Release of 'blistering' priest sex abuse report blocked

The Pennsylvania Supreme Court on Wednesday blocked the expected release of a massive report examining sexual abuse and misconduct by priests in six Pennsylvania dioceses, including Scranton and Allentown. The state’s high court issued an order barring Cambria County Judge Norman Krumenacker, who supervised the grand jury that heard testimony over two years, and Pennsylvania Attorney General Josh Shapiro from releasing the report until further order.

http://www.phillytrib.com/news/release-of-blistering-priest-sex-abuse-report-blocked/article_7fb35d79-52c6-53c6-bd95-74a90d351c66.html 

Expect more 'lie, deny and cover-up': Ex-Philly DA pessimistic ahead of report on church

A little over 15 years ago, right after The Boston Globe published a bombshell investigation exposing decades of widespread sexual abuse of children at the hands of hundreds of priests in the Archdiocese of Boston, Lynne Abraham hit upon the notion that if it was happening there it was surely happening in her hometown. Then Philadelphia's district attorney, Abraham launched what would become a legal benchmark in state history: She organized an investigation into child sexual abuse in the Archdiocese of Philadelphia. It would be the longest-running investigation into clergy sex abuse and put Pennsylvania on the map of jurisdictions that most aggressively have gone after child sex predators.

https://www.pennlive.com/news/2018/06/lynne_abraham_lethal_investiga.html 

Chile police raid Catholic Church offices amid sex abuse scandal

Police and prosecutors in Chile have raided offices and seized documents of the Roman Catholic Church amid a child sexual abuse and cover-up scandal. The surprise raids took place in the capital Santiago and in the city of Rancagua. They come as two Vatican envoys are in Chile to investigate the claims and advise dioceses how to respond. On Monday the Pope accepted the resignations of three Chilean bishops in the wake of the scandal. They included the controversial Juan Barros who was accused of covering up sexual abuse committed by priest Fernando Karadima in the 1980s and 1990s.

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-latin-america-44477890 

Duterte's 'stupid God' quip is his 'personal opinion' - spokesman

Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte is entitled "not to believe in any faith" and express his views, his spokesman has said, addressing criticism following the 73-year-old leader's recent commentary describing God as "stupid" and a "son of a whore". In an interview on Monday with the Philippine television GMA-7, Harry Roque said the remarks were an expression of the president's "personal belief".

https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2018/06/duterte-stupid-god-quip-personal-opinion-spokesman-180625082730103.html 

#MeToo Comes for the Archbishop

The first time I ever heard the truth about Cardinal Theodore McCarrick, the former archbishop of Washington, D.C., finally exposed as a sexual predator years into his retirement, I thought I was listening to a paranoiac rant. It was the early 2000s, I was attending some earnest panel on religion, and I was accosted by a type who haunts such events — gaunt, intense, with a litany of esoteric grievances. He was a traditionalist Catholic, a figure from the church’s fringes, and he had a lot to say, as I tried to disentangle from him, about corruption in the Catholic clergy. The scandals in Boston had broken, so some of what he said was familiar, but he kept going, into a rant about Cardinal McCarrick: Did you know he makes seminarians sleep with him? Invites them to his beach house, gets in bed with them …

https://catholiccitizens.org/views/79660/metoo-comes-archbishop/ 

Francis accepts two more Chilean bishops' resignations in continuing abuse fallout

Pope Francis has accepted the resignation of two more Chilean Catholic bishops, bringing to five the number of prelates he has replaced so far as part of the continuing fallout from the country's clergy sexual abuse crisis. In a brief note June 28, the Vatican announced that Francis had effectively removed both Talca Bishop Horacio Valenzuela Abarca and Rancagua Bishop Alejandro Goić Karmelić. At age 78, Goić was well past the traditional retirement age of 75. But Valenzuela, at age 64, had an expected 11 years of service left to the church.

https://www.ncronline.org/news/accountability/francis-accepts-two-more-chilean-bishops-resignations-continuing-abuse-fallout

Church body warns of legal barriers to addressing abuse failings

The Catholic Church’s child protection watchdog has said legal barriers are preventing it from addressing “serious and widespread” failings in how some allegations of clerical sexual abuse are handled. Data protection concerns are preventing the National Board for Safeguarding Children from keeping a central database of priests who are facing child abuse allegations, with potentially “devastating consequences for children”, the organisation’s board told the Department of Justice in April.

https://www.irishtimes.com/news/social-affairs/religion-and-beliefs/church-body-warns-of-legal-barriers-to-addressing-abuse-failings-1.3546118 

Lawmakers call for Matt Flynn to exit Wisconsin governor's race over priest abuse cases

Taylor and Sargent point to records released in 2013 as part of the Milwaukee Archdiocese’s Chapter 11 bankruptcy proceedings. Those documents show while he represented the Archdiocese of Milwaukee from 1989-2004 as an attorney with Quarles & Brady, Flynn played a central role developing and administering a system where priests known to have abused children were kept in ministry, transferred to other parishes or paid off rather than reported to police.

https://host.madison.com/ct/news/local/govt-and-politics/election-matters/lawmakers-call-for-matt-flynn-to-exit-wisconsin-governor-s/article_a5d44532-8b87-57c2-9abe-94da286a542f.html 

Kathy Shaw, Watchdog on Clergy Sexual Abuse, Dies at 72

Kathy Shaw, a journalist who doggedly investigated allegations of sexual abuse by clergymen and compiled a national register of misconduct accusations so that the public could grasp the dimensions of the crisis, died on Sunday in a hospital in Worcester, Mass. She was 72. The cause was complications of pneumonia, her niece Renee Whitenett said. By surveying thousands of cases and posting them on a blog called Abuse Tracker, Ms. Shaw played a meaningful if largely unheralded role in helping fellow journalists and victims of abuse.

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/26/obituaries/kathy-shaw-watchdog-on-clergy-sexual-abuse-dies-at-72.html 

'Shattered life' worth $30k: Sex abuse survivor releases book about attacks suffered in care

Darryl Smith says the abuse started on his first night at Marylands – a Christchurch school for children with learning difficulties – in 1971. Woken from his sleep, the 6-year-old was called to a Order of St John of God brother's office late in the evening and told one of the men responsible for his care wanted to speak about his grandmother. Instead, the man raped him. The abuse continued over the course of a year and came from other members of the order and older students, Smith said. He eventually told his parents what happened.

https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/crime/104893016/sex-abuse-survivor-releases-book-about-attacks-suffered-in-care 

Sports on Sundays OK, except when used to skip Mass, says Vatican

VATICAN CITY — A new Vatican document cautions against the dangers of highly competitive children's sports, political and economic pressures on athletes to win '"at all costs" and the unsportsmanlike or violent behavior of fans. The document on sports also calls on every group or institution sponsoring sports programs to have expert-guided child protection policies in place and it urged bishops, parishes and lay Catholics to be proactive in helping "humanize" sports.

http://www.catholicsentinel.org/Content/Default/Homepage-Rotator/Article/Sports-on-Sundays-OK-except-when-used-to-skip-Mass-says-Vatican-/-3/382/35722 

Catholic boys' school settles 5 sex-abuse suits; former teacher admits he had sex with 50 boys

MORRISTOWN, N.J. - The Catholic order that runs an all-boys junior and senior high school with more than 500 students has settled lawsuits from five men who alleged that five monks, including a former headmaster, had sexually abused them. Six additional lawsuits are pending against the Order of St. Benedict of New Jersey and St. Mary's Abbey, which runs Delbarton School in nearby Morris Township. Three were filed Tuesday. Details of the settlements, made over the past couple of months, were not disclosed.

http://www.cbs8.com/story/38330479/catholic-boys-school-settles-5-sex-abuse-suits-former-teacher-admits-he-had-sex-with-50-boys 

Sex Abuse Survivors Can Finally Sue the Catholic Church in Victoria, Australia

For the last 16 years, survivors of child sex abuse at the hands of Catholic Church officials in Victoria, Australia, had little to no legal recourse. But that has all changed now, as the government has closed a loophole that kept the church from being sued. That loophole, of course, is the infamous “Ellis defense,” which was inappropriately named after former altar boy and alleged abuse victim John Ellis. Ellis lost his case against the Catholic Church because its lawyers convinced a court it didn’t legally exist because its assets were held in a protected trust, and the court continued to use that defense for more than a decade.

http://www.patheos.com/blogs/friendlyatheist/2018/05/30/sex-abuse-survivors-can-finally-sue-the-catholic-church-in-victoria-australia/