ABUSE TRACKER

AUSTRALIA
ABC News

By Richard Baines

Tasmanian survivors of clergy abuse want police to investigate whether a former Anglican Bishop should face criminal charges for allowing a paedophile to remain in the church.

A day after the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse released damning findings, survivors said they planned to launch legal action.

The commission held hearings in Hobart last year to examine responses to allegations within the Church of England Boy’s Society (CEBS) and Anglican Diocese, including in Tasmania.

The report found evidence that former Tasmanian Bishop Philip Newell was made aware in 1987 that now-convicted paedophile Louis Daniels had sexually abused three boys.

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DELAWARE
Sussex Living

A former U.S. Navy lieutenant commander and ordained Catholic priest was recently sentenced to 30 years in prison for charges involving the sexual exploitation of children, announced U.S. Attorney Charles M. Oberly III of the District of Delaware.

John Thomas Matthew Lee, 51, of Millsboro, was sentenced Feb. 8 by U.S. District Court Judge Leonard P. Stark of the District of Delaware, who also ordered Lee to serve a lifetime term of supervised release. On Nov. 16, 2015, Lee pleaded guilty to one count of production of child pornography and one count of distribution of child pornography. He became a registered sex offender following his 2007 conviction in a general court martial of sexually assaulting another Naval officer while serving as a chaplain at the U.S. Naval Academy. Lee has been in custody since his arrest Nov. 3, 2014.

According to admissions made in connection with the plea agreement, following a series of CyberTipline reports from the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s Homeland Security Investigations special agents connected Lee with accounts that were being used to upload images of child pornography to several social networking sites. In executing a search warrant at Lee’s Millsboro residence, agents found child-pornography images on Lee’s electronic devices, including his phone. Using online messenger applications and text messages from his cell phone, Lee also induced juveniles to send him pornographic images of themselves. Lee uploaded at least one of these images to a publicly-accessible social media site. He also traded other images of child pornography online with other adults.

The Criminal Division’s Child Exploitation and Obscenity Section and Assistant U.S. Attorney Edmond Falgowski of the District of Delaware prosecuted the case.

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GUAM
Pacific Daily News

Haidee V Eugenio , heugenio@guampdn.com Feb. 14, 2017

Former Guam priest Tomas A. Camacho, who now is a retired bishop on Saipan, still can be investigated by the Vatican and face a canonical trial over allegations he sexually abused an altar boy in the 1970s, a lawyer with expertise on Catholic Church law said.

“Yes, he can still be investigated and punished, even if he is retired,” said Minnesota-based canon lawyer Jennifer Haselberger, who established Canonical Consultation and Services LLC in 2013.

Haselberger said “a retired bishop remains a priest and can still exercise ministry — say Mass, baptize, confirm.”

“If someone is defrocked, it means he loses the ability to act as a priest/bishop and do those things,” added Haselberger, who previously served as chancellor for canonical affairs at the Archdiocese of Saint Paul and Minneapolis, but resigned in April 2013 in protest of the archdiocese’s handling of accusations of clergy sexual abuse.

Vatican policy dictates that only the Vatican can investigate bishops and archbishops who are accused of sexual abuse.

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INDIA
The Ladies Finger!

February 14, 2017
By Maya Palit

A 37-year-old adivasi woman from Kanapur, a village in Madhya Pradesh, was raped by a priest (reports do not indicate which clergy or church he belonged to) named Hanop Alexander on the church premises. According to news reports, the incident took place around midnight, when she left her house (also on the church premises) and was abducted by the priest and taken to his room. The priest fled on his motorcycle after the incident and has been absconding since, but the police managed to book him for rape, and are on the look-out.

The rampant abuse of women carried out by members of the clergy, at least in the Catholic Church, is hardly a new issue, and a new incident surfaces practically every couple of months. In November last year, for instance, a woman in Kozhikode was forced to file a police complaint after internal complaints to her bishop about a sexually abusive priest was ignored for months. A month later, another priest from the Kottappauram Catholic diocese was given a double life term under the POCSO Act for raping a minor girl, while a government doctor was accused of colluding with him and failing to report the abuse.

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GUAM
Guam Daily Post

Neil Pang | Post News Staff Feb 14, 2017

Bishop Ryan Jimenez of the Diocese of Chalan Kanoa in Saipan said that while the church will give their full cooperation with civil authorities in any investigation into the allegations of child sexual abuse made against Bishop Emeritus Tomas Camacho, they can offer no further comment as the matter is in litigation.

“It is with deep sadness and great bearing to learn of the sexual abuse allegations in a civil claim against then-priest and now Bishop Emeritus Tomas A. Camacho by a Guam resident Melvin Duenas,” Jimenez said in a letter released to the media. “I request for your prayers for everyone affected by this news – those who have sought and continue to seek redress from abuses, the accused and their journey to realize due process, the families on each side that are struck with a heavy weight of pain that comes with each sharing and everyone within our midst who are affected one way or another.”

Camacho was named, along with former Guam priest Louis Brouillard and the Archdiocese of Agana, in the latest in a series of child sexual abuse allegations by former altar boys stretching back decades.

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AUSTRALIA
ABC News

By Oliver Jacques

One of Australia’s most senior child protection bureaucrats has expressed concern with the way governments monitor incidents of child abuse within religious institutions.

NSW Deputy Ombudsman Steve Kinmond runs a watchdog scheme in his state that checks how schools, churches, childcare and foster care agencies handle complaints of child abuse.

He said there was a “hodgepodge” arrangement in place where some religious institutions were covered by his watchdog functions and others were not.

“We have a curious situation, and somewhat unhelpful situation where some religious organisations come under our jurisdiction and some don’t,” Mr Kinmond said.

“The issue that the churches have raised is that they are required to have working with children checks, but we have a hodgepodge arrangement as to whether the church or part of the church is under our jurisdiction.

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AUSTRALIA
The Advocate

Melissa Cunningham
@MeljCunningham

14 Feb 2017.

A lack of understanding and compassion may have caused Catholic priests to hear the confessions of clergy committing child sex crimes and allow them to continue to abuse, an inquiry heard.

David Leary, an academic and Franciscan friar told the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse on Tuesday, the Catholic Church still failed to fully comprehend how its systems allowed a culture of child sexual abuse to flourish.

He said assessment for clergy candidates was fundamentally flawed because it tested homosexual tendencies ahead of whether or not the applicant was a compassionate person.

Dr Leary also said the Catholic Church still did not fully understand how civil society works.

“I don’t think we understand the psychology that underpins our modern understanding of child sexual abuse. As a result, we fluff around the edges and we try to negotiate,” he said.

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VATICAN CITY
Premier

Tue 14 Feb 2017
By Premier Journalist

Pope Francis has written an introduction to a book by a survivor of clerical sex abuse in which he asks survivors of clerical sexual abuse to forgive the Church.

The Pope added that he was particularly distressed by the fact that some victims of abuse had resorted to suicide.

He wrote: “These deaths weigh on my heart, on my conscience, and on that of the whole Church. To their families I offer my sentiments of love and of sorrow, and I humbly ask forgiveness.”

Since his election in 2013, Pope Francis said he would take a “zero tolerance” approach against cleric abuse.

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UNITED KINGDOM
Police Professional

Britain’s biggest child sex abuse inquiry has been hit by another high-level departure.

Media chief Bron Madson has left the troubled Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse (IICSA) amid reports of tensions over a consultancy firm that has been paid nearly £300,000.

Ms Madson quit her role as head of communications as the IICSA revealed that it has paid the consultancy firm Crest Advisory £294,232 since 2015 for “strategic communications advice”.

She stepped down from the inquiry – beset by a flurry of departures in recent months– after an enhanced role was afforded to Crest.

She and her team are said to have been frustrated by the reluctance of senior officials and members of the panel to “engage with the media” at a time when the future running of the inquiry was in doubt.

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TEXAS
The Monitor

LORENZO ZAZUETA-CASTRO | STAFF WRITER

EDINBURG — A judge set a tentative trial date for a former priest accused of killing a McAllen woman more than 50 years ago.

After a brief hearing Monday morning both sides in the capital murder case of John Bernard Feit agreed to a late April trial date.

92nd state District Court Judge Luis Singleterry set a pretrial date for April 20, and a subsequent trial date of April 24 after Hidalgo County Assistant District Attorney Michael Garza asked the court to set a date as most evidence has been turned over to the defense.

The 83-year-old man is accused of killing Irene Garza, a McAllen schoolteacher and beauty queen back in the 60s when he worked as a priest in the Valley.

The 25-year-old woman was last seen April 16, 1960 going to confession at the Sacred Heart church in McAllen; authorities found her lifeless body 5 days later in a canal.

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TEXAS
KRGV

[with video]

EDINBURG – A former McAllen priest accused in a decades-old murder made a court appearance Monday morning.

John Feit was arrested for the murder of Irene Garza last year in Phoenix, Arizona.

Feit walked into court Monday using his walker and shook hands with people on his way to his seat. When his counsel asked him how he was feeling, Feit replied that he felt great.

The 92nd District judge, Luis Singleterry, set Feit’s trial date for April 24.

In April 1960, Garza was going to confession at Sacred Heart Church the night before Easter Sunday. Feit heard her confession, but what happened after that was unknown.

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IRELAND
Irish Times

Mary Carolan

An elderly man with cancer has taken High Court action urgently seeking information about the fate of the infant sister he has “never known” after she went into a mother and baby home in Tuam, Co Galway.

Peter Mulryan claims Tusla, the Child and Family Agency has a duty to forensically examine what it describes as an “enormous” quantity of documents in its possession related to the home, but has not done that.

Mr Justice Richard Humphreys has directed Tusla to write to the Bon Secours order, which operated the home, asking if it kept burial records for hundreds of children recorded as having died there. If burial records were maintained but destroyed, the order is asked to confirm when they were destroyed and at whose direction.

Mr Mulryan went with his mother to the home in July 1944 four days after his birth. He wants, in his “lifetime”, to get whatever knowledge exists concerning the life or death and resting place of his infant sister, Marian Bridget Mulryan.

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GUAM/SAIPAN
Saipan Tribune

By Jon Perez | Posted on Feb 14 2017

A Guam resident filed a sexual abuse lawsuit against bishop emeritus Tomas A. Camacho yesterday regarding allegations that date back several decades ago, making Camacho the first clergy member from the CNMI to be embroiled in a controversy that has hounded the Roman Catholic Church.

Last year, Guam’s Catholic community was rocked by several allegations of similar sexual abuse by then archbishop Anthony S. Apuron. Guam and the CNMI are both predominantly Catholic and tight-knit communities.

Most Rev. Archbishop Savio Hon Tai Fai, then serving as the Archdiocese of Agana’s apostolic administrator, urged Pope Francis to remove Apuron from his post because of the allegations.

Most. Rev. Archbishop Michael J. Byrnes was appointed Coadjutor Archbishop of the archdiocese on Oct. 31, 2016.

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UNITED STATES
BishopAccountability.org

Summary of Case: Charles Stephney was a priest of the Society of the Precious Blood, ordained in 1980, or possibly earlier. He was assigned to St. Mark’s parish and to a jail chaplaincy Cincinnati, OH. In late 1981 Stephney was investigated after teenage boys complained that the priest had made sexual advances toward them. Jail officials asked him to leave, and Stephney’s Order sent him to Brooklyn, NY, for treatment. While in Brooklyn Stephney was assigned to Our Lady of the Presentation parish. Against the Society of the Precious Blood’s orders, Stephney left Brooklyn and was later hired to assist accused priest, Rev. George Stallings, at St. Teresa’s in Washington, DC. Stallings knew of Stephney’s history, but told parishioners the priest had left his Order to care for his mother. Archbishop Hickey discovered the situation and twice told Stallings to fire Stephney. Stallings refused. In 1990 Stephney was known to be assisting Stallings at Imani Temple in DC, which Stallings established after breaking away from the Roman Catholic Church.

Ordained: 1980?

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VATICAN CITY
Catholic Philly

By Carol Glatz • Catholic News Service • Posted February 13, 2017

VATICAN CITY (CNS) — The sexual abuse of children by those who have vowed to serve Christ and the church is a horrendous monstrosity that represents “a diabolical sacrifice” of innocent, defenseless lives, Pope Francis said.

The church, which must protect the weakest, has a duty “to act with extreme severity with priests who betray their mission and with the hierarchy — bishops and cardinals — who protect them,” the pope wrote in the preface to a new book written by a man raped as a child by a Capuchin priest.

The book, “My Father, I Forgive You” (“Mon Pere, Je Vous Pardonne”), was written by Daniel Pittet, 57, in an effort to describe how he fell victim to a predator abuser when he was 8 years old growing up in Fribourg, Switzerland, and the challenges he faced when came forward two decades later with the accusations. The book, currently published only in French, was to be released Feb. 16. News outlets released the text of the pope’s preface Feb. 13.

Pittet — who had been a monk, but later married and had six children — had met the pope at the Vatican during the Year of Consecrated Life in 2015.

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MINNESOTA
The Journal

NEW ULM — The Diocese of New Ulm announced over the weekend that one of its priests, Fr. Sam Wagner, has been placed on leave from ministry during an investigation of “allegations of inappropriate personal conduct.”

The statement from Monsignor Douglas Grams, Vicar General of the Diocese of New Ulm and the Bishop’s Delegate for Matters Pertaining to Sexual Misconduct, was read at parish masses on Saturday and Sunday. The statement did not disclose what the nature of the alleged misconduct was.

The suspension follows a recent report to the New Ulm Police Department about the allegations, which relate to the time period Fr. Wagner was assigned to the Cathedral parish in New Ulm, the statement said.

Fr. Wagner was assigned to the Cathedral parish from June 23, 2014 to June 29, 2016.

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GEORGIA
Foreign Policy

BY EMILY TAMKIN
FEBRUARY 13, 2017

A Georgian priest was arrested Monday for allegedly scheming to poison a high-ranking cleric, prosecutors said.

Speaking at a news conference, Georgia’s chief prosecutor, Irakli Shotadze, described a plot that could have been pulled from a Dan Brown novel or an episode of an Orthodox version of Young Pope: A private citizen informed the office that Georgian Archpriest Giorgi Mamaladze had allegedly asked him to help obtain cyanide in order to poison the cleric, who wasn’t named.

Mamaladze allegedly told the person that he would pay with both money and “unlawful benefits,” but that he allegedly wanted the cyanide in hand before leaving for Germany to visit 84-year-old Patriarch Ilia II, the head of the Georgian Orthodox Church. Ilia II was in Berlin ahead of a gallbladder operation on Monday. The priest allegedly wanted to carry the poison with him on the plane. And, indeed, when arrested for preparation of murder at Tbilisi International Airport on Friday, Mamaladze had cyanide in his luggage. (Some good news for the patriarch: the operation was apparently successful, and Georgian Prime Minister Giorgi Kvirikashvili has sent Anzor Chubinidze, the head of the Special State Protection Service, to Berlin for his protection.)

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MINNESOTA
Mankato Free Press

By Brian Arola barola@mankatofreepress.com

NEW ULM — The New Ulm Police Department is investigating allegations of sexual misconduct by an area priest.

The allegations stem from when the Rev. Sam Wagner worked in New Ulm between 2014 and 2016, said Jeff Hohensee, senior investigator with the New Ulm Police Department. Wagner, who Hohensee said was placed on leave by the Diocese of New Ulm, is listed online as a parochial vicar at St. Mary’s Catholic Church in Sleepy Eye.

Hohensee said the investigation remains ongoing and no charges have been filed at this time.

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MINNESOTA
KEYC

[with video]

Feb 13, 2017

By Kelsey Barchenger

A Diocese of New Ulm priest has been placed on leave and an investigation is underway in response to allegations of inappropriate conduct.

The investigation surrounds Father Sam Wagner, who was assigned to the Cathedral parish from June 2014 to June 2016.

In July, Wagner served as parochial vicar in the Divine Mercy Area Faith Community, St. Mary’s, in Sleepy Eye, Japanese Martyrs in Leavenworth, St. Michael in Morgan, and St. Paul in Comfrey.

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AUSTRALIA/SCOTLAND
BBC News

A former Catholic monk accused of child abuse at a Scottish school has appeared in court in Australia facing extradition.

Father Denis “Chrysostom” Alexander was one of several monks accused of abusing boys at the former Fort Augustus Abbey boarding school in the Highlands.

He has always denied the allegations.

He appeared via a video link at the hearing in Sydney and was refused bail. The full extradition case is set to be heard in May.

In 2013, Father Alexander was confronted by BBC Scotland in Australia as part of a documentary into alleged abuse by monks at the school, which prompted a major police investigation.

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ROME
The Daily Beast

In his strongest words yet, the pontiff condemns clerics involved in child sex abuse in the preface to a shocking new book by one of their accusers.

Barbie Latza Nadeau

ROME—Pope Francis has been criticized in the past for not taking a harder stance against pedophile priests. His Pontifical Commission for the Protection of Minors has been slow to start, condemned for missteps surrounding the forced leave of absence for Peter Saunders, one of two commission members who is a victim of clerical abuse. And the group faced accusations last year that it was out of touch and irrelevant because it wasn’t even involved in training new bishops about how to handle clerical-abuse accusations.

But writing in the preface of a hard-hitting new book, I Forgive You, Father by Swiss clerical sex-abuse survivor Daniel Pittet, Pope Francis makes it abundantly clear where he stands on this issue. In doing so, he asks the uncomfortable questions for which everyone familiar with the sordid history of clerical sex abuse have long wanted answers.

“How can a priest at the service of Christ and his church cause so much harm?” writes Pope Francis. “How can someone who devoted their life to lead children to God, end up instead to devour them in what I call a ‘diabolical sacrifice’ that destroys both the victim and the life of the church? Some of the victims have been driven to suicide. These deaths weigh on my heart, on my conscience and that of the whole church.”

Two years ago, Francis met Pittet, who was systematically raped for four years starting when he was just 8 years old by his parish priest in Switzerland. He supported Pittet’s desire to meet his abuser, who was never punished by secular or church authorities, but instead moved from Switzerland to France, where Pittet says he abused “hundreds of boys.”

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GUAM
Guam Daily Post

Mindy Aguon | For the Post

The latest sex abuse case filed in the District Court of Guam alleges that a former Guam Catholic priest, who later became bishop of the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands, repeatedly molested and raped an altar boy decades ago.

Melvin Duenas is the 17th victim to come forward and file a lawsuit in the District Court against the Archdiocese of Agana, retired Bishop Tomas Aguon Camacho of the CNMI, and Louis Brouillard, a former priest who worked at parishes and schools on Guam. Camacho, 83, is accused of sexually abusing Duenas for at least three years before the former altar boy ran away.

The complaint, which seeks a minimum of $5 million in damages, alleges Duenas was repeatedly sexually molested and raped by Camacho when he became the priest for the Saint Joseph Catholic Church in Inarajan in the 1970s. The lawsuit accuses the Archdiocese of Agana of knowing about the sexual abuse and assisting Camacho and Brouillard with keeping the misconduct “hidden or secret.” It also accuses the archdiocese of failing to adequately investigate, discharge or discipline Camacho and Brouillard, and other priests known to have sexually abused children.

Calls to Camacho went unreturned as of press time.

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AUSTRALIA
NT News

Nicholas Payne, Geelong Advertiser
February 13, 2017

SURVIVOR of abuse at Geelong Grammar School has slammed its trademark positive education program as “crap”, as the royal commission’s findings on the elite Corio school are set to be tabled in Parliament.

Libby O’Brien attended Geelong Grammar in the 1980s and said she hoped the commission’s report did not “get swept under the carpet”.

“There are so many more perpetrators out there,” she said, despite the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse having been in progress since 2013.

“The cover-ups were really frightening,” she said. “I just want to make sure (the royal commission finding) doesn’t go under the radar.”

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AUSTRALIA
Anglican Communion News Service

[ACNS] Royal Commission examining allegations of child sexual abuse in Australia has delivered a damning verdict on a system which enabled a culture of abuse to flourish.

The report by the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse comes after public hearings into how the Church of England’s Boys’ Society (CEBS) and the Anglican dioceses of Tasmania, Adelaide, Brisbane and Sydney dealt with claims of abuse. The hearings, in Hobart, Tasmania, were told of allegations of abuse by lay people and clergy associated with CEBS in the 1970s and 1980s.

The report concluded that most CEBS branches were able to operate in an autonomous and unregulated way. As a result, a culture developed in which attackers had easy access to boys and opportunities to sexually abuse them. It found the abuse often happened at camps, on sailing and fishing trips and on overnight stays at rectories and private homes.

The report also found that there were networks of sexual predators at CEBS who had knowledge of each other’s offending. A number of abuse survivors told the hearing they were shared by abusers or their abusers were aware of the conduct of other attackers.

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ROME
Irish Times

Paddy Agnew in Rome

Pope Francis has described clerical sex abuse as “diabolic sacrifice” in the preface of a new book. I Forgive You, Father, by former Swiss priest Daniel Pittet, who was himself the victim of clerical sex abuse as an eight-year-old altar boy, has been published as as suggestions emerge that the Vatican may soon be dealing with a raft of abuse cases.

La Repubblica, a daily Roman newspaper, carried the full preface in a front page article on Monday, in which it explained the background to Mr Pittet’s story. During an audience with the pope two years ago, Mr Pittet told Francis the story of his four-year-long abuse. The pope, claims Mr Pittet, not only listened to his story in tears but also encouraged the 57-year-old former priest to tell the story more widely.

“For anyone who has been the victim of a paedophile it is very difficult to recount what happened to them, to describe still existing traumas many years later. For that reason, Daniel Pittet’s testimony is necessary, precious and courageous”, Francis writes in the preface.

“I am glad that people can today read his witness and discover for themselves the extent to which evil can enter into the heart of a servant of the church.”

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ROME
NBC News

by CLAUDIO LAVANGA

ROME — Pope Francis has penned the preface to a new book by a survivor of clerical sexual abuse, and asked forgiveness for what he called an “absolute monstrosity” in the Church’s history.

“It is difficult for a victim of pedophilia to speak out about what they have endured and to describe the trauma that still persists many years later,” Pope Francis writes in “Father, I Forgive You” by Daniel Pittet, a Swiss man who was repeatedly raped by a Capuchin friar as a child.

“I am happy that others today can read his testimony and discover to what extent evil can enter a servant of the church. How can a priest, at the service of Christ and the Church, cause so much pain?” the pope writes.

The book will be published in Italy on Thursday but La Republica newspaper ran the pope’s preface in full on Monday.

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AUSTRALIA
The Australian

February 14, 2017

MATTHEW DENHOLM
Tasmania correspondentHobart
@MatthewRDenholm

Networks of pedophiles operated in the Church of England Boys’ Society for several decades, some “sharing” victims, while the church’s only formal response was to revoke awards given to several perpetrators.

These are among findings of a report by the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse, released yesterday, relating to abuse of boys in CEBS in Tasmania, Queensland, NSW and South Australia in the 1970s and 80s.

The Anglican Bishop of Tasmania, Richard Condie, res­ponded by apologising to victims and announcing disciplinary proceedings against former bishop Philip Newell, whose handling of abuse in that state in the 80s and 90s was heavily criticised by the commission.

Former governor-general Peter Hollingworth was also criticised for a “serious error of judgment”, when as archbishop of Brisbane he allowed pedophile priest John Elliot to remain in the ministry after his abuse was known.

The report is scathing of the church’s responses to the abuse; identifying systemic shortcomings and a failure to adequately co-ordinate belated investigations across state borders.

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OHIO
BishopAccountability.org

Summary of Case: Donald Shelander was ordained for the Archdiocese of Cincinnati in 1970. He was a pastoral assistant in Springfield and Urbana parishes, rising to pastor status in Urbana in 1977. He then led parishes in Bellefontaine and Newport, OH before retiring in 2002.

In late 2005 a man reported to the archdiocese that Shelander had sexually abused him during the late 1970s to early 1980s, when the man was 14 to 18 years-old and Shelander was pastor of St. Mary’s in Urbana. Shelander denied the allegations. An internal investigation found “the semblance of truth” and Shelander was placed on leave in March 2006. The Vatican ordered a canonical trial, which determined that the allegations could not be proven. Shelander was allowed to return to active ministry in February 2009.

Ordained: 1970
Retired: 2002

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VATICAN CITY
Vatican Radio

(Vatican Radio) “How can a priest, at the service of Christ and of His Church, come to cause such evil? How can one who has consecrated his life to leading the little ones to God, end up instead devouring them in what I have called a ‘diabolic sacrifice,’ which destroys both the victims and the life of the Church?”

Pope Francis has once again spoken out strongly against the evil of sex abuse perpetrated by clergy and religious. His words come in the preface to a book by a victim of clerical sexual abuse, Daniel Pettit, today a husband and father of six children.

In his preface, the Holy Father describes meeting Mr Pettit at the Vatican during the Year of Consecrated Life. “I couldn’t imagine that this man, enthusiastic and passionate about Christ, was a victim of abuse by a priest,” the Pope writes. “And yet this is what he told me, and his suffering struck me deeply. I saw once more the fearful damage caused by sexual abuse, and the long and painful journey that awaits the victims.” In particular, Pope Francis notes that some victims have even taken their own lives. “These deaths weigh on my heart, on my conscience, and on that of the whole Church,” he says. “To their families I offer my sentiments of love and of sorrow, and I humbly ask forgiveness.”

Pettit’s witness, the Pope says, deals with “an absolute monstrosity, a horrendous sin, radically contrary to all that Christ teaches us.” Pope Francis recalls the Church’s duty to care for and protect the weakest and the most defenceless; and the duty to show proof of “extreme severity towards priests who betray their mission, and towards their hierarchy, Bishops or Cardinals, who protect them.”

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VATICAN CITY
Religion News Service

By Josephine McKenna

VATICAN CITY (RNS) Pope Francis has condemned clerical sex abuse as an “absolute monstrosity” and asked victims and their families for forgiveness on behalf of the Catholic Church.

In an unusual move, the pontiff’s comments were published as a preface to a new book by Daniel Pittet, a Swiss victim who was sexually abused for four years by a priest when he was a child.

“How can a priest in the service of Christ and his church cause so much evil?” the pope said. “This is an absolute monstrosity, a horrendous sin, completely opposed to what Christ teaches us.”

The pope said he had personally witnessed the damage caused by clerical abuse and it affected him deeply.

“Several victims have committed suicide. These deaths weigh on my heart and my conscience and on the whole church,” Francis said.

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VATICAN CITY
Crux

Inés San Martín February 13, 2017
VATICAN CORRESPONDENT

ROME- As the Catholic church in Australia struggles with fresh revelations that some 4,400 people have reported being sexually abused in more than 1,000 Catholic institutions, a new book by a religious sexual abuse survivor with a preface by Pope Francis was revealed on Monday, in which the pontiff calls sexual abuse an “absolute monstrosity, a horrible sin.”

“For those who have been victims of a pedophile, it is difficult to talk about what they have been through and describe the trauma that persists still, after many years,” Francis wrote. “For this reason, Daniel Pittet’s testimony is necessary, treasured and courageous.”

The pope is talking about a 57-year old Swiss man, who was first abused at the age of eight by a Capuchin brother, who would continue molesting him for four years.

As Francis writes in the preface to I forgive you, Father, to be released in Italian later this month, he met Pittet in the Vatican back in 2015 during the Year for Consecrated Life. The pope’s words were released in full on Monday by the Italian newspaper La Stampa.

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VATICAN CITY
Yahoo! News

February 13, 2017

By Philip Pullella

VATICAN CITY (Reuters) – Senior Roman Catholic cardinals from the around the world defended Pope Francis on Monday against a spate of recent attacks from conservatives challenging his authority.

In an unusual move, nine cardinals in a group advising Francis on Vatican economic and structural reforms issued a statement expressing “full support for the pope’s work” and guaranteeing “full backing for him and his teachings”.

The statement was unusual in that the cardinals – from Italy, Chile, Austria, India, Germany, Congo, the United States, Australia and Honduras – customarily issue statements only at the end of their meetings, which are held four times a year.

The statement said the cardinals expressed their solidarity with the pope “in light of recent events,” which Vatican sources said was a clear reference to the attacks.

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AUSTRALIA
ABC News

By Sarah Hawke

The former governor-general and Archbishop of Brisbane Peter Hollingworth has been found to have made a “serious error of judgement” for allowing a rector who admitted to abusing a child to continue in the ministry.

The Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse has handed down its report into the response by the Church of England Boys’ Society (CEBS) and four Anglican dioceses into allegations of child sexual abuse.

Public hearings were held in Hobart in February 2016.

The report detailed the case of John Linton Elliot who the commission had been told abused a boy in the 1970s when he was a lay preacher at St Barnabas Anglican Church in Sunnybank, Brisbane, and also CEBS branch governor.

The boy know as BYB was about nine when the sexual abuse started, and it occurred almost on a weekly basis until he was 13.

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AUSTRALIA
Western Advocate

A WEBSITE dedicated to supporting victims of institutional childhood sexual abuse has done “a better job” of outing paedophilia then the Royal Commission, says one journalist who spent the best part of a decade reporting on the crimes.

Former Western Advocate journalist Terry Jones said the website, Broken Rites Australia, had done a phenomenal job in outing what he described as the shame of Bathurst – decades of sexual abuse against students at Bathurst boarding schools.

As the Royal Commission last week began the final hearing into Child Sexual Abuse involving the Catholic Church, Mr Jones said he was still at a loss to think there would be no public hearing held in Bathurst.

He said the city was epicentre of paedophilia and it defied logic a public hearing would not take place.

Mr Jones said the Broken Rites website had done what the Royal Commission should have done – “out this dreadful, horrendous thing which happened in Bathurst”.

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DEUTSCHLAND
Stuttgarter Zeitung

[In the Protestant community of Korntal in the district of Ludwigsburg many children were abused in homes. But the investigation is progressing.]

In der evangelischen Gemeinde Korntal im Kreis Ludwigsburg wurde in der Vergangenheit in Heimen viele Kinder missbraucht. Doch die Aufklärung kommt nicht voran.

Korntal – Im Ringen um die Aufarbeitung von Missbrauchsfällen in Heimen der evangelischen Brüdergemeinde Korntal (Kreis Ludwigsburg) haben sich die Fronten verhärtet. In einem mehrere Stunden dauernden Gespräch konnten sich Opfervertreter, die Brüdergemeinde und Mediatoren am Samstag nicht auf einen gemeinsamen Aufklärer einigen.

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ROME
La Repubblica

[Pedophilia, the Pope’s pain: “How can a priest to cause so much harm?”]

Su Repubblica in edicola la prefazione scritta da Francesco per il libro in cui lo svizzero Daniel Pittet racconta gli abusi subiti da un sacerdote: “Chiedo perdono per i preti pedofili: un segno del diavolo, saremo severissimi”

di FRANCESCO

Per chi è stato vittima di un pedofilo è difficile raccontare quello che ha subito, descrivere i traumi che ancora persistono a distanza di anni. Per questo motivo la testimonianza di Daniel Pittet è necessaria, preziosa e coraggiosa.

Ho conosciuto Daniel in Vaticano nel 2015, in occasione dell’Anno della vita consacrata. Voleva diffondere su larga scala un libro intitolato “Amare è dare tutto”, che raccoglieva le testimonianze di religiosi e religiose, di preti e di consacrati. Non potevo immaginare che quest’uomo entusiasta e appassionato di Cristo fosse stato vittima di abusi da parte di un prete. Eppure questo è ciò che mi ha raccontato, e la sua sofferenza mi ha molto colpito.

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ROM
Radio Vatikan

[Pope Francis has written the preface for a book on abuse. He asks for forgiveness for the sins of the church and promises to deal harshly with offenders. The preface was published Monday in the Italian daily La Repubblica. The book is written by Daniel Pittet, a former Swiss priest who is now married and has six children. Pittet was sexually abuse for four years by a priest.]

Papst Franziskus hat ein Vorwort zum Buch eines Missbrauchsopfers geschrieben. In dem Text bittet der Papst um Vergebung für die Sünden von Kirchenleuten und verspricht, mit Härte gegen Missbrauchstäter vorzugehen. Das Papst-Vorwort wurde an diesem Montag von der italienischen Tageszeitung La Repubblica veröffentlicht.

Das Buch, zu dem Franziskus seinen Text beisteuerte, stammt von dem Schweizer Daniel Pittet. Er war früher Priester, ist mittlerweile verheiratet und hat sechs Kinder. Beginnend mit einem Alter von acht Jahren, war Pittet vier Jahre lang von einem Priester sexuell missbraucht worden. Der Schweizer und der Papst sind einander vor zwei Jahren im Vatikan begegnet. Sein Buch erschien auf Italienisch im Vatikanverlag LEV und trägt den Titel: „Ich vergebe Ihnen, Pater“.

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AUSTRALIEN
Radio Vatikan

[The chapter on abuse and sexual violence is a part of the history of the church and should not be suppressed: The terrible figures presented by the Royal Commission, a government inquiry commission, have shattered the church’s initial reactions.]

Das Kapitel ‚Missbrauch und sexuelle Gewalt’ gehört zur Geschichte der Kirche dazu und darf nicht verdrängt werden: die furchtbaren Zahlen, welche von der ‚Royal Comission’ – einer staatlichen Untersuchungskommission – in der vergangenen Woche vorgelegt wurden, haben die Kirche erschüttert, erste Reaktionen sprachen von Scham und Trauma.

Ganz direkt und nicht über einen Text oder Brief wendet sich jetzt der Bischof des südlich von Sydney gelegenen Bistums Wollongong in einer Video-Botschaft auf Facebook an die Gläubigen und die Gesellschaft Australiens. Bischof Peter Ingham spricht vom Schaden, der von Priestern und Ordensleuten in seinem Bistum angerichtet wurde. Sie hätten ihre Autorität gegen die verletztlichsten Mitglieder der Gesellschaft gerichtet und durch diesen Missbrauch das Leben vieler Menschen zerstört.

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PERU
Latina Press

[Abuse scandal in Peru: Victims are disappointed.

Über Jahrzehnte haben Führungspersonen der peruanischen Bewegung „Sodalitium Christianae Vitae“ (SCV) junge Menschen sexuell und psychisch missbraucht. Mitglieder des „Sodalicio“ hatten in ihren Blogs über ihre traumatischen Erfahrungen mit der Gemeinschaft berichtet, die Opfer wurden um Entschuldigung gebeten und der Missbrauch durch hochrangige Mitglieder eingestanden. Die religiöse Laienbewegung wurde 1971 in Lima auf Initiative des Peruaners Luis Fernando Figari gegründet, der nach Bekanntwerden des Skandals von der Bewegung ausgeschlossen wurde und in Rom lebt. Die Opfer, die sich Gerechtigkeit und eine exemplarische Verurteilung vonseiten der Kirche erhofften, wurden nun enttäuscht.

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GUAM
KUAM

Updated: Feb 13, 2017

By Krystal Paco

The Sunday pickets in front of the Dulce Nombre de Maria Cathedral-Basilica continue strong with a singular demand: defrock Archbishop Anthony Apuron. According to Laity Forward Movement’s Lou Klitzkie, protestors are now multi-generational, seeing as grandmothers are joined by their children and their grandchildren. Although there’s been limited information released on the ongoing canonical trial for Apuron, who allegedly sexually molested altar boys decades ago in Guam, protestors remain hopeful the Vatican is listening. Apuron was spotted in Fairfield, California last month. He also faces lawsuits at the federal court for allegations of child molestation.

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AUSTRALIA
Eureka Street

Frank Brennan | 12 February 2017

Last Monday, the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse commenced its three-week examination of the causes of child sexual abuse and cover up in the Catholic Church in Australia over the last 60 years. The statistics were horrifying.

Every case represented a person who claims as a child to have been abused by a person of authority in a Catholic institution — whether it be a school, a parish, an orphanage or a children’s home.

Whichever way the statistics are interpreted in comparison with other institutions, they are appalling. The Catholic Church harboured child abusers in the past, and in numbers which now shock Australians, whether they be Catholic or not.

We need to hold the victims clearly in focus, not as statistics or as hard cases, but as individuals, erstwhile vulnerable members of the church community, citizens able to walk tall again because they have been heard, believed and affirmed. Francis Sullivan got it right when speaking for the Church’s Truth Justice and Healing Council. With great compassion and insight, he told the commissioners:

‘We are advised that the data does not distinguish those claims that were substantiated from those that were accepted without investigation. In an ideal world, the data would distinguish between the number of allegations where offenders made admissions, or were convicted, and those where an investigation substantiated the complaint.

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GUAM
KUAM

[with video]

Updated: Feb 13, 2017

By Krystal Paco

Another former Guam priest stands accused of child molestation. Former bishop of the Northern Mariana Islands Tomas A. Camacho is the latest clergyman named in a lawsuit against the Church.

Much like the others, Melvin Duenas was an altar boy when he allegedly fell victim to child molestation by the hands of church clergy. Today, 55 years old, he marks the 17th victim to file suit against the Church. According to court filings, Duenas was the chief of altar boys at St. Joseph Parish in Inajaran. His duties – which included ringing the church bell multiple times a day in addition to serving at mass daily and three times on Sundays – he was asked to live in the guest room at the St. Joseph Rectory. The priest at the time was Tomas A. Camacho, now retired Bishop of the Diocese of Chalan Kanao in the NMI.

The complaint alleges that between 1971 to 1974, when Duenas was 10 to 13 years old, he was sexually molested and raped by Camacho on a nightly basis. According to Duenas, he wouldn’t be allowed back to his room until the priest was satisfied. Despite efforts to resist the sexual abuse and prevent Camacho from penetrating him, Duenas reports he was not able to free himself, and ultimately ran away from the rectory to escape the abuse.

Duenas also names Father Louis Brouillard of molestation. Court documents state Duenas on occasion served mass at the San Isidro Catholic Church of Malojloj. Much like other accusations against Brouillard, Duenas reports the priest would walk around naked, not only in the Convent in front of the boys, but under his robe while saying mass. Duenas was not alone in the abuse, as the complaint states other boys were subject to masturbating and performing oral sex on the priest who also served as the Scout Master for the Boy Scouts of America. Last year, Brouillard admitted in a phone interview with KUAM to molesting young boys while on Guam. Today, he lives in Minnesota and although he’s been removed as a priest, the Archdiocese of Agana confirms he still receives a $300 monthly stipend.

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AUSTRALIA
Mercury

DUNCAN ABEY, Mercury
February 13, 2017

THE Anglican Bishop of Tasmania has launched an investigation into the response of former church leader Bishop Philip Newell to complaints of sexual abuse by clergy.

The inquiry comes in the wake of the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse’s report on the Church of England Boys’ Society operations in Tasmania.

The report, released on Monday, detailed systematic issues in the operation of the Church of England Boys’ Society in the 1970s and ’80s in Tasmania — as well as in Adelaide, Brisbane and Sydney — and followed days of public hearings in Hobart early last year.

The report found abuse often occurred on camps and sailing trips and senior Church of England Boys’ Society organisers were left to operate autonomously within the organisation, which was attended by boys aged between six and 16.

The report criticised Bishop Newell for failing to adequately deal with multiple complaints of sexual abuse from young Church of England Boys’ Society members against priest Louis Daniels, who was eventually defrocked and jailed for his crimes.

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UNITED STATES
New York Times

By THE EDITORIAL BOARD

FEB. 13, 2017

The global scale of the Catholic clergy’s sexual abuse scandal becomes harder for the Vatican to deny with each shocking national inquiry. The latest, from Australian government investigators, found that from 1980 to 2015 there were 4,444 victims of abuse and at least 1,880 suspected to be abusers, most of them priests and religious brothers.

Through this period, the haunting subtext is the culpability of bishops who did nothing about the crimes. The abused children were ignored or punished while priests who raped children were protected by supervisors.

“Secrecy prevailed as did cover-ups,” said Gail Furness, senior counsel to the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse. The inquiry, which began six years ago, has been meticulous, with hearings investigating 116 institutions, including government agencies responsible for children’s welfare.

The findings show harrowing patterns of abuse. Forty percent of religious brothers from the order of St. John of God were accused of sexually assaulting their wards in residences where some of the most vulnerable youngsters were housed. Of all the chilling statistics, one stands out: 33 years is the average time it took for victims to overcome decades of personal despair and go to authorities with complaints. And many might never have filed complaints but for the emergence of other victims as the scandal grew churchwide in the wake of news media investigations.

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AUSTRALIA
ABC News

By Georgie Burgess

Tasmania’s Anglican Bishop has taken disciplinary action against a senior church figure following the release of the child sex abuse royal commission’s findings.

The Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse held hearings in Hobart last year to examine responses to allegations within the Church of England Boy’s Society (CEBS) and Anglican Diocese, including in Tasmania.

The report confirmed that there were networks of sexual perpetrators at the Boy’s Society who had knowledge of each other’s sexual offending, and in some instances facilitated the sexual abuse of children.

“Historically, allegations of child sexual abuse weren’t reported to the police either at all or in a timely way,” it said.

“The report concluded that most CEBS branches could operate in an autonomous and unregulated way and that the abuse often occurred on camps, sailing and fishing trips as well as overnight stays at rectories and private residences.”

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UNITED KINGDOM
Blackmore Vale Magazine

David Jonathan Everett, 57, of Hankinson Road, Bournemouth was jailed for six year and eight months at Bournemouth Crown Court on Thursday 26 January after pleading guilty at the same court on Tuesday 3 January to six counts of indecent assault on a boy aged under 16.

The court heard that Everett was a member and conductor of the Priory Church Choir in Christchurch and met his victim via his connections with the church.

The incidents occurred in the Christchurch area in the early 2000s.

Detective Constable Adrian Stocker, of Dorset Police’s Child Abuse Investigation Team, said: “David Everett abused the position he held in the church to take advantage of his victim.

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AUSTRALIA
The Advertiser

Nigel Hunt, The Advertiser
February 13, 2017

FORMER Anglican archbishop Ian George was more concerned with legal liability facing the church than providing care to the victims of notorious paedophile Robert Brandenburg, a report found.

The Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse report also reveals a public statement Dr George issued in 2003 concerning his awareness of Brandenburg’s abuse was “misleading.’’

It found he was aware of allegations surrounding Brandenburg up to a decade earlier, after he was advised Brandenburg had been caught in a spa with a 10-year old boy.

The damning findings also state Dr George “bore the primary responsibility’’ for the Adelaide Diocese’s poor handling of the abuse allegations.

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AUSTRALIA
3AW

Eileen Piper refuses to give up.

The 92-year-old continues to fight for an apology from the Catholic church after her daughter Stephanie committed suicide in 1994.

Stephanie was a victim of repeated sexual abuse at the hands of a priest.

But Eileen has never received an acknowledgement from the church that it happened, let alone an apology.

So she became the oldest person to start an online petition.

Ms Piper told Neil Mitchell she wanted an apology before she died.

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AUSTRALIA
The Advertiser

Megan Neil, Australian Associated Press
February 12, 2017

The Catholic Church has not done enough to ensure the increasing number of overseas priests coming to Australia will not present a risk to children, the child sex abuse royal commission has heard.

Commissioner Robert Fitzgerald said the Catholic Church in some countries was in denial about the problem of child sexual abuse by priests and other religious.

“It’s not helpful for the church in many countries to deny or to assert that the child sexual abuse issues are that of the white western world or some European countries,” Mr Fitzgerald said on Monday.

“Isn’t that a fundamental problem in the church itself, that whilst there’s been an acknowledgement that in many countries such as America, Australia and Ireland and some of the Europeans, the church is largely in denial in many of the countries from which these priests, nuns and brothers are coming?”

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AUSTRALIA
Brisbane Times

Rachel Browne

A “network of sexual perpetrators” used an Anglican church youth group to prey on young boys over a period of decades from the 1970s to the 1990s with church leaders failing to report allegations, a royal commission has found.

In a scathing assessment of Anglican authorities, the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse found leaders, including former Brisbane archbishop and governor-general Peter Hollingworth, failed to protect children.

The report into Anglican youth group, the Church of England Boys’ Society, and the Dioceses of Sydney, Brisbane, Adelaide and Tasmania, comes a year after a public inquiry heard harrowing accounts of abuse by clergy and lay people.

The commissioners found the Church of England Boys’ Society (CEBS), which still operates in parts of Australia under the name the Anglican Boys’ Society and Boys’ Ministry Australia, provided a number of paedophiles with easy access to children between the 1970s and 1990s.

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GUAM
Guam Daily Post

By Mindy Aguon | For the Post Feb 13, 2017

A retired bishop of the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands is accused of sexually abusing an altar boy for at least three years until the victim ran away.

Melvin Duenas, a Yona resident, filed the lawsuit in the U.S. District Court of Guam this afternoon against the Archbishop of Agana, retired Bishop Emeritus Tomas Aguon Camacho, and Louis Brouillard, a former priest who worked at parishes and schools on Guam.

Camacho was a member of the clergy of the Agana Archdiocese who became a priest in June 1961 and ordained a bishop in January 1985. He served as bishop until he retired in April 2010 and currently serves as bishop emeritus for the Roman Catholic Diocese of Chalan Kanoa in Saipan, the main island of the CNMI.

In the complaint, which seeks a minimum of $5 million in damages, Duenas alleges he was repeatedly sexually molested and raped by Camacho. At the time, Camacho was the priest for the Saint Joseph Catholic Church in Inarajan.

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GUAM
Pacific Daily News

Haidee V Eugenio , heugenio@guampdn.com

Feb. 13, 2017

U.S. District Court of Guam Magistrate Judge Joaquin Manibusan on Friday granted a request by the Archdiocese of Agana for more time, or up to March 10, 2017, to respond to the 16 clergy abuse cases filed in federal court.

Gov. Eddie B. Calvo on Sept. 23, 2016, signed a bill into law, eliminating the statute of limitations on lawsuits against those who accused of abusing children, as well as the institutions that supported them.

That law paved the way for 16 former altar boys to sue the church and priests over alleged clergy sexual abuse from decades ago. Each lawsuit demands a jury trial and a minimum of $5 million in damages, for a combined total of $80 million, plus attorney’s fees and other costs.

The lawsuits originally were filed in the Superior Court of Guam, but were refiled in federal court after most Superior Court judges recused themselves, citing conflicts of interest.

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GUAM
Pacific News Center

Written by Janela Carrera

Bishop Emeritus Tomas Camacho was ordained bishop in 1985 and retired in 2010.

Guam – Archbishop Anthony Apuron isn’t the only bishop facing allegations of sexual abuse.

Another survivor has come forward saying he was repeatedly raped by Tomas Camacho, the Bishop Emeritus for the Roman Catholic Diocese of Chalan Kanoa in the Northern Mariana Islands.

The latest accuser is 55-year-old Melvin Duenas who served as an altar boy at the St. Joseph church in Inarajan between 1968 to 1974.

Duenas said the sexual abuse began when he was 10 years old and lasted for about three years.

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GUAM
Pacific Daily News

Haidee V Eugenio , heugenio@guampdn.com Feb. 13, 2017

Tomas A. Camacho, Saipan’s bishop emeritus, has been accused of raping and sexually abusing a former altar boy on Guam from about 1971 to 1974. The accusations are part of the 17th clergy sex abuse case filed in Guam’s federal court since January.

In the complaint, Melvin Duenas, now a 55-year-old resident of Yona, said former Guam priest Louis Brouillard also abused him. Brouillard publicly admitted in 2016​ that he sexually abused more than 20 altar boys when he was on Guam, his home from the late 1940s to 1981.

Camacho was bishop of the Diocese of Chalan Kanoa from 1984 until his retirement in April 2010 at the age of 76. He has since served as bishop emeritus.

Duenas filed a lawsuit on Monday in the U.S. District of Guam, alleging Camacho sexually abused and raped him multiple times from approximately 1971 to 1974, when Camacho was priest at Saint Joseph Catholic Church in Inarajan.

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IRELAND
Irish Times

Patsy McGarry

In his victim impact statement to the courts in Dublin a priest, falsely accused of raping a child, said he would have preferred to have been shot through the head than go through what he had since the allegation was made.

He had to stand down from public ministry, leave the presbytery where he had lived for years, and deal with rumour, and rumours of rumour.

The priest, who was not named in court proceedings but who was, and remains, deeply respected in the archdiocese, made his impact statement at the trial of his accuser who was jailed for four years in 2007, reduced on appeal to three years.

In June 2003, Paul Anderson made a statement to gardaí at Kevin Street in Dublin, falsely accusing the priest of indecent assault and buggery between February and May 1981 while being prepared for First Communion.

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AUSTRALIA
Huffington Post

Eoin Blackwell Senior Associate Editor, HuffPost Australia

An Anglican Church-founded youth group was used by a “network of sexual perpetrators” who knew of each other’s offending while they abused children for more than a decade, a new report says.

The Child Sex Abuse Royal Commission report found the Church of England’s Boys’ Society’s (CEBS) only formal response to the sex abuse was to strip awards given to certain offenders, while the body’s national council decided against an apology in 2009.

The report also found a culture developed in the CEBS — a Scout-like activity group — in which perpetrators had easy access and opportunities to sexually abuse boys in their care.

The abuse often occurred on youth camps, sailing and fishing trips and overnight stays organised by the CEBS, which the Commission found was was left to operate autonomously by the Anglican Church in the 1970s and 1980s.

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AUSTRALIA
9 News

AAP

The Catholic Church has not done enough to ensure the increasing number of overseas priests coming to Australia will not present a risk to children, the child sex abuse royal commission has heard.

Commissioner Robert Fitzgerald said the Catholic Church in some countries was in denial about the problem of child sexual abuse by priests and other religious.

“It’s not helpful for the church in many countries to deny or to assert that the child sexual abuse issues are that of the white western world or some European countries,” Mr Fitzgerald said on Monday.

“Isn’t that a fundamental problem in the church itself, that whilst there’s been an acknowledgement that in many countries such as America, Australia and Ireland and some of the Europeans, the church is largely in denial in many of the countries from which these priests, nuns and brothers are coming?”

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AUSTRALIA
9 News

AAP

The Catholic Church in Australia accepts there have been deep failures in its past approach to the seminary life of priests, the child sex abuse royal commission has heard.

Commissioner Robert Fitzgerald on Monday asked if the church recognised there were deep failures in the seminary approaches of the past and that seminary life was unhealthy in the 1950s, ’60s and ’70s.

Archdiocese of Sydney Auxiliary Bishop Anthony Randazzo replied: “I think there is an acknowledgement that there were aspects of the formation in the past that were not as good as they could have been and that they did contribute to the shortcomings within this area that we’re talking about.”

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AUSTRALIA
The Conversation

Kathleen McPhillips
Lecturer, School of Humanities and Social Science, University of Newcastle

The final hearing of the Catholic Church at the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse opened on February 6.

The three-week hearing is investigating the church’s response to the crisis of child sexual abuse by clerics over a 60-year period, and particularly the church’s plans for child protection protocols and institutional change. The hearing (Case Study 50) is streamed live from the commission’s website. Members of the public are welcome to attend at any time.

The structure of the hearing is comprised of panels of experts who will report on the main issues raised throughout the 15 public hearings that the Catholic Church has been the subject of over the past four years. The panels are divided into topics that reflect the major concerns the commission has identified with church culture and practice. These include church governance, culture, clericalism, discipline and secrecy, the practice of confession, formation programs for clerics, Catholic education, child safety and risk management, complaint handling, professional standards, professional support and responses from the church leadership.

It is a long hearing, reflecting that the Catholic Church is the worst offender before the royal commission. It is also possibly the most complex in terms of managing change.

Prior to the hearing, a number of church leaders, including Archbishop Mark Coleridge from Brisbane and Archbishop Anthony Fisher from Sydney, warned Catholic communities that the evidence and data emerging from the hearing would be “grim”.

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AUSTRALIA
7 News

AAP on February 13, 2017

A youth group set up by the Anglican Church had a network of sexual perpetrators who knew of each other’s offending and facilitated the abuse of boys, a report has found.

The abuse often occurred on camps, sailing and fishing trips and overnight stays as The Church of England Boys’ Society was left to operate autonomously in the 1970s and 1980s.

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AUSTRALIA
Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse

13 February, 2017

The Royal Commission’s report of Case Study 36 – The response of the Church of England Boys’ Society and the Anglican Dioceses of Tasmania, Adelaide, Brisbane and Sydney to allegations of child sexual abuse – was released today.

This report follows public hearings held in Hobart, Tasmania in January and February 2016 that investigated the responses of the Church of England Boys’ Society (CEBS) and the Anglican Dioceses to allegations of child sexual abuse made against lay people and clergy associated with CEBS in the 1970s and 1980s.

In particular, the Royal Commission examined the experiences of survivors of child sexual abuse perpetrated by convicted pedophiles Louis Daniels, Garth Hawkins, Simon Jacobs and John Elliot and alleged pedophile, Robert Brandenburg.

CEBS, which has now changed its name in some jurisdictions to the Anglican Boys’ Society and Boys’ Ministry Australia, was a youth group set up by the Anglican Church for boys between six and 16 years and had various branches within numerous dioceses of the church.

A network of sexual perpetrators
The report concluded that most CEBS branches could operate in an autonomous and unregulated way and that the abuse often occurred on camps, sailing and fishing trips as well as overnight stays at rectories and private residences.

As a result a culture developed in which perpetrators had easy access to boys and opportunities to sexually abuse those boys.

There were networks of sexual perpetrators at CEBS who had knowledge of each other’s sexual offending against boys and in some instances facilitated the sexual abuse of children, the report found.

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GUAM
Radio New Zealand

The Catholic Church on Guam says a group of investigators will soon arrive as part of the canonical trial of the island’s archbishop.

The Archbishop, Anthony Apuron, is facing a Vatican trial after several former altar boys accused him of sexual assault in the 1970s, when he was a parish priest.

The Pacific Daily News reported Archbishop Michael Byrnes – who will replace Archbishop Apuron when he retires, resigns or is removed – also announced tougher policies against sexual abuse.

They include background checks for anyone working around children; requierd reporting to civil authorities any allegation involving minors; and suspension of clergy if an accusation is deemed credible.

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AUSTRALIA
Sky News

The Catholic Church in Australia is moving to set up national standards to ensure priests are properly trained about child protection issues and receive ongoing personal and professional development.

The child sex abuse royal commission has heard the training many priests and religious brothers received historically was inadequate to prepare them for their vocation, and that they should have ongoing formation and supervision.

The church’s Truth Justice and Healing Council says it is important for all priests and religious to participate in ongoing formation and continuous professional development, and be provided with ready access to appropriate support and supervision throughout their time in ministry.

‘This is not presently as readily available, or utilised, as it should be,’ the TJHC said in a submission to the royal commission.

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GUAM
Guam Daily Post

Chris Wong | Post News Staff

Members of the Concerned Catholics Of Guam marked their 30th week of protest in front of the Dulce Nombre de Maria Cathedral-Basilica in Hagåtña yesterday, a humid Sunday morning.

A younger voice at the protest, Father Duenas Memorial School student Jude Concepcion, 15, came out to support his grandfather who was picketing for the permanent removal of Archbishop Anthony Apuron.

“I don’t really know much about it,” Concepcion said, referring to the details over the controversy that has surrounded Apuron’s departure amid sex abuse allegations.

When asked if this issue comes up in school among his friends, he said, “People my age … not really, they don’t really think about it,” he said. “A lot of us know a lot about what happened, but we don’t really care to support it. We talk about it, but we don’t really do anything about it.”

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ITALIA
Rete L’Abuso

[A psychologist says pedophiles cannot be healed.]

ALESSANDRO CALDERONI

Lo afferma lo psicologo che cura, fra gli altri, anche i preti che abusano di minorenni. Per questo, spiega, non è prudente lasciarli al loro incarico. A mezzo chilometro dalla Basilica di San Pietro, in Vaticano, lavora un professionista che conosce i più cupi segreti di alcuni membri del clero. Non è un confessore ma un clinico. Poco meno di sesant’anni, origini pugliesi, uomo di scienza prima che uomo di fede, Aureliano Pacciolla insegna psicologia della personalità alla Lumsa ed è psicoterapeuta orientato verso l’ipnosi e il cognitivismo. Dirige la collana Psicologia e interdisciplinarità dell’editore Laurus Robuffo ed è consulente tecnico del tribunale di Roma e della Sacra rota. Il suo campo d’azione specifico riguarda l’abuso sessuale: in particolare l’abuso su minorenni e la pedofilia.

In qualità di terapeuta tenta il recupero di pazienti che si sono macchiati di questi reati anche all’interno del clero. In veste di studioso e ricercatore, è chiamato a tenere corsi di aggiornamento per superiori del clero, su questi temi. «Il primo caso di cui mi sono occupato riguardava un laico e mi ha insegnato che riconoscere un pedofilo non è cosa semplice, anche se sei un esperto» spiega Pacciolla.

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RUSSIA
Slate

By Christina Cauterucci

Russian President Vladimir Putin signed into law on Tuesday an amendment that decriminalizes domestic violence, making physical abuse of a spouse, child, or elder parent punishable by a monetary fine rather than time in prison. Both houses of Russian parliament approved the measure handily—the first reading of the amendment in the lower house passed 386 to one.

Under the new law, a person can beat his spouse or child until she’s bloodied and bruised, and as long as her injuries don’t require a hospital stay, he’ll get hit with a fine if his victim presses charges. The most jail time he’ll serve will be 15 days. Previously, domestic abusers faced a maximum of two years in prison. The amendment offers domestic abusers this easy out as long as they don’t commit more than one severe beating a year. …

The Russian Orthodox Church has also pushed for looser restrictions on domestic abusers, claiming that the state should not interfere in family matters and that calls to make domestic violence a crime are informed by Western influences that want to impose liberal values on Russia.

Domestic violence is widely recognized as an epidemic in Russia, where each month, more than 600 women are killed in their own homes. In 2013, Russian officials reported that 600,000 women reported being physically or verbally abused at home; that year, 14,000 died from injuries inflicted by an intimate partner.

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ISRAEL
JTA

February 10, 2017

(JTA) – An Israeli woman who was denied a divorce by a rabbinic court on the grounds of documented domestic violence has appealed to the state’s attorney general.

The woman’s lawyers made the unusual appeal Thursday following the Jerusalem Rabbinic Court’s rejection of her divorce motion. Her husband had been convicted and imprisoned for 75 days for assaulting his wife last year.

In Israel, religious tribunals function as family courts. According to Orthodox Jewish law, divorce is only possible if the husband consents to it. Rabbinical judges in most cases cannot force husbands to give their wives a divorce, though they can impose punishments – including imprisonment and dispossession – on those deemed to be abusing their wives but not granting them a divorce. Such women are called agunot in Hebrew, meaning chained.

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AUSTRALIA
The Australian

EILEEN PIPER
The Australian
February 13, 2017

Don’t be fooled by the Catholic Church’s supposed grief and regret at the royal commission into child abuse as the archbishops give evidence. Don’t be fooled by their crocodile tears or their so-called quest to heal. These manufactured gestures mean nothing. I know, because the church continues to refuse to have anything to do with me, the elderly mother of one of the horrifically abused victims.

The year before my daughter Stephanie killed herself, she told me that she’d been repeatedly ­sexually abused as a teenager by a Catholic priest.

The Catholic Church did everything in its power to silence and deny this abuse.

Then, a few days after her ­suicide, a member of the church turned to me and said: “Don’t worry. God will forgive her.” I threw him out of my house and turned my back on my faith.

I’m now 92 and I have one mission I’m determined to fulfil before my time is up: I want a proper, personal apology from Archbishop of Melbourne Denis Hart and Pallottine leader Father Eugene San.

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AUSTRALIA
The Australian

February 13, 2017

SIMONE FOX KOOB
JournalistSydney
@SimoneFoxKoob

Eileen Piper’s faith in the Catholic Church died when her daughter did.

It was January 19, 1994, when the mother of two found a note left by her only daughter, Stephanie­, in her bedroom at the family’s Melbourne home.

“A blaze of glory streams from heaven’s gates,” it read. “The prize: eternal life. A dream no more, for God himself has opened his holy sacred doors to a peaceful place.”

After years of sexual abuse as a teenager at the hands of disgraced Pallottine priest Father Gerard Mulvale, Stephanie had been unable­ to recover and ended her life just after she turned 32.

Mulvale has previously said he “did not know” about the abuse.

Twenty-three years later, Stephanie’s 92-year-old mother is still battling with the institution that refused to acknowledge the systematic abuse of her daughter.

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VATICAN CITY
Herald Sun

Ellen Whinnett in Rome, News Corp Australia Network
February 12, 2017

CARDINAL George Pell has declined to discuss the progress of a police investigation into allegations of sexual abuse made against him.

News Corp Australia spoke to Cardinal Pell outside his home on the edge of St Peter’s Square at the Vatican in Rome.

He declined to comment, and another priest who spoke on his behalf said the Cardinal had considered his position and decided it was inappropriate to make public comments from Rome while the royal commission into the Catholic Church’s response to clergy abuse was continuing in Australia.

The priest, from Ireland, also gave News Corp Australia a copy of a statement issued by the Australian Council for Civil Liberties, which had condemned a Greens motion passed through the Senate last week calling for Cardinal Pell to return to Australia to face the royal commission.

Australia’s most senior Catholic, Cardinal Pell was appointed by Pope Francis in 2014 to the role of Prefect of the Secretariat for the Economy, where he oversees the Vatican’s vast finances.

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PERU/CIUDAD DEL VATICANO
Infobae

La Santa Sede decidió enviar a Luis Fernando Figari a un lugar de penitencia “para que pueda enclaustrarse y rezar por su alma”. Cuáles son las graves acusaciones en su contra y por qué habían prescripto en su país

Perú está comovido por la tibia respuesta del Vaticano ante las graves acusaciones de abuso sexual contra el fundador del Sodalicio de Vida Cristiana (SCV), Luis Fernando Figari.

Se esperaba una condena ejemplar de la Santa Sede, sin embargo la institución sólo se limitó a dar unas indicaciones para que el acusado pueda “enclaustrarse”.

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VATICAN CITY
Crux

Catholic News Agency February 11, 2017

VATICAN CITY – A newly released decree from the Vatican’s congregation for religious life states that the founder of the Sodalitium Christianae Vitae, Luis Fernando Figari, may not have contact with members of the community.

A Jan. 30 decree of the Congregation for Institutes of Consecrated Life and Societies of Apostolic Life addressed to the superior general of the Sodalitium, Alessandro Moroni Llabres, directs him to order that Figari be “prohibited from contacting, in any way, persons belonging to the Sodalitium Christianae Vitae, and no way have any direct personal contact with them.”

The Sodalitium Christianae Vitae is a society of apostolic life which was founded in 1971 in Peru, and granted pontifical recognition in 1997. CNA’s executive director, Alejandro Bermúdez, and its global director of operations, Ryan Thomas, are both members of the community.

The decree, obtained by CNA Feb. 10, is a fruit of an apostolic visitation made by Bishop Fortunato Pablo Urcey, Prelate of Chota, who was charged with investigating allegations of sexual and psychological abuse committed by Figari. The dicastery had first received accusations against Figari in 2011.

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AUSTRALIA
PerthNow

Peter Law & Kate Campbell, PerthNow
February 12, 2017

THE extent of alleged child sex abuse in the Anglican church in WA will finally be laid bare this week.

A report detailing all child sex abuse complaints received by dioceses across Australia between 1980 and 2015 is expected to be made public by the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse. Perth diocesan secretary Brian Dixon said its response to the Anglican Data Project was provided to the royal commission “on a confidential basis”.

But Anglican Church of Australia general secretary Anne Hywood said the findings were likely to be published on Friday, the first day of the public hearing into Anglican authorities.

The Sunday Times has revealed numerous allegations of sex abuse suffered by boys at an Anglican Church run orphanage in Middle Swan in the 1940s and 1950s, and reported how paedophilia was expected to cost the diocese $1 million in legal fees and settlements over three years.

But the church’s Perth diocese has refused to say how many complaints it had received, how many allegations were reported to police or how many victims had received compensation.

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UNITED KINGDOM
Thisis Lancashire

A FORMER headmaster from Burnley, convicted of sexually abusing boys at a residential school in Yorkshire, has been jailed for 18 years.

Roy Leonard Allen, 72, is beginning the prison term after vulnerable youngsters at Thorp Arch Grange, near Wetherby, were targeted in the 70s and 80s.

Allen, now of Moseley Road, was convicted of nine charges of indecent assault, two serious sexual assaults and one attempted serious sexual assault after a trial at Leeds Crown Court. He was cleared of two further indecent assaults.

Prosecutors told jurors Allen was director of education and later headmaster at Thorp Arch, where there was a culture of bullying so young boys, many who had ended up there through court or care proceedings.

Roy Lovatt, 71, from Redcar, a housemaster at Thorp Grange, was convicted of four indecent assaults and five serious sexual assaults at the trial. He had confessed earlier to 23 indecent assault offences and two gross indecency charges.

He went on to become an ordained Catholic priest and was jailed for 28 years by Judge Neil Clark.

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UNITED STATES
NewsBusters

By Brent Bozell and Tim Graham | February 11, 2017

When Pope Francis visited America in 2015, one topic that seemed mandatory to address was the old scandal over priests found guilty of the sexual abuse of children. Despite more than a decade of reforms and a more liberal-pleasing pontiff, some activists never stopped bashing the Catholic hierarchy.

The group called SNAP – the Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests – disparaged Francis meeting with victims as an empty public-relations gesture, a dodge. On CNN, SNAP spokesman Manny Vega demanded that if the pope “wants to put an end to this, he has to be completely transparent, allow the names to go unredacted, allow the files — allow researchers to get into the Vatican files and take a look at everything that’s happened. There has to be complete disclosure. That hasn’t happened yet.”

But CNN and the other television networks haven’t touched the amazing story of the shoe going on the other foot in the last few weeks. Suddenly, SNAP is falling apart after a lawsuit alleging they were funded largely by kickbacks for contingency-fee attorneys extracting billions of dollars in settlements.

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AUSTRALIA
Daily Telegraph

JORDAN BAKER, The Sunday Telegraph
February 11, 2017

ASHAMED. Humiliated. A kick in the guts. They’re some of the words Sydney Archbishop Anthony Fisher used to describe his reaction, and the ­reaction of many clergy, to new figures on the extent of sexual abuse in the Catholic Church.

In a frank interview that shows a marked departure from his predecessor Cardinal George Pell’s aloof approach, Archbishop Fisher admitted that he and other clergy felt ­contaminated, betrayed and demoralised by the paedophiles in the church.

He understood why Australians felt so angry.

“I felt — probably this will be pretty universal among the bishops and the clergy — quite winded,” ­Archbishop Fisher said.

“We knew (the report) would be bad, but it’s humiliating, it’s harrowing,” Archbishop Fisher said.

“We all feel that the priesthood has been demeaned, that people’s trust has been broken, that confidence in us is understandably shaken.

“It really has hurt me and it has hurt a lot of priests and bishops, but that’s tiny compared with how it’s hurt the survivors.”

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UNITED STATES
Religion News Service

By Emily McFarlan Miller

(RNS) President Trump is reportedly considering naming former Baylor University President Ken Starr to head the State Department’s Office of International Religious Freedom.

The ambassador-at-large for international religious freedom monitors religious persecution and discrimination worldwide and develops programs to promote religious freedom, according to the State Department website.

The reports about possible picks for the position come a week after more than 700 religious leaders, scholars and human rights advocates signed a letter to President Trump, coordinated by the 21st Century Wilberforce Initiative, that urges him to name an ambassador-at-large in the first 100 days of his presidency. …

Starr is best known for his work investigating President Bill Clinton’s extramarital relationship with Monica Lewinsky that led to Clinton’s impeachment. The Baylor Board of Regents removed Starr as president last year after an investigation into his mishandling of reports of sexual assault at the private Baptist university in Waco, Texas. He and the university later announced a mutual separation.

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DEUTSCHLAND
Westfalische Nachrichten

[Frankfurt / Limburg (dpa) – The investigation into child pornography in the Diocese of Limburg is likely to take some time and rapid results are not to be expected, said the spokesman of the Frankfurt general public prosecutor, Alexander Badle.]

Von dpa

Frankfurt /Limburg (dpa) – Die Ermittlungen im Kinderporno-Verdachtsfall im Bistum Limburg dürften längere Zeit in Anspruch nehmen. Mit schnellen Ergebnissen sei nicht zu rechnen, sagte der Sprecher der Frankfurter Generalstaatsanwaltschaft , Alexander Badle .

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AUSTRALIA
Noosa News

Opinion

ALTHOUGH not yet finished, the Royal Commission into Institutionalised Responses to Child Sexual Abuse has produced some shocking revelations and, as Scott Sawyer says, they are truly horrific (Daily, February 8).

The Federal Government has announced about $800 million in compensation.

Scott quite rightly asks: why shouldn’t the Catholic Church be totally responsible for compensation for all their abuse victims, especially as he reports that it has been estimated that “the Catholic Church’s tax exemptions at somewhere in the order of $16 billion annually in Australia”.

The Catholic Church, the Salvation Army and all the other institutions that turned a blind eye to the abuse by the evil perpetrators within their ranks should be totally responsible for their unjust treatment of the victims and their families and pay up. Due to the heart-rending suffering and loss of victims, their families and friends, as a nation we have lost productive and valued members of our community.

We have been paying support to many of them through social services and health services.

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NEW HAMPSHIRE
WLBZ

[with video]

Dustin Wlodkowski, WCSH February 11, 2017

SEABROOK, New Hampshire (NEWS CENTER) –

A former Catholic priest and convicted sex offender is now facing 29 new counts of sexual misconduct here in Maine.

Ronald Paquin appeared in court Friday morning in Massachusetts, charged with being a fugitive from justice.

Officials expect he will be brought to Maine soon.

One of the accusers, Keith Townsend of Seabrook, New Hampshire, told NEWS CENTER’S Dustin Wlodkowski his story.

“It’s difficult, it’s difficult because you’re never going to get it out of your mind,” said Townsend.

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AUSTRALIA
Border Mail

Mick McGlone
11 Feb 2017

AN opinion columnist should always be grateful for the opportunities the role provides. But it is not all beer and skittles, let me assure you.

There have been times I have sat in front of the computer wondering what I was going to write about. At other times there have been so many topics available. This week it is the latter.

There was the excellent Cork and Fork event at Noreuil Park last Friday, the disgraceful behaviour of Senator Cory Bernardi, the death of the great man Eric Turner and a commentary on the many people who do so much for the community and other topics.

But as a Catholic I feel a duty to comment on what has come out of the proceedings of the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sex Abuse.

I am not about to sink to beat my chest and plead mea culpa – because I have no reason to; it is not a question of me remaining silent while all this was happening around me. I was in complete ignorance.

I could come up with a lot of excuses for what has happened.

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UNITED KINGDOM
Daily Echo

Alex Winter

A CHURCH choir conductor who sexually abused a young teenager has been jailed.

David Everett, of Hankinson Road in Bournemouth, was approaching middle age when he exploited his victim, then aged in his early teens.

The defendant was a member and conductor of the Priory Church Choir in Christchurch at the time of the abuse, which took place in the early 2000s.

At a sentencing hearing held at Bournemouth Crown Court, Judge Peter Crabtree OBE said the defendant was “trusted” by the victim’s parents.

“No doubt your offending has had an enduring and significant impact on [the victim],” Judge Crabtree told Everett.

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TEXAS
ABC 13

By Kevin Quinn
Friday, February 10, 2017

SPLENDORA, TX (KTRK) — A Montgomery County man is in jail and accused of sexually assaulting at least three young boys in a church bathroom.

Juan McKinney, 21, is accused of aggravated sex assault of a child and three counts of continuous sexual abuse of a child. Investigators say the attacks occurred inside the Church of the Lord Jesus Christ in Splendora between December 2012 and May 2015. Those boys were between 6 and 9 years old during that time period, according to court documents.

One of the boys told investigators they were forced to do “…gross stuff, nasty stuff….” Each told detectives how McKinney would allegedly lure them into the church bathroom with a game he called “Vampire and Wolf.” Inside a stall, they claim, McKinney would touch them and force them to inappropriately touch him. They said the attacks happened sometimes even during church prayer.

For months, the boys silently endured these sessions, only later telling investigators McKinney threatened them.

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NEW YORK
WIVB

[with video]

By Dave Greber, News 4 Reporter
Published: February 10, 2017

BUFFALO, N.Y. (WIVB) — Convicted child molester Roy Harriger has been convicted again, this time in another state and by yet another accuser.

But for the first time, he’s admitting to years of abuse.

Harriger has now been convicted of sexually abusing children within his own family and accused of molesting children associated with his church.

Until he was jailed in April 2015, Harriger continued to preach at Community Fellowship Church in Johnson Creek.

In April 2015, members of Harriger’s family, including his son, reacted to what they and investigators described as sexual abuse of children that goes back 40 years.

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MASSACHUSETTS
New Hampshire Union Leader

BOSTON — A defrocked priest at the center of the Boston clergy abuse scandal, and at the center of an Oscar-winning movie about it, has been arrested on 29 counts of sexual misconduct against young boys in Maine.

Ronald Paquin had served 10 years in prison for sexually assaulting a boy in Massachusetts.

Upon his release in 2015, a New Hampshire man contacted authorities in Kennebunkport, Maine, to say Paquin had sexually abused him when he was eight years old. The abuse went on for five more years according to Keith Townsend, now 42, who told Seacoast Online his story.

Paquin was held without bail Friday in Roxbury, Mass., and was scheduled to be in court next week.

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UNITED STATES
Crux

Fr. Dwight Longenecker February 10, 2017
CRUX CONTRIBUTOR

With the release of a shocking report from Australia on accusations of sexual abuse of minors by Catholic priests, the old question is bound to arise: “Is the discipline of celibacy to blame for sexual abuse of minors?”

The complicated question is dealt with in historian Philip Jenkins’s excellent study on the problem. Published in 2001, Pedophiles and Priests looks at the problem objectively, and his basic findings on the American church can probably be applied to the Australian situation.

Jenkins summarizes his findings in this article. He acknowledges the problem, but also points out press exaggeration and popular flawed understanding of the causes and possible solutions.

Jenkins also points out how the sexual abuse crisis spurred on progressive critics of the Catholic Church. “What else can we expect from a Church that keeps its clergy in a lifelong state of sexual immaturity,” they inveighed… “that denies the spiritual gifts of women, that preserves an authoritarian system?”

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MASSACHUSETTS
Daily News

By Jill Harmacinski jharmacinski@eagletribune.com 3 hrs ago

BOSTON – Defrocked and formerly jailed ex-priest Ronald Paquin, who was assigned to parishes in Haverhill and Methuen, will be held without bail on a fugitive from justice charge until late next week.

Paquin, 74, was arrested on Wednesday in Boston after a grand jury in York County, Maine, handed down an indictment on 29 new sexual abuse and misconduct charges against him.

Friday at his arraignment in Roxbury District Court, Paquin was held without bail and waived rendition proceedings.

He will return to Roxbury District Court on Thursday, Feb. 16, when he is likely to be picked up by Maine authorities, said Jake Wark, spokesperson for Suffolk County District Attorney Daniel Conley.

Paquin then faces arraignment in York County on the 29 new charges in Maine, which include 13 counts of gross sexual misconduct, class A, and 16 counts of gross sexual misconduct, class B.

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MASSACHUSETTS
WCVB

BOSTON —
A former Roman Catholic priest facing dozens of sexual misconduct charges in Maine has been held without bail in Boston.

Prosecutors say 74-year-old Ronald Paquin was arraigned Friday in West Roxbury Municipal Court and held as a fugitive from justice. He waived rendition proceedings and is due back in court Feb. 16, when he’ll likely be transferred to Maine authorities.

Paquin was taken into custody by Boston police and U.S. Marshals Wednesday in the city’s Jamaica Plain neighborhood.

Paquin spent more than a decade in a Massachusetts prison for raping an altar boy. He was defrocked in 2004.

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UNITED STATES
National Catholic Register

A lawsuit filed by a former employee contends that the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests is motivated by self-interest and animus to the Church, not the cause of aiding clergy-abuse victims.

Wayne Laugesen

ST. LOUIS — In the wake of a lawsuit challenging her organization’s integrity, the managing director of the embattled clergy-abuse organization said facts will exonerate her organization.

In the meantime, she said, the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests (SNAP) will continue “standing up for victims of sexual abuse” and won’t be deterred by lawsuits.

The organization’s critics are less positive, pointing to growing suspicions SNAP is less in the service of survivor support and more in the business of feeding plaintiffs to lawyers in return for financial kickbacks.

“We are not defending the Catholic Church, but it is an incredibly horrendous matter to falsely accuse a priest of sexual abuse,” said Chicago attorney Bruce Howard, whose client is suing SNAP.

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ITALIA
Rete L’Abuso

[Bishop Rossi is defending a priest accused of pedophilia.]

Federica Lupino

“Avevo 7 anni, mi ha tirato per le orecchie, portato in bagno, tolto pantaloni e violentato per tre volte”. A parlare è uno degli ospiti dell’istituto Provolo di Verona dove fino agli anni ’80 alcuni preti avrebbero abusato degli ospiti, tutti bambini sordomuti. Tra gli accusati anche don Giuseppe Pernigotti, ora parroco al Parco falisco di Fabrica di Roma. Alcuni fedeli della parrocchia dei santissimi Gratiliano e Felicissima, scoperte le accuse, preoccupati hanno contattato la diocesi di Civita Castellana. Ma il vescovo Romano Rossi rassicura: “E’ una persona libera e pulita. Il popolo è tutto con lui”.

Sono 67 le vittime di abusi sessuali al Provolo che ora chiedono i danni al Vaticano dopo che ormai il reato è andato in prescrizione. A riaccendere i riflettori sul caso sono state la scorsa settimana le telecamere di Piazza Pulita, il programma de La7 condotto da Corrado Formigli. Alcuni dei prelati accusati ormai sono morti, altri sono stati allontanati da Verona. Come don Giuseppe che da una ventina di anni risiede nella curia civitonica in piazza Matteotti e dice messa nel centro residenziale di Fabrica. Avvicinato dal giornalista de La 7, si è detto estraneo ai fatti.

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IRELAND
RTE News

Ireland’s Catholic Church-established watchdog on child sexual abuse is to ask the Government to give it statutory powers to allow it share information among church authorities concerning allegations against priests, religious and church workers.

Head of the watchdog Teresa Devlin announced the move at a public hearing of a Royal Commission in Australia which is reviewing institutional responses to child sexual abuse there.

She said it would involve her board using legislation adopted by the EU to assess whether sharing sensitive information about alleged abusers is more important than protecting a suspect’s privacy.

Giving testimony to the Royal Commission in Sydney earlier today, Ms Devlin – who is the chief Executive of the National Board for Safeguarding Children in the Catholic Church in Ireland – said some religious authorities in Ireland have concerns about sharing confidential information with her board because it is a non-statutory body.

The difficulties have surfaced publicly during the eight years of the board’s existence, but Ms Devlin said they are now affecting its efforts to persuade the 190 church bodies – including dioceses and orders – to agree a new memorandum of understanding with it based on revised standards of child protection which it produced in 2015.

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AUSTRALIA
The Advocate

Melissa CunninghamMelissa Cunningham
@MeljCunningham

10 Feb 2017

A culture of secrecy, the misuse of canon law by Catholic Church hierarchy to conceal child sex crimes and the Vatican’s role in orchestrating a widespread cover-up, were at the centre of a royal commission’s hearings this week.

The Royal Commission into Institutional Response to Child Sexual Abuse’s final hearing into the Australian Catholic Church, is examining how systemic institutional factors, including structure, governance and culture prevailed over the safety of children and allowed paedophile clergy to flourish for decades.

On Monday, the extent of child sexual abuse in the Australian Catholic Church was laid bare. World first data showing between 1980 and 2015, 4,444 people alleged incidents of child sexual abuse relating to 93 Catholic Church authorities.

Almost one in ten priests in the Diocese of Ballarat had allegations of child sexual abuse levelled against them between 1950 and 2010, the inquiry heard.

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ROME
National Catholic Reporter

Joshua J. McElwee | Feb. 10, 2017

ROME

A fake edition of the Vatican’s semi-official newspaper L’Osservatore Romano made the rounds in Rome Friday, declaring in a bolded headline that Pope Francis had (subtext: finally) responded to four cardinals who challenged him last fall with five yes or no questions about how he understands church teaching.

“He responded!” the fake paper exclaims under what looks like an exact copy of L’Osservatore’s masthead. “Francis has broken his silence on the dubia of the four cardinals.”

And the supposed answer to each question? “Sic et non.” (Latin for “Yes and no.”)

While the very Italian version of fake news appears to have been created in a mean spirit — the story below the pope’s response reports that German Cardinal Walter Kasper fell on his knees upon hearing the news –it may just end up making the pope’s point: life is more complicated than yes or no answers.

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VATICAN CITY
Crux

Inés San MartínFebruary 10, 2017
VATICAN CORRESPONDENT

ROME- Barely a week after Rome woke up full of anti- Pope Francis posters, anonymous critics were back at it, sending a fake version of the Vatican’s official newspaper to cardinals and officials via email, claiming that the pontiff had answered five dubia, or questions, posed to him by four conservative cardinals about his document Amoris Laetita.

“He has answered!” reads the cover of the satirical edition of L’Osservatore Romano (LOR), the Vatican’s newspaper, which carries the date of Jan. 17.

“May your speech be yes yes no no,” reads the excerpt of the cover story, in reference to Matthew’s Gospel that says “But let your ‘Yes’ be ‘Yes,’ and your ‘No,’ ‘No.” (In Roman circles, Si Si No No is also familiar as the title of a small publication put out by the“St. Pius X Catholic Center for Anti-Modernist Studies,” expressing traditionalist criticism of post-Vatican II reforms.)

According to the fake LOR, Francis replied to the five yes-or-no questions put to him with both “yes” and no,” expressing his own “unequivocal previous magisterium.”

The dubia were submitted to Francis by American Cardinal Raymond Burke; Cardinal Carlo Caffarra, archbishop emeritus of Bologna; German Cardinal Walter Brandmüller, president emeritus of the Pontifical Committee for Historical Sciences; and German Cardinal Joachim Meisner, archbishop emeritus of Cologne.

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AUSTRALIA
Sydney Morning Herald

Deborah Snow and Beau Donelly

Mark Fabbro remembers most vividly the flowering callistemon and blue sky outside the window of the small room tucked behind the priest’s office.

Everything else – the whip, the feel of his bare skin being pressed into the leather couch, the priest mumbling in Latin behind him – comes back in fractured snapshots, images rising unbidden from the deep wells of childhood memory.

“That was a mental escape for me, out the window and into nature,” Mr Fabbro says. “Apparently I was sent there again but I can’t remember what happened [the second time]. It’s like my mind shut down as I crossed the playground.”

Mr Fabbro was just 11 when he was raped by Jesuit priest John Byrne at the prestigious Xavier College in Melbourne.

Not long after, he was sent to board at St Ignatius’ College in Sydney, where another priest (who can’t be named for legal reasons) took a liking to him. This abuser, he alleges, would make him strip, and belt him with a leather strap while the other boarders slept in the dormitory next door.

Mr Fabbro, now 55, says if the church is to continue running schools it needs to be held to a higher standard.

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NEW JERSEY
Father Kenneth Lasch

Thursday February 9, 2017

Website Editor’s Note: The admission of Pope Franics that there is corruption in the Vatican is no surprise. Hints of the same have been in the news from time to time but not until now has Pope Francis himself been so open about it. Moreover, it is no secret that the resignation of Pope Benedict XVI was motivated in part by his inability to institute a reform of the curia. He admitted that he no longer had the stamina to carry out the demands of the papacy that surely included administration of the Roman Curia.

Pope Francis has adverted on several occasions to the lingering issue of sexual abuse. Many would like to assume that the issue has been resolved but nothing could be further from the truth. The Royal Commission on Sexual Abuse in Australia is about to publish the results of an extensive and intensive examination of sexual abuse in Australia, a significant portion of which deals with child abuse by Roman Catholic clergy and it is very damaging.

But even here in this country, the issue is not dead. There are still allegations that have yet to be fully resolved and there are priests who continue in positions of influence especially in vocations ministry whose past misconduct surely disqualifies them for ministry much less vocations ministry to seminarians and prospective candidates for the priesthood. In any other profession, they would loose their license to practice. It is interesting that any layperson that in the process of vetting is found to have been guilty of sexual misconduct of any kind is automatically disqualified for volunteer ministry. However, a priest who has had such a history of sexual misconduct may still function. What’s wrong with this picture?

In the words of one commentator, dealing with certain members of the hierarchy is like dealing with the mafia. That comment was repeated by the former governor of Oklahoma, Frank Keating, the first chairman of the National Review Board established by the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops.

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GUAM
Pacific News Center

Written by Janela Carrera

An expert in canon law says canonical trials are all “paper trials.”

Guam – The canonical trial of ousted Archbishop Anthony Apuron is “well underway,” that’s according to the archbishop who replaced him on Guam, Michael Byrnes.

But we spoke with an expert with knowledge of canonical trials, Patrick J. Wall, and he says the process is not that simple, much less for a bishop.

Apuron has gone underground since he was removed from his position has the shepherd of the local catholic faithful. For the most part, the community was told that a canonical trial was pending for Apuron.

But over the last eight months little was known about a trial he’s supposed to be facing in Rome for allegations of sexual abuse. No one knew where he was hiding. It wasn’t until recently that he was discovered in California where his attorney, Jacque Terlaje, says he’s staying to be able to “continue working on defending his innocence without distraction.”

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GUAM
Pacific Daily News

[with video]

Haidee V Eugenio , heugenio@guampdn.com Feb. 10, 2017

Vatican investigators will be on Guam soon as part of Archbishop Anthony S. Apuron’s ongoing canonical trial, Coadjutor Archbishop Michael Jude Byrnes said at a news briefing Friday, during which he announced tougher church policies to protect children from clergy sexual abuse.

Apuron’s trial at the Vatican started after several former altar boys accused him of molesting or raping them in the 1970s, when he was a parish priest in Agat.

Byrnes, who will replace Apuron if he retires, resigns or is removed, announced the Archdiocese of Agana’s voluntary adherence to the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops’ revised “Charter for the Protection of Children and Young People.”

Byrnes said there will be: required automatic reporting to civil authorities of any allegation of clergy sex abuse involving minors; suspension of the clergy if the accusation is deemed credible and while the investigation is still ongoing; legal background checks, from priests to church volunteers, working with children; and, permanent removal from ministry if the sexual abuse allegations are substantiated.

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GEORGIA
RadarOnline

RadarOnline.com has uncovered even more sordid details from the twisted life of Paula Deen’s “pedophile” priest brother-in-law, Henry Groover III. According to a long-buried police investigation, he once had gay sex with a murderer and was accused of being part of a sex ring!

The secrets emerged as part of a Georgia police investigation into Jeremy Wayne Manieri, who was charged with killing Groover’s one-time roommate and fellow priest, Rev. Ed Everitt, inside their beach house in Waveland, Mississippi in 2011.

After confessing to the gruesome murder, Manieri ended up killing himself in jail before his trial began in 2012, taking his sordid secrets with him. Until now.

READ The GRAPHIC Police Documents Here

According to Waveland Police Department documents in the case, Manieri gave a statement about the day of he murder, implying Groover andEveritt were much more than just friends and church colleagues, claiming that they “pleasured each other” as gay lovers!

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