Clergy abuse cover ups, Pope, Vatican, Archbishop, US Swim Coaches

AP: Future pope stalled pedophile case By GILLIAN FLACCUS 4/10/10 LOS ANGELES - The future Pope Benedict XVI resisted pleas to defrock a California priest with a record of sexually molesting children, citing concerns including "the good of the universal church," according to a 1985 letter bearing his signature. The correspondence, obtained by The Associated Press, is the strongest challenge yet to the Vatican's insistence that Benedict played no role in blocking the removal of pedophile priests during his years as head of the Catholic Church's doctrinal watchdog office....
The letter, signed by then-Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, was typed in Latin and is part of years of correspondence between the diocese of Oakland and the Vatican about the proposed defrocking of the Rev. Stephen Kiesle, who pleaded no contest to misdemeanors involving child molestation in 1978.

The Vatican confirmed Friday that it was Ratzinger's signature and said it was a typical form letter used in laicization cases. Attorney Jeffrey Lena said the matter proceeded "expeditiously, not by modern standards, but by those standards at the time," and that the bishop was to guard against further abuse. Another spokesman, the Rev. Ciro Benedettini, said the letter showed no attempt at a cover-up. "The then-Cardinal Ratzinger didn't cover up the case, but as the letter clearly shows, made clear the need to study the case with more attention, taking into account the good of all involved."
The diocese recommended removing Kiesle (KEEZ'-lee) from the priesthood in 1981, the year Ratzinger was appointed to head the Vatican office that shared responsibility for disciplining abusive priests.

The case then languished for four years at the Vatican before Ratzinger finally wrote to Oakland Bishop John Cummins. It was two more years before Kiesle was removed; during that time he continued to do volunteer work with children through the church....Kiesle had been sentenced in 1978 to three years' probation after pleading no contest to misdemeanor charges of lewd conduct for tying up and molesting two young boys in a San Francisco Bay area church rectory. http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100409/ap_on_re_us/us_pope_church_abuse



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

A San Jose swimming coach, Andy King, 62, was sentenced to 40 years in prison last year after authorities discovered a pattern of sexual abuse that stretched over three decades up and down the West Coast and involved more than a dozen teen female victims. "He was a monster," said Santa Clara County prosecutor Ray Mendoza. "He had almost every conceivable sex act," he said. Mendoza said King would move out of town once parents or police began asking questions and was stopped only after a 14-year old girl in San Jose complained to her youth pastor....In 2008, USA Swimming gave King a clean bill of health, saying his background screening had been approved. "Congratulations," read the letter. "Your background screening has been thoroughly reviewed and meets the qualification standards set by USA Swimming." According to USA Swimming, the organization only checks for criminal convictions and does not include background interviews or investigations with local police. "It was willfully incomplete," said Bob Allard, a lawyer for families now suing USA Swimming. "A simple phone call to Oak Harbor, his prior stop, or to the East Bay would have revealed much about this man's propensity to abuse and molest kids."

Police later documented at least 15 victims among the teenage girl swimmers he coached over the years, including a woman who said she had an abortion after King got her pregnant at the age of 14.
http://abcnews.go.com/Blotter/abc-news-investigation-usa-swimming-coaches-raped-molested/story?id=10322469



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

"It is a situation which we wish to avoid at all costs," the late Bishop Joseph Windle of Pembroke, Ont., wrote in Feb. 10, 1993, to the Pope's envoy to Canada, Carlo Curis. The man Bishop Windle was writing about was then-monsignor Bernard Prince, now 75, a friend of the late Pope John Paul II who had just been posted to the Vatican as a high-ranking official working with missionary societies. The year before Mr. Prince was sent to Rome, a man had complained to the diocese that the priest had molested him when he was a child.

At least one Vatican archbishop, Jose Sanchez, now a cardinal, had been warned about Mr. Prince's problem before he was sent to Rome, Bishop Windle said in the letter....It would only be in May, 2005, that a victim contacted the Ontario Provincial Police. Mr. Prince is now defrocked and serving a four-year sentence after being convicted in 2008 of sexually molesting 13 boys between 1964 and 1984....The four-page letter – an exhibit filed this week in a civil suit – is the first court document to buttress the long-held belief by victims of Mr. Prince that the clergy had known of the problem for years but tried to hush it up. It shows that the church hierarchy was aware that the allegations were serious since they involved up to five victims, were of "considerable duration" and triggered "traumatic memories" in one or two victims who needed counselling.
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/national/vatican-canadian-church-officials-tried-to-keep-sex-scandal-secret/article1528471/?cmpid=nl-news1



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



Britain's top Catholic ‘protected' paedophile From The Times April 10, 2010 David Brown, Sean O'Neill, Julia Bradshaw The head of the Roman Catholic Church in England and Wales presided over a child protection system that allowed a paedophile priest to continue abusing schoolboys despite repeated complaints from victims, an investigation by The Times has discovered.

The Archbishop of Westminster, the Most Rev Vincent Nichols, chaired the church's child safety watchdog in 2001-08 while Father David Pearce was repeatedly investigated by church officials and police. Despite a High Court ruling in 2006 awarding damages to one of his victims, Pearce remained a priest at Ealing Abbey, West London, where he groomed and assaulted one final victim before his arrest in 2008. Pearce, 68, a Benedictine monk and former headteacher at the prestigious St Benedict's School, was jailed for eight years in October after admitting a catalogue of sex offences against teenage pupils during 35 years at the abbey. Archbishop Nichols last night denied any knowledge of the Pearce case while he was chairman of the Catholic Office for the Protection of Children and Vulnerable Adults (Copca). Church officials said that Archbishop Nichols was not told the full details of Pearce's child abuse offences until he replaced Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O'Connor at Westminster last year.
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/faith/article7093935.ece



AP Writer: Vatican 'In the Loop' on Calif Priest
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DAdDnBVVxjQ



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



Church swamped by priest abuse claims April 9, 2010 AFP Norway's Roman Catholic Church received so many email tip-offs about possible paedophile priests following revelations of abuse by a bishop that its computer crashed, a senior cleric said. "I received so many email tip-offs about possible aggressions and other sexual abuse that the computer server crashed," Bishop of Oslo and Trondheim Bernt Eidsvig was quoted as saying by the tabloid paper Verdens Gang. Bernt disclosed on Wednesday at the request of the Vatican that one of Norway's former bishops, German Georg Mueller, had abused a choirboy in the early 1990s. The newspaper said that its own research had in recent days uncovered nine sex abuse cases in the church.
http://news.smh.com.au/breaking-news-world/church-swamped-by-priest-abuse-claims-20100409-rykc.html


UK police arrest 17 over alleged child smuggling ring 9 April 2010 Seventeen people suspected of helping to smuggle children into Britain for crime have been arrested in Romania. About 300 police officers, including 20 from the Metropolitan Police, carried out searches at homes in the south-east Romanian town of Tandarei. Thirty people were questioned on suspicion of taking 168 Roma (Gypsy) children to Britain for "criminal activities", Romanian police said. Pistols, hunting rifles and money were seized, and 17 people were arrested.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/8610412.stm