Sec. Mullin: DHS moves on sanctuary cities to rescue missing children

Something Strange is Happening with School Picture Day

 

DETAILS: Florida's massive child recovery operation rescues more than 10...

Abuse in the Catholic Church | DW Documentary

Kevin Annett on Pope Francis & Horrors of the Catholic Church - Podcast 741

'Mea Maxima Culpa : Silence in the House of God'

Investigation reveals widespread sexual abuse and cover-ups by Archdioce...

Pope John Paul II covered up paedophilia, Polish TV investigation alleges

Sins of the Church: The Disturbing Transfer of Fallen Priests | ENDEVR D...

Let Him Prey: High-Ranking Jesuits Helped Keep Pedophile Priest Hidden By Peter Jamison

SF Weekly

Wed May 25th, 2011 4:00am

FeatureNews

Jesuit priest and former USF professor Donald McGuire with one of his alleged victims in Walnut Creek in 1982.

 

Illustration by Brian Stauffer

The conservative Catholic family lived on a quiet cul-de-sac in Walnut Creek and took pains to observe the traditions of a church racked by social change. Their lives appeared driven by the famous motivational phrase of Saint Ignatius, “Ad majorem Dei gloriam” — for the greater glory of God. It was the same motto that ostensibly guided the Jesuit priest, Donald McGuire, to whom they turned for spiritual guidance.

Then, in 1993, they learned that McGuire had done unthinkable things with their 16-year-old son, Charles, who traveled with him as his personal assistant. The boy and the priest had allegedly looked at pornographic magazines, masturbated, and taken showers together. The family took this devastating news to an esteemed San Francisco priest, Joseph Fessio, who, like McGuire, had once been a teacher at the University of San Francisco.

Fessio runs the Ignatius Press, a Catholic publishing house based in the Sunset District that is the primary English-language publisher of the pope's writings. He and McGuire shared a reputation for doctrinal orthodoxy. McGuire, for his part, was a cleric of worldwide renown, functioning as adviser and confessor to Mother Teresa. While family members considered reporting the abuse to secular authorities, Fessio urged them to stay quiet until he could confer with Jesuit higher-ups.

Confronted with the allegations, McGuire, a famously manipulative man known both for his charm and periodic rages, denied Charles's accusations or made excuses. His Jesuit bosses in Chicago, where McGuire was technically based, ordered him to undergo a residential treatment program at a psychiatric hospital for priests. In about seven months, McGuire was released and returned to active ministry. He continued to prey on other children for the next nine years.

McGuire, who was officially defrocked by the church in 2008, is serving a federal prison sentence stemming from his acts of child molestation. In 2009, SF Weekly published a story revealing his extensive ties to families and institutions in the Bay Area. But not until last month did newly released court documents in a lawsuit against the Jesuits reveal the full extent to which his colleagues and bosses were aware of his highly questionable relationships with teenage boys.

Despite this knowledge, fellow priests did not report McGuire's behavior outside the Church. In California, that silence may, at times, have amounted to a violation of state law, which requires professionals who work with children to immediately report suspected child abuse to police or child welfare workers.

“It boggles the mind how you could have something so well documented and nobody could act on it,” says Mark, a second Walnut Creek man who asserts he was molested by McGuire and is part of the lawsuit filed in Illinois against the Jesuits' Chicago Province. He joins three others — Charles, George, and Dominick — in the ranks of alleged victims who were abused by McGuire in the Bay Area or reported their abuse to local clergy. Only Mark and Dominick have taken legal action against the church. (SF Weekly is identifying three of the men by pseudonyms because they are victims of childhood sexual abuse whose names have never been made public. The fourth victim has already been identified in federal court proceedings by his real first name, Dominick, though his last name has not been disclosed.)

New Jersey Hotline For Clergy Sex Abuse Claims Flooded With Calls, Officials Say

September 15, 2018 at 11:13 pm





NEWARK, N.J. (CBSNewYork) — A hotline created to document reports of clergy sex abuse in New Jersey is receiving so many calls that some can’t even get through. The round-the-clock call center opened last week as part of a new investigation by Attorney General Gurbir Grewal.

Fred Marigliano says it took him more than 50 years to speak out about being abused by his priest when he was 11-years-old.

“All I wanted to do was not be raped again,” he told CBS2. “Sometimes I still have nightmares.”


MORE: “Predator Priests” Molested Over 1,000 Kids Since 1940s In Pennsylvania, Report Says

His sobering story was told to a crowd that included Cardinal Joseph Tobin at Newark’s Cathedral Basilica of the Sacred Heart on Friday. On Saturday, he called it in to Grewal’s office via the hotline that’s been slammed virtually nonstop with calls from other survivors.

“It rang maybe 10 times,” survivor Joe Capozzi said. “It hung up and a message came up saying we’re unable to take your call.”

Pennsylvania Attorney General Josh Shapiro released a grand jury report last month which alleged there’s more than 1,000 victims of sexual abuse by more than 300 Roman Catholic priests in the state over the past seven decades. Soon after, Grewal created the hotline to identify potential victims in New Jersey. He wouldn’t discuss the exact number of calls coming in, but he did confirm the volume is so high it’s forced him to assign additional staff.

Attorney Greg Gianforcaro says he’s interacted with at least 300 victims in New Jersey, and he thinks the state’s total number will most likely surpass Pennsylvania’s.

“In 1958, New Jersey passed the charitable immunity legislation, that basically immunized this kind of abuse by religious clerics,” Gianforcaro said on Friday. “I think under these circumstances I believe that New Jersey was a safe haven for pedophile priests.”

Survivors say the state’s statute of limitations has given them another reason to call.

“We want you to go back and do away with the statute of limitations so these people… these people that raped us and raped our kids can pay the price,” Marigliano said.

Cardinal Tobin says he supports eliminating the statute of limitations.

“I think a blanket question like that is hard sometimes, because you have to ask to what do statute of limitations do that we’ve kept them around for so long? But I do believe there’s something unique about this crime in that people often don’t realize what happened to them until they are adults,” Newark’s Archbishop said. “Demand the truth, because Jesus said the truth will set us free.”

Grewal says a state task force will use the calls to present evidence to a state grand jury.

“I kept my secret for 20 years, and it ate me up inside,” Capozzi said. “It was slowly killing me, and now being able to call up the hotline, leave your name, leave your information and let go of that secret because then you can start healing.”

New York’s Attorney General Barbara Underwood has also launched an investigation into all eight Roman Catholic dioceses in the state. Underwood’s office also announced a hotline — 1-800-771-7755 — for individuals to call to report allegations of clergy abuse, as well as a confidential online complaint form that can be found at ag.ny.gov/ClergyAbuse.




Source

The Crusader Who Exposed Pennsylvania’s Sadistic Priests

THE GOOD FIGHT

BARBIE LATZA NADEAU

08.17.18 10:10 PM ET




PHOTO ILLUSTRATION BY THE DAILY BEAST

ROME — Richard Serbin remembers the day in 1987 when he met 19-year-old Michael Hutchinson. The skinny young man was in a mental health institution for criminals serving time for robbery and male prostitution. “I can remember that meeting very well,” said Serbin, who was 40 at the time and just getting his bearings in what he thought would be a career dedicated to civil cases against big corporations. “He was very hyper and he got all these candy bars from the vending machine. Then he told me what happened.”

Michael, it turns out, was very troubled. He had been sexually abused from just before his 11th birthday until he was 17 by Father Francis Luddy, a Catholic priest in the Pennsylvania diocese of Altoona-Johnstown who has since died.

Luddy, who was in his 40s at the time, was so close to the Hutchinson family he was also Michael’s godfather. He is one of 301 predator priests exposed in a sickening document released by a Pennsylvania grand jury on Tuesday. That document outlines alleged sexual crimes against more than 1,000 children over seven decades of stunning silence and cover ups across six dioceses in Pennsylvania.

Without Serbin’s diligence and commitment, many of these atrocities never would have come to light. Serbin, who has been defending victims of clerical sex abuse since he met Michael more than 30 years ago, provided the names of 109 predator priests to the Pennsylvania grand jury investigation, and to a prior Pennsylvania grand jury investigation in 2016.

Serbin found his way to Michael’s cell after the boy’s mother, Mary Hutchinson, grew frustrated with a lack of response from the local diocese. She went to visit Serbin in his small office. “She was obviously a brave woman, willing to publicly take on the church on behalf of her son,” Serbin recalls. “Keep in mind that in 1987 no one believed a priest would sexually molest a child.” She didn’t want compensation from the church, Serbin insists. She just wanted her son to get the care he needed.

“He was in a mental institute for criminals. It was close to his 20th birthday,” Serbin told The Daily Beast by phone from Pennsylvania. “Michael was this very slender boy. He had been in prison, he was sodomized in prison, he had borderline intelligence.”

'Pope Cannot Claim He Was Misinformed': Chilean Abuse Survivor After Vatican Meeting

May 10, 20185:02 AM ET
Heard on Morning Edition


ALEX LEFF

Juan Carlos Cruz, a survivor of sexual abuse by a Chilean predator priest, met with Pope Francis recently at the Vatican.Andres Kudacki/AP

In January, Pope Francis traveled to South America to spread peace and hope. Many cheered him on, but he also wound up causing emotional pain when he dismissed accusations that Chilean clergy had covered up sexual abuse.

In the weeks that followed, the Vatican's leading sex crimes investigator looked into the allegations, and the pope did an about-face: He acknowledged making mistakes.

Now, Francis has been apologizing and listening to some of those he offended most.

Last month, three men who had been molested by a Chilean priest in their youth were invited to the Vatican by Francis so he could speak with them personally and ask their forgiveness.

One of the Chilean abuse survivors, Juan Carlos Cruz, now a communications professional in Philadelphia, describes how moving the experience was for him.

"He said, 'Juan Carlos, the first thing I want to do is apologize for what happened to you and apologize in the name of the pope, and in the name of the universal church,' " Cruz says in an interview on Morning Edition. "Of course it was very emotional."


"The pope in January called me a liar"

Ex-Guam archbishop appealing sex abuse verdict

The Latest: Ex-Guam archbishop appealing sex abuse verdict


Religion News


Friday, March 16, 2018 5:23 PM EST
By The Associated Press, AP



VATICAN CITY (AP) — The Latest on the Vatican convicting suspended Guam Archbishop Anthony Apuron of some charges in a sex abuse trial (all times local):

10 p.m.

The suspended Guam archbishop convicted of some charges in a sex abuse trial says he's appealing the verdict and looks forward to proving his innocence.

The Vatican on Friday removed Archbishop Anthony Apuron from office and ordered him not to return to the Pacific island, a U.S. territory where nearly everyone is Catholic. The Vatican didn't say exactly what Apuron has been convicted of.

Apuron says in a statement he's relieved the tribunal dismissed the majority of accusations against him.

Pope Francis named a temporary administrator for Guam in 2016 after Apuron was accused by former altar boys of sexually abusing them when he was a priest. Dozens of cases involving other priests on the island have since come to light. The archdiocese is facing more than $115 million in civil lawsuits alleging child sexual abuse by priests.

Source

Vatican investigator to meet with Chile abuse victim in NYC

By Associated Press

February 17, 2018 | 12:22am

Juan Carlos Cruz

AP


A Vatican sex-crimes investigator is meeting in New York with one of the key victims in the Chilean abuse scandal.

Saturday’s meeting between Archbishop Charles Scicluna and whistleblower Juan Carlos Cruz will take place at a Roman Catholic church in Manhattan.

Scicluna is investigating accusations against Bishop Juan Barros, a protege of Chile’s most notorious predator priest, the Rev. Fernando Karadima.

Cruz and two others have said Barros witnessed the abuse Karadima inflicted on them and ignored it. Barros has denied seeing or knowing of any abuse.

The scandal has tarred the reputation of Pope Francis. Francis angered many when he appointed Barros a bishop in 2015.

Source

Pope Francis accuses clerical abuse victims of slandering bishop

Pontiff enrages Chilean victims of paedophile priest, saying claims of cover up are ‘all calumny’

about 4 hours ago

Pope Francis ‘has just turned back the clock to the darkest days of this crisis’, says campaigner Anne Barrett Doyle. Photograph: Mario Ruiz/EPA



Pope Francis has accused victims of Chile’s most notorious paedophile of slander, in an astonishing end to a visit meant to help heal the wounds of a sex abuse scandal that has cost the Catholic Church its credibility in the country.

Francis said that until he sees proof that Bishop Juan Barros was complicit in covering up the sex crimes of the Reverend Fernando Karadima, such accusations against the bishop are “all calumny”.

The pope’s remarks drew shock from Chileans and immediate rebuke from victims and their advocates. They noted the accusers were deemed credible enough by the Vatican that it sentenced Karadima to a lifetime of “penance and prayer” for his crimes in 2011.

A Chilean judge also found the victims to be credible, saying that while she had to drop criminal charges against Karadima because too much time had passed, proof of his crimes was not lacking.

“As if I could have taken a selfie or a photo while Karadima abused me and others and Juan Barros stood by watching it all,” tweeted Bishop Barros’s most vocal accuser, Juan Carlos Cruz.
Truly crazy

“These people are truly crazy, and the pontiff talks about atonement to the victims. Nothing has changed, and his plea for forgiveness is empty.”

The Karadima scandal dominated Francis’s visit to Chile and the overall issue of sex abuse and church cover-up was likely to factor into his three-day trip to Peru that began late on Thursday.

Karadima’s victims reported to church authorities as early as 2002 that he would kiss and fondle them in the Santiago parish he ran, but officials refused to believe them.

Only when the victims went public with their accusations in 2010 did the Vatican launch an investigation that led to Karadima being removed from ministry.

Francis had sought to heal the wounds by meeting this week with abuse victims and begging forgiveness for the crimes of church pastors. But on Thursday, he struck a defiant tone when asked by a Chilean journalist about Mr Barros.

“The day they bring me proof against Bishop Barros, I’ll speak,” Francis said. “There is not one shred of proof against him. It’s all calumny. Is that clear?”

Anne Barrett Doyle, of the online database BishopAccountability.org, said it was “sad and wrong” for the pope to discredit the victims since “the burden of proof here rests with the church, not the victims – and especially not with victims whose veracity has already been affirmed.

“He has just turned back the clock to the darkest days of this crisis,” she said in a statement. “Who knows how many victims now will decide to stay hidden, for fear they will not be believed?”
Claims

Indeed, Catholic officials for years accused victims of slandering and attacking the church with their claims. But up until the pope’s words on Thursday, many in the church and Vatican had come to reluctantly acknowledge that victims usually told the truth and that the church for decades had wrongly sought to protect its own.

German Silva, a political scientist at Santiago’s Universidad Mayor, said the pope’s comments were a “tremendous error” that will reverberate in Chile and beyond.

Patricio Navia, political science professor at Diego Portales University in Santiago, said Francis had gone much further than Chilean bishops in acknowledging the sexual abuse scandal, which many Chileans appreciated.

“Then right before leaving, Francis turns around and says: ‘By the way, I don’t think Barros is guilty. Show me some proof’,” Mr Navia said, adding that the comment will probably erase any goodwill the pope had won over the issue.

– PA

Source

A Very Creepy Sex Cult Scandal Greets the Pope

DEVILS

BARBIE LATZA NADEAU
01.15.18 1:21 PM ET





ROME—What is a boy to do when his spiritual mentor, part of a group that claims it is leading young people on the path of Christ, says that God, working in mysterious ways, wants him to fondle and be fondled, to lie naked with grown men, to be sodomized? Too often and for too long in too many parts of the world, those experiences have been kept as guilty secrets, not by the perpetrators but by the victims.

“I thought I had been selected by the devil to provide sexual services to this man,” as one of those boys explained to investigators.

Only when the press has documented the cases has action been taken to expose some of the perpetrators, although far from all of them.

Such is the situation in Peru and Chile, where Pope Francis is paying a visit this week. However beneficent his reputation, the sordid past of such men and institutions keeps coming back to afflict his papacy like a recurrent, debilitating disease.

Luis Fernando Figari, the 70-year-old founder of Peru’s conservative Sodalitium Christianae Vitae (SCV) Catholic movement used psychological manipulation and sexual torture on young members of his Catholic organization, according to his victims. He and three other men stand accused, though not yet officially charged by Peruvian authorities, of sexually and psychologically assaulting dozens of little boys and young men throughout the ’90s and early 2000s by threatening them with the wrath of God if they didn’t succumb to their wanton pleasures of the flesh.

One of the alleged perpetrators, Jeffrey Daniels Valderrama, now lives in Chicago, where he has told authorities he is innocent of the Peruvian allegations, according to the Chicago Tribune.

One of Daniels Valderrama’s alleged victims, Alvaro Urbina, interviewed by the Tribune, said he had been taken to SCV to escape bullying in school when Daniels gave him attention that soon turned sexual. “I was a child. I didn’t know what I was doing or what I wanted. These are scars that I’ll carry for years,” he told the Tribune in December. “It’s a pain I’m going to carry in my heart forever.”

The reported abuses of SCV founder Figari are remarkably similar to those lodged against the late Father Marcial Maciel Degollado, who founded the Legion of Christ in the 1940s and used it as a pool from which those in charge could recruit young victims for sex acts that often included oral and anal abuse. Maciel Degollado did not limit himself to little boys. While serving as a supposedly celibate priest, he also fathered several children, at least one of whom he later abused.

Pope Francis Exposed Quietly Letting Pedophile Priests Off With Little or No Punishment

by Matt Agorist
February 25, 2017

from TheFreeThoughtProject Website


Matt Agorist is an honorably discharged veteran of the USMC and former intelligence operator directly tasked by the NSA. This prior experience gives him unique insight into the world of government corruption and the American police state.

Agorist has been an independent journalist for over a decade and has been featured on mainstream networks around the world. Agorist is also the Editor at Large at the Free Thought Project.

Follow @MattAgorist on Twitter and now on Steemit



  In 2014, Pope Francis admitted that "about two percent" or 1 in 50 Roman Catholic priests are pedophiles.

He then promised solutions to the history of the church essentially condoning the horrid practice. However, it appears that his solution is to sweep it under the rug.

According to a report out of the AP, Pope Francis has quietly reduced sanctions against a handful of pedophile priests, applying his vision of a merciful church even to its worst offenders in ways that survivors of abuse and the pope's own advisers question.

One of the child molesting priests given clemency by the Pope was later arrested and sentenced to more than four years in jail for abusing multiple boys aged 12-16.

The Rev. Mauro Inzoli is now facing a second church trial after new evidence emerged against him, according to the AP.

It is no secret that the Vatican has been sweeping the issue of pedophilia under the rug for many years. In 2014, the UN issued a scathing report, blasting the Vatican for protecting pedophiles.

The U.N. committee's main human rights investigator, Sara Oviedo, led the most intense grilling the Holy See has received on the issue, according to a report by The Associated Press.

Given the "zero tolerance" policy of the Vatican, she asked, why were there "efforts to cover up and obscure these types of cases?"


Another committee member, psychologist Maria Rita Parsi, added:


"If these events continue to be hidden and covered up, to what extent will children be affected?"

One such event that was covered up by the Vatican and the Western media at large was the reverend Gino Flaim, who claimed to "understand pedophilia" and said it's caused by the child's attempt to find affection.

He told Italy's La7 television channel,


"I've been to lots of schools, and I know children.

Unfortunately, there are children who seek affection because they don't receive it at home and I understand that some priests can give up.

Pedophilia is a sin, and like all sins has to be accepted."

When the interviewer asked Flaim,


"So, you actually mean that most of the time it's because of the kid's fault?"

Flaim responded by saying,


"Yes, most of the time."

After condoning pedophilia and blaming it on the child, this 'holy man' went on to bash homosexuality, calling it a "disease."




Many canon lawyers and church authorities argue that defrocking pedophiles can put society at greater risk because the church no longer exerts any control over them.

They argue that keeping the men in restricted ministry, away from children, at least enables superiors to exert some degree of supervision.

However, as the case of Rev. Mauro Inzoli illustrates, these people need to be locked up.

In November, an Italian criminal judge showed little mercy in convicting Inzoli of abusing five children, aged 12-16, and sentencing him to four years, nine months in prison.

The judge said Inzoli had a number of other victims but their cases fell outside the statute of limitations, according to the AP.

With pedophilia scandals rocking the elite right now, is it that surprising to learn that the Pope is attempting to downplay the church's role in the horrific practice?

As the AP reports, Francis scrapped the commission's proposed tribunal for bishops who botch abuse cases following legal objections from the congregation.

The commission's other major initiative - a guideline template to help dioceses develop policies to fight abuse and safeguard children - is gathering dust.

The Vatican never sent the template to bishops' conferences, as the commission had sought, or even linked it to its main abuse-resource website.

Source

Australian Catholic church has paid $276m to abuse victims so far, inquiry shows

Royal commission into institutional responses to child sexual abuse releases data showing 4,445 have come forward




Catholic church records show more than 3,000 child abuse claims have resulted in payments for redress and many are still being assessed. Photograph: Dean Lewins/AAP
Australian Associated Press

Wednesday 15 February 2017 20.31 EST


The Catholic Church in Australia has paid $276m in compensation to thousands of people sexually abused as children by priests and religious brothers.

The victims who have come forward to the church have received on average $91,000, according to data released by the royal commission into institutional responses to child sexual abuse on Thursday.

In total 4,445 people have made abuse claims to the church but that number still does not reveal the true extent of abuse in Catholic institutions in Australia as many victims never come forward.

Catholic church’s ‘pontifical secret’ stops disclosure of sex abuse allegations, expert says

Read more

“The royal commission’s experience is that many survivors face barriers which deter them from reporting abuse to authorities and to the institution in which the abuse occurred,” senior counsel assisting the commission Gail Furness SC said.

“Accordingly, the total number of incidences of child sexual abuse in Catholic church institutions in Australia is likely to be greater than the claims made.”

The commission’s analysis of church records showed more than 3,000 child abuse claims resulted in payments for redress, of which 2,854 resulted in monetary compensation.

A significant number of claims are ongoing, the inquiry heard.

Furness said Catholic church authorities have paid $276.1m in total, a sum that includes compensation and amounts for treatment, legal and other costs.

Victims say Catholic church data on child abuse underestimates scale of offending

Read more

The Christian Brothers, which operated a number of residential facilities, have made the highest number of payments at 763, totalling $48.5m. The data covers claims made between 1980 and 2015.

They mainly relate to abuse between 1950 and 1989 but the earliest incident occurred in the 1920s and the latest after 2010.

Almost half the claims made to church authorities concerned schools.

The highest number of abuse claims – 219 – concerned a residential care facility run by the De La Salle Brothers in Beaudesert, Queensland.


Catholic church told of 4,444 abuse claims in 35 years, says royal commission


Source 


 

Cardinal George Pell meets with victims of abuse and is committed to working with them

ROME REPORTS in English 

Published on Mar 4, 2016


Follow us on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/RomeReportsENG/
Click here to receive the latest news: http://smarturl.it/RomeReports
Visit our website to learn more: http://www.romereports.com/

He has been questioned by an Australian commission investigating abuses in the country.

---------------------

For broadcasting: sales@romereports.com

ROME REPORTS, www.romereports.com, is an independent international TV News Agency based in Rome covering the activity of the Pope, the life of the Vatican and current social, cultural and religious debates. Reporting on the Catholic Church requires proximity to the source, in-depth knowledge of the Institution, and a high standard of creativity and technical excellence.

As few broadcasters have a permanent correspondent in Rome, ROME REPORTS is geared to inform the public and meet the needs of television broadcasting companies around the world through daily news packages, weekly newsprograms and documentaries.

---------------------

Follow us...
Our website http://www.romereports.com/
Facebook https://www.facebook.com/RomeReportsENG
Twitter https://twitter.com/romereports

.