Germany's Shelter for Victims of Ritual Abuse
By Antonia Oettingen
Gaby Breitenbach has seen and heard some awful things. The German psychotherapist is telling me about how sometimes, from a very young age, women are systematically tortured by people seeking to split their minds into multiple identities. The desire is to control the victims, of course, but also to leave them with an identity that seems perfectly normal to strangers. While the victim's everyday identity will have no "memory" of the trauma they've experienced, Breitenbach says the abusers are able to "summon" the other identities with various triggers. This can be something as simple as a ringtone, for example.
This method of mind control is known as "ritual abuse." Most of the time the abuse is sexual in nature. Sometimes the abusers crave power; sometimes they're just being cruel. Sometimes they're pseudo-religious nutjobs, sometimes they're fascists, and oftentimes they are organized crime networks. Sometimes the abusers use their victims to gain membership to a secret society; sometimes they flick a switch in their minds to make them commit suicide. The world can be an incredibly shitty place.
Last month, Breitenbach opened a safehouse to treat victims of ritual abuse in Germany. Vielseits, which translates to versatility, is the first of its kind in Europe and offers trauma therapy to anyone who walks through its doors....
Can you tell me about the kind of women who seek help at Vielseits?
All the women who end up with us are victims of organized, sadistic, and sexual violence, who have been subjected to mind control. There are also organizations practicing ritual abuse with a kind of spiritual superstructure where certain ideologies come into play, such as neo-fascist mindsets or different pseudo-religious groups, like Scientology or satanic cults.
From an outsider's perspective, these are women who appear to have led seemingly normal lives—their everyday persona wouldn't have been aware of the abuse they were subjected to at night, weekends, or on school holidays. These traumatic experiences are contained in different parts of the identity, so they're kept away from the conscious, and the person has no knowledge of the trauma they've experienced.
How are these personas created?
The victims are subjected to near-death situations—with the help of electric shocks, waterboarding, or other forms of torture—from an early age, and then they're "rescued" by their tormentors. At some point the victim’s psyche will develop an automated response—it will split, in a bid to survive. As a consequence of the systematic torture, the victims can develop a range of different identities throughout their lifetimes. Offenders perpetrating the abuse hold the key to this system of split identities and have the power to evoke a specific set of behaviors using triggers—which can be hand signs or certain smells or sounds, like a ringtone....
http://www.vice.com/en_ca/read/ritual-abuse-sanctuary-vielseits
Showing posts with label Germany. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Germany. Show all posts
Saturday, February 22, 2014
Saturday, October 5, 2013
The Devon cult that canes tiny children to ‘cleanse their sins
The Devon cult that canes tiny children to ‘cleanse their sins’:
As social services launches an investigation, a mother’s shocking testimony lifts the lid on the mysterious commune squatting on a farm
'Vicki' has lifted the lid on the commune she escaped from in 2005
Then a vulnerable, single mother, she was ordered to beat her son
The commune is linked to the controversial US Twelve Tribes cult
Forty children were taken in to care at two German branches recently
The NSPCC has now raised concerns with Stentwood Farm in Devon
By David Jones 4 October 2013
In recent weeks, via an undercover TV documentary screened in Germany (where similar communes have been raided) and later by personal accounts of former members — including a British mother who escaped the Devon commune with her son — details of the brutal discipline to which they are routinely subjected have started to emerge.
Supposedly to cleanse them of sin and prepare them for salvation when the world ends (the cult insists it will, within the next century or so), they are repeatedly ordered to bend over to be thrashed on their bare bottoms with a willow rod soaked in resin to make it more pliable.
And as these so-called ‘correction’ sessions are central to the cult’s beliefs — a mishmash of Judaism and Christianity devised by its messianic leader Eugene Spriggs, a former carnival showman from Tennessee — the children are often thrashed several times a day....
In Germany, the child protection authorities clearly agree. Shocked by scenes in this month’s TV documentary, immediately after it was screened they raided the cult’s two Bavarian communes and took all 40 children into protective care, where they remain pending court proceedings.
Given that the law prevents German parents from striking their children at all, and the film showed a four-year-old boy being led to a punishment cellar and caned until he scream....
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2444736/Devon-cult-canes-children-cleanse-sins-Mothers-testimony-lifts-lid-mysterious-commune.html
As social services launches an investigation, a mother’s shocking testimony lifts the lid on the mysterious commune squatting on a farm
'Vicki' has lifted the lid on the commune she escaped from in 2005
Then a vulnerable, single mother, she was ordered to beat her son
The commune is linked to the controversial US Twelve Tribes cult
Forty children were taken in to care at two German branches recently
The NSPCC has now raised concerns with Stentwood Farm in Devon
By David Jones 4 October 2013
In recent weeks, via an undercover TV documentary screened in Germany (where similar communes have been raided) and later by personal accounts of former members — including a British mother who escaped the Devon commune with her son — details of the brutal discipline to which they are routinely subjected have started to emerge.
Supposedly to cleanse them of sin and prepare them for salvation when the world ends (the cult insists it will, within the next century or so), they are repeatedly ordered to bend over to be thrashed on their bare bottoms with a willow rod soaked in resin to make it more pliable.
And as these so-called ‘correction’ sessions are central to the cult’s beliefs — a mishmash of Judaism and Christianity devised by its messianic leader Eugene Spriggs, a former carnival showman from Tennessee — the children are often thrashed several times a day....
In Germany, the child protection authorities clearly agree. Shocked by scenes in this month’s TV documentary, immediately after it was screened they raided the cult’s two Bavarian communes and took all 40 children into protective care, where they remain pending court proceedings.
Given that the law prevents German parents from striking their children at all, and the film showed a four-year-old boy being led to a punishment cellar and caned until he scream....
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2444736/Devon-cult-canes-children-cleanse-sins-Mothers-testimony-lifts-lid-mysterious-commune.html
Saturday, March 26, 2011
Germany extends statute of limitations on abuse, US Jesuits agree $166 million
US Jesuits agree $166 million abuse payout by Laura Onstot Mar 25 2011
SEATTLE (AFP) – A US Jesuit order has agreed to pay $166 million to compensate some 500 mostly native American child victims of "horrific" sexual abuse at religious mission schools, lawyers said.
The US Northwest chapter of the Rome-based Society of Jesus agreed to the payout -- which lawyers said is the biggest by a religious organization in the United States -- as part of bankruptcy proceedings.
Most of those abused by members of the Oregon Province -- the Jesuit order covering the states of Oregon, Washington, Alaska, Idaho and Montana -- were at mission schools on Indian reservations, from the 1940s through to the 1990s.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20110326/ts_alt_afp/usreligioncatholicabuse_20110326025049
Germany extends statute of limitations on abuse
Mar 23, 2011
BERLIN – Germans who were sexually abused as children will now have up to 30 years after their 21st birthday to bring their alleged attackers before the courts.
The change was triggered by last year's sex abuse scandal that rocked the nation's Roman Catholic Church.
The previous statute of limitations on civil abuse cases was only three years. Criminal cases have a statute of limitations ranging from three to 30 years, depending on the charges.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20110323/ap_on_re_eu/eu_germany_church_abuse_1
SEATTLE (AFP) – A US Jesuit order has agreed to pay $166 million to compensate some 500 mostly native American child victims of "horrific" sexual abuse at religious mission schools, lawyers said.
The US Northwest chapter of the Rome-based Society of Jesus agreed to the payout -- which lawyers said is the biggest by a religious organization in the United States -- as part of bankruptcy proceedings.
Most of those abused by members of the Oregon Province -- the Jesuit order covering the states of Oregon, Washington, Alaska, Idaho and Montana -- were at mission schools on Indian reservations, from the 1940s through to the 1990s.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20110326/ts_alt_afp/usreligioncatholicabuse_20110326025049
Germany extends statute of limitations on abuse
Mar 23, 2011
BERLIN – Germans who were sexually abused as children will now have up to 30 years after their 21st birthday to bring their alleged attackers before the courts.
The change was triggered by last year's sex abuse scandal that rocked the nation's Roman Catholic Church.
The previous statute of limitations on civil abuse cases was only three years. Criminal cases have a statute of limitations ranging from three to 30 years, depending on the charges.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20110323/ap_on_re_eu/eu_germany_church_abuse_1
Thursday, January 27, 2011
Sex abuse victims reject Church payout offer, MPD movie
Sex abuse victims reject Church payout offer 27 Jan 11
Victims of sexual abuse at Jesuit schools in Germany said Thursday that the Catholic Church's offer of €5,000 in compensation is too low. "This sum is not at all sufficient to compensate for the damages suffered or to signal a recognition of guilt," leader of the Eckiger Tisch victim's group Thomas Weiner told daily Frankfurter Rundshau.
Weiner also said he found it incomprehensible that victims already known to the Church would have to file an application to receive the payment.
On Monday Klaus Mertes, rector of Canisius College, the elite Jesuit school in Berlin at which the first allegations surfaced, told daily Berliner Zeitungthat the 205 known victims would share about €1 million in damages payments from the Jesuit order, meaning each would receive roughly €5,000....
The onslaught of sexual and physical abuse revelations within the Catholic Church began in January 2010 when it emerged that priests at Canisius committed dozens of assaults on pupils in the 1970s and 1980s. Since then more than 200 cases of such abuse at Church institutions throughout the country have emerged.
http://www.thelocal.de/society/20110127-32695.html
When the Devil Knocks January 26, 2011 CBC News Network
Until her mid-40s, Hilary Stanton lived with big gaps in her memory that she thought were normal. Then Hilary had a breakdown, started therapy, and gradually discovered that - during those gaps in memory that she thought were so normal - other personalities (“alters”) were taking over from her....Many of the therapy sessions were videotaped to train therapists in the treatment of Dissociative Identity Disorder (formerly known as Multiple Personality Disorder). Remarkably, Hilary has given Bountiful Films permission to use these videotaped therapy sessions in a documentary - When the Devil Knocks. (website has online film)
http://www.cbc.ca/documentaries/passionateeyeshowcase/2011/whenthedevilknocks/
Victims of sexual abuse at Jesuit schools in Germany said Thursday that the Catholic Church's offer of €5,000 in compensation is too low. "This sum is not at all sufficient to compensate for the damages suffered or to signal a recognition of guilt," leader of the Eckiger Tisch victim's group Thomas Weiner told daily Frankfurter Rundshau.
Weiner also said he found it incomprehensible that victims already known to the Church would have to file an application to receive the payment.
On Monday Klaus Mertes, rector of Canisius College, the elite Jesuit school in Berlin at which the first allegations surfaced, told daily Berliner Zeitungthat the 205 known victims would share about €1 million in damages payments from the Jesuit order, meaning each would receive roughly €5,000....
The onslaught of sexual and physical abuse revelations within the Catholic Church began in January 2010 when it emerged that priests at Canisius committed dozens of assaults on pupils in the 1970s and 1980s. Since then more than 200 cases of such abuse at Church institutions throughout the country have emerged.
http://www.thelocal.de/society/20110127-32695.html
When the Devil Knocks January 26, 2011 CBC News Network
Until her mid-40s, Hilary Stanton lived with big gaps in her memory that she thought were normal. Then Hilary had a breakdown, started therapy, and gradually discovered that - during those gaps in memory that she thought were so normal - other personalities (“alters”) were taking over from her....Many of the therapy sessions were videotaped to train therapists in the treatment of Dissociative Identity Disorder (formerly known as Multiple Personality Disorder). Remarkably, Hilary has given Bountiful Films permission to use these videotaped therapy sessions in a documentary - When the Devil Knocks. (website has online film)
http://www.cbc.ca/documentaries/passionateeyeshowcase/2011/whenthedevilknocks/
Wednesday, December 15, 2010
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
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
Friday, July 9, 2010
Bishop admits ignoring abuse cases, The Pope’s Duty
Bishop admits ignoring abuse cases 09 Jul 2010 Germany's senior Roman Catholic bishop Robert Zollitsch has admitted his mistakes in dealing with allegations of sexual abuse against an alleged pedophile priest. The Archbishop of Freiburg and head of the German Bishops Conference said on Friday that he should have probed more intensely the sexual abuse accusations laid against a priest, who is believed to have molested boys when he worked in the town of Oberharmersbach from 1968 to 1991, AP reported. "I was shocked about the unfathomable extent of the abuse in Oberharmersbach, which has become apparent only in recent months," said Zollitsch, who was diocese staff manager at the time and responsible for priest placements. According to a statement issued by the diocese, Zollitsch also met with victims and their families, delivering apologies to those whose lives have been shattered by sexual abuse scandals that have rocked the Catholic Church over the past months. The statement has pointed to accusations against 44 other priests in the first six months of 2010. http://www.presstv.ir/detail.aspx?id=134100§ionid=351020604
Editorial: The Pope’s Duty 7/8/10
When rolling scandal forced the American Catholic bishops conference to take action against pedophile priests, the prelates issued a tough policy requiring accused child molesters be reported immediately to secular authorities. This mandate finally acknowledged that crimes against children should take priority over bureaucratic church policies that served to cloak rogue priests and bishops in a fog of ecclesiastical evasion.
Eight years after the American church’s overdue order, it is shocking that Pope Benedict XVI and the Vatican have not yet applied it to the worldwide Roman Catholic Church. The pedophilia scandal has erupted in other nations, leaving parents concerned about a repetition of the harrowing experience in America, where more than 700 priests had to be dismissed across a three-year period. Yet the Vatican is reportedly working on new “guidelines” — not mandates. They are likely to fall short of zero-tolerance and other requirements in the American church that parishes and communities be alerted to abusers. http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/09/opinion/09fri3.html
Editorial: The Pope’s Duty 7/8/10
When rolling scandal forced the American Catholic bishops conference to take action against pedophile priests, the prelates issued a tough policy requiring accused child molesters be reported immediately to secular authorities. This mandate finally acknowledged that crimes against children should take priority over bureaucratic church policies that served to cloak rogue priests and bishops in a fog of ecclesiastical evasion.
Eight years after the American church’s overdue order, it is shocking that Pope Benedict XVI and the Vatican have not yet applied it to the worldwide Roman Catholic Church. The pedophilia scandal has erupted in other nations, leaving parents concerned about a repetition of the harrowing experience in America, where more than 700 priests had to be dismissed across a three-year period. Yet the Vatican is reportedly working on new “guidelines” — not mandates. They are likely to fall short of zero-tolerance and other requirements in the American church that parishes and communities be alerted to abusers. http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/09/opinion/09fri3.html
Saturday, July 3, 2010
Church Office Failed to Act on Abuse Scandal, Archbishop apologises
Church Office Failed to Act on Abuse Scandal By LAURIE GOODSTEIN and DAVID M. HALBFINGER
July 1, 2010 In its long struggle to grapple with sexual abuse, the Vatican often cites as a major turning point the decision in 2001 to give the office led by Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger the authority to cut through a morass of bureaucracy and handle abuse cases directly. The decision, in an apostolic letter from Pope John Paul II, earned Cardinal Ratzinger, now Pope Benedict XVI, a reputation as the Vatican insider who most clearly recognized the threat the spreading sexual abuse scandals posed to the Roman Catholic Church. But church documents and interviews with canon lawyers and bishops cast that 2001 decision and the future pope’s track record in a new and less flattering light.
The Vatican took action only after bishops from English-speaking nations became so concerned about resistance from top church officials that the Vatican convened a secret meeting to hear their complaints — an extraordinary example of prelates from across the globe collectively pressing their superiors for reform, and one that had not previously been revealed. And the policy that resulted from that meeting, in contrast to the way it has been described by the Vatican, was not a sharp break with past practices.
It was mainly a belated reaffirmation of longstanding church procedures that at least one bishop attending the meeting argued had been ignored for too long, according to church documents and interviews. The office led by Cardinal Ratzinger, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, had actually been given authority over sexual abuse cases nearly 80 years earlier, in 1922, documents show and canon lawyers confirm. But for the two decades he was in charge of that office, the future pope never asserted that authority, failing to act even as the cases undermined the church’s credibility in the United States, Australia, Ireland and elsewhere. http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/02/world/europe/02pope.html
Archbishop apologises to sex abuse victims Jul 3, 2010 Melbourne's Catholic Archbishop has apologised to church sex abuse victims for what he describes as an unacceptable evil. In a letter to parishioners, Archbishop Denis Hart said continuing reports of abuse, including the latest investigations in Europe, are causing great distress and shame for the Church. He offered a sincere and unreserved apology for what he describes as a grave evil.
http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2010/07/03/2943947.htm
The Sexual Revolution and Children - How the Left Took Things Too Far 07/02/2010
By Jan Fleischhauer and Wiebke Hollersen Germany's left has its own tales of abuse. One of the goals of the German 1968 movement was the sexual liberation of children. For some, this meant overcoming all sexual inhibitions, creating a climate in which even pedophilia was considered progressive....One of the few leaders of the left who staunchly opposed the pedophile movement early on was social scientist Günter Amendt. "There is no equitable sexuality between children and adults," Amendt said, expressing his outrage over the movement. Alice Schwarzer, the founder of the political women's magazine Emma, also spoke out against the downplaying of sex with children and defined it as what it really was: outright abuse.
http://www.spiegel.de/international/zeitgeist/0,1518,702679,00.html
Thursday, May 27, 2010
The Trial of Benedict XVI, Germany: 205 claims of abuse at Jesuit schools
Shanley recovered memory case
http://ritualabuse.us/research/memory-fms/shanley-recovered-memory-case/
The Trial of Benedict XVI By Jeff Israely and Howard Chua-Eoan Thursday, May. 27, 2010
How do you atone for something terrible, like the Inquisition?....When his turn came, Ratzinger, the church's premier theologian, intoned a short prayer that said "that even men of the church, in the name of faith and morals, have sometimes used methods not in keeping with the Gospel in the solemn duty of defending the truth."....
"He grabbed me, tickling and wrestling like I did with my dad, and I thought at first it was fun," McDaid, who grew up in Salem, Mass., says of a parish priest. "But then something changed ... He started grabbing my genitals. I felt him rubbing against me from behind ... I was so scared. I knew this was so wrong. I looked out the window. I started praying." That would happen again and again over three years. McDaid's devout mother was delighted whenever the priest arrived to pick up her son, just 11 when the abuse started, to join other boys on trips to the beach. But, recalls McDaid, now 54, "the last boy out of the car was the one who would get molested." He finally spoke to his dad, who then took him to a priest from the next town to report what had happened. "We waited for months. Then there was a rotation of priests. He left, but they made it look like a natural progression. They celebrated him with cake and ice cream." The boy was left in silence and with his secret shame. The priest, Father Joseph Birmingham, went on to abuse boys in three other parishes in the Boston area before he died in 1989. http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1992171,00.html
Germany: 205 claims of abuse at Jesuit schools
AP Thu May 27, 2010 MUNICH – A special investigator says in her final report that at least 205 former students claim to have been sexually or otherwise abused in Jesuit schools in Germany. Investigator Ursula Raue said Thursday she thinks the number is even higher, as "we cannot expect to have heard everything yet." She said 46 Jesuits and non-clerical staff at the schools have been accused of abuse or of knowing of such crimes without acting.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100527/ap_on_re_eu/eu_germany_church_abuse
also at
http://www.wral.com/news/national_world/world/story/7677958/
http://ritualabuse.us/research/memory-fms/shanley-recovered-memory-case/
The Trial of Benedict XVI By Jeff Israely and Howard Chua-Eoan Thursday, May. 27, 2010
How do you atone for something terrible, like the Inquisition?....When his turn came, Ratzinger, the church's premier theologian, intoned a short prayer that said "that even men of the church, in the name of faith and morals, have sometimes used methods not in keeping with the Gospel in the solemn duty of defending the truth."....
"He grabbed me, tickling and wrestling like I did with my dad, and I thought at first it was fun," McDaid, who grew up in Salem, Mass., says of a parish priest. "But then something changed ... He started grabbing my genitals. I felt him rubbing against me from behind ... I was so scared. I knew this was so wrong. I looked out the window. I started praying." That would happen again and again over three years. McDaid's devout mother was delighted whenever the priest arrived to pick up her son, just 11 when the abuse started, to join other boys on trips to the beach. But, recalls McDaid, now 54, "the last boy out of the car was the one who would get molested." He finally spoke to his dad, who then took him to a priest from the next town to report what had happened. "We waited for months. Then there was a rotation of priests. He left, but they made it look like a natural progression. They celebrated him with cake and ice cream." The boy was left in silence and with his secret shame. The priest, Father Joseph Birmingham, went on to abuse boys in three other parishes in the Boston area before he died in 1989. http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1992171,00.html
Germany: 205 claims of abuse at Jesuit schools
AP Thu May 27, 2010 MUNICH – A special investigator says in her final report that at least 205 former students claim to have been sexually or otherwise abused in Jesuit schools in Germany. Investigator Ursula Raue said Thursday she thinks the number is even higher, as "we cannot expect to have heard everything yet." She said 46 Jesuits and non-clerical staff at the schools have been accused of abuse or of knowing of such crimes without acting.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100527/ap_on_re_eu/eu_germany_church_abuse
also at
http://www.wral.com/news/national_world/world/story/7677958/
Wednesday, March 31, 2010
Vatican denies abuse liability, Pope implicated, bishop accused beating orphans
Law firm implicates Vatican, Pope in abuse case By CHRISTINE ARMARIO AP March 31, 2010 MIAMI - A South Florida law firm is implicating the Vatican and Pope Benedict XVI in its handling of a priest accused of sexually abusing children. Jessica Arbour, an attorney representing one of the alleged victims, says documents show the Vatican was aware of Rev. Ernesto Garcia-Rubio's misconduct as early as 1968. Thirteen years later, Benedict became head of the Vatican office that received a petition from Garcia-Rubio seeking to leave the priesthood. Arbour says the paperwork was lost. Arbour says they do not have any evidence indicating children were abused during that time. A lawsuit has been filed against the Archdiocese of Miami, claiming it was negligent in its supervision and assignment of the reverend. Arbour says it may be amended to include the Vatican.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/03/31/AR2010033100931.html
Vatican offers 3 reasons it's not liable for abuse By NICOLE WINFIELD, AP Mar 30, 2010 VATICAN CITY – Dragged deeper than ever into the clerical sex abuse scandal, the Vatican is launching a legal defense that it hopes will shield the pope from a lawsuit in Kentucky seeking to have him answer attorneys' questions under oath. Court documents obtained Tuesday by The Associated Press show that Vatican lawyers plan to argue that the pope has immunity as head of state, that American bishops who oversaw abusive priests weren't employees of the Vatican, and that a 1962 document is not the "smoking gun" that provides proof of a cover-up.
The Holy See is trying to fend off the first U.S. case to reach the stage of determining whether victims actually have a claim against the Vatican itself for negligence for allegedly failing to alert police or the public about Roman Catholic priests who molested children.
The case was filed in 2004 in Kentucky by three men who claim they were abused by priests and claim negligence by the Vatican. Their attorney, William McMurry, is seeking class-action status for the case, saying there are thousands of victims across the country.
"This case is the only case that has been ever been filed against the Vatican which has as its sole objective to hold the Vatican accountable for all the priest sex abuse ever committed in this country," he said in a phone interview. "There is no other defendant. There's no bishop, no priest." The Vatican is seeking to dismiss the suit before Benedict XVI can be questioned or documents subpoenaed. http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100331/ap_on_re_eu/eu_the_vatican_s_defense_16
describes abuse
German bishop accused of beating orphaned girls April 1, 2010 One of the Pope's closest conservative allies in Germany, Bishop Walter Mixa, has been accused of brutally beating and flogging children in his care. The Bishop of Augsburg, 68, denies the claims by five former pupils at a Catholic-run orphanage and care facility. But they will be a source of deep embarrassment and concern in the Vatican: Bishop Mixa is part of a conservative axis in Pope Benedict XVI's native Bavaria that has always backed the pontiff in his most controversial decisions, from criticising the violence of Islam in Regensburg cathedral, to rehabilitating the Holocaust-sceptic Bishop Richard Williamson....The beatings were regular and always brutal.
"At least 50 times Mr Mixa pulled down my trousers and beat me on the bottom with a stick, five or six whacks each time," Mr Tagwerk added....The blows were always administered in places where the bruising could be hidden - high up on the arm or on the bottom. One of the victims, a man who is now 44, reports being flogged with a carpet beater, 35 strokes each time. http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/faith/article7082705.ece
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/03/31/AR2010033100931.html
Vatican offers 3 reasons it's not liable for abuse By NICOLE WINFIELD, AP Mar 30, 2010 VATICAN CITY – Dragged deeper than ever into the clerical sex abuse scandal, the Vatican is launching a legal defense that it hopes will shield the pope from a lawsuit in Kentucky seeking to have him answer attorneys' questions under oath. Court documents obtained Tuesday by The Associated Press show that Vatican lawyers plan to argue that the pope has immunity as head of state, that American bishops who oversaw abusive priests weren't employees of the Vatican, and that a 1962 document is not the "smoking gun" that provides proof of a cover-up.
The Holy See is trying to fend off the first U.S. case to reach the stage of determining whether victims actually have a claim against the Vatican itself for negligence for allegedly failing to alert police or the public about Roman Catholic priests who molested children.
The case was filed in 2004 in Kentucky by three men who claim they were abused by priests and claim negligence by the Vatican. Their attorney, William McMurry, is seeking class-action status for the case, saying there are thousands of victims across the country.
"This case is the only case that has been ever been filed against the Vatican which has as its sole objective to hold the Vatican accountable for all the priest sex abuse ever committed in this country," he said in a phone interview. "There is no other defendant. There's no bishop, no priest." The Vatican is seeking to dismiss the suit before Benedict XVI can be questioned or documents subpoenaed. http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100331/ap_on_re_eu/eu_the_vatican_s_defense_16
describes abuse
German bishop accused of beating orphaned girls April 1, 2010 One of the Pope's closest conservative allies in Germany, Bishop Walter Mixa, has been accused of brutally beating and flogging children in his care. The Bishop of Augsburg, 68, denies the claims by five former pupils at a Catholic-run orphanage and care facility. But they will be a source of deep embarrassment and concern in the Vatican: Bishop Mixa is part of a conservative axis in Pope Benedict XVI's native Bavaria that has always backed the pontiff in his most controversial decisions, from criticising the violence of Islam in Regensburg cathedral, to rehabilitating the Holocaust-sceptic Bishop Richard Williamson....The beatings were regular and always brutal.
"At least 50 times Mr Mixa pulled down my trousers and beat me on the bottom with a stick, five or six whacks each time," Mr Tagwerk added....The blows were always administered in places where the bruising could be hidden - high up on the arm or on the bottom. One of the victims, a man who is now 44, reports being flogged with a carpet beater, 35 strokes each time. http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/faith/article7082705.ece
Monday, March 29, 2010
20 priests accused of sex abuse (Germany), U.S. lawyer takes on Vatican
20 priests accused of sex abuse - diocese March 29 2010
Berlin - A German Roman Catholic diocese said on Monday that 20 of its current and former priests had been accused "in recent weeks" of sexual abuse as a scandal embroiling the Church widened....
Ackermann said the diocese was still conferring on how to handle three cases that fell under the criminal statute of limitations.
He said that beyond the new cases that had surfaced, three priests had been convicted of abuse in the 1990s....The Vatican has said it received 3,000 reports between 2001 and 2010 of sexual abuse of children by Catholic clergy committed over the past 50 years.
http://www.iol.co.za/index.php?art_id=nw20100329182045293C418447&set_id=1&click_id=24&sf=
U.S. lawyer takes on Vatican over abuse cases
He shared documents with New York Times, sees Ore. lawsuit as critical
by Patrick Condon AP March. 28, 2010 ST. PAUL, Minn. - Jeff Anderson has filed thousands of lawsuits alleging sex abuse by priests and won tens of millions of dollars for his clients, but he has had a bigger goal in mind for nearly two decades. He wants to bring his career-long legal crusade against misconduct in the Roman Catholic Church right to the top. He would love to question Pope Benedict XVI himself under oath. Though that is extremely unlikely given that the pope is a head of state, documents Anderson has unearthed have the potential to take a scandal that has plagued dozens of dioceses around the world and place it at the doorstep of Vatican leadership.
The documents, which became publicly known in the past week after Anderson shared them with The New York Times, show that a Vatican office led by the pope, then Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, halted a church trial against a Wisconsin priest accused of molesting some 200 boys at a school for the deaf. "This is a tipping point," Anderson said. He found the documents in handling one of the dozens of lawsuits he has pending against various church officials, and hopes to use them to bolster a separate federal lawsuit against the Vatican itself....
Oregon case could be key
In that case, an unidentified plaintiff claims he was sexually abused as a teenager in 1965 or 1966 by the Rev. Andrew Ronan at St. Albert's Church in Portland, Ore. According to court documents, Ronan was accused of abusing boys in the mid-1950s as a priest in the Archdiocese of Armagh, Ireland. He was transferred to Chicago, where he admitted abusing three boys at St. Philip's High School, and after that was sent to Oregon. The church removed Ronan from the priesthood in 1966. He died in 1982. The lawsuit says the Vatican had to approve the international transfer. The Holy See claims it is protected by the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act, which prohibits U.S. lawsuits against foreign countries. Several lower courts have produced differing rulings on the suit, and the Holy See has appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court to settle the question. The high court has not decided whether it will hear the case. Anderson said his legal team will attempt to use documents from the Milwaukee lawsuit to show the Vatican was heavily involved in decisions about how to deal with problem priests.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/36075025/ns/us_news-crime_and_courts/
Vatican confirms report of sexual abuse and rape of nuns by priests in 23 countries By Frances Kennedy in Rome 21 March 2001
The Catholic Church in Rome made the extraordinary admission yesterday that it is aware priests from at least 23 countries have been sexually abusing nuns.
Most of the abuse has occurred in Africa, where priests vowed to celibacy, who previously sought out prostitutes, have preyed on nuns to avoid contracting the Aids virus.
Confidential Vatican reports obtained by the National Catholic Reporter, a weekly magazine in the US, have revealed that members of the Catholic clergy have been exploiting their financial and spiritual authority to gain sexual favours from nuns, particularly those from the Third World who are more likely to be culturally conditioned to be subservient to men.
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/vatican-confirms-report-of-sexual-abuse-and-rape-of-nuns-by-priests-in-23-countries-688261.html
Berlin - A German Roman Catholic diocese said on Monday that 20 of its current and former priests had been accused "in recent weeks" of sexual abuse as a scandal embroiling the Church widened....
Ackermann said the diocese was still conferring on how to handle three cases that fell under the criminal statute of limitations.
He said that beyond the new cases that had surfaced, three priests had been convicted of abuse in the 1990s....The Vatican has said it received 3,000 reports between 2001 and 2010 of sexual abuse of children by Catholic clergy committed over the past 50 years.
http://www.iol.co.za/index.php?art_id=nw20100329182045293C418447&set_id=1&click_id=24&sf=
U.S. lawyer takes on Vatican over abuse cases
He shared documents with New York Times, sees Ore. lawsuit as critical
by Patrick Condon AP March. 28, 2010 ST. PAUL, Minn. - Jeff Anderson has filed thousands of lawsuits alleging sex abuse by priests and won tens of millions of dollars for his clients, but he has had a bigger goal in mind for nearly two decades. He wants to bring his career-long legal crusade against misconduct in the Roman Catholic Church right to the top. He would love to question Pope Benedict XVI himself under oath. Though that is extremely unlikely given that the pope is a head of state, documents Anderson has unearthed have the potential to take a scandal that has plagued dozens of dioceses around the world and place it at the doorstep of Vatican leadership.
The documents, which became publicly known in the past week after Anderson shared them with The New York Times, show that a Vatican office led by the pope, then Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, halted a church trial against a Wisconsin priest accused of molesting some 200 boys at a school for the deaf. "This is a tipping point," Anderson said. He found the documents in handling one of the dozens of lawsuits he has pending against various church officials, and hopes to use them to bolster a separate federal lawsuit against the Vatican itself....
Oregon case could be key
In that case, an unidentified plaintiff claims he was sexually abused as a teenager in 1965 or 1966 by the Rev. Andrew Ronan at St. Albert's Church in Portland, Ore. According to court documents, Ronan was accused of abusing boys in the mid-1950s as a priest in the Archdiocese of Armagh, Ireland. He was transferred to Chicago, where he admitted abusing three boys at St. Philip's High School, and after that was sent to Oregon. The church removed Ronan from the priesthood in 1966. He died in 1982. The lawsuit says the Vatican had to approve the international transfer. The Holy See claims it is protected by the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act, which prohibits U.S. lawsuits against foreign countries. Several lower courts have produced differing rulings on the suit, and the Holy See has appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court to settle the question. The high court has not decided whether it will hear the case. Anderson said his legal team will attempt to use documents from the Milwaukee lawsuit to show the Vatican was heavily involved in decisions about how to deal with problem priests.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/36075025/ns/us_news-crime_and_courts/
Vatican confirms report of sexual abuse and rape of nuns by priests in 23 countries By Frances Kennedy in Rome 21 March 2001
The Catholic Church in Rome made the extraordinary admission yesterday that it is aware priests from at least 23 countries have been sexually abusing nuns.
Most of the abuse has occurred in Africa, where priests vowed to celibacy, who previously sought out prostitutes, have preyed on nuns to avoid contracting the Aids virus.
Confidential Vatican reports obtained by the National Catholic Reporter, a weekly magazine in the US, have revealed that members of the Catholic clergy have been exploiting their financial and spiritual authority to gain sexual favours from nuns, particularly those from the Third World who are more likely to be culturally conditioned to be subservient to men.
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/vatican-confirms-report-of-sexual-abuse-and-rape-of-nuns-by-priests-in-23-countries-688261.html
Wednesday, March 24, 2010
Irish bishop resigns, Germany to set up expert panel on sexual abuse
Shanley recovered memory case
Irish bishop resigns, apologizes to abuse victims By SHAWN POGATCHNIK (AP) – 3/24/10
DUBLIN — Pope Benedict XVI accepted the resignation Wednesday of Bishop John Magee, a former papal aide who stands accused of endangering children by failing to follow the Irish church's own rules on reporting suspected pedophile priests to police. Magee apologized to victims of any pedophile priests who were kept in parish posts since he took charge of the southwest Irish diocese of Cloyne in 1987....Irish society is still debating the merits of Saturday's unprecedented letter from Benedict apologizing for decades of unchecked child abuse by priests, nuns and other clerics. The letter criticized Irish bishops, promised a Vatican inspection of unspecified dioceses and religious orders in Ireland — but accepted no Vatican responsibility for promoting a culture of cover-up.
Benedict also has yet to accept resignation offers from three other Irish bishops who were linked to cover-ups of child-abuse cases in the Dublin Archdiocese, the subject of a government-ordered investigation that published its findings four months ago. Magee, however, had been expected to resign ever since an Irish church-commissioned investigation into the mishandling of child-abuse reports in Cloyne ruled two years ago that Magee and his senior diocesan aides failed to tell police quickly about two 1990s cases.
The church and government suppressed publication of that report's findings until December 2008, when Magee faced immediate calls to quit from victims' rights activists and some parishioners. They accused him of ignoring an Irish church policy enacted in 1996 requiring all abuse cases to be reported to police....Cardinal Sean Brady, a Vatican-trained canon lawyer, faces his own cover-up accusations. He has admitted collecting evidence in 1975 from two altar-boy victims of a notorious pedophile priest — but had both boys sign confidentiality agreements and never passed his information to police. That priest, Brendan Smyth, wasn't imprisoned until 1994 after molesting scores of children in Ireland and the United States....The church's Cloyne report found that Magee and his diocesan deputies fielded complaints from parishioners about two priests from 1995 onward — but told the police nothing until 2003 and little thereafter. The report said Cloyne church authorities appeared solely concerned with helping the two priests, not protecting children of the diocese.
One priest, who was accused of molesting a younger priest when he was a teenager, was encouraged by Magee to resign. But the investigation found that the bishop shielded the abuser's identity from police — and considered such concealment "the normal practice" for the church.
http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5jQWrzPjAEtxgfa_tARqu5413A4PAD9EL25QG2
Germany to set up expert panel on sexual abuse 24 Mar 2010 Following recent revelations of sexual abuse in Catholic Church, Germany is setting an expert panel to discuss sex crimes in the country....Merkel has said that the panel should examine past abuse cases and reevaluate Germany's limitations on sex crimes as well as possible compensation for the victims. Since January, several Catholic-run institutions in Germany have been engulfed in a deepening scandal over allegations of sadistic and sexual abuse, with more than 150 pupils coming forward with horrifying tales of mistreatment, mostly during 1970s to 80s. German Catholic Church is dealing with 300 alleged cases of child abuse across the country, many of which were reported in regions where Pope Benedict served as an archbishop. Vatican is accused of building up a "wall of silence" around such issues after it ordered Catholic priests in 2001 to report 'priestly misbehaviors', even the most serious abuse cases, only to the Vatican. http://www.presstv.ir/detail.aspx?id=121572
Irish bishop resigns, apologizes to abuse victims By SHAWN POGATCHNIK (AP) – 3/24/10
DUBLIN — Pope Benedict XVI accepted the resignation Wednesday of Bishop John Magee, a former papal aide who stands accused of endangering children by failing to follow the Irish church's own rules on reporting suspected pedophile priests to police. Magee apologized to victims of any pedophile priests who were kept in parish posts since he took charge of the southwest Irish diocese of Cloyne in 1987....Irish society is still debating the merits of Saturday's unprecedented letter from Benedict apologizing for decades of unchecked child abuse by priests, nuns and other clerics. The letter criticized Irish bishops, promised a Vatican inspection of unspecified dioceses and religious orders in Ireland — but accepted no Vatican responsibility for promoting a culture of cover-up.
Benedict also has yet to accept resignation offers from three other Irish bishops who were linked to cover-ups of child-abuse cases in the Dublin Archdiocese, the subject of a government-ordered investigation that published its findings four months ago. Magee, however, had been expected to resign ever since an Irish church-commissioned investigation into the mishandling of child-abuse reports in Cloyne ruled two years ago that Magee and his senior diocesan aides failed to tell police quickly about two 1990s cases.
The church and government suppressed publication of that report's findings until December 2008, when Magee faced immediate calls to quit from victims' rights activists and some parishioners. They accused him of ignoring an Irish church policy enacted in 1996 requiring all abuse cases to be reported to police....Cardinal Sean Brady, a Vatican-trained canon lawyer, faces his own cover-up accusations. He has admitted collecting evidence in 1975 from two altar-boy victims of a notorious pedophile priest — but had both boys sign confidentiality agreements and never passed his information to police. That priest, Brendan Smyth, wasn't imprisoned until 1994 after molesting scores of children in Ireland and the United States....The church's Cloyne report found that Magee and his diocesan deputies fielded complaints from parishioners about two priests from 1995 onward — but told the police nothing until 2003 and little thereafter. The report said Cloyne church authorities appeared solely concerned with helping the two priests, not protecting children of the diocese.
One priest, who was accused of molesting a younger priest when he was a teenager, was encouraged by Magee to resign. But the investigation found that the bishop shielded the abuser's identity from police — and considered such concealment "the normal practice" for the church.
http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5jQWrzPjAEtxgfa_tARqu5413A4PAD9EL25QG2
Germany to set up expert panel on sexual abuse 24 Mar 2010 Following recent revelations of sexual abuse in Catholic Church, Germany is setting an expert panel to discuss sex crimes in the country....Merkel has said that the panel should examine past abuse cases and reevaluate Germany's limitations on sex crimes as well as possible compensation for the victims. Since January, several Catholic-run institutions in Germany have been engulfed in a deepening scandal over allegations of sadistic and sexual abuse, with more than 150 pupils coming forward with horrifying tales of mistreatment, mostly during 1970s to 80s. German Catholic Church is dealing with 300 alleged cases of child abuse across the country, many of which were reported in regions where Pope Benedict served as an archbishop. Vatican is accused of building up a "wall of silence" around such issues after it ordered Catholic priests in 2001 to report 'priestly misbehaviors', even the most serious abuse cases, only to the Vatican. http://www.presstv.ir/detail.aspx?id=121572
Tuesday, March 16, 2010
Irish Catholic Abuse cover up, Pope Germany concealment, Smyth/McGonigle
Irish Catholic leader won't quit for abuse coverup By SHAWN POGATCHNIK (AP) – 3/15/10
DUBLIN - Ireland's senior Roman Catholic, Cardinal Sean Brady, said Monday he would not resign despite admitting he helped the church collect evidence against a child-molesting priest - and never told police about the crimes.
Brady, as a priest and Vatican-trained canon lawyer in 1975, said he interviewed two children about the abuse they suffered at the hands of the Rev. Brendan Smyth. He said both children were required to sign oaths promising not to tell anyone outside the church of their allegations.
Smyth went on to molest and rape scores of other children in Ireland, Britain and the United States before British authorities in neighboring Northern Ireland demanded his arrest in 1994. The Irish government of the day collapsed amid acrimony over why Smyth had not been extradited to Belfast....
Smyth abused at least 90 children in Ireland, Britain and in U.S. parishes in Rhode Island and North Dakota from 1948 to 1993.
His Irish religious order, the Norbertines, gave him sanctuary in the Republic of Ireland in 1991 after one Belfast family told Northern Ireland police he had molested four of the family's children.
After his delayed 1994 arrest and extradition north, Smyth pleaded guilty to 17 counts of indecently assaulting five girls and two boys in Belfast and spent three years in a Northern Ireland prison. In 1997 he pleaded guilty to 74 counts of sexually abusing 20 boys and girls between 1958 and 1993 in the Republic of Ireland.
http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5hH-e1FTvF61v8gt0efOO4w5Kz60wD9EF6CEO0
Under-fire pope urges youth to follow 'the call' By Simon Sturdee (AFP) - 3/16/10
Since the first revelations of abuse dating back to the 1970s and 1980s at an elite Jesuit-run school in Berlin emerged in January, former victims have alleged abuse at two-thirds of Germany's 27 dioceses.
One of those implicated is a boarding school attached to Regensburg cathedral's choir. The pope's elder brother, Georg Ratzinger, who ran the choir for 30 years, has denied all knowledge.
On Friday the diocese of Munich and Freising said that the pope, when he was archbishop there, had approved in 1980 giving a priest reportedly suspected of abusing an 11-year-old boy Church housing for "therapy".
Two years later, by which time the pope had been transferred to the Vatican, the priest was given pastoral duties in a Bavarian town and convicted of sexual abuse of minors in 1986, according to the diocese....Bishop Stephan Ackerman of Trier, charged with shedding light on the scandal, said in an interview that the Church was guilty of trying to hush up abuse.
"According to our information, there has been concealment," he told the Rhein Zeitung daily.
"In cases where there has not been the will to shed light and where abusers have been simply transferred, we must admit there has been concealment," the daily's online edition quoted him as saying.
http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5g_ICbQc_NQN7nCXilfXdGNBaH8JQ
Victims recall horror of abuse and call on prelate to resign his post March 16 2010 - THEIR innocence was stolen by the notorious paedophile priest Brendan Smyth -- but three of Smyth's victims yesterday united to call on Cardinal Sean Brady to take personal responsibility for his role in allowing the serial child abuser to continue on his destructive path.
The youngest victim was just six-years-old, the eldest 13, when they were abused. He sought them out in their family homes, in their schools, and in a care home. Each was left traumatised by their experiences. But now -- as adults -- they are determined that those who covered up for their abuser will be called to account. While the church investigation into Smyth in 1975 came too late for many children, countless more could have been saved. It is for that reason that they believe Cardinal Brady has "blood on his hands" and should resign.
Helen McGonigle
HELEN McGonigle was just six-years-old and preparing for the sacrament of penance when she was abused by Smyth, who led her from her classmates into the sacristy of the church where he molested her.
Her sister, Kathleen, was also abused by the Belfast-born priest in their hometown of East Greenwich, Rhode Island, in the US. Unable to cope with the trauma of her devastated childhood, she took her own life as an adult. Smyth was already known to have sexually molested children when he was sent to the McGonigles' parish in the summer of 1965. Using his usual modus operandi, he befriended the family and they bonded over a shared Irish ancestry. Speaking to the Irish Independent, Ms McGonigle, who is an attorney living in Connecticut, said: "From 1967 until about 1970 he molested me. He was caught in my parish molesting children as early as 1968.
"It was in the spring of 1967, when myself and a neighbour were going through training to get the sacrament of penance, that he would pick us out one by one and bring us to the sacristy of the church to abuse us." While any intervention by Cardinal Brady in 1975 would have been too late to save the children of East Greenwich, Ms McGonigle said many others could have been protected. "Cardinal Brady has blood on his hands. He came to this with unclean hands. "So many lives and children could have been spared. We know the reports of the number of Brendan Smyth's victims who committed suicide or attempted suicide."
She said Cardinal Brady must resign and he should be charged with obstruction of justice. "He sat on this knowledge for 35 years, from 1975 through to 2010, and Brendan Smith continued to abuse children. It is only because of the lawsuit one of his victims has brought that he has had to show his hand." She added: "How this is unfolding, we're seeing what the real church is. The real church has orchestrated this for decades. People need to take their church back." http://www.independent.ie/national-news/victims-recall-horror-of-abuse-and-call-on-prelate-to-resign-his-post-2100127.html
German Priest in Church Abuse Case Is Suspended By NICHOLAS KULISH March 15, 2010
MUNICH - The priest at the center of a German sexual-abuse scandal that has embroiled Pope Benedict XVI continued working with children for more than 30 years, even though a German court convicted him of molesting boys.The priest, Peter Hullermann, who had previously been identified only by the first letter of his last name, was suspended from his duties only on Monday. That was three days after the church acknowledged that the pope, then Archbishop Joseph Ratzinger, had responded to early accusations of molestation by allowing the priest to move to Munich for therapy in 1980.
Hundreds of victims have come forward in recent months in Germany with accounts of sexual abuse from decades past. But no case has captured the attention of the nation like that of Father Hullermann, not only because of the involvement of the future pope, but also because of the impunity that allowed a child molester to continue to work with altar boys and girls for decades after his conviction....In June 1986, the priest was convicted of sexually abusing minors and given an 18-month suspended sentence with five years of probation, fined 4,000 marks and ordered to undergo therapy.
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/16/world/europe/16church.html
THE LAW and MIND CONTROL – A LOOK AT THE LAW AND GOVERMENT MIND CONTROL THROUGH FIVE CASES
THE LAW and MIND CONTROL
A LOOK AT THE LAW AND GOVERMENT MIND CONTROL THROUGH FIVE CASES
CIA VS SIMS
UNITED STATES VS STANLEY
ORLIKOW, ET AL VS UNITED STATES
KRONISCH VS UNITED STATES ET AL
HEINRICH, ET AL VS SWEET, ET AL
August 15, 1999
by, HELEN L. McGONIGLE
ATTORNEY AT LAW
http://ritualabuse.us/mindcontrol/articles-books/the-law-and-mind-control-a-look-at-the-law-and-goverment-mind-control-through-five-cases/
DUBLIN - Ireland's senior Roman Catholic, Cardinal Sean Brady, said Monday he would not resign despite admitting he helped the church collect evidence against a child-molesting priest - and never told police about the crimes.
Brady, as a priest and Vatican-trained canon lawyer in 1975, said he interviewed two children about the abuse they suffered at the hands of the Rev. Brendan Smyth. He said both children were required to sign oaths promising not to tell anyone outside the church of their allegations.
Smyth went on to molest and rape scores of other children in Ireland, Britain and the United States before British authorities in neighboring Northern Ireland demanded his arrest in 1994. The Irish government of the day collapsed amid acrimony over why Smyth had not been extradited to Belfast....
Smyth abused at least 90 children in Ireland, Britain and in U.S. parishes in Rhode Island and North Dakota from 1948 to 1993.
His Irish religious order, the Norbertines, gave him sanctuary in the Republic of Ireland in 1991 after one Belfast family told Northern Ireland police he had molested four of the family's children.
After his delayed 1994 arrest and extradition north, Smyth pleaded guilty to 17 counts of indecently assaulting five girls and two boys in Belfast and spent three years in a Northern Ireland prison. In 1997 he pleaded guilty to 74 counts of sexually abusing 20 boys and girls between 1958 and 1993 in the Republic of Ireland.
http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5hH-e1FTvF61v8gt0efOO4w5Kz60wD9EF6CEO0
Under-fire pope urges youth to follow 'the call' By Simon Sturdee (AFP) - 3/16/10
Since the first revelations of abuse dating back to the 1970s and 1980s at an elite Jesuit-run school in Berlin emerged in January, former victims have alleged abuse at two-thirds of Germany's 27 dioceses.
One of those implicated is a boarding school attached to Regensburg cathedral's choir. The pope's elder brother, Georg Ratzinger, who ran the choir for 30 years, has denied all knowledge.
On Friday the diocese of Munich and Freising said that the pope, when he was archbishop there, had approved in 1980 giving a priest reportedly suspected of abusing an 11-year-old boy Church housing for "therapy".
Two years later, by which time the pope had been transferred to the Vatican, the priest was given pastoral duties in a Bavarian town and convicted of sexual abuse of minors in 1986, according to the diocese....Bishop Stephan Ackerman of Trier, charged with shedding light on the scandal, said in an interview that the Church was guilty of trying to hush up abuse.
"According to our information, there has been concealment," he told the Rhein Zeitung daily.
"In cases where there has not been the will to shed light and where abusers have been simply transferred, we must admit there has been concealment," the daily's online edition quoted him as saying.
http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5g_ICbQc_NQN7nCXilfXdGNBaH8JQ
Victims recall horror of abuse and call on prelate to resign his post March 16 2010 - THEIR innocence was stolen by the notorious paedophile priest Brendan Smyth -- but three of Smyth's victims yesterday united to call on Cardinal Sean Brady to take personal responsibility for his role in allowing the serial child abuser to continue on his destructive path.
The youngest victim was just six-years-old, the eldest 13, when they were abused. He sought them out in their family homes, in their schools, and in a care home. Each was left traumatised by their experiences. But now -- as adults -- they are determined that those who covered up for their abuser will be called to account. While the church investigation into Smyth in 1975 came too late for many children, countless more could have been saved. It is for that reason that they believe Cardinal Brady has "blood on his hands" and should resign.
Helen McGonigle
HELEN McGonigle was just six-years-old and preparing for the sacrament of penance when she was abused by Smyth, who led her from her classmates into the sacristy of the church where he molested her.
Her sister, Kathleen, was also abused by the Belfast-born priest in their hometown of East Greenwich, Rhode Island, in the US. Unable to cope with the trauma of her devastated childhood, she took her own life as an adult. Smyth was already known to have sexually molested children when he was sent to the McGonigles' parish in the summer of 1965. Using his usual modus operandi, he befriended the family and they bonded over a shared Irish ancestry. Speaking to the Irish Independent, Ms McGonigle, who is an attorney living in Connecticut, said: "From 1967 until about 1970 he molested me. He was caught in my parish molesting children as early as 1968.
"It was in the spring of 1967, when myself and a neighbour were going through training to get the sacrament of penance, that he would pick us out one by one and bring us to the sacristy of the church to abuse us." While any intervention by Cardinal Brady in 1975 would have been too late to save the children of East Greenwich, Ms McGonigle said many others could have been protected. "Cardinal Brady has blood on his hands. He came to this with unclean hands. "So many lives and children could have been spared. We know the reports of the number of Brendan Smyth's victims who committed suicide or attempted suicide."
She said Cardinal Brady must resign and he should be charged with obstruction of justice. "He sat on this knowledge for 35 years, from 1975 through to 2010, and Brendan Smith continued to abuse children. It is only because of the lawsuit one of his victims has brought that he has had to show his hand." She added: "How this is unfolding, we're seeing what the real church is. The real church has orchestrated this for decades. People need to take their church back." http://www.independent.ie/national-news/victims-recall-horror-of-abuse-and-call-on-prelate-to-resign-his-post-2100127.html
German Priest in Church Abuse Case Is Suspended By NICHOLAS KULISH March 15, 2010
MUNICH - The priest at the center of a German sexual-abuse scandal that has embroiled Pope Benedict XVI continued working with children for more than 30 years, even though a German court convicted him of molesting boys.The priest, Peter Hullermann, who had previously been identified only by the first letter of his last name, was suspended from his duties only on Monday. That was three days after the church acknowledged that the pope, then Archbishop Joseph Ratzinger, had responded to early accusations of molestation by allowing the priest to move to Munich for therapy in 1980.
Hundreds of victims have come forward in recent months in Germany with accounts of sexual abuse from decades past. But no case has captured the attention of the nation like that of Father Hullermann, not only because of the involvement of the future pope, but also because of the impunity that allowed a child molester to continue to work with altar boys and girls for decades after his conviction....In June 1986, the priest was convicted of sexually abusing minors and given an 18-month suspended sentence with five years of probation, fined 4,000 marks and ordered to undergo therapy.
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/16/world/europe/16church.html
THE LAW and MIND CONTROL – A LOOK AT THE LAW AND GOVERMENT MIND CONTROL THROUGH FIVE CASES
THE LAW and MIND CONTROL
A LOOK AT THE LAW AND GOVERMENT MIND CONTROL THROUGH FIVE CASES
CIA VS SIMS
UNITED STATES VS STANLEY
ORLIKOW, ET AL VS UNITED STATES
KRONISCH VS UNITED STATES ET AL
HEINRICH, ET AL VS SWEET, ET AL
August 15, 1999
by, HELEN L. McGONIGLE
ATTORNEY AT LAW
http://ritualabuse.us/mindcontrol/articles-books/the-law-and-mind-control-a-look-at-the-law-and-goverment-mind-control-through-five-cases/
Thursday, March 4, 2010
Germany clergy abuse cover up
describes crimes
RIGHTS-GERMANY: 'Catholic Church Protects Paedophile Priests' By Julio Godoy BERLIN, Feb 28, 2010 (IPS) - The Catholic Church has for decades protected paedophile priests and clerics who sexually abused children from judiciary prosecution, according to German theologians, law experts, and internal church documents. The church hierarchy's complicity was confirmed recently through thousands of denouncements against numerous priests in Germany. In practically all the cases, the abusers were only transferred from one jurisdiction to another and never legally prosecuted.
Similar cases of sexual abuse of children within Catholic schools and other institutions, with impunity for the abusers, have been documented in such countries as Austria, Australia, France, Italy, the Philippines, Spain, and the United States. In Germany, the denouncements started last January, when Klaus Mertes, director of the Catholic Canisius high school in Berlin, in an open letter addressed to former students, apologised for the sexual abuse priests had inflicted on them in the 1970s and 1980s.
In the letter, Mertes said that he knew "since years" of the abuse, and called them "systematic and years-long." He also urged the victims to reveal the precise the nature of the abuse and encouraged them to ‘'break the wall of silence" maintained around the cases. Much attention has fallen on the Canisius high school, managed by the Jesuit order, and rated as one of the best educational institutions in Germany.
On Feb. 14, Mertes said at a press conference that the number of cases of sexual abuse at Canisius reached "the hundreds" and suggested that the Catholic church pay financial reparations to the victims....According to German theologians, and Germany's prosecution officials, the church hierarchy invariably hid the abuse. The German theologian Uta Ranke-Heinemann told IPS that the Catholic Church "from the Vatican down to the priests on the field, have helped to guarantee the abusers absolute impunity. There are two internal documents in which the Catholic church takes care of maintaining the abuse in absolute secrecy," Ranke-Heinemann said.
The first document, titled "Crimen Sollicitationis" (Latin for "the crime of soliciting"), goes back to 1962, and was written by the Cardinal Alfredo Ottaviani, at the time prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, formerly known as the Inquisition. The second paper, "De delictis gravioribus" ("on more serious crimes"), was written in 2001 by then Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, today's Pope Benedict XVI. He was also prefect of the congregation.
"Both documents, which are today in the possession of every Catholic bishop around the globe, emphasise the exclusive jurisdiction of the Vatican on sexual crimes such paedophilia," Ranke-Heinemann told IPS. "In the letters, Ottaviani and Ratzinger order bishops all over the world to report the priests' sexual abuses against children
exclusively to the Vatican, under the threat of excommunication. These threats have led to a total obstruction of judiciary inquiries, other state law enforcement actions, and to impunity," Ranke-Heinemann added. Ranke-Heinemann said that the only penalty for the abusers has been their "continued relocation. They are continuously transferred from one place to another. This allows them to walk abroad and be up to their mischief in total impunity." http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=50479
Wednesday, February 10, 2010
Germany's Clergy Abuse Scandal, Ritual Abuse New Zealand
describes crimes
Inside Germany's Catholic Sexual Abuse Scandal The Catholic Church in Germany has been shaken in recent days by revelations of a series of sexual abuse cases. Close to 100 priests and members of the laity have been suspected of abuse in recent years. After years of suppression, the wall of silence appears to be crumbling. By SPIEGEL Staff. 2/8/10
This is what it looks like, the document of a conspiracy: 24 pages, with appendix, in Latin, published by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith at the Vatican. A "norma interna," or confidential set of guidelines for all bishops, who were required to keep it a secret for all eternity, in the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost....
The guidelines, issued in the year of our Lord 1962, address a sensitive subject: sex in the confessional. The Vatican doesn't put it quite that directly, preferring to use more guarded terminology to describe what happens when a priest leads a member of his flock astray before, during or after the confession -- in other words, when he provokes a penitent "toward impure and obscene matters" through "words or signs or nods of the head (or) by touch." ....
But now the wall of silence is coming down here in Germany. It started when Berlin's Canisius College, an elite Jesuit high school, recently disclosed the sordid past of a number of members of the order, who had abused students at the school in the 1970s and 1980s. After that, new victims began coming forward on a daily basis. By last Friday, at least 40 of them had accused three Jesuit priests of molesting children and adolescents, first in Berlin and later at the St. Ansgar School in Hamburg, the St. Blasien College in the Black Forest and in several parishes in the northern German state of Lower Saxony.....
For decades, German bishops tried to look the other way when their pastors engaged in sexual abuse, as well as to downplay the problem by characterizing it as isolated incidents. Now they are finally revealing their own figures, though hesitantly. According to a SPIEGEL survey of Germany's 27 dioceses conducted last week, at least 94 priests and members of the laity in Germany are suspected or have been suspected of abusing countless children and adolescents since 1995. A total of 24 of the 27 dioceses responded to SPIEGEL's questions.
A group called the Round Table for Care in Children's Homes recently published an interim report which contains dramatic findings. The report deals with the wrongs committed since the 1950s against children and adolescents living in homes, almost half of which were run by the Catholic Church.
According to the report, more than 150 victims of sexual abuse have come forward with their stories in recent months.
http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/0,1518,676497,00.html
Part 5: A Church Pays Hush Money
Instead of investigating the case and putting the chaplain on trial, the abusive chaplain, acting through the episcopal ordinariate, paid the family what amounted to damages for pain and suffering as well as hush money. Then the man was transferred to another parish, which was not informed about the abuse allegations, and where new cases of abuse were reported in 2003.
http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/0,1518,676497-5,00.html
New Zealand counsellors talk about ritual abuse: A discourse analysis - Pack, Sylvia - Abstract: Research indicates that in the last five decades, claims of Satanic ritual abuse (RA), and the numbers of clients receiving counselling for RA, have increased in all Western countries. This has resulted in an increased corpus of related literature overseas, which includes studies in which facticity as well as aetiology, symptomology and treatment are debated. This present study focuses on a New Zealand context, and examines the talk of New Zealand counsellors in relation to their views regarding RA and the counselling of RA clients. Social constructionist and positivist epistemologies were evaluated in terms of their suitability for this research, and the discourse analytic method developed by Potter and Wetherell (1987) chosen as the means by which participants' talk might be analysed in such a way as to allow the inclusion of multiple constructions and the emergence of the many discourses and conflicting ideas which occur in overseas literature. A broad selection of the literature was first critically analysed to give an understanding of the topic.
Nine counsellors gave interviews, eight women and one man, all Pakeha, six of whom were ACC-registered (Accident Compensation Commission, 2009). The participants constructed RA as a physical reality, which was justified by the use of the credible client discourse. A traditional linguistic repertoire furnished a discourse of government backing, which was employed to warrant voice...The thesis concludes by highlighting the participants' comments regarding the need for openness and awareness, and specialised literature and training for counsellors treating RA clients.
Publisher: Massey University Issue Date: 2009 http://muir.massey.ac.nz/handle/10179/1098
http://muir.massey.ac.nz/bitstream/10179/1098/1/02_whole.pdf
Sunday, February 7, 2010
Clergy abuse - Germany, incest is never consensual
Sexual abuse in German Church deeper than expected 2/6/10 Less than a week after a German Jesuit leader apologized over a deepening sexual abuse scandal at a prestigious Catholic institution, new reports paint a far grimmer picture of the crisis.
German media reported on Saturday that nearly 100 employees of the Catholic Church have been suspected of involvement in sexual abuse over the past 15 years.The new accusation comes after victims, who suffered abuse as students in four Jesuit-run schools in the 1970s and 1980s came forward. More than 20 of the victims assaulted at a Berlin school were between 13 and 14. A former Catholic priest admitted in early January to sexually abusing pupils in the 1970s and 1980s at a Berlin school where he taught....The cases of sexual abuse at Jesuit schools in Berlin during the 1970s and 80s spread from Berlin to Hamburg and the Black Forest, and at church institutions in Spain and Chile. http://www.presstv.ir/detail.aspx?id=118042§ionid=3510212
Therapy teaches that incest is never consensual By Elizabeth Landau, CNN February 5, 2010 Realizing that incest is not the victim's fault is a difficult process that happens through therapy and can take many years....By definition, incest is never consensual, although often the perpetrator will convince the victim otherwise, experts say. The power dynamics of the relationship between a parent and child are such that it's always the parent's responsibility to maintain normal boundaries....
Realizing that they are not to blame for the incident or incidents is necessary for recovery, but it is also anxiety-provoking, forcing them to confront the sadness surrounding the incestuous relationship, Zucchetto said....Of the 60,000 sexual assault cases reported in 12 states in 2000, about 25 percent were committed by family members, according to a U.S. Bureau of Justice report. Family members were involved in about half of the sexual assault cases with victims younger than 11.
http://www.cnn.com/2010/HEALTH/02/05/incest.therapy.phillips/index.html
German media reported on Saturday that nearly 100 employees of the Catholic Church have been suspected of involvement in sexual abuse over the past 15 years.The new accusation comes after victims, who suffered abuse as students in four Jesuit-run schools in the 1970s and 1980s came forward. More than 20 of the victims assaulted at a Berlin school were between 13 and 14. A former Catholic priest admitted in early January to sexually abusing pupils in the 1970s and 1980s at a Berlin school where he taught....The cases of sexual abuse at Jesuit schools in Berlin during the 1970s and 80s spread from Berlin to Hamburg and the Black Forest, and at church institutions in Spain and Chile. http://www.presstv.ir/detail.aspx?id=118042§ionid=3510212
Therapy teaches that incest is never consensual By Elizabeth Landau, CNN February 5, 2010 Realizing that incest is not the victim's fault is a difficult process that happens through therapy and can take many years....By definition, incest is never consensual, although often the perpetrator will convince the victim otherwise, experts say. The power dynamics of the relationship between a parent and child are such that it's always the parent's responsibility to maintain normal boundaries....
Realizing that they are not to blame for the incident or incidents is necessary for recovery, but it is also anxiety-provoking, forcing them to confront the sadness surrounding the incestuous relationship, Zucchetto said....Of the 60,000 sexual assault cases reported in 12 states in 2000, about 25 percent were committed by family members, according to a U.S. Bureau of Justice report. Family members were involved in about half of the sexual assault cases with victims younger than 11.
http://www.cnn.com/2010/HEALTH/02/05/incest.therapy.phillips/index.html
Tuesday, February 2, 2010
Jesuit Priest Admits Molesting Youth - Germany
Jesuit Priest Admits Molesting Youth - Germany Shaken By 'Systematic' Sexual Abuse at Berlin Catholic School Reported by Sven Röbel and Peter Wensierski 2/1/10 A priest last week admitted in a statement to SPIEGEL he had abused a number of pupils at an elite Berlin high school run by Jesuit priests. In recent days, around 20 former students have come forward alleging they were sexually abused by priests at the school. The director of Canisius College has described the years-long abuse as "systematic." Berlin's Canisius College, a university-prep high school run by Jesuit priests, is one of the most elite schools in the German capital. Former students from the respected private school have reached the upper echelons of business, politics and society. For the past week, however, Canisius College has been at the center of a major sexual abuse scandall. Last week, around 20 former students claimed they had been sexually abused by two teachers at the school, Wolfgang S. and Peter R. The abuse is believed to have been committed during the 1970s and 1980s. http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/0,1518,675331,00.html
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)