Germany mass child abuse, Knights of Columbus accused of child abuse, porn ring

Germany admits enslaving and abusing a generation of children
Lawsuits accuse Knights of Columbus of child abuse
Federal authorities say they broke up a global child porn ring

Germany admits enslaving and abusing a generation of children
Government agrees up to €120m in compensation for three decades of post-war 'Nazi-era' brutality in foster homes By Tony Paterson in Berlin Tuesday, 14 December 2010

Germany has owned up to one of the most disturbing examples of mass child and youth abuse in its post-war history, some 60 years after the first teenagers started being locked away and mistreated by supposedly "caring" foster homes.

The country agreed yesterday to provide a €120m (£101m) compensation fund for the estimated 30,000 victims who were among the 800,000 children in German foster homes in the Fifties, Sixties and Seventies.

Institutions that for decades meted out inhuman treatment – including ritual beatings, periods of solitary confinement, forced labour and sexual assaults – were not youth remand centres or borstals as might be expected, but homes run by nuns and priests in former West Germany's Catholic and Protestant churches, as well as state-run homes.
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/germany-admits-enslaving-and-abusing-a-generation-of-children-2159589.html


Lawsuits accuse Knights of Columbus of child abuse NEW HAVEN, Connecticut Dec 14, 2010 (Reuters) - The Knights of Columbus was sued on Tuesday by two men who said they were sexually abused as children by a leader of a youth group run by the Roman Catholic fraternal organization. The federal lawsuits allege that Knights of Columbus officials knew a leader of the Columbian Squires youth group in Texas was molesting children but did not make any effort to stop him or remove him from the position.

The suits are believed to be the first child sex abuse claims filed against the Catholic group, said Jeffrey Herman, the attorney representing the two alleged victims....
"We emphatically deny the allegations that have been made," said Patrick Korten, a spokesman for the Knights of Columbus.
With 1.8 million members worldwide, the Knight of Columbus is the world's largest Catholic mens' organization and is focused on charity work....

In one of the lawsuits, an unnamed Kansas resident claims the Squires leader abused him from 1978, when he was 10 years old, until 1986.
He claims the leader shared him with other youth counselors in the group and threatened to kill him if he told anyone, the lawsuit said.
The second lawsuit came from Texas resident Jim Dennany, who said he alerted Knights of Columbus officials in 1986 to assaults he said he suffered in the 1970s when he was a young teenager.

He claimed the group took no action, concealed the allegations and told him to keep quiet, according to the lawsuit....
The Knights of Columbus spokesman said the group first became aware of allegations of sexual abuse against Rivera in December 2009.
"We acted immediately, removing him from any responsibility involving youth programs," Korten said. The group also alerted local authorities in Brownsville, Texas...
http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE6BD5LW20101214


Federal authorities say they broke up a global child porn ring By Michael Martinez, CNN December 15, 2010 Los Angeles (CNN) -- Federal authorities announced Tuesday they dismantled an international child pornography ring that allowed its 35 male members to trade thousands of images and videos of boys in sexually explicit situations through a website.

The announcement was made in the wake of Monday's guilty plea by a Georgia man to transporting child pornography using a secret Internet bulletin board called "Lost Boy." That website operated from September 2007 to January 2009, when authorities shut it down and began investigating the men who operated it, officials said....

The investigation has also led to the identification of 27 victims of child abuse in the United States, including some whose images were posted on the Lost Boy bulletin board, officials said....

The bulletin board also had a "Handbook Project," where members contributed to a guide on how to find and groom boys to engage in sex and how to move on to other victims when the current victim grows too old to be attractive to the members, authorities said.
http://www.cnn.com/2010/CRIME/12/14/california.child.porn/index.html