Priest accused of US abuse working in India, Child abuse scandal US $3 bln

Shanley recovered memory case


Priest accused of US abuse still working in India By RAVI NESSMAN (AP) – 4/5/10 NEW DELHI — A Catholic priest charged with sexually assaulting a 14-year-old girl in Minnesota is working in his home diocese in India and has no plans to return to the U.S. to face the courts, he and his bishop told The Associated Press on Monday. Church documents obtained by the AP show the Vatican was alerted to the accusations against the Rev. Joseph Palanivel Jeyapaul more than three years ago but did not respond. The priest has received only a minor punishment and is currently working in his bishop's office processing teacher appointments for a dozen church schools in the diocese of Ootacamund in southern India. Jeyapaul is currently wanted on two counts of criminal sexual conduct stemming from accusations he assaulted a young, female parishioner in the fall of 2004 at the Blessed Sacrament Church in Greenbush, Minnesota, where he was working. Each charge carries a sentence of up to 30 years....In a telephone call with The Associated Press, Jeyapaul denied the charges....

At the time the accusations against Jeyapaul first surfaced in 2005, the priest had returned home to visit his ailing mother and officials in Minnesota's Crookston diocese told him he should stay in India, Jeyapaul said. "My mother told me to remain here, and the (Crookston) bishop also told me not to come back, because these allegations have come against you," he said.
http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5ilg-XpU7rvtWx3qbEwd152oTmBiwD9ESS0U80


Vatican Declined to Pursue Accused Priest By LAURIE GOODSTEIN April 5, 2010
A Catholic priest who has been criminally charged with sexually assaulting a 14-year-old girl in Minnesota six years ago is still working in his home diocese in India despite warnings to the Vatican from an American bishop that the priest continued to pose a risk to children, according to church documents made public on Monday. The documents show that the American bishop warned the Vatican that the priest was accused of molesting two teenage girls whose trust he gained by promising to discuss their interest in becoming nuns.

A county attorney in Minnesota is seeking to extradite the priest from India in a criminal case that involves one of the girls, who said the priest had forced her to perform oral sex and had threatened her and her family. The case took place during the papacy of Pope Benedict XVI, who has recently come under fire for his role in cases of sexually abusive priests in Germany and Wisconsin....In 2006, the Vatican recommended that the priest simply be monitored, a document shows. A lawyer for the Holy See said in a statement that the Vatican had recommended that the priest be defrocked, but that canon law specifies that the decision rests with the local bishop. The bishop in India sentenced the priest to a year of prayer in a monastery rather than seeking his removal from the priesthood, according to documents and interviews.

The priest, the Rev. Joseph Palanivel Jeyapaul, was working temporarily in the Diocese of Crookston, Minn., which like many United States dioceses is bringing in priests from India because there are not enough American priests to serve its parishes. Father Jeyapaul ministered to three parishes simultaneously in Crookston, where he was accused of misappropriating church funds as well as sexual abuse.
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/06/world/europe/06church.htm


Child abuse scandal cost US Catholic church $3 bln by Mira Oberman Apr 5, 2010
CHICAGO (AFP) – The pedophile priest crisis has cost the Roman Catholic church nearly $3 billion in the United States, but only a fraction of the perpetrators have been jailed and little been done to punish those who covered up the crimes. After years of painful revelations, massive payouts, soul searching and reforms, the child sex abuse scandal has spread across the globe and in recent weeks has struck the Church at its very core. Pope Benedict XVI, long celebrated for speaking out against abuse, is facing allegations that he helped protect predator priests when he was archbishop of Munich and later as the Vatican's chief morals enforcer....The allegations currently sweeping across Europe bear a stark similarity to those that first surfaced in the United States in the mid 1980s.

Victims were intimidated into silence. Abusive priests were left unpunished, or shuffled to unsuspecting parishes where they found new prey....researchers from the John Jay College of Criminal Justice. They found that more than 4,392 Catholic priests and deacons sexually abused at least 10,677 American children between 1950 and 2002. Just 615 of those incidents had been reported to law enforcement and only 384 clergy members were criminally charged, resulting in 252 convictions. More than 700 priests and deacons were removed from or voluntarily left ministry between January 2002 and December 2003 due to allegations of sexual abuse. A further 3,091 abusive clergy and 4,568 victims were identified from 2004 through 2009, according to a report published last month.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20100405/lf_afp/vaticanreligionchildabuseus


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Ritual sacrifice of children on rise in Uganda By JASON STRAZIUSO (AP) 4/4/10 The practice of human sacrifice is on the rise in Uganda, as measured by ritual killings where body parts, often facial features or genitals, are cut off for use in ceremonies. The number of people killed in ritual murders last year rose to a new high of at least 15 children and 14 adults, up from just three cases in 2007, according to police. The informal count is much higher — 154 suspects were arrested last year and 50 taken to court over ritual killings....Human sacrifices have been recorded throughout history and occur still in many countries, including India, Indonesia, South Africa, Gabon and Tanzania. http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5iVKJwZGbjcGft_IsyTJWdY6UGlCQD9ESCS900