Bishop heading anti-racism committee says ex-KKK priest “a tragic story with noble end”

for crying out loud... it is one thing for any person to commit a crime of some sort... But i feel what this priest did in his younger years... and then to hide himself away as a priest in the catholic church... is a crime in it's self... I have not pity for this priest... it seems to me that I have read it all now... they join the priesthood... to hide their crimes of RAPE and abuse of innocent children... and now of being in the KKK... doing all sorts of crime... what a hide away... so safe they must feel... until they are found out... and then out comes all of their lies... deceit... and excuses of covering up their crimes... of today and yesterday... I just don't get it... well I don't understand where they are coming from...

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A priest who had served as a grand wizard in the Ku Klux Klan 40 years ago is “a tragic story that has had a noble end,” according to the new head of an ad hoc committee set up by the U.S. bishops’ conference to work against racism.
“It was tragic that this man was involved in the KKK, and that his behavior was of such a degree that he ended up in trouble with the authorities about it. What is hopeful and noble is the fact that he realized he was going down the wrong path,” said Bishop George V. Murry of Youngstown during a press conference announcing the new Ad Hoc Committee Against Racism of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB).

http://www.cathnewsusa.com/2017/08/bishop-heading-anti-racism-committee-says-ex-kkk-priest-tragic-story-noble-end/

Victims, advocates push for Archdiocese of Santa Fe officials to come clean

Everyone finally believed them. At least that is how they felt. In the days and weeks after the Catholic Diocese of Gallup in 2014 published a list naming 30 priests and a teacher who church executives said had been credibly accused of sexually abusing children, Elizabeth Terrill got one phone call after another from survivors whose allegations had been met for years with denial and doubt.

With the bishop’s very public admission, some survivors believed at last that the Catholic Church and the broader community accepted their charges against men who once had been trusted and enjoyed protection from a system few others had challenged.

http://www.santafenewmexican.com/news/local_news/victims-advocates-push-for-archdiocese-of-santa-fe-officials-to/article_a96f0fc2-901e-59a3-8004-da11a0b6b160.html 

All eyes on Vatican Cardinal's sexual assault case in Australia

Australian Cardinal George Pell, one of Pope Francis' most senior aides, has been summoned to appear in court in his home state this week to face "historical sexual assault" charges.  Last month, Victorian state police charged him with multiple sexual offences involving multiple complainants from years ago.
In Australia, there is no statute of limitations on such crimes, which means one can be charged for crimes committed decades ago. Police have refused to elaborate on the allegations and the local court has issued a gag order on details regarding the case.

http://www.chinapost.com.tw/asia/2017/07/25/499597/all-eyes.http

The clergy’s task is unfinished in confronting sex abuse

The story of Marie Collins, an Irish victim of clergy sex abuse and a witness of unimpeachable integrity, is a dual tale of how far the church has come in acknowledging and handling the scandal and of how wholly and demonstrably incapable the Catholic clerical culture is of dealing with its own sin.
Collins was one of two survivors of clergy sex abuse who were appointed in 2014 to the Pontifical Commission for the Protection of Minors, an agency created by Pope Francis. She resigned the commission in March, providing NCR with a long explanatory statement.

http://www.cathnewsusa.com/2017/07/clergys-task-unfinished-confronting-sex-abuse/?newsletter=1 

Brisbane girls school Mt St Michael's College receives historical sexual abuse complaint

An exclusive Brisbane girls school has revealed it received a formal complaint of historical sexual assault, dating back 40 years. Mt St Michael's College, an all-girls Catholic high school in the inner suburb of Ashgrove, has written to former students about the allegations.
The letter, signed by principal Sharon Volp, said the abuse allegedly occurred between a student and a former staff member in the 1970s.

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-08-01/brisbane-mount-saint-michaels-college-abuse-allegation/8761488 

German abuse report ‘shocking’ and not the end, Church expert says

Jesuit Father Hans Zollner, a leading anti-abuse expert and a member of the Pontifical Commission for the Protection of Minors, called a report documenting hundreds of cases of physical and sexual abuse at a German boys' choir "shocking," and warned that as the taboo lifts in other parts of the world, similar accounts are likely to keep emerging.

ROME - A recent German report documenting hundreds of cases of physical and sexual abuse at a famed boys choir in Regensburg, led for part of the seventy-year span covered in the report by Pope Benedict XVI’s brother, was “shocking,” according to one of the Church’s leading experts on child abuse - and what’s worse, he warns, the story hardly ends there.

https://cruxnow.com/interviews/2017/07/28/german-abuse-report-shocking-not-end-church-expert-says/ 

Praise for Gillard over abuse inquiry

TWENTY years ago, who would have thought in our wildest dreams that acardinal in the Roman Catholic church would be charged with child molestation? George Pell must now be allowed due process and the presumption of innocence. But spare a thought for the victims of these crimes, who are finally getting some closure from the recent spate of convictions of paedophile priests.
They have lived with the trauma for years, struggling to get some form of compensation and admission of wrongdoing from one of the most powerful and richest institutions in the world with little or no success. 

https://www.qt.com.au/news/praise-for-gillard-over-abuse-inquiry/3207011/

Catholic schoolchildren asked to pay archdiocese debts

'WRONGS AND DEBTS': David Sablan, Concerned Catholics of Guam president, addresses the media during a press conference in this file photo. Sablan said recently that the families of Guam's 4,424 Catholic school students shouldn't have to help pay for the debts left behind by a closed, college preparatory school and the financial problems caused by another school.
The sexual abuse of our children by members of our Catholic clergy is the worst violation of trust, when supposedly holy men take advantage of our young for their own pleasure. This is truly sad and our prayers continually go out for the victims and their families. Suspended Archbishop Apuron's administration of our archdiocese was a "disaster."

https://www.postguam.com/forum/letter_to_the_editor/catholic-schoolchildren-asked-to-pay-archdiocese-debts/article_33cb8b2c-7c0c-11e7-a797-97e455441f2c.html

Former Phoenix Bishop Thomas O'Brien accused of sexual abuse

PHOENIX - A Tucson man alleges Bishop Emeritus Thomas J. O'Brien sexually abused him more than 35 years ago.  O'Brien has already admitted to helping cover up suspected pedophile priests, but this is the first lawsuit to allege O'Brien was personally responsible for abuse. O'Brien stepped down as bishop in 2003.
The lawsuit, filed by a Tucson man going only by "Joseph W.", alleges O'Brien molested him between 1977 and 1982, when the boy was in second to fifth grades. The lawsuit was filed in September of 2016.

http://www.12news.com/news/local/valley/former-phoenix-bishop-thomas-obrien-accused-of-sexual-abuse/461976998

The Boy With the Perpetual Nervousness review – a tale of betrayal by the church

Pope Francis has taken great strides in challenging all sorts of entrenched attitudes and prejudices in the Vatican that have given the Catholic church such a bad name of late. Progress has been disappointingly slow, however, on the commission he appointed in 2014 to tackle the appalling scandal of clerical sexual abuse.
In March of this year Marie Collins, the last remaining member of the panel who was a survivor of abuse, resigned after a Vatican department failed to comply with the commission’s recommendation that it respond to every correspondent who writes in with allegations that they have been a victim. If the curia is resisting such simple steps, how to have faith that they will tackle the bigger underlying issues?

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2017/aug/07/the-boy-with-the-perpetual-nervousness-review-graham-caveney-betrayal-by-the-church 

Why I won't let shame about sexual assault silence me any more

When I had the idea of asking women to tell me the stories they found most difficult to tell, I knew I was entering uncharted waters. I knew it because I had experienced the same silencing myself.

Alarming rate of university sexual assaults revealed

Human Rights Commission report reveals one in five students are sexually harassed at university. In my early 20s I was sexually molested by a GP while he was inserting an IUD. For decades I was unable to tell anyone what had happened to me. Every time I thought about the incident I felt hot with shame.

Yet rational, grown-up me knew perfectly well that I had done nothing wrong. I had behaved as a patient behaves with a doctor. It was the GP who had behaved appallingly and broken our unspoken contract. Yet, somehow, I had shouldered both the shame and the blame.

https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=4184472111856999279#editor/target=post;postID=4248805477530116786

Australia's Ballarat diocese accused of breaking Church sex abuse guidelines by challenging compensation claim

The Diocese of Ballarat, one of the Catholic bodies most scrutinised by Australia's Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse, has been accused of breaking the Church’s guidelines in resisting a compensation claim by a victim of laicised priest Gerald Ridsdale. The guidelines state a claimant cannot be required to prove the elements of an abuse case that the Church authority had already accepted to be true. But lawyer Paula Shelton said the Diocese was challenging parts of her client's claim that were accepted by a court when Ridsdale was convicted of the abuse. Her client was seven years old when sexually abused by Ridsdale, who is now in jail, in 1980.

http://www.thetablet.co.uk/news/7607/0/australia-s-ballarat-diocese-accused-of-breaking-church-sex-abuse-guidelines-by-challenging-compensation-claim-

Paedophile priest Gerald Ridsdale assaulted girl on altar of Ballarat church, court told

A father took his daughter to a notorious paedophile priest to be abused, including one time when she was assaulted on the altar of a Ballarat church, a Victorian court has heard. Gerald Ridsdale is back in court after pleading guilty to more historical sex offences, including rape and indecent assault.
The 83-year-old has been in jail since 1994 for abusing numerous children, but has now admitted to raping and indecently assaulting 12 more victims between 1961 and 1988 in western Victoria. 

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-08-15/gerald-ridsdale-abused-girl-on-church-altar-court-told/8808606