Issue 93 – July 2010

S M A R T
(Stop Mind control And Ritual abuse Today)
P. O Box 1295, Easthampton, MA 01027-1295 USA E-mail: SMARTNEWS@aol.com
Home page: http://ritualabuse.us/

The purpose of this newsletter is to help stop secretive organizations and groups from abusing others and to help those who allege they have been abused by such organizations and groups. This newsletter is not a substitute for other ways of recovering from ritual abuse. Readers should use caution while reading this newsletter. If necessary, make sure other support systems are available during and after reading this newsletter.

Important: The resources mentioned in this newsletter are for educational value only. Reading the books cited may or may not help your recovery process, so use caution when reading any book or contacting any resource mentioned in this newsletter. Some may have a religious or other agenda that may be separate from your own recovery process. Others may have valuable information on the Masons and other organizations, but have triggers or be somewhat sympathetic to those organizations. Unless explicitly stated otherwise, the views expressed in this newsletter constitute expressions of opinion, and readers are cautioned to form their own opinions and draw their own conclusions by consulting a variety of sources, including this newsletter. Resources listed, quoted and individual articles, etc. and their writers do not necessarily support all or any of the views mentioned in this newsletter. Also, the views, facts and opinions mentioned in this newsletter are solely the opinions of the authors and are not necessarily the opinions of this newsletter or its editor.

SMART wants to thank all those that have contributed resource information to the newsletter.

August 2010 conference information is at http://ritualabuse.us/smart-conference/

This issue contains information on clergy abuse, the Vatican, the Pope,Legionaries, Connecticut and New York child abuse bills, Roman Polanski, USA Swimming Coaches, Boy Scouts, Wikpedia/Wikimedia porn purge (Bomis connection), ritual abuse articles, mk-ultra, Franklin Scandal, government torture, trauma myth, memory and trauma articles, Developmental Trauma Disorder

Resources and Information
Please note: Listing of these resources does not necessarily constitute our endorsement of them. They are for educational value only and some may be heavy for survivors to read. Some of the conferences listed may not necessarily be safe for all survivors. S.M.A.R.T. recommends always bringing a support person to all conferences. If you are a survivor of mind control and/or ritual abuse, S.M.A.R.T. recommends that you try to bring a support person that is familiar with mind control techniques.

Legal Information

describes abuse
The Trial of Benedict XVI By Jeff Israely and Howard Chua-Eoan Thursday, May. 27, 2010
How do you atone for something terrible, like the Inquisition?….When his turn came, Ratzinger, the church’s premier theologian, intoned a short prayer that said “that even men of the church, in the name of faith and morals, have sometimes used methods not in keeping with the Gospel in the solemn duty of defending the truth.”….”He grabbed me, tickling and wrestling like I did with my dad, and I thought at first it was fun,” McDaid, who grew up in Salem, Mass., says of a parish priest. “But then something changed … He started grabbing my genitals. I felt him rubbing against me from behind … I was so scared. I knew this was so wrong. I looked out the window. I started praying.” That would happen again and again over three years. McDaid’s devout mother was delighted whenever the priest arrived to pick up her son, just 11 when the abuse started, to join other boys on trips to the beach. But, recalls McDaid, now 54, “the last boy out of the car was the one who would get molested.” He finally spoke to his dad, who then took him to a priest from the next town to report what had happened. “We waited for months. Then there was a rotation of priests. He left, but they made it look like a natural progression. They celebrated him with cake and ice cream.” The boy was left in silence and with his secret shame. The priest, Father Joseph Birmingham, went on to abuse boys in three other parishes in the Boston area before he died in 1989. http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1992171,00.html

Vatican details U.S. sex abuse defense By NICOLE WINFIELD, AP May 16, 2010 VATICAN CITY (AP) – The Vatican on Monday will make its most detailed argument yet for why it is not liable for bishops who allowed priests to molest children in the U.S., in a motion that could affect other efforts to sue the Holy See in American courts, The Associated Press has learned.
In a motion to dismiss a lawsuit on jurisdictional grounds, the Holy See is expected to argue that a key Vatican document calling for secrecy in church trials for sex abuse cases was not, as victims’ lawyers say, proof of a Vatican-orchestrated cover up. The Vatican’s U.S. attorney, Jeffrey Lena, said Sunday there was no evidence the document was even known to the archdiocese in question – much less used. http://www.kboi2.com/news/national/93891519.html

U.S. lawyer takes on Vatican over abuse cases – He shared documents with New York Times, sees Ore. lawsuit as critical by Patrick Condon AP March. 28, 2010 ST. PAUL, Minn. – Jeff Anderson has filed thousands of lawsuits alleging sex abuse by priests and won tens of millions of dollars for his clients, but he has had a bigger goal in mind for nearly two decades. He wants to bring his career-long legal crusade against misconduct in the Roman Catholic Church right to the top. He would love to question Pope Benedict XVI himself under oath. Though that is extremely unlikely given that the pope is a head of state, documents Anderson has unearthed have the potential to take a scandal that has plagued dozens of dioceses around the world and place it at the doorstep of Vatican leadership.
The documents, which became publicly known in the past week after Anderson shared them with The New York Times, show that a Vatican office led by the pope, then Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, halted a church trial against a Wisconsin priest accused of molesting some 200 boys at a school for the deaf. “This is a tipping point,” Anderson said. He found the documents in handling one of the dozens of lawsuits he has pending against various church officials, and hopes to use them to bolster a separate federal lawsuit against the Vatican itself….
Oregon case could be key – In that case, an unidentified plaintiff claims he was sexually abused as a teenager in 1965 or 1966 by the Rev. Andrew Ronan at St. Albert’s Church in Portland, Ore. According to court documents, Ronan was accused of abusing boys in the mid-1950s as a priest in the Archdiocese of Armagh, Ireland. He was transferred to Chicago, where he admitted abusing three boys at St. Philip’s High School, and after that was sent to Oregon. The church removed Ronan from the priesthood in 1966. He died in 1982. The lawsuit says the Vatican had to approve the international transfer. The Holy See claims it is protected by the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act, which prohibits U.S. lawsuits against foreign countries. Several lower courts have produced differing rulings on the suit, and the Holy See has appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court to settle the question. The high court has not decided whether it will hear the case. Anderson said his legal team will attempt to use documents from the Milwaukee lawsuit to show the Vatican was heavily involved in decisions about how to deal with problem priests. http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/36075025/ns/us_news-crime_and_courts/

Obama Administration Backs Vatican In Pedophile Case 25 May 2010, (NewsCore) – The Obama administration in a brief to the Supreme Court has backed the Vatican’s claim of immunity from lawsuits arising from cases of sexual abuse by priests in the United States, AFP reported Tuesday. The Supreme Court is considering an appeal by the Vatican of an appellate court ruling that lifted its immunity in the case of an alleged pedophile priest from Oregon. In a filing on Friday, the solicitor general’s office argued that the Ninth Circuit court of appeals erred in allowing the lawsuit brought by a man who claims he was sexually abused in the 1960s by the Oregon priest.
The unnamed plaintiff, who cited the Holy See and several other parties as defendants, argued the Vatican should be held responsible for transferring the priest to Oregon and letting him serve there despite previous accusations he had abused children in Chicago and in Ireland. The solicitor general’s office, which defends the position of President Barack Obama’s administration before the Supreme Court, said the Ninth Circuit improperly found the case to be an exception to the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act, a 1976 federal law that sets limits on when other countries can face lawsuits in U.S. courts.
http://www.myfoxaustin.com/dpps/news/obama-administration-backs-vatican-in-pedophile-case-km-20100525_7741141

Abuse victims’ fury as Cardinal Sean Brady refuses to quit From Times Online May 18, 2010 David Sharrock, Ireland Correspondent Survivors of clerical child sexual abuse called on Irish Roman Catholics to make their voices heard today after Cardinal Sean Brady ended months of speculation about his future by saying he would not resign. The cardinal, the head of the Catholic Church in Ireland, is under pressure to stand down after it emerged that he took part in a secret canonical tribunal in 1975 at which two minors were made to swear oaths of silence about their allegations against the paedophile priest Father Brendan Smyth. Smyth went on to rape hundreds more children across Ireland, the UK and the United States before he died in prison in 1997. http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/faith/article7129779.ece

RTE News: Prime Time 5/18/10 Helen McGonigle, Attorney & Victim of Brendan Smyth, Fr Brendan Purcell, Lecturer in Philosophy, UCD, and Patsy McGarry, Religious Affairs Correspondent, Irish Times, discuss Seán Brady’s position http://www.rte.ie/news/2010/0518/primetime_av.html?2755841,null,230

Spain struggles with new Catholic sex abuse claims 18 May 2010 By Sarah Rainsford BBC News, Cordoba For almost 50 years, the Franciscan Brothers of the White Cross have run care homes across Spain, looking after the sick and the needy. Now the Catholic order and its centre in Cordoba are the focus of allegations of sex abuse that have shocked the city….Since 2001, Spain has reported 14 confirmed cases of clerical sex abuse to the Vatican. But this month brought two fresh accusations: one against a Carmelite monk in eastern Spain, the other against Franciscan brothers in the south.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/world/europe/10122305.stm

Vatican confirms report of sexual abuse and rape of nuns by priests in 23 countries By Frances Kennedy in Rome 21 March 2001 The Catholic Church in Rome made the extraordinary admission yesterday that it is aware priests from at least 23 countries have been sexually abusing nuns. Most of the abuse has occurred in Africa, where priests vowed to celibacy, who previously sought out prostitutes, have preyed on nuns to avoid contracting the Aids virus. Confidential Vatican reports obtained by the National Catholic Reporter, a weekly magazine in the US, have revealed that members of the Catholic clergy have been exploiting their financial and spiritual authority to gain sexual favours from nuns, particularly those from the Third World who are more likely to be culturally conditioned to be subservient to men.
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/vatican-confirms-report-of-sexual-abuse-and-rape-of-nuns-by-priests-in-23-countries-688261.html

The Troubled Church – Vatican, Canadian church officials tried to keep sex scandal secret April 10, 2010 A 1993 letter focuses on protecting the church’s image by preventing public knowledge of Bernard Prince’s abuse of altar boys. Tu Thanh Ha Globe and Mail Apr. 09, 2010 More than a decade before police got wind that a priest had molested several altar boys in small towns in the Ottawa Valley, Vatican and Canadian church officials knew about the matter and discussed in a letter how to keep it secret. The letter, written in 1993, focused on protecting the church’s image by preventing the scandal from becoming public – the very essence of an international wave of allegations now battering the Roman Catholic clergy and the Vatican.

“It is a situation which we wish to avoid at all costs,” the late Bishop Joseph Windle of Pembroke, Ont., wrote in Feb. 10, 1993, to the Pope’s envoy to Canada, Carlo Curis. The man Bishop Windle was writing about was then-monsignor Bernard Prince, now 75, a friend of the late Pope John Paul II who had just been posted to the Vatican as a high-ranking official working with missionary societies. The year before Mr. Prince was sent to Rome, a man had complained to the diocese that the priest had molested him when he was a child. At least one Vatican archbishop, Jose Sanchez, now a cardinal, had been warned about Mr. Prince’s problem before he was sent to Rome, Bishop Windle said in the letter….It would only be in May, 2005, that a victim contacted the Ontario Provincial Police. Mr. Prince is now defrocked and serving a four-year sentence after being convicted in 2008 of sexually molesting 13 boys between 1964 and 1984….The four-page letter – an exhibit filed this week in a civil suit – is the first court document to buttress the long-held belief by victims of Mr. Prince that the clergy had known of the problem for years but tried to hush it up. It shows that the church hierarchy was aware that the allegations were serious since they involved up to five victims, were of “considerable duration” and triggered “traumatic memories” in one or two victims who needed counselling.
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/national/vatican-canadian-church-officials-tried-to-keep-sex-scandal-secret/article1528471/?cmpid=nl-news1

Vatican knew of abuse in Ontario: Victim – Papal embassy officials told in 1993, says man abused by former monsignor Mar 28 2010 Sandro Contenta – An Ontario victim of a pedophile priest who later became a top Vatican official says the Vatican knew of allegations against the priest years before he was convicted. The priest, former Monsignor Bernard Prince, was convicted in 2008 of molesting 13 young boys between 1964 and 1984. Most of the incidents occurred in the Killaloe area, near Pembroke in eastern Ontario. He was defrocked last year. Prince was appointed to a top Vatican job in Rome in 1991 – the year after the Roman Catholic Diocese of Pembroke learned of sex abuse allegations – says the victim, who can’t be identified because of a court publication ban on identifying him. The victim says in 1993 the Apostolic Nunciature in Ottawa – the Vatican’s embassy – was notified of the allegations.
Yet Prince remained secretary general of the Vatican’s Pontifical Society for the Propagation of the Faith until his retirement in 2004. “The Apostolic Nuncio in Ottawa was aware of the allegations,” says the victim, referring to the Vatican’s ambassador at the time, Archbishop Carlo Curis. “They did nothing about it,” the victim alleges, referring to Vatican officials. “In fact, they just continued to cover him up.” The victim, now 53, is one of several who have filed civil lawsuits seeking damages against Prince and the diocese of Pembroke. Questions surrounding the Vatican’s treatment of Prince – now serving a four-year prison sentence in British Columbia – come as the Roman Catholic Church is facing a wave of sex abuse scandals in Ireland, Germany, Austria, Switzerland and the Netherlands….
In Ontario, Robert Talach, the London-based lawyer for Prince’s victim, wants the Vatican to come clean: “What did the Vatican know, and did that factor into how they treated (Prince) when he got to Rome?” he asked. Talach has filed 14 separate civil lawsuits against Prince and the Pembroke diocese. He says six have been resolved. The remaining lawsuits each demand $2 million in damages….
Talach has almost 100 clients alleging sexual abuse by priests in Ontario and the Maritimes. The incidents span from the late 1950s to the early 1980s. The way bishops in almost all cases reacted, Talach says, suggests a Church-wide policy: “Stop the spread of the information, move the perpetrator, and with some sort of religious duress, at least, make your best effort to keep the victims and the family quiet, and back to business as usual.”….
“Is that standard procedure – you promote someone who has allegations of sexual abuse against him?” the victim asks….At his trial in 2008, Prince, then 72, pleaded guilty to 12 charges of indecent or sexual assault. He was found guilty on a 13th charge of indecent assault.
http://www.thestar.com/news/ontario/article/786550–vatican-knew-of-abuse-in-ontario-victim

20 priests accused of sex abuse – diocese March 29 2010 Berlin – A German Roman Catholic diocese said on Monday that 20 of its current and former priests had been accused “in recent weeks” of sexual abuse as a scandal embroiling the Church widened….(Bishop) Ackermann said the diocese was still conferring on how to handle three cases that fell under the criminal statute of limitations. He said that beyond the new cases that had surfaced, three priests had been convicted of abuse in the 1990s….The Vatican has said it received 3,000 reports between 2001 and 2010 of sexual abuse of children by Catholic clergy committed over the past 50 years.
http://www.iol.co.za/index.php?art_id=nw20100329182045293C418447&set_id=1&click_id=24&sf=

Germany: 205 claims of abuse at Jesuit schools AP Thu May 27, 2010 MUNICH – A special investigator says in her final report that at least 205 former students claim to have been sexually or otherwise abused in Jesuit schools in Germany. Investigator Ursula Raue said Thursday she thinks the number is even higher, as “we cannot expect to have heard everything yet.” She said 46 Jesuits and non-clerical staff at the schools have been accused of abuse or of knowing of such crimes without acting. http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100527/ap_on_re_eu/eu_germany_church_abuse
also at http://www.wral.com/news/national_world/world/story/7677958/

Number of Jesuit abuse victims continues to climb 10 Apr 10 Some 10 weeks after the first abuse cases at Jesuit education institutions came to light, the number of victims continues to climb. Around 170 people are now believed to have been abused in Germany. Lawyer Ursula Raue, who has been commissioned to investigate the abuse cases, told the DPA news agency in an interview that abuse by members of the clergy took place in Jesuit educational establishments as early as the 1950s. She did not name the exact number of known abusers. Berlin’s prestigious Canisius secondary school made headlines when it was revealed at the end of January that at least two priests had repeatedly abused students in the 1970s and 1980s. It is now thought that at least 59 former students were victims of the abuse. http://www.thelocal.de/society/20100410-26465.html

German Archbishop Caught up in Catholic Abuse Scandal By Tristana Moore / Berlin Jun. 03, 2010 Already reeling from a series of sexual abuse accusations, Germany’s Catholic Church has taken another hit, and this time the scandal has reached into the upper echelons of the organization. On Monday, German prosecutors confirmed that they’ve launched a preliminary criminal investigation into allegations that the head of Germany’s Catholic Church, Archbishop Robert Zollitsch, was an accessory to the sexual assault of children.
The case threatens to further deepen a crisis that has already tainted the image of the Catholic Church in Germany, not least because, as head of the German Bishops’ Conference, Zollitsch is tasked with dealing with the sex abuse scandal. Prosecutors say that in 1987, Zollitsch re-appointed a priest who was facing abuse allegations to work in a monastery in Birnau, in southern Germany by Lake Constance. “According to the complaint filed by a man at the end of May, Archbishop Zollitsch assigned further work to a priest … despite knowing that this priest had sexually abused children in the past,” Wolfgang Maier, the senior public prosecutor in the south German city of Freiburg, tells TIME.
http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1993737,00.html?artId=1993737

1963 letter shows former pope knew of abuse By GILLIAN FLACCUS (AP) – 4/1/10 LOS ANGELES — A newly released letter to then-Pope Paul VI indicates the Vatican was aware of clergy abuse in the U.S. nearly five decades ago. In the 1963 letter released Wednesday, the head of a Roman Catholic order that oversaw treatment of pedophile priests tells the pope he recommends removing pedophile priests from active ministry. The letter is a summary of the Rev. Gerald M.C. Fitzgerald’s thoughts on problem priests that appears to have been requested by the pope after Fitzgerald’s 1963 visit to the Vatican. Fitzgerald headed the New Mexico-based Servants of the Holy Paraclete. The letter was released in Los Angeles by attorneys for California clergy abuse victims who obtained the document during litigation. Was at http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap

1963 letter indicates former pope knew of abuse – Priest recommended the removal of pedophiles from ministry March. 31, 2010 LOS ANGELES AP – The head of a Roman Catholic order that specialized in the treatment of pedophile priests visited with the then-pope nearly 50 years ago and followed up with a letter recommending the removal of pedophile priests from ministry, according to a copy of the letter released Wednesday. http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/36123847/ns/world_news-europe/

U.S. Bishops Quietly Reinstate Accused Priests by Barbara Bradley Hagerty March 31, 2010 While the Roman Catholic sexual abuse scandal unfolds in Europe, the Catholic Church in the U.S. is under renewed scrutiny. In the wake of its own scandal almost a decade ago, the U.S. church says it has reformed its policies for handling sexual abuse allegations and will remove from ministry every priest who is credibly accused of abuse. But some of those priests are now being quietly reinstated….Juan Rocha was 12 years old when he says he was molested by his parish priest, the Rev. Eric Swearingen. He eventually brought his complaints to the bishop of Fresno, Calif., John Steinbock. When Steinbock said he didn’t find the allegations credible, Rocha sued the priest and the diocese in civil court. In 2006, the jury found 9 to 3 that Swearingen had abused Rocha. But it could not decide whether the diocese knew about it. Rather than go through a new trial, the two sides settled. At the time, Steinbock said he thought the jury got it wrong, and that while the Catholic Church should protect children, “doing this cannot be done in such a manner as to punish innocent priests.”….Today, Swearingen serves as priest at Holy Spirit parish in Fresno, where he also oversees the youth ministry. Swearingen did not return phone calls, and Steinbock declined requests for an interview….Swearingen’s case is not an isolated one, says Anne Barrett Doyle, who works with the watchdog group

BishopAccountability.org. She says that recently, bishops have started quietly returning to ministry priests who previously have been accused of abuse…Doyle and others have identified about a dozen clergy who have been accused, arrested or sued for abuse and returned to ministry. She says the process for investigating priests is secret, and often the diocese says nothing about the charges against a priest when it returns him to ministry. In 2003, a criminal-trial jury convicted the Rev. Michael Fugee, a priest in Newark, N.J., of molesting a teenage boy. Later, an appellate court overturned the verdict because of the judge’s instruction. Rather than undergo a new trial, the prosecutors and the Archdiocese of New Jersey agreed to keep Fugee away from children. When officials at a local hospital where Fugee was serving as a volunteer chaplain — saying Mass and ministering to families — learned of the criminal trial in his past, they were horrified. http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=125420225

CLERGY ABUSE SCANDAL Lawyers: Vatican knew about South Florida priest’s past – Lawyers for refugee boys accusing a local Catholic priest of sexual abuse said the Vatican and Archdiocese of Miami — for decades — were aware of his troubled past in Cuba. 3/30/10
BY JAY WEAVER The Archdiocese of Miami, along with top Vatican authorities, knew as far back as 1968 that the Rev. Ernesto Garcia-Rubio, a priest later defrocked amid child sex-abuse allegations, had a troubled past in Cuba before transferring to South Florida, lawyers representing victims claimed Monday. The lawyers say the Vatican’s role is similar to what is alleged in the scandal now unfolding in Wisconsin, where top Catholic officials are accused of failing to defrock a priest accused of molesting some 200 deaf boys in a long career that paralleled the Miami cleric’s….
“It was a longstanding and well-known secret that the Vatican and Archdiocese of Miami knew exactly what Ernesto Garcia-Rubio was capable of,” said Aventura attorney Jessica Arbour who with lawyer Stuart Mermelstein have filed several suits against the archdiocese involving Garcia-Rubio….
But privately Archbishop Edward McCarthy had already insisted that Garcia-Rubio be evaluated for pedophilia, according to investigative records obtained by The Herald. Six months before the paper’s November 1988 story ran, the archbishop told Garcia-Rubio, then on sabbatical in Colombia, that he shouldn’t return to Miami for a visit to celebrate his 25th year in the priesthood.
“I also must insist that following your sabbatical, but prior to your return, you receive a psychiatric evaluation in a setting determined by the archdiocese,” McCarthy wrote him on May 11, 1988…. The complaints against Garcia-Rubio — first lodged at the Sweetwater church — eventually surfaced in The Herald story, which highlighted four sex-abuse allegations by teenage Nicaraguan and Salvadoran refugees from 1983 to 1988. In late 1988, Miami archdiocese officials sent Garcia-Rubio to St. Luke’s Institute in Maryland for a pedophilia evaluation.
http://www.miamiherald.com/2010/03/29/1554330/suit-vatican-knew-about-priests.html

Pope accused in new U.S. predator priest case Agence France-Presse March 30, 2010
WASHINGTON – The Vatican and Pope Benedict XVI came under fire in the United States Tuesday for allegedly covering up for another predator priest and doing nothing to remove him from ministry.
Documents sent to AFP by lawyers representing a man who claims he was sexually abused as a teen by Father Ernesto Garcia Rubio claim the Papal Nuncio — the Vatican ambassador to the U.S. — asked the church in Miami to protect Garcia after he moved there from Cuba in 1968 after “serious difficulties of a moral nature.” “He was in ministry here in Miami for about 30 years and during that time we know of about a dozen victims that he abused,” said Jessica Arbour, an attorney for the unnamed victim and five others who are suing the archdiocese of Miami for alleged abuse between 1977 and 1987. http://www.vancouversun.com/news/Pope+accused+predator+priest+case/2744898/story.html

Law firm implicates Vatican, Pope in abuse case By CHRISTINE ARMARIO AP March 31, 2010 MIAMI – A South Florida law firm is implicating the Vatican and Pope Benedict XVI in its handling of a priest accused of sexually abusing children. Jessica Arbour, an attorney representing one of the alleged victims, says documents show the Vatican was aware of Rev. Ernesto Garcia-Rubio’s misconduct as early as 1968. Thirteen years later, Benedict became head of the Vatican office that received a petition from Garcia-Rubio seeking to leave the priesthood. Arbour says the paperwork was lost. Arbour says they do not have any evidence indicating children were abused during that time. A lawsuit has been filed against the Archdiocese of Miami, claiming it was negligent in its supervision and assignment of the reverend. Arbour says it may be amended to include the Vatican. http://www.washingtonpost.com/

Vatican to court: Priests are not our employees Attorney outlines defense ahead of filing Monday in sex abuse case By NICOLE WINFIELD May 16, 2010 VATICAN CITY – The Vatican on Monday will make its most detailed defense yet against claims that it is liable for U.S. bishops who allowed priests to molest children, saying bishops are not its employees and that a 1962 Vatican document did not require them to keep quiet, The Associated Press has learned.
The Vatican will make the arguments in a motion to dismiss a federal lawsuit on jurisdictional grounds filed in Louisville, Kentucky, but it could affect other efforts to sue the Holy See.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/37182162/ns/world_news-europe/

Vatican offers 3 reasons it’s not liable for abuse By NICOLE WINFIELD, AP Mar 30, 2010
VATICAN CITY – Dragged deeper than ever into the clerical sex abuse scandal, the Vatican is launching a legal defense that it hopes will shield the pope from a lawsuit in Kentucky seeking to have him answer attorneys’ questions under oath. Court documents obtained Tuesday by The Associated Press show that Vatican lawyers plan to argue that the pope has immunity as head of state, that American bishops who oversaw abusive priests weren’t employees of the Vatican, and that a 1962 document is not the “smoking gun” that provides proof of a cover-up.
The Holy See is trying to fend off the first U.S. case to reach the stage of determining whether victims actually have a claim against the Vatican itself for negligence for allegedly failing to alert police or the public about Roman Catholic priests who molested children.
The case was filed in 2004 in Kentucky by three men who claim they were abused by priests and claim negligence by the Vatican. Their attorney, William McMurry, is seeking class-action status for the case, saying there are thousands of victims across the country.
“This case is the only case that has been ever been filed against the Vatican which has as its sole objective to hold the Vatican accountable for all the priest sex abuse ever committed in this country,” he said in a phone interview. “There is no other defendant. There’s no bishop, no priest.” The Vatican is seeking to dismiss the suit before Benedict XVI can be questioned or documents subpoenaed. http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100331/ap_on_re_eu/eu_the_vatican_s_defense_16

Abuse in the Church The Demons of Pope Benedict XVI By Alexander Smoltczyk 03/30/2010….
Between 1950 and 1974, Murphy stalked his pupils and molested them in cars, in dormitories and, in some cases, even in the confessional — a doubly serious offence under Catholic Church law.
Murphy would tell the boys to confess to sexual activities with their peers….Murphy pressured the boys to give him the names of other young sinners, whose beds he would then visit at night. There was no need to be quiet about it, because the boys were all deaf.
In 1974, Murphy was removed from the school “for health reasons” and transferred to a parish in northern Wisconsin, where he apparently continued to have contact with children and adolescents. But the civil authorities also did nothing, and all investigations against Murphy were dropped…..In June 1996, the Archbishop of Milwaukee, Rembert Weakland, turned to the then chairman of the CDF (Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith), Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger. Even though it wasn’t until 2001 that the church began requiring that all abuse cases in the global church be reported to the CDF, Ratzinger’s office was responsible, because the “sollicitatio,” or solicitation to commit carnal sin, occurred in the confessional, one of the holiest places in the church. The severity of the case, Weakland wrote, suggested that an internal church trial would be the right approach, a trial that could end in exclusion from the priesthood. Ratzinger didn’t respond. In December 1996, the Archdiocese of Milwaukee informed Murphy of its intention to investigate the abuse cases. Only after a second attempt did Weakland receive a response from the Vatican, in March 1997, in the form of a letter from Tarcisio Bertone, Ratzinger’s then deputy at the CDF. Bertone wrote that he recommended an internal church trial based on the laws of 1962, which protects the participants by applying the “Secretum Sancti Officii,” or secrecy on penalty of excommunication.
‘Kind Assistance’

On Jan. 12, 1998, Murphy appealed directly to Cardinal Ratzinger, asking him to stop the proceedings his archdiocese had initiated. The acts of which he was being accused, he wrote, had occurred 25 years earlier: “I am 72 years of age, your Eminence, and am in poor health. I simply want to live out the time that I have left in the dignity of my priesthood. I ask your kind assistance in this matter.”
His wish was fulfilled. In April 1998, Bertone dropped the case against Murphy, in the spirit of forgiveness. In his letter to the Bishop of Superior, Wisconsin, he wrote: “The Congregation invites Your Excellency to give careful consideration to what canon 1341 proposes as pastoral measures destined to obtain the reparation of scandal and the restoration of justice.” The letter ends with Bertone’s best wishes for “a blessed Easter.”
Murphy died five months later, in August 1998. Bertone, for whom this meant that the matter was closed, wrote to the Archbishop of Milwaukee: “This Dicastery commends Father Murphy to the mercy of God and shares with you the hope that the Church will be spared any undue publicity from this matter.”
Today, Tarciso Bertone is the Cardinal Secretary of State, which makes him the second-in-command at the Vatican. http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/0,1518,686495,00.html

describes abuse

German bishop accused of beating orphaned girls April 1, 2010 One of the Pope’s closest conservative allies in Germany, Bishop Walter Mixa, has been accused of brutally beating and flogging children in his care. The Bishop of Augsburg, 68, denies the claims by five former pupils at a Catholic-run orphanage and care facility. But they will be a source of deep embarrassment and concern in the Vatican: Bishop Mixa is part of a conservative axis in Pope Benedict XVI’s native Bavaria that has always backed the pontiff in his most controversial decisions, from criticising the violence of Islam in Regensburg cathedral, to rehabilitating the Holocaust-sceptic Bishop Richard Williamson….The beatings were regular and always brutal.
“At least 50 times Mr Mixa pulled down my trousers and beat me on the bottom with a stick, five or six whacks each time,” Mr Tagwerk added….The blows were always administered in places where the bruising could be hidden – high up on the arm or on the bottom. One of the victims, a man who is now 44, reports being flogged with a carpet beater, 35 strokes each time. http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/faith/article7082705.ece

Papal ally accused of ‘ritual beatings’ German bishop accused of hitting child with carpet beater at church-run home By Tony Paterson in Berlin 1 April 2010 The child abuse scandal rocking the Catholic Church widened yesterday as a leading German bishop personally appointed by Pope Benedict was accused of ritually beating and punching children at a church-run home during the late 1970s and early 1980s. Five former residents of the St Josef’s home in Bavaria submitted written statements to Germany’s Süddeutsche Zeitung newspaper claiming the Bishop of Augsburg, Walter Mixa, a controversial conservative churchman appointed by the Pope in 2005, used to hit and degrade them during punishment sessions at the home….Bishop Mixa is renowned for being a member of the hardline conservative group of German Catholic Church leaders, to which the Pope belonged before his appointment to the Vatican.
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/papal-ally-accused-of-ritual-beatings-1932764.html

Conspiracy and Bribery in the Vatican An abusive priest allegedly bought protection with payoffs to Vatican officials. 4/1/10 video abcnews Maciel
http://abcnews.go.com/WNT/video/conspiracy-bribery-vatican-10264509

Catholic Church to overhaul disgraced Legionaries order 05/02/2010 VATICAN CITY—The Roman Catholic Church will overhaul the ultra-conservative Legion of Christ whose late founder Marcial Maciel was disgraced after abuse scandals, the Vatican said Saturday. Maciel’s “conduct… had consequences in the life and the structure of the Legion that are so serious as to require a journey of profound restructuring,” a statement said. Pope Benedict XVI will name an interim leader within weeks, said Vatican spokesman Federico Lombardi, in a major shakeup at a time when the Church faces intense pressure to crack down on abusers and their protectors in the hierarchy….

The Mexican-born Maciel, who died in the United States in January 2008 aged 87, was accused of molesting eight seminarians and secretly fathering children. The Vatican said that many members of the order had been unaware of Maciel’s misconduct as he “created around him a defence mechanism that shielded him for a long time”….Maciel founded the Legion of Christ in 1941 and ran it with an iron fist, requiring a vow of secrecy and barring any criticism of the order’s superiors including himself. Before Maciel’s fall from grace, he and his order enjoyed the adulation of Benedict’s predecessor John Paul II.

Just weeks before the Polish pope died in 2005 he hailed Maciel’s and the Legionaries’ work throughout the world as the Church battled tough competition from evangelical groups, notably in its Latin American stronghold….Maciel’s “very serious and objectively immoral actions confirmed by incontestable testimonies … show a life without scruples nor authentic religious sentiments,” the Vatican said. Last month in Mexico the order asked for forgiveness from two brothers claiming to be Maciel’s sons who said he had abused them. Last year the order confirmed a report in The New York Times that Maciel had also secretly fathered a daughter. http://newsinfo.inquirer.net/breakingnews/world/view/20100502-267620/Catholic-Church-to-overhaul-disgraced-Legionaries-order

Editorial – Justice for Child Abuse Victims May 14, 2010 The Catholic Church is working against the interests of child abuse victims in state legislatures around the country. In recent weeks, lobbying by the church has blocked measures in Wisconsin, Arizona and Connecticut intended to widen the legal window for victims to file lawsuits against hidden predators.
We urge the New York State Legislature to rise above intense lobbying by the New York State Catholic Conference and Orthodox Jewish officials and pass the overdue Child Victims Act. Like a similar measure enacted in 2003 by California, it would create a one-time, one-year suspension of the statute of limitations for bringing civil lawsuits over the sexual abuse of children.
Once that window closes, people alleging abuse would have until age 28 to bring a claim. Current law sets the limit at 23 in most circumstances.
The measure recognizes that it typically takes many years before victims are ready to come forward. The measure also recognizes the Catholic Church’s history of intimidating victims and burying abuses in church files, creating a shroud of secrecy that extended in many cases until victims were in their 30s or older, well beyond existing time limits for prosecutions or civil lawsuits.
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/16/opinion/16sun2.html

A Better Chance at Justice for Abuse Victims By LAWRENCE LESSIG April 26, 2010….I represented a victim of child sexual abuse in a case brought against a nonsectarian private school in New Jersey. The trial court in that case had held that a state statute immunizing charities against negligence also protected the school even if its employees acted “willfully, wantonly, recklessly, indifferently – even criminally.” I volunteered to help appeal that ruling of absolute immunity, and get it reversed. On the other side were lawyers for the insurance company that would have paid the bill if the school had been found liable. Their position was completely understandable: An insurance company has an obligation to its shareholders.
What was truly astonishing was the appearance of the New Jersey Catholic Conference in the case. As its Web site explains, the conference “represents the Catholic bishops of New Jersey on matters of public policy,” because “the Catholic Church calls for a different kind of political engagement: one shaped by the moral convictions of well-formed consciences and focused on the dignity of every human being, the pursuit of the common good and the protection of the weak and the vulnerable.”
Yet the “well-formed consciences” of the conference had not entered the case on behalf of the weak and the vulnerable. The Catholic Conference had filed a brief in support of the insurance company, to defend a rule that would have left institutions – like the church – immune from responsibility even if employees “criminally” protected an abuser. The New Jersey Supreme Court ruled against the insurers in 2006.
….New York has one of the nation’s most restrictive statutes of limitations for child sexual abuse, requiring victims to sue within five years of turning 18, whether or not they have recognized the psychological harm caused to them by their abuse.
Assemblywoman Margaret Markey, a Queens Democrat, has introduced a bill to give victims another five years to seek compensation, plus a one-year window for victims blocked by the old limitations to now bring suit. That legislation has passed the Assembly three times, yet the Senate has refused to consider it. It has now been reintroduced into the Assembly. At the core of the opposition to this bill is heavy lobbying by the New York Catholic Conference; according to published reports, the conference has hired top-dollar lobbyists to kill the bill. At least one bishop is reported to have threatened to close schools and parishes in legislators’ districts if they vote for the bill. And as Marci Hamilton, a law professor at Cardozo University, has written, bishops “publicly rail against statute of limitation reform as though it were the equivalent of mandatory abortion.”
If the New York Catholic Conference stops this reform, it will achieve three things. First, it will protect its own wealth. Second, it will assure that potentially thousands of victims who have been abused by priests will have no opportunity for compensation. And third, it will help preserve a system of irresponsibility that makes it too easy to ignore child sexual abuse, because the costs of ignoring it are lower in New York than in most other states. http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/27/opinion/27lessig.html

Abuse Case Offers a View of the Vatican’s Politics By DANIEL J. WAKIN and JAMES C. McKINLEY Jr.
May 2, 2010 The two former Mexican seminarians had gone to the Vatican in 1998 to personally deliver a case recounting decades of sexual abuse by one of the most powerful priests in the Roman Catholic Church, the Rev. Marcial Maciel Degollado. As they left, they ran into the man who would hold Father Maciel’s fate in his hands, Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, and kissed his ring. The encounter was no accident. Cardinal Ratzinger wanted to meet them, witnesses later said, and their case was soon accepted. But in little more than a year, word emerged that Cardinal Ratzinger — the future Pope Benedict XVI — halted the inquiry. “It isn’t prudent,” he had told a Mexican bishop, according to two people who later talked to the bishop. For five years, the case remained stalled, possibly a hostage to Father Maciel’s powerful protectors in the Curia, the Vatican’s governing apparatus, and his own deep influence at the Holy See.

In any case, it took Cardinal Ratzinger — by then Pope Benedict — until 2006, eight years after the case went before him, to address Father Maciel’s abuses by removing him from priestly duties and banishing him to a life of prayer and penitence, though without publicly acknowledging his wrongs or the suffering of his victims….A close look at the record shows that the case was marked by the same delays and bureaucratic caution that have emerged in the handling of other sexual abuse matters crossing Benedict’s desk, whether as an archbishop in Munich or a cardinal in Rome. Benedict’s supporters believe he was trying to take action on the Maciel case but was thwarted by other powerful church officials.
But advocates for Father Maciel’s victims say that the Vatican’s eventual investigation and reckoning in the case were too little, too late. The Rev. Alberto Athié Gallo, a Mexican priest who in 1998 tried to bring allegations of sexual abuse by Father Maciel to the attention of Cardinal Ratzinger, said the Vatican allowed Father Maciel, who died in 2008, to lead a double life for decades….Former Legion seminarians have said that Father Maciel abused them from the early 1940s to the early ’60s, when they were 10 to 16 years old.

For years, Father Maciel had cultivated powerful allies among the cardinals, through gifts and cash donations, according to reporting by Jason Berry in the National Catholic Reporter. Mr. Berry is co-author of a book about the order and helped break the story of the priest’s abuses….Father Maciel’s troubles with the Vatican dated to 1956, when his personal secretary accused him of drug abuse and financial mismanagement; he was suspended for two years during an investigation, after which he was cleared and reinstated in 1959. “From that moment on, he was completely protected by all the high offices of the Vatican,” said Fernando M. González, a sociologist who wrote a book about the Maciel case, based on more than 200 previously undisclosed documents from church archives, that was published in 2006.

Reports of problems in the order persisted, including sexual abuse allegations forwarded to the Vatican starting in the late 1970s. In 1997, nine former Legion seminarians — a number of them prominent priests and professionals — detailed their abuse at the hands of Father Maciel in a series of articles in The Hartford Courant by Mr. Berry and Gerald Renner….Father Maciel’s dismissal was announced on May 19, 2006. But it was not until Saturday that the Vatican officially spelled out why: Father Maciel’s “objectively immoral behavior” included criminal acts “and showed a life devoid of scruples and authentic religious feeling.” http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/03/world/europe/03maciel.html

Conn. lawmakers pull statute-of-limitations bill HARTFORD By SUSAN HAIGH Associated Press 4/30/10 Lawmakers on Friday pulled a bill that would have extended the statute of limitations for lawsuits involving sexual abuse, saying they didn’t believe they had enough votes to pass the measure this legislative session.
Disappointed proponents said they would revive the issue next year. They also suggested that some kind of resolution could likely be reached in the coming months regarding victims of the late Dr. George Reardon, a former St. Francis Hospital and Medical Center physician who is believed to have victimized hundreds of children beginning in the 1950s. Some of his victims have been limited in pursuing lawsuits against the Hartford Archdiocese, the hospital or others because of the state’s statute of limitations, which gives childhood sex abuse victims until age 48 to file lawsuits….Michael Culhane, executive director of the Connecticut Catholic Conference, called the bill “horrendous” and said he was pleased it was withdrawn. Earlier this month, Roman Catholic bishops warned of potentially disastrous financial fallout….Scores of people claim Reardon molested them in his office at the hospital and took inappropriate photographs as part of a bogus “growth study.” Reardon resigned from the hospital in 1993 amid the molestation accusations but never faced criminal charges. He died in 1998. The owner of his former home in West Hartford discovered more than 50,000 photo slides and more than 100 movie reels of child pornography in a hidden storage space while renovating the house in May 2007. Authorities said evidence links the images to Reardon. http://www.thehour.com/story/485788
Connecticut bishops fight sex abuse bill Jamie Guzzardo, CNN April 11, 2010 Hartford, Connecticut (CNN) — A bill in Connecticut’s legislature that would remove the statute of limitations on child sexual abuse cases has sparked a fervent response from the state’s Roman Catholic bishops, who released a letter to parishioners Saturday imploring them to oppose the measure. Under current Connecticut law, sexual abuse victims have 30 years past their 18th birthday to file a lawsuit. The proposed change to the law would rescind that statute of limitations. The proposed change to the law would put “all Church institutions, including your parish, at risk,” says the letter, which was signed by Connecticut’s three Roman Catholic bishops. The letter is posted on the Web site of the Connecticut Catholic Public Affairs Conference, the public policy and advocacy office of Connecticut’s Catholic bishops. It asks parishioners to contact their legislators in opposition of the bill. http://www.cnn.com/2010/CRIME/04/11/connecticut.abuse.bill/index.html
For 5th Year, Child Sex Abuse Bill Dies in Legislature By PAUL VITELLO June 2, 2010
For four years, advocates for sexually abused children had fought a battle in the New York Legislature to open a legal window that would allow victims to file lawsuits against predators long after the statute of limitations had expired.
Though the bill died each year, it passed in the Assembly three timesand earned the support of two governors. And the renewed attention to sexual abuse in the Roman Catholic Church augured well for the cause this year….Dennis Poust, the communications director of the New York State Catholic Conference, said the vote represented an emerging consensus that time limits on legal liability were an important civil rights protection. The conference is the policy arm of the state’s Catholic bishops, the bill’s most formidable opponents….Since it was first introduced in the 2006-7 session, the Child Victims Act has been fervently opposed by the Catholic Church and several Orthodox Jewish groups, which saw potentially devastating financial implications in opening an opportunity for victims, regardless of age, to bring lawsuits for sexual abuse suffered in childhood. http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/03/nyregion/03abuse.html
Latvian vicar arrested on sex abuse allegations April 29, 2010 RIGA, Latvia (AP) — A former Catholic priest who converted to Protestantism and two other men have been arrested in Latvia for allegedly sexually abusing children, police said Thursday. The three suspects were friends and exchanged information to help each other find victims throughout the Baltic country, police spokesman Toms Sadovskis said. They preyed on orphans or boys from dysfunctional families in a string of abuse cases going back at least five years, Sadovskis alleged, adding that “some of the victims were mentally challenged.” http://www.kens5.com/news/world/92427899.html
Church admits abuse victims came second 2 Apr 10 The head of Germany’s Catholics has admitted in a Good Friday message that victims of child abuse had been inadequately cared for because of the Church’s effort to protect its reputation. In one of the frankest admissions yet to come out of the scandal-battered Catholic Church, the head of the German Bishops’ Conference, Archbishop Robert Zollitsch, said help given to the victims of abuse “had not been enough.” http://www.thelocal.de/national/20100402-26281.html

Rome waited to ban pedophile priest April 3, 2010 The future Pope Benedict XVI took over the abuse case of an Arizona priest, then let it languish at the Vatican for years despite repeated pleas from the bishop for the man to be removed from the priesthood, according to church correspondence. Documents reviewed by The Associated Press show that in 1990, members of a church tribunal found that the Reverend Michael Teta in Arizona had molested children as far back as the late 1970s. The panel deemed his behaviour – including allegations he abused two boys in a confessional – almost “satanic”. The tribunal referred his case to then-Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, who would become pope in 2005. But it took 12 years from the time Ratzinger assumed control of the case in a signed letter until Teta was formally removed from ministry, a step only the Vatican can take. As abuse cases with the pontiff’s fingerprints mushroom, Teta’s case and that of another Arizona priest cast further doubt on the church’s insistence that the future pope played no role in shielding pedophiles. Teta was accused of engaging in abuse not long after his arrival at the Diocese of Tucson, Arizona, in 1978. Among the allegations that would later be part of settlements: He molested two boys, ages 7 and 9….Bishop Manuel Moreno eventually was made aware of the allegations and held a church tribunal for Teta, which determined “there is almost a satanic quality in his mode of acting toward young men and boys”. Teta was removed from ministry by the bishop, but because the church’s most severe punishment – laicisation – can only be handed down from Rome, he remained on the church payroll and was working with young people outside the church. http://www.smh.com.au/world/rome-waited-to-ban-pedophile-priest-20100403-rkb7.html

Ratzinger And The Cases Of Father Teta And Father Trupia 02 Apr 2010 It was well-known in Arizona two decades ago that Father Michael Teta was a rapist of teen boys. Teta was first suspended from his duties in 1990 because he was credibly accused of such crimes. But it took seven more years to successfully convict him in a canonical court of sexual molestation, in part because of the arcane legal expertise necessary to conduct such a trial. During that time, the rapist was paid living expenses, legal fees and health insurance by the church….And yet despite Moreno’s personal appeal, it took Ratzinger’s CDF another seven years to defrock this priest. He was still being paid the equivalent of administrative leave until 2004 – fourteen years after his “insidious rapes” were first reported. During those fourteen years, parishioners paid the priest about $1,400 a month. The diocese also paid for Teta’s canon lawyer….In a second case, that of Father Trupia, another sex abuser, it was Moreno who had to fight tooth and nail to prevent Ratzinger’s CDF from allowing him to resign in good standing, once the CDF took over the case in 2001
http://andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com/the_daily_dish/2010/04/ratzinger-and-the-cases-of-father-teta-and-father-trupia.html
Bishop Moreno’s letter on the Trupia case http://azstarnet.com/news/local/pdf_b9ac4966-3d26-11df-b092-001cc4c002e0.html

Was seen as poor advocate for victims; files refute that Moreno struggled to defrock 2 priests 4/1/10 Patty Machelor The late Tucson Bishop Manuel D. Moreno, often characterized as a poor advocate for sexual abuse victims, struggled with both canon law and Vatican mandates in his efforts to defrock two local priests, documents obtained by the Arizona Daily Star show….Teta and Trupia were defrocked in 2004. The diocese suspended Trupia in 1992 after a Tucson mother told the diocese her young son had been sexually abused by Trupia….The church’s canonical court in 1997 found “there is almost a satanic quality in (Teta’s) mode of acting toward young men and boys.” The court found that Teta’s “insidious ‘rape’ of so many young men in his capacity as a priest” warranted his immediate removal from the priesthood. “What is wrong with this system in which it takes another seven years to defrock a priest that has been found guilty of ‘satanic abuse?’ ” Tucson lawyer Lynne Cadigan said.
http://azstarnet.com/news/local/article_6fd9e4bd-fcfc-50d6-ab3f-2d14c95219fd.html
Britain’s top Catholic ‘protected’ paedophile From The Times April 10, 2010 David Brown, Sean O’Neill, Julia Bradshaw The head of the Roman Catholic Church in England and Wales presided over a child protection system that allowed a paedophile priest to continue abusing schoolboys despite repeated complaints from victims, an investigation by The Times has discovered.
The Archbishop of Westminster, the Most Rev Vincent Nichols, chaired the church’s child safety watchdog in 2001-08 while Father David Pearce was repeatedly investigated by church officials and police. Despite a High Court ruling in 2006 awarding damages to one of his victims, Pearce remained a priest at Ealing Abbey, West London, where he groomed and assaulted one final victim before his arrest in 2008. Pearce, 68, a Benedictine monk and former headteacher at the prestigious St Benedict’s School, was jailed for eight years in October after admitting a catalogue of sex offences against teenage pupils during 35 years at the abbey. Archbishop Nichols last night denied any knowledge of the Pearce case while he was chairman of the Catholic Office for the Protection of Children and Vulnerable Adults (Copca). Church officials said that Archbishop Nichols was not told the full details of Pearce’s child abuse offences until he replaced Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O’Connor at Westminster last year. http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/faith/article7093935.ece
New Sex Scandal Rocks Vatican 3/6/10 Vatican City, Italy (CBS) The Vatican is facing allegations that one of Pope Benedict’s ceremonial ushers, as well as a member of the Vatican choir, were involved in a gay prostitution ring. Http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2010/03/06/earlyshow/saturday/main6272743.shtml
Vatican was told 50 years ago to act against paedophile priests Expert’s warning proves Catholic church should have known about failings in dealing with abuse cases, says lawyer – Owen Bowcott and agencies 1 April 2010 A former pope was warned that paedophile priests should be removed from active ministry and repeat offenders expelled from the church, according to a clerical communique that has emerged following a US lawsuit. The letter, written in August 1963 by the head of an order that specialised in the treatment of priests accused of abusing children, suggests that the Vatican and Pope Paul VI should have known about failings in procedures for dealing with such cases, according to the lawyer who produced it. http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/apr/01/catholic-priests-abuse-warning

Late Pope ‘covered up’ sexual abuse scandal 04 Apr 2010 The plight of the Vatican continues to draw worldwide attention as revelations surface that the late pope John Paul II had allegedly blocked an investigation into the allegations of sexual misconduct by Catholic priests….According to Schonborn, Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, who went on to become Pope Benedict XVI, had tried to investigate the allegations of sexual abuse by clergies as head of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. His efforts, Schonborn claimed, had nevertheless been blocked by “the Vatican”, an apparent reference to John Paul…..This comes as John Paul also faced criticism last week from his home country of Poland for protecting Archbishop Juliusz Paetz, who was accused of abusing trainee priests. http://www.presstv.ir/detail.aspx?id=122423&sectionid=3510212
Belgian bishop denounces silence on sex abuses 4/4/10 Belgium’s top Roman Catholic bishop has denounced the “guilty silence” of church officials in the pedophile priest scandal that has rocked much of Europe and the US. Archbishop of Brussels, Andre Joseph Leonard, has criticized the church for often worrying more about the reputation of priests and “savagely exploiting the abused children.” http://www.presstv.ir/detail.aspx?id=122393&sectionid=351020606

Future pope refused defrocking of convicted priest MATT SEDENSKY AP 5/30/10 The future Pope Benedict XVI refused to defrock an American priest who confessed to molesting numerous children and even served prison time for it, simply because the cleric wouldn’t agree to the discipline. The case provides the latest evidence of how changes in church law under Pope John Paul II frustrated and hamstrung U.S. bishops struggling with an abuse crisis that would eventually explode. Documents obtained by The Associated Press from court filings in the case of the late Rev. Alvin Campbell of Illinois show Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, following church law at the time, turned down a bishop’s plea to remove the priest for no other reason than the abuser’s refusal to go along with it.
“The petition in question cannot be admitted in as much as it lacks the request of Father Campbell himself,” Ratzinger wrote in a July 3, 1989, letter to Bishop Daniel Ryan of the Diocese of Springfield, Ill….Campbell’s misdeeds date back at least 15 years before his defrocking.
As an Army chaplain, he was reprimanded and ultimately left the service after abusing at least one boy, according to military and church correspondence. An Army letter in his file said he had exploited his rank and position as a chaplain “by engaging in indecent homosexual acts” with a child under 16 who had been under his supervision….
Campbell became a pastor upon his return to the diocese. In at least three instances after returning to diocesan work, he was forced to depart jobs as parish pastor or administrator “for reasons of health,” a euphemism for sexual abuse used within the church that Ryan himself put in quotes.
After workers at a rape crisis center alerted authorities that they were treating one of Campbell’s victims, police found he had been plying boys with video games, bicycles, watches and other gifts to get them to the waterbed in his second-floor rectory bedroom. Ryan sent Campbell to a New Mexico treatment facility after the arrest.
Campbell was sentenced to 14 years in prison in 1985, after admitting to molesting seven boys during his time as pastor of St. Maurice Parish in Morrisonville, Ill. He was released in 1992 after serving about seven years for sexual assault and sexual abuse. Ryan apparently waited four years after Campbell went to prison, according to church files, before asking for the priest’s defrocking. It’s unclear what accounted for the delay.
http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/R/REL_POPE_CHURCH_ABUSE?SITE=AP&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT
describes allegations of abuse Sex abuse victims say church is still tenaciously fighting claims – Even after convictions, some lawsuits have dragged on for more than a decade; church official blames complexities of judicial system May 30 2010 …. The pressure Caruso experienced in battling the Catholic Church is not unusual, say those suing Catholic dioceses, priests and nuns over abuse. Despite the church’s pledge to handle victims with compassion — a position repeated this month by Pope Benedict — it too often plays a game of courtroom chicken with stall tactics, hostile discovery sessions and intrusive psychological probes that unnerve vulnerable clients, say victims and their lawyers. “They don’t want to pay out the money,’’ said Jack Lavers, a Newfoundland lawyer who has worked both sides of the liturgical legal landscape. “There are (cases) that do start and never seem to finish.”
Seemingly relentless legal campaigns — especially against victims like Caruso, whose abuser had been convicted — appear to clash with church reforms adopted two decades ago after the Mount Cashel orphanage sex scandal. Pastoral outreach for victims of clergy abuse was among the recommendations in the 1992 “From Pain to Hope” report commissioned by the Canadian Council of Catholic Bishops. Counselling and empathy for the abused were again recommended in a 2007 CCCB task force. http://www.thestar.com/news/ontario/article/816223–sex-abuse-victims-say-church-is-still-tenaciously-fighting-claims?bn=1
How a Molesting Case Emerged Decades Later – Wilfried Fesselmann recently told his story of sexual abuse at the hands of a priest in 1979. The priest was transferred, but not formally suspended until last month. By NICHOLAS KULISH April 1, 2010 ESSEN, Germany — The case that has raised questions about the future pope’s handling of a pedophile priest in Germany came to light three decades after it occurred, and then almost by chance. It happened when Wilfried Fesselmann, an early victim, said he stumbled on Internet photographs of the priest who sexually abused him, still working with children….Father Hullermann went on to molest other boys and was not formally suspended until last month, after the German church acknowledged that “bad mistakes” were made in the handling of his case. The church said the decision to allow the priest to resume his duties in 1980 was made solely by Cardinal Ratzinger’s top aide at the time, but church officials also said the future pope was sent a memo about the reassignment. While the church has acknowledged Father Hullermann’s extensive history of sexual abuse, there have been no court proceedings on Mr. Fesselmann’s claims. http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/02/world/europe/02church.html

US cardinal protected child abusing priest: court documents By Lucile Malandain (AFP) 4/3/10 WASHINGTON — A staunch defender of Pope Benedict XVI in pedophile scandals now gripping the Vatican reassigned a US priest and alleged child molester in the 1990s without warning parishioners, court documents showed. In sworn testimony in 2006 about his time as Archbishop of Portland, Oregon (1986-1995), US Cardinal William Levada said he decided to reassign the offending priest after he underwent therapy.

“The abuse in question had happened 20 years before, or so… the recommendation of the therapy was that he was not at risk for re-abusing and that it would be prudent to reassign him… and prudent also to put conditions that would make sure that he would not be overstressed to do some inappropriate behavior,” Levada testified….In the testimony, Levada was asked if he had warned parishioners about the Oregon priest’s past — inappropriate sexual behavior with teenagers in the 1970s. He answered that he had not. “I took what I believe to be the prudent step of giving complete information to the pastor of the parish… and assigning him as the supervisor to (the priest) who (would) have weekly or regular meetings with him and so forth,” the cardinal said. http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5h8k6tKDnB1OKPdrFRhfD6L8kS3uA

Priest sex scandals on rise in Belgium 12 May 2010 In Belgium complaints of sexual abuse continue to pile up as the Roman Catholic Church struggles to mend its severely tainted reputation. An investigative committee probing allegations of priestly pedophilia says it has received 270 separate letters in this regard since April 23rd. The commission’s president Peter Adriaenssens revealed on Tuesday that 90 percent of the reports involve boys. 95 percent of the reports come from the northern Belgian region of Flanders, the diocese where pedophile Bishop Roger Vangheluwe served. Vangheluwe, after his April 23 resignation, admitted sexually abusing a boy when in office in the Flemish city of Bruges. http://www.presstv.ir/detail.aspx?id=126227&sectionid=3510212

John Paul ‘ignored abuse of 2,000 boys’ Cardinal Hans Hermann Groer abused an estimated 2,000 boys for decades without sanction Bojan Pancevski in Vienna and John Follain in Rome 4/4/10 Allegations that the late pontiff blocked an inquiry into a paedophile cardinal, promoted senior church figures despite accusations that they had molested boys and covered up innumerable cases of abuse during his 26-year papacy have cast a cloud over his path to sainthood. The most serious claims related to Cardinal Hans Hermann Groer, an Austrian friend of John Paul’s Cardinal Christoph Schönborn, Groer’s successor, criticised the handling of that scandal and other abuse cases last week after holding a special service in St Stephen’s cathedral, Vienna, entitled “Admitting our guilt”.
Schönborn condemned the “sinful structures” within the church and the patterns of “silencing” victims and “looking away”….The Groer affair became public in 1995 when former pupils of an elite Catholic school accused him of sexual abuse. After an outcry, Groer was replaced and made the prior of a convent. He was never punished and issued only a vague apology in 1998 before retreating to a nunnery where he lived until his death in 2003. Some of his victims were offered “hush money” from the church….John Paul also faced criticism last week from Poland for protecting Archbishop Juliusz Paetz, who was accused of abusing trainee priests. Letters detailing the charges were sent to John Paul’s office and to Ratzinger in 2000 but were ignored. Paetz resigned in 2002 when the allegations became public….John Paul was also accused of ignoring controversy over John Magee, a former private secretary to three popes including the Polish pontiff, who named him Bishop of Cloyne in 1987. Late last month Magee was forced to resign after an independent report found that his diocese in Ireland had put children at risk. http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/faith/article7086738.ece

Pope’s immunity could be challenged in Britain 4/4/10 By PAISLEY DODDS LONDON (AP) – Protests are growing against Pope Benedict XVI’s planned trip to Britain, where some lawyers question whether the Vatican’s implicit statehood status should shield the pope from prosecution over sex crimes by pedophile priests….Although Benedict has not been accused of any crime, senior British lawyers are now examining whether the pope should have immunity as a head of state and whether he could be prosecuted under the principle of universal jurisdiction for an alleged systematic cover-up of sexual abuses by priests. http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/36167166/

Priest accused of US abuse still working in India By RAVI NESSMAN (AP) – 4/5/10 NEW DELHI — A Catholic priest charged with sexually assaulting a 14-year-old girl in Minnesota is working in his home diocese in India and has no plans to return to the U.S. to face the courts, he and his bishop told The Associated Press on Monday. Church documents obtained by the AP show the Vatican was alerted to the accusations against the Rev. Joseph Palanivel Jeyapaul more than three years ago but did not respond. The priest has received only a minor punishment and is currently working in his bishop’s office processing teacher appointments for a dozen church schools in the diocese of Ootacamund in southern India….Jeyapaul is currently wanted on two counts of criminal sexual conduct stemming from accusations he assaulted a young, female parishioner in the fall of 2004 at the Blessed Sacrament Church in Greenbush, Minnesota, where he was working. Each charge carries a sentence of up to 30 years….In a telephone call with The Associated Press, Jeyapaul denied the charges….At the time the accusations against Jeyapaul first surfaced in 2005, the priest had returned home to visit his ailing mother and officials in Minnesota’s Crookston diocese told him he should stay in India, Jeyapaul said. “My mother told me to remain here, and the (Crookston) bishop also told me not to come back, because these allegations have come against you,” he said. http://www.google.com
Vatican Declined to Pursue Accused Priest By LAURIE GOODSTEIN April 5, 2010 A Catholic priest who has been criminally charged with sexually assaulting a 14-year-old girl in Minnesota six years ago is still working in his home diocese in India despite warnings to the Vatican from an American bishop that the priest continued to pose a risk to children, according to church documents made public on Monday. The documents show that the American bishop warned the Vatican that the priest was accused of molesting two teenage girls whose trust he gained by promising to discuss their interest in becoming nuns. A county attorney in Minnesota is seeking to extradite the priest from India in a criminal case that involves one of the girls, who said the priest had forced her to perform oral sex and had threatened her and her family.

The case took place during the papacy of Pope Benedict XVI, who has recently come under fire for his role in cases of sexually abusive priests in Germany and Wisconsin….In 2006, the Vatican recommended that the priest simply be monitored, a document shows. A lawyer for the Holy See said in a statement that the Vatican had recommended that the priest be defrocked, but that canon law specifies that the decision rests with the local bishop. The bishop in India sentenced the priest to a year of prayer in a monastery rather than seeking his removal from the priesthood, according to documents and interviews. The priest, the Rev. Joseph Palanivel Jeyapaul, was working temporarily in the Diocese of Crookston, Minn., which like many United States dioceses is bringing in priests from India because there are not enough American priests to serve its parishes. Father Jeyapaul ministered to three parishes simultaneously in Crookston, where he was accused of misappropriating church funds as well as sexual abuse.
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/06/world/europe/06church.htm

Child abuse scandal cost US Catholic church $3 bln by Mira Oberman Apr 5, 2010 CHICAGO (AFP) – The pedophile priest crisis has cost the Roman Catholic church nearly $3 billion in the United States, but only a fraction of the perpetrators have been jailed and little been done to punish those who covered up the crimes. After years of painful revelations, massive payouts, soul searching and reforms, the child sex abuse scandal has spread across the globe and in recent weeks has struck the Church at its very core. Pope Benedict XVI, long celebrated for speaking out against abuse, is facing allegations that he helped protect predator priests when he was archbishop of Munich and later as the Vatican’s chief morals enforcer….The allegations currently sweeping across Europe bear a stark similarity to those that first surfaced in the United States in the mid 1980s.
Victims were intimidated into silence. Abusive priests were left unpunished, or shuffled to unsuspecting parishes where they found new prey….researchers from the John Jay College of Criminal Justice. They found that more than 4,392 Catholic priests and deacons sexually abused at least 10,677 American children between 1950 and 2002. Just 615 of those incidents had been reported to law enforcement and only 384 clergy members were criminally charged, resulting in 252 convictions. More than 700 priests and deacons were removed from or voluntarily left ministry between January 2002 and December 2003 due to allegations of sexual abuse. A further 3,091 abusive clergy and 4,568 victims were identified from 2004 through 2009, according to a report published last month. http://news.yahoo.com/

Child sex abuse: Catholic church leader admits he knew 26 March 2010 By Robert Chesal The child sex abuse scandal within the Dutch Catholic Church is deepening with the admission for the first time from the country’s most senior church figure that he was aware of abuse in the 1970s and 80s. Bishop of Rotterdam Ad van Luyn, who now chairs the Netherlands Synod of Bishops, knew of concrete cases of sexual abuse during his time as head of the Salesian order between 1975 and 1981….The church’s own body set up to deal with these issues, Hulp en Recht (Help and Justice), has received more than 1,100 claims of abuse….Bishop Van Luyn was provincial head of the Salesian order at the time of the abuse, and a teacher at the school. http://www.rnw.nl/english/article/child-sex-abuse-catholic-church-leader-admits-he-knew

Number of church abuse cases rises Friday, 09 April 2010 Latest victim tells media that his offender is still a serving priest in the Danish Catholic Church The number of cases of child abuse reported to the Danish Catholic Church has risen to 17 and an 18th man has told media that he was abused by a priest who is still an active member of the church in Zealand.
http://www.cphpost.dk/news/national/48706-number-of-church-abuse-cases-rises.html

Church swamped by priest abuse claims April 9, 2010 AFP Norway’s Roman Catholic Church received so many email tip-offs about possible paedophile priests following revelations of abuse by a bishop that its computer crashed, a senior cleric said. “I received so many email tip-offs about possible aggressions and other sexual abuse that the computer server crashed,” Bishop of Oslo and Trondheim Bernt Eidsvig was quoted as saying by the tabloid paper Verdens Gang. Bernt disclosed on Wednesday at the request of the Vatican that one of Norway’s former bishops, German Georg Mueller, had abused a choirboy in the early 1990s. The newspaper said that its own research had in recent days uncovered nine sex abuse cases in the church.
http://news.smh.com.au/breaking-news-world/church-swamped-by-priest-abuse-claims-20100409-rykc.html
Toronto-area child porn probe goes global: 73 suspects in 20 countries Mar 30, 2010 By Allison Jones, The Canadian Press BRAMPTON, Ont. – Evidence uncovered in a local child pornography investigation could lead to charges against dozens of people in 20 countries and while it may involve millions of images, Ontario police said Tuesday that’s just a drop in the bucket. The investigation began in November with a tip from police in Edmonton that led to the arrest of a 29-year-old man in Brampton, Ont., on child-pornography and sexual-assault charges, police said. That probe went global, culminating in police gathering evidence against 73 people in 20 countries. http://ca.news.yahoo.com/s/capress/100330/national/child_porn_probe
Vatican tries to shift blame for abuse on to John Paul By Richard Owen in Rome April 03 2010 Five years after his death, Pope John Paul II’s record in office is coming under growing criticism as Vatican officials try to shift the blame for the sex-abuse scandals engulfing the Catholic Church on his leadership. As Pope Benedict XVI prepares to make an address to the world for Easter Sunday tomorrow, the Vatican is fighting back. It has also lashed out at criticism from the media. Fr Raniero Cantalamessa, preacher to the papal household, yesterday told a congregation that the current “violent and concentric attacks” on the church and the Pontiff were “reminiscent of the most shameful aspects of anti-Semitism”. Above all, the church is casting doubt on the Pope’s Polish-born predecessor’s record in office, and his fast track to sainthood.
Investigate – Cardinal Christoph Schonborn, the Archbishop of Vienna — a staunch supporter of Pope Benedict, and seen as a possible successor — put the blame on John Paul II and his advisers for failure to take action against Cardinal Hans Hermann Groer, Cardinal Schonborn’s predecessor and a serial child-abuser. Cardinal Schonborn told ‘L’Osservatore Romano’, the Vatican newspaper, that as Head of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, which dealt with clerical sex abuse, the Pope (then Cardinal Ratzinger) had pressed John Paul in vain to investigate Cardinal Groer. Cardinal Groer stepped down in 1995 after being accused of molesting a schoolboy. After he resigned, allegations surfaced that he had also sexually abused young monks. He was never defrocked, however, and died in Germany in 2003. http://www.independent.ie/world-news/europe/vatican-tries-to-shift-blame-for-abuse-on-to-john-paul-2123826.html

Church warned about Quebec pedophile priest The Religieux Saint-Vincent-de-Paul order says Denis Vadeboncoeur was flagged April 7, 2010 The Canadian Press A Roman Catholic order in Quebec is defending its reputation after a former French bishop claimed he was asked to take in one of its priests who was found guilty of sexually abusing children in the 1980s. Jacques Gaillot is a former bishop of Evreux, France, located about 100 kilometres west of Paris. Gaillot told a Parisian newspaper earlier this week he regretted appointing Denis Vadeboncoeur to head a parish in western France, where he was convicted in 2005 of child abuse….
But Vadeboncoeur’s old order in Quebec, the Religieux Saint-Vincent-de-Paul, denies it had anything to do with Vadeboncoeur’s career being allowed to continue in France. They said he went to France on his own initiative in 1987, two years after being given a 20-month sentence in Quebec for sexually assaulting children. He was originally charged in the province with gross indecency and sexually assaulting several children aged 12-17, as well as one count of sodomy. Order says French officials knew priest’s past Upon learning of his new position in France, the order penned a letter, dated Oct. 29, 1987, to Gaillot informing him of Vadeboncoeur’s past….The letter was sent to Gaillot again in 1988 and details Vadeboncoeur’s crimes and punishment in Quebec, noting he served one-third of his sentence after pleading guilty. Vadeboncoeur received a 12-year prison sentence in 2005 in France after a much-covered trial related to the rape of several minors between 1989 and 1992. http://www.cbc.ca/canada/montreal/story/2010/04/07/quebec-pedophile-priest-cp.html

Bishop: 100 cases in 10 yrs for Italy priest abuse By NICOLE WINFIELD (AP) 5/25/10 ROME — Italy’s bishops’ conference provided the first ever statistics of clerical sex abuse in the country Tuesday, saying there had been about 100 cases over the past 10 years that warranted church trials or other canonical procedures. Monsignor Mariano Crociata, the No. 2 official in the Italian bishops’ conference, gave the estimate during a press conference on the sidelines of the bishops’ general assembly, the ANSA and Apcom news agencies reported. He declined to say how many of the cases resulted in condemnation or defrocking of the priest, or how many were reported to police. While saying the church officials cooperated with police, he insisted that Italian law doesn’t require bishops to report suspected abuse. Some lawyers for victims say bishops are required to report abuse since they are public officials. Vatican norms say bishops should follow civil laws in reporting abuse. http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5j8J_ZQy2Ttux-lpPy9gEA4hp13AQD9FU47J00

Italy sees 130 priests investigated over abuse – Italian authorities have arrested, investigated or convicted 130 Catholic priests for sexually abusing children over the last decade, it has been claimed. By Nick Squires in Rome 06 Apr 2010 A report by prosecutors said that not one of the cases was referred to the police by the local bishop. Sergio Cavaliere, a lawyer who has compiled evidence on the cases, said: “It’s an alarming figure if you consider that it’s only the tip of the iceberg, if you think about all the cases that haven’t shown up in the media or that haven’t gone to court.” A prosecutor in Milan, Pietro Forno, who has won 10 convictions for paedophile priests, claimed that police suspected the existence of a “network of clergy who have a passion for minors”.
He said abusive priests had been shuffled between dioceses, where they were free to molest more children. “It seems that some chose the priesthood with the aim of being close to children,” said Mr Forno, the head of a unit which investigates sex crimes….But signs are emerging that Italian priests sexually abused children in their care and were protected from investigation by bishops who were desperate not to harm the reputation of the Church….In Verona, in the north, almost 70 deaf men and women have claimed they were raped and molested over a period of about 30 years at a Church-run institute for deaf children. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/italy/7559899/Italy-sees-130-priests-investigated-over-abuse.html

Exiled Pedophile Priest May Have Continued Abuse By SUSAN SAULNY and LAURIE GOODSTEIN April 2, 2010 BOULDER JUNCTION, Wis….The house, in the Northwoods of Wisconsin, had been in the Rev. Lawrence C. Murphy’s family for years, his getaway in the summer months and his sanctuary where he was sent to retire in 1974, at age 48, after victims of sexual abuse demanded he be removed from work at a school for the deaf near Milwaukee. But Father Murphy’s time around Boulder Junction was not so secluded, according to recent interviews with people who live in the area and Roman Catholic Church documents. Those interviews and documents suggested that Father Murphy, who is accused of molesting as many as 200 boys at the school near Milwaukee, also used his family’s lakefront cottage as a lure in his sexual advances, bringing youths from the school into his home beginning at least in the early 1960s.

What has recently come to light in fresh documents and interviews is that he was in the company of boys not only from the Milwaukee area but in the Northwoods region. Two in the area have accused Father Murphy of abuse, one at the isolated family cottage and the other, as late as 1978, at a youth detention center near Boulder Junction….In fact, around Boulder Junction, in high school religious classes and preparation for the sacrament of confirmation, in sleepovers at his cottage and fishing excursions, Father Murphy interacted freely with children until his death in 1998, never having been punished by the church or local criminal authorities in Milwaukee, according to documents and interviews with people in the area….at a Mass, Archbishop Jerome Listecki acknowledged that mistakes were made in the case of Father Murphy. “The mistakes were not made in Rome in 1996, 1997 and 1998,” the archbishop said. “The mistakes were made here, in the Archdiocese of Milwaukee, in the 1970s, the 1980s and the 1990s, by the church, by civil authorities, by church officials, and by bishops. And for that, I beg your forgiveness.” http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/03/us/03wisconsin.html

Another pedophilia scandal rocks Vatican 10 April 2010 Following a series of pedophilia scandals, a new document has come to light showing that Pope Benedict XVI resisted defrocking a US pedophile priest in 1985. Former Cardinal Joseph Radzinger had signed a letter which defied calls to defrock California priest Stephen Kiesle over children abuse charges, letters released by the victims’ attorney Jeff Anderson showed Friday. While Radzinger admitted the gravity of Kiesle’s case, he stated he was reluctant to take immediate action on the grounds that the case needed careful consideration, which would take a longer period of time than usual. Kiesle was finally defrocked in 1987. He later worked as a youth coordinator at a parish in Pinole, north California for eight months, a statement released by Anderson said. Ratzinger went on to become Pope Benedict XVI in 2005. http://www.presstv.ir/detail.aspx?id=122905&sectionid=351020606

Future pope stalled pedophile case Letter: Defrocking must consider `good of church’ By Gillian Flaccus Associated Press Writer LOS ANGELES 4/10/10 – The future Pope Benedict XVI resisted pleas to defrock a California priest with a record of sexually molesting children, citing concerns including “the good of the universal church,” according to a 1985 letter bearing his signature. The correspondence, obtained by The Associated Press, is the strongest challenge yet to the Vatican’s insistence that Benedict played no role in blocking the removal of pedophile priests during his years as head of the Catholic Church’s doctrinal watchdog office. The letter, signed by then-Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, was typed in Latin and is part of years of correspondence between the Diocese of Oakland and the Vatican about the proposed defrocking of the Rev. Stephen Kiesle. http://www.decaturdaily.com/detail/57596.html
AP Writer: Vatican ‘In the Loop’ on Calif Priest http://www.youtube.com /watch?v=DAdDnBVVxjQ
Clergy who conceal abuse should be dismissed: cardinal – Silvia Aloisi ROME Apr 11, 2010 (Reuters) – The powerful head of Italy’s bishops, responding to mounting pressure on the Vatican, said on Sunday those in the Church who mishandled, minimized and covered up sexual abuse of children should be dismissed. Cardinal Angelo Bagnasco said in a newspaper interview that pedophilia was a “heinous crime” and even more serious when committed by members of the Church. Http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE63A0X620100411

Vatican lifts veil of secrecy on abuse cases – As two more cover-ups are revealed, a simple online guide to the canonical procedures for dealing with accused priests is launched By Nicole Winfield in The Vatican 11 April 2010 The Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith – the office once known as the Inquisition – has long epitomised the secrecy of the Vatican, with responsibility for banning books and meting out punishments as severe as excommunication and burning at the stake. Now, as the office’s handling of child-molesting priests comes increasingly under fire, the Vatican is starting to open up. Tomorrow, it will release online a concise guide for the layman on how the congregation handles sex abuse allegations. http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/vatican-lifts-veil-of-secrecy-on-abuse-cases-1941264.html
Ex-St. Catharines bishop implicated in coverup By GRANT LAFLECHE, QMI AGENCY 4/12/10 As local Catholics puzzle Friday over the sudden resignation of their bishop, his predecessor was implicated in the coverup of sexual abuse by a priest in Pembroke. Former St. Catharines bishop John O’Mara was named by former Pembroke bishop Joseph Windle in a 1993 letter to the Vatican’s ambassador in Ottawa. O’Mara was named as part of a group of Ontario bishops who backed Windle’s recommendation that the abuse of minors by a Pembroke priest be kept silent. The priest in question, Father Bernard Prince, had been shipped off to Rome and became a friend of then Pope John Paul II. In his letter, Windle was deeply concerned that if the Vatican graced the priest with any attention or honours, it would expose the abuse and create a scandal….Prince was convicted in 2008 of sexually molesting 13 boys between 1964 and 1984, and was formally defrocked by Pope Benedict XVI last year. He was sent to Rome and became a Vatican official in 1991 after church officials in Canada first heard from a victim of his crimes. In his letter, which became public Friday as part of a civil case against the Pembroke Diocese and Prince, Windle supported the move even in light of the seriousness of the allegations. “I would not object to him being given another chance since it would remove him from the Canadian scene,” Windle wrote. By 1993, further allegations against Prince surfaced. Windle explained in his letter there were four or five known victims and at least one of them was asking pointed questions about how the church was handling the situation. Still, Windle believed the Church could keep the situation secret because the victims were unlikely to go to the police or the press. http://www.niagarafallsreview.ca/ArticleDisplay.aspx?e=2529871

Pope Benedict accused of masterminding Catholic Church sex abuse cover-up ‘No denying fact that Benedict signed off on cover-up’ By APRIL DREW IrishCentral.com April 16, 2010, Pope Benedict has been accused of masterminding the child sex-abuse cover up which has rocked the Catholic Church. Swiss theologian Fr Hans Kung has written a furious letter to the Catholic bishops accusing the Pope of engineering the global cover-up. “There is no denying the fact that the worldwide system of covering up cases of sexual crimes committed by clerics was engineered by the Roman Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith under Cardinal Ratzinger (1981-2005),” he said. “During the reign of Pope John Paul II, that Congregation had already taken charge of all such cases under oath of strictest silence. Ratzinger himself, on May 18th, 2001, sent a solemn document to all the bishops dealing with severe crimes in which cases of abuse were sealed under the secretum pontificium, the violation of which could entail grave ecclesiastical penalties. http://www.irishcentral.com/news/Pope-Benedict-accused-of-masterminding-Catholic-Church-sex-abuse-cover-up-91038229.html

Priest says he was bullied into taking fall for Pope in abuse scandal 18 Apr 10 The church official who initially said it was his fault that a paedophile priest was given succour in Pope Benedict XVI’s former diocese has broken ranks, alleging he was bullied into taking responsibility to protect the pontiff. Gerhard Gruber was Joseph Ratzinger’s general vicar in Munich during the 1980s, when Ratzinger, now Pope, was Archbishop. Ratzinger chaired the meeting which decided to offer paedophile priest Peter H., a safe haven in Munich. The priest was also given further positions of trust in the church, and was later convicted of further child abuse. Gruber’s friends have told Der Spiegel news magazine that when the story came to light last month, he was under immense pressure to take responsibility for the decision in order to shield the Pope from accusations of having helped a paedophile. The magazine wrote that he was urgently “requested” to take full responsibility in order to take the Pope “out of the firing line.” http://www.thelocal.de/national/20100418-26613.html

Paedophilia complaints ‘unpunished’ April 13, 2010 BELGIAN bishops have failed to punish any clergy over 300 complaints of paedophilia brought to their attention in the 1990s, claims a priest who helped many victims. ”We brought forward between 1992 and 1998 more than 300 complaints from victims of abuse committed by priests, but only 15 ended up with admissions” of guilt, Father Rick Deville told the Flemish dailies De Standaard and Het Nieuwsblad yesterday. ”A priest accused would most often be moved, but was never punished,” he complained. Founder of the group Human Rights in the Church, which defends victims of abuse, the 65-year-old Father Deville deplored the lack of support from the Belgian Catholic hierarchy. ”Very few bishops helped us,” he said. In most cases the victims were told that their actions were ”unfortunately banned”. In some cases the victims themselves were accused of defamation, he said. AFP http://www.theage.com.au/world/paedophilia-complaints-unpunished-20100412-s4e9.html
AP IMPACT: Predator priests shuffled around globe By BRADLEY BROOKS and ALESSANDRA RIZZO (AP) 4/14/10 RIO DE JANEIRO — There he was, five decades later, the priest who had raped Joe Callander in Massachusetts. The photo in the Roman Catholic newsletter showed him with a smile across his wrinkled face, near-naked Amazon Indian children in his arms and at his feet. The Rev. Mario Pezzotti was working with children and supervising other priests in Brazil.
It’s not an isolated example. In an investigation spanning 21 countries across six continents, The Associated Press found 30 cases of priests accused of abuse who were transferred or moved abroad. Some escaped police investigations. Many had access to children in another country, and some abused again. A priest who admitted to abuse in Los Angeles went to the Philippines, where U.S. church officials mailed him checks and advised him not to reveal their source. A priest in Canada was convicted of sexual abuse and then moved to France, where he was convicted of abuse again in 2005. Another priest was moved back and forth between Ireland and England, despite being diagnosed as a pederast, a man who commits sodomy with boys. “The pattern is if a priest gets into trouble and it’s close to becoming a scandal or if the law might get involved, they send them to the missions abroad,” said Richard Sipe, a former Benedictine monk and critic of what he says is a practice of international transfers of accused and admitted priest child abusers. “Anything to avoid a scandal.” Church officials say that in some cases, the priests themselves moved to another country and the new parish might not have been aware of past allegations. In other cases, church officials said they did not believe the allegations, or that the priest had served his time and reformed. http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2010/04/14/world/main6397279.shtml

Church pedophilia scandal grows in Latin America By TALES AZZONI AP April 20, 2010 SAO PAULO – The detention of an 83-year-old priest in Brazil for allegedly abusing boys as young as 12 in a case involving lurid videotape and a congressional investigation has added to the scandals hitting the Roman Catholic Church in Latin America. The allegations against Monsignor Luiz Marques Barbosa – and two other Brazilian priests – have made headlines throughout the world’s most populous Catholic nation and come amid accusations of sexual abuse by priests across the world….Congressional investigators said more than 20 witnesses were called and some testified Barbosa and two other priests in the same northeastern archdiocese had abused boys as young as 12, plying them with money, clothes and other gifts. http://www.msnbc.msn.com/

Chile priest charged with abusing daughter, others AP By FEDERICO QUILODRAN, Apr 14, 2010 SANTIAGO, Chile – A Chilean priest has been charged with eight cases of sexually abusing minors, including his own daughter, and his diocese says he was suspended from his duties in the Roman Catholic Church early this year. Ricardo Munoz Quinteros, 55, is accused of paying young girls for sex. State television broadcast video Tuesday night that it said shows the priest entering a motel with a young girl he paid for her services. Prosecutors in Curacavi, on the outskirts of Santiago, formally charged Munoz on Tuesday with crimes dating back five years, expanding the initial sex abuse charges for which he was jailed in January. Prosecutor Cristian Caceres said investigators are looking at whether the diocese tried to cover up for Munoz’s activities, noting a series of transfers of the priest among four parishes in a few years, according to Radio Bio-Bio. According to the charges, the priest abused girls between 16 and 18 years old, as well as his own daughter who was 5 years old at the time. http://www.denverpost.com/rawnews/ci_14883903

Priest accused of sexual abuse – Father Chase is on administrative leave from parish By Alicia Ebaugh Staff Writer April 20, 2010 MICHIGAN CITY – Facing an allegation of sexual abuse from 19 years ago, Father Terrence Chase of Queen of All Saints Catholic Church has been placed on administrative leave. Parishioners were first made aware of an investigation into the incident this weekend, although it was reported to Bishop Dale Melczek and Chesterton police nearly a month ago, officials said….The alleged sexual misconduct took place in 1991 while Father Chase was a pastoral associate at St. Patrick Church in Chesterton, Plaiss said. On Thursday, the day Father Chase was officially placed on leave, he issued a statement maintaining his innocence, saying the allegations are “simply not true.” http://www.heraldargus.com/articles/2010/04/20/news/local/doc4bcd29da71768079325036.txt

Suit alleges Cardinal Mahony conspired to hide priest’s sexual abuse of children The 25-year-old Mexican national also accuses a Mexican cardinal of involvement. The suit filed in L.A. cites a little-used law. April 20, 2010 By Carol J. Williams, Los Angeles Times
A 25-year-old Mexican man filed suit Tuesday alleging that Cardinal Roger Mahony of the Los Angeles Archdiocese and a Mexican cardinal conspired to hide a priest’s 20-plus years of child sexual abuse, exposing dozens more young victims to rape by a known pedophile. The complaint filed in federal court in Los Angeles relies on a U.S. law, more than 200 years old, that allows foreign victims of human rights abuses to bring their perpetrators to justice in U.S. courts. The civil suit is the first known to use the Alien Tort Claims Act of 1789 to demand a jury trial and compensation for sexual offenses committed abroad by clergy, attorneys said.
The suit accuses Mahony and Cardinal Norberto Rivera Carrera of Mexico City of negligence and conspiracy in covering up allegations against Father Nicolas Aguilar Rivera in Los Angeles and at Mexican parishes. The plaintiff, whose name was not disclosed in the suit, alleges that he was abused by the priest in 1997, when he was a 12-year-old altar boy. The Mexican-born Aguilar first came to the attention of police in late 1986, after he was beaten by several attackers. Authorities speculated that the attack was in retaliation for his alleged abuse of young boys during overnight stays at the rectory in the Diocese of Tehuacan, Mexico. A month later, then-Bishop Rivera wrote to Mahony to offer Aguilar for placement in a Los Angeles ministry, with a coded reference to the priest being problematic, the lawsuit alleges.
Mahony appointed Aguilar associate pastor at Our Lady of Guadalupe Church in Los Angeles in March 1987, and two months later, transferred him to St. Agatha Catholic Church, according to the suit. Within nine months of Aguilar’s arrival, Los Angeles police had amassed 26 reports of sexual abuse of minors by the priest, who fled to Mexico the night Mahony was informed of the abuse allegations, according to the suit filed by attorney Jeffery R. Anderson….Anderson … said Aguilar is suspected of abusing as many as 60 boys in Mexico as well as the 26 reported in Los Angeles. “For 21 years, from 1988 until Nicolas Aguilar Rivera was defrocked, he was allowed to utilize the authority of the church in Mexico to brutalize children,” said Los Angeles attorney Anthony M. De Marco, who represents others who allege that they were abused by Aguilar. http://articles.latimes.com/2010/apr/20/local/la-me-church-sex-abuse-20100421
California: 2 Archdioceses Sued By REBECCA CATHCART April 20, 2010 Lawyers for a Mexican man who says he was abused as a boy by his priest in Mexico filed a civil complaint Tuesday against archdioceses here and in Mexico. The complaint was filed under the Alien Tort Claims Act, meant to prosecute human rights abuses committed outside the United States. The complaint accuses Cardinals Roger Mahony of Los Angeles and Norberto Rivera of Tehuacan, Mexico, of transferring the priest, the Rev. Nicolás Aguilar-Rivera, a Mexican citizen, between dioceses despite his history of sexual abuse. Tod Tamberg, a spokesman for the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Los Angeles, said Cardinal Mahony was not warned of the priest’s history before the transfer. A 20-year-old warrant for the arrest of the priest on 19 counts of child rape is pending in Los Angeles. He was defrocked in 2009. https://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/21/us/21brfs-2ARCHDIOCESE_BRF.html?emc=eta1

Victims want ‘abuse’ priests defrocked April 22, 2010 AAP A church-related victims’ group is calling on the Vatican to defrock about 100 Melbourne priests implicated in sexual abuse claims which have been substantiated by church investigations. The Melbourne Victims’ Collective, a group of 27 primary and secondary alleged sex abuse victims, wants the priests stripped of their titles and privileges. A Fairfax newspaper (The Age) reported on Thursday that almost 300 sexual abuse allegations had been substantiated in Melbourne by the Catholic church since 1996 but only one priest had been defrocked. http://news.smh.com.au/breaking-news-national/victims-want-abuse-priests-defrocked-20100422-tfhk.html

300 abuse cases, one defrocking NICK MCKENZIE AND RAFAEL EPSTEIN April 22, 2010 VICTORIA Police has called for sweeping changes to the way Melbourne’s Catholic Church deals with sex crime allegations, as The Age reveals that only one priest has been defrocked for abuse in the past 14 years. Nearly 300 allegations of sexual abuse have been substantiated by church investigations since 1996, when the ”Melbourne Response” was set up to deal with complaints. It is believed the abuses were perpetrated by approximately 100 priests, a figure the church will not confirm. Just one priest has been defrocked as a result. Some other priests lost their role serving a parish full-time. http://www.theage.com.au/victoria/300-abuse-cases-one-defrocking-20100421-szz6.html
Suit: Vatican No. 2 Got Letter From Abuse Victim – Lawsuit claims Vatican official got letter from victim on Wis. abuse earlier than known before By DINESH RAMDE and ERIC GORSKI MILWAUKEE April 22, 2010 (AP) A neatly typed letter dated March 5, 1995, is addressed to the No. 2 man at the Vatican and recounts the story of a priest who preyed on deaf boys trapped in dormitories with no chance of escape. The letter to Cardinal Angelo Sodano from one of the Rev. Lawrence Murphy’s alleged victims is more evidence for those trying to learn what Vatican officials knew about abuse claims at St. John’s School for the Deaf outside Milwaukee and when. The document was revealed Thursday in yet another lawsuit aimed at the highest reaches of the Roman Catholic Church. It’s also significant because it involves Sodano, a strong defender of Pope Benedict XVI’s handling of the global clergy sexual abuse crisis and a man whose own record on a separate high-profile case has come under scrutiny. The Vatican’s U.S.-based attorney, Jeffrey Lena, said in a statement Thursday that the lawsuit was a publicity stunt with no merit and it rehashes theories already rejected by U.S. courts. Murphy, who died in 1998, is accused of sexually abusing some 200 boys at the deaf school from 1950 to 1974. He was put on a leave of absence when the allegations were revealed in the early 1970s.

The lawsuit claims Murphy was still allowed to serve in ministry and work with children in another Wisconsin diocese into the early 1990s….Sodano has long been accused in news reports in U.S. Catholic publications and other outlets of stalling a Vatican probe of the Rev. Marcial Maciel, the discredited founder of the Legionaries of Christ. The order has admitted that the late Maciel fathered at least one child and molested young seminarians. http://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory?id=10445461
Vatican’s Cardinal Sodano accused of sex abuse cover-up PADDY AGNEW in Rome The Irish Times – Monday, May 10, 2010 IN A HIGHLY unusual development, the archbishop of Vienna, Cardinal Christoph Schönborn, has accused the former Vatican secretary of state, Cardinal Angelo Sodano, of having blocked a Vatican inquiry into sex abuse allegations against the late, disgraced cardinal of Vienna, Hans Hermann Groer….As someone widely believed to have been one of the key “electors” of Pope Benedict at the 2005 conclave, Cardinal Schönborn is both close to the pope and a “heavyweight” in the College of Cardinals. He had already raised the issue of Cardinal Groer, his predecessor as archbishop of Vienna, in late March when he claimed that unnamed Vatican officials had blocked an inquiry in 1995 into sex abuse allegations against Cardinal Groer. In comments last week to Austrian news agency, Kathpress, Cardinal Schönborn went further, identifying Cardinal Sodano as the person who had persuaded the current pope, then in his previous role of Prefect For The Congregation Of The Doctrine Of The Faith (CDF), not to investigate Cardinal Groer. In 1995 the Austrian church had been stunned by a series of sex abuse accusations against Cardinal Groer, which alleged that he had molested young boys at a seminary in the town of Hollabrunn. Three years later, Cardinal Groer relinquished all religious duties and sought exile in Germany. He died in 2003 without having admitted any guilt in relation to the sex abuse allegations. Not only did Cardinal Schönborn last week identify Cardinal Sodano as the head of the Vatican “diplomatic track” that had protected Cardinal Groer but he also said that Cardinal Sodano had done “massive harm” to victims of sex abuse with his recent Easter Sunday remarks in which he dismissed international criticism of the church over the sex abuse scandal as “idle gossip”. Furthermore, Cardinal Schönborn added: “The days of cover up are over.” Cardinal Schönborn’s unprecedented comments could well be seen as an attempt to defend Pope Benedict, arguing that it was not he but rather other senior church figures, in particular “prime minister” Sodano, who so manifestly mishandled the sex abuse crisis during the last decade of the pontificate of the ailing John Paul II. http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/world/2010/0510/1224270048664.html
Archbishop of Vienna accuses one of Pope’s closest aides of abuse cover-up From The Times May 10, 2010 Richard Owen, Rome Open warfare broke out in the Vatican over the clerical sex abuse scandal at the weekend as Cardinal Christoph Schönborn, the Archbishop of Vienna, accused one of Pope Benedict XVI’s closest aides of covering up past scandals. Cardinal Schönborn, 65, seen as a possible future Pope, accused Cardinal Angelo Sodano, 82, the former Vatican Secretary of State (Prime Minister), of having blocked investigations into sex abuse crimes committed by his predecessor in Vienna, the late Cardinal Hans Hermann Groer. Http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/europe/article7121062.ece#cid=OTC-RSS&attr=797093
Ex-priest accused in Denver – Civil suit filed against former Hawaii priest for sex assault of teen 4/22/10 A former Roman Catholic priest who was sentenced to 20 years in prison in 2000 for sexually abusing a 13-year-old O’ahu boy is at the center of a civil lawsuit filed yesterday in Denver, Colo. The lawsuit alleges Mark Matson repeatedly assaulted a 15-year old boy while the teen was attending St. Andrews Seminary in Denver in 1976. The lawsuit was filed on behalf of the former student, identified only as “John Doe,” who is now 49 years old and a resident of the Denver area. The complaint contends that when the student confronted Matson about a series of sexual assaults, the priest claimed to have found marijuana in the boy’s belongings and had him expelled from the Denver seminary. http://www.honoluluadvertiser.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/201004211622/BREAKING01/100421055

German bishop ‘who beat orphans’ resigns From Times Online April 22, 2010 Roger Boyes, Berlin The resignation of the conservative Bishop of Augsburg – accused of thrashing orphans with a carpet beater – has given a powerful boost to reformers in the German Catholic Church who are trying to stop the mass desertion of believers. It took almost three weeks to persuade the controversial bishop, Walter Mixa, 68, to step down and restore the credibility of the Church as it attempts to tackle and contain the growing scandal of physical and sexual abuse of children in its care. The bishop is a close ally of Pope Benedict XVI and he had evidently counted on papal support as he stood firm against claims from at least six former pupils at a Catholic-run orphanage in Bavaria. http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/faith/article7104574.ece

New Lawsuit Shows Letters to Vatican on Sexual Abuse Earlier Than Previously Thought By LAURIE GOODSTEIN April 22, 2010 Documents released in a lawsuit filed Thursday against Pope Benedict XVI show that the Vatican was informed more than a year earlier than previously thought about the case of a priest who molested deaf boys for two decades at a boarding school in Wisconsin. One victim of the priest wrote two letters to the Vatican’s secretary of state in 1995 asking Pope John Paul II himself to read his anguished letters and “excommunicate” the priest, the Rev. Lawrence Murphy.
Father Murphy, who died in 1998, admitted to a psychologist hired by the Archdiocese of Milwaukee that he had molested 34 children when he worked at St. John’s School for the Deaf in St. Francis, Wis., from 1952 to 1974. Church officials concluded that there might have been as many as 200 victims. The Vatican had previously said that the first notice it had about Father Murphy was when Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger — now Pope Benedict XVI — received a letter about the case in 1996 from Archbishop Rembert G. Weakland of Milwaukee.
The letter writer, whose name was excised, is now the unnamed plaintiff in the latest lawsuit filed by Jeffrey Anderson, a lawyer who has brought hundreds of sexual abuse cases against the Roman Catholic Church. The victim said he never received a response. What makes this lawsuit unusual is that it names as defendants Pope Benedict; the Vatican’s current secretary of state, Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone; a former secretary of state, Cardinal Angelo Sodano; and the Holy See. http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/23/us/23priest.html

Pride and wickedness Embattled and arrogant to the last, a Colombian cardinal implicates Pope John Paul II in the cover-up Austen Ivereigh 21 April 2010 ….Cardinal Castrillón was no ordinary official. From 1996 to 2006, he headed the Congregation for the Clergy in Rome, the department which safeguards the interests and rights of priests. In September 2001, he wrote to a French bishop to praise him for refusing to turn over an abusive priest to the police. The letter could not have been clearer or more damning. “I congratulate you for not denouncing a priest to the civil administration,” the Colombian wrote to Bishop Pierre Pican of Bayeux-Lisieux. “You have acted well and I am pleased to have a colleague in the episcopate who, in the eyes of history and of all other bishops in the world, preferred prison to denouncing his son and priest.” The last was a reference to the fact that Bishop Pican had received a suspended three-month sentence for refusing to report the crimes of Fr René Bissey, claiming that to do so would have violated the confessional (in fact, he had learned of the abuse from one of the victim’s mothers). Nor, when Cardinal Castrillón wrote the letter, could he have been in any doubt about the priest’s guilt. He had been jailed the year before for 18 years for the sexual abuse of 11 boys. http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/belief/2010/apr/21/religion-castrillon-coverup-johnpaul2

The Man Who Sued the Pope Houston’s Daniel Shea thinks Joseph Ratzinger has a lot to answer for if he’d talk. By John Nova Lomax Apr 22 2010
Five years ago, Houston attorney/theologian Daniel Shea watched the results of the papal conclave at home. Intellectually, he knew what the dirty-gray smoke puffing out of the Sistine Chapel’s chimney signaled: that Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger would soon be announced as the new Supreme Pontiff of the Roman Catholic Church. Now, as the white-haired Pope battles a seemingly endless series of priestly sex scandals, Shea says he is still trying to get his head around his belief that he and his co-counsel Tahira Khan Merritt set the coronation in motion when they filed a Houston-based sex abuse lawsuit against Ratzinger. According to Shea, the cardinals elected Ratzinger Pope to give him the immunity that would enable him to avoid answering any questions concerning his knowledge about and handling of sex abuse cases in Houston’s St. Francis De Sales church in the mid-1990s….

In Doe et al v. Roman Catholic Diocese of Galveston-Houston et al, Shea and Khan Merritt allege that a letter then-Cardinal Ratzinger sent to every Catholic bishop on May 18, 2001, constituted an international conspiracy to obstruct justice. This official Vatican document Ratzinger penned in his role as prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith dealt with official church procedure in dealing with clerical sex abuse cases. Not only did this letter contain the cardinal’s current thinking on the subject, it also cited in a footnote a top-secret 1962 Vatican document Shea would eventually flush out.
This 48-year-old document, informally known as Crimen Sollicitationis, considered a smoking gun in some quarters, contains written orders from the Vatican laying bare a system for protecting child molesters. To Shea, Crimen is more than a smoking gun, it is “a nuclear bomb.”
Many churchmen disagree as to the true meaning of Crimen. Still, it’s easy to interpret that, taken together, Crimen and Ratzinger’s letter of May 18 make it plain that Ratzinger wanted these cases handled by the Vatican and only the Vatican. According to Ratzinger’s letter, the roles “of judge, promoter of justice, notary and legal representative can validly be performed for these cases only by priests.” Furthermore, the letter was co-signed by Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, who later went on the record as follows: “In my opinion, the demand that a bishop be obligated to contact the police in order to denounce a priest who has admitted the offense of pedophilia is unfounded.”
The letter ordered everyone involved in these cases to keep the evidence confidential for ten years after the victims reached adulthood. The entire proceedings were to be held under “pontifical secret,” meaning those who broke the silence to outside authorities could be excommunicated….
In fact, Shea believes that what he started with the lawsuit may eventually result in the destruction of the entire Roman Catholic Church….In response to Ratzinger’s sending that letter, Shea and the Texas Secretary of State had already served his Vatican office with papers. The cardinal was scheduled to appear in federal Judge Lee Rosenthal’s Houston courtroom.
What’s more, the Pope would be giving his deposition to Shea, who is not just a tough plaintiff’s lawyer, but also a former Catholic deacon with three postgraduate theological degrees — one of them pontifical — from the University of Louvain, one of the oldest Catholic universities in Europe.
“I don’t think they were too pleased by that prospect,” Shea says.
But now that he had been made Pope, it would be a cold day in hell before Joseph Ratzinger would darken the Rusk Street doorway of Rosenthal’s court. As a newly minted head of state, Pope Benedict XVI was now diplomatically immune to American lawsuits. Again, Shea believes that was the whole point behind Ratzinger’s election. http://www.houstonpress.com/2010-04-22/news/the-man-who-sued-the-pope/

Belgium’s Catholic bishop of Bruges quits over abuse 4/23/10 The bishop of the Belgian city of Bruges, Roger Vangheluwe, has resigned after admitting sexual abuse of a boy earlier in his career.
Bishop Vangheluwe, 73, said the abuse had happened when he was a simple priest and continued when he started as a bishop, a Vatican statement said. The Vatican said Pope Benedict XVI had accepted the resignation. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/8639253.stm

Movie: All God’s Children – Through the eyes of three families, All God’s Children tells the personal story of the first boarding school for children of missionaries to be investigated for abuse at the hands of the parents’ missionary colleagues. The survivors and parents share their journey of seeking justice, redemption and healing. The Beardslee, Shellrude and Darr families left North America for West Africa during the 1950s. They followed what they believed to be “God’s Calling” – to spread Christianity throughout the world. Their children however – starting at the age of 6 – were required to attend the boarding school in Mamou, Guinea, run by the Christian and Missionary Alliance. Cut off from their families for 9 months out of the year and without any reliable means of communication, the children quietly suffered emotional, spiritual, physical and/or sexual abuse at the hands of the all-missionary staff. It took the children decades to acknowledge the effects the abuses had on their lives. When they finally dared to break the silence and speak out, the Church denied all allegations and refused to help. But through years of persistent activism the survivors and their parents finally compelled the Christian and Missionary Alliance to conduct an investigation and acknowledge the abuses. The healing could begin. http://www.allgodschildrenthefilm.com/The_Film.htm

Church scandal’s next wave: Abused girls Expect numbers of women victimized by priests as children to rise over next few years, say lawyers Apr 24 2010 By Mary Ormsby….But London-based lawyer Robert Talach, who represented McLauchlin and other Sylvestre victims, expects that male-female ratio to change within five to 10 years to reflect a trend that began in the 1970s when the church welcomed female altar servers. Researchers say disclosure of abuse is typically delayed for about 30 years, which means women assaulted as children are just starting to come to terms with what happened. “In some of our Sylvestre cases, which are (from) the `70s, many of the women were victimized under the pretenses of `I’m training you to be one of these new, upcoming female altar servers,'” said Talach, who has represented more than 100 victims of clergy abuse, most of them male…..Father Donald Holmes, a modern cleric who rode a motorcycle, sported a beard, played hockey and preferred street clothes to his Roman collar, also preyed on girls as they began taking bigger roles in the church. He was convicted in 2002 of sexually abusing 12 girls around the Sudbury area between 1972 and 1984. In general, girls in Canada are four times more likely than boys to be victims of sexual offences, according to police figures reported to Stats Canada. Females are more likely to be attractive to clergy because the majority of priests are heterosexual – but some are psychologically and sexually immature, says former priest-turned-lawyer Patrick Wall.
“If they’re going to explore sexually, they’re going to explore with a little girl,” said Wall, a California-based expert on Catholic clergy abuse who now works with victims. Wall’s perspective on the degree of female abuse is unique. He was a Benedictine monk for 12 years, working as a “fixer” dispatched to tidy up messy sexual problems of priests and laymen at troubled parishes and schools. He said when a girl required surgery after rape, the code was that she needed a “hernia” operation.
In a bizarre twinning, he counselled accused priests and heard confessions from traumatized victims. He also worked on cases where priests impregnated girls then procured abortions for them. “That is so prevalent, it happens all the time,” he said of the abortion runs, which in part accounts for his belief that teenaged girls are the silent majority of priest-related sexual abuse. By age 33, Wall deduced most, if not all, of the 195 parishes and hundreds of religious orders in the U.S. employed “fixers” like him to wipe down crime scenes that involved children. He quit religious life in disgust and scoffs at the Vatican’s pledge to better protect boys and girls from its surpliced predators. http://www.thestar.com/news/gta/article/800312–church-scandal-s-next-wave-abused-girls

Book focuses on abuse by priest by ERICA BAJER, QMI AGENCY A new book about a clergy sexual abuse scandal that rocked southwestern Ontario carries a message of hope, the author said Tuesday. “The message is the important thing,” Jim Gilbert said during the launch of Breach of Faith, Breach of Trust: The Story of Lou Ann Soontiens, Father Charles Sylvestre and Sexual Abuse within the Catholic Church….The pedophile priest was convicted in 2006 of molesting 47 girls over four decades in churches in Chatham, Pain Court, London, Sarnia and Windsor. Sylvestre served in Port Dover from 1965 to 1968. None of the incidents are connected to his time at St. Cecilia’s church. The 84-year-old was sentenced to three years behind bars. He died less than six months later. http://www.simcoereformer.ca/ArticleDisplay.aspx?e=2585245
Church in Mexico relieves priest of duties years after woman alleges abuse By N.C. Aizenman Washington Post Staff Writer April 27, 2010 Roman Catholic Church officials in Mexico have temporarily relieved a priest of his parish duties pending further investigation of long-standing allegations that he sexually abused a girl in San Francisco during the 1960s and early 1970s, according to a press release issued Monday in Spanish by the Archdiocese of Yucatan. The priest, the Rev. Teodoro Baquedano Pech, 70, who has denied engaging in abuse, had been ministering in several rural hamlets near Yucatan’s state capital, Merida. A recent Washington Post article described how for 12 years Baquedano’s alleged victim, Sylvia Chavez, now 54, and top church officials in San Francisco repeatedly warned church leaders in Yucatan about the priest. In 2003 a top deputy of Emilio Carlos Berlie Belaunzarán, the archbishop of Yucatan, responded in a letter that “we have taken all precautions to restrict Father Baquedano’s access to children.” Baquedano was never removed from ministry, however. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/04/26/AR2010042604261.html

Child sex `no breach of virtue’, some priests believe STEPHEN LUNN The Australian April 28, 2010 SOME priests didn’t see the molestation of boys as a breach of their celibacy vows, retired Catholic bishop Geoffrey Robinson says. The former auxiliary bishop of Sydney blames the absence of women from church life as a catalyst for the sexual abuse crisis enveloping the faith. In an interview with The Australian Women’s Weekly, Bishop Robinson says boys suffered more than girls at the hands of pedophile priests partly because they were more available to them, with nuns tending to play a greater role in the religious education of young girls. There was also a view among some offenders with whom he had worked that a priest’s celibacy vows weren’t broken if a boy was involved. http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/nation/child-sex-no-breach-of-virtue-some-priests-believe/story-e6frg6nf-1225859084751

Pedophile priest flees back to Ireland, where he is a free man By NIALL O’DOWD IrishCentral.com Publisher 4/27/10 Notorious pedophile priest Father Oliver O’Grady is back in his old haunts in Ireland a free man after fleeing Rotterdam in Holland, where it was discovered that he was working with children and in a local Catholic church, calling himself “Brother Francis.” O’Grady abused hundreds of children during his thirty years in America as a priest. One victim was only nine months old. He served seven years out of a 14-year prison sentence before being deported to Ireland in 2003. O’Grady was unmasked in Holland a few weeks ago after a 2006 documentary called “Deliver us from Evil” was finally shown in the country. The documentary is based on his activities while in America and the priest was immediately recognized….Local police in Ireland say they can do nothing, as O’Grady has not committed any crime since he was deported from America in 2003. He is due to receive a large retirement benefit from the church when he turns 65 in June, according to Berg. http://www.irishcentral.com/news/Pedophile-priest-flees-back-to-Ireland-where-he-is-a-free-man-92147629.html
California Church Cover-up? Allegations Los Angeles Cardinal Mahony Knew Of Priest’s Abuse
By chris oregan LOS ANGELES, April 23, 2002 (CBS) When victims of a California priest were awarded $30 million in 1998, it was the largest judgment ever against the Catholic Church. And, for the first time in a priest abuse case, a cardinal, Roger Mahony, testified. “I felt like he lied to us,” said juror Mary Park. He told Park and other jurors that when he was Bishop of Stockton, he didn’t know Father Oliver O’Grady was a molester. Mahony transferred the priest weeks after a police investigation. He claimed he never read the secret file his diocese kept which contained O’Grady’s confession. “We asked each other, ‘Did you think he was telling the truth?’ And the greatest majority of us felt he wasn’t being honest with us, that he was still covering up,” said Park. In 1991, evidence surfaced connecting Mahony and his predecessors to the cover up of the Rita Milla case. When she was a teenager, a priest told her: he had a secret. “He just leaned over and kissed me,” said Milla. In time, she says Father Santiago Tamayo forced her to have sex with him and other priests. “It was seven priests. It didn’t stop until I got pregnant,” she said….But, reports CBS News Correspondent Vince Gonzales, when they did nothing she decided to sue. The priests fled and the archdiocese said it didn’t know where they went. The story might have ended there, but seven years later, Father Tamayo, plagued by guilt, came back and confessed. He’d kept letters showing the Church knew he was in the Philippines and paid him to stay there. http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2002/04/23/eveningnews/main507039.shtml
US cardinal ignored pedophilic priest 29 Apr 2010 A recently uncovered statement reveals that a US cardinal kept silent after learning that a California priest had molested a boy 15 years ago. Former archbishop of San Francisco, Cardinal William Levada, talked about the case in a 2005 deposition obtained by The Associated Press. Levada decided not to remove the Rev. Milton Walsh from the ministry after learning he had molested a 13-year-old boy. The cardinal said that he did not contact police because he trusted Walsh would not reoffend. When Levada learned of the abuse, Walsh had been pastor for six years at St. Mary’s Cathedral in San Francisco. Walsh remained there for two more years and was removed from active ministry in 2002, when US bishops passed a “zero tolerance” policy on sex abuse and police started investigating. Levada is currently the highest-ranking American at the Vatican and head of the office that defrocks pedophile priests. http://www.presstv.ir/detail.aspx?id=124832&sectionid=3510203
Vicar arrested over sex abuse From correspondents in Riga from: AFP April 30, 2010 A FORMER Catholic priest who converted to Protestantism and two other men have been arrested in Latvia for allegedly sexually abusing children. The three suspects were friends and exchanged information to help each other find victims throughout the Baltic country, police spokesman Toms Sadovskis says. They preyed on orphans or boys from dysfunctional families in a string of abuse cases going back at least five years, Mr Sadovskis alleged today. “Some of the victims were mentally challenged.” http://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/news/breaking-news/vicar-arrested-over-sex-abuse/story-e6freuyi-1225860429388
Top Scientologist ‘covered up sex abuse’ By Steve Cannane May 20, 2010 A senior figure in the Church of Scientology has been accused of trying to cover up the sexual assault of an 11-year-old girl in Sydney. In an exclusive interview for ABC1’s Lateline program, a former member of the Church of Scientology says she was coached by a senior figure in the church to lie to police about the abuse at the hands of her stepfather….Ms Rainer says it was indoctrination that led her to agree to protect the Church of Scientology instead of her daughter – an act that has lead to a strained relationship. “It would be hard for an outsider to understand why it would be done, but you are so totally brainwashed by their beliefs and then you get told that if you go this particular way you will lose everything, you will lose your future,” she said. Carmen Rainer has now made a statement to police outlining the allegations against Ms Eastgate and police are investigating the matter. The Church of Scientology said in a statement the allegations were untrue and defamatory. http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2010/05/20/2904503.htm
Rescuing girls from sex slavery By Ebonne Ruffins, CNN April 30, 2010 Kathmandu, Nepal (CNN) ….By raiding brothels, patrolling the India-Nepal border and providing safe shelter and support services, Koirala and Maiti Nepal have helped rescue and rehabilitate more than 12,000 Nepali women and girls since 1993. According to the U.S. State Department, some 10,000 to 15,000 women and girls from Nepal are trafficked to India and then sexually exploited each year. http://www.cnn.com/2010/LIVING/04/29/cnnheroes.koirala.nepal/
Democracy Now – Attorney Uncovers Docs Implicating Vatican in Sexual Abuse Coverup 4/29/10 We speak with St. Paul-based attorney Jeff Anderson, who has filed hundreds of lawsuits alleging sexual abuse by priests and bishops since 1983. He filed a lawsuit last week against the Vatican in a Milwaukee court and wants the Church to release any files it has on sexual abuse cases involving priests. It was his discovery of previously undisclosed documents that fueled the latest wave of accusations leading all the way up to the Vatican….
AMY GOODMAN: How did you get involved with this case?
JEFF ANDERSON: Well, this case is one of many we have been working on for twenty-five years. In the case involving Lawrence Murphy, in particular, the documents came to us in forced discovery as a result of suits we brought some years ago. And these are documents that were just revealed to us.
In the case brought in Milwaukee, which is one of many that have been brought across the country, what we’re learning, and what we have known to be the case for twenty-five years, is that all roads are leading to Rome, that the decisions are made at the top of the pyramid by the Vatican. What we know is that the documentary trails that are being revealed are showing that, just like Lawrence Murphy and Archbishop Weakland covering up locally, they’re doing so under directions from Rome, from the pontiff, from the Pope and his predecessor….
JEFF ANDERSON: Well, I think the latest wave of allegations coming to the fore that are right now on the stream of public consciousness in the US and worldwide is really an accumulation of information that has come to us and the survivors working with us and others through the lawsuits brought that have revealed documents and patterns and practices that have shown that, time and time again, not tens or dozens of times, but hundreds and thousands of times, when a priest offends, they are required by their superiors, from the bishop to the Vatican, to keep that secret. And that’s under protocols and laws developed by the pontiff, by the Vatican, that says, “We are required to avoid scandal, to protect the reputation of the Church, and in so doing, are embedded with an ethos, a norm, that says we move the priest, avoid scandal, do not report it to anybody outside a clerical culture, and continue to meet, move and protect the priest without regard to the well-being of the children.” And that’s why we see so many priests being recycled by so many bishops worldwide, because the Vatican requires them to make a vow of silence, to make a promise of secrecy, and to be absolutely obedient to the protocols of Vatican issues. https://www.democracynow.org/2010/4/29/attorney_uncovers_docs_implicating_vatican_in

Catholics returned convicted priest to Sierra Leone where he had preyed on boys Carley Petesch and Michelle Faul, The Associated Press 6/05/2010 MAKANKA, Sierra Leone – A rutted red dirt track leads to the “bar,” a couple of homemade wood benches in the shade of an old tree dripping with wild mangoes. Within easy reach, there’s a yellow plastic jerry can of the fiery palm wine the American priest loved.
A 40-year-old schoolteacher now charges that Rev. James Tully gave the palm wine to teenage boys to make them more susceptible to his advances. This faraway corner of West Africa — with no electricity or piped water — is where the Roman Catholic Church sent Tully, twice. The teacher told The Associated Press that Tully abused him and other boys repeatedly during his first stint in Sierra Leone, from 1979 to 1985. After a conviction in the U.S. for giving minors alcohol and groping them, the church sent Tully back to Sierra Leone for a second stint from 1994 to 1998. Tully’s story is an example of how the church transferred abusive priests from country to country, in a scandal now emerging worldwide. But it also shows the deep reluctance to come out against a Catholic priest in many parts of Africa. http://www.winnipegfreepress.com/life/home_family/catholics-returned-convicted-priest-to-sierra-leone-where-he-had-preyed-on-boys-92999779.html

Victims of sex abuse in Catholic children’s homes set to win damages ‘Vulnerable’ claimant showed ‘incredible endurance’ in pursuing group’s case for 21 years to its conclusion at the high court Jamie Doward The Observer, Sunday 9 May 2010 One of the longest-running legal cases in UK history, centred on systemic sexual abuse at children’s homes in the north-west of England, is poised to end after a judge found in favour of two men who claimed they had been sexually assaulted while in care. A judgment handed down in the high court on Friday determined that the men had been abused while in the care of the Nugent Care Society, formerly Catholic Social Services, in Liverpool. It also cast doubt on the testimony by two former staff members at the homes who had denied the men’s claims. The allegations centred on sexual abuse between 1968 and 1982 at two children’s homes for juvenile offenders, St Aidan’s and St Vincent’s, both in Liverpool, which have now closed. The homes became notorious following high-profile court cases in the mid-1990s that resulted in criminal convictions for a number of paedophiles who had worked at them. http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2010/may/09/child-sex-abuse-church-victim

Settlement in 26 Vermont priest sex abuse cases AP Lisa Rathke, Associated Press Writer – May 13, 2010 MONTPELIER, Vt. – Dozens of former altar boys who sued Vermont’s Catholic church over allegations of sexual abuse by priests 30 years ago will share in a nearly $18 million settlement of their cases. The attorney for the 26 plaintiffs and the bishop of the statewide Diocese of Burlington said Thursday they were pleased by the settlement, but both acknowledged that the cases had been difficult for the victims….The lawsuits accused the diocese of negligent hiring, and many of the cases centered on the defrocked Rev. Edward Paquette, who was the target of allegations before he transferred to Vermont in the mid-1970s. Paquette had worked in parishes in Rutland and Montpelier and in Christ the King Church in Burlington, and he was accused of molesting dozens of altar boys. The diocese didn’t dispute that the molestations occurred. The 80-year-old priest recently told the Burlington Free Press newspaper he was sorry for his actions and prays daily for the families of the people he harmed. http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100514/ap_on_re_us/us_priest_sex_abuse

describes abuse Four followers of accused cult leader convicted of child abuse – Ultra-Orthodox cult leader Elior Chen and his followers allegedly used knives and hammers to abuse children as young as 3 and 4 years old. By Nir Hasson 5-12-10 The Jerusalem District Court convicted four disciples of accused cult leader Elior Chen of child abuse on Wednesday. Elior Chen was the spiritual leader of an ultra-Orthodox Jerusalem sect suspected of severe child abuse. Chen and several of his followers allegedly used knives, hammers and other instruments to abuse children as young as 3 and 4 years old in the West Bank settlement of Beitar Illit in February and March 2008. The four convicted followers were accused of 22 charges stemming from 40 instances of child abuse. http://www.haaretz.com/news/national/four-followers-of-accused-cult-leader-convicted-of-child-abuse-1.289898
Rabbi Sentenced 32 Years For Sexually Abusing Teen (WPIX) http://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=GvyB5ZzntAQ

joel engleman, Rabbi Baruch Lebovits (WPIX) http://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=pQ3x98Zp7h8&NR=1

More sex allegations hit Roman Polanski By AFP, Vancouver Sun May 14, 2010 Fugitive film-maker Roman Polanski was hit by fresh allegations of sexual misconduct Friday by a woman who claims the director “forced himself” upon her just after her 16th birthday in 1982. Polanski, who is fighting extradition to the United States to face sentencing in his 1978 child sex case, was accused by British actress Charlotte Lewis of sexually abusing her at his apartment in Paris nearly 30 years ago.
In a press conference at the Beverly Hills offices of prominent attorney Gloria Allred, Lewis, 42, said she was speaking out to refute suggestions from Polanski’s legal team that his earlier case was an isolated incident. “I am also a victim of Roman Polanski. He sexually abused me in the worst possible way when I was just 16-years-old, four years after he fled the United States to avoid sentencing for his crimes,” Lewis said in a prepared statement.
Allred said Lewis had given statements to Los Angeles police and prosecutors about the incident which she hoped would be taken into consideration if Polanski was extradited back to the United States for sentencing. “It is very important that the District Attorney and the Swiss authorities are armed with this information as they decide Mr Polanski’s fate,” said Lewis, who had a minor role in Polanski’s 1986 period flop “Pirates.”
“Mr Polanski knew I was only 16 years old when he met me and forced himself upon me in his apartment in Paris. He took advantage of me and I have lived with the effects of his behavior ever since it occurred.” http://www.calgaryherald.com/entertainment/More+allegations+Roman+Polanski/3029260/story.html
The files that damn Roman Polanski: Court account of what director REALLY did to a girl, 13 By Glenys Roberts 20th May 2010….This extraordinary attempt to influence the authorities follows a high-profile campaign by the 76-year-old director’s many show business friends. Polanski’s 44-year-old wife, actress Emmanuelle Seigner, has marshalled all her associates to his defence, while more than 100 stars have signed a petition for his release, including directors Martin Scorsese and Woody Allen (who, coincidentally, has granted a part in his new film to President Sarkozy’s wife, Carla Bruni)…..

This week, the campaign was rather dented by accusations from actress Charlotte Lewis, who claimed Polanski had ‘sexually abused’ her in 1983 when she was only 16 after plying her with Moet & Chandon champagne. Lewis, who is now helping Los Angeles prosecutors, alleges he told her: ‘I must sleep with every actress that I work with.’ No doubt Polanski’s supporters will dismiss Lewis’s story as irrelevant, but together with the case of Samantha Geimer, many will feel these latest accusations suggest a disturbing pattern of behaviour involving drink, teenage girls and sex. Would Polanski’s cheerleaders be quite so vocal in his defence if they knew exactly what happened that afternoon in 1977 with 13-year-old Samantha? The Mail has obtained Polanski’s probation officer’s report – an extraordinarily revealing document which records in grim and forensic detail how the then 43-year-old went about seducing a girl 30 years his junior with the aid of a good deal of alcohol and a drug that would have rendered her almost incapable of resisting….

The 28-page probation report was prepared for this sentencing – court case A334139, ‘The people of the state of California vs Roman Raymond Polanski’ – and was put together during the six weeks that the director was in Chino jail for psychiatric assessment. It reveals that far from the crime being an impromptu lapse, as his supporters argue, Polanski carried out not just one, but a succession of sexual assaults against Samantha – and that he knew exactly what he was doing throughout….That night, Samantha poured out her story to her 17-year-old boyfriend who had come over to see her. Her mother overheard their conversation and called the police. Polanski had no defence. The girl was taken to a local hospital, where a medical examination established without doubt that sex had taken place. http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-1279787/The-files-damn-Roman-Polanski-Court-account-director-really-did-girl-13.html

ABC News Investigation: USA Swimming Coaches Molested, Secretly Taped Dozens of Teen Swimmers Olympic Governing Body Under Fire; 36 Swim Coaches Banned for Life Because of Sexual Misconduct with Teens By MEGAN CHUCHMACH and AVNI PATEL Apr. 9, 2010 In a sex abuse scandal that some victims compare to what happened in the Catholic Church, at least 36 swimming coaches have been banned for life by the USA Swimming organization over the last 10 years because of sexual misconduct. The coaches have molested, fondled and abused dozens of swimmers, according to court records and interviews conducted by ABC News for reports Friday on “World News with Diane Sawyer” and “20/20.”One coach….was sentenced in 2008 to 33 years in federal prison. His attorney Gregg Stark did not return repeated requests for comment….

A San Jose swimming coach, Andy King, 62, was sentenced to 40 years in prison last year after authorities discovered a pattern of sexual abuse that stretched over three decades up and down the West Coast and involved more than a dozen teen female victims. “He was a monster,” said Santa Clara County prosecutor Ray Mendoza. “He had almost every conceivable sex act,” he said. Mendoza said King would move out of town once parents or police began asking questions and was stopped only after a 14-year old girl in San Jose complained to her youth pastor….In 2008, USA Swimming gave King a clean bill of health, saying his background screening had been approved. “Congratulations,” read the letter. “Your background screening has been thoroughly reviewed and meets the qualification standards set by USA Swimming.” According to USA Swimming, the organization only checks for criminal convictions and does not include background interviews or investigations with local police. “It was willfully incomplete,” said Bob Allard, a lawyer for families now suing USA Swimming. “A simple phone call to Oak Harbor, his prior stop, or to the East Bay would have revealed much about this man’s propensity to abuse and molest kids.” Police later documented at least 15 victims among the teenage girl swimmers he coached over the years, including a woman who said she had an abortion after King got her pregnant at the age of 14.
http://abcnews.go.com/Blotter/abc-news-investigation-usa-swimming-coaches-raped-molested/story?id=10322469

Teen Sold as Sex Slave on Craigslist – Experts say 100,000 children in the U.S. are sold for sex every day. KTLA News May 11, 2010 LOS ANGELES — According to Congressional estimates, every day in our country 100,000 children are being sold for sex. Enterprising pimps prey on young girls, and turn them into sex slaves. http://www.ktla.com/news/extras/ktla-sex-slaves-sweeps,0,3561067.story
UK police arrest 17 over alleged child smuggling ring 9 April 2010 Seventeen people suspected of helping to smuggle children into Britain for crime have been arrested in Romania. About 300 police officers, including 20 from the Metropolitan Police, carried out searches at homes in the south-east Romanian town of Tandarei. Thirty people were questioned on suspicion of taking 168 Roma (Gypsy) children to Britain for “criminal activities”, Romanian police said. Pistols, hunting rifles and money were seized, and 17 people were arrested. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/8610412.stm

Secret Boy Scout files document flawed history of child-protection in Oregon May 22, 2010 By LES ZAITZ and NICOLE DUNGCA When a parent heard that William E. Tobiassen, a longtime Scout leader in Corvallis, was sexually abusing one of his troop members, she alerted Scout officials. Nothing changed. For two more years, Tobiassen, an insurance agent with sons of his own, abused the boy. The abuse was exposed only when the teenager told a counselor and then police what had happened. Even then, internal memos show, the Scouts executive overseeing Tobiassen didn’t want to ban him from Scouting until there were formal charges.
The episode from 1984 wasn’t the only instance when Oregon Scout leaders failed to act on trouble in their ranks. Secret files obtained by The Oregonian from 1971 to 1991 contain no record that Scout leaders alerted authorities to adults suspected of child abuse in at least 11 instances in Oregon….Scout leaders insist they take appropriate measures to protect children. A Portland jury recently concluded otherwise. In that case, jurors considered 1,000 confidential Scout files from 1965 to 1985 to judge the Scouts’ liability. Only once before in the country has a jury seen such files, but never before in the volume or unrestricted form provided Portland jurors. The jury subsequently awarded Kerry Lewis $18.5 million to punish the Scouts for abuse he suffered at the hands of a Scout leader. But the award also was meant to jolt the Scouts. “We were trying to send a message,” said Margaret Ormsbee, one of the jurors. “It seemed to most of us they were putting their PR and reputation above children’s safety.” http://www.oregonlive.com/news/index.ssf/2010/05/secret_boy_scout_files_documen.html

$18.5 Million in Liability for Scouts in Abuse Case By WILLIAM YARDLEY April 23, 2010 PORTLAND, Ore. — The Boy Scouts of America were ordered Friday to pay $18.5 million in a lawsuit that has focused new attention on the secret files the Scouts keep to document claims of sexual abuse by troop leaders and volunteers….In Multnomah County Circuit Court on Friday, a jury found the Scouts liable for $18.5 million in punitive damages in a case brought by a man who was sexually abused by an assistant troop leader in the early 1980s, when the man was about 12. The verdict was by far the largest ever against the Scouts in a jury trial. The jury could have ordered the Scouts to pay up to $25 million. The same jury last week awarded the man, Kerry Lewis, $1.4 million in compensatory damages….

In the Oregon case, about 1,000 files, from the years 1965 to 1984, were included as evidence, though the judge, John A. Wittmayer, allowed only the jury and lawyers involved to view them. Lawyers for Mr. Lewis, who is now 37, said in court that the files detailed many instances across the country in which troop leaders or volunteers were allowed to continue working with children even after the Scouts had received complaints that they had committed sexual abuse. “They hid the problem,” Paul Mones, a lawyer for Mr. Lewis, said in closing arguments on Thursday, “and by hiding the problem, more abuse happened.” In the Oregon case, a former assistant troop leader, Timur Dykes, had admitted to molesting Mr. Lewis. Evidence has shown that Mr. Dykes, who has since been convicted in child-molesting cases, was allowed to interact with scouts even after leaders learned he had abused children.
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/24/us/24scouts.html

$1.4 million awarded in Boy Scout abuse case William McCall, AP April 14, 2010 Portland, Ore. – A jury delivered an embarrassing rebuke to the Boy Scouts of America on Tuesday when it found that the organization failed to protect a man who was molested by an assistant scoutmaster in the early 1980s. Jurors awarded $1.4 million to the former Portland man and decided that the Irving, Texas-based organization was liable for up to $25 million in punitive damages to be decided in a separate phase of the trial. Over the first three weeks of testimony, secret Scout “perversion files” – records of known sex offenders – were used as evidence, though it’s unclear if jurors consulted the documents while deliberating over two days. http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2010/04/14/MNGR1CU7K1.DTL

Oregon jury finds Boy Scouts negligent in sex case By WILLIAM McCALL 4/13/10 PORTLAND, Ore. (AP) – Jurors on Tuesday found the Boy Scouts of America negligent and awarded $1.4 million to a former Portland man who was abused by an assistant Scoutmaster in the early 1980s, following a three-week trial in which secret Scout “perversion files” were used as evidence. The jury also decided the Irving, Texas-based Scouts organization was liable for punitive damages that will be decided in a separate phase of the trial. That would be in addition to the $1.4 million. The Scouts denied allegations of negligence and said the files actually helped them keep child molesters out of their ranks. Lawyers for Kerry Lewis, the victim who filed the lawsuit, argued the Boy Scouts organization was reckless for allowing former assistant Scoutmaster Timur Dykes to continue to associate with the victim’s Scout troop after Dykes acknowledged to a bishop for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints early in 1983 that he had molested 17 Boy Scouts. The church was the charter organization for an estimated third to one half of the Boy Scout troops in the nation in the 1980s.

The church settled its portion of the Portland case before trial, but the jury ordered it to pay 25 percent of the $1.4 million in noneconomic damages, or $350,000. The Boy Scouts of America must pay 60 percent, or $840,000, while its Cascade Pacific Council must pay 15 percent, or $210,000. Dykes was later convicted three times of various abuse charges involving boys and served time in prison. Shortly before trial, he admitted in a deposition to abusing Lewis….All lawyers in the case declined comment pending the second phase of the trial to determine whether to award $25 million in punitive damages. The case is set to resume April 20 and involves only the national Boy Scouts after the jury decided the Cascade Pacific Council was not liable for punitive damages. http://www.komonews.com/news/local/90768949.html

Follow the Prophet A controversial thriller about a young girl’s escape from a polygamy cult http://www.followtheprophetmovie.com/

Cardinal Hailed Bishop for Hiding Predator Priest: Report – By Tom Heneghan, Religion Editor April 15, 2010 VATICAN CITY (Reuters) – A Vatican cardinal in charge of clergy around the world congratulated a French bishop in a 2001 letter for not denouncing a sexually abusive priest to the police, according to a French website on Thursday. The letter posted by Golias, a critical lay Roman Catholic magazine based in Lyon, is the most explicit of a wave of recently published internal church documents in showing past Vatican encouragement to cover up sexual abuse by priests. In the letter dated Sept 8, 2001, Cardinal Dario Castrillon Hoyos backed French Bishop Pierre Pican’s decision not to denounce a priest who was later sentenced to 18 years in jail for repeated rape of a boy and sexual assaults on 10 others.
Under fire in recent weeks for its secretive handling of abuse cases, the Vatican has insisted the fact that other published documents did not explicitly instruct bishops to inform police of abuse did not prove it told them to hide it….Pican, who received a suspended three-month jail sentence for not denouncing sexual abuse of minors, admitted in court he had kept Rev. Rene Bissey in parish work despite the fact the priest had privately admitted committing pedophile acts. The case shocked France and prompted its bishops to declare that all abuse cases must be reported to civil authorities. “I congratulate you for not denouncing a priest to the civil administration,” Castrillon Hoyos said. “You have acted well and I am pleased to have a colleague in the episcopate who, in the eyes of history and of all other bishops in the world, preferred prison to denouncing his son and priest.” http://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory?id=10388243

Delaware pediatrician faces more sex charges By the CNN Wire Staff April 19, 2010 (CNN) – A Delaware pediatrician was indicted Wednesday on 58 additional counts of rape and other sexual offenses in the alleged child abuse of his patients, state Attorney General Beau Biden announced Monday. Dr. Earl Bradley, 56, previously pleaded not guilty to 471 felony counts involving 102 girls and one boy. Wednesday’s indictment — which includes charges of rape, unlawful sexual contact, continuous sexual abuse of a child and sexual exploitation — involves 24 girls he saw as patients from 1999 to 2009. Biden has said the charges are based on “video and digital evidence” seized from Bradley’s home and medical practice in December, when the doctor was arrested. http://www.cnn.com/2010/CRIME/04/19/doctor.sex.charges/index.html

Wikipedia founder tries to remove alleged kiddie porn, then gives up editorial privileges May 16, 2010 Paul Boutin [Update: Jimmy Wales tweeted me to say the change to his editorial status is ” A purely technical matter. I am not stepping down or pulling back from anything.”]….Fox News reports that Jimmy Wales, cofounder of do-it-yourself encyclopedia Wikipedia and a member of its board, has given up his administrative privileges on the site in response to a Wikipedia community backlash against his removal of thousands of images deemed pornographic by Fox last month….In April, Fox reported that Wikipedia cofounder Larry Sanger, who left the project in 2002, had sent a letter to the FBI specifying his concerns that at least two categories of the Wikimedia Commons archive — one for pedophilia and another for Japanese lolicon comics — contained dozens of images of child sexual abuse, in violation of Federal law. Wikimedia Commons is used to host images and videos displayed on Wikipedia….

Fox News claimed that Wikimedia officials did not respond to reporters’ requests for comment. That may have been a bad move. The brazenly conservative news agency went after the Wikimedia Foundation’s corporate sponsors, sending links to the controversial content to Microsoft, Google, Best Buy, the Ford Foundation, Yahoo, USA Networks and dozens of other companies and organizations. Last week, a purge of thousands of Wikpedia images still left Fox with plenty of pictures to wave around. Now, Fox claims, it turns out that Wales had unilaterally begun deleting images and recruiting other editors to assist him, against the wishes of other editors who felt the content was acceptable. Wales, whose personal page on Wikipedia speaks of “Doing The Right Thing,” allegedly began the purge himself despite opposition from many editors. http://venturebeat.com/2010/05/16/wikipedia-founder-gives-up-control-of-site-over-fox-news-kiddie-porn-scandal/

EXCLUSIVE: Shakeup at Wikipedia in Wake of Porn Purge By Jana Winter – FOXNews.com 5/14/10 updated on May 17, 2010 A shakeup is underway at the top levels of Wikipedia, FoxNews.com has learned, as administrators try to deal with the growing controversy surrounding pornographic images that appear on the online encyclopedia and its associated websites….On May 7, FoxNews.com reported exclusively that Wales had personally deleted many of the images from Wikimedia’s servers, and that he’d ordered that thousands more be purged. Now many of those images have been restored to their original web pages….
Several of those donors contacted the foundation to inquire about the thousands of images on Wikimedia’s servers that could be considered child pornography. There also are graphic photo images of male and female genitalia, men and women or groups of people involved in sexual acts, images of masturbation and other pornographic material – all of which can be viewed by children at most public schools, where students are encouraged to use Wikipedia as a source encyclopedia.
When the donors started calling, Wales immediately called on the sites’ editors to quickly purge any possibly obscene or pornographic content from the sites. This led to outrage among the sites’ many volunteer editors and administrators, who charged that Wales’ actions betrayed the essence of the open user-generated online encyclopedia.
One lengthy e-mail response read in part: “In essence, right now Jimbo is deleting things based on his singular judgment about what should be allowed.. This is a large change and lack of a clear policy creates a very confusing and frustrating environment for editors. (Multiple Commons admins have already stated their intention to resign and/or retire over this.)” But Wales defended his actions on the foundation listserve, writing: “Much of the cleanup is done, although there was so much hardcore pornography on commons that there’s still some left in nooks and crannies….”We were about to be smeared in all media as hosting hardcore pornography and doing nothing about it. Now, the correct storyline is that we are cleaning up. I’m proud to have made sure that storyline broke the way it did, and I’m sorry I had to step on some toes to make it happen.” http://www.foxnews.com/scitech/2010/05/14/exclusive-shake-wikipedia-porn-pressure/

EXCLUSIVE: Wikipedia’s Parent Company Starts Purging Porn From Its Websites By Jana Winter – FOXNews.com May 07, 2010 The parent company of the online encyclopedia Wikipedia is rapidly purging thousands of explicit pornographic images from its websites as it prepares to announce a new policy regarding sexually explicit content in response to reporting by FoxNews.com.
The move came as FoxNews.com was in the process of asking dozens of companies that have donated to Wikimedia Foundation — the umbrella group behind Wikimedia Commons and its Wiki projects, including Wikipedia — if they were aware of the extent of graphic and sexually explicit content on the sites. Among the donors to Wikimedia Commons who were contacted by FoxNews.com were Google, Microsoft’s Bing, Yahoo!, Open Society Institute, Ford Foundation, Best Buy, USA Networks and Craigslist Foundation.
These images were and in some cases still are easily accessible to anyone, including school children, many of whom receive unfiltered access to Wiki projects in schools across the country. A child doing homework research on the educational website could easily stumble upon pornographic photos – including close-ups of genitalia and people having sex and masturbating. There’s even a “nude children” category.

On Friday, Jimmy Wales, the president of the Wikimedia Foundation, acknowledged in a posting in the now defunct “sexual content” category:
“We have had a problem with images being placed into inappropriate categories, so that viewers were exposed in unexpected ways to sexual content. Image categorization should be done in such a way that readers are not exposed unexpectedly to content that may be offensive.” Wales wrote elsewhere – in the newly defunct “sexual content” category – that he expected the foundation to announce a change in policy in the coming days.
“I expect the board to issue a statement within a few days offering a general philosophical support for the serious enforcement of policy on this issue,” he wrote. “The Board normally does not get involved with detailed content decisions; I don’t expect that to change.”
Last week, FoxNews.com revealed that Wikipedia co-founder Larry Sanger had sent a letter to the FBI expressing his concerns that Wikimedia was distributing child pornography. The FBI has not commented on whether it will pursue an investigation. On Wednesday evening, Wales posted this note on Wikimedia Commons: “Wikimedia Commons admins [administrators allowed to edit the site, including Wales himself] who wish to remove from the project all images that are of little or no educational value but which appeal solely to prurient interests have my full support. This includes immediate deletion of all pornographic images. We should keep educational images about sexuality — mere nudity is not pornography — but as with all our projects, editorial quality judgments must be made and will be made — appropriately and in good taste….”
Immediately after, Wikimedia administrators started rapidly marking files for deletion, and the purging is going strong. Images tagged for deletion – though some were still viewable Friday afternoon – include pictures of men, women and young girls involved in a range of sex acts with each other and, in some cases, with animals.
A collection by one user — “Images of Stan Spanker” included at least 50 close-up photographs, many of which were too graphic to discuss. Some involved the combined use of children’s toys and/or household products and female genitalia. The category was scrubbed from the site on May 6. The images had been online since January or earlier. Numerous other categories have been entirely removed without a trace. Categories of images taken from the sites of adult entertainment companies – and from their awards shows – have been marked for deletion. Wales himself marked hundreds of images for deletion, all of which involved graphic images of sex acts.
Still, as of Friday afternoon, dozens of categories of explicit sexual images remained on Wikimedia with no indication that they had been marked for deletion. http://www.foxnews.com/scitech/2010/05/07/wikipedia-purges-porn/

Wikipedia Purges Porn Following Reports of Child Porn by Ryan Fleming May 10, 2010 Wikipedia has begun to remove any potentially pornographic images from the website after Fox News began to warn donors of explicit content. After discovering instances of pornographic material, Fox News has contacted donors of Wikipedia and warned them that there is explicit content on the website. The FBI has been contacted as well.
Since Fox’s report, Wikipedia has begun to purge thousands of images from its website. The report from Fox cited several topics that included pornographic materials, including one search for “nude children”, which led them to pictures of child pornography. “We have had a problem with images being placed into inappropriate categories, so that viewers were exposed in unexpected ways to sexual content,” Jimmy Wales, President of the Wikimedia Foundation, the parent company of Wikipedia acknowledged in an open letter posted to the “sexual content” category. “Image categorization should be done in such a way that readers are not exposed unexpectedly to content that may be offensive.”
The purge began after Fox News began to contact donors to Wikimedia- donors that include Yahoo, Google, Microsoft, Best Buy, and many more- to ask if they were aware of graphic and sexually explicit material on Wikipedia. Last week Fox revealed that Wikipedia co-founder Larry Sanger had been in contact with the FBI over his concerns of child pornography on the website. The FBI has not yet responded to the charges….Several categories that were deemed offensive have also been removed from the website. http://www.digitaltrends.com/computing/wikipedia-purges-porn-following-reports-of-child-porn/

Wikipedia Distributing Child Porn, Co-Founder Tells FBI By Jana Winter FOXNews.com
April 27, 2010 The parent company of Wikipedia is knowingly distributing child pornography, the co-founder of the online encyclopedia says, and he’s imploring the FBI to investigate.
Larry Sanger, who left Wikipedia in 2002, said Wikimedia Commons, the parent company of Wiki products including Wikipedia, Wiktionary, Wikinews and Wikiquote, is rife with renderings of children performing sexual acts. Sanger sent a letter to the FBI earlier this month outlining his concerns and identifying two specific Wikimedia Commons categories he believes violate federal obscenity law. The first category, entitled “Pedophilia,” contains 25-30 explicit and detailed drawings of children performing sexual acts. The category was created three years ago. The second, “Lolicon,” provides cartoons similar in detail and depiction. One of the more egregious cartoons shows a rendering of a young child about to perform oral sex on a much older man….But the threat is even greater than the images themselves, says James Marsh, an attorney who wrote about Sanger’s letter to the FBI on his Child Law Blog. “Wikipedia’s continued interest in child sexual exploitation is troubling not only because the site hosts some questionable images, but because it can easily serve as a gateway to other sites containing child pornography,” Marsh told FoxNews.com….
UPDATES: Following publication of this article, Wikimedia Foundation posted an online response that reads in part: “The Wikimedia Foundation obeys the law. In the weeks since Sanger’s published allegations, the Wikimedia Foundation has not been contacted by the FBI or any other law-enforcement agency with regard to allegedly illegal content on any Wikimedia projects. Our community of volunteer editors takes action to remove illegal material when such material is brought to its attention. The Wikimedia Foundation is proud of the Wikimedia editors who zealously work to keep the projects free of illegal material. If and when we are informed by law enforcement agencies of illegal content that has not already been removed through self-policing, we will take quick action to delete it.”….

Erik Moeller also posted a response that reads in part:
“I want to say definitively: I do not defend nor support acts of sexual violence against children and have never defended pedophilia in any way. I have consistently defended the right of children of comparable age to engage in consensual, harmless sexual interactions with each other – what’s commonly called “playing doctor”, and also safe sex among teens. I have never defended the “right” of pedophiles to abuse children; child sexual abuse is a crime, and there is no such right. Children also don’t have the ability to consent to sexual activity with pedophiles, and such activities are sexual violence against children by definition.”….FoxNews.com has been informed that Sen. Sherrod Brown, D-Ohio, sent a copy of Sanger’s letter to the FBI on April 21, and Rep. Steve Austria, R-Ohio, sent a copy of the same letter to the FBI on April 27.
http://www.foxnews.com/scitech/2010/04/27/wikipedia-child-porn-larry-sanger-fbi/

Congress Reacts to Wikipedia Firestorm By James R. Marsh on April 29, 2010 FoxNews.com was recently informed that the day after the Wikipedophilia post appeared on this blog, Sen. Sherrod Brown, D-Ohio, sent a copy of Wikipedia co-founder Larry Sanger’s letter to the FBI. Rep. Steve Austria, R-Ohio, sent a copy of the same letter to the FBI on April 27. Perhaps this is the kind of bi-partisanship we’ve all been waiting for. Stay tuned for updates which are posted here on FoxNews.com.
An interesting side note: Wikipedia apparently got its start in the world of online pornography. According to an article on Wikipedia: Bomis …is a dot-com company founded in 1996. Its primary business is the sale of advertising on the Bomis.com search portal. It was founded by [the current head of Wikipedia] Jimmy Wales and Tim Shell, and provided support for the free encyclopedia projects Nupedia and Wikipedia.
On the Bomis.com site, Bomis creates and hosts web rings around search terms popular among male users. The rings are currently categorized broadly as “Babe”, “Entertainment”, “Sports”, “Adult”, “Science fiction”, and “Other”. The “Adult”, “Babe”, and “Entertainment” categories are the most frequently updated and the most popular. Revenue from search-related pages is generated from advertising and affiliate marketing.
Bomis ran a website called Bomis Premium at premium.bomis.com until 2005, offering customers access to premium, X-rated pornographic content. Until mid-2005, Bomis also featured the Bomis Babe Report, a free blog, publishing news and reviews about celebrities, models, and the adult entertainment industry. The Babe Report prominently linked to Bomis Premium and frequently posted updates about new models joining Bomis. Bomis has also operated nekkid.info, a free repository of selected erotic photographs, and continues to host The Babe Engine, “a precision babe search engine”, which indexes photos ranging from glamour photography to pornography. Bomis is best known for having supported the creation of the free-content online encyclopedia projects Nupedia and Wikipedia. Bomis hosted Nupedia in 2000, and Larry Sanger was hired to manage and edit that project. http://www.childlaw.us/2010/04/congress-reacts-to-wikipedia-f.html
Wikipedophilia By James R. Marsh on April 20, 2010 ….About two years ago, rumors started floating around about Wikipedia’s involvement with child pornography and the pedophile agenda. First there was a row about this image on Wikipedia depicting child nudity. Then there was the long-standing allegation by Perverted Justice that:
Pedophiles have long sought to use Wikipedia to justify and promote their agenda. They organize together in order to create Wikipedia accounts and then seek to use Wikipedia’s all-inclusiveness to promote their point of view. When pointed out, Wikipedians themselves often don’t believe that there is an organized campaign to subvert the user-edited encyclopedia in order to promote the pedophile agenda.
Well now these allegations have risen to a new level. Last week, Wikipedia co-founder Larry Sanger reported the site’s parent organization to the Federal Bureau of Investigation, saying he believes the Wikimedia Commons “may be knowingly distributing child pornography.”
http://www.childlaw.us/2010/04/wikipedophilia.html

related web pages
Wikipedia Campaign – Wikisposure
http://www.wikisposure.com/Wikipedia_Campaign

Larry Sanger – Wikimedia Commons allegations of child pornography
http://h-net.msu.edu/cgi-bin/logbrowse.pl?trx=vx&list=EDTECH&month=1004&week=a&msg=oh60TKAnthvEwBjcWNxxSg&user=&pw=

Erik Moeller (Wikimedia Deputy Director) and Defenses of Pedophilia
http://mashable.com/2008/05/08/erik-moeller-pedophilia/

Wikipedia Responds to FOXNews.com Story By James R. Marsh on April 28, 2010 Yesterday, FOXNews.com published this story online entitled “Wikipedia Distributing Child Porn, Co-Founder Tells FBI.” Now both the Wikimedia Foundation and one subject of the exposé, Erik Möller, have responded.
http://www.childlaw.us/2010/04/wikipedia-responds-to-foxnewsc.html

Mafia hits ‘new low’: Reputed Gambino mobsters charged with running Craigslist teen prostitution ring BY Alison Gendar and Rich Schapiro DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITERS April 20th 2010 The mob has hit a “new low” – pimping out young girls, including a baby-faced 15-year-old, on craigslist, authorities said Tuesday. The creepy crime was among a litany of charges leveled against 14 members of the Gambino crime family…. https://www.nydailynews.com/news/ny_crime/2010/04/20/2010-04-20_mafia_hits_new_low_reputed_gambino_mobsters_charged_with_running_craigslist_teen.html

Feds say they’ve busted major child porn ring By CHARLES WILSON (AP) 5/26/10 INDIANAPOLIS – Federal prosecutors in Indianapolis say they’ve busted an international online child pornography ring and that more than 50 people have been arrested. U.S. Attorney Tim Morrison said Wednesday that the investigation started in 2008 and that authorities kept it quiet to avoid tipping off suspects. The last U.S. suspect charged in the case was due in court Wednesday in Indianapolis. Assistant U.S. Attorney Steve DeBrota says the government is seeking the extradition from England of the alleged ringleader. DeBrota says Delwyn Savigar was convicted there this year of sexually assaulting three teenage girls and is serving a 14-year prison term. http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5hXC2gblWzzPoYlWG4vR9BFVsAUFAD9FUN0480

Briton ‘headed child porn ring’ (UKPA) 5/26/10 US prosecutors are seeking to extradite a Briton they say spearheaded a huge online child pornography ring that once had more than 1,000 members trading millions of sexually explicit images. More than 50 people had been arrested in several states since the 2008 start of the investigation, US Attorney Tim Morrison said. Authorities said they were seeking the extradition of several suspects from overseas, including the group’s alleged ringleader, Delwin Savigar, 35, of Leyland, Lancashire, who is serving a 14-year prison term in Britain for sexually assaulting three underage girls. http://www.google.com/hostednews/ukpress/article/ALeqM5gmCNmXM133mWiokp4ArQ0S_ML-ZA

Ritual Abuse and Mind Control Information

Ritual Abuse and Satanic Ritual Abuse Evidence and Journal Articles – Over 280 sources proving ritual abuse and satanic ritual abuse exist http://childabusewiki.org/index.php?title=Satanic_Ritual_Abuse_Evidence_and_Journal_Articles

Cries From the Past: Torture’s Ugly Echoes Sunday 23 May 2010 by: H.P. Albarelli Jr. and Jeffrey Kaye, t r u t h o u t | Report Information on CIA programs http://www.truthout.org/cries-from-past-tortures-ugly-echoes59738

MKULTRA victims and therapists speak – MKULTRA was the human experimentation program that used children in the lab to induce MPD using severe trauma. This methodology continues today….
http://video.google.com

/videoplay?docid=-8694323367213482956#docid=7665687155999039274

Wholeness: My Healing Journey from Ritual Abuse 2010 Suzie Burke, R.N., Ph.D. is the pen name of a real woman who is a registered nurse and licensed professional counselor with a doctorate in psychology. She sought professional counseling for herself when she experienced an episode of major depression. Initially, she assumed the mental and physical signs of her depression were caused by the family’s move across the country with her business executive husband. She discovered, however, her depression was deeper and darker than most. In order to survive the trauma of horrific ritual abuse she suffered as a child, her mind had long ago repressed those memories. The 10-year path to health, happiness and wholeness was a result of a savvy counselor, her own determination not to let her perpetrators “win,” plus a family that never wavered. Suzie Burke is now thriving. Paperback (Mass Market Paperback) 2010 Authorhouse ISBN13 : 9781449057190 http://suzieburke.com/

Innocence Revisited A Tale in Parts Dr. Cathy Kezelman “From a childhood filled with abuse and betrayal the victim, an adult woman struggles to come to terms with having no memory of her childhood….Terrifying “flashbacks” emerge which reveal a string of horrific memories involving a number of family members as well as her mother’s revered doctor friend. As a little girl, Cathy had been subjected to unimaginable acts over many years including those perpetrated by an evil and brutal cult. As a result of her trauma Cathy is left grappling with a severe depression and a dissociated personality. The story ends with a quiet sense of hope as Cathy embraces not only her remarkable survival and recovery but a great enthusiasm for the next phrase of her life.” JoJo Publishing Australia 2010 ISBN 978-0-9806193-3-1 Yarra’s Edge 2203/80 Lorimer Street Docklands Victoria 3008 Australia Phone: +61 (0)3 9681 7275 Email: jo-media@bigpond.net.au http://www.jojopublishing.com/html/s01_home/home.asp
http://www.internationalpubmarket.com/clients/jop/books/BookDetail.aspx?productID=30752
http://cathykezelman.com/books/innocence-revisisted-a-tale-in-parts/
Interview with Stan Thomson ABC SA (SE) re Innocence Revisited – a tale in parts March 2010
http://cathykezelman.com/abc-interview-march-2010/178/

describes graphic crimes
Ritual Sacrifice of Children on Rise in Uganda JINJA, Uganda, April 5, 2010 30 Charged in 2009 But Many More Accused, No Convictions Despite Police Taskforce and U.S. Aid…The number of people killed in ritual murders last year rose to a new high of at least 15 children and 14 adults, up from just three cases in 2007, according to police. The informal count is much higher – 154 suspects were arrested last year and 50 taken to court over ritual killings. http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2010/04/05/world/main6364466.shtml

describes graphic crimes
Satanic cult teens ‘sacrificed’ victims then ate them Seven young members of a satanic sect have gone on trial in Russia accused of four gruesome murders in which they “ritually sacrificed” their victims before cooking and eating parts of them. Andrew Osborn in Moscow 24 May 2010 Prosecutors say the murders took place on 29 and 30 June 2008 in a remote forested area close to Yaroslavl with two victims killed per night. The self-styled devil worshippers, which included a young teenage girl, lured three girls and a boy aged from 15 to 17 to the spot by plying them with alcohol and inviting them to sit round a bonfire. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/russia/7760270/Satanic-cult-teens-sacrificed-victims-then-ate-them.html

Bailey, Harry Richard (1922 – 1985) “extended narcotic induced comas”
After twelve months at Royal Prince Alfred Hospital, Bailey became a medical officer at Broughton Hall Psychiatric Clinic, Leichhardt, in 1952. That year he was appointed assistant-director of psychiatric clinical services in the Department of Public Health….From December 1954 he spent fifteen months on a World Health Organisation fellowship in the United States of America and Europe, closely observing the sedation techniques, psychosurgery and electroconvulsive therapy methods of Ewan Cameron in Canada, William Sargant in London and Lars Leksell in Sweden. On his recommendation, the Cerebral Surgery and Research Unit at Callan Park Mental Hospital was established in 1957. Bailey was named director. There he experimented with new ECT and psychosurgical methods, announcing significant developments in the successful treatment of mental illness….
In 1963 Bailey, with John Herron, and later Ian Gardiner and John Gill, began to treat patients at Chelmsford Private Hospital, Pennant Hills. There Bailey experimented with the combination of extended narcotic induced comas (deep sleep therapy) and ECT. Complications such as pneumonia, infections, dehydration, vomiting and respiratory problems were common. Within two years five patients had died as a result of this treatment. More deaths followed, although it was not until 1967 that a coronial inquest resulted. Impressed by Bailey’s medical reputation and his justification for his therapeutic regime, the coroner did not consider him culpable. Apart from private mutterings in psychiatric circles and occasional published criticisms of Bailey’s research, there were few efforts by the profession to control his methods. He continued to publish research papers on psychosurgery with reputable psychiatrists such as Cedric Swanton and John Dowling. By 1979, when Bailey’s Chelmsford practice closed, at least twenty-four patients had died, others had committed suicide and many survivors suffered physical and mental complications arising from their treatment.
The veil of professional repute that protected Bailey began to unravel. From 1972 a Chelmsford nurse, Rosa Nicholson, documented treatment irregularities; she passed this evidence to the Citizens Committee on Human Rights, a branch of the controversial Church of Scientology. In 1978 the committee wrote to the attorney-general detailing the evidence of medical malpractice, and newspapers began to report their allegations. That year the suicide of the dancer Sharon Hamilton, a patient and lover of Bailey, and revelations that he was the beneficiary of her estate, further undermined his reputation.
In 1980 the influential current affairs program `60 Minutes’ aired an episode on Chelmsford, containing details of the death of Miriam Podio in 1977. Five years later a coronial inquest into her death was held and in 1983 Bailey was charged with manslaughter. Although the charge was dismissed in 1985, the media siege was intense. Sick, tired, dispirited and facing years of litigation, on 8 September 1985 he drove to Mount White and parked on an isolated track. Next day police found him dead, the cause of death being barbiturate poisoning. from Stephen Garton, ‘Bailey, Harry Richard (1922 – 1985)’, Australian Dictionary of Biography, Online Edition 2006, ISSN 1833-7538, published by Australian National University http://adbonline.anu.edu.au/biogs/A170047b.htm

Psychologists Notes May Indicate Zubaydah Torture Experimentation 25 April 2010 by: Jeffrey Kaye, t r u t h o u t | News Analysis One interesting nugget found in newly released CIA documents related to the destruction of 92 torture tapes concerns the unreported existence of psychologist’s notes as a standard part of the interrogation protocol. In a “top secret” paper (undated) entitled “The CIA Interrogation of Abu Zubaydah, March 2001 – January 2003,” in a section that, though heavily redacted, describes the review of the tapes by a CIA attorney from the Office of General Counsel, “interrogation materials” are described as consisting of “videotapes, logbook, notebook, and psychologist’s notes.” http://www.truthout.org/psychologists-notes-indicate-zubaydah-torture-experimentation58855

Torture FOIA – Torture Documents Released April 15, 2010 In response to the ACLU’s lawsuit, the CIA released documents related to the reasons behind the agency’s destruction of 92 videotapes of interrogations on April 15, 2010. (Part 1 includes documents 1-9 of the release.) http://www.aclu.org/national-security/torture-foia-torture-documents-released-4152010 http://www.aclu.org/files/assets/cia_release20100415_p01-09.pdf
Danger Room What’s Next in National Security – Chemical Concussions and Secret LSD: Pentagon Details Cold War Mind-Control Tests By Katie Drummond May 11, 2010 More than 30 years after it was written, the Pentagon has released a memorandum detailing its involvement in the CIA’s infamous Cold War mind-control experiments. The 17-page document (.pdf) http://www.dod.mil/pubs/foi/02-A-0846RELEASE.pdf, “Experimentation Programs conducted by the Department of Defense That Had CIA Sponsorship or Participation and That Involved the Administration to Human Subjects of Drugs Intended for Mind-Control or Behavior-Modification Purposes,” was prepared in 1977 by the General Counsel of the Department of Defense and released on May 6 after a Freedom of Information Act request….

Take the origins of MK-ULTRA, the notorious CIA program that dosed thousands of unwitting participants with hallucinogenic drugs. Initially funded by the Navy, the project set out to study the effects of brain concussion. Soon after, scientists noted that a blow to the head prompted amnesia, leading to the pursuit of a drug-based technique to “induce brain concussion. without physical trauma.” Shortly thereafter, the project was transferred entirely to the CIA, because it involved “human experiments….not easily justifiable on medical-therapeutic grounds.”
Other programs, described briefly focused on mind control. MK-NAOMI was after “severely incapacitating and lethal materials . [and] gadgetry for their dissemination,” and MK-CHICKWIT was designed to “identify new drug developments in Europe and Asia,” and then “obtain samples.”
Edgewood Laboratories, where many of the programs were carried out, is also identified as having tested an incapacitating chemical on prisoners and military personnel without the agency’s approval. The drug, EA#3167, was “appl[ied] to the skin” of subjects using an adhesive tape.
Another program, MK-OFTEN, started as a study on dopamine. But the scope was soon expanded to evaluate ibogaine, a hallucinogen, and then several more drugs, in hopes of creating “new pharmacologically active drugs affecting the central nervous system [to] modify men’s behavior.”
And the Navy is reported to have “obtain[ed] heroin and marijuana” in an effort to develop speech-inducing drugs for use on defectors and prisoners of war. The drugs were eventually tested on 14 people: six volunteer research assistants, and eight unwitting Soviet defectors.
The report pins most of the nefarious activities on CIA-funded scientists. But that’s hardly the verdict of subsequent government documents, like a 1994 report from the U.S General Accounting Office. In that report, Pentagon officials are said to have “work[ed] directly with the CIA” and dosed “thousands” of military subjects with LSD and other drugs. Eyewitness accounts, like that of psychiatrist James Ketchum, describe outlandish Army efforts at creating hallucinogenic weapons in conjunction with MK-ULTRA.
And the Pentagon’s had plenty of experience in out-there mind control, even without CIA involvement. Troops have been dosed with LSD and cannabis oil, and Pentagon officials were reportedly toying with the idea of psychic spies as recently as 2007.
Not surprisingly, the released report also doesn’t address darker questions that persist about the specifics of the CIA projects. Last year, a group of vets sued the agency for illnesses and trauma caused by the “diabolical and secret [MK-ULTRA] testing program,” which they allege included experiments with nerve gas, psychochemicals, and brain implants.
http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2010/05/chemical-concussions-and-secret-lsd-military-releases-cold-war-mind-control-report/

Sarson, J & MacDonald, L. (2010). Canada, Torturers, Guns and Bullets International Action Network on Small Arms (IANSA) April 2010 Bulletin No., 22 page 1 http://www.iansa-women.org/sites/default/files/newsviews/en-iansa-wn-bulletin22-web.pdf

Excerpt: ‘Triumph’ by Carolyn Jessop – Jessop Writes About Life After the Polygamist Sect
May 6, 2010 In “Triumph,” Carolyn Jessop writes about growing up in a polygamist sect and her April 2003 escape from the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints.
Carolyn Jessop reflects on her life in a polygamist sect and how it changed her. Jessop, 42, begins her story on April 3, 2008, when the church’s Texas ranch was raided by law enforcement officials and she watched hundreds of children, some her own stepchildren, involved in a case that would unfold in the spotlight of the national media….
Kathy Mankin and her husband, Randy, publish The Eldorado Success, the local newspaper in Eldorado, Texas, the town nearest to the Yearning for Zion Ranch, a $20 million compound spread across seventeen hundred acres in West Texas. The YFZ Ranch is owned and operated by the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, the polygamous Mormon cult in which I’d spent my entire life until fleeing in April 2003. My ex-husband, Merril Jessop, had been running the ranch since becoming one of the highest- ranking men in the FLDS in 2006.
Kathy and Randy had been covering the FLDS since 2003, when the ranch was bought under false pretenses as a corporate retreat and lodge. On March 24, 2004, with the headline “Corporate Retreat or Prophet’s Refuge?” the Mankins broke the news to the residents of Eldorado—a town of roughly two thousand residents, thirteen churches, three restaurants, and an aging motel—that their new neighbors were members of an extreme polygamous sect….
The Texas Supreme Court decision that was reached six weeks later described the reception CPS got at the ranch: “When the Department arrived at the YFZ Ranch, it was treated cordially and allowed access to children, but those children repeatedly ‘pled the Fifth’ in response to questions about their identity, would not identify their birth dates or parentage, refused to answer questions about who lived in their homes and lied about their names—sometimes several times. Answers from parents were similarly inconsistent: One mother first claimed that four children were hers, and then later avowed that they were not. Furthermore, the Department arrived to discover that a shredder had been used to destroy documents just before its arrival. “Law enforcement officers who accompanied CPS onto the ranch noticed pregnant young girls being herded from one house to another on the compound. A lawyer involved with the case later told me that the state always suspected that it never got all the children from the ranch because some had been whisked away….
As for CPS, along with not being equipped to handle all the children who were removed from the ranch, it never found the Sarah Barlow who’d made the call. Suspicion was building that the call was a hoax. All the same, evidence suggested that the YFZ Ranch was a hotbed of child abuse. As this evidence was presented to Judge Walther, she ordered more and more children removed.
By Monday, April 7, Judge Walther had ordered 401 children into temporary protective custody based on a determination of significant risk of harm. In addition, 133 women had now left the compound. The men, meanwhile, were told to remain on the ranch while the investigation continued.
….One of the major reasons I fled the FLDS was because fourteen-year-old girls were routinely forced to marry and my daughter Betty was thirteen at the time….
With Warren Jeffs’s 2006 arrest and conviction (he’s now serving two five years-to-life sentences for being an accomplice to rape), his followers became more convinced than ever that he was being persecuted like Jesus Christ, just as he’d predicted.
http://abcnews.go.com/GMA/Books/triumph-life-cult-survivors-lessons-carolyn-jessop/story?id=10564744
Journal articles and child abuse and trauma information

The Trauma Myth: The Truth about the Sexual Abuse of Children—and Its Aftermath reviewed by Philip M. Coons excerpts
“Clancy’s polemic against the trauma theory of clinicians and researchers who seek to understand and treat sexual abuse victims as adults has produced a flawed book.” “Beginning in the mid-1990s, Susan Clancy, now a psychology associate at Harvard, interviewed over 200 adults about memory and childhood sexual abuse experiences. Two-thirds of her interviewees were women. She solicited her subjects through a newspaper ad in the Boston Globe and other Boston-area newspapers. Unfortunately she does not completely describe her methodology, and her sample appears to have been biased.”Not a clinician herself, Clancy takes a narrow diagnostic view of trauma, the one found in the 2000 edition of the American Psychiatric Association’s Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders. According to the DSM, a diagnosis of posttraumatic stress disorder requires that an individual’s response to a traumatic event involve “intense fear, helplessness, or horror.” She seems to have missed the note explaining that in children discomfort “may be expressed by disorganized or agitated.”
“Clancy and others have found that it is not uncommon for victims to forget the sexual abuse. Despite her findings, however, Clancy attacks the idea of what she calls repressed memory. She incorrectly observes that the more traumatic the sexual abuse events are, the less likely the victim will be to forget. This mistaken opinion has previously been refuted by Lenore Terr’s elegant studies involving traumatized children. Jennifer Freyd, in her 1998 book, Betrayal Trauma: The Logic of Forgetting Child hood Abuse, takes a much wider view of the effects of trauma on children and cogently explains how sexual abuse leads to distrust, shame and guilt in children and adults. She also explains how and why children may forget their sexual abuse experiences and later recover their memories in adulthood.”

“Although Clancy includes excerpts from some of her interviews, her book contains no figures or tables tabulating her findings; nor does she present many of the results from the experimental clinical interviews and rating scales that she used. Thus far, Clancy’s study on the effects of childhood sexual abuse has not appeared in a peer-reviewed scientific journal.Clancy argues that current prevention and treatment methods based on the trauma model do not work, but she appears to be mistaken. David Finkel hor’s 2008 book Childhood Victimi zation: Violence, Crime, and Abuse in the Lives of Young People, which she lists in chapter notes, mentions that childhood sexual abuse has declined dramatically since the mid-1990s, and just recently a massive new federal study, the National Incidence Study of Child Abuse and Neglect, showed a 38 percent drop in the number of sexually abused children since 1993.” http://www.christiancentury.org/article.lasso?id=8378

Call for Papers! Speakers Welcome! New Book Release! Please Forward and Post
“Sociology of Memory: New and Old Conceptualizations of Memory, Personal or Commodity, Public or Private?” Papers about: collective memory; personal memory; narrative; new and classical sociological theories and conceptualizations of memory; sociological, psychological, historical or legal conceptualizations pertaining to personal, trauma, repressed, body memory; socio-political issues pertaining to “commodity memory” (such as electronic dataveillance, video surveillance; seed, sperm, egg or DNA banking); drug technology to improve or repress memory; and closely related topics are invited to present their research at the 2011 Pacific Sociological Association’s 82st Annual meeting, to be held in Seattle, Washington on March 10-13, 2011.
Past papers from this session are featured in the book, Sociology of Memory: Papers from the Spectrum (2009), Cambridge Scholars Publishing. For more information see: http://www.c-s-p.org/Flyers/Sociology-of-Memory–Papers-from-the-Spectrum1-4438-0199-2.htm
Please send questions, abstracts and contact information to: Noel Packard at packardn@prodigy.net Visit the Pacific Sociological Association website
at www.pacificsoc.org for conference information and paper submission procedures. Due date: October 15, 2010.

Talking About Sexual Assault: Society’s Response to Survivors – Sexual assault is a traumatic experience for any woman. Furthermore, many victims who tell others about their assault must endure a “second assault” in the form of negative reactions, such as victim blaming and disbelief. One third to two thirds of victims may experience such reactions, which have negative mental and physical health effects on the victims. This book provides a comprehensive look at women’s rape disclosure, addressing such issues as why, how often, and to whom women disclose their sexual assault; how people respond to disclosures; what factors influence how they respond to disclosures; and how these responses affect survivors. ISBN: 978-1-4338-0741-1 March 2010 Part of the Psychology of Women Series http://www.apa.org/pubs/books/4318073.aspx
Traumatic Stress Articles – Anne DePrince, Ph.D. http://mysite.du.edu/~adeprinc/pub.html
The state of betrayal trauma theory: Reply to McNally Conceptual issues and future directions Freyd, DePrince, Gleaves MEMORY, 2007, 15 (3), 295-311 Betrayal trauma theory (Freyd, 1994, 1996, 2001) is an approach to conceptualising trauma that points to the importance of social relationships in understanding post-traumatic outcomes, including reduced recall. We argue in this paper that child sexual abuse very often constitutes a severe betrayal trauma and that it is thus ‘‘genuinely traumatic’’. We will also argue that one reasonably common effect of child sexual abuse *particularly the more it involves betrayal trauma* is some degree of forgetting or ‘‘knowledge isolation’’ about the event. This last claim speaks to the heart of betrayal trauma theory that McNally has summarised and critiqued.

In this paper we will respond to aspects of McNally’s critique as well as offer our own perspective on the state of betrayal trauma theory. We discuss (1) conceptual issues, (2) critiques of empirical studies, and (3) future directions. Although our interpretation of data diverges from McNally’s in many places, we have all arrived at a surprisingly common endpoint. McNally suggests a child may not think about the abuse for several reasons, such as fears that disclosure may break up the family. In accord with betrayal trauma theory, we note that the failure to think about events will contribute to poorer memory for the event and that these processes are mediated by the unique demands placed on a child exposed to betrayal traumas. http://dynamic.uoregon.edu/~jjf/articles/fdg2007.pdf

Psych Week 2010: EEG Test – An EEG test shows physiological evidence of Paula’s D.I.D. http://health.discovery.com/videos/psych-week-2010-eeg-test.html

PROPOSAL TO INCLUDE A DEVELOPMENTAL TRAUMA DISORDER DIAGNOSIS FOR CHILDREN AND ADOLESCENTS IN DSM-V Bessel A. van der Kolk, MD et al….The goal of introducing the diagnosis of Developmental Trauma Disorder is to capture the reality of the clinical presentations of children and adolescents exposed to chronic interpersonal trauma and thereby guide clinicians to develop and utilize effective interventions and for researchers to study the neurobiology and transmission of chronic interpersonal violence. Whether or not they exhibit symptoms of PTSD, children who have developed in the context of ongoing danger, maltreatment, and inadequate caregiving systems are ill-served by the current diagnostic system, as it frequently leads to no diagnosis, multiple unrelated diagnoses, an emphasis on behavioral control without recognition of interpersonal trauma and lack of safety in the etiology of symptoms, and a lack of attention to ameliorating the developmental disruptions that underlie the symptoms….
The introduction of PTSD in the psychiatric classification system in 1980 has led to extensive scientific studies of that diagnosis. However, over the past 25 years there has been a relatively independent and parallel emergence of the field of Developmental Psychopathology (e.g. Maughan & Cicchetti, 2002; Putnam, Trickett, Yehuda, & McFarlane, 1997), which has documented the effects of interpersonal trauma and disruption of caregiving systems on the development of affect regulation, attention, cognition, perception, and interpersonal relationships. A third significant development has been the increasing documentation of the effects of adverse early life experiences on brain development (e.g. De Bellis et al., 2002; Teicher et al., 2003), neuroendocrinology (e.g.Hart, Gunnar, & Cicchetti, 1995; Lipschitz et al., 2003) and immunology (e.g. Putnam et al., 1997; Wilson et al, 1999).
Studies of both child and adult populations over the last 25 years have established that, in a majority of trauma-exposed individuals, traumatic stress in childhood does not occur in isolation, but rather is characterized by co-occurring, often chronic, types of victimization and other adverse experiences (Anda et al., 2006; Dong et al., 2004; Pynoos et al., 2008; Spinazzola et al., 2005; van der Kolk et al, 2005). http://traumacenter.org/announcements/DTD_papers_Oct_09.pdf
Contribute to the Field Trial for Developmental Trauma Disorder There currently is an ongoing field trial for the NCTSN proposed Developmental Trauma Disorder for inclusion in the DSM V, in which the University of Connecticut (Dr. Julian Ford), the Trauma Center at JRI (Drs. van der Kolk, Spinazzola and D’Andrea), and LaRabida Hospital in Chicago (Dr. Bradley Stolbach) are the principal sites. Part of this field trial is underwritten by several private foundations, but we are seeking an additional $150,000 to complete this study. http://traumacenter.org/products/DTD_Field_Trial.php

Trauma-Induced Changes to Genes May Lead to Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder ScienceDaily (May 5, 2010) – A study by researchers at Columbia University’s Mailman School of Public Health suggests that traumatic experiences “biologically embed” themselves in select genes, altering their functions and leading to the development of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD)….
Previous studies have found that lifetime experiences may alter the activity of specific genes by changing their methylation patterns. Methylated genes are generally inactive, while unmethylated genes are generally active….The analysis found that participants with PTSD had six to seven times more unmethylated genes than unaffected participants, and most of the unmethylated genes were involved in the immune system.
The observed methylation changes in the immune system genes were reflected in the PTSD participants’ immune systems: levels of antibodies to a herpes virus were high in PTSD patients, indicative of a compromised immune system. While people who experience severe trauma will exhibit a normal stress response, in PTSD, the stress response system becomes deregulated and chronically overactive causing compromised immune functioning. PTSD has long been linked to increased risk of numerous physical health problems — including diabetes and cardiovascular disease. This paper suggests why PTSD is so strongly associated with physical health problems — trauma exposure causes epigenetic changes in immune system genes and thus, compromised immune functioning putting individuals at risk for a host of disorders.
“Our findings show that PTSD may be associated with epigenetic changes in immune-system genes. If this is the case, these clusters could provide clues to our understanding of how a traumatic event changes gene expression, thus altering immune function and resulting in other possible physiologic alterations,” says Dr. Galea. M. Uddin, A. E. Aiello, D. E. Wildman, K. C. Koenen, G. Pawelec, R. de los Santos, E. Goldmann, S. Galea. Epigenetic and immune function profiles associated with posttraumatic stress disorder. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 2010; DOI: 10.1073/pnas.0910794107 http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/05/100504102124.htm

The “False Memory” Defense: Using Disinformation and Junk Science in and out of Court Charles L. Whitfield, M.D., F.A.S.A.M. Journal of Child Sexual Abuse 9 (3 & 4) Haworth Press (2001) This article describes a seemingly sophisticated, but mostly contrived and often erroneous “false memory” defense, and compares it in a brief review to what the science says about the effect of trauma on memory. Child sexual abuse is widespread and dissociative/traumatic amnesia for it is common. Accused, convicted and self-confessed child molesters and their advocates have crafted a strategy that tries to negate their abusive, criminal behavior, which we can call a “false memory” defense.
http://web.archive.org/web/20070914163211/http://childabuse.georgiacenter.uga.edu/both/whitfield/whitfield1.phtml

Child Sexual Abuse: A Risk Factor for Pregnancy, Study Finds ScienceDaily (Apr. 6, 2010) — A new study carried out by researchers at the University of Haifa and Soroka Hospital has found that women who were victims of sexual abuse in childhood reported higher levels of depression and symptoms of post-trauma during pregnancy. Sexual abuse in childhood increases the chances of high-risk pregnancy, according to the new study, which was conducted by Prof. Rachel Lev-Wiesel, Head of the Graduate School of Creative Arts Therapies at the University of Haifa, Lee Yampolsky and Dr. Tzachi Ben Zion, Deputy Director of Soroka Hospital….The current study, which has been accepted for publication in the Journal of Advanced Nursing (January 2011), examined the possibility of sexual abuse experienced in childhood triggering retraumatization during wanted pregnancy.
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/04/100406073255.htm

June 13, 2010 · Filed Under Newsletter 2010 - Issues 90 - 95

Issue 93 – July 2010

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