Showing posts with label Connecticut. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Connecticut. Show all posts
Saturday, May 23, 2026
Tuesday, March 10, 2015
Two states, Puerto Rico join N.Y. in diet supplement probe
By Christie Smythe and Chris Dolmetsch, Bloomberg News
Bloomberg
NEW YORK — Dietary supplements are facing more scrutiny from U.S. regulators as two states and Puerto Rico joined New York in a probe of the $33 billion industry after testing showed some products didn't appear to contain key ingredients advertised.
Attorneys general in Connecticut and Indiana and the Puerto Rico Department of Consumer Affairs will investigate industry business practices and whether claims of authenticity and purity are valid, Attorney General Eric Schneiderman said Tuesday in a statement.
Pittsburgh-based GNC Holdings Inc.'s stock price fell as much as 7 percent Tuesday following news of the expanded probe. Herbal supplements make up about 8 percent of the nutritional retailer's sales, according to analysts from Jefferies.
The real $61 billion per year question is whether or not the entire supplement business is one big criminal fraud that steals by deception $61 billion a year of consumer payments. Anyone who has been spending money buying supplements needs to take this case very seriously. It is after all not...
Earlier, a researcher hired by New York found evidence that store-brand products from GNC, Wal-Mart Stores, Walgreens and Target labeled as containing supplements such as echinacea and ginkgo biloba lacked those signature ingredients or contained substances not on the label. GNC has disputed Schneiderman's findings and called his testing methods "incomplete and unreliable."
GNC "fully complied" with inquiries about products from Schneiderman and "took the additional step of commissioning independent, third-party tests to verify the quality of our products," Ellen Davis, a spokeswoman for GNC with Sard Verbinnen & Co., said in a statement Tuesday. The additional tests and the company's own procedures "confirm in no uncertain terms that our products are safe, pure, properly labeled and in full compliance with all regulatory requirements."
Based on work at Ontario's University of Guelph, the DNA barcoding testing method in Schneiderman's probe identifies organisms using a small amount of genetic material.
Minneapolis-based Target and Deerfield, Illinois-based Walgreens Boots Alliance have pulled products flagged by Schneiderman's results from store shelves nationwide. GNC and Wal-Mart have said they would remove some of their supplements from stores in New York.
"We take these issues very seriously," Emily Hartwig, a spokeswoman for Walgreens, said in a statement Tuesday. "We continue to review this matter and also intend to continue cooperating."
Evan Lapiska, a spokesman for Target, declined to comment on the states' actions. Brian Nick, a spokesman for Bentonville, Arkansas-based Wal-Mart, didn't immediately respond to phone and e-mailed requests for comment.
The Food and Drug Administration requires supplement sellers to verify that products are safe and properly labeled. Supplements don't undergo the same strict evaluation process as drugs.
One problem for the industry as the probe expands is "consumer perception" of supplements, Jefferies analysts Mark Wiltamuth, Christopher Mandeville and Clayton Meyers said in a note to investors Tuesday. The timing of the probe is "unfortunate" as companies begin to shake off the effects of scrutiny of products such as fish oil and multivitamins, they said.
Ted Craig, a Miami lawyer who has defended companies in regulatory disputes and class actions, said other states may see Schneiderman's investigation as "low-hanging fruit" and seek to "jump on this bandwagon" by joining it.
Schneiderman said in his release that the industry "contributes" $61 billion to the U.S. economy. According to the Nutrition Business Journal, a trade publication, supplement companies had 2012 sales of $32.5 billion.
NEW YORK — Dietary supplements are facing more scrutiny from U.S. regulators as two states and Puerto Rico joined New York in a probe of the $33 billion industry after testing showed some products didn't appear to contain key ingredients advertised.
Attorneys general in Connecticut and Indiana and the Puerto Rico Department of Consumer Affairs will investigate industry business practices and whether claims of authenticity and purity are valid, Attorney General Eric Schneiderman said Tuesday in a statement.
Pittsburgh-based GNC Holdings Inc.'s stock price fell as much as 7 percent Tuesday following news of the expanded probe. Herbal supplements make up about 8 percent of the nutritional retailer's sales, according to analysts from Jefferies.
The real $61 billion per year question is whether or not the entire supplement business is one big criminal fraud that steals by deception $61 billion a year of consumer payments. Anyone who has been spending money buying supplements needs to take this case very seriously. It is after all not...
Earlier, a researcher hired by New York found evidence that store-brand products from GNC, Wal-Mart Stores, Walgreens and Target labeled as containing supplements such as echinacea and ginkgo biloba lacked those signature ingredients or contained substances not on the label. GNC has disputed Schneiderman's findings and called his testing methods "incomplete and unreliable."
GNC "fully complied" with inquiries about products from Schneiderman and "took the additional step of commissioning independent, third-party tests to verify the quality of our products," Ellen Davis, a spokeswoman for GNC with Sard Verbinnen & Co., said in a statement Tuesday. The additional tests and the company's own procedures "confirm in no uncertain terms that our products are safe, pure, properly labeled and in full compliance with all regulatory requirements."
Based on work at Ontario's University of Guelph, the DNA barcoding testing method in Schneiderman's probe identifies organisms using a small amount of genetic material.
Minneapolis-based Target and Deerfield, Illinois-based Walgreens Boots Alliance have pulled products flagged by Schneiderman's results from store shelves nationwide. GNC and Wal-Mart have said they would remove some of their supplements from stores in New York.
"We take these issues very seriously," Emily Hartwig, a spokeswoman for Walgreens, said in a statement Tuesday. "We continue to review this matter and also intend to continue cooperating."
Evan Lapiska, a spokesman for Target, declined to comment on the states' actions. Brian Nick, a spokesman for Bentonville, Arkansas-based Wal-Mart, didn't immediately respond to phone and e-mailed requests for comment.
The Food and Drug Administration requires supplement sellers to verify that products are safe and properly labeled. Supplements don't undergo the same strict evaluation process as drugs.
One problem for the industry as the probe expands is "consumer perception" of supplements, Jefferies analysts Mark Wiltamuth, Christopher Mandeville and Clayton Meyers said in a note to investors Tuesday. The timing of the probe is "unfortunate" as companies begin to shake off the effects of scrutiny of products such as fish oil and multivitamins, they said.
Ted Craig, a Miami lawyer who has defended companies in regulatory disputes and class actions, said other states may see Schneiderman's investigation as "low-hanging fruit" and seek to "jump on this bandwagon" by joining it.
Schneiderman said in his release that the industry "contributes" $61 billion to the U.S. economy. According to the Nutrition Business Journal, a trade publication, supplement companies had 2012 sales of $32.5 billion.
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Saturday, December 14, 2013
Newtown Pastor and Knights of Columbus Council Receive Inaugural Caritas Awards
8/6/2013
(SAN ANTONIO) — The Knights of Columbus has created a new award to recognize extraordinary works of charity and service. The first to receive the Caritas Award were the pastor of the Catholic parish in Newtown, Conn., and its Knights of Columbus council.
Supreme Knight Carl Anderson conferred the awards Tuesday night, Aug. 6, with the first going to Msgr. Robert Weiss, pastor of St. Rose of Lima Church, and the second to St. Virgilius Knights of Columbus Council 185. The council, located at St. Rose of Lima in Newtown was represented by Grand Knight Timothy Haas. The awards were announced at a dinner gathering in San Antonio that included approximately 90 members of the Catholic hierarchy, including Boston’s Cardinal Sean O’Malley, OFM, Cap., who delivered a keynote address.
Read more
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Wednesday, April 03, 2013
Sandy Hook linked to CIA Mind Control MK-ULTRA Brainwashing Program
Submitted by Bigs on Tue, 04/02/2013 - 06:16
My long-distance interest in the Sandy Hook events is based on ongoing work with a team of anti-pedophile journalists and activists who for over a decade have tracked and exposed American pedophile rings from Southeast Asia (Indonesia, Thailand, Cambodia, Vietnam) to Beijing, China.
In all cases so far, our team discovered that these frontline pedophiles supply children for sexual services to VIPs traveling in Asia, including diplomats from the highest levels of the White House and State Department, top executives of major corporations, and heads of universities and aid agencies. Nearly all the patrons involved in this cruel pastime have backgrounds in US intelligence the CIA, NSA or State Department intelligence. The individuals are from diverse religious backgrounds Catholic, Jewish and Orthodox - while the core facilitators are often priests with Jesuit order, and to a lesser degree Franciscans and Benedictines.
At an orphanage in Cambodia, it took three years for our multinational team against death threats from armed policemen and undisguised hostility from NGOs to realize the expulsion of a pedophile coven, which included a former US ambassador to the United Nations, the celebrated head of a new media program at an Ivy League campus and a renowned correspondent based at the Tokyo American Club. When the police shut down their strong-encryption computer center and satellite uplink, used for sweetheart messaging and exporting child-porn videos, the American pedophiles stripped out all the programs, rendering a room of Apple computers inoperable. Later, at a celebration for the “liberation” of the orphans from the grip of these abusive men and their compliant wives, the teachers told me that the average age of the boys and girls who had been invited to sleep over at weekend parties was “10 years old.”
One member of our team who resided in Cambodia suffered an “accident” in a cowardly act of retaliation by that viscous coven with all the fingers on both hands broken and bleeding from his ears as he lay unconscious along a highway. It’s taken our brave friend three years to regain his formidable intellectual powers as a former political speechwriter. I use the term “coven” because these predators work as families parents, children and grandchildren indoctrinated from infancy that inflicting trauma on helpless children is life's greatest pleasure.
Pedophilia is a psychiatric illness that is spreading worldwide because the globalist elite, much like a deranged fraternity from hazing hell, use it to control their peers and underlings through the commission of shameful and often lethal crimes. The photos are enough to prevent defection, informing to the police or sending leaks to the media.
The American power elite’s predilection for young boys has always been a privilege as shown in past scandals involving White House pages. One of the first postwar American ambassadors to Tokyo was a voracious pursuer of teenage boys inside gay bath houses frequented by rightwing Japanese militarists, the very same war criminals who had committed unspeakable atrocities against civilians for example converting Christian boys schools into male brothels. The shared lust of the former soldiers from both sides corrupted and ultimately reversed the attempt by a victorious Allied Supreme Command to transform Japan into a peaceful democracy. Authoritarian perversion remains in command.
In recent years with the rise of Internet file-sharing, a major shift in pedophile profiles has appeared in the increasingly lower age of pedophiles. It is shocking that college-age men, who should be involved in same-age affairs (with either sex we are not being judgmental about preference) are instead eager to abduct kids who are barely out of infancy and videotape brutal rape scenes to share with their online fellows. Today, young men of college age serve as procurers, pimps and producers of child porn for their sugar daddies.
These younger pedophiles, at least while in Asia, are often studying abroad on US government fellowships, CIA grants or working for Soros-funded NGOs. In Beijing, I had a verbal sparring match with a young American video producer who was making a documentary on child abductions by Chinese adoption rings. He had no intention of saving kids from these criminals, since his stated ambition was to launch a pornography industry in China. This was the son of a leading faculty member at a Connecticut prep school, which sponsors troubled boys and prepares them for a life of male prostitution with dormitory screenings of videos showing the gang rape of preteen girls with the knowledge and sometimes approval of teachers, according to testimony submitted to court.
After first being a victim of sexual assault and then acting as a perpetrator against younger boys or girls, many of these young men develop passive-aggressive personalities. When challenged, they tend react with suppressed rage under a blank expression and then get their revenge with a strange prank against their accusers.
Many women might nod in agreement that men are awful creatures, but from our experience in Southeast Asia, there are also many female predators. On an early-morning visit to a Peace Corps camp on the Laotian border, a friend in the U.S. Army was stunned to discover that every American women all graduates of elite East Coast colleges was asleep with a 12-to-14 girl tucked inside her bed. Americans are not alone in this sickness of mind and body Europeans, Australians and Japanese are among the notorious child molesters. Sexual domination of weaker individuals, especially children who cannot defend their rights, is a hallmark of imperialism.
There is one more element involved in the pedophile industry: the organized crime groups that finance the purchase or kidnapping of children. These gangsters are not just low-life elements but also include professional gangsters - “businessmen” with connections to politicians and bankers.
A point that needs mentioning is that during youth, I spent a summer at a prep school in Connecticut on a National Science Foundation program but it had nothing to do with MK-ULTRA.
Mind Control in Connecticut: Catcher in the Rye
In 1942, at the start of World War II, the Jesuit order opened Fairfield University in southern Connecticut. The new Catholic college was erected on the country estate of Brewster Jennings, then chairman of the Socony Mobil Oil Company, which after a series of mergers became ExxonMobil. After serving as a naval officer in World War I, the Hartford-born oil executive graduated from Yale and became closely associated with the OSS and CIA. He founded the Avalon Foundation, since renamed the Mellon Foundation, which has funded pacification programs inside American society. (Outed spy Valerie Plame worked under cover at the Brewster Jennings “brass plate” company, which acted as the CIA’s counter-proliferation department.) Although the information remains classified, it had to be OSS chief Bill Donovan who prompted the formation of Fairfield University as an intelligence training center for potential CIA recruits vetted from the elite preparatory schools in Connecticut.
During the war in Europe, a noncommissioned office of Russian Jewish descent assigned to U.S. Defense Intelligence worked on Operation Paperclip (the transport of Nazi scientists to U.S. laboratories) and Project Artichoke (smuggling German Jews into Palestine in support of a Zionist state). His name was J.D. “Jerry” Salinger. Later, he served in the Counter-Intelligence Corps, debriefing and reassigning Nazi officers, including those who had conducted psychiatric experiments on prisoners of war.
At war’s end, Salinger lived in Tarrytown, New York, but was soon ordered to move across the state border to Stamford, Connecticut, close to Fairfield University. He resided in a converted barn, out of public view, presumably to continue his special area of intelligence work, the field testing of the MK-ULTRA methods refined by the sadistically clinical Dr. Sidney Gottlieb (the pseudonym of Joseph Schieder), who ran the main mind-control lab at Jesuit-run Georgetown University in Washington, D.C., which is also a finishing school for diplomats in the State Department.
In the Connecticut countryside during his “lost years”, Salinger penned “The Catcher in the Rye”, which contains the command code-words for MK-ULTRA assassins. The protagonist Holden Caulfield is a study of a paranoiac passive-aggressive character, whose favorite expression is: “You’re killing me.”
CIA Partners with Organized Crime in New England
Around 1950, while Salinger was in Stamford, the CIA recruited a South Boston convict nicknamed “Whitey” Bulger to supply young runaways for mind-control experiments under the fast-expanding MK-ULTRA programs being set up at 44 universities across the United States. The centers for the New England drug experiments were probably the Whiting Forensic Facility at the Connecticut Valley Hospital in Middleford, Connecticut, and Bridgewater Hospital in Massachusetts, the region’s psychiatric facilities for the criminally insane.
With CIA backing, Bulger built up his Winter Hill Gang, composed mainly of Irishmen, who strong-armed their way to control over the Boston’s gambling scene and drug trafficking. While little is known about the political activities of the Bulger gang, its rise to crime dominance coincided with the expansion of weapons smuggling into Northern Ireland in support of the IRA. A parallel cross-Atlantic traffic in drugs (and illegal immigration in the reverse direction) began at the same time. The predominantly Irish political machine of Boston from the Prohibition Era smuggling tycoon Joseph Kennedy Sr, to House Majority Leader Tip O’Neill gave their blessings to the flourishing organized crime network and voiced support for the patriotic IRA “freedom fighters,” who returned the favor to Washington with murderous attacks on American-loathing British figures such as Lord Montbatten.
Connecticut, under control of the Patriciarca crime family, was off-limits to Bulger. The day-to-day operations of the Sicilian immigrants were run by Bill Grasso, head of the clan that later produced Connecticut’s first female governor.
Starting in the 1980s, the DOJ, FBI and CIA launched an all-out war against the Patriciarca mob in order to install their puppet Whitey Bulger as crime boss of New England. FBI agent John Connelly took credit for infiltrating and busting up the Patriarca clan, but later he was exposed as a mole for Bulger. By the early 1990s, Bulger set up his Jai Alai Associates, a betting syndicate based in Connecticut and Florida. Finally, all of New England was safe for CIA smuggling, support for terrorism, money-laundering and mind-control operations.
In 2011, Bulger made headlines with his arrest in Malibu, California, where he had lived for more than a decade “undetected” despite being on the FBI “most wanted” list - on a long vacation thanks to his relationship with the CIA. If there was one point of irritation, however, between the Irish mobster and his controllers, it was his opposition to drug use by teenagers. After seeing first-hand how MK-ULTRA had destroyed the minds of his young recruits, Bulger ordered his gang members never to sell drugs to teenagers. Even a ruthless mobster has more decency that the self-styled “patriots” who run the intelligence services.
Child Porn Hub for New York and Washington
Whatever its genteel image of colonial homes and autumnal foliage, Connecticut has a sleazy underside embedded in its servant pool, welfare households and the chronic unemployed. Bridgeport, with its low-income Puerto Rican population, is a major center for prostitution and recruitment of prostitutes for VIP clients in New York and the nation’s capital.
The pedophile rings have a social-economic hierarchy at the top are the VIP clients, then the intermediaries, often Catholic priests or social-services managers, further down the ladder the operatives losers recruited from prep schools and college campuses - and finally the supply itself - money-hungry willing parents and the unwillingly abducted children.
Newtown, like Fairfield and Stamford, is part of the Diocese of Bridgeport, which got into legal trouble in 2001 due to lawsuits by 23 victims of pedophilia committed by priests. Bishop Edward Egan, then diocese head, was a protector of sexual offender priests, sending them to other areas when parental complaints reached the ears of the police. After the plaintiffs won an out-of-court settlement, the Diocese petitioned the US Supreme Court to quash the thousands of documents detailing the beastly sex crimes. In 2009 Opus Dei honcho Justice Antonin Scalia determined that the court records should not be made public.
In this past year’s pedophile scandal at Penn State, another Opus Dei leader, former FBI director Louis Freeh, was hired as a consultant by the Nittany Lions football team. His whitewash report put most of the blame on head coach Joe Paterno, while suppressing the names and backgrounds of the wealthy and powerful boosters who were provided sexual services from the young football players.
In Connecticut, the Vatican had an interest in wiping the slate clean, and so did the CIA. The clean slate turned out to be a bloody mess.
Agency-Spawned Pedophiles
The MK-ULTRA program that reached into campuses across Connecticut quickly created a human garbage heap of wrecked minds and twisted souls. The child abuse and drugs routinely administered to young trainees led to a permanent social fixture of sadism and sexual abuse throughout New England from the gutter up to the governing class.
In 2011, a Newtown resident named Edwin Wilson was arrested for having a months-long sexual relationship with a 4-year-old girl and producing child-porn videos of their sexual encounters. The arrest was a part of a wide crackdown order the state attorney general, Richard Blumenthal which boosted his successful campaign in the U.S. Senate race. Other cases included: a 24-year-old Hispanic male in Hartford who shot videos of sex with a pre-teen girl; a DJ in Plainfield arraigned on similar charges, an older theater and film teacher accused of using Taft school’s equipment to make kiddie porn the list goes on in sickening detail. Fairfield University, where MK-ULTRA was implanted into New England, recently saw two staffers implicated in the rape of 23 Haitian boys during the earthquake relief effort.
Adam Lanza fits the profile of a pedophile-ring recruit young enough to approach children at the local schools and in the churches, possessing the computer skills to produce child-porn videos and typically passive-aggressive in personality. The Lanzas attended the Saint Rosa of Lima Church, where eight child parishioners were among the shooting victims. Santa Rosa is the very same order that sponsors the western-state hospital that employed Michael Jackson’s physician Dr. Conrad Murray. As in the case of Jackson’s Neverland, after a child-sex experiment blossoms, it must be shut down.
The Lone Gun-Boy Theory
Nancy Lanza kept an arsenal of firearms, and ordered her son to be constantly under watch by older boys. She must have had good reason for being armed to the teeth. Judging from her hoard of rifles and hand guns, she was expecting an all-out assault from a coven of pedophiles, not an attack by a single shooter. The lone gun-boy theory is sheer nonsense her son may have been an accomplice in giving the assailants access to his home but ended up murdered as a patsy.
The coven is larger and more powerful than Mrs. Lanza could ever have imagined. Sexual violation is the key to creating intelligence agents and assassins who are impervious to reason and mercy, lacking any original thoughts or moral qualms. Plus a supply of children is needed in Congress and the White House to entertain the satraps and moguls from Colombian drug lords to Israeli weapons dealers and French money launderers, not to mention America’s own homegrown pervs.
The Motive: Payback for a Double-Cross
If the culprits had been Adam Lanza and his pals, then their response to grounding would have been something like posting photos and address of naked children. The method of the shooting point-blank execution-style gun shots indicate that the assailants were professional hit men, probably allied with the Winter Hill Gang.
The Sandy Hook assault happened probably because of a split between competing institutions and diverging policies. On one hand, the gangland figures who cooperated with CIA mind-control program that promoted child-sex as a means of ensuring obedience and secrecy were being challenged by politicians playing up parental demands to clean up the scandalous child-sex problem in Connecticut.
The dirty FBI agent John Connelly was more of a double agent and go-between for the Feds and not simply a Winter Hill mole as portraying at his sentencing. The arrest of Whitey Bulger was a pure-and-simple double-cross by the FBI and CIA, who had used him as an ally in MK-ULTRA and informant for more than a half-century. In his ambitious drive to win a U.S. senatorial seat, state attorney general and now Senator Blumenthal broke the basic rules of mob cooperation. And now that has led to a war on the streets and in the schools.
Unlike the Sicilian crime families who went down easy, the fighting Irish criminals can be counted on to put up a street battle with the same flair as in the movie “The Gangs of New York.” The gangsters have no shortage of allies in the pimps, drug dealers, pedophiles, punks and deranged freaks who have been caught up in the sudden dragnet. The police are outnumbered and easily outgunned. It’s happened before, as in Fort Apache in the South Bronx. Sandy Hook is just the first installment of a payback. If the Feds push any harder, then Bridgeport and Boston will soon be looking like Belfast during the troubles or Beirut in the bad old days.
Stop Drugging the Kids
The mass media is under pressure to cover up the incident with sympathetic blather instead of a sustained probe. Forensic evidence is being literally buried. America is moving on where to, nobody knows. The politicians and cops are now silent and glum. Relying on arrests and wiretapping, they have forgotten that the fight against crime begins with addressing social justice, economic fairness and education and in some unfortunate cases, psychiatric care.
Was a Senate seat worth the lives of all those children and teachers? Blumenthal, who paints himself as a clone of the erstwhile New York mayor Rudy Giuliani, will have to live with that question for the remainder of his life. Is the CIA satisfied that its mind-control techniques that have created hordes of homicidal monsters from Iraq to Libya and now Connecticut?
The lesson of Sandy Hook is that mind-control cannot itself be controlled. Programmed killers are like robots without power-off switches. The process of transforming innocent children into robots through sexual abuse is inhumane and a crime. Whatever MK-ULTRA is called today - since we know it still exists after seeing the Abu Ghraib Prison photos - it must be shut down forever or the murderous nightmare will go on and on. And mind-altering drugs are not just for sinister purposes, since at least 60 percent of U.S. children are on a pharmaceutical dosages long before they can learn how to think. Even parents act as mind-controllers against their own kids.
Now, with the investigation terminated, comes the diversionary exercise of “gun control”, a national effort led by Joe Biden, a member of the Knights of Malta, a politician with an intelligence background who is sworn to protect the interests of the Vatican. Say it ain't so, Joe. Leave intact the right of armed self-defense or the gangsters will take over everything, but get rid of the drugs and end the mind control and America will be a safer place, especially for its children.
Yoichi Shimatsu, a science writer based in Hong Kong, provides herbal therapy and health counseling to the victims of the Fukushima radiation crisis.
Agency-Spawned Pedophiles
The MK-ULTRA program that reached into campuses across Connecticut quickly created a human garbage heap of wrecked minds and twisted souls. The child abuse and drugs routinely administered to young trainees led to a permanent social fixture of sadism and sexual abuse throughout New England from the gutter up to the governing class.
In 2011, a Newtown resident named Edwin Wilson was arrested for having a months-long sexual relationship with a 4-year-old girl and producing child-porn videos of their sexual encounters. The arrest was a part of a wide crackdown order the state attorney general, Richard Blumenthal which boosted his successful campaign in the U.S. Senate race. Other cases included: a 24-year-old Hispanic male in Hartford who shot videos of sex with a pre-teen girl; a DJ in Plainfield arraigned on similar charges, an older theater and film teacher accused of using Taft school’s equipment to make kiddie porn the list goes on in sickening detail. Fairfield University, where MK-ULTRA was implanted into New England, recently saw two staffers implicated in the rape of 23 Haitian boys during the earthquake relief effort.
Adam Lanza fits the profile of a pedophile-ring recruit young enough to approach children at the local schools and in the churches, possessing the computer skills to produce child-porn videos and typically passive-aggressive in personality. The Lanzas attended the Saint Rosa of Lima Church, where eight child parishioners were among the shooting victims. Santa Rosa is the very same order that sponsors the western-state hospital that employed Michael Jackson’s physician Dr. Conrad Murray. As in the case of Jackson’s Neverland, after a child-sex experiment blossoms, it must be shut down.
The Lone Gun-Boy Theory
Nancy Lanza kept an arsenal of firearms, and ordered her son to be constantly under watch by older boys. She must have had good reason for being armed to the teeth. Judging from her hoard of rifles and hand guns, she was expecting an all-out assault from a coven of pedophiles, not an attack by a single shooter. The lone gun-boy theory is sheer nonsense her son may have been an accomplice in giving the assailants access to his home but ended up murdered as a patsy.
The coven is larger and more powerful than Mrs. Lanza could ever have imagined. Sexual violation is the key to creating intelligence agents and assassins who are impervious to reason and mercy, lacking any original thoughts or moral qualms. Plus a supply of children is needed in Congress and the White House to entertain the satraps and moguls from Colombian drug lords to Israeli weapons dealers and French money launderers, not to mention America’s own homegrown pervs.
The Motive: Payback for a Double-Cross
If the culprits had been Adam Lanza and his pals, then their response to grounding would have been something like posting photos and address of naked children. The method of the shooting point-blank execution-style gun shots indicate that the assailants were professional hit men, probably allied with the Winter Hill Gang.
The Sandy Hook assault happened probably because of a split between competing institutions and diverging policies. On one hand, the gangland figures who cooperated with CIA mind-control program that promoted child-sex as a means of ensuring obedience and secrecy were being challenged by politicians playing up parental demands to clean up the scandalous child-sex problem in Connecticut.
The dirty FBI agent John Connelly was more of a double agent and go-between for the Feds and not simply a Winter Hill mole as portraying at his sentencing. The arrest of Whitey Bulger was a pure-and-simple double-cross by the FBI and CIA, who had used him as an ally in MK-ULTRA and informant for more than a half-century. In his ambitious drive to win a U.S. senatorial seat, state attorney general and now Senator Blumenthal broke the basic rules of mob cooperation. And now that has led to a war on the streets and in the schools.
Unlike the Sicilian crime families who went down easy, the fighting Irish criminals can be counted on to put up a street battle with the same flair as in the movie “The Gangs of New York.” The gangsters have no shortage of allies in the pimps, drug dealers, pedophiles, punks and deranged freaks who have been caught up in the sudden dragnet. The police are outnumbered and easily outgunned. It’s happened before, as in Fort Apache in the South Bronx. Sandy Hook is just the first installment of a payback. If the Feds push any harder, then Bridgeport and Boston will soon be looking like Belfast during the troubles or Beirut in the bad old days.
Stop Drugging the Kids
The mass media is under pressure to cover up the incident with sympathetic blather instead of a sustained probe. Forensic evidence is being literally buried. America is moving on where to, nobody knows. The politicians and cops are now silent and glum. Relying on arrests and wiretapping, they have forgotten that the fight against crime begins with addressing social justice, economic fairness and education and in some unfortunate cases, psychiatric care.
Was a Senate seat worth the lives of all those children and teachers? Blumenthal, who paints himself as a clone of the erstwhile New York mayor Rudy Giuliani, will have to live with that question for the remainder of his life. Is the CIA satisfied that its mind-control techniques that have created hordes of homicidal monsters from Iraq to Libya and now Connecticut?
The lesson of Sandy Hook is that mind-control cannot itself be controlled. Programmed killers are like robots without power-off switches. The process of transforming innocent children into robots through sexual abuse is inhumane and a crime. Whatever MK-ULTRA is called today - since we know it still exists after seeing the Abu Ghraib Prison photos - it must be shut down forever or the murderous nightmare will go on and on. And mind-altering drugs are not just for sinister purposes, since at least 60 percent of U.S. children are on a pharmaceutical dosages long before they can learn how to think. Even parents act as mind-controllers against their own kids.
Now, with the investigation terminated, comes the diversionary exercise of “gun control”, a national effort led by Joe Biden, a member of the Knights of Malta, a politician with an intelligence background who is sworn to protect the interests of the Vatican. Say it ain't so, Joe. Leave intact the right of armed self-defense or the gangsters will take over everything, but get rid of the drugs and end the mind control and America will be a safer place, especially for its children.
Yoichi Shimatsu, a science writer based in Hong Kong, provides herbal therapy and health counseling to the victims of the Fukushima radiation crisis.
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Sunday, January 27, 2013
'Monsignor Meth' dealt drugs, bought sex shop, feds say
By Dave Collins Associated Press
POSTED: 05:00 a.m. HST, Jan 27, 2013
LAST UPDATED: 05:04 a.m. HST, Jan 27, 2013
Watch PIX Video:
http://landing.newsinc.com/shared/video.html?freewheel=90719&sitesection=honolulu&VID=24261411
ASSOCIATED PRESS / MAY 2006
POSTED: 05:00 a.m. HST, Jan 27, 2013
LAST UPDATED: 05:04 a.m. HST, Jan 27, 2013
Watch PIX Video:
http://landing.newsinc.com/shared/video.html?freewheel=90719&sitesection=honolulu&VID=24261411
ASSOCIATED PRESS / MAY 2006
Monsignor Kevin Wallin spoke at the Catholic Center, headquarters of the Diocese of Bridgeport, in Bridgeport, Conn. Wallin, of Waterbury, Conn., awaits a March 2013 trial on federal charges of shipping methamphetamine from California to his apartment and making more than $300,000 in drug sales in the second half of 2012. He was one of five people arrested and indicted by a grand jury in January 2013.
HARTFORD, Conn. » To onlookers, Monsignor Kevin Wallin's fall from grace at his Connecticut parish was like something out of "Breaking Bad," the television series about a high school chemistry teacher who becomes a methamphetamine lord.
The suspended Roman Catholic priest was arrested on federal drug charges this month for allegedly having methamphetamine mailed to him from co-conspirators in California and making more than $300,000 in drugs sales out of his apartment in Waterbury in the second half of last year.
Along the way, authorities said, he bought a small adult video and sex toy shop in the nearby town of North Haven named "Land of Oz & Dorothy's Place," apparently to launder all the money he was making. He has pleaded not guilty, and jury selection in his trial is scheduled to begin March 21.
On social media sites, people couldn't help but compare Wallin with Walter White, the main character on "Breaking Bad" who was making so much cash that he and his wife bought a car wash to launder their profits. He has also been dubbed in some media as "Monsignor Meth."
Wallin, 61, was the pastor of St. Augustine Parish in Bridgeport for nine years until he resigned in June 2011, citing health and personal problems. He previously served six years as pastor of St. Peter's Church in Danbury until 2002.
He was granted a sabbatical in July 2011. The Diocese of Bridgeport suspended him from public ministry last May.
Diocesan officials become concerned about Wallin in the spring of 2011 after complaints about his appearance and erratic behavior, diocese spokesman Brian Wallace told the Connecticut Post.
Some reports of his behavior were startling.
"We became aware that he was acting out sexually — with men — in the church rectory," Wallace told the newspaper, adding that church officials deemed the sexual behavior unbecoming of a priest and asked Wallin to resign.
Wallace didn't return several messages left by The Associated Press.
"News of Monsignor Kevin Wallin's arrest comes with a sense of shock and concern on the part of the diocese and the many people of Fairfield County who have known him as a gifted, accomplished and compassionate priest," the diocese said in a statement on Jan. 16 after learning about Wallin's arrest. "We ask for prayers for Monsignor Wallin during the difficult days ahead for him."
Wallin's arrest called attention to larger problems within the church, said Voice of the Faithful in the Diocese of Bridgeport, one of many local chapters of the lay organization formed in response to the sexual abuse crisis in the church.
"Catholics have to ask whether the mandatory obligation of celibacy imposes a harmful burden on priests and whether women ought to be admitted to the priesthood," the group said in a statement. "The steady decline in the number of priests, the aging of priests, the terrible sin of pedophilia among priests, and the downfall of Monsignor Wallin are all signs of a sickness in the priesthood. It is time to seek a remedy for this awful malady that threatens the Eucharist, the center of Catholic life."
Elizabeth Badjan, a member of the St. Augustine congregation, told The New York Times that Wallin needed the prayers of parishioners.
"This is all the work of evil," she said as she left Mass last weekend. "He was not close enough to God. He was tempted by the devil."
Wallin's case has drawn comparisons to that of the Rev. Ted Haggard, a well-known evangelical megachurch pastor in Colorado who was forced out of his job in 2006 after a male escort alleged Haggard had paid him for sex and bought crystal meth.
Federal agents arrested Wallin on Jan. 3, and a grand jury indicted him and four other people on drug charges on Jan. 15. All are charged with one count of conspiracy to distribute 500 grams or more of a substance containing methamphetamine and 50 grams of actual methamphetamine, a crime that carries 10 years to life in prison upon conviction.
Wallin is also charged with six counts of possession with intent to distribute methamphetamine.
Last July, Drug Enforcement Administration agents in New York told agents in the New Haven office that there was an unidentified Connecticut-based drug trafficker distributing methamphetamine in the region. Two months later, an informant told the DEA that the trafficker was Wallin, according to an affidavit by agent Jay Salvatore in New Haven.
The Connecticut Statewide Narcotics Task Force was also investigating Wallin.
Authorities said an undercover officer with the state task force bought methamphetamine from Wallin six times from Sept. 20 to Jan. 2, paying more than $3,400 in total for 23 grams of the drug.
Federal agents also say they learned through wiretaps and informants about other sales Wallin was making.
Connecticut U.S. Attorney David Fein said federal and state authorities worked together in "the dismantling of what we allege was a significant methamphetamine distribution organization that spanned from California to Connecticut."
Also charged in the case were Kenneth Devries, 52, of Waterbury; Michael Nelson, 40, of Manchester; Chad McCluskey, 43, of San Clemente, Calif.; and Kristen Laschober, 47, of Laguna Niguel, Calif. Authorities say McCluskey and Laschober were involved in the shipping of methamphetamine to Wallin.
Messages by the AP were left lawyers for Wallin, McCluskey and Laschober. Wallin is being detained without bail at the Bridgeport Correctional Center, state records show.
Source
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The suspended Roman Catholic priest was arrested on federal drug charges this month for allegedly having methamphetamine mailed to him from co-conspirators in California and making more than $300,000 in drugs sales out of his apartment in Waterbury in the second half of last year.
Along the way, authorities said, he bought a small adult video and sex toy shop in the nearby town of North Haven named "Land of Oz & Dorothy's Place," apparently to launder all the money he was making. He has pleaded not guilty, and jury selection in his trial is scheduled to begin March 21.
On social media sites, people couldn't help but compare Wallin with Walter White, the main character on "Breaking Bad" who was making so much cash that he and his wife bought a car wash to launder their profits. He has also been dubbed in some media as "Monsignor Meth."
Wallin, 61, was the pastor of St. Augustine Parish in Bridgeport for nine years until he resigned in June 2011, citing health and personal problems. He previously served six years as pastor of St. Peter's Church in Danbury until 2002.
He was granted a sabbatical in July 2011. The Diocese of Bridgeport suspended him from public ministry last May.
Diocesan officials become concerned about Wallin in the spring of 2011 after complaints about his appearance and erratic behavior, diocese spokesman Brian Wallace told the Connecticut Post.
Some reports of his behavior were startling.
"We became aware that he was acting out sexually — with men — in the church rectory," Wallace told the newspaper, adding that church officials deemed the sexual behavior unbecoming of a priest and asked Wallin to resign.
Wallace didn't return several messages left by The Associated Press.
"News of Monsignor Kevin Wallin's arrest comes with a sense of shock and concern on the part of the diocese and the many people of Fairfield County who have known him as a gifted, accomplished and compassionate priest," the diocese said in a statement on Jan. 16 after learning about Wallin's arrest. "We ask for prayers for Monsignor Wallin during the difficult days ahead for him."
Wallin's arrest called attention to larger problems within the church, said Voice of the Faithful in the Diocese of Bridgeport, one of many local chapters of the lay organization formed in response to the sexual abuse crisis in the church.
"Catholics have to ask whether the mandatory obligation of celibacy imposes a harmful burden on priests and whether women ought to be admitted to the priesthood," the group said in a statement. "The steady decline in the number of priests, the aging of priests, the terrible sin of pedophilia among priests, and the downfall of Monsignor Wallin are all signs of a sickness in the priesthood. It is time to seek a remedy for this awful malady that threatens the Eucharist, the center of Catholic life."
Elizabeth Badjan, a member of the St. Augustine congregation, told The New York Times that Wallin needed the prayers of parishioners.
"This is all the work of evil," she said as she left Mass last weekend. "He was not close enough to God. He was tempted by the devil."
Wallin's case has drawn comparisons to that of the Rev. Ted Haggard, a well-known evangelical megachurch pastor in Colorado who was forced out of his job in 2006 after a male escort alleged Haggard had paid him for sex and bought crystal meth.
Federal agents arrested Wallin on Jan. 3, and a grand jury indicted him and four other people on drug charges on Jan. 15. All are charged with one count of conspiracy to distribute 500 grams or more of a substance containing methamphetamine and 50 grams of actual methamphetamine, a crime that carries 10 years to life in prison upon conviction.
Wallin is also charged with six counts of possession with intent to distribute methamphetamine.
Last July, Drug Enforcement Administration agents in New York told agents in the New Haven office that there was an unidentified Connecticut-based drug trafficker distributing methamphetamine in the region. Two months later, an informant told the DEA that the trafficker was Wallin, according to an affidavit by agent Jay Salvatore in New Haven.
The Connecticut Statewide Narcotics Task Force was also investigating Wallin.
Authorities said an undercover officer with the state task force bought methamphetamine from Wallin six times from Sept. 20 to Jan. 2, paying more than $3,400 in total for 23 grams of the drug.
Federal agents also say they learned through wiretaps and informants about other sales Wallin was making.
Connecticut U.S. Attorney David Fein said federal and state authorities worked together in "the dismantling of what we allege was a significant methamphetamine distribution organization that spanned from California to Connecticut."
Also charged in the case were Kenneth Devries, 52, of Waterbury; Michael Nelson, 40, of Manchester; Chad McCluskey, 43, of San Clemente, Calif.; and Kristen Laschober, 47, of Laguna Niguel, Calif. Authorities say McCluskey and Laschober were involved in the shipping of methamphetamine to Wallin.
Messages by the AP were left lawyers for Wallin, McCluskey and Laschober. Wallin is being detained without bail at the Bridgeport Correctional Center, state records show.
Source
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Sunday, December 16, 2012
Obama speaks at Connecticut vigil for shooting victims
U.S. President in Newtown, Conn., to console victims' families and thank first responders
CBC News Posted: Dec 16, 2012 8:24 AM ET Last Updated: Dec 16, 2012 6:56 PM ET
U.S. President Barack Obama is attending an interfaith vigil in Newtown, Connecticut tonight in memory of the 26 schoolchildren and teachers killed during a shooting massacre at an elementary school on Friday.
Read more
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CBC News Posted: Dec 16, 2012 8:24 AM ET Last Updated: Dec 16, 2012 6:56 PM ET
Obama in Newtown LIVE
U.S. President Barack Obama is attending an interfaith vigil in Newtown, Connecticut tonight in memory of the 26 schoolchildren and teachers killed during a shooting massacre at an elementary school on Friday.
Read more
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Newtown, Connecticut Church Bomb Threat: St. Rose Of Lima Evacuated
www.huffingtonpost.com | Posted: 12/16/2012 1:14 pm EST | Updated: 12/16/2012 3:48 pm EST
Tons of officials swarm St. Rose of Lima Church in Newtown Sunday following an anonymous threat that prompted an evacuation in the middle of a Mass. It was intended to honor the victims of Friday's shooting.
A church in Newtown, Conn. has been evacuated after reports of a bomb threat, according to the Associated Press.
UPDATE: Police gave the "all clear" sign at the church at around 1:15 p.m. Sunday, according to NBC News.
The evacuation occurred during noon mass Sunday, just two days after the town experienced a massacre that left 8 adults and 20 young children dead.
From Tim Shaffrey of the Associated Press:
NEWTOWN, Conn. -- Worshippers hurriedly left a church Sunday, saying they were told there was a bomb threat not far from the elementary school where 20 kids and six adults were massacred.
At least a dozen police in camouflage SWAT gear and carrying guns arrived at the St. Rose of Lima Church. An Associated Press photographer saw police leave carrying something in a red tarp.
There was no official report from police about the threat or evacuation.
Shooter Adam Lanza, his mother and eight of the child victims attended St. Rose of Lima. It is a Roman Catholic Church with an adjacent school, which Lanza attended briefly.
It's not clear if there actually was a threat or if, like many tragedies, whether it was a hoax or the result of a community on edge.
The church hosted overflow crowds at all three morning masses Sunday.
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In Newtown, Sunday services honor victims of tragedy
Yamiche Alcindor and Martha T. Moore, USA TODAY10:44a.m. EST
December 16, 2012
A Connecticut town grapples with deaths and anguish after senseless shooting spree.
A Connecticut town grapples with deaths and anguish after senseless shooting spree.
(Photo: Mario Tama, Getty Images)
STORY HIGHLIGHTS
Early services draw hundreds of worshipers
Police officers stationed in church parking lot
Sign in the sanctuary says of victims: 'You will never be forgotten'
Early services draw hundreds of worshipers
Police officers stationed in church parking lot
Sign in the sanctuary says of victims: 'You will never be forgotten'
NEWTOWN, Conn. -- Sunday dawned here with many grieving residents joining religious services paying homage to the victims of Friday's explosion of violence and death at a local elementary school.
At one site, Saint Rose Catholic Church, a 7:30 a.m. mass drew hundreds of worshipers. Outside the church, which has kept its doors open since the tragedy, signs of the grief gripping Newtown lined the front lawn. A table with dozens of dimly lit candles bearing images of Jesus and the Virgin Mary overlooked mountains of flowers and stuffed animals.
Directly across from the front door more lighted candles have been placed at the feet of a large statue of the Virgin Mary. Small white plastic angels hung in a bush bordering Churchill Road -- which has been filled with traffic for days. A nearby flag remained at half staff.
Msgr. Robert Weiss, the church's leader, has been counseling people since the Friday morning, when 20-year-old Adam Lanza's shooting spree at Sandy Hook Elementary School took the lives of 20 young students and six adults before he turned a gun on himself. On Sunday, several wary police officers were stationed in the parking lot of the church observing those entering the church.
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Northern Fairfield Professionals - Newtown
Networking Group Moving To Newtown
Northern Fairfield Professionals, a networking group focusing on people in transition, has updated its meeting dates, times, and location to better accommodate members.
Beginning December 11, the group will meet the second Tuesday of every month from 5:30 to 8 pm at the Knights of Columbus building at 46 Church Hill Road (behind the St Rose Church Rectory, to the far left of the parking lot).
Attendance remains free.
On December 11, the group will host networking, followed by a Personal Pitch/Ask a Recruiter session. Guests will meet and network with peers, managers, local business owners, and professionals.
NFP is a local business professionals’ networking group that allows individuals to meet and network with peers, managers, local business owners and professionals.
For more information, e-mail NFP@itechcp.com or call Amanda at 203-270-0051, extension 310.
Northern Fairfield Professionals, a networking group focusing on people in transition, has updated its meeting dates, times, and location to better accommodate members.
Beginning December 11, the group will meet the second Tuesday of every month from 5:30 to 8 pm at the Knights of Columbus building at 46 Church Hill Road (behind the St Rose Church Rectory, to the far left of the parking lot).
Attendance remains free.
On December 11, the group will host networking, followed by a Personal Pitch/Ask a Recruiter session. Guests will meet and network with peers, managers, local business owners, and professionals.
NFP is a local business professionals’ networking group that allows individuals to meet and network with peers, managers, local business owners and professionals.
For more information, e-mail NFP@itechcp.com or call Amanda at 203-270-0051, extension 310.
Related:
Published 8:26 pm, Friday, December 7, 2012
THE NORTHERN FAIRFIELD PROFESSIONALS, a networking group focusing on people in transition, will meet from 5:30 p.m. to 8 p.m. Tuesday at the Knights of Columbus, 46 Church Hill Road, behind St. Rose of Lima Church in Newtown. The meeting will be followed by an opportunity to meet and network with peers, managers, local business owners and other professionals. Attendance is free. For information, email NFP@itechcp.com.
Read more: http://www.stamfordadvocate.com/news/article/Business-calendar-4100821.php#ixzz2FEE1SR23
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Saturday, December 15, 2012
President Obama To Attend Sunday Memorial In Connecticut
Posted: Sat 7:20 PM, Dec 15, 2012
Reporter: ABC News
Saturday, December 15, 2012
President Obama will travel to Newtown, Conn., on Sunday to meet with the families of the the 26 people who were slain at Sandy Hook Elementary School, the White House said today.
The president, who will also meet with first responders, is scheduled to speak at an interfaith service in Newtown at 7 p.m., according to a statement from the Office of the Press Secretary.
One day after Obama addressed the nation, mourning the children who "had their entire lives ahead of them -- birthdays, graduations, weddings, kids of their own," the world learned just how grim the scene inside Sandy Hook was.
The gunman massacred 20 first graders, shooting some of them as many as 11 times, the medical examiner said today.
"I've been at this for a third of a century so my sensibilities may not be the that of the average man, but it's probably the worst I've ever seen," said Chief Medical Examiner H. Wayne Carver II, who has been a medical examiner for 36 years.
A team of 14 medical technicians worked through the night to complete the grisly job of identifying the children killed by Adam Lanza, 20, in the Sandy Hook Elementary School massacre so their names could be released today.
Several weapons were found in the school, including a semi-automatic rifle.
"All the wounds that I know of at this point were caused by the long weapon," Carver said, and many were shot at close range.
"I believe many of them were hit more than once," and he said the wounds were "all over" the children's bodies.
"I only did seven of the autopsies. The victims I had ranged from three to 11 wounds a piece," Carver said.
The names of the children slain Friday in the school were released today.
To carry out the identifications, Carver said they "did not bring the families and the bodies into contact." He said the identifications were made through photographs of the children's faces.
"It's easier on the families," he said.
Additional work is needed to complete the autopsies and identifications of the seven adults slain in Lanza's killing spree.
Fresh details of the massacre emerged, including the fact that all of the young victims were first graders in two rooms.
Based on the Sandy Hook school directory, all the kids killed were in the first grade and were in two classrooms.
In one class, 15 of the 16 students listed were killed. In the other class, five of the 16 students died along with their teacher, Victoria Soto. Also, nine of the deceased students have siblings in the school.
At a nearby firehouse that has become a center for the town, a makeshift memorial and vigil has emerged under a sign that reads "Sandy Hook School." People have left flowers, candles, signs that read "Rest in Peace" and "God Bless Sandy Hook Elementary," as well as a cross made of blue flowers and a wreath of teddy bears
With the tally of Lanza's carnage complete, authorities and the grieving people of Newtown are left to wonder why he turned the elementary school in this quaint New England town into a slaughter house.
Connecticut State Police Lt. Paul Vance said the investigation "did produce some very good evidence" about motive, but he would not go into further detail.
He indicated the evidence came from the shooting scene at the school as well as at the home where Lanza's mother, Nancy, was slain.
Also key will be the lone person shot by Lanza who wasn't killed. The female teacher has not been publicly identified.
"She is doing fine," Vance said at a news conference today. "She has been treated and she'll be instrumental in this investigation."
Vance said it appears that reports of an altercation involving Lanza at the school in the days before the mass slaying are not checking out.
Vance said that Lanza forced his way into the school, but did not say how.
Evidence emerged today that Lanza's rampage began in the office of school principal Dawn Hochsprung while the school intercom was on. It's not clear whether it was turned on to alert the school or whether it was on for morning announcements, but the principal's screams and the cries of children heard throughout the school gave teachers time to take precautions to protect their children.
Hochsprung was among those killed in the Friday morning killing spree.
Authorities have fanned out to New Jersey, Connecticut and Massachusetts to interview Lanza's relatives, ABC News has learned.
According to sources, Lanza shot his mother in the face, then left his house armed with at least two semi-automatic handguns, a Glock and a Sig Sauer, and a semi-automatic rifle. He was also wearing a bulletproof vest.
Lanza then drove to the elementary school to carry out his murderous plan, authorities said.
It appeared that Lanza died from what was believed to be a self-inflicted gunshot wound.
Lanza's father, Peter Lanza, released a statement today saying the family is "grieving along with all those who have been affected by this enormous tragedy."
"No words can truly express how heartbroken we are," he said. "We are in a state of disbelief and trying to find whatever answers we can. We too are asking why. We have cooperated fully with law enforcement and will continue to do so. Like so many of you, we are saddened, but struggling to make sense of what has transpired."
This is the second worst mass shooting in U.S. history, exceeded only by the Virginia Tech shooting in 2007 when 32 were killed before the shooter turned the gun on himself. The carnage in Connecticut exceeded the 1999 Columbine High School shooting in which 13 died and 24 were injured.
Friday's shooting came three days after masked gunman Jacob Roberts opened fire in a busy Oregon mall, killing two before turning the gun on himself.
The Connecticut shooting occurred at the Sandy Hook Elementary School, which includes 450 students in grades K-4. The town is located about 12 miles east of Danbury, Conn.
ABC News' Emily Friedman, Michael S. James and Shushannah Walshe contributed to this report.
Source
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Reporter: ABC News
Saturday, December 15, 2012
President Obama will travel to Newtown, Conn., on Sunday to meet with the families of the the 26 people who were slain at Sandy Hook Elementary School, the White House said today.
The president, who will also meet with first responders, is scheduled to speak at an interfaith service in Newtown at 7 p.m., according to a statement from the Office of the Press Secretary.
One day after Obama addressed the nation, mourning the children who "had their entire lives ahead of them -- birthdays, graduations, weddings, kids of their own," the world learned just how grim the scene inside Sandy Hook was.
The gunman massacred 20 first graders, shooting some of them as many as 11 times, the medical examiner said today.
"I've been at this for a third of a century so my sensibilities may not be the that of the average man, but it's probably the worst I've ever seen," said Chief Medical Examiner H. Wayne Carver II, who has been a medical examiner for 36 years.
A team of 14 medical technicians worked through the night to complete the grisly job of identifying the children killed by Adam Lanza, 20, in the Sandy Hook Elementary School massacre so their names could be released today.
Several weapons were found in the school, including a semi-automatic rifle.
"All the wounds that I know of at this point were caused by the long weapon," Carver said, and many were shot at close range.
"I believe many of them were hit more than once," and he said the wounds were "all over" the children's bodies.
"I only did seven of the autopsies. The victims I had ranged from three to 11 wounds a piece," Carver said.
The names of the children slain Friday in the school were released today.
To carry out the identifications, Carver said they "did not bring the families and the bodies into contact." He said the identifications were made through photographs of the children's faces.
"It's easier on the families," he said.
Additional work is needed to complete the autopsies and identifications of the seven adults slain in Lanza's killing spree.
Fresh details of the massacre emerged, including the fact that all of the young victims were first graders in two rooms.
Based on the Sandy Hook school directory, all the kids killed were in the first grade and were in two classrooms.
In one class, 15 of the 16 students listed were killed. In the other class, five of the 16 students died along with their teacher, Victoria Soto. Also, nine of the deceased students have siblings in the school.
At a nearby firehouse that has become a center for the town, a makeshift memorial and vigil has emerged under a sign that reads "Sandy Hook School." People have left flowers, candles, signs that read "Rest in Peace" and "God Bless Sandy Hook Elementary," as well as a cross made of blue flowers and a wreath of teddy bears
With the tally of Lanza's carnage complete, authorities and the grieving people of Newtown are left to wonder why he turned the elementary school in this quaint New England town into a slaughter house.
Connecticut State Police Lt. Paul Vance said the investigation "did produce some very good evidence" about motive, but he would not go into further detail.
He indicated the evidence came from the shooting scene at the school as well as at the home where Lanza's mother, Nancy, was slain.
Also key will be the lone person shot by Lanza who wasn't killed. The female teacher has not been publicly identified.
"She is doing fine," Vance said at a news conference today. "She has been treated and she'll be instrumental in this investigation."
Vance said it appears that reports of an altercation involving Lanza at the school in the days before the mass slaying are not checking out.
Vance said that Lanza forced his way into the school, but did not say how.
Evidence emerged today that Lanza's rampage began in the office of school principal Dawn Hochsprung while the school intercom was on. It's not clear whether it was turned on to alert the school or whether it was on for morning announcements, but the principal's screams and the cries of children heard throughout the school gave teachers time to take precautions to protect their children.
Hochsprung was among those killed in the Friday morning killing spree.
Authorities have fanned out to New Jersey, Connecticut and Massachusetts to interview Lanza's relatives, ABC News has learned.
According to sources, Lanza shot his mother in the face, then left his house armed with at least two semi-automatic handguns, a Glock and a Sig Sauer, and a semi-automatic rifle. He was also wearing a bulletproof vest.
Lanza then drove to the elementary school to carry out his murderous plan, authorities said.
It appeared that Lanza died from what was believed to be a self-inflicted gunshot wound.
Lanza's father, Peter Lanza, released a statement today saying the family is "grieving along with all those who have been affected by this enormous tragedy."
"No words can truly express how heartbroken we are," he said. "We are in a state of disbelief and trying to find whatever answers we can. We too are asking why. We have cooperated fully with law enforcement and will continue to do so. Like so many of you, we are saddened, but struggling to make sense of what has transpired."
This is the second worst mass shooting in U.S. history, exceeded only by the Virginia Tech shooting in 2007 when 32 were killed before the shooter turned the gun on himself. The carnage in Connecticut exceeded the 1999 Columbine High School shooting in which 13 died and 24 were injured.
Friday's shooting came three days after masked gunman Jacob Roberts opened fire in a busy Oregon mall, killing two before turning the gun on himself.
The Connecticut shooting occurred at the Sandy Hook Elementary School, which includes 450 students in grades K-4. The town is located about 12 miles east of Danbury, Conn.
ABC News' Emily Friedman, Michael S. James and Shushannah Walshe contributed to this report.
Source
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Report: Obama Advance Team Scouting Spots for Newtown Visit
U.S. President Barack Obama may visit Danbury and Newtown early next week in the wake of the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting that claimed the lives of 20 children.
By Mark Langlois
3:17 pm
Danbury Mayor Mark Boughton Tweeted the helicopters people heard over Danbury today were an advance team setting up for a possible presidential visit early next week.
"We don't know when at this point," Boughton said.
The helicopters visited Danbury Municipal Airportand other locations in the city. The mayor didn't know if the helicopters visited Newtown yet.
"Those helicopters you hear are the Presidential advance team. No details on what day the President is coming," was one of the mayor's Tweets.
Airport Administrator Paul Estefan declined to say anything at all about the helicopters or the president or any visit. Estefan said when President Clinton visited Danbury, the advance team arrived three months before the visit.
"They are scouting landing locations. He's not with them," Boughton Tweeted, referring to the president.
The Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting began at about 9:30 a.m. Friday. In all, 27 people were killed, police said, including 20 children. Among the adults killed were the school’s beloved principaland psychologist.
The identities of all victims have been established, according to State Police Spokesman Lt. J. Paul Vance. Families of those killed have asked that no media members press them for interviews.
On Saturday afternoon, state and federal officials were preparing for the expected arrival of President Obama on Sunday.
http://www.courant.com/news/connecticut/hc-newtown-sandy-hook-school-shooting-20121214,0,3124907,full.story
By Mark Langlois
3:17 pm
Danbury Mayor Mark Boughton Tweeted the helicopters people heard over Danbury today were an advance team setting up for a possible presidential visit early next week.
"We don't know when at this point," Boughton said.
The helicopters visited Danbury Municipal Airportand other locations in the city. The mayor didn't know if the helicopters visited Newtown yet.
"Those helicopters you hear are the Presidential advance team. No details on what day the President is coming," was one of the mayor's Tweets.
Airport Administrator Paul Estefan declined to say anything at all about the helicopters or the president or any visit. Estefan said when President Clinton visited Danbury, the advance team arrived three months before the visit.
"They are scouting landing locations. He's not with them," Boughton Tweeted, referring to the president.
The Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting began at about 9:30 a.m. Friday. In all, 27 people were killed, police said, including 20 children. Among the adults killed were the school’s beloved principaland psychologist.
The identities of all victims have been established, according to State Police Spokesman Lt. J. Paul Vance. Families of those killed have asked that no media members press them for interviews.
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Related:
http://www.courant.com/news/connecticut/hc-newtown-sandy-hook-school-shooting-20121214,0,3124907,full.story
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Saturday, October 27, 2012
Sandy Intensifies, Heads Our Way as Evacuation Orders Begin in NY, NJ
The storm's effects will be felt here by Sunday evening
By Storm Team 4
| Saturday, Oct 27, 2012 | Updated 2:27 PM EDT
PHOTOS AND VIDEOS
PHOTOS
Watching
Hurricane SandyMore Photos and Videos
Sandy barreled north from the Caribbean on Saturday, expected to make landfall early Tuesday near the Delaware coast before it hits two winter weather systems as it moves inland, creating a hybrid superstorm that has the potential to cause widespread flooding and power outages that last for days.
MTA officials warned that subways, bridges and commuter rails could be shut down starting 7 p.m. Sunday, but said a decision would not be made until hours before that.
New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie declared a state of emergency and ordered mandatory evacuations by Sunday at 4 p.m. for the state's barrier islands from Sandy Hook south to Cape May. During a briefing Saturday, he also ordered evacuations at Atlantic City casinos by that time.
To anyone planning to ignore the warnings, Christie said: "Please don't. We have to be prepared for the worst here."
Sandy, which has left more than 40 people dead in its path, is expected to move parallel to the southeast coast of the U.S. through the weekend.
The storm could be wider and stronger than Irene, which caused more than $15 billion total in damage, and could rival the worst East Coast storm on record. On Saturday morning, forecasters said hurricane-force winds of 75 mph could be felt 100 miles away from the storm's center.
After Irene left millions without power, utilities were taking no chances and were lining up extra crews and tree-trimmers. Wind threatened to topple power lines, and trees that still have leaves could be weighed down by snow and fall over if the weight becomes too much.
Sandy was briefly downgraded on Saturday to a tropical storm, which is defined by only a small difference in wind speed; a hurricane has sustained winds of at least 74 mph while a tropical storm has 73 mph and under. More fluctuations between hurricane and tropical storm status are expected as it heads north.
Track Sandy with our satellite radar
See a timeline of when Sandy's effects will be felt here
The rain bands of Sandy will first show in the region Sunday, with the heaviest rain developing Sunday evening and lasting through Tuesday, meteorologists say. The worst of the system is expected to hit Monday into Tuesday morning.
Sandy is likely to arrive in our region during a full moon when tides are near their highest, increasing coastal flooding potential, particularly across the south shores of Long Island and coastal New Jersey.
Significant beach erosion is expected along the shore lines with wind gusts of 60 to 70 mph, 6 to 10 inches of rain, waves of up to 20 feet and widespread power outages that, with some trees still leafy and the potential for snow, could last to Election Day.
Under the heaviest rain band, which looks like it will settle across New Jersey, rain totals could exceed 10 inches, saturating the ground. As strong winds move across those soaked soils, that could cause trees to come down, causing large-scale power outages.
NEW YORK
The first evacuations in New York have been ordered on Fire Island. Residents are to leave by 2 p.m. Sunday, the Islip town supervisor said.
New York City officials are warning that people in low-lying areas might have to evacuate. The city's emergency management situation room has been activated.
The city's primary evacuation zone includes Battery Park City, Coney Island, Manhattan Beach, Far Rockaway and Midland Beach and South Beach in Staten Island. See the zone in orange on this map.
Mayor Bloomberg said Friday that six hospitals and 41 chronic care facilities are in those areas. At this point, officials are not recommending evacuations but say all those facilities should cancel all elective admissions and should discharge patients that can be sent home.
In August 2011, Bloomberg ordered evacuations in low-lying areas of the city as Hurricane Irene approached. The entire subway system was also shut down.
The MTA says its plan calls for service to be shut down if sustained winds of 39 mph or higher are expected. Ahead of the storm, extra workers were being called in, trains were being removed from outdoor yards and subway ventilation grates vulnerable to flooding were being sandbagged and covered.
The agency says some vehicles may be barred from its bridges when winds reach 50 mph or more, and the bridges could be closed if winds reach 60 mph.
Bloomberg said officials would decide Sunday if school would be in session on Monday.
Gov. Andrew Cuomo has activated the state's emergency crews. He also urged people to prepare storm kits, which include non-perishable food, water, cash, filled prescriptions, a battery-powered or hand-crank radio, first aid kit, flashlights and batteries.
"We want to take every precaution possible," Cuomo said.
NEW JERSEY
Despite the dire predictions, some coastal residents said they planned to stay in their homes. Many predicted Sandy would fizzle as most of the recent storms to approach the shore did, while others said they felt safer in their homes.
Many residents, though, were preparing for the worst.
One island resident who wasn't taking any chances was Russ Linke. He and his wife planned to leave Ship Bottom after securing their patio furniture and packing bicycles into their pickup truck.
"I've been here since 1997, and I never even put my barbecue grill away during a storm," Linke said. "But I am taking this one seriously. They say it might hit here. That's about as serious as it can get."
Christie is urging residents to closely monitor the storm and prepare to put in motion their own emergency plans.
The Department of Environmental Protection is opening the Pompton Lakes Dam to lower the lake's level in advance of the storm. The town of Pompton Lakes sits between the Pequannock and Ramapo rivers and has a long history of flooding.
In addition, the state is lowering the levels of four reservoirs used for drinking water in northern New Jersey for the first time ever in preparation for the storm. According to Larry Ragones, a spokesman for the department, the actions were being taken to "create a void space for runoff from the storm."
CONNECTICUT
Gov. Dannel P. Malloy has declared a state of emergency. He says the state is better prepared for Sandy than it was last year when it was hit by the remnants of Hurricane Irene, which knocked out power to residents for days.
Malloy met Friday with representatives from the electric, cable and communications utilities to discuss their preparations. Electricity line crews are already making their way to the state.
Malloy said residents need to plan on at least 7 inches of rain to fall over a 36 hours and winds of 40 mph. Effects could be felt early Sunday evening.
The state has launched a site to keep residents up to date on Sandy. It can be found atwww.ct.gov/sandy.
By Storm Team 4
| Saturday, Oct 27, 2012 | Updated 2:27 PM EDT
PHOTOS AND VIDEOS
PHOTOS
Watching
Hurricane SandyMore Photos and Videos
Sandy barreled north from the Caribbean on Saturday, expected to make landfall early Tuesday near the Delaware coast before it hits two winter weather systems as it moves inland, creating a hybrid superstorm that has the potential to cause widespread flooding and power outages that last for days.
MTA officials warned that subways, bridges and commuter rails could be shut down starting 7 p.m. Sunday, but said a decision would not be made until hours before that.
New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie declared a state of emergency and ordered mandatory evacuations by Sunday at 4 p.m. for the state's barrier islands from Sandy Hook south to Cape May. During a briefing Saturday, he also ordered evacuations at Atlantic City casinos by that time.
To anyone planning to ignore the warnings, Christie said: "Please don't. We have to be prepared for the worst here."
Sandy, which has left more than 40 people dead in its path, is expected to move parallel to the southeast coast of the U.S. through the weekend.
The storm could be wider and stronger than Irene, which caused more than $15 billion total in damage, and could rival the worst East Coast storm on record. On Saturday morning, forecasters said hurricane-force winds of 75 mph could be felt 100 miles away from the storm's center.
After Irene left millions without power, utilities were taking no chances and were lining up extra crews and tree-trimmers. Wind threatened to topple power lines, and trees that still have leaves could be weighed down by snow and fall over if the weight becomes too much.
Sandy was briefly downgraded on Saturday to a tropical storm, which is defined by only a small difference in wind speed; a hurricane has sustained winds of at least 74 mph while a tropical storm has 73 mph and under. More fluctuations between hurricane and tropical storm status are expected as it heads north.
Track Sandy with our satellite radar
See a timeline of when Sandy's effects will be felt here
The rain bands of Sandy will first show in the region Sunday, with the heaviest rain developing Sunday evening and lasting through Tuesday, meteorologists say. The worst of the system is expected to hit Monday into Tuesday morning.
Sandy is likely to arrive in our region during a full moon when tides are near their highest, increasing coastal flooding potential, particularly across the south shores of Long Island and coastal New Jersey.
Significant beach erosion is expected along the shore lines with wind gusts of 60 to 70 mph, 6 to 10 inches of rain, waves of up to 20 feet and widespread power outages that, with some trees still leafy and the potential for snow, could last to Election Day.
Under the heaviest rain band, which looks like it will settle across New Jersey, rain totals could exceed 10 inches, saturating the ground. As strong winds move across those soaked soils, that could cause trees to come down, causing large-scale power outages.
NEW YORK
The first evacuations in New York have been ordered on Fire Island. Residents are to leave by 2 p.m. Sunday, the Islip town supervisor said.
New York City officials are warning that people in low-lying areas might have to evacuate. The city's emergency management situation room has been activated.
The city's primary evacuation zone includes Battery Park City, Coney Island, Manhattan Beach, Far Rockaway and Midland Beach and South Beach in Staten Island. See the zone in orange on this map.
Mayor Bloomberg said Friday that six hospitals and 41 chronic care facilities are in those areas. At this point, officials are not recommending evacuations but say all those facilities should cancel all elective admissions and should discharge patients that can be sent home.
In August 2011, Bloomberg ordered evacuations in low-lying areas of the city as Hurricane Irene approached. The entire subway system was also shut down.
The MTA says its plan calls for service to be shut down if sustained winds of 39 mph or higher are expected. Ahead of the storm, extra workers were being called in, trains were being removed from outdoor yards and subway ventilation grates vulnerable to flooding were being sandbagged and covered.
The agency says some vehicles may be barred from its bridges when winds reach 50 mph or more, and the bridges could be closed if winds reach 60 mph.
Bloomberg said officials would decide Sunday if school would be in session on Monday.
Gov. Andrew Cuomo has activated the state's emergency crews. He also urged people to prepare storm kits, which include non-perishable food, water, cash, filled prescriptions, a battery-powered or hand-crank radio, first aid kit, flashlights and batteries.
"We want to take every precaution possible," Cuomo said.
NEW JERSEY
Despite the dire predictions, some coastal residents said they planned to stay in their homes. Many predicted Sandy would fizzle as most of the recent storms to approach the shore did, while others said they felt safer in their homes.
Many residents, though, were preparing for the worst.
One island resident who wasn't taking any chances was Russ Linke. He and his wife planned to leave Ship Bottom after securing their patio furniture and packing bicycles into their pickup truck.
"I've been here since 1997, and I never even put my barbecue grill away during a storm," Linke said. "But I am taking this one seriously. They say it might hit here. That's about as serious as it can get."
Christie is urging residents to closely monitor the storm and prepare to put in motion their own emergency plans.
The Department of Environmental Protection is opening the Pompton Lakes Dam to lower the lake's level in advance of the storm. The town of Pompton Lakes sits between the Pequannock and Ramapo rivers and has a long history of flooding.
In addition, the state is lowering the levels of four reservoirs used for drinking water in northern New Jersey for the first time ever in preparation for the storm. According to Larry Ragones, a spokesman for the department, the actions were being taken to "create a void space for runoff from the storm."
CONNECTICUT
Gov. Dannel P. Malloy has declared a state of emergency. He says the state is better prepared for Sandy than it was last year when it was hit by the remnants of Hurricane Irene, which knocked out power to residents for days.
Malloy met Friday with representatives from the electric, cable and communications utilities to discuss their preparations. Electricity line crews are already making their way to the state.
Malloy said residents need to plan on at least 7 inches of rain to fall over a 36 hours and winds of 40 mph. Effects could be felt early Sunday evening.
The state has launched a site to keep residents up to date on Sandy. It can be found atwww.ct.gov/sandy.
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Monday, August 06, 2012
Nearly 30K Without Power in Greenwich
Power should be returned by 8 p.m., according to Connecticut Light & Power
Monday, Aug 6, 2012 | Updated 2:28 PM EDT
A power line on fire along Sullivan Avenue in South Windsor Sunday night
Nearly 25,000 customers of Connecticut Light & Power in Greenwich are without electricity after a tree fell on a major transmission line, the company reported Monday.
Outages in Stamford were restored by Monday afternoon, but 24,594 residents of Greenwich still lacked power, the utility said. The outage occurred when a tree -- 85-feet tall and 16-inches in diameter -- was knocked onto transmission lines.
A 24-ton crane was used to clear the tree from the site Monday, the utility said.
The summer storms that blew through the region last night knocked down the tree, which was on a private property on Summit Road, said power company spokesman Frank Poirot. Power should be restored by 8 p.m., Poirot said.
Stay on top of summer storms with interactive radar.
The First Selectman in Greenwich declared a state of emergency at 10:15 a.m. Greenwich police also warn that many traffic control signals might not be operating during the power outage.
Businesses or residences that use the municipal sewer system are asked to help conserve water to the greatest extent possible to reduce the strain on the municipal sewer pump stations and treatment plant.
The Town of Greenwich opened cooling centers at noon on Monday. They include the Community Room of the Public Safety Complex, at 11 Bruce Place, and the Ben Heim Western Greenwich Civic Center, at 449 Pemberwick Road.
The cooling spots will have connections for charging personal electronic devices. There will be no food or water.
The storm also caused rail problems because the line is in close proximity to railroad tracks operated by MetroNorth and Amtrak.
Metro-North trains are currently not operating west of the Cos Cob station, according to Greenwich officials.
Metro-North warns customers to expect crowded conditions and delays of up to 30 minutes.
Sunday, January 22, 2012
Behind the Ban on Sunday Sales of Alcohol
The history of Connecticut’s blue state laws and how they influenced the sale of alcohol
Sparkling cider and sparkling wine at Cask 'n Keg in Mystic
Saturday. It’s a day off of work, a day full of household chores, the last day of the weekend to buy alcohol.
I can’t say Connecticut’s ban on Sunday sales of alcohol has ever affected me much. But then I grew up in Connecticut with the understanding that you buy your alcohol before 9 p.m. that the package stores closed on Sundays, and that for some inexplicable reason you can’t buy wine in the supermarkets.
It was years before I realized those norms were actually strange. The ban on Sunday sales of alcohol still seems to confuse many of my non-Connecticut native friends now living in the nutmeg state, even if they have lived here for years.
But why, they repeatedly ask.
Is it really that big of a deal if you know you can’t buy it beforehand, I repeatedly respond.
Apparently, though, it is a big deal, and my friends aren’t the only ones who think so. When Governor Dannel Malloy called for Sunday alcohol sales last week, it immediately caused the resumption of the debate on Sunday sales of alcohol, and called into question if our state is really ready to leave its Puritanical roots behind.
The Sunday ban on sales of alcohol dates back not to prohibition, but even further, to our Puritan heritage. According to state Senator Kevin Witkos of the 17th Assembly District, Connecticut has prohibited Sunday alcohol sales since about 1882.
But the idea really came about from when the state’s first government based in New Haven created the Blue Laws in the 1600s. Under the direction of Theophilus Eaton and Reverend John Cotton the blue laws, established in 1655, addressed public morality, and according toNetstate.com and The True Blue Laws of Connecticut and New Haven helped give our state it’s Blue Law State nickname.
While the ban on Sunday sales of alcohol was never really a blue law per se it prevented businesses up until the late 1970s from being open at all on Sundays. In fact, according to Witkos some business owners in the Olde Mistick Village were even arrested for violating the law.
But even though those blues laws were slowly challenged and repealed the ban on the Sunday sales of alcohol remained.
Today, Connecticut is one of only 13 states to prohibit the sale of alcohol on Sundays. Alabama, Indiana, Minnesota, Mississippi, Montana, North Carolina, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, Utah and West Virginia are the other states. Only Connecticut and Indiana, however, however completely ban beer, wine and liquor sales on Sundays, the Distilled Spirits Council of the United States said in a press release.
Interestingly, the original blue state laws tried to regulate Sunday as a day of rest. Many of the package store owners I spoke with this week said they liked not being able to open on Sunday. The ban gives them time to spend with their families.
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Monday, December 21, 2009
Catholics Grapple With Divisions Over Abuse
Andrew Sullivan for The New York Times
At St. Mary Church in Norwalk, Conn., the Rev. Greg Markey, left, the Rev. Richard Cipolla, center, and Stephan Genovese, a deacon, celebrate Mass.
By PAUL VITELLO
Published: December 20, 2009
NORWALK, Conn. — Thousands of Masses were celebrated this year in the Roman Catholic Diocese of Bridgeport. But two of them, within a few weeks and a few miles of each other in this diverse commuter-line city, hinted at the tangled emotions still dividing many Catholics almost eight years after the start of a scandal that has confronted the church with its greatest crisis in the modern era.
At St. Mary Church in Norwalk, Conn., the Rev. Greg Markey, left, the Rev. Richard Cipolla, center, and Stephan Genovese, a deacon, celebrate Mass.
By PAUL VITELLO
Published: December 20, 2009
NORWALK, Conn. — Thousands of Masses were celebrated this year in the Roman Catholic Diocese of Bridgeport. But two of them, within a few weeks and a few miles of each other in this diverse commuter-line city, hinted at the tangled emotions still dividing many Catholics almost eight years after the start of a scandal that has confronted the church with its greatest crisis in the modern era.
At St. Jerome Church on Half Mile Road, priests celebrated a Holy Mass of Reconciliation in June for people anywhere who had suffered sexual abuse at the hands of a priest. Though church authorities across the country have paid billions of dollars in legal settlements, advocates for abuse victims said it was one of the few Masses for victims ever held in the United States.
The same month, at St. Mary Church on West Avenue, hundreds of people participated in a requiem Mass for the Rev. Alfred J. Bietighofer, a beloved parish priest who committed suicide in 2002 after four men accused him of molesting them when they were boys.
The diocese has been hit hard by the sex abuse scandal, paying more than $37 million to settle claims. This month, the court-ordered release of 12,000 pages of documents generated by those claims refocused attention on one of the most painful allegations: that officials of the Bridgeport Diocese, like many others, kept parishioners in the dark for years about predatory priests in their midst.
Yet, after years of public scrutiny, lawsuits and quarrels at the dinner table, parishioners here say a kind of armistice has been reached between those who are still angry about it and those who are tired of talking about it.
There are people in both camps at St. Mary’s and St. Jerome’s, parishioners said in recent interviews. They work side by side at the food pantry, on the raffle committee and at meetings of the Ladies Guild; they simply avoid the subject around others with different views.
“The most important thing we have is our community, and that’s what has to be preserved,” said Jeanne Tarrant, a longtime member of St. Jerome’s. “There are people who feel differently than I do about the abuse — and about a lot of other things — but I don’t try to change them, and they don’t try to change me.”
In that spirit, the two summer Masses — one for victims, one for an accused priest — went almost unnoticed outside the ranks of those who celebrated them. But one group that cared deeply is Voice of the Faithful, a nationwide organization of Catholic parishioners who banded together after the scandal broke to advocate for abuse victims and more transparency in church affairs.
When a longtime member of St. Jerome’s asked his pastor, the Rev. David Blanchfield, to offer a special Mass for the victims of abuse, Father Blanchfield said he did so without hesitation “because, obviously, it needed to be done.”
But John Marshall Lee, a Voice of the Faithful leader in Connecticut, said the Mass for the deceased priest at St. Mary’s raised questions for some Catholics.
“People who were upset over the Mass for Bietighofer had no objection to saying a Mass for the man,” said Mr. Lee, who belongs to neither parish. “It was that St. Mary’s didn’t also have a Mass for the victims. That seemed odd.”
He asked the pastor there, the Rev. Greg Markey, to offer a Mass for victims, but Father Markey declined. No member of his parish had asked him for such a service, the pastor said, and none had expressed objections to Father Bietighofer’s Mass, which he described as “not a celebration of the life of a predator, but a Mass to pray for a man’s soul.”
People in the parish loved Father Bietighofer, Father Markey said. No one could know for sure whether he had abused anyone. But whether he did or did not, Father Markey said, “he served this parish well for many years.”
For many Catholics, differences over the sex abuse crisis are rooted in deeper, older tensions in the church — between tradition and reform, between parishes like St. Mary’s, with its Latin Masses, and St. Jerome’s, where parishioners playing electric guitar and drums accompany the choir.
Father Markey, a self-described conservative Catholic, upset some parishioners soon after he became pastor of St. Mary’s two years ago by deciding to phase out girls from the ranks of the altar servers. Those in place could stay, the pastor decided, but he reasoned that girls cannot become priests, and altar service should be a gateway to a potential vocation in the priesthood.
The traditional Latin Mass he introduced about the same time is one of the few offered in the state, and has drawn worshipers from a 50-mile radius.
To conservatives like Father Markey, abuses committed in the 1960s and after reflect the “moral decline” of those freewheeling times, the effects of the Second Vatican Council’s liberalization of church rules and the church’s failure to weed out gay men in the priesthood.
“There is a sense that a lot of what happened — not all of it, but a lot — had to do with lapses of theological orthodoxy and the decline of moral life that went with it,” Father Markey said.
To more liberal-leaning Catholics like Father Blanchfield, the abuses reflect a failure to keep up with the times by bringing more diversity — women and lay people in particular — into the church’s decision-making process. People with broad life experience, he said, would more likely have spotted the “psychosexual” problems of those priests who abused.
Both Father Markey and Father Blanchfield agree on at least one point: They are weary of the unrelenting publicity about sex abuse.
Parishioners at both churches said the issue still hovered but did not cast as dark a shadow as it once did. They said common bonds trumped their differing views about it — bonds of faith, mainly, but also connections forged in the prosaic, time-consuming commitments people make to serve on the Buildings and Grounds Committee, to chaperone Teen Night, to volunteer for the bereaved-parishioners dinner squad.
Jane Reichle, a member of St. Mary’s, said another bond was the sense of mourning people felt for the intimacy — once taken for granted and now under constant watch — between priests and parishioners.
Since 2002, Bishop William E. Lori of Bridgeport has adopted several measures, commonly used across the country, which he says are protecting children from future abuse by priests. The diocese has conducted background checks of more than 30,000 clerics, employees and volunteers; it has introduced an abuse-prevention course that 90,000 parishioners, clergy and staff members have completed. When accusations are made against priests, the bishop has said, the matter is turned over to the police.
At a confirmation ceremony at St. Jerome’s one recent Sunday, as a standing-room-only crowd of families looked on, Bishop Lori spoke to the 42 young confirmands about the importance of practicing their faith, then anointed each one, making the sign of the cross.
As the service entered its second hour, Jack Bellairs, 87, grandfather of Jordan Michael Bellairs, 13, snapped a picture with a disposable camera, then went outside to have a cigarette. He said he had “followed all that stuff, sure” in the newspapers about sex abuse. But this was a great day — seeing his grandson become a full-fledged member of the Catholic Church.
“Why?” he was asked.
“Why?” he repeated, seeming to find the question incomprehensible.
“Because I believe in life after death,” he said, blowing cigarette smoke in the rain. “And I want my grandson to be with me when I get there.”
A version of this article appeared in print on December 21, 2009, on page A25 of the New York edition.
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Thursday, June 18, 2009
Fairfield University - Conference on Mission in US Jesuit Higher Education
Agenda of the Director General: P. Adolfo Nicolás, S.J.*
June18-21, 2009
Fairfield: Conference on Mission in US Jesuit Higher Education
June18-21, 2009
Fairfield: Conference on Mission in US Jesuit Higher Education
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Source: http://www.apostleshipofprayer.net/news/Agenda-Nicolas-en.aspx
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*P.S.. The meeting will take place at Fairfield University in Fairfield, Connecticut.
The Superior General of the Jesuits,
Adolfo Nicolas will attend ; He is also known as the black pope.
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Tuesday, June 09, 2009
Jesuit Justice Conference 2009
Transforming The World and Being Transformed
Nine years ago, the Rev. Hans Kolvenbach, S.J., then secretary general of the Society of Jesus, charged the 28 Jesuit colleges and universities in the U.S. with making a priority of their response to justice issues around the world. Accordingly, a permanent National Committee on Justice in Jesuit Higher Education was created. The group is committed to meeting every few years; this year, the Commitment to Justice in Jesuit Higher Education 2009 meeting will take place on the Fairfield campus from June 18 to 21. The entire campus is reserved for the duration of the event, and sessions will be held in various locations on campus.
"This year's meeting will be particularly meaningful because we'll have representatives from several South and Central American colleges, who will present the issues from their perspective," said Dr. Winston Tellis, who represents Fairfield University on the National Volunteering Committee for the 2009 conference.
Keynote speakers for the conference include British Robinson, director of public/private partnerships in the Office of the U.S. Global AIDS Coordinator at the State Dept.; the Rev. Charles Onyango Oduke, S.J., assistant professor of philosophy at Boston College; and the Rev. Richard Ryscavage, S.J., director of the Center for Faith and Public Life at Fairfield.
Faculty and staff are encouraged to attend all or part of the conference at a reduced attendee rate of $50 per day, which covers registration, conference materials, and lunch. A registration form for Fairfield personnel will be distributed via e-mail shortly.
To learn more about the conference and/or to register, visit the Justice Conference 2009 website, and if you have any additional questions, please contact us.
Source: http://www.fairfield.edu/about/adm_just_conf09.html
P.S.
- The University is located in Fairfield, Connecticut
- According to agenda Jesuit Superior General Adolfo Nicolas will be at the event. http://www.apostleshipofprayer.net/news/Agenda-Nicolas-en.aspx
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