramos was a coach with the Catholic Youth Organization (CYO) at the time.

The sheriff’s office said it it unknown whether there are other victims in this case. Anyone who may have been victimized is asked to call the Bexar County Sheriff’s Office Tip Line at (210) 335-TIPS.

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PENNSYLVANIA
Tribune-Democrat

By Dave Sutor
dsutor@tribdem.com

Pope Francis’ recently released decree that outlined procedures for investigating bishops who allegedly fail to protect victims of child sexual abuse would not likely apply to former Bishop Joseph Adamec, according to one of Pennsylvania’s prominent Canon law lawyers and the leader of a victims’ advocacy group.

By releasing the document, the pontiff wanted to point out the “grave reasons” a diocese leader can be removed from office include “the negligence of the bishops in the exercise of their office, in particular in relation to cases of sexual abuse of minors and vulnerable adults.”

Earlier this year, the Pennsylvania Office of Attorney General released a grand jury report, accusing the Roman Catholic Diocese of Altoona–Johnstown of carrying out a decades-long cover-up of child sexual abuse.

Adamec, who served as the diocese’s bishop from 1987 to 2011, was criticized for allegedly protecting accused priests.

However, since Adamec is no longer the bishop, Professor Nicholas P. Cafardi, dean emeritus for the Duquesne University School of Law, cannot see how the pope’s guidelines and punishments would apply to him since “He has no office to deprive him of.”

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NEW YORK
New York Daily News

KENNETH LOVETT
MICHAEL O’KEEFFE
STEPHEN REX BROWN
NEW YORK DAILY NEWS
Monday, June 6, 2016

The head of the Catholic Church in Brooklyn offered a $5,000 bribe to an Albany politician in exchange for dropping her support for the reform of a state law preventing victims of child sexual abuse from seeking justice, the pol claimed Monday.

Assemblywoman Margaret Markey, who has for a decade advocated for an overhaul of the state’s statute of limitations on claims of child sexual abuse, said she turned down the unholy hush money from Bishop Nicholas DiMarzio in 2010.

“I’m not a billionaire, but I don’t need $5,000 to buy me off,” Markey told the Daily News.

The offer came across as a payoff, not a campaign donation, she added.

The Brooklyn Diocese called the allegation “patently false.”

“The bishop did not, would not and has never attempted to bribe an elected official or anyone else,” said Carolyn Erstad, a diocese spokeswoman. “This is a very serious allegation against a clergyman with an impeccable reputation. It is beyond comprehension that an elected official would not report an alleged crime of this kind to the proper authorities. She did not report it. It is not true. And it would be irresponsible for your paper to print it.” …

Markey (D-Queens) said DiMarzio, who as head of the Brooklyn Diocese presides over 1.5 million Catholics, invited her into his chancery at the now-shuttered Bishop Ford High School on Prospect Park West in early 2010.

A nun was present when he offered the money, she recalled.

Markey’s spokesman Michael Armstrong said that DiMarzio suggested to Markey that the money would go toward therapy for one of her family members who had been sexually abused as a child.

After declining the offer, DiMarzio targeted her with robocalls as she ran for reelection against Republican challenger Anthony Nunziato, saying she did not have Catholic values, Markey said.

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WASHINGTON
ipetitions

Dear Archbishop Sartain:

We, as Catholics of the Archdiocese of Seattle, believe that the profound damage and alienation caused by the clergy abuse crisis remains with us and that our young people continue to be vulnerable because of the incomplete response to this crisis by the Archdiocese. We know of your deep concern for abuse victims and appreciate your willingness to extend pastoral care to them. We also acknowledge that some procedures have been put in place to safeguard our youth. However, we believe that more is needed if we are to truly protect our youth, heal the wounds caused by this horrific evil, and address the continued alienation of Catholics from their Church. We urge you to:

1. Establish and implement a protocol for the release of all files, memoranda, settlements and communications related to credible claims of abuse by all clergy and religious who have ministered in this Archdiocese or will do so in the future (with the names of victims redacted). Doing so would meet the expectation set forth in the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops’ “Charter for the Protection of Children and Young People” (Dallas Charter) that there be “open and transparent communication with the public.” (Article 7)

2. Consistent with the intent of the Dallas Charter, empower a reconstituted Review Board that would have: a) broad, independent access to all Church files concerning clergy abuse of minors, and b) authority to investigate and make recommendations as to policy and discipline for all matters relating to such abuse in the Archdiocese – past, present and future. The majority of members on this independent Review Board should be selected by the laity and all of its recommendations made public unless the Archbishop explains in writing to the Catholic community the reasons for not doing so.

We urge you to take these actions because the interests of abuse victims must be placed above those of the abusers and those who protected them. A final and definitive revelation of the historical truth regarding clergy abuse, including attempts to cover up acts of abuse and shield abusers, will provide some measure of justice to the victims who have suffered so horribly. Although many victims continue to come forward, we know, too, there are many others who have and will continue to suffer in silence. We must honor them as well by disclosing the whole truth of what has happened.

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WASHINGTON
National Catholic Reporter

Dan Morris-Young | Jun. 6, 2016

An open letter in the form of an online petition asks Seattle Archbishop J. Peter Sartain to address what it charges is the archdiocese’s “incomplete response” to the “clergy abuse crisis.”

Posted late Sunday, June 5, the petition acknowledges the archbishop’s “deep concern for abuse victims” and “willingness to extend pastoral care to them,” but claims “more is needed if we are to truly protect our youth, heal the wounds caused by this horrific evil, and address the continued alienation of Catholics from their Church.”

The letter specifically asks:

* For the public release of “all files, memoranda, settlements and communications related to credible claims of abuse by all clergy and religious who have ministered in this archdiocese or will do so in the future”;
* For the empowerment of “a reconstituted Review Board” that would have “broad, independent access to all Church files concerning clergy abuse of minors,” and the “authority to investigate and make recommendations as to policy and discipline for all matters relating to such abuse in the Archdiocese — past, present and future”;
* That the majority of a new Review Board be “selected by the laity and all of its recommendations made public unless the Archbishop explains in writing to the Catholic community the reasons for not doing so.”

The demands are all “consistent with the Dallas Charter,” the narrative stated, alluding to the U.S. bishops’ Charter for the Protection of Children and Young People issued following the bishops’ historic 2002 gathering in Dallas to deal with explosive clerical abuse revelations. The document was revised in 2011.

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VIRGINIA
Roman Catholic Diocese of Arlington

2016-05-28

Rev. Kevin J. Downey, O.F.M., a priest of the Franciscan Friars of the Holy Name Province, has been placed on administrative leave pending investigation of an allegation of sexual misconduct involving a male minor in 1990 in another state. The investigation is in its early phases, and no final determination has yet been made regarding the allegation.

Rev. Downey denies the accusation. Like all priests, diocesan employees and volunteers who work with children, he underwent an official background check prior to beginning his service in the Catholic Diocese of Arlington.

Law enforcement in the jurisdiction where the incident is alleged to have occurred have been notified, and the diocese and the Holy Name Province will cooperate fully with any law enforcement investigation.

Rev. Downey has served as pastor of St. Francis of Assisi Parish in Triangle since 2011. Previously, he served as pastor of St. Mary’s Parish in Pompton Lakes, N.J., from 2002-2011, as pastor of St. Bonaventure Parish in Allegany, N.Y., from 1999 to 2001, as parochial vicar of St. Mary’s Parish in Pompton Lakes, N.J., from 1993 to 1999, and as parochial vicar at St. Francis Parish in Raleigh, N.C., from 1991 to 1993. He served as executive vice-president and vice-president for development at Quincy University in Illinois from 1983 to 1991.

Rev. John F. O’Connor, O.F.M., has been appointed as parochial administrator of St. Francis of Assisi Catholic Church.

The diocese encourages anyone who knows of any information related to this case, or of any misconduct or abuse on the part of any cleric or employee of the diocese, to notify civil authorities, as well as to reach out to the diocesan Victim Assistance Coordinators at 703-841-2530.

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GUAM
Guam Daily Post

By Tony Azios | Post News Staff

The Vatican has appointed an apostolic administrator with temporary authority to govern the archdiocese of Agaña while Archbishop Anthony Apuron faces fallout from at least two allegations of sexual abuse.

On Monday, Pope Francis named Archbishop Savio Tai Fai Hon, the secretary of the Congregation for the Evangelization of Peoples, as apostolic administrator of the Archdiocese of Agaña. A late night press release from the Archdiocese of Agaña confirms that while Apuron remains archbishop of Agaña, Archbishop Hon has been given temporary authority to govern the archdiocese.

The release claims that Hon’s appointment follows a request for Apuron for an apostolic administrator pending the investigation of an abuse allegation.

On Saturday, Pope Francis established new legal procedures to remove bishops deemed negligent in protecting members of their flock from pedophile priests. Specifically, it states that negligence in handling abuse cases is a cause for dismissal.

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UNITED STATES
Washington Post

[Abuse-Enabling Bishops Who Resigned or Were Removed – BishopAccountability.org]

By Editorial Board June 6

POPE FRANCIS has made empathy for the downtrodden and the powerless a hallmark of his papacy, but he has been less deft in dealing with the Roman Catholic Church’s own most defenseless victims — children sexually abused by clergy. At the outset of his visit last fall to the United States, the pope spoke feelingly of the pain and suffering endured by American bishops who had withstood the ongoing clergy sex-abuse scandal. His words of sympathy for the actual victims of that abuse — those whose lives have been scarred and destroyed by priests — came on the final day of his journey and, to many survivors, seemed nearly an afterthought.

Three years into his papacy, Francis is trying to hit the reset button on his sputtering efforts to add muscle to the church’s stated policy of zero tolerance for clerical abuse. After trying and failing for 12 months to establish a special Vatican tribunal that would hold negligent bishops accountable, he has issued a decree, in the form of an apostolic letter, serving notice that bishops can and should be removed from office if they actively or passively sanction sex abuse in their dioceses.

That Francis is making such a proclamation now, 14 years after explosive revelations of the church’s complicity in allowing and covering up the sexual abuse of minors in the United States , is a measure of how slowly, partially and inadequately the Vatican has come to terms with the scandal. Even after countless disclosures, year after year, Catholic bishops — who in many cases shuffled pedophile priests from one parish to another, allowing them to abuse again and again — continue to enjoy something approaching official impunity from Rome.

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GUAM
Catholic News Agency

Hagatna, Guam, Jun 6, 2016 / 04:00 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- After sex abuse and other allegations were leveled against Guam’s archbishop, Pope Francis on Monday appointed a Vatican official to be the local Church’s apostolic administrator while an investigation is carried out.

On June 6, Archbishop Savio Hon Tai-Fai, secretary of the Congregation for the Evangelization of Peoples, was appointed apostolic administrator “sede plena” of the Archdiocese of Agaña, which serves Catholics in Guam, a U.S. island territory in the northwestern Pacific Ocean.

The appointment was made shortly after Archbishop Anthony Apuron of Agaña was accused of sexual abuse dating from the 1970s, and of failing to implement strong policies on the handling of clerical sex abuse.

As apostolic administrator “sede plena,” Archbishop Hon will govern the archdiocese because its ordinary is incapable of doing so. Though Archbishop Apuron remains archbishop, he will not exercise his office while Archbishop Hon remains as apostolic administrator.

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NORTHERN IRELAND
BBC News

A religious minister has never been prosecuted despite admitting abuse linked to a state-run home in Belfast, an inquiry has heard.

The pastor told the RUC in the 1980s that he abused a boy who was being cared for at the former Bawnmore children’s home in north Belfast.

The inquiry also heard from counsel Christine Smith that the former care worker told the RUC in the mid-80s about “other sexual incidents involving other people in the various places” where he worked.

The Historical Institutional Abuse Inquiry was told that the police wanted to pursue a prosecution against the man who cannot be named.

However, prosecutors decided against it because the incidents linked to the Bawnmore boy happened 17 years previously.

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VATICAN CITY
Vatican Radio

(Vatican Radio) Pope Francis on Monday named Archbishop Savio Tai-Fai Hon, currently serving as secretary of the Congregation for the Evangelisation of Peoples, to the post of Apostolic Administrator of the archdiocese of Agana, on the Pacific island of Guam.

The archdiocese in the U.S territory said last week it had hired a top law firm and was working with an independent investigator to examine accusations that Archbishop Anthony Apuron, had sexually abused two boys in the 1970s.

The archbishop has denied the allegations and has not been charged with any crime.

Pope Francis’ nomination came two days after he issued a new document establishing norms for the removal of Church leaders who have been negligent in protecting children or vulnerable adults from abuse.

Hong Kong born Archbishop Savio Tai-Fai Hon has been a member of the International Theological Commission since 2004 and the number two at the Congregation for the Evangelisation of Peoples since 2010.

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GUAM
KUAM

By Sabrina Salas Matanane

The Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests (SNAP) has released the following statement following the Vatican naming a new apostolic administrator for the Archdiocese of Agana in light of the abuse allegations that have been brought up against Archbishop Anthony Apuron, which he has vehemently denied.

We are encouraged that the Vatican has taken this first step. Archbishop Anthony Sablan Apuron is now a twice-accused predator archbishop—who has also been accused of intimidating victims, bullying Catholics, and manipulating church rules regarding abuse to protect himself.

But this is only a first step.

We urge the new administrator Archbishop Savio Hon Tai-Fai to engage in a complete and independent investigation of the allegations against Apuron and act upon the findings swiftly and appropriately.

We hope that the new administrator reaches out to and works with victims and local Catholics who have demanded transparency and change. Without their bravery and tenacity, Apuron’s alleged crimes would never have been exposed.

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PENNSYLVANIA
PennLIve

By Ivey DeJesus | idejesus@pennlive.com

At 72, Nancy O’Brien has been a devout Catholic all her life.

On Sunday, O’Brien walked out of Mass in disgust. She did so after her priest at St. Anthony of Padua in Ambler, just outside Philadelphia, read a letter from the head of the archdiocese encouraging parishioners to help defeat a proposed legislation that would reform the state’s child sex crimes.

St. Anthony’s wasn’t the only parish to receive the letter. All 219 parishes across Philadelphia were read the letter from Archbishop Charles Chaput urging them to contact their lawmakers by mail or telephone and encourage them to vote against House Bill 1947, which would reform the statute of limitations.

“It was bull****,” O’Brien said on Monday. “I don’t have to listen to this bull**** anymore. I’ve been a practicing Catholic all my life. I’m not going to be anything else. I thought it was an insult. I know what’s been going on.”

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MINNESOTA
St. Cloud Times

Editorial

With the closing of a temporary three-year window that lifted the statute of limitations on allegations of sexual abuse of minors in Minnesota, a sorry set of statistics has emerged:

* Seventy-four claims were made against the Diocese of St. Cloud for clergy sex abuse of minors during the window.
* Claims were made against 31 members of the clergy who had served in the diocese.
* Of 131 parishes in the diocese, 30 were named in the claims.
* Eleven clergy members named in the lawsuits weren’t on a list of “clergy identified” released by the diocese in 2014.

Tragic. Sad.

The state Legislature made a good decision by opening the three-year window to file claims. While there is no way to repair completely the damage suffered by victims of abuse by clergy, it may give them some comfort.

The diocese has said none of the clergy named in the claims are currently in parish ministry.

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MINNESOTA
Chronicle of Philanthropy

The federal judge overseeing the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis’s bankruptcy is weighing a call by victims of clergy sexual abuse to include hundreds of millions of dollars from church-affiliated charities among its assets, reports The Wall Street Journal.

The archdiocese has proposed setting aside at least $65 million to help compensate about 450 victims. Lawyers for the victims say the archdiocese is significantly undervaluing its assets by not including hundreds of related but legally distinct entities such as schools, parishes, and charitable foundations that they claim are effectively controlled by the archbishop.

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TEXAS
KURV

It will be at least another month before attorneys for former McAllen priest John Feit will be able to inspect a part of the San Juan Basilica in connection with the 56-year-old murder of beauty queen and school teacher Irene Garza.

During a court hearing today, prosecutors and defense attorneys told the judge it’s taken longer than expected to coordinate the inspection. District Court Judge Luis Singleterry last month ruled defense attorneys could inspect a building where it’s been alleged that Feit kept Garza, before her body was dumped into a canal.

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GUAM
Religion News Service

By Rosie Scammell

(RNS) Mounting accusations of sexual abuse against the archbishop of Guam have prompted Pope Francis to name a Vatican official to oversee the Catholic Church on the Pacific island territory while the charges are investigated.

The decision announced Monday (June 6) to force Archbishop Anthony Sablan Apuron, who has led the Agana Archdiocese for 30 years, to yield his authority, at least temporarily, is the latest sign that Francis is taking tougher steps to tackle the sexual abuse crisis.

Over the weekend, the Vatican announced that the pope had signed off on new measures to remove bishops who fail to respond to abuse allegations.

In the case of Guam’s archbishop, however, the accusations are that Apuron himself abused boys during the 1970s.

The charges emerged last month when 52-year-old Roy Taitague Quintanilla claimed while he was an altar boy Apuron molested him. “I cried then, and I’ve never stopped crying,” Quintanilla was quoted as saying by Pacific Daily News.

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ITALY
Can-India

Rome, June 6 (IANS/AKI) A court in southern Italy on Monday sentenced a Calabrian priest to four years in jail for paying for sex with minors.

The court in Reggio Calabria found Father Antonello Tropea, 44, guilty of paying 20 euros for sex in his car and of possessing child pornography.

Tropea was arrested in December after highway police spotted him parked in his car with an under-age boy.

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TEXAS
The Monitor

LORENZO ZAZUETA-CASTRO | STAFF WRITER

EDINBURG — The trial of a former priest accused of killing a former beauty queen and McAllen school teacher will be delayed at least a month after attorneys met in court Monday.

John Bernard Feit was all smiles moments before a scheduled hearing Monday inside the 92nd state District Court.

The 83-year-old former priest is accused in the April 1960 death of Irene Garza, a schoolteacher and beauty queen who was last seen going to confession at McAllen’s Sacred Heart Church. Her body was found five days later after it was dumped in a canal.

During the brief status hearing, Feit’s attorneys, O. Rene Flores and Ricardo Flores, and the state’s attorneys Michael Garza and Krsytine Ramon, after speaking to church officials in San Juan, said they are closer to a walk-through date to inspect one of the alleged crime scenes.

“We have scheduled a meeting to inspect the physical evidence but due to counsel’s schedule and my schedule we have been unable to coordinate that; we’ll get that done with McAllen (police),” Garza said. “An issue arose this morning concerning the order that was entered regarding the inspection of the basilica, the order was brought but it needed to be, and we were able to narrow that order down to a specific location. Counsel for the basilica is writing a letter of protocol, which will give us a specified time, date, which people will be present, and where exactly we will be directing them.”

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VATICAN CITY
Crux

Inés San Martín
June 6, 2016
VATICAN CORRESPONDENT

Archbishop Anthony Apuron of Guam faces multiple accusations of abuse from decades ago, and on Monday Pope Francis named a senior Vatican official as “apostolic administrator” of his archdiocese while an investigation plays out.

In his latest effort to show resolve against clerical sexual abuse, Pope Francis on Monday appointed an apostolic administrator to take over the Church in Guam, where the island territory’s archbishop faces multiple allegations of abusing minors in the 1970s while he was a parish priest.

Until the situation surrounding Archbishop Anthony Apuron is clarified, his archdiocese, Agaña, will be supervised by the Hong Kong-born Archbishop Savio Hon Tai-Fai, currently the number two official of the Vatican’s Congregation for the Evangelization of Peoples.

Tai-Fai was appointed apostolic administrator “sede plena,” a rare practice used for grave or special reasons, typically when the current bishop is either incapacitated by illness or advanced age, or unable to govern for some other serious motive.

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CANADA
680 News

by THE CANADIAN PRESS
Posted Jun 6, 2016

ST. JOHN’S, N.L. – The Mount Cashel civil trial heard Monday that three boys separately told the same priest in confession they were being abused by Christian Brothers.

The boys lived in the orphanage in St. John’s, N.L., in the 1950s and can’t be named as part of a publication ban.

Their agreed statements of facts were entered as part of a lawsuit arguing the Roman Catholic Episcopal Corp. of St. John’s should compensate former residents for alleged abuse dating back to the 1940s.

Lawyer Geoff Budden represents about 60 clients and says the archdiocese knew or ought to have known about sexual and physical abuse but didn’t stop it.

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CALIFORNIA
Courthouse News Service

By JEFF D. GORMAN

(CN) — The Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Los Angeles is not off the hook for two men’s claims that a monsignor molested them decades ago, a California appeals court ruled.

Juan H.J. Doe and Juan H.L. Doe claimed that Monsignor Benjamin Hawkes molested them from the mid-1970s to the early to mid-1980s. During that period, the boys were ages 14 through 21.

Hawkes, who died in 1985, “lavished them with meals, clothes, travel and money,” according to court records. He also allegedly financed trips and paid for J. Doe’s private school tuition.

The monsignor, who worked for the Los Angeles archdiocese at the time, “communicated in words and deeds that the compensation he was providing for them was for the abuse he was committing upon them, and that by providing for [them] in this manner, Hawkes believed he owned [them],” according to the two men’s lawsuit.

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CANADA
The Telegram

Barb Sweet
Published on June 06, 2016

Three agreed statements of facts were submitted to the Mount Cashel civil trial Monday from 1950s-era residents who told their parish priest during confession they were sexual abused by Christian Brothers.

Episcopal Corp. of St. John’s lawyer Susan Adam Metzler speaks with Father Frank Puddister and Archbishop Martin Currie (left) at the Mount Cashel civil trial Monday. Puddister is testifying Tuesday. — Photo by Barb Sweet/The Telegram

Those statements and some 1990 videotape from the Hughes Inquiry formed a short day as the trial resumed after a roughly one-month break.

It was the 14th non-consecutive day of testimony in this trial — a John Doe lawsuit against the RC Episcopal Corp. of St. John’s seeks compensation and involves four test cases that claim the church should be held liable for the physical and sexual abuse of boys at the orphanage by certain Christian Brothers during the period late 1940s to early 1960s. The test cases represent about 60 claimants in the case being pursued by Budden and Associates.

The church contends it did not run the orphanage, therefore is not responsible for actions of the lay order Christian Brothers there.

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NEW YORK
Staten Island Advance

By Daniel Leddy | For the Staten Island Advance

STATEN ISLAND, N.Y. — As the current legislative session in Albany winds down, efforts are intensifying to pass legislation that would either extend or eliminate the statute of limitations for both civil and criminal cases involving the sexual abuse of children.

The issues are complex, however, and not resolvable according to whether legislators are “with the kids or with the predators,” as a Manhattan tabloid has been screaming virtually every day.

Few would dispute that those sexually abused as children deserve to be compensated for having endured such ordeals, some so horrific that they entail catastrophic, lifelong consequences.

At the same time, charges of sexual abuse are easily made and sometimes false, particularly when traceable to the machinations of warring parents engaged in custody and visitation disputes. This, and the ever-present possibility of false accusations generally, underscores the need to provide accused individuals with a fair chance to defend themselves against allegations so heinous that they ruin reputations, decimate finances, and put people behind bars.

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GUAM
Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Agana

Mr. Stephen Martinez, on June 1, 2016, released to the media a number of malicious and intentionally false claims against our Archbishop. Regarding these calumnious statements, the archdiocese points out that:

We are facing one allegation – contradicted by other testimonies – and some unsubstantiated rumors of sexual abuse. We are dealing with unproven allegations, not with proven crimes. To insult the archbishop as Mr. Martinez did is not only against any Christian standard, but also below any standard of due process which have to be granted to every person: a man is innocent until proven guilty and the Archbishop has adamantly denied these allegations.

The Archbishop has always taken very seriously any allegations, and even rumors, of sexual abuse and acted on them: this is what he did in the case of Fr. Paul Gofigan, who was removed when he refused to restrict from active and voluntary church activities a registered sex offender and murderer; this is what he did when he limited the faculties of Fr. John Wadeson following the surfacing of an old unproven allegation (subsequently cleared by the Archdiocese of Los Angeles); and, lately, when Fr. Luis Camacho was removed as pastor, and had his ministry limited, when his only accuser was the same Stephen Martinez who was reporting rumors.

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GUAM
Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Agana

On June 6, 2016, following a request from Archbishop Anthony Sablan Apuron for an apostolic administrator pending the investigation of an abuse allegation, Pope Francis named Archbishop Savio Tai Fai Hon, the secretary of the Congregation for the Evangelization of Peoples, as apostolic administrator “sede plena” of the Archdiocese of Agaña, Guam.

The appointment of an apostolic “sede plena” means that while the administrator will discharge the archdiocesan pastoral duties, Archbishop Anthony Sablan Apuron remains the Archbishop of Agana.

The Archdiocese and the Archbishop warmly welcome Archbishop Hon to Guam.

Download Full Statement

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AUSTRALIA
J-Wire

June 6, 2016 by Henry Benjamin

A member of Melbourne’s Adass Yisroel community has told J-Wire that no-one is aware of anyone within the community funding Malka Leifer who lives in Israel but is wanted by authorities in Australia to face 74 charges of child sexual abuse.

The offences took place when Leifer was employed by the Adass Yisroel school as its principal . She fled Melbourne in 2008 when allegations were surfacing and has avoided extradition on ten occasions to Australia failing to appear in court on psychiatric grounds.

Melbourne’s “The Herald Sun” has reported that it “can reveal a bank account linked to Mrs Leifer is being topped up by Adass community members here”.

The report stated that “deposits are being made over the counter at a bank in Elsternwick”. Elsternwick borders the suburb of Ripponlea, home to the Adass community.

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NEW YORK
New York Daily News

BY
EDGAR SANDOVAL
MEGAN CERULLO
STEPHEN REX BROWN

The Catholic Church’s powerbrokers should listen to their better angels!

That was the message from city parishioners in favor of changing a law that prevents many victims of child sex abuse from seeking justice. Current state law prohibits the victims from bringing criminal charges or civil claims against abusers after the victim’s 23rd birthday.

“It should definitely be extended. It’s a terrible thing, and I know people who have had encounters and I feel very sorry for them. I don’t think that’s what our religion should be,” said Annette Gould, who attends Masses at St. Patrick’s Cathedral.

Araceli Colato, who had just attended the Sunday service at the storied house of worship, agreed.

“It’s never too late for justice. People deserve a say, even if years have passed. I understand why the church wants to keep the law as is, but it’s not fair,” Colato, 27, said. “In most cases, victims become adults. But they can’t do anything about it.”

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ROME
National Catholic Reporter

Joshua J. McElwee | Jun. 6, 2016

ROME

Pope Francis’ move to grant several Vatican offices authority to initiate removal of Catholic bishops negligent in their response to clergy sexual abuse has drawn mixed reviews from canon lawyers and survivors’ advocates, who say the pontiff’s action may not go far enough in stemming the abuse crisis.

The experts are expressing confusion over why the pontiff chose not to go forward with a proposal from his Pontifical Commission for the Protection of Minors for a new tribunal tasked specifically with judging bishops in their handling of sexual abuse and instead directed four existing Vatican congregations to take on the work.

In one example, a canon lawyer at the Catholic University of America tweeted that the pope had promised the creation of that new tribunal more than a year ago.

With Saturday’s publication of the motu proprio Come una madre amorevole (“Like a loving mother”), that tribunal “seems to get [a] first class funeral,” Kurt Martens continued.

“Everyone seems to be excited about the new [motu proprio], but there is really no change,” he said in a later conversation with NCR. “That which was already done is now put in a text format.”

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UNITED STATES
National Catholic Reporter

Michael Sean Winters | Jun. 6, 2016

The Vatican took an enormously large step towards completing the Catholic church’s assault on the scourge of sexual abuse by clergy on Saturday when Pope Francis issued his motu proprio entitled “Come una madre amorevole” or, in English, “Like a loving mother.” My colleague Joshua McElwee was yet again first with the story and you can find his report here.

The document helps confront the last, critical piece of the puzzle in any effective strategy to confront the scourge of clergy sex abuse: episcopal accountability. Until bishops know that they will be held accountable for their actions and, perhaps more importantly, for their inaction, all the other architecture for protecting children was sitting on a shaky foundation. You can train ministers who work with children. You can adopt norms like those in the Dallas Charter that established zero tolerance for priests and deacons who abuse a child sexually. You can require lay review boards and have diocesan audits. But, unless the bishops who oversee all this know that they are accountable for enforcing the norms and the culture of zero tolerance, it is easy to see how there can be backsliding.

In far too many depositions pertaining to conduct after, repeat, after, the Dallas Charter on Child Protection was adopted in 2002, we see bishops and other diocesan officials thinking that they can handle Fr. X or that they can get Fr. Y to amend his ways. No, no, no. This is too close to the kind of thinking that got us into the scandal in the first place: That also had a heavy dose of thinking a cover up would somehow serve the church, to say nothing of the careers of the bishops and clergy doing the covering up. But, the idea that we can ignore the rules that are in place to handle something on our own, on an issue like this, has proven to be the opening wedge for a regime of laxity and, consequently, the endangerment of children.

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VATICAN CITY
Vatican Information Service – Bollettino

Vatican City, 6 June 2016 – The Holy Father has appointed Msgr. Savio Hon Tai-Fai, S.D.B., as apostolic administrator “sede plena” of the archdiocese of Agaña, Guam, U.S.A.

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GUAM
Pacific Daily News

Haidee V Eugenio, Pacific Daily News June 7, 2016

Pope Francis named on Monday night (Guam time) a new apostolic administrator “sede plena” for the Archdiocese of Agana, pending investigation of allegations of sexual abuse against Archbishop Anthony Apuron.

While Apuron remains archbishop of Agana, Archbishop Savio Tai Fai Hon — as apostolic administrator — has been given temporary authority to govern the Archdiocese of Agana.

“The appointment of an apostolic administrator ‘sede plena’ means that while the administrator will discharge the archdiocesan pastoral duties, Archbishop Anthony Sablan Apuron remains the Archbishop of Agana,” the Archdiocese of Agana confirmed in a statement sent after 11 p.m. Monday.

This may well be the first time ever — or at least the first in recent history — that the Vatican made such an appointment in a U.S. territory.

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VATICAN CITY
Catholic Register

BY CAROL GLATZ, CATHOLIC NEWS SERVICE
June 6, 2016

VATICAN CITY – Pope Francis will set up a panel of legal experts to help him in deciding whether to remove a religious superior or bishop from office for failing to protect minors and vulnerable adults from sex abuse.

Vatican offices will continue to investigate claims of negligence on the part of bishops, ordinaries or religious superiors under their jurisdiction. But the Pope — who makes the final decision about a bishop’s removal from office — will now be assisted by a papally appointed “college of jurists,” according to procedures that take effect Sept. 5.

In an apostolic letter given “motu proprio” (on his own initiative), dated June 4, the Pope reaffirmed that bishops of a diocese or eparchy and those responsible for other kinds of particular churches can be “legitimately removed” for negligence.

In order for it to be grounds for removal, such negligence — either through omission or commission — will have had to cause “serious harm to others,” including individuals or a community, the letter said, and “the harm can be physical, moral, spiritual” or to property.

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NEW YORK
Catholic League

Bill Donohue comments on today’s front-page story in the New York Daily News:

The Daily News stooped to a new low yesterday when it assigned reporters to interview the faithful as they exited St. Patrick’s Cathedral, and other Catholic churches in New York City; they were asked about proposed changes in the statute of limitations for offenses involving the sexual abuse of minors.

There were no reporters assigned to a synagogue over the weekend, even though Orthodox Jews are united with Catholics in opposing the “look-back” provision of some bills that would allow alleged victims to bring a lawsuit for offenses that occurred decades ago.

Why the discrimination? Why were only Catholics badgered as they left a service? This blatant expression of religious bias is of a piece with a lot of reporting by the Daily News lately—it has been on a tear against the Catholic Church.

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UNITED STATES
The Worthy Adversary

Statement by Joelle Casteix of Newport Beach, CA, Western Regional Director of SNAP, Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests

We are encouraged that the Vatican has taken this first step. Archbishop Anthony Sablan Apuron is now a twice-accused predator archbishop—who has also been accused of intimidating victims, bullying Catholics, and manipulating church rules regarding abuse to protect himself.

But this is only a first step.

We urge the new administrator Archbishop Savio Hon Tai-Fai to engage in a complete and independent investigation of the allegations against Apuron and act upon the findings swiftly and appropriately.

We hope that the new administrator reaches out to and works with victims and local Catholics who have demanded transparency and change. Without their bravery and tenacity, Apuron’s alleged crimes would never have been exposed.

We also encourage anyone who has seen or suspected abuse to report immediately to civil authorities.

Finally, we ask Guam’s lawmakers to revisit legislation that allows victims of sexual abuse to use the civil courts to expose their abuser and the organizations that cover-up and facilitate abuse. It is only through this kind of legislation—that includes exposing organizations that hire and protect predators—that the people of Guam can learn the true scope and scale of the cover-up of sexual abuse.

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GUAM
KUAM

By Sabrina Salas Matanane

Catholic World News reports that Archbishop Savio Tai Fai Hon has been appointed by the Pope as apostolic administrator of the Archdiocese of Agana. The article on catholiculture.org states the appointment follows recent abuse allegations that were made against Archbishop Anthony Apuron.

In the past two weeks, two people have come forward alleging sexual molestation. Roy Quintanilla alleged he was sexually abused by the Archbishop when he was an altar server at Mt. Carmel Church in Agat where Apuron was a priest at the time. His story, prompted former Guam resident Doris Concepcion to break her silence after more than a decade. She said her son while on his death bed told her too had been molested when Apuron was a priest in Agat. Like Quintanilla, her son was an altar server. The Archbishop has denied the allegations.

During a recent press conference held by Deacon Steven Martinez, a former Sex Abuse Response Coordinator for the Archdiocese of Agana, said the local church’s sex abuse policy was “flawed” and claimed the Archbishop purposely kept the policy weak. According to the Archdiocese of Agana’s sex abuse policy the Archbishop has control of all investigations.

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UNITED STATES
Religion News Service – Spiritual Politics

By Mark Silk

A year ago, Pope Francis announced that a special tribunal would be set up within the Vatican’s Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF) to judge bishops accused of covering up the abuse of minors. Three months ago, the AP’s Nicole Winfield reported that the tribunal was going nowhere: no special secretary for discipline had been appointed, no staff assigned, no resources allocated, nada.

On Saturday, Francis told the CDF to forget about it. In an apostolic letter written on his own authority (motu proprio), he announced that beginning in September, such accusations — involving not only bishops but also heads of religious orders — will be handled by the Vatican “congregations” charged with overseeing them. The final decision will be up to the pope, acting with the assistance of a new “college” of jurists.

Unsurprisingly, SNAP’s David Clohessy was unimpressed. “Instead of just sacking bad bishops, or turning over abuse records to law enforcement, the Vatican is setting up yet another untested, internal church “process” to purportedly deal with bishops who ignore or conceal child sex crimes,” he said in a statement.

With due respect, Clohessy is wrong. The pope has done something far more consequential than setting up another internal process.

The apostolic letter, titled “Like a Loving Mother,” declares that not dealing properly with abuse accusations is an administrative failure sufficiently serious to warrant removal from office, even if there is no serious moral culpability on the bishop’s part (anche senza grave colpa morale da parte sua). In other words, there’s no need to prove that the bishop personally engaged in a cover-up. If it happened on his watch, he can be removed.

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NEW YORK
News 12

[with video]

BROOKLYN – Hundreds of people walked across the Brooklyn Bridge Sunday to raise awareness against sexual abuse against children.

Victims of abuse, survivors, parents, children and other supporters all united at Cadman Plaza Park for the “Walk for a Window.”

The public walk was created by abuse survivor Anna Wagner as a demonstration for children’s civil rights.

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NEW YORK
News 12

RAMAPO – Orthodox Jewish leaders and Rockland County officials are at odds over the county’s move to re-inspect dozens of schools for fire safety violations after a Ramapo town fire inspector was accused of missing hazardous conditions.

Many, but not all, of the schools believed to have wrongfully passed inspections are private yeshiva schools.

The Orthodox leaders say their community is being targeted by the county.

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UNITED STATES
Frum Follies

[with video]

I don’t know whether to laugh or cry about the latest pronouncements about child sex abuse by Agudath Israel of America’s lead figure, the Novominsker Rebbe, Rabbi Yaakov Perlow, on Sunday, May 26th at the Annual Convention of Torah Umesorah, the national umbrella organization for ultra orthodox Jewish schools. Below is a full transcript of the videotaped talk with translations in parentheses and my annotations below each section.

One of the problems that we are facing, more today, that we weren’t aware of, and it has to be mentioned, for a number of reasons, is the abuse of young people, b’oifen gufni (physical abuse) and molestation, al d’avoinoseinu harabim (which because of our many sins), have gotten into our tzibur (community).

Rabbi Yaakov Perlow (RYP) is dishonest in claiming they were not aware if the problem for decades. In fact he participated in the cover-up of the sex abuse of Yehuda Kolko among many other cases where molesting teachers were allowed to keep their jobs.

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VATICAN CITY
ABC News

By NICOLE WINFIELD, ASSOCIATED PRESS
VATICAN CITY — Jun 6, 2016

Pope Francis on Monday named a special administrator for the Catholic Church on the Pacific island of Guam after its archbishop was accused of sexually abusing young boys and of keeping church abuse policies weak to protect himself.

The archdiocese of Agana in the U.S. territory said last week it had hired a law firm and independent investigator to look into the allegations against Archbishop Anthony Apuron and how abuse cases were handled by his church.

On Monday, Francis named Archbishop Savio Hon Tai-Fai, currently the No. 2 official in the Vatican’s mission office, as “apostolic administrator” for Agana. Apostolic administrators are often named to run dioceses or archdioceses temporarily before a new archbishop is named.

Apuron, who remains in his post, has vigorously denied allegations he sexually abused an altar boy and a now-deceased son of an Arizona woman in the 1970s. The allegations came to the fore last week after a church deacon accused Apuron of purposely keeping the archdioceses’ sexual abuse policy weak to protect himself.

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GUAM
Pacific News Center

Written by Janela Carrera

Father Jeff San Nicolas is the principal of Father Duenas Memorial School.

Guam – One priests are weighing in on the sex abuse scandal that hit the Catholic Church, but not to take sides. Father Jeff San Nicoals is offering a sense of hope and a perspective for those caught in the middle.

The community has heard from both sides of the sex abuse scandal. The victims who say they were molested at the hands of the archbishop himself, those who have criticized him for a flawed sex abuse policy and then there’s the archdiocese calling the allegations rumors and part of one big conspiracy to overthrow Archbishop Anthony Apuron.

But there are also those stuck in the middle. Father Jeff San Nicolas, who is the principal at Father Duenas Memorial School, spoke about the recent scandal, to offer some reassurance to all catholic faithful.

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VATICAN CITY
Bollettino

Il Santo Padre Francesco ha nominato S.E. Mons. Savio Hon Tai-Fai, S.D.B., Amministratore Apostolico «sede plena» dell’Arcidiocesi di Agaña, in Guam.

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GUAM
Catholic Culture

June 06, 2016

Pope Francis has named Archbishop Savio Tai Fai Hon, the secretary of the Congregation for the Evangelization of Peoples, as apostolic administrator of the Archdiocese of Agaña, Guam, following abuse allegations against Archbishop Anthony Sablan Apuron.

Archbishop Apuron, 70, has led the archdiocese since 1986. While Archbishop Apuron remains archbishop of Agaña, Archbishop Hon, as apostolic administrator, has been given temporary authority to govern the archdiocese.

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CHILE
Bio Bio

[A laity group in Osorno are collecting signatures for presentation to the City Council. They want Bishop Juan Barros declared “persona non grata.” They have opposed Bishop Barros because he allegedly participated in a cover-up of abuse by priest Fernando Karadima.]

“Persona no grata”, así demandarán los Laicos Organizados que se declare al obispo de Osorno, Juan Barros, para lo cual se encuentran reuniendo firmas, las que serán presentadas al Concejo Municipal.

La estrategia la comunicó el líder de la organización, Mario Vargas, quien sostuvo que la actual situación de la Diócesis Local requiere que el cuerpo colegiado local analice dicha moción.

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AUSTRALIA
Western Advocate

The Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse will host a community forum in Bathurst next week.

The session, run in conjunction with Relationships Australia NSW, will be at the Bathurst City Community Club from 5.30pm-7.30pm on Tuesday, June 14.

Commissioner Robert Fitzgerald will address the forum, provide an overview of the work of the Royal Commission and answer questions from the community.

Royal Commission CEO Philip Reed said the forum provided an important opportunity for interested individuals and community groups in Bathurst to learn more about the Royal Commission.

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VATICAN CITY
Natonal Catholic Reporter

Robert Mickens | Jun. 6, 2016

Pope Francis has begun another round of meetings with his Council of Cardinals (C9), a special advisory group he formed just a month after becoming Bishop of Rome to assist him in governing the universal church and reforming the Roman Curia.

The three-day gathering, which got underway today at the pope’s Santa Marta Residence, is the 15th time Francis has convened the C9 for discussions and consultations.

During their last sessions in April, the cardinal-advisors continued to review the work and mission of various Curia offices. They also discussed “criteria” for selecting new bishops and the role of apostolic nuncios.

“On the final day the council worked to gather, order and integrate the various contributions that have emerged from the meetings so far, so as to begin to structure an overall proposal to offer to the pope from the council in view of the new constitution [of the Roman Curia],” the Holy See Press Office said in a statement.

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UNITED STATES
Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests

For immediate release: Sunday, June 5, 2016

Statement by Barbara Dorris of St. Louis, Outreach Director of SNAP, the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests (314 503 0003cell, bdorris@SNAPnetwork.org)

Originally, Francis proposed

–making the cover up of child sex crimes an actual crime in church policy. Now, instead, he’s not. (According to the AP, “Francis appears to have backed off” and according to Kurt Martens, professor of canon law at The Catholic University of America, “There is nothing breaking here” and “what is significant about the new law is that it makes no mention of the proposal for the tribunal, which would have treated negligence as a crime and prosecuted it as such.)

[The Citizen]

–one agency to deal with complicit bishops. Now, instead, it’s allegedly going to be four agencies.

–a new agency. Now, instead, it’s supposedly going to be existing agencies (none of which has ever taken real action, or even showed interest in complicit bishops).

[VICE News]

–a “tribunal,” which sounds like he may be ‘cracking down.’ Now, instead, he writes of being a “loving mother,” which sounds a lot softer (and less like he’s actually trying to deter cover ups).

[Daily Caller]

It’s just like the US bishops’ “Dallas Charter.” When bishops TALKED about it, they used clear and tough language. But when they WROTE it, they got all legalistic and watered it down considerably.

Similarly, when Francis TALKED about holding complicit bishops responsible, he used clear and tough language. But when he finally WROTE something, he backed off his own strong words considerably.

These are not, however, our central concerns. Our biggest reservation is that again, church officials avoid and stonewall secular authorities and instead prefer and promote their own authority.

[SNAP]

We do a disservice to children when we become prematurely and unjustifiably complacent, and when we confuse words with deeds or procedures with action.

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AUSTRALIA
Courier

Melissa Cunningham and Olivia Shying
June 6, 2016

Catholic bishops found guilty of negligence when dealing with cases of sexual abuse can now be removed from office Pope Francis has announced.

The move will also apply to other senior Church officials and was unveiled in a papal decree on Sunday which said such cases would now fall under existing canon law allowing for prelates to be sacked for “serious reasons”. The Pope previously pledged zero tolerance for anyone in the church who abuses children and likened such abuse to a “satanic mass”.

Survivors have long demanded the Catholic Church do more to make bishops accountable for abuse in their dioceses. Ballarat survivor Andrew Collins remained sceptical about the Pope’s pledge. He feared it would not go far enough to eradicate the scourge of sexual abuse inside the Church.

“It’s not only bishops that must be removed but any religious clergy that have abused or covered it up,” Mr Collins said. “For a victim of child sexual abuse, there is nothing more frustrating than offending clergy getting convicted for raping children but then being able to remain a priest or a Christian brother.”

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MALAYSIA
Channel NewsAsia

By Sumisha Naidu, Malaysia Correspondent, Channel NewsAsia
Posted 06 Jun 2016

KUALA LUMPUR: Malaysian police on Monday (Jun 6) said they were focusing on rehabilitating the victims of British paedophile Richard Huckle and generating community awareness in the wake of revelations he sexually abused dozens of Malaysian children.

Huckle was only caught after an investigation by British authorities who monitored his online activities, which included prolifically uploading indecent images to paedophilia forums.

Huckle was arrested in December 2014 when he returned to Britain to spend Christmas. He has pleaded guilty to 71 counts of child sex offences.

However, Ong Chin Lan, assistant director at the Royal Malaysian police’s sexual, women and child investigation division, told Channel NewsAsia they would not be recording testimonies from victims.

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GUAM
KUAM

[with video]

By Krystal Paco

Is it just a coincidence? Over the weekend, Pope Francis laid down the law when it comes to Catholic bishops who turn a blind eye to child sex abuse allegations. His announcement comes amid an alleged sex abuse scandal here on Guam involving the head of the island’s Catholic church.

Last week former Archdiocese of Agana sexual abuse response coordinator Deacon Steve Martinez called out Archbishop Anthony Apuron – that Apuron purposely kept church policies weak in order to protect himself. Martinez’s allegations follow lack of action from Apuron in the midst of being accused of molesting two Agat altar boys decades ago. “Some people question why is Rome doing nothing? My comment to that is we don’t know if Rome’s doing nothing,” Martinez said in last week’s press conference. “All I can do from my point is hope and pray we can find a quick resolution to the problems we have.”

And it appears Martinez’s prayers were answered. Over the weekend, Pope Francis laid down the law in the Motu Proprio – that Catholic bishops guilty of negligence in sex abuse cases, especially sex abuse against minors, constitutes as a “grave reason” to remove a bishop from office. The new law follows longstanding demands by survivors of abuse that blame bishops for shuffling alleged pedophile priests rather than reporting them to police.

In an e-mailed response to KUAM News, Martinez believes the pope’s actions aren’t coincidental to what’s happening here on Guam. “I believe his message is in response to the many prayers and letters the people of Guam have been sending to Rome,” he wrote. “While the pope’s letter addresses the issue of bishops who mismanage sex abuse claims, it would logically and naturally extend to bishops who are also accused of sexual abuse themselves, since they have the same responsibility to apply the established policies, regardless of who the accused happens to be.”

He further adds that he continues to be disappointed in the chancery whose complete lack of respect and care for the accused is most devastating. Fortunately, those victims can find comfort in Pope Francis, who has become a champion of the helpless and abused.

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UNITED KINGDOM
The Guardian

Louise Tickle
Monday 6 June 2016

When a child dies or is catastrophically harmed because of abuse, there is often a knee-jerk political response. Perhaps the most chilling example for social workers was David Cameron’s announcement last year that they could find themselves jailed for five years for failing to act on evidence of child sexual abuse.

This raises concerns that professionals mandated to report reasonably-held suspicions of child abuse could be criminalised for failing to prevent it.

Despite this, proposals for mandatory reporting are included in the victims of crime bill designed by Keir Starmer MP, former director of public prosecutions. The measure was prompted, Starmer says, because “there [have been] too many historic examples of institutions choosing not to report when they have balanced that duty against other interests, such as their reputation.”

Now out of time for this session of parliament, Starmer must decide whether to reintroduce his bill next time or butcher it and create amendments to other legislation. Whichever option he chooses, campaigners for mandatory reporting are unimpressed at what they say is a lack of scope and detail in the proposed law.

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ZAMBIA
Zambia Daily Mail

THE Ministry of Home Affairs will today hold a meeting with the Evangelical Fellowship of Zambia (EFZ) and the Council of Churches in Zambia (CCZ) to get further details on allegations of criminality and sexual abuse by a self-styled Nigerian prophet Andrew Anointed.

Ministry of Home Affairs public relations officer Moses Suwali said following concerns by the EFZ and CCZ, it has been decided that more details are obtained from the two church mother bodies.

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INDIA
Huffington Post

By Rituparna Chatterjee

A notorious British paedophile who is accused of raping and sexually abusing numerous children in Malaysia’s impoverished communities, some even as young as six months old, allegedly posed as a volunteer at an orphanage in Bangalore and wanted to take photos and videos of children, according to reports.

In a series of chilling letters published by the Daily Mail, Huckle approached Indian pastor George Fernandes, 37, for a trip to his New Hope for Children Orphanage in June, 2013 after finding the name on Facebook. The unsuspecting pastor allowed Huckle, who introduced himself in the mail as “originally from UK but am studying an IT Degree in Malaysia”, to visit New Hope.

WASN’T LEFT ALONE WITH THE CHILDREN

“I’m very much interested in visiting your orphanages in Bangalore and Ambur. It would be a great experience for me to visit your orphanages, meet and help the children, and would be more than happy to use my photography and video editing skills to help make some promotional material for your ministry. God bless your ministry and I look forward to hearing back from you,” he wrote.

Fernandes even allowed Huckle to stay at his house, but according to the Daily Mail, at no point was he left alone with the children during his two-day stay and he is not believed to have abused any children at the orphanage.

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UNITED STATES
National Catholic Reporter

Mary Gail Frawley-O’Dea | Jun. 6, 2016

ANALYSIS Editor’s note: This is Part 3 of “Hell, hope and healing,” an NCR four-part series on sexual abuse. You can read the series introduction, Part 1, and Part 2, which are also available at the feature series page Hell, hope and healing. Part 4 will be published first in our print edition first and then posted to our website.

In the second article of this series, I focused on hope and healing for survivors of sexual abuse. Here, I extend the discussion beyond healing to discuss the possibility, now validated through research, that some trauma survivors actually experience post-traumatic growth.

If healing can occur from the truly devastating consequences of adverse childhood experiences — including sexual abuse by clergy — can survivors also experience meaningful growth through their confrontation with trauma? Can post-traumatic growth also occur in institutions that fostered abuse, as well as in the advocacy organizations that have worked on behalf of survivors?

Let me be very clear: No one ever is “better off” because they were abused or suffered other adverse childhood experiences (ACEs). Every child and adolescent is entitled to a “good enough” childhood where suffering is manageable and betrayal is minimal.

Unfortunately, too many children and teens are faced with soul-battering betrayals, abuse, neglect or terrifying family dynamics that send normal developmental pathways, including those related to the brain, off the rails.

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IRELAND
Irish Times

Barry Roche

A Catholic priest has called on the Church to put proper structures in place to protect priests who have been the subject of false allegations of child sexual abuse.

Fr Tim Hazelwood (57) from Castletownroche in Co Cork spent six years fighting to clear his name following a false accusation.

He told The Irish Times that he was going public about his own experience as he knew of other priests who had been similarly abandoned by the Church after they were falsely and maliciously accused of child sex abuse.

“Priests are sitting ducks for this sort of thing because there is no protection for us within the Church and we live now in a climate both in society and in the Church which presumes priests are guilty until they prove their innocence,” he said.

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IRELAND
Irish Times

Patsy McGarry

A parish priest anonymously and falsely accused of child sexual abuse has said he was cut loose and hung out to dry by Catholic Church authorities.

Fr Tim Hazelwood, priest of Killeagh, Co Cork, recently settled a High Court action and got an apology from the man who made the allegation in 2010.

“After six years my accuser has now settled the court action I had taken. I have received a detailed signed retraction and admission that lies had been told and a signed apology was received. My legal fees were paid and a generous donation to my nominated charity has been paid,” the priest said.

“While I have no understanding behind the motives of my accuser, my reflections are mainly around my church, which I felt cut me loose, hung me out to dry, disowned me and left me feeling very alone. I struggled between my desire to clear my name and the expectation to lie low and to say nothing, hoping that it will go away.”

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MINNESOTA
Duluth News Tribune

By Tom Olsen on Jun 5, 2016

It’s been a little more than a week since the Minnesota Child Victims Act expired, bringing a close to a three-year window that provided legal recourse for victims of decades-old child sexual abuse cases.

The legislation allowed hundreds of victims to come forward for the first time. It led to a whopping $4.9 million verdict in November. Both the Diocese of Duluth and the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis cited an abundance of claims stemming from the law in filing for bankruptcy.

And while the window is now closed, it could be years before the full effects of the law are seen for both victims and the Catholic Church.

“Honestly, I think this is just the beginning,” victims’ advocate Megan Peterson said. “We have all these civil suits that have been filed, and we’re going to continue to fight for the release of documents and work to expose perpetrators that have been covered up.”

The U.S. Bankruptcy Court reported that 125 abuse claims were filed against the Diocese of Duluth, which entered Chapter 11 protection in December. A majority came in the final weeks before the deadline.

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INDIA
Mumbai Mirror

By Jyoti Shelar, Mumbai Mirror | Jun 6, 2016

The simmering anger among city’s Catholic community triggered by the arrest of a priest from Govandi on the charge of sexually assaulting a teenaged boy has begun to intensify following an announcement that Pope Francis has approved measures to sack bishops for mishandling child sexual abuse cases.

While Lawrence Johnson, 51, is facing an FIR and behind bars for the past six months, community members are questioning why the churchman is still not disrobed. “Cardinal Oswald Gracias who is archbishop of Bombay has to act fast and push for this. If there is a First Information Report (FIR) filed against apriest for such misdeed, why should they wait for anything to rusticate of disrobe him,” said a 76-year-old Cletus Gomes from Bandra.

Another parishioner from Mahim, A M Sodder, said that Vatican is like an appellate authority, but action has to be taken by the archbishop. “By now, he should have taken a decision.”

Bishops who are “negligent” in dealing with priests committing abuse will be removed under the new legal procedures, Vatican announced on Saturday.

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UNITED STATES
catholic church abuse: criminal nuns and priests

So Francis says that Catholic bishops guilty of negligence in child abuse cases can now be dismissed from office. Is it a coincidence that Frances made this announcement just two weeks after he came under fire for meeting French Cardinal Philippe Barbarin, Archbishop of Lyon, accused of covering up for a pedophile priest in a scandal that has shaken France’s Catholic Church? Francis said then it would be “nonsensical and imprudent” to seek Barbarin’s resignation.

French law officials are deciding whether to pursue charges against Barbarin for his handling of the allegations against Bernard Preynat, a priest in his diocese who has been charged with sex abuse. Police raided the offices of a clerical judicial adviser to the Lyon diocese and Barbarin will be questioned by police shortly, according to the French press. Good for the French police – let’s hope other countries follow their lead.

David Clohessy, director of SNAP, the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests is, with good cause, very skeptical about this “new” plan working. In the case of the abuse of minors, “Popes and bishops have long had the power, but not the will, to oust those who protect predators and endanger kids. They refuse to do this, and the consequences are devastating,” Clohessy said. “When it’s advantageous to move quickly, Catholic officials move quickly. When they want to move slowly, or not at all, they set up commissions and ‘processes’ and the like.”

The bishops, according to Francis, can be sacked for “serious reasons.” But who is deciding what is serious? We’ve seen for 2000 years that self-policing by the church hierarchy changes nothing when it comes to justice for child sex abuse victims.

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.

CANADA
National Post

Sue Bailey, The Canadian Press | June 5, 2016

ST. JOHN’S, N.L. — Long before the Boston scandal that inspired the award-winning movie “Spotlight,” men who once lived at the Mount Cashel orphanage in Newfoundland allege they endured horrific abuse ignored by church officials.

Their civil lawsuit will return to provincial Supreme Court Monday as they argue the Roman Catholic Episcopal Corp. of St. John’s should compensate them for incidents dating back to the 1940s.

“The archdiocese was negligent,” Geoff Budden, a lawyer representing about 60 claimants, said in an interview. “They knew or ought to have known that abuse was occurring and did not stop it from happening.

“The second thing we’re arguing is that by basic legal principles, they are responsible for the actions of the Christian Brothers who were really their agents in running Mount Cashel.”

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.

AUSTRALIA
ABC – 7.30

Australian Broadcasting Corporation
Broadcast: 03/06/2016
Reporter: Louise Milligan

Alleged victims of former Melbourne school principal Malka Leifer have been devastated by news she will not face extradition from Israel to Australia. Overnight a Jerusalem judge ruled Leifer was not mentally fit to face extradition.

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.

ISRAEL
Reuters

An Israeli court has ruled that a former Australian school principal accused of more than 70 counts of sexual assault was mentally unfit to face extradition and could be freed from house arrest, officials said on Friday.

For nearly three years Australia has been pushing Israel to extradite Malka Leifer, who fled Australia in 2008, with what Australian authorities believe was the assistance of the insular Adass Jewish community, after accusations against her surfaced.

Leifer, who has Israeli citizenship, is the former principal of the Adass Israel School, an ultra-orthodox Jewish girls’ school in Melbourne. She is wanted by police in the surrounding Australian state of Victoria on charges of indecent assault and rape involving girls at the school.

Thursday’s court decision angered former students who say they were abused by her and could raise diplomatic tensions between Australia and Israel.

Copies of the court ruling were not immediately available and spokespeople from Israel’s Ministry of Justice did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

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.

ISRAEL
JTA

(JTA) — A court in Jerusalem extended the remand of a haredi Orthodox school supervisor from Jerusalem whose indictment for the alleged rape of two girls from his own family is reportedly eroding taboos on reporting sex crimes within his community.

The Jerusalem District Court’s decision Thursday on Naftali Maklev, 50, came two weeks after his May 18 indictment, the news site Kikar HaShabbat reported. According to Haaretz, the affair is leading to unusual developments within highly insular haredi Orthodox communities, including increased reporting of molestation and warnings to haredi schoolchildren to be wary even of adults known to them.

Maklev’s lawyer, Yehuda Fried, told Kikar his client was innocent and that a “detailed examination of the evidence will show the accusations and alleged evidence are made up.” Maklev is not accused of molesting pupils at the Jerusalem religious school for boys where he worked.

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.

MINNESOTA
Dairyland Peach

Tom West

I’ve been having flashbacks in recent days to the worst story I ever covered.

In 1983, a week after I had taken ownership of the newspaper in Janesville, Minn., a burglary occurred in the veterinary office, which was next door to the newspaper. I wrote a small story about the break-in and thought nothing more about it.

Then, a month later, I went to church on Sunday, and halfway through the sermon, the minister broke down on the pulpit, weeping. When the service ended, I turned to the person behind me and asked what happened. He said, “They arrested Doc Hendricks for molesting boys on Friday.”

The authorities had found the kid who had burglarized the office, and when they interrogated him, he told them that the veterinarian, Dr. Roy Hendricks, had molested him. Allegedly there were also other victims.

Hendricks had been mayor for many years, and in the morning of the day he was arrested, he had stopped by to compliment me on the job I was doing with the paper.

When I wrote up the story for the next edition, I remember having tears of my own — mostly from fear. I wondered into what I had gotten my family, and I worried that, being a newcomer, the community would turn on me in favor of its former mayor. As I came to learn, Janesville has many good people, some of whom I still count as friends.

The story, however, was big news. After the next issue came out, many people stopped by the office to talk about it. I remember a retired publisher, about 80 at the time, who came in to tell me, “In my day, we never would have covered something like that.” A woman even claimed to have known — but done nothing — about it.

Ten weeks later, on the Saturday after Thanksgiving, several inches of snow had fallen. We were living in the apartment above the newspaper, and I told my wife I would go out and clean off her car for her so she could go Christmas shopping. I walked down the back stairs to the car and saw the police chief, Doc’s brother, and a long time friend of Doc’s all hugging each other behind Doc’s office.

He had just committed suicide while his friend was beating on the locked door, hoping to stop him.

It came out later that growing up in Watertown, Doc had been the victim of sexual abuse at the hands of some migrant workers.

Just a few weeks ago, Doc’s widow, whom I always thought was a good person and unaware of her husband’s sins, passed away.

I retell the story now because it comes within the backdrop of the scandal caused by pedophile Catholic priests. Last week, I watched the movie “Spotlight” which won the Oscar for Best Picture a couple of months ago. It is about an investigative reporting unit of the Boston Globe, who discovered that the church had been covering up for pedophile priests by moving them from parish to parish. In one scene, a reporter tracks down a retired priest who admitted abusing boys, but, in total denial, said he didn’t mean them any harm. He also said that he had been raped as a boy himself.

At the end of the movie, a list of locations where pedophile priest activity had been reported was shown. On the list from Minnesota were Collegeville, Greenbush, Onamia, St. Paul and Minneapolis.

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.

GUAM
Pacific Daily News

Gaynor Dumat-ol Daleno, June 5, 2016

The attorney for one of Archbishop Anthony Apuron’s accusers is questioning the Guam Catholic church’s ability to conduct an unbiased investigation into a child molestation allegation against Apuron.

Several church officials, speaking on behalf of the archbishop, have recently said Roy Quintanilla — the former Guam resident who recently accused Apuron of molesting him while Quintanilla was an altar boy in Agat 40 years ago — is spreading lies.

Apuron has released a videotaped message, denying Quintanilla’s allegations. Apuron has not been charged with any crime.

Quintanilla has publicly given a detailed account of how he was allegedly molested by Apuron during a sleepover at Apuron’s home when Quintanilla was 12.

Quintanilla’s attorney, David Lujan, in a letter Thursday to Deacon Larry Claros, the Archdiocese of Agana’s sexual abuse response coordinator, questioned the church investigation process and whether it can be fair.

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
Salon

DONALD MCCARTHY

Former Speaker of the House Dennis Hastert begins his prison sentence on June 22. His crime? Payoffs he gave a former athlete he trained. He is not, however, going to prison for his alleged molestation of at least four boys, one of whom was the man he was paying off while he was a wrestling coach.

Thanks to statute of limitations laws, he can’t be charged for what prosecutors allege he did to his athletes decades ago. This is, sadly not an uncommon case; the statute of limitation laws regarding sexual assault in the U.S. are in dire need of repair. What is surprising — although it will soon become apparent that it shouldn’t be — is the amount of letters former Republican officials sent to the judge in Hastert’s case, imploring him to go easy when it comes to sentencing.

That prominent members of a political party would come out, sans hesitation, to urge the justice system to go easy on a child predator is gruesome. However, there is ample historical precedent. The rape and molestation of boys and young men in established institutions is rampant and goes uncommented upon more often than not.

The most famous current day example would be the institutionalized rape within the Catholic Church. Far from simply having a few “bad seeds,” the Catholic Church has long harbored pedophiles, protecting them from consequences. Thanks to the patriarchal nature of the church, it is extremely difficult for victims to come forward because they’re not speaking out about one priest but instead the entire church structure that backs the priest, a structure that has long held political power across the globe.

Even more convenient is the church’s positions on homosexuality and sex in general, which instill guilt in the young men who are molested by priests. One bishop, Robert Cunningham, even suggested during a deposition that the victims might have been encouraging the priests to go along with it, continuing the idea that the victims might be to blame. Despite calls for his resignation, Cunningham is still the bishop of Syracuse and has faced no repercussions for his words. It remains difficult to imagine Cunningham being able to adequately handle a case of sexual abuse in his diocese after these comments, but the church apparently disagrees.

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.

VATIKAN
Tagesschau

Papst Franziskus macht weiter Ernst im Kampf gegen Kindesmissbrauch. Bischöfe, die mit Missbrauchsfällen nachlässig oder ignorant umgehen, droht künftig die Amtsenthebung. Die Regelung gilt allerdings nicht rückwirkend. Den Missbrauchsopfern der Vergangenheit hilft sie also nur bedingt.

Die Anordnung des Papstes trägt den Titel “Wie eine liebende Mutter”. An Härte lässt sie aber nichts zu wünschen übrig. Bischöfe und auch Ordensobere sollen künftig ihres Amtes enthoben werden können, wenn sie nachlässig mit Missbrauchsvorwürfen umgehen. Entsprechende Vorwürfe sollen in Rom untersucht werden. Das letzte Wort bei der Entscheidung hat dann der Papst. Nach einer Entscheidung muss ein Bischof innerhalb von 15 Tagen sein Amt aufgeben.

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VATIKAN
Zeit

Werden Missbrauchsfälle in der Kirche vertuscht oder nicht verhindert, können Bischöfe künftig abgesetzt werden. Franziskus unterstützt damit die Forderung von Opfern.

Gehen katholische Bischöfe nachlässig mit Missbrauchsfällen um, können sie künftig aus dem Amt entlassen werden. Etwa, wenn sie versuchen, den Missbrauch von Minderjährigen oder schutzbedürftiger Erwachsenen zu vertuschen, oder wenn sie ihn einfach ignorieren. Einen entsprechenden Erlass hat Papst Franziskus in Form eines Motu Proprio veröffentlicht. Er trägt den Titel Come una madre amorevole (Wie eine liebende Mutter) und tritt am 5. September in Kraft.

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.

VIRGINIA
WHSV

[with video]

HARRISONBURG, Va. (WHSV) — An advocacy group wants independent investigation of accusations of past abuse, stalking, and threats allegedly by Luke Hartman, a former vice president at Eastern Mennonite Univ. and a member of Lindale Mennonite Church.

You may remember Hartman was arrested on solicitation of prostitution earlier this year, but that case was later dismissed in court.

The group that wants an investigation is the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests –or SNAP. They are urging Mennonite leaders to hire independent investigators to look into a different case involving Hartman. The group wants these investigators to look at women’s accusations of sexual and verbal abuse, stalking, and threats of violence.

SNAP also claims he was able to stay in his position long after credible accusations were made.

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.

MINNESOTA
The Journal

June 5, 2016

By Kevin Sweeney – Journal Editor , The Journal

Editor’s note: This is the fourth in a series of articles on the issue of sexual abuse of minors by priests in the Diocese of New Ulm.

NEW ULM – For 15 years, Msgr. Douglas Grams has been the Diocese of New Ulm’s point man on the issue of sexual abuse by clerics. As Vicar General of the New Ulm Diocese, he is also a member of the Diocesan Review Board for Sexual Misconduct.

He has been dealing with the allegations, complaints and civil lawsuits brought by victims of sex abuse who have come forward, especially over the past three years when state law opened a window of opportunity for filing civil complaints long after the normal statute of limitations had expired.

During those three years, the diocese has been named in 98 lawsuits, involving 28 of the diocese’s 75 parishes and 15 priests of the diocese.

The lawsuits claim that the diocese knew, or should have known, about the activities of its own priests, that they allowed them to have access to children, putting children at risk, and allowed abusive priests to continue abusing by moving them to other posts.

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
Philly.com

by Maria Panaritis, Staff Writer

What happened to his son remains so seared in his memory that when he talks about it, Thomas Conaty speaks as though he is still the young father of a grade-school boy.

To understand Pa. battle over clergy sex-abuse victims law, look to Delaware
“Let me tell you briefly about Matty,” said Conaty, a 74-year-old dentist. “Matty is the guy that made things happen here.”

Matthias Conaty was 9 when he was sexually abused by a chaplain at St. Edmund’s Academy in Wilmington. Conaty’s son stayed mum about it for years. But the boy had grit, his father said, later earning two degrees, getting married, having two kids.

In 2002, he told his parents about the abuse. And what was initially despair gave way to a bedrock determination to change the law for child sex-abuse victims.

With Tom Conaty, a longtime lobbyist, leading the way, father and son helped lead an effort to let victims sue as adults. Their advocacy led Delaware to lift its civil statute of limitations in 2007 for two years. What followed was a flood of lawsuits, the bankruptcy of the Diocese of Wilmington, and, ultimately more than $100 million paid to about 150 clergy sex-abuse victims.

As a similar measure in Pennsylvania inches closer to passage, advocates on both sides of the issue point to Delaware. Supporters applaud the outcome there as just, while opponents, most notably from the Catholic Church, warn its consequences will unfairly ripple across communities here.

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
VICE News

By Tess Owen

June 4, 2016

Under the new church laws announced by Pope Francis on Saturday, Catholic bishops who cover up for pedophile priests will be investigated and could face removal from office.

The papal decree is the result of a long fight to end the child sex abuse scandal that has rattled the Roman Catholic Church, and an effort to fix systemic failures within the church hierarchy that have led to abusers not being held responsible.

Sexual abuse victims have long contended that bishops will often relocate abusive priests to other parishes, rather than reporting them to the police or church authorities.

From 2001 to 2010, the Holy See received sex abuse allegations concerning about 3,000 priests dating back 50 years.

Saturday’s papal decree supposedly enacts what Francis approved last year: the creation of a Vatican tribunal for judging bishops who are accused of covering up or failing to act in child abuse cases by priests.

But some analysts see the new law as falling short of his original promises.

Kurt Martens, professor of canon law at the Catholic University of America, told the Associated Press that what was significant about the new law is that it doesn’t mention that original proposal for the tribunal, which would have criminalized and prosecuted negligence.

“There’s nothing breaking here,” Martens said. …

David Clohessy, director of the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests, said in a statement that he was “extraordinarily skeptical.”

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UNITED STATES
Daily Caller

KEVIN DALEY

Pope Francis issued a new edict Saturday effectively countermanding a previous order and reflecting his ongoing struggle with interests entrenched inside the Roman Curia, the Vatican’s sprawling bureaucracy.

The document is a motu proprio called “Like a loving mother,” which clarifies language and procedures governing the removal of bishops for negligence in clerical sexual abuse investigations. In it, Francis advises that impeding, ignoring, or bungling an investigation into so called “pedophile priests” by a bishop is sufficient reason to remove said bishop from office. A motu proprio is the functional equivalent of an executive order, issued by the pope to explicate certain aspects of canon law, guide clergy in their implementation of policy, or establish guidelines for liturgical practices.

In the document, the pontiff acknowledges that previous motu proprios, specifically Sacramentorum Sanctitatis Tutela promulgated by Pope John Paul II in 2001, already provide for the removal of a bishop from office for “grave reasons.” The pope clarified that negligence in the investigation or prosecution of pedophile priests constitutes a “grave reason” which warrants removal from office.

Little doubt existed that such actions by prelates were considered “graves reasons” necessitating disciplinary action by the Church. The Holy See Press Office says Pope Francis sought to emphasis the “special diligence” with which bishops must act “in the protection of the weakest among those entrusted to them.”

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PENNSYLVANIA
Philly.com

Stephen E. Jenkins

is a lawyer in Wilmington

Pennsylvania House Bill 1947, which has now been sent to the Pennsylvania Senate, would largely eliminate the statute of limitations relating to allegations of child sexual abuse by private parties. Among other things, it would allow civil claims for abuse to be brought at any time until a victim is 50 years old. In addition, some – but not most – victims will be allowed to sue for abuse that happened decades ago.

Many politicians and plaintiffs’ lawyers say that this represents long-needed “reform” and “justice.” I have a different perspective.

I was the volunteer attorney for a variety of Catholic institutions in Delaware after a similar bill was passed. Far from justice and reform, I saw the devastation it caused and the unfairness it created.

Supporters of HB 1947 claim that not one school, church, or charitable activity has been closed down in states that have passed similar legislation. That claim is wrong.

In Delaware, for example, one excellent inner-city school, St. Paul’s, which served a primarily poor Hispanic population, was forced to shutter its doors because the money it needed to operate went instead to settle lawsuits. Another school, Pope John Paul II, closed only months after the settlement because it had a sudden financial emergency and the money for such emergencies had been taken for the settlement.

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VATICAN CITY
America

Jun 4 2016

Gerard O’Connell

Pope Francis has issued a very important decree regarding the accountability of bishops, which makes it possible now to remove diocesan bishops for neglecting their duties, in particular in regard to protecting minors and vulnerable adults from sexual abuse.

The decree comes in the form of an Apostolic Letter motu proprio released by the Vatican on June 4, responding to the many calls to hold bishops fully accountable for failing to act to protect children and vulnerable adults. With this decree Francis addresses that problem head on.

In it, Francis recalls that already “canon law provides the possibility of removal from ecclesiastic office ‘for grave reasons’” and this applies also to “diocesan bishops, eparchs and those who are equivalent to them in law.”

In the decree, Francis said that he intended “to specify that among those ‘grave reasons’ is included the negligence of bishops in the exercise of their office, in particular in relation to the cases of sexual abuse committed on minors and vulnerable adults,” explaining that this had been envisaged by earlier decrees on this matter. He mentioned the motu proprio issued by John Paul II in 2001 (Sanctorum Sanctitatis Tutela) and the amendments to this by Benedict XVI in 2010.

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.

VATICAN CITY
National Catholic Register

BY EDWARD PENTIN 06/04/2016

In the latest effort to stamp out clerical sex abuse, the Vatican announced today that Pope Francis has established new norms to ensure that bishops, or those of equal rank, can be removed when they have been negligent, active or complicit in acts causing grave harm to others or a community.

In a new Apostolic Letter, issued motu proprio, entitled “Come una madre amorevole” (As a Loving Mother), the new norms provide for the removal of bishops (or those equivalent to them in Canon Law) from their offices in cases where they have “through negligence, committed or omitted acts that have caused grave harm to others, either with regard to physical persons, or with regard to the community itself.”

The Letter also clarifies in cases of “abuse of minors or vulnerable adults, it is sufficient that the lack of diligence be grave.”

The director of the Holy See Press Office, Father Federico Lombardi, said in an explanatory note that the apostolic letter “insists on the importance of vigilant care for the protection of minors and vulnerable adults, calling for a ‘particular diligence.”

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.

MALAYSIA
The Star

BY MARTIN VENGADESAN

LIKE many Malaysians, I am absolutely seething with anger at the actions of British paedophile Richard Huckle, who came to Malaysia and spent eight years indulging his depraved sexual fantasies on dozens of our children.

Huckle was able to use both religion and his “status” as a white foreigner to gain the trust of communities eager to accept help in fighting a difficult battle against poverty. What a cruel thing to do.

First of all, let me make it clear that I am not blaming the community. I do think, however, that we need to look at why he was able to gain such access to children and what concrete steps we can take to prevent this sort of thing from happening again.

One thing that needs to be questioned is blind faith. Huckle used religion as an entry point, joining community work and getting close to underprivileged children in the process.

That brought home something to me. Why are we quick to blindly believe in those who manipulate our own religious faith to give themselves authority? While there are many who do genuinely good work in the service of others, we must be aware of wolves in sheep’s clothing who claim to be motivated by sacrifice and benevolence but actually have an evil agenda.

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.

MALAYSIA
New Straits Times

5 JUNE 2016

KUALA LUMPUR: Possibly the most prolific paedophile in Britain, Richard Huckle sent a series of chilling emails to gain the trust of a priest, who runs orphanages in India, to get access to children living there.

The MailOnline reported yesterday that an Indian pastor, George Fernandes, 37, had revealed that Huckle targeted his New Hope for Children Orphanage in Bangalore. Huckle sent emails to Fernandes after finding the orphanage on Facebook, detailing his plans to travel through India and expressing his enthusiasm to visit the orphanage.

In his first email to Fernandes on June 30, 2013, Huckle said he was from the United Kingdom but was studying for an information technology degree in Malaysia. “I’m interested in visiting your orphanages in Bangalore and Ambur.

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.

FRANCE
Le Monde

Par Emeline Cazi et Cécile Chambraud

Depuis qu’a éclaté, en janvier, l’affaire du Père Bernard Preynat, accusé d’avoir commis des agressions sexuelles sur des dizaines de scouts lyonnais dans les années 1970 et 1980, l’Eglise est soupçonnée d’avoir étouffé les agissements de ce prêtre et de n’avoir pas pris les mesures nécessaires pour l’écarter des enfants.

Les éléments du dossier judiciaire dont Le Monde a pu prendre connaissance confirment que le diocèse de Lyon savait depuis longtemps l’attirance de l’aumônier pour les jeunes garçons – ce dernier a très tôt reconnu les faits – mais qu’à aucun moment elle n’a songé à saisir la justice.

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FRANCE
L’Express

[Pedophilia: The Church knew about the actions of the Father Preynat since 1978.]

Un rapport judiciaire que s’est procuré Le Monde révèle que l’Eglise était parfaitement aux courants des actes commis par le père Preynat depuis près de quarante ans.

Vendredi 10 juin, la Cour d’appel de Lyon déterminera si oui ou non, les faits reprochés au père Bernard Preynat sont prescris. Mis en examen pour agressions sexuelles sur mineurs, le prêtre est soupçonné d’avoir abusé de “dizaines de scouts lyonnais dans les années 70 et 80”. Ce samedi, Le Monde révèle en partie le contenu du dossier judiciaire monté dans cette affaire.

Ce contenu est particulièrement accablant, pour l’Eglise. Le quotidien retrace en effet toute une série d’événements qui permettent aujourd’hui d’affirmer que le diocèse de Lyon avait conscience des pratiques du prêtre, sans avoir pour autant mis un terme à ses agissements.

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GUAM
Toronto Star

By Associated Press
Sat., June 4, 2016

HAGATNA, GUAM—The Archdiocese of Agana is working with a law firm as well as an independent investigator after Archbishop Anthony Apuron was accused of decades-old sexual abuse.

Deacon Steve Martinez said last week that the archbishop — the highest leader of the Catholic Church in Guam — was protecting himself and intentionally kept the archdiocese’s sexual abuse policy weak, the Pacific Daily News reported.

A Friday statement from the archdiocese called Martinez’s accusation false.

“We are working with one of the most prominent U.S. legal firms to address these issues and with an independent investigator to inquire about this allegation and these rumours,” the statement said. “These intentional lies oblige the Archbishop to take appropriate and immediate canonical measures in regard to Stephen Martinez.”

The statement does not address Martinez by his title of deacon, and it’s unclear whether the law firm or investigator will probe the statements of abuse.

Apuron denies the abuse allegations and is not charged with any crime.

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UNITED STATES
Church Militant

By Juliana Freitag

The archdiocese of Brindisi-Ostuni reportedly has a network of homosexual, sexually abusive priests.

The first offense came to public light when the Italian investigative TV show “Le iene” received an anonymous email stating that underage boys in Brindisi had suffered sex abuse at the hands of Fr. Giampero Peschiulli, 73. The program then commissioned youthful-looking actors (one who claimed to be 16) to meet with the priest, and then secretly recorded their actions. Footage shows Fr. Peschiulli caressing the faces of the male actors and aggressively hugging and kissing them — all while wearing his Roman collar. The episode, titled “The Smooching Priest,” aired toward the end of 2014.

The airing led to police inquiries, resulting in several accusations from victims of sexual assault going as far back as 2002. The parents of some of the victims declared they had sought help from the archbishop of Brindisi-Ostuni at the time, Msgr. Rocco Talucci, who “seemed surprised at the fact that the youngsters were talking about the abuse, and invited the victims not to press charges and not share the incidents with anyone else.”

The accusations that eventually led to the priest’s prosecution in January of this year involved two of his altar boys, who revealed they had been suffering abuse since 2012, when both of them were under 14. The boys explained in detail how Peschiulli approached them when he was already in Mass vestments. He had a preference for boys, they claimed, always getting rid of any females in his presence, whom he referred to as “little whores only interested in sex.”

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UNITED STATES
One Peter 5

BY STEVE SKOJEC ON JUNE 4, 2016

Vatican Radio reports on the issuance of a new motu proprio letter from Pope Francis that aims to deal with episcopal enablers of clerical sex abuse:

In a new Apostolic Letter, issued motu proprio, Pope Francis has established new norms providing for the removal of Bishops (or those equivalent to them in Canon Law) from their offices in cases where they have “through negligance, committed or omitted acts that have caused grave harm to others, either with regard to physical persons, or with regard to the community itself.”

The Apostolic Letter “Come una madre amorevole” (As a Loving Mother) also clarifies that, with regard “to abuse of minors or vulnerable adults, it is sufficient that the lack of diligence be grave.”

In a note explaining the new procedures, the Director of the Holy See Press Office, Father Federico Lombardi, SJ, said, “The Apostolic Letter insists on the importance of vigilant care for the protection of minors and vulnerable adults, calling for a ‘particular diligence.” Therefore, he continued, “it clarifies that negligence regarding cases of sexual abuse committed against children or vulnerable adults are among the ‘grave causes’ that justify removal from ecclesiastical Offices, even of Bishops.”

We already know that Francis is keen to discipline orthodox bishops implicated in such malfeasance, as was the case with Bishop Finn of Kansas City-St. Joseph, whose case we covered here, here, and here.

But what about Francis’ personal friends? The ones who, like Cardinal Godfried Danneels of Belgium — who was caught on tape attempting to silence a victim of clerical sex abuse — helped to get Francis elected? As I shared with our readers last year:

On April 8, 2010, the newly retired Cardinal Danneels received some visitors at his home. They were the relatives of the Bishop of Bruges, Roger Vangheluwe, Danneels’ close friend. At this meeting, the nephew of Vangheluwe described a long and sordid 13 year molestation by his uncle, the Bishop of Bruges. Cardinal Daneels advised the nephew not to go public with the sexual abuse. During the meeting, Danneels advised the young man not to “make a lot of noise” about the abuse he endured from his uncle bishop because Vangheluwe was scheduled to retire in a year anyway. “It would be better that you wait,” advised Danneels, while also urging the young man to forgive his uncle.

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