ABUSE TRACKER

UNITED STATES
CNN

May 11, 2020

By Ariane de Vogue

The Supreme Court on Monday will tackle a dispute concerning two teachers who sought to file employment discrimination claims against the religious schools that fired them.

Seven years ago, the Supreme Court recognized a “ministerial exception” for the first time, holding that under the First Amendment the government could not interfere with a church’s hiring decisions. The justices held that the teacher in that case could be considered a “minister” under the law, triggering the exception.

Now the justices will address the scope of that decision and whether it bars teachers — who say they have limited religious duties — from bringing suit.

Like those last week, the oral arguments will be held remotely by telephone with audio broadcast live to the public.

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NEW YORK (NY)
Crux

May 11, 2020

By Christopher White

Governor Andrew Cuomo has extended the state’s lookback window for victims of abuse to file civil lawsuits until January 14, 2021 due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

The New York Child Victims Act (CVA) took effect last August and extends the statute of limitations for abuse victims which had originally allowed for a one-year window in which victims could bring suit. Further, the legislation extended the statute of limitations for civil claims, now allowing survivors to file a claim until they are 55 years old. In January, a similar window allowing for two years took effect in New Jersey.

Given that courts have been closed for nearly two months, the governor said on Friday that he would extend the special period into 2021.

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AUSTRALIA
Sydney Morning Herald

May 10, 2020

By Farrah Tomazin

After almost two years as Archbishop of Melbourne Peter Comensoli remains an elusive figure to many Catholics, and a study in contrasts to the wider public.

It’s August 2018, and Peter Comensoli is standing on a stage in a packed city restaurant, daring to do something none of his predecessors have ever done: subject himself to the scrutiny of the Melbourne Press Club.

After a wide-ranging speech, the newly installed Archbishop of Melbourne agrees to take questions.

That’s when he meets Eileen Piper, then 93, brandishing a large photograph of her dead daughter lying in her coffin.

Stephanie Piper was 32 when she killed herself in 1994, after informing authorities that she had been raped and assaulted as a child by Father Gerard Mulvale, a priest from the Catholic Pallottine order.

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PITTSBURGH (PA)
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

May 10, 2020

By Peter Smith

The criminal complaint against the Amish bishop is clear about how he learned of a church member’s alleged sexual assault on three young teenage girls:

“John G. Beiler confessed the sexual assault incidents to Bishop Levi S. Esh Sr.,” says the complaint, pending in Lancaster County and filed by Pequea police in April.

“Confessed.” Whether the case moves forward could hinge on that word.

In April, Pequea police charged Mr. Esh, 63, with felony and misdemeanor charges of failing to report suspected child abuse to authorities after Mr. Beiler allegedly confessed to the sexual assaults.

The case is believed to be the first in Lancaster County — hub of the nation’s largest population of Amish — in which one of their spiritual leaders is charged with violating a Pennsylvania law that includes clergy among those mandated to report suspected child abuse.

But Pennsylvania law allows a privilege, or exemption, for clergy who learn about suspected abuse in “confidential communications” while in the course of their “duties.”

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John M. Shuster: September 18, 1951 ~ February 7, 2020 [Obituary]

WASHINGTON
Haven of Rest Gig Harbor

[Note: John Shuster dedicated much of his life to clergy sex abuse survivors. Following a brief stint in the clerical priesthood, he went on to serve as a vice president of CITI Ministries and a longtime leader of the Seattle chapter of Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests (SNAP). In his work with SNAP, he developed a healing model for adults who needed spiritual guidance and counseling as a result of being abused as children. John passed away in February. He is greatly missed.]

John M. Shuster, Port Orchard, was born September 18, 1951 in Pittsburgh, PA to Andrew and Catherine (Miller) Shuster. He passed away from complications of a stroke on February 7, 2020 at St. Joseph Hospital in Tacoma.

John was ordained in 1979 by Bishop Joseph Francis to serve as a priest in the Roman Catholic missionary order, the Society of the Divine Word (SVD). He graduated from the Catholic Theological Union in Chicago in 1980 with a Masters of Divinity with specialization in cross-cultural ministry. During his four years as a celibate priest, he served in Mexico, and at parishes in East Los Angeles and South Central L.A. Due to his seeing the alarming disfunction that was present in the church, John left the clerical priesthood 1983, and began selling medical instrumentation. He had a successful career as a senior salesman of medical diagnostics at Abbott Laboratories, and retired in 2010.

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BROOKLYN (NY)
The Tablet (newspaper for the Brooklyn diocese)

May 8, 2020

By Monsignor Steven Aguggia

The crisis of sexual abuse of minors coming to light in the past two decades has taught us many things. In so many ways, the Church has learned how to understand and deal with this horrible scourge which harms so many, both victims and the whole Church, the Body of Christ. Those who are accused of sexual abuse of minors, especially the clergy, are subject to clear and stringent norms to investigate and adjudicate their crimes. The Charter for the Protection of Children and Young People is a set of procedures that the United States Bishops established in 2002 to address the allegations of sexual abuse of minors by some clergy. The Charter was revised in 2005, 2011 and in 2018. Topics addressed in the Charter include healing from abuse and the prevention of future acts of abuse. The Dallas Charter and the accompanying Norms govern the investigation of the crimes of sexual abuse of minors by priests and deacons. Over time, it became clear that it was necessary to create and implement Norms to direct the investigation of allegations against Bishops, as well. The Norms, issued by our Holy Father, Pope Francis, in May of 2019, are entitled Vos Estis Lux Mundi (“You are the Light of the World”).

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AUSTRALIA
Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC)

May 10, 2020

By Matt Neal

Key points:
– Clergy abuse survivor Paul Levey has started a petition calling for Cardinal George Pell to be defrocked
– The petition has attracted 32,000 signatures in 48 hours
– Mr Levey created the petition following the release of the Royal Commission’s previously redacted findings, which Cardinal Pell says weren’t supported by evidence

A petition started by a clergy abuse survivor has received more than 30,000 signatures supporting his call for Cardinal George Pell to be defrocked.

Paul Levey, who was abused by convicted paedophile priest Gerald Ridsdale, began the Change.org petition on Friday and said he was surprised by the response.

“The first night I went to bed and it was at 600 and I thought that was fantastic. Now, I think it’s around 32,000 signatures,” Mr Levey said.

Mr Levey was 13 when he was sent to live with Ridsdale in the presbytery in Mortlake, in south-west Victoria, where he was abused daily for six months.

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AUSTRALIA
Sydney Morning Herald

May 8, 2020

By Barney Zwartz

It may be possible – remotely – as Cardinal George Pell claims, that he did not know about the crimes of paedophile Gerald Ridsdale until much later than the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse thinks he did. But if so, it must have required the most herculean effort, the most Nelsonian blind eye, to avoid something so well known that priests in Ballarat and Melbourne were gossiping about it.

But Nelson turning his blind eye to the telescope at the Battle of Copenhagen in 1801 was a matter of national heroism. Pell’s blind eye served only himself, and at a huge cost to victims, their families, and the professionals who tried to intervene.

For the young and ambitious Pell, a priest in Ballarat clearly destined for high office, knew one thing: whistle-blowers don’t go on to glorious careers in the institutions they hold to account. Embarrass the church, and you can forget about a cardinal’s red hat and a vital Vatican role.

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AUSTRALIA
BBC

May 7, 2020

Cardinal George Pell knew of child sexual abuse by priests in Australia as early as the 1970s but failed to take action, a landmark inquiry found.

The findings on Cardinal Pell – an ex-Vatican treasurer – come from Australia’s royal commission into child sexual abuse, which ended in 2017.

Details were only revealed on Thursday. A court had previously redacted the report because the cleric was facing child abuse charges at the time.

The cardinal has denied the findings.

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

AUSTRALIA
The Guardian

May 8, 2020

By Melissa Davey

The cardinal maintains he didn’t know about the Victorian town’s notorious paedophile priests, a claim the royal commission found ‘implausible’

“Why isn’t all of Australia talking about what happened here in Ballarat?”

That’s the question Clare Linane remembers asking her husband, Peter Blenkiron, 12 years ago as they were sitting in the kitchen talking about his abuse. Linane’s husband, brother and cousin had all been abused when they were children between 1973 and 1974 by Christian Brother and now convicted paedophile Edward “Ted” Dowlan. They knew they were among thousands of people living in and around Ballarat – Victoria’s largest inland city – who had been affected by child sexual abuse perpetrated by clergy.

On Thursday, Australia’s five-year inquiry into child sexual abuse in Australian institutions published its findings about Ballarat in full, more than two years after its inquiry was complete. Previously, a heavily redacted version of the report had been published, missing details about Cardinal George Pell and what he knew about abuse in the town located about 100km north-west of Melbourne. At the time Pell was working in the diocese, Ballarat was home to some of the Catholic church’s, and Australia’s, most notorious paedophile priests. Survivor groups say at least 50 suicides in the town over the past few decades are the result of clergy abuse.

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ST. LOUIS (MO)
StlToday.com

May 9, 2020

Darrin Patrick, who co-founded The Journey megachurch in St. Louis, died Thursday (May 7, 2020) while target shooting with a friend, according to a news release from South Carolina-based Seacoast Church, where Mr. Patrick was a teaching pastor. He was 49 and lived in Webster Groves.

In 2002, Mr. Patrick and his wife, Amie, started The Journey in the Southwest Garden neighborhood with 30 members. The church now has five locations in the St. Louis area. By 2016, it was drawing 4,000 worshipers to its weekend services, and Mr. Patrick also was serving as the chaplain for the St. Louis Cardinals.

In the spring of that year, Mr. Patrick was fired from the church for what its leaders viewed as pastoral misconduct.

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AUSTRALIA
Crikey.com

May 11, 2020

By David Hardaker

Where does it leave the justice system if the highest court in the land says a jury isn’t capable of working out what it should believe?

There was a time in the not-so-distant past when a priest was the first person you would believe. Now? Not so much.

The royal commission into, among others, the Catholic Church and Cardinal George Pell, has killed that off. Then-prime minister Julia Gillard’s decision to bring it on in 2012 triggered an eight-year unravelling which reached its endpoint with the judges of the High Court and the royal commission now delivering their final verdicts.

In the space of four weeks, we’ve learnt there was a “significant possibility” that Pell was innocent of charges that he committed child sex abuse, but that he was most guilty of allowing predator priests to keep abusing children under the church’s care.

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

AUSTRALIA
Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC)

May 10, 2020

By Jessica Longbottom

Key points:
— Attempts to prosecute other senior Catholics for knowing about clergy abuse have failed
— Mandatory reporting laws didn’t come into effect in Victoria until 2014
— Victoria Police says it will examine the royal commission’s findings
— It found Cardinal Pell was aware of general allegations that children were being abused in the Ballarat diocese from 1973.

After a two-year wait, the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses into Child Sexual Abuse has released its findings on what Cardinal George Pell knew about clergy abuse.

It also found that he was told that paedophile priest Gerard Ridsdale was being moved because of his alleged sexual abuse of children at a meeting in 1982.

The royal commission found that later on, as he rose through the ranks in the Archdiocese of Melbourne, Cardinal Pell should have advocated for the removal of paedophile priest Peter Searson when he received a list of allegations of bizarre behaviour by him in 1989.

The royal commission found that later on, as he rose through the ranks in the Archdiocese of Melbourne, Cardinal Pell should have advocated for the removal of paedophile priest Peter Searson when he received a list of allegations of bizarre behaviour by him in 1989.

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WASHINGTON (DC)
Washington Post

May 9, 2020

By Michelle Boorstein

A months-long standoff between a Catholic bishop in Virginia and a priest who blogs frequent, strident criticism of the church’s handling of clergy sexual abuse has boiled over, with the bishop this week suspending the priest from ministry and issuing a trespass order demanding he leave the parish residence by Saturday.

The Rev. Mark White, who has been assigned to two southwest Virginia parishes, is refusing to leave, saying Richmond Bishop Barry Knestout is the one violating canon law by not giving more details about what Knestout considers White’s wrongdoing and by not waiting for an appeal to the Vatican to play out.

White on Friday was consulting with his lawyer to figure out his options if the diocese changes locks at the parish residences at St. Joseph in Martinsville and St. Francis of Assisi in Rocky Mount, two half-English, half-Spanish parishes of about 400 families each. White was pastor to the two parishes from 2011 until April 13, when Knestout ordered him transferred to prison ministry in the midst of their conflict. White told The Post he is waiting for the appeal and is not leaving.

The dispute between the two men has been watched by the hundreds and sometimes thousands who read White’s blog, which is a mix of homilies and spiritual musings and frequent lambasting of church officials from Knestout to Pope Francis to disgraced ex-cardinal Theodore McCarrick, who ordained White in May 2003.

While a priest being removed by a bishop isn’t unusual, the White-Knestout standoff taps into remaining deep mistrust and anger over the McCarrick scandal and how few bishops and cardinals have been held accountable for his long rise — particularly those who have worked along the New York-New Jersey-Washington, D.C. corridor where rumors of McCarrick’s sexual misbehavior percolated for decades.

The case also reflects the challenge posed to the world’s largest church — one accustomed to tight, top-down control — by the power of social media. The Vatican is increasingly calling social media an essential part of ministry and evangelization, but metrics of what is effective vs. what is divisive are growing more subjective. White had paused his blog last fall at Knestout’s order but restarted it in March because of the coronavirus shutdown, saying online ministering is crucial while parishes and Mass are shut off.

“I can’t recall a case when a pastor was removed because he was blogging,” said Kurt Martens, a canon law expert at Catholic University. “Blogging is a new way of ministry, so how do you stop a priest?”

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MARTINSVILLE (VA)
Martinsville Bulletin

May 9, 2020

The relationships within the hierarchy of the Roman Catholic Church are strict and complicated. They are founded in a structure and formality that eludes those who didn’t grow up under the church and its papal sovereignty, and their complexities can be daunting in trying to understand decisions, practices and reactions.

But the one simple aspect of that structure that is without question is the church’s foundation in the principles of Jesus Christ, its purchase in the deep meaning and subtexts of Scripture.

If is for the latter and not the former that the dispute between Father Mark White and his boss the Rev. Barry Knestout, the bishop of the Catholic Diocese of Richmond, appears not only perplexing but just so ridiculously unnecessary.

You likely have read the many words published about the conflict that has led Bishop Knestout to remove Father White in all facets except title as the pastor of St. Joseph’s in Martinsville and St. Francis of Assisi in Rocky Mount.

This began because Father White, disturbed by the way the church handled the sexual abuse charges against Cardinal McCarrick, the priest who ordained him, deigned to write in his blog about those feelings. Father White didn’t measure the tone in his comments, frankly and reasonably questioning the transparency and appropriateness of decision-making of the church all the way to the Vatican in Rome. He is not alone among Catholics in questioning this festering blemish on the church’s image.

Bishop Knestout told Father White to discontinue his blog or else. Father White did. Then the pandemic hit, and Mass was canceled, and Father White resumed the blog as a means to communicate with his flock. He asked for permission to do so and said he received silence. But this dispute has not been carried out in silence.

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NEW ORLEANS (LA)
Times-Picayune / New Orleans Advocate

May 6, 2020

By Ramon Antonio Vargas

Accused of sexually molesting a boy he taught before he become a priest, Paul Calamari walked into New Orleans Archbishop Alfred Hughes’ office on Feb. 5, 2004, to discuss what might be ahead.

The Catholic church had only recently been rocked by the sexual-abuse scandal in Boston. Bishops across the U.S. were dealing with allegations in their dioceses, and New Orleans was no different. Calamari ultimately chose to retire, and he began receiving a monthly pension of $1,566 from the archdiocese — which later rose to more than $2,500 a month, according to court records.

The archdiocese slashed the amount by several hundred dollars during the spring of 2019, citing “significant” budget issues.

But after the archdiocese petitioned for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection last week, U.S. District Judge Meredith Grabill ordered the organization to stop paying priests who — like Calamari — are credibly accused child molesters.

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NEW ORLEANS (LA)
Times-Picayune / New Orleans Advocate

May 8, 2020

By Ramon Antonio Vargas

Board said plaintiff agreeably resigned to avoid appearance of conflict of interest, but plaintiff says he felt forced out

The leader of the board of directors for one of the Archdiocese of New Orleans’ various ministries resigned his post recently after claiming in a lawsuit against the church that he was molested by one of its priests decades ago.

The plaintiff — whom The Times-Picayune | New Orleans Advocate is not identifying because he’s a victim of sex abuse — spoke out about his case after an April 30 letter from the ministry to his fellow board members said he had agreed to resign to avoid “at least the appearance of a conflict of interest.”

But the plaintiff said he had hoped to remain on the board and resigned under duress. He didn’t believe there was a conflict because the board is incorporated separately from the archdiocese’s administrative offices, which filed for federal bankruptcy protections on May 1, citing the financial fallout from clerical abuse lawsuits and the coronavirus pandemic.

*

The plaintiff’s case dates back to when he entered the fifth grade at St. Ann School in Metairie in 1980, according to records filed in Orleans Parish Civil District Court. One day that academic year, the plaintiff was behind the church rectory when he encountered James Collery, a Spiritan order member who was originally from Ireland and had just been transferred there.

Collery was pretending to tuck in the boy’s T-shirt when he used his hand to fondle the plaintiff’s genitals and penetrate him, the lawsuit alleged. The plaintiff, who served as an altar boy, said Collery, who died in 1987, molested him in similar fashion after catching the boy alone in the sacristy a couple of other times.

Despite the abuse, the plaintiff clung to his Catholic faith as he grew up and began serving on numerous charitable boards and committees associated with the archdiocese. He said he had been in those roles for a number of years when, in 2013, he decided to privately report Collery’s assaults to the archdiocese — specifically, to Archbishop Gregory Aymond, for whom the plaintiff had once been an altar boy.

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BUFFALO (NY)
WKBW

May 6, 2020

By Charlie Specht

Memo reveals Fr. Paul Salemi case

Paul Salemi graduated from Christ the King Seminary and became a priest in the Diocese of Buffalo in 2000.

But after serving at churches in Hamburg and Lancaster, and at St. Gregory the Great in Amherst, former Bishop Richard Malone quietly put Salemi on administrative leave in 2012.

Salemi never returned from that leave of absence and moved to the South. But he stayed on the diocesan payroll until last week, when the diocese announced it was removing from its payroll 23 priests with substantiated sexual abuse allegations.

Many parishioners in the last year have reached out to the 7 Eyewitness News I-Team wondering what happened to Fr. Salemi. They say they were told he had an anger problem, but internal documents show Salemi was also accused of sexual misconduct against a young man he met through his duties as a priest.

The most comprehensive account was written by Lawrence Vilardo, who is now a federal judge in Buffalo. In 2012, he was law partners with Terry Connors, longtime lawyer for the diocese, and wrote a memo to Connors that was obtained by the I-Team.

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ALBANY (NY)
Times-Union

May 6, 2020

By Cayla Harris

Albany – Advocates for survivors of sexual abuse are denouncing the Buffalo Diocese this week after the institution, temporarily headed by Albany Bishop Edward B. Scharfenberger, moved forward with two legal filings that activists say diminish victims’ experiences and could allow the diocese to dodge consequences for decades of alleged abuse and cover-up.

The most recent filing on Tuesday was a lawsuit against the federal Small Business Administration for denying the diocese’s application for relief under the CARES Act because of its ongoing bankruptcy proceedings. It followed a separate legal action on Saturday in bankruptcy court, in which the diocese argued that all cases filed against the institution under the state’s Child Victims Act, including those that also name local parishes and schools, should be permanently suspended.

Last summer, the act opened a one-year “look-back” window allowing survivors of sexual abuse to pursue previously time-barred cases against their alleged offenders. The Buffalo Diocese, the most-named defendant in claims filed under the act, is facing more than 250 actions.

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NEW YORK (NY)
Daily News

May 8, 2020

By Denis Slattery

Albany – New Yorkers who were sexually assaulted as children will have a little more time to take legal action against their alleged abusers.

Gov. Cuomo on Friday extended a “look back window” created as part of the Child Victims Act last year that allows survivors abused as kids, to file civil suits beyond the normal statute of limitations.

The one-year window, which was slated to expire in August, will be extended until Jan. 14 in response to the coronavirus crisis’ impact on the state court system, the governor said during a briefing Friday at the Murray Student Center at Marist College in Poughkeepsie.

“Because of the reduction in court services we want to extend that window and we’ll extend it for an additional five months,” Cuomo said. “Because people need access to the courts to make their claim, because justice too long delayed is justice denied.”

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BUFFALO (NY)
Spectrum News

May 8, 2020

By Fadia Patterson

Governor Cuomo is giving survivors an additional five months to file a civil claim against abusers under the Child Victims Act.

Attorney Steve Boyd, who is representing many survivors of child sexual abuse, says that when the Child Victims Act passed, New York had the shortest look-back window of a year. Because the COVID-19 pandemic, Gov. Cuomo has ordered an extension of the deadline for survivors to pursue legal action from August 13 to January 14.

“When the crisis hit and the courts closed down the filing system, people were not allowed to file,” said Boyd. “People who could’ve filed lawsuits between then, they filed lawsuits. I think it’s in a sense of general fairness. It’s a good thing that the governor has extended the time.”

While waiting on the reopening of the court filing system, Boyd says he’s still gathering information from those who do want to file a lawsuit. For those looking to sue the Buffalo Roman Catholic Diocese, Boyd lays out how this extension and the diocese’s bankruptcy proceedings will affect cases against clergy.

“There are several different tracks,” adds Boyd. “The Diocese of Rochester filed bankruptcy late last summer. In those cases the proof of claims form, the deadline for those is still August 13, 2020. Buffalo Diocese has filed bankruptcy, they have not yet set a bar date or a deadline to put the claims in. And then there are cases that don’t involve the diocese of Rochester or Buffalo. For those cases, people will have until January 14 to file a claim.”

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MANASSAS (VA)
CatholicCulture.org – Trinity Publications

May 7, 2020

By Phil Lawler

An Australian royal commission has found that Cardinal George Pell was aware of sexual abuse in the 1970s “but failed to take action.” Cardinal Pell says that he is “surprised” by that finding, and observes quite accurately that the evidence against him is very thin.

But even if the commission’s finding is accurate—and keep in mind that it is in dispute—that finding does not justify making Cardinal Pell the scapegoat for the sex-abuse scandal in Australia. What he did (if he did it) is what most bishops did—but at the most relevant times, he wasn’t a bishop!

The abuse in question occurred in the 1970s. Cardinal Pell was not appointed as a bishop until 1987. Even then he was an auxiliary in Melbourne, acting as an assistant to Archbishop Thomas Little, rather than making policy decisions for his own diocese. He became Archbishop of Melbourne in 1996. The BBC report on the royal commission’s finding says that he “failed to take action” against abusers. But as a parish priest he did not have authority to take action. The worst that could be said is that he did not urge the archbishop to take action.

It is alleged that Pell was aware of abuse by the notorious ex-priest Gerald Ridsdale in the 1970s and early 1980s. But it is an established fact that the late Bishop Ronald Mulkearns of Ballarat moved Ridsdale from one parish to another to cover the abusive priest’s trail. Here the worst that can be said (and again, Pell disputes it) is that Pell, a parish priest, was aware that his superior, a bishop, had covered up abuse. Literally hundreds of Catholic priests could be indicted on the same charge.

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ALBANY (NY)
Times-Union

May 7, 2020

By Cayla Harris

New claims have been frozen during pandemic

The state court system will make an exception to allow new filings under the Child Victims Act “in the next few weeks,” even as other non-essential filings remain frozen during the pandemic, a spokesman for the state Office of Court Administration said Thursday.

“We will not deny those litigants the ability to file,” the spokesman, Lucian Chalfen, said in an email.

The exception, first reported by the New York Law Journal, comes amid growing calls from survivors and advocates to extend the act’s one-year “look-back” period that is set to expire in August. The window has resulted in more than 1,700 lawsuits filed by individuals who had previously been time-barred from lodging claims against their alleged sexual abusers. But court filings were paused in March as the coronavirus pandemic effectively shut down the state court system.

It is unclear whether alleged survivors will be able to make up for lost filing time during the pandemic; Chalfen said any extension of the window would require executive or legislative action. Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo issued an executive order in March suspending statutes of limitations during the state of emergency, but there is uncertainty among lawyers and legal experts as to whether that moratorium also applies to the Child Victims Act’s one-year window.

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CANTON (NY)
North Country Public Radio

May 9, 2020

By Karen DeWitt

Gov. Andrew Cuomo is extending a one-year look-back window for victims of childhood sexual abuse to file lawsuits for an additional five months, to mid-January.

The governor announced the change at his daily coronavirus briefing, where he also said his health officials are looking into a new related illness in children that killed a 5-year-old boy on Thursday.

The Child Victims Act opened a one-year window for New Yorkers who were sexually abused as children that lifts the statute of limitations to file civil suits against their alleged abusers. It was set to expire in mid-August, but because the courts have been virtually closed since March, many people have been unable to proceed with their legal actions.

Cuomo said victims will now have until Jan. 14 to sue.

“People need access to the courts to make their claim,” Cuomo said.

Sponsors of the original measure had sought to extend the look-back window for another full year.

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SAN ANTONIO (TX)
News 4 WOAI

May 8, 2020

Helotes, Texas – The Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests (SNAP) is asking why a priest at a local church has not come forward after being accused of sending sexually inappropriate texts.

According to a letter from San Antonio Archbishop Gustavo Garcia Siller, Monsignor Carlos Davalos was removed as pastor of Our Lady of Guadalupe Catholic Church in Helotes.

The letter went out April 30, but others wonder where he is now.

“The church did the right thing by removing him,” Patti Koo, SNAP San Antonio Volunteer Chapter Leader, said. “However, they could go a step further and let us know where he’s at. Is he somewhere in San Antonio near a school, near public places where children might be? So, that’s our concern.”

Archbishop Garcia Siller says there have been no other allegations of misconduct against Davalos.

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MELBOURNE (VICTORIA AUSTRALIA)
The Age

May 8, 2020

By Chip Le Grand and Farrah Tomazin

The Catholic Church is facing hundreds of civil claims by victims of clerical sex abuse, bolstered by the royal commission’s findings about Cardinal George Pell’s role in the “catastrophic failure of leadership” in the Ballarat diocese.

The royal commission’s finding that Cardinal Pell knew nearly 40 years ago of the church’s practice of shifting notorious paedophile Gerald Ridsdale to different parishes to avoid scandal is likely to bolster the cases of abuse survivors who must demonstrate a breach of duty of care to successfully sue the church.

A separate finding that Cardinal Pell in 1974 dismissed a plea by a St Patrick’s College student to stop Christian Brother Edward Dowlan abusing other boys at the school will strengthen the compensation claims of people subsequently molested by the convicted child sex offender, their lawyers say.

One victim expressed his disappointment that Cardinal Pell and other church leaders were not going to take responsibility for the harm that “could [and] should have been stopped”.

A deluge of civil claims against the church and its entities has prompted the Supreme Court to establish a specialised Institutional Liability List to administer lawsuits relating to child sex abuse.

The new list includes claims for damages arising from the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse as well as the Victorian Inquiry into the Handling of Child Abuse by Religious and Other Organisations. At the end of April, there were 347 cases on the list.

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CAMBRIDGE (MA)
Harvard Crimson

May 8, 2020

By Isabel L. Isselbacher

After more than a year of reviewing comments on a draft of the new guidelines, U.S. Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos released the highly-anticipated Title IX rule Wednesday. The new rule offers a narrow definition of sexual misconduct and imposes new guidelines for schools’ Title IX procedures.

Title IX, a law that prohibits discrimination on the basis of sex in educational institutions that receive federal funding, underpins universities’ sexual harassment prevention and adjudication policies across the country.

The new regulations — which were first released as a draft in November 2018 — shift the definition of sexual misconduct to “unwelcome conduct that is so severe, pervasive, and objectively offensive.” Previous Obama-era guidance defined sexual harassment as “unwelcome conduct of a sexual nature” that includes “requests for sexual favors, and other verbal, nonverbal, or physical conduct of a sexual nature.”

The new rule encompasses “all of a school’s education programs or activities,” both on and off campus. However, for a complaint to be addressed under the new policy, the alleged sexual misconduct must have taken place on-campus or, if off-campus, in the context of a school-sponsored activity, building, or event in which the institution has “substantial control.”

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ROCHESTER (NY)
WHAM 13 ABC

May 8, 2020

[In the video on this webpage of Cuomo’s daily COVID-19 presentation, the announcement of the window extension comes at 13:20.]

Gov. Andrew Cuomo says New York is extending the window to file claims under the Child Victims Act as a result of the coronavirus pandemic.

During his daily briefing Friday at Murray Student Center at Marist College in Poughkeepsie, Cuomo said the window to file claims has been extended to January 14.

The CVA gave survivors of child sexual abuse a one-year window to file civil claims through August. Because courts have been closed amid the pandemic, Cuomo said the state will extend that window.

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NEW YORK (NY)
New York Times

May 7, 2020

By Livia Albeck-Ripka

The cardinal, whose sexual abuse conviction was overturned last month, knew decades ago that priests had victimized children but failed to take action, a government inquiry concluded.

Melbourne, Australia – Cardinal George Pell, the Australian prelate whose sexual abuse conviction was overturned last month, knew decades ago that other Roman Catholic priests had sexually abused children but failed to take action, an Australian government inquiry found.

That conclusion was reached in 2017 by the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse, which issued a lengthy report on the victimization of children within the Catholic Church and other institutions in Australia. But its findings about Cardinal Pell were redacted from the original report to avoid prejudicing potential jurors in the cardinal’s pending trials on sexual abuse charges.

Cardinal Pell, who had been the Vatican’s chief financial officer and an adviser to Pope Francis, was found guilty in 2018 of sexually abusing two 13-year-old boys in 1996, making him the highest-ranking Catholic leader to be convicted of a crime in the church’s sexual abuse crisis. But Australia’s highest court overturned the conviction last month, saying that there was “a significant possibility” that he was not guilty.

That decision cleared the way for the release of the Royal Commission’s findings about Cardinal Pell from its 2017 report, which were made public on Thursday.

The commission found that the cardinal had been “conscious of child sexual abuse by clergy” as long ago as the 1970s, when he was a priest in the diocese of Ballarat, and that he had failed to report priests who were suspected of abuse.

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MARTINSVILLE (VA)
Associated Press

May 6, 2020

A Catholic priest in Virginia has been suspended of all priestly duties from the two parishes he leads in southwestern Virginia.

The suspension is the latest development in the ongoing dispute between Father Mark White and the Bishop of Richmond. White had maintained a well-known blog that was critical of the church’s handling of the sexual abuse scandal.

The Martinsville Bulletin reports that Bishop Barry Knestout announced the suspension on Wednesday. It means that White is prohibited from practicing ministry, including the public celebration of the sacraments.

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NEW ORLEANS (LA)
Times-Picayune / New Orleans Advocate

May 6, 2020

By Ramon Antonio Vargas

Accused of sexually molesting a boy he taught before he become a priest, Paul Calamari walked into New Orleans Archbishop Alfred Hughes’ office on Feb. 5, 2004, to discuss what might be ahead.

The Catholic church had only recently been rocked by the sexual-abuse scandal in Boston. Bishops across the U.S. were dealing with allegations in their dioceses, and New Orleans was no different. Calamari ultimately chose to retire, and he began receiving a monthly pension of $1,566 from the archdiocese — which later rose to more than $2,500 a month, according to court records.

The archdiocese slashed the amount by several hundred dollars during the spring of 2019, citing “significant” budget issues.

But after the archdiocese petitioned for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection last week, U.S. District Judge Meredith Grabill ordered the organization to stop paying priests who — like Calamari — are credibly accused child molesters.

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VATICAN CITY
Associated Press

May 7, 2020

A Roman Catholic bishop in Cincinnati has resigned after not going to his superiors with concerns about a priest who now is set to be tried on charges that he raped a boy.

Pope Francis recently accepted the resignation of Auxiliary Bishop Joseph R. Binzer, the Vatican announced Thursday. The announcement gave no details.

But the Archdiocese of Cincinnati noted that Binzer had already been removed as director of priest personnel “after he failed to bring past concerns about Father Geoffrey Drew’s conduct to the attention of Archbishop Dennis Schnurr” and the priests’ personnel board.

Drew is accused of raping the boy in the 1980s and 1990s, years before he was ordained as a priest and while he was music director at a suburban Cincinnati parish. Drew has pleaded not guilty to nine counts of rape. His trial was scheduled for October.

“I am deeply sorry for my role in addressing the concerns raised about Father Drew, which has had a negative impact on the trust and faith of the people of the Archdiocese of Cincinnati,” the archdiocese quoted Binzer as saying. “In April, having studied this matter since last summer, the Holy See informed me that it agreed with this assessment.”

Binzer, a Cincinnati native, was ordained as a priest on June 4, 1994, and later served as chancellor of the archdiocese for eight years before being ordained a bishop. He was installed as auxiliary bishop in 2011. Binzer remains a priest in the archdiocese.

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CANBERRA (AUSTRALIA)
Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse

May 7, 2020

[The reports are lengthy. To help locate the unredacted portions, use Control-F to search for Pell.]

The Royal Commission’s Terms of Reference required that its work did not prejudice current or future criminal or civil proceedings. For this reason, the Commissioners delivered an un-redacted and a redacted version of certain reports and recommended that the un-redacted version should be tabled and published at the conclusion of the relevant criminal proceedings. The below un-redacted versions were tabled on 7 May 2020:

• Un-redacted Report of Case Study No. 28: Catholic Church authorities in Ballarat (PDF)

• Un-redacted Report of Case Study No. 35: Catholic Archdiocese of Melbourne (PDF)

• Un-redacted Volume 16, Religious institutions Book 2 (PDF)

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SYDNEY (NEW SOUTH WALES, AUSTRALIA)
Catholic Weekly – Archdiocese of Sydney

May 7, 2020

By Marilyn Rodrigues

Royal Commission views “not supported” by evidence

Cardinal George Pell has rejected statements of the Royal Commission into Institutional Child Sexual Abuse that he must have known about notorious paedophile priest Gerard Risdale following the release of redacted reports on 7 May.

In a statement a spokesperson for the cardinal said he was surprised by some of the views of the Royal Commission about his actions.

“These views are not supported by evidence,” the spokesperson said. “He is especially surprised by the statements in the report about the earlier transfers of Gerald Ridsdale discussed by the Ballarat Diocesan Consultors in 1977 and 82.

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KINGSCOTE (SOUTH AUSTRALIA)
The Islander

May 7, 2020

By Megan Neil
.
Cardinal George Pell knew pedophile priest Gerald Ridsdale was moved between parishes because of sex abuse allegations and failed to push for another’s removal, a royal commission concluded.

The child abuse royal commission findings surprised Australia’s most senior Catholic cleric, who argues they are not supported by the evidence.

The commissioners rejected Cardinal Pell’s claim he was deceived in “a world of crimes and cover-ups” about Ridsdale, his 1973 Ballarat housemate who was later revealed to be Australia’s worst pedophile priest, and the unstable and disturbed Melbourne priest Peter Searson.

The commission found Cardinal Pell was aware of child sexual abuse by clergy in the early 1970s, after the former Vatican treasurer conceded it was “on his radar”.

“We are also satisfied that by 1973 Cardinal Pell was not only conscious of child sexual abuse by clergy but that he also had considered measures of avoiding situations which might provoke gossip about it,” the commissioners wrote in their unredacted report released on Thursday.

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CANBERRA (AUSTRALIA)
Associated Press

May 7, 2020

By Rod McGuirk

Australian Cardinal George Pell knew that a notorious pedophile priest had been sexually abusing children years before his arrest and had been aware of the Catholic Church’s clergy abuse problem since the early 1970s, a government inquiry concluded.

A report from the inquiry on child sexual abuse had been released in 2017, but findings concerning Pell — who was formerly Pope Francis’ finance minister and at one time the third-highest ranking cleric in the Vatican — had been redacted until Thursday to avoid prejudicing juries in any future prosecutions.

The government decided to release the full report after the High Court last month overturned convictions against Pell on charges he molested two choirboys in a Melbourne cathedral in the late 1990s when he was an archbishop. The 78-year-old cleric spent 13 months in prison before being released last month.

The findings undermine Pell’s criticisms of what he described as the church’s inadequate response to the global abuse crisis and concealing its extent.

Pell, who now lives in a Sydney seminary, said in a statement that he was “surprised by some of the views” of the inquiry about his actions.

“These views are not supported by evidence,” Pell said.

The inquiry rejected Pell’s evidence given by video link from Rome in 2016 that he was deceived and lied to by church officials about Australia’s worst pedophile priest, Gerald Ridsdale, and disturbed Melbourne parish priest Peter Searson.

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ATLANTA (GA)
CNN

May 7, 2020

By Hilary Whiteman

Brisbane, Australia – Nearly three years after the release of a damning national report into child sexual abuse, the Australian government has published dozens of previously redacted pages of text relating to Cardinal George Pell.

Three unredacted reports published Thursday reveal for the first time the commission’s findings into what Pell knew about allegations of child sex abuse committed by priests decades ago in the Australian state of Victoria.

The commission found that, as early as 1973, the former Vatican Treasurer “was not only conscious of child sex abuse by clergy but that he also had considered measures of avoiding situations which might provoke gossip about it.”

The commission’s findings had been redacted to avoid prejudicing a trial involving Pell on five charges of child sexual assault allegedly committed in the mid-1990s. Pell was convicted in December 2018, but the decision was overturned by Australia’s High Court in a unanimous ruling by the full bench of seven judges in April.

The redacted pages appeared in the final report of the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Assault, which was published in December 2017. Black lines obscured multiple pages of Case Studies 16, 28 and 35, which examined allegations of abuse in the Diocese of Ballarat, the Archdiocese of Melbourne, and the church’s mechanism to address assault claims.

Large portions of the report relate to one of Australia’s most notorious pedophiles, Gerald Ridsdale, who is serving a 34-year prison sentence for a string of child sex attacks spanning decades. In 2017, the commission found former Bishop Ronald Mulkearns knew about Ridsdale’s offending from 1975 and failed to stop it. Instead, he moved him between parishes, which gave the priest access to more victims, the commission found.

For a time, Pell served under Bishop Mulkearns as one of his consultors, a small group of priests tasked with advising the bishop on the movement of parish priests and other matters.

Pell has consistently denied ever being involved in any decision to move Ridsdale. In a statement to the commission in May 2015, Pell said, “I would never have condoned or participated in a decision to transfer Ridsdale in the knowledge that he had abused children, and I did not do so.”

The unredacted report released Thursday said the commission was “satisfied” that in 1973 Pell had “turned his mind to the prudence of Ridsdale taking boys on overnight camps.” It said the most likely reason for this was the possibility that “if priests were one-on-one with a child then they could sexually abuse a child or at least provoke gossip about such a prospect.”
“By this time, child sexual abuse was on his radar,” the unredacted report said.

The reports released Thursday also said Pell should have acted sooner to advise Archbishop Frank Little to remove Father Peter Searson, a parish priest who had been accused of a litany of abuse.

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ALAMOGORDO (NM)
Alamogordo Daily News

May 6, 2020

By Nicole Maxwell

[See also the lawsuit.]

A lawsuit centered on child molestation by Fr. David Holley named two Alamogordo Catholic parishes and several dioceses as defendants.

The suit, filed in the 2nd Judicial District Court in Bernalillo County, alleged the Servants of Paraclete, the Catholic Diocese of El Paso, Diocese of Worcester, Dioces of Las Cruces, the Immaculate Conception Parish and St. Jude Parish allowed Holley to prey on boys within the Alamogordo parishes during his time in New Mexico in the 1970s.

The suit was filed by “John Doe” and demanded a jury trial and restitution. The complaint alleged negligence, intentional infliction of emotional distress, vicarious liability, public nuisance and racketeering.

Immaculate Conception Catholic Church offered no comment on the suit.

The suit places most of the blame on Holley’s home diocese: the Diocese of Worcester, located in Massachusetts.

It gives a history of child sexual offenses that Holley was alleged to have perpetrated in Massachusetts prior to transfer to the Servants of the Paraclete in New Mexico.

The Servants of the Paraclete operated a rehabilitation center initially for priests with substance abuse issues before it admitted priests with psycho-sexual disorder, which was what Holley had, according to the complaint.

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SPRINGFIELD (MA)
New England Public Radio

May 6, 2020

By Adam Frenier

The Springfield Roman Catholic Diocese and three western Massachusetts prosecutors have reached a deal on how the church will report sexual abuse allegations.

Under the memorandum of understanding, the diocese has to turn over information about sexual abuse claims it receives to the appropriate district attorney’s office. The church also will suspend its own investigation for three months, or longer if a criminal probe is taking place.

The deal comes after Hampden District Attorney Anthony Gulluni said last year the diocese was failing to refer all cases to prosecutors. Gulluni said this latest agreement should clear up those concerns.

“We’re happy with this, that this will be in place going forward, to make sure that if any of those allegations come forward to the diocese, that they’re given to law enforcement [and] law enforcement has the appropriate opportunity to investigate cases,” Gulluni said.

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PINELLAS PARK (FL)
Legal Examiner – Saunders and Walker

May 6, 2020

By Joseph H. Saunders

The Catholic Diocese of Buffalo, which has recently been hit by hundreds of child sex abuse claims, has announced it will terminate pay and health benefits for 23 priests involved in the allegations. The move comes after the diocese filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in late February.

The diocese is facing over 250 lawsuits alleging child sex abuse by its priests. That’s more than any other diocese in New York.

In a letter, Bishop Edward B. Scharfenberger explained that the termination of pay was part of an agreement reached in federal bankruptcy court with the committee representing over 200 survivors suing the diocese under New York’s Child Victims Act. Enacted on August 15, 2019, the statewide Child Victims Act opened a one-year window for survivors to sue the Catholic Church for abuse they suffered as children, despite how much time has passed.

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SYDNEY (NEW SOUTH WALES, AUSTRALIA)
Catholic Weekly – Archdiocese of Sydney

May 7, 2020

By Dr Philippa Martyr

A difficult conversation – but necessary

If we are going to do real soul-searching about clergy sexual abuse, it’s time we turned the spotlight on to the laity and their role in enabling abusers.

This is a difficult conversation to begin. We are used to seeing ourselves as the good guys, and the solution, not the problem: that if we had lay-led parishes or diocesan offices, this would rid us of clergy abuse for good.

Unfortunately, history is not on our side. Cases of clergy sexual abuse in the English-speaking world reveal any number of compromised lay people who have helped with covering up and explaining away, either directly or indirectly.

The ‘lay clericalism’ of the insiders

They are usually wealthy and influential, or employed by the Church, or in useful professions. Start with the Boston case, so admirably narrated in ‘Spotlight’- a good reminder that almost all clergy abuse has been exposed by outsider journalists, not by people inside the Church.

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NEW ORLEANS (LA)
Associated Press

May 5, 2020

By Jm Mustian and Michael Rezendes

A bankruptcy filing by New Orleans’ Roman Catholic archdiocese freezes sexual abuse lawsuits and could help bury the details of alleged coverups of predator priests and thousands of internal emails documenting a behind-the-scenes alliance with the New Orleans Saints.

Attorneys for those suing the church attacked last week’s Chapter 11 filing as a veiled attempt to keep church records secret, scrap a long-awaited legal deposition of Archbishop Gregory Aymond and deny victims a public reckoning that had been years in the making.

“Those victims were on the path to the truth,” attorney Soren Gisleson wrote in court papers. “The rape of children is a thief that keeps on stealing.”

Among the most explosive legal fights now in disarray is a lawsuit alleging Aymond and his three predecessors systematically concealed the crimes of the Rev. Lawrence Hecker, an 88-year-old priest removed from active ministry in 2002 after accusations that he abused “countless children.”

A recent court motion drew direct parallels between the church’s handling of Hecker and John Geoghan, a serial pedophile who molested scores of children during his 30-year career as a Massachusetts clergyman.

The bankruptcy also freezes a court battle over a cache of confidential emails describing the behind-the-scenes public relations work New Orleans Saints executives did for the archdiocese in 2018 and 2019 to contain fallout from clergy abuse scandals.

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PHILADELPHIA (PA)
Archdiocese of Philadelphia

May 5, 2020

By Archbishop Nelson J. Pérez

Dear Sisters and Brothers in Christ,

With the worldwide outbreak of the coronavirus, life as we understand it has temporarily changed in drastic and necessary ways for the good of public health. I know that these difficult times have brought concerns about physical and mental health, family, loved ones, and finances to the forefront of your minds. As a people of faith, we will continue to navigate these challenging waters together.

As your Shepherd it is my duty to provide for the pastoral and temporal well-being of every member of our local Church. Some of those most in need of our care and compassion are survivors of sexual abuse at the hands of Archdiocesan clergy. I deeply regret the pain and suffering of survivors and any decisions that failed to protect them. The pain and damage are profound.

In November of 2018, the Archdiocese of Philadelphia committed to creating new modes of support focused on a path toward healing and helping survivors. To supplement the Victim Assistance Program in place since 2002, the Archdiocese launched the Independent Reconciliation and Reparations Program (IRRP). It has provided an opportunity for survivors to share their experiences, identify their abusers, and receive compensation to assist them in healing and recovery. From its outset, this program included a comprehensive financial plan to provide for its funding. As the claims submission period has now passed, we are providing you with an update on the progress of this important ministerial outreach.

As of April 22, 2020, a total of 800 individuals have come forward to the IRRP. 615 of these individuals have submitted formal claims. The Archdiocese remains fully committed to funding this program and paying claims in the amounts assigned by the independent IRRP Claims Administrators. Given the claims experience to date, the Archdiocese currently estimates the total cost of the IRRP to be approximately $130 million. As of April 22, 2020, $43.8 million of total compensation had already been paid to resolve 208 claims fully.

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PHILADELPHIA (PA)
Philadelphia Inquirer

May 5, 2020

By Harold Brubaker

The Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Philadelphia said Tuesday that it expects to pay $126 million to sexual-abuse victims under a reparations program announced in 2018.

The archdiocese said its Independent Reconciliation and Reparations Program has received a total of 615 claims, and had settled 208 of them for $43.8 million as of April 22. That averages out to about $211,000 per claim, which is in line with what other dioceses have been paying under similar programs.

The archdiocese said it still has $20 million on hand to pay claims and will raise the rest of the money through loans or property sales. The diocese made the $126 million estimate as part of an audited financial statement for the year ending June 30, 2019.

“I deeply regret the pain and suffering of survivors and any decisions that failed to protect them,” Archbishop Nelson J. Pérez wrote to parishioners in a letter Tuesday. “The pain and damage are profound.”

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PHILADELPHIA (PA)
WPVI ABC 6

May 6, 2020

By Dann Cuellar

In a profound letter to parishioners, the newly installed Archbishop of Philadelphia, Nelson Perez, addressed claims of prior priest sex abuse of children head-on, saying the archdiocese is committed to paying about $130 million in reparations.

When new Archbishop Perez came to Philadelphia from Cleveland a few months ago, he inherited a mess stemming from the priest sex abuse scandal. But on Tuesday, he says in a letter that he deeply regrets the pain and suffering of survivors and any decisions that failed to protect them.

A victim of sex abuse and spokesman for a survivors group called SNAP (Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests), recently met with the archbishop.

“I found the archbishop to be compassionate. I found him to be concerning, and he expressed his own personal anger and disgust of what has happened,” said Mike McDougal.

In the letter, the archbishop says that the archdiocese remains fully committed to funding a reparations program for victims and paying claims of approximately $130 million. That’s roughly about $211,000 per claim.

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NEW ORLEANS (LA)
Times-Picayune / New Orleans Advocate

May 4, 2020

By Matt Sledge

A federal judge said Monday that the Archdiocese of New Orleans can keep its lights on, but she held off on other decisions as the first hearing of the archdiocese’s bankruptcy process turned into a skirmish between lawyers for alleged victims of sexual abuse and the church.

The archdiocese filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection on Friday, citing the financial fallout from abuse lawsuits and the coronavirus pandemic. The move essentially kicks a multitude of lawsuits against the church out of state court and into a single federal case.

While the bankruptcy process continues, the church asked for approval to keep paying utility bills, salaries for hundreds of employees and insurance premiums.

Such requests are standard procedure at the time of a bankruptcy filing, but attorneys wrangled over them for more than two hours during a telephone hearing on Monday.

Accusers’ lawyers said the judge should order that no salary or pension payments be made to predator priests and demanded to know the archdiocese’s plan for using cash in one bank account.

U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Meredith S. Grabill said she would approve requests from the church to keep making utility and insurance payments. She also approved salary payments for nearly 800 full-time and part-time employees.

However, Grabill also said the church should not make salary or pension payments to employees who have been credibly accused of sexual abuse. The church in 2018 revealed a list of dozens of suspected predator priests.

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LONDON (ENGLAND)
Australian Associated Press via The Guardian

May 5, 2020

The federal attorney general says two separate reports on abuse in the Melbourne and Ballarat dioceses can now be released in full

A royal commission’s findings about Cardinal George Pell’s knowledge of historical child sexual abuse complaints will be released within days.

The federal attorney general, Christian Porter, says he has been advised that the two royal commission into institutional responses to child sexual abuse reports can now be published in full.

Porter said that would happen within days, although he would not give a specific release date.

“The advice is that it is now okay to publish the unredacted version,” he told the ABC on Tuesday.

Porter said he would read the reports and consider the final legal advice, but did not expect there to be any problem with the release of the documents.

“They’ve only just arrived with me now that that advice has been received, so it’s just a matter of process from here and that will be a matter of days.”

The reports into the Catholic church’s response to abuse complaints and allegations in the Melbourne archdiocese and Victoria’s Ballarat diocese were released in December 2017.

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COLUMBIA (MO)
Religion News Service

May 4, 2020

By Christa Brown

For more than a decade, abuse survivor advocates have been asking the Southern Baptist Convention to establish a clergy predator database, and for just as long they’ve been confronted with a denomination determined to do nothing.

Now Megan and Dominique Benninger, who brought to light their former pastor’s record as a convicted child molester after the leadership of their Pennsylvania church failed to disclose it, have launched a new Baptist sex abuser database at BaptistAccountability.org.

Their work builds on the StopBaptistPredators database that I started and maintained from 2006 to 2012, containing 170 entries of convicted, admitted and credibly accused Southern Baptist clergy sex abusers and on the “Abuse of Faith” database that the Houston Chronicle published in 2019, documenting 263 criminally convicted and plea-bargained Southern Baptist sex offenders over the prior 20 years.

BaptistAccountability has incorporated the information from these prior databases and is continuing to expand through crowdsourcing. You can submit an entry here.

In explaining the purpose of their database, the Benningers focus not only on protecting kids and congregants but also on their stated desire that the site serve as “a testimony” to the fact that “it’s just not that hard” and that the SBC could do this if it wanted. “Again and again,” they say, “we’ve been told that the Southern Baptist Convention takes this issue seriously. But if you take something seriously, it causes you to ACT.”

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BUFFALO (NY)
Associated Press

May 4, 2020

The Roman Catholic Diocese of Buffalo has taken legal action seeking to stop all outstanding clergy sexual abuse lawsuits while it navigates bankruptcy proceedings in federal court.

The diocese filed a motion in federal bankruptcy court on Saturday seeking an injunction on lawsuits filed under New York’s Child Victims Act. About 250 lawsuits have been filed against the diocese since August, when the act gave victims one year to pursue even decades-old allegations of abuse.

Lawsuits against the diocese were moved to bankruptcy court in February and permanently frozen, but the bankruptcy filing only temporarily halted lawsuits against individual parishes or Catholic schools. Those cases could be moved back into state supreme court unless the diocese is granted a permanent injunction.

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BUFFALO (NY)
Spectrum News

May. 4, 2020

Lawyers for the Buffalo Catholic Diocese are asking for the abuse lawsuits filed under the Child Victims Act to be put on hold.

Attorneys for clergy sex abuse survivors are rallying against the latest legal move by the diocese.

Lawyers representing the diocese filed an adversary proceeding in bankruptcy court, stating the abuse lawsuits could prevent the diocese from reorganizing its debts.

A local attorney who’s filed more than 100 sex abuse claims against the diocese says this move could force those cases out of state supreme court, and limit what information the diocese would be forced to reveal.

It’s something lawyers already had to deal with in the Rochester Diocese.

“What we did in that case is we negotiated a stipulate stay with them on a temporary bases in exchange for the personnel files and in Rochester the diocese has turned over about 43,000 some pages of personnel files and other records,” said attorney Steve Boyd. “We don’t think those records are complete yet, but it’s a lot more than nothing.”

Mitchell Garabedian is another attorney representing 39 survivors who are suing the diocese.

“This legal maneuver by the Diocese of Buffalo is just another example of the Catholic Church coldly putting its needs before the needs of victims,” he said. “Instead of trying to negotiate an agreement the Diocese has chosen to litigate and accordingly once again shown how little it cares about the healing of victims.”

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NEW YORK (NY)
The Conversation

April 30, 2020

By Jane Barter

When Jean Vanier passed away in May 2019, the Canadian Catholic founder of the L’Arche International movement that challenged barriers between people with disabilities and able-bodied people was hailed as a “saviour to people on the margins.”

But since news of his abuse of six women broke in Feburary 2020, many who once thought him a hero have struggled to make sense of the man and his legacy.

I include myself in this group.

As a former caregiver of people with disablities, I came to see Vanier’s theology of disability as one that had the capacity to transform not only hearts and minds, but also communities and structures. But since learning of the abuse, I have come to see it otherwise.

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SAULT STE. MARIE (ONTARIO, CANADA)
SooToday

May 1, 2020

https://www.sootoday.com/local-news/supreme-court-says-basilian-fathers-responsible-for-25m-in-damages-to-sexual-abuse-victim-rod-macleod-2318411

Canada’s highest court upholds decision from Ontario Court of Appeals that religious order liable for damages

Rod MacLeod, the victim of a pedophile priest in the 1960s at a Sudbury high school, said he hopes his latest legal victory will inspire other sexual abuse victims to come forward and “seek justice through the court.”

MacLeod made the comments on April 30 when the Supreme Court of Canada rejected the Basilian Fathers of Toronto’s bid for a further appeal after they were held responsible when one of their priests was convicted in 2011 of abusing 17 students at schools over a 38-year period.

MacLeod was one of those students. He was abused by Father William Hodgson Marshall when he attended St. Charles College from 1963-1967.

MacLeod received $500,000 in punitive damages and more than $1.5 million for lost earnings.

“It is possible to achieve justice in Canada,” MacLeod said in a news release following the decision from the Supreme Court of Canada.

Marshall worked in Rochester, Toronto, Windsor, Sudbury and Sault Ste. Marie, and was reported a total of six times over his career, but continued in his role as a priest and teacher. He died in 2014.

Instead of reporting Marshall to the police, the Basilian Fathers moved him to another school when abuse complaints emerged. The Basilians are a Roman Catholic Religious Order of priests who operate on three continents, including in Canada and the United States, with their headquarters located in Toronto, Ontario.

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

BUFFALO (NY)
WIVB

May 3, 2020

The Diocese of Buffalo has taken legal action to stop lawsuits filed under the Child Victims’ Act from moving forward.

The Diocese recently filed an adversary proceeding.

Currently, all of the lawsuits against the Diocese are frozen because it’s in bankruptcy. However, lawsuits that name a parish or school are only stopped temporarily because the parish or school is not in bankruptcy, meaning that they could still go to trial.

Attorney Steve Boyd told News 4 that this action is meant to freeze the cases so that they don’t reach the courtroom.

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

BROOKLYN (NY)
Brooklyn Reader

May 2, 2020

By Albert Cooper

The Child Victims Act (CVA), which was enacted last year, is widely lauded for opening up the time frame for victims of child sexual abuse to file lawsuits over claims that were previously barred from court due to the statute of limitations.

Amid the pandemic that has nearly clogged the wheel of justice, state lawmakers are yet to decide on extending a one-year legal window that allowed survivors of child sex abuse to sue over decades-old allegations.

The legal window is set to close in August, but New York’s court system is no longer accepting CVA lawsuits. Since the state’s court system has postponed all non-essential services and the CVA lawsuits were not listed as essential under an order from Lawrence Marks, the state’s chief administrative judge, this has effectively placed a hold on new litigation under the act.

It should be noted that an executive order from Cuomo last month paused the state’s statute of limitations, tolling “any specific time limit for the commencement, filing, or service of any legal action, notice, motion, or other process or proceeding.”

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BRISTOL (CT)
ESPN

May 1, 2020

Detroit – A former wrestler who claims he was sexually assaulted by a University of Michigan sports doctor waited too long to file a lawsuit, the school said Friday as it asked a judge to dismiss the case.

The university said it believes Dr. Robert Anderson assaulted athletes, and it wants to compensate victims. But it added that it’s trying to avoid “drawn-out litigation” while a law firm investigates what happened during Anderson’s decades in Ann Arbor. He died in 2008.

“The university is committed to grappling with those findings, whatever they may be, to ensure that nothing like this can ever happen again,” attorneys said in a filing in U.S. District Court.

In his lawsuit, a man identified as John Doe MC-4 said he was molested by Anderson during exams approximately 16 times, from 1987 to 1991. Hundreds of others have said they too were assaulted, some as far back as the 1960s.

“The university has great sympathy for what plaintiff suffered,” attorney Cheryl Bush said of Doe.

But in Doe’s case, Bush noted that decades have passed since the last abuse, making the lawsuit untimely.

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ATLANTA (GA)
CNN

May 4, 2020

By Eliott C. McLaughlin

It was the snap of the doctor’s glove that spooked him right out of the exam room.

Chuck Christian is a large fellow, a 6-foot-4 former tight end for one of the most decorated college football programs in the country. He doesn’t come off as squeamish.

Yet about 15 years ago, when a physician prepared to perform a prostate exam after Christian discovered blood in his semen, the big man simply walked out of the office. He harkened back decades to his days as a Michigan Wolverine, when team Dr. Robert Anderson allegedly performed unwarranted prostate checks on athletes.

“Nobody’s going to do that again,” he thought as he escaped the urology clinic. “That’s why I didn’t go get the exam because of my fear of these digital exams that Dr. Anderson used to give me.”

Today, Christian, 60, has stage 4 prostate cancer that has spread to his spine, tailbone, hips, ribs and shoulders.
Doctors told him in 2016 he had three years to live, but he just passed the four-year mark, he said, explaining that he opted for alternative treatments over chemotherapy and radiation.

The married father of three wishes he would’ve realized sooner that his fear of doctors stemmed from the trauma he says he suffered as a University of Michigan student-athlete in Anderson’s exam room. He’s speaking up so other former athletes don’t make the mistake he made, of waiting too long to get checked.

No one should be ashamed of being a victim, he said.

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GUAM
Guam Daily Post

May 4, 2020

By Haidee Eugenio Gilbert

A former Guam resident now living in Virginia sits on an official committee that represents the interests of potentially thousands of survivors of child sexual abuse in the Boy Scouts of America’s bankruptcy case.

Guam’s abuse claims represent more than a quarter of the approximately 275 pending civil actions asserting personal injury claims against the Boy Scouts across the nation, as of Feb. 18.

Across the United States, some 1,400 additional claims of abuse against the Boy Scouts are anticipated.

Morgan Wade Paul, a former Guam altar boy and Boy Scout, was appointed to sit on the nine-member official committee of unsecured creditors in the Boy Scouts bankruptcy.

Paul, represented by Lujan & Wolff LLP, filed a Guam lawsuit in 2017, alleging that Guam priest and Boy Scout scoutmaster Louis Brouillard had sexually abused him repeatedly for a scout swimming merit badge around 1975.

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NEW ORLEANS (LA)
Archdiocese of New Orleans

May 1, 2020

By Archbishop Gregory M. Aymond

Dear Sisters and Brothers in Christ,

The past few years have been extremely trying times for us in the Archdiocese of New Orleans. The resurgence of the clergy abuse crisis has been particularly challenging, especially as it has played out regularly in the local media.Most importantly, again, I extend daily prayers to those who are victims and survivors. May God give you healing and renewed hope. This issue coupled with ongoing budget challenges has created an impossible situation.

After much prayer and consultation, we have made the difficult decision to pursue Chapter 11 reorganization. I, along with a team of advisors, believe that reorganization will create an opportunity for us to renew our commitment to the faithful and the New Orleans community by restructuring our financials, increasing our transparency and creating a path forward in hopes that we can continue and strengthen our core mission: bringing Christ to others. This reorganization will affect only the archdiocesan administrative offices.

The prospect of more abuse cases with associated prolonged and costly litigation, together with pressing ministerial needs and budget challenges, is simply not financially sustainable. Additionally, the unforeseen circumstances surrounding COVID-19 have added more financial hardships to an already difficult situation.

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AUSTRALIA
Daily Mail

May 3, 2020

By Australian Associated Press and Jackson Barron for Daily Mail

– Gerald Ridsdale is facing 14 more assault charges from Victoria in 1973 to 1979
– The charges will likely extend his release date and have Ridsdale die in prison
– He has been charged with 136 offences, with some victims as young as four
– Ridsdale admitted more rapes and his lawyer argued he shouldn’t get more time
– Barrister Tim Marsh said he should have been sentenced for his crimes at once

Paedophile priest Gerald Ridsdale is likely to die in jail as he faces more sexual abuse charges.

The 85-year-old will be heard on May 14 for 10 indecent assault charges and four buggery charges in Victoria between 1973 and 1979 to further his time behind bars.

The charges will likely extend his time behind bars beyond 2022, his earliest release date.

Ridsdale is suffering chronic health problems including heart conditions, arthristis, bowel problems and high blood pressure.

He has been charged with 136 offences since 1994, with his barrister Tim Marsh telling The Australian he is ‘a repugnant figure to many, and for reasons that are only too understandable’.

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AUSTRALIA
Malaysia Sun

By Chris Fiel

May 3, 2020

– In the wake of Cardinal George Pell’s acquittal, commentators have asked whether the Australian national broadcaster engaged in a witch-hunt.

– I shall not address this question directly but ask instead what a witch-hunt is.

– I have written on Farlow previously identifying the close links with the lawyer who acted for Pell’s complainant.

In the wake of Cardinal George Pell’s acquittal, commentators have asked whether the Australian national broadcaster, the ABC, engaged in a witch-hunt.

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NEW ORLEANS (LA)
Associated Press

May 1, 2020

By Kevin McGill

The Roman Catholic Archdiocese of New Orleans announced Friday that it is seeking federal Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection amid growing legal costs related to sexual abuse by priests.

The filing for reorganization could free the archdiocese from the threat of creditors’ lawsuits while it reorganizes its finances. The New Orleans archdiocese is the latest of more than 20 dioceses nationwide to take such action.

Friday’s statement said costs associated with preventing the spread of coronavirus also have contributed to financial pressures.

The archdiocese said the filing applies only to the administrative offices of the archdiocese. “The Archdiocese’s action will not affect individual church parishes, their schools, schools run by the various religious orders, or ministries of the church,” the statement said.

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WAUKESHA (WI)
Fox 6 TV News

May 1, 2020

The Waukesha County District Attorney will not pursue new charges against a priest accused of sexual assault of a teenage girl.

Father Charles Hanel was accused of sexually assaulting a 13-year-old girl in December 2017 during confession at Queen of Apostles Church.

At trial, the judge agreed to a motion for a mistrial and dismissed the jury.

Now, in a letter obtained by FOX6 News, District Attorney Sue Opper said she will not seek new charges to avoid the strain of a new trial for all of the parties involved.

Hanel’s defense attorney said the decision is welcome news for “an innocent man who has been through a terrible ordeal.”

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NEW ORLEANS (LA)
Nola.com

May 1, 2020

By Ramon Antonio Vargas

Archbishop Gregory Aymond, facing the mounting financial toll of the Catholic church’s child sexual-abuse crisis and the more acute money troubles wrought by the coronavirus, filed the paperwork early Friday morning to seek bankruptcy protection for the Archdiocese of New Orleans.

Aymond, the leader of the two-century old archdiocese serving half a million area Catholics, broke the news in person to dozens of mask-wearing clergy Thursday evening at a Metairie church before officially submitting the documents to federal bankruptcy court a little after midnight.

On Friday, he told the faithful that the filing for Chapter 11 bankruptcy petition is aimed at putting the archdiocese on sounder financial footing in the wake of millions of dollars in abuse claims.

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NEW ORLEANS (LA)
Nola.com

May 2, 2020

By John Simerman

For the Archdiocese of New Orleans, shadow-boxing the sins of its past became a fight too risky to stomach.

Now, in the wake of filing for Chapter 11 bankruptcy on Friday, the archdiocese and its creditors — mostly sexual abuse claimants — will begin to negotiate the price for a move bound to have lasting repercussions for the archdiocese and its accusers, for better or worse.

The outcome will hinge on several factors, as clergy abuse claims move en masse from the drag-it-out halls of state court, to a single federal bankruptcy proceeding with no jury and a swifter pace, say lawyers and advocates familiar with the 26 previous bankruptcy filings by U.S. dioceses since 2004.

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RICHMOND (VA)
Martinsville Bulletin

May 2, 2020

By Bill Wyatt

The ongoing dispute between Father Mark White of Martinsville and Bishop of Richmond Barry Knestout will be decided by a Catholic court.

The boiling dispute between a Martinsville priest and a Richmond bishop could wind up spilling over the doorstep of the Vatican in Rome.

That is the intention of Michael Podhajsky, the canon lawyer retained by Father Mark White to defend against the efforts of Richmond Bishop Barry Knestout to remove White as pastor of St. Joseph Parish in Martinsville and St. Francis of Assisi Parish in Rocky Mount.

Knestout issued a decree effective April 13, the day after Easter Sunday, removing White and declaring the priest had “persistently disregarded” repeated instructions “to desist from his scurrilous and public, published attacks on His Holiness, Pope Francis and other members of the hierarchy.”

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HELENA (MT)
Independent Record

May 1, 2020

By Phoebe Tollefson

The one-year window Montana lawmakers opened to give child sex abuse survivors a chance to bring old claims is closing soon, and a flurry of lawsuits is hitting the courts.

Adults who were abused as children have until May 6 to bring claims otherwise barred by the statute of limitations. The Montana Legislature created the window in 2019, prompted by news of a lawsuit against James “Doc” Jensen, a Miles City high school athletic trainer who abused dozens of boys while working with the district between the 1970s and 1990s.

After May 6, various restrictions are reinstated on which claims can be brought. Factors include age of the victim, and whether the abuser is still alive.

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AMAZON (BRAZIL)
HuffPost.com

April 21, 2020

By Travis Waldron

Indigenous Brazilians are demanding a missionary group based in Florida with deep ties to far-right President Jair Bolsonaro stay off their lands.

The novel coronavirus outbreak has intensified a decadeslong battle between indigenous tribes and evangelical Christian missionaries in the most remote regions of the Brazilian Amazon rainforest, as tribes warning of the virus’s potential to cause their “genocide” have pushed to ban controversial religious groups from entering their lands.

On Thursday, a Brazilian judge granted the tribes’ wishes, barring missionaries from entering the Javari Valley, a remote region along Brazil’s border with Peru that is home to numerous indigenous tribes and at least 16 groups of isolated peoples ― those who have no known contact with outside communities.

The ruling specifically named three missionaries, as well as New Tribes Mission of Brazil, a 67-year-old fundamentalist Christian organization that is affiliated with a larger evangelical missionary group in the United States. New Tribes also has deep ties to the right-wing government of President Jair Bolsonaro, who in February tapped Ricardo Lopes Dias, a former New Tribes missionary, to head the agency that is supposed to protect Brazil’s isolated peoples.

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NEW ORLEANS (LA)
WVUE, Fox 8-TV

May 1, 2020

By Kimberly Curth

SNAP reacts to Archdiocese bankruptcy filing

Attorneys for alleged church sex abuse victims with pending lawsuits against the Archdiocese of New Orleans released the following statement Friday responding to the Archdiocese’s bankruptcy filing.

STATEMENT OF VICTIM-SURVIVORS’ LEGAL TEAM:

“Regarding the Archdiocese’s midnight filing for bankruptcy, Archbishop Gregory Aymond stated, “I strongly believe that this path will allow victims and survivors of clergy abuse to resolve their claims in a fair and timely manner.” Unfortunately, this is not what our client-survivors believe, and of course, Abp. Aymond made no attempt to find out what the victim-survivors believed. When he released the incomplete list of pedophile clergy on November 2, 2018, Abp. Aymond said he wanted “justice” for the victims and promised to be totally transparent. He then proceeded to spend ungodly amounts of money fighting these very same victims in court and being the exact opposite of transparent. This bankruptcy brings all pending lawsuits, including the depositions of Aymond and other Archdiocese officials, to a grinding halt. Abp. Aymond will never have to face a single victim before a jury.

“The Archdiocese sought to keep internal documents of decades of sexual abuse hidden from the public. The Archdiocese sought to keep the victims from understanding the full weight and scope of its intentional, conscious scheme to protect, promote, and pay child rapists. Its bankruptcy filing is more of the same. …”

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ENGLAND
Times of London

May 2, 2020

By Marc Horne

An English-based paedophile had connections with Celtic Boys Club it has emerged, strengthening claims of collusion between a network of abusers.

Father Michael Spencer, a priest, teacher and football coach, used his position at Preston Catholic College, Lancashire, to abuse dozens of adolescent boys in the 1970s.

Now evidence has emerged which shows that Spencer, who died in 2000, forged a relationship with Celtic FC’s feeder club and brought young players to Glasgow. Four men who held senior roles with Celtic Boys Club have been convicted of sexual abuse, spanning four decades, in recent years.

Police Scotland is investigating claims that known abusers worked together to molest young footballers.

It came after an independent review — commissioned by the Scottish FA — received “substantive” new evidence of an organised abuse ring operated by paedophile coaches in Scotland and England.

Celtic View, Celtic FC’s official magazine, carried an article praising Spencer in August, 1975. It said he had been invited to Glasgow for a “friendly” match between Celtic Boys Club and his Preston Schoolboys under 15 team.

In 2012 Patrick Raggett, a former lawyer, was awarded £55,000 in damages for the years of abuse Spencer inflicted on him during his schooldays.

Lady Justice Swift at the High Court in London ruled Mr Raggett had been the victim of “insidious” abuse, stating: “Father Spencer took every opportunity to observe naked young boys and film them. He exploited his position to touch and fondle the boys for his own sexual satisfaction.”

Mr Raggett told The Times: “It seems inconceivable to me that Spencer and those responsible for abuse at Celtic Boys Club weren’t in collusion.”

His abuser filmed and photographed him naked on numerous occasions as well as taking shots of him in his football kit and swimming trunks.

Mr Ragget said: “Spencer was a Celtic fanatic and had an obsession with photography and filming. He used to wear a black tracksuit with a Celtic badge and would show cine footage of the Celtic Boys Club playing, which would bore us rigid. I also believe he was sharing naked footage of me with others.”

In 2004 John Cullen, who worked as the official photographer for Celtic View for almost 30 years, admitted taking indecent photographs of boys as young as 10. Cleaners found a black bag containing bundles of black and white images of naked and semi-naked boys in a store room at Celtic Park.

Glasgow sheriff court heard the cache had been hidden there for almost 20 years before the management was alerted, called in the police and sacked Cullen, who was given three years probation.

In 1976 Spencer’s conduct was deemed to be “unsatisfactory”, but he remained at the college until it closed in 1978 before being sent to Orkney.

The review into abuse in Scottish football, due to be published within weeks, is expected to name Gordon Neely, a former Rangers and Hibernian youth coach, as a prolific abuser who worked with other paedophiles in northwest England. Neely died of cancer in 2014.

Celtic FC has said that it is sorry that abuse took place but continues to insist that it was a separate entity to its feeder club.

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MEDELLÍN (COLOMBIA)
Explica

May 1, 2020

Yepes was denounced in recent years by three men who, they say, were victims of sexual abuse by the priest when they were minors

The Colombian priest Carlos Arturo Yepes has been provisionally suspended from the exercise of all priestly ministry by order of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith of The Vatican for allegations of alleged sexual abuse.

This was confirmed by the vicar general of the Archdiocese of Medellín, Father Óscar Augusto Álvarez, who assured Caracol Radio that “the Congregation has just ordered the carrying out of a canonical criminal judicial process and has been suspended ad cautelam.”

The Archdiocese of Medellín In 2018, he opened a formal investigation to Yepes for the complaint of a 36-year-old man who claimed to have been abused, when he was still a child, by the religious in 1995.

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BUFFALO (NY)
Catholic News Agency

May 1, 2020

By Matt Hadro

The Diocese of Buffalo clarified on Friday that priests accused of sexual abuse cannot be left “destitute,” even as the diocese acts to withdraw financial support payments.

The diocese had announced earlier this week that 23 priests “with substantiated allegations of sexual abuse” would no longer receive financial assistance or health benefits from the Diocese of Buffalo as of May 1. However, the diocese said that pension plans would not be affected by the decision.

Interim communications director for the diocese Greg Tucker told CNA on Friday that “the diocese recognizes that there are certain canonical obligations to ensure that these individuals are not left destitute and is addressing this.”

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UNITED STATES
Eurasia Review

May 1, 2020

By William Donohue

If Joe Biden were a priest, he would have been removed from ministry pending a more thorough investigation. Instead, he is holed up in his basement talking to the media. Until May 1, no one from the media asked him one question about sexually assaulting Tara Reade.

On April 29, the Free Beacon reported that in 19 interviews he granted over a 5-week period, he fielded 142 questions, but not one was about Reade. In fact, when Biden was interviewed on April 28, even though he teed it up for reporters by discussing domestic violence and challenges that women face, none asked him about his accuser. That changed when Biden was questioned by Mika Brzezinski on the MSNBC show, “Morning Joe.”

Five people have corroborated at least some parts of Reade’s account. She says Biden, then a senator, digitally penetrated her against her will in 1993. She says she reported the assault to three of his staffers. She also filed a Senate complaint. What happened? She was subject to reprisal. She said her assignments were downgraded, and she was moved to an isolated workstation. She was also told she had 12 months to find another job

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TORONTO (CANADA)
Windsor Star

Mary 2, 2020

By Trevor Wilhelm

The Supreme Court of Canada has shot down the appeal of a $2.5 million judgment against the Basilian Fathers of Toronto for sexual abuse inflicted by Rev. William “Hod” Hodgson Marshall.

The country’s highest court handed down its decision against the Basilians, a Roman Catholic Religious Order of priests, on Thursday.

“I hope this final victory will give hope to other sexual abuse victims to come forward and seek justice through the courts,” said abuse survivor Rod MacLeod, who sued the Basilians for the abuse he suffered at the hands of Marshall. “It is possible to achieve justice in Canada.”

On April 26, 2018, a Toronto jury awarded a judgment of $2,570,181, including $500,000 in punitive damages, against the Basilians for abuse Hodgson inflicted against MacLeod.

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NEW ORLEANS (LA)
The Washington Times

May 1, 2020

By James Varney

Hobbled by waves of sexual abuse lawsuits against clergy members and unable to hold services during the coronavirus emergency, the 227-year-old Archdiocese of New Orleans filed for bankruptcy protection Friday.

The announcement leaked Thursday evening after Archbishop Gregory Aymond met with more than 100 Roman Catholic clergy members in Metairie, just outside of New Orleans, and delivered the grim news, according to nola.com.

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New Orleans (LA)
WWL

May 1, 2020

By Kenny Kuhn

Aymond: Church parishes and schools not affected

The Archdiocese of New Orleans announced Friday that it is filing for Chapter 11 bankruptcy.

Archbishop Gregory Aymond said in a statement that the filing only affects the Archdiocese’s administrative offices at Walmsley Avenue and the offices on Howard Avenue. Aymond says the action will not affect individual church parishes or their schools.

“The move was necessitated by the growing financial strain caused by litigation stemming from decades-old incidents of clergy abuse as well as ongoing budget challenges,” Aymond said. “The unforeseen circumstances surrounding COVID-19 have added more financial hardships to an already difficult situation.”

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JACKSON COUNTY (OR)
KTVL

April 30, 2020

By Shelby Reilly

With children and their guardians stuck at home due to school shutdowns and a statewide ‘stay at home order’, advocates worry that child abuse may be going undetected and unreported.

Court Appointed Special Advocates (CASA) of Jackson County says it is now bracing for the influx of cases it expects to see as the state prepares to reopen.

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UNITED KINGDOM
The Argus

May 1, 2020

By Aidan Barlow

A “RAGING” vicar who previously served in the SAS has been banned from the Church of England over abuse and threats to kill his wife.

Reverend Paul Parks had been working as the vicar for St Helen’s with St Barnabas Church in Ore, Hastings.

But he admitted being in breach of Clergy Discipline Measures by a sustained pattern of abuse and assault on his wife Lois, whom he married in 2003.

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NELIGH (NE)
Norfolk Daily News

May 1, 2020

Christofer Carstens, 21, of Oakdale was sentenced to 30 to 40 years in the Nebraska Department of Corrections for child abuse on Wednesday.

Carstens was convicted of injuring his infant daughter in May 2019.

He pleaded no contest to the charges in March, in exchange for an agreement with Antelope County Attorney Joe Abler that no further charges would be filed in the case.

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NORTHERN ONTARIO (CANADA)
CTV News

May 1, 2020

By Darren MacDonald

Canada’s top court is refusing to hear an appeal of a $2.5 million judgement for a Sudbury man who was a survivor of historic sexual assaults by a Catholic priest.

Rod McLeod, a student at St. Charles College in the 1960s, was one of several victims of Father Hodgson Marshall, a priest with the Basilian Fathers. As complaints emerged about Marshall in the 1960s and 1970s, the Basilians moved him to different schools, where he victimized more children.

Marshall was convicted of abusing 17 young people in his 38-year career.

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AUSTRALIA
National Catholic Reporter

May 1, 2020

By Joshua J. McElwee

Q & A with Bishop Vincent Long of the Parramatta Diocese

Like many Catholics in Australia, Bishop Vincent Long speaks about the upcoming plenary council as something of a final chance for the national church to show it has both reformed on clergy sexual abuse and can still be culturally relevant in the 21st century.

In an emailed NCR interview focused on how the quashing of Cardinal George Pell’s convictions might affect the gathering, which has been in preparation for two years, Long called the assembly “the last throw of the dice.”

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UNITED KINGDOM
The Times

May 1, 2020

By Emma Yeomans

A former soldier who became a vicar has been defrocked for abusing his wife, whom he called “Jezebel”, for 14 years.

The Rev Paul Parks, 60, formerly rector of St Helen’s Ore and St Barnabas in Hastings, was arrested in 2017 after his wife revealed the abuse, which included beating her and threatening to stab her with a letter opener.

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LINCOLN (NE)
KMTV

April 30, 2020

By Jon Kipper

The Diocese of Lincoln announced the results of an investigation into a priest stationed at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln campus, one that showed vast misbehavior from a priest entrusted to help college students with their Catholic faith.

Archbishop of Omaha George Lucas, who is currently the active bishop of the Diocese of Lincoln, which includes much of southern Nebraska, says the diocese is remorseful, and committed to serving the people respectively and appropriately going forward.

Monsignor Leonard Kalin was Chaplain of the Newman Center at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln from 1970 to 1998.

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LINCOLN (NE)
Diocese of Lincoln

April 29, 2020

By Most Reverend George J. Lucas

(leer la carta del obispo en español)

Dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ:

Last April, Bishop Conley shared with all of you a plan to “Build a Culture of Vigilance” and released the names of clergy who had substantiated allegations of sexual abuse against minors and young adults.

The purpose of my letter is to update you on the diocese’s efforts and share the findings related to an investi­gation into the actions of Monsignor Leonard Kalin while he was diocesan vocation director and chaplain at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln Newman Center. It also includes a brief update on our safe environment policies, and on the priests who are on leave.

This is an important next step in strengthening trust with all of you. While Bishop Conley is on medical leave, I believe it is important to provide this update now. I have spoken to Bishop Conley and he is aware of this update. I am committed to continued communication about all this work in the hope of healing wounds and strengthening our faith as we move forward together.

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LINCOLN (NE)
Associated Press

April 29, 2020

The longtime pastor of the Newman Center on the University of Nebraska-Lincoln made “occasional” sexual advances to students and seminarians, the Catholic Diocese of Lincoln announced Wednesday.

Monsignor Leonard Kalin, who died in 2008, led the Newman Center from 1970 to 1998.

The report said the leadership of the diocese was aware of the socializing, frequent trips to casinos, alcohol and cigarette use by Kalin but said evidence did not support allegations that church leaders knew of sexual impropriety by the priest, The Omaha World-Herald reported.

The diocese began investigating Kalin’s conduct in April 2018 after two former seminarians alleged in that he had made sexual advances toward them in 1998.

In a letter to church members Wednesday, Archbishop George Lucas said the investigation by an independent private investigator focused on Kalin’s leadership style and the culture he promoted at the Newman Center .

“The investigation did not find there was a culture of homosexuality at the Newman Center,” Lucas’ letter said. “The investigation did reveal that Msgr. Kalin did on occasion make sexual advances toward some seminarians and college students.”

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UNITED STATES
StandUpSpeakUp.org (blog)

April 26, 2020

By Tim Lennon

We have seen the recent articles concerning former Vice President Joseph Biden allegedly sexually attacking one of his aides over twenty-five years ago. The recent articles in The Guardian, The Nation Magazine, Salon, and Huffington Post provide a variety of analyses. The articles have raised a storm of wrangling in the comment section.

The Apologists

The apologists for Biden say Trump sexually abused more, so, in comparison, Biden is OK. Advocates for survivors call out the hypocrisy of Democratic Party hierarchy and their double standard. Joining in the mix are the partisan and Russian trolls who muddy every exchange.

The powerful do not get a pass. Why doesn’t the Democratic Party throw Biden out like they did Sen. Franklin? How can those who viciously attacked Justice Kavanaugh for sexual abuse and then turn around and say Joe Biden should get a free pass? Because he is better than Trump? Not only is this argument hypocritical, it is also insulting and disturbing.

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AUSTRALIA
National Catholic Reporter

May 1, 2020

By Joshua J. McElwee

Originally to begin in October, council sessions being rescheduled due to pandemic
May 1, 2020

A number of influential Catholic figures across Australia are expressing concern that the divisive atmosphere stoked by the recent quashing of Cardinal George Pell’s sexual abuse convictions could frustrate hopes for an upcoming once-in-a-generation assembly of the nation’s church.

The assembly, a plenary council in preparation for two years and involving the direct input of some 222,000 people across the continent, is intended to address issues of church reform and to consider the difficult questions confronting the country’s largest faith community in the 21st century.

But in a series of interviews conducted over the month since Australia’s highest court released Pell from prison, senior Catholic leaders worried that the passions inflamed by the case could provoke a sort of fortress mentality, in which Pell’s now-scuppered prosecution is just one example of a church unfairly under siege.

Robert Fitzgerald, a widely respected lawyer and former member of the 2013-17 Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse, said there is “genuine concern” among Australian Catholics that opponents to discussing church reform “will seek to leverage this recent decision to undermine the plenary council.”

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NEW ORLEANS (LA)
NOLA.com

April 30, 2020

By Ramon Antonio Vargas

Filing could be as soon as Friday, May 1

The Archdiocese of New Orleans is preparing to file for bankruptcy, a source familiar with the matter said Thursday evening, as the mounting cost of unresolved clergy-abuse lawsuits and the shutdown of church services due to the coronavirus deliver crushing blows to church finances.

The 227-year-old local institution serving half a million New Orleans-area Catholics will join 26 other American dioceses and Catholic religious orders that have sought financial protection from creditors and claimants since the clergy-abuse scandal reached a fever pitch in 2002.

Despite filing for Chapter 11 bankruptcy, which could occur as early as Friday, the archdiocese is expected to continue ministering to its parishioners and operate in relatively normal fashion. As in other recent diocesan bankruptcies, churches will still hold Mass and schools and various ministries will likely continue to teach students and perform their duties to the community whenever restrictions associated with the pandemic are lifted.

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PROVIDENCE (RI)
Providence Journal

April 30, 2020

By Brian Amaral

The state attorney general is stepping into a civil battle between men who say they were abused when they were boys by Rhode Island priests and the Roman Catholic Diocese of Providence.

Attorney General Peter Neronha’s office said it would defend the constitutionality of a state law passed last year giving sexual abuse victims more time to sue perpetrators even if the deadline had passed under the old law. The diocese has argued the new law is unconstitutional.

The move is an about-face for the state’s top lawyer, who previously told the court that the office wouldn’t get involved in the litigation. It signals that the constitutionality of the statute will be a threshold question for the lawsuits filed in the wake of the legislation.

“We typically decline to intervene because these cases are usually resolved short of reaching the constitutional issue,” Kristy dosReis, a spokeswoman for Neronha’s office, said in an email Wednesday. “In this case, we initially advised the court that we would not immediately intervene, but left open the possibility of doing so in the future. We continued to closely follow the litigation and, when it became clear that the Superior Court was likely to reach the constitutional issue, we advised the court of our intention to file an amicus (friend of the court) brief.”

Three men — Philip Edwardo, Peter Cummings and Robert Houllahan — allege they were abused when they were boys by different Rhode Island priests. They are represented by Timothy J. Conlon, an attorney who has spent years representing priest abuse victims. They sued after the state last year passed legislation extending the deadline for sexual abuse lawsuits from seven years to 35 years after a victim’s 18th birthday.

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