Ex-trooper: Duggars hid full extent of abuse, Up to 14 priests sexually abused children in Ballarat, commission hears, Paedophile Gerald Ridsdale admits another priest 'may have seen abuse'

- Ex-trooper: Duggars hid full extent of abuse
- Up to 14 priests sexually abused children in Ballarat, commission hears
- Paedophile Gerald Ridsdale admits another priest 'may have seen abuse'

Ex-trooper: Duggars hid full extent of abuse
Doug Stanglin, USA TODAY May 28, 2015

A former Arkansas state trooper claims the Duggar family concealed the extent of their son's alleged fondling of underage girls when the patriarch of the family turned to him for help disciplining the teenager more than a decade ago, In Touch reports.

The trooper, Hutchens, is currently serving 56 years in an Arkansas prison on child pornography charges. He spoke with In Touch on Wednesday through a local law firm, the publication says....

According to the police report, Jim Bob Duggar, the family patriarch, told police that he brought his son to then-State Trooper Joseph Hutchens, a personal friend, for a "stern talk" after Josh purportedly had gone through a Christian counseling program in 2003.

The report states that Hutchens said there was nothing more to do about the allegations, given that Josh Duggar had gone through a counseling program.

Michelle Duggar, Josh's mother, later told police that her son did not go through such a program but instead had stayed at a Little Rock home that a family friend was remodeling.

In Touch says that Hutchens' failure to report the abuse caused the police to halt their 2006 investigation because the statute of limitations had run out....

Hutchens disputes Duggar's account of the incident, saying Jim Bob Duggar only told him about a single incident of abuse.

He maintains that Jim Bob and Josh Duggar told him Josh had inappropriately touched one girl through her clothing while she slept. They said "it only happened one time," the former state trooper told In Touch.

Hutchens told In Touch that the Duggars' original account of the incident played a part in his decision not to report the alleged abuse....
http://www.usatoday.com/story/life/people/2015/05/28/jim-bob-duggar-state-trooper-josh-duggar-fondling-sex-abuse/28058841/


Up to 14 priests sexually abused children in Ballarat, commission hears
Child sex abuse royal commission told there have been at least 130 claims and substantiated complaints of child sexual abuse against the diocese since 1980
Australian Associated Press Thursday 28 May 2015

As many as 14 priests have been found to have sexually abused children in Victoria’s Ballarat diocese, the child sexual abuse royal commission has heard.

Data before the royal commission into institutional responses to child sexual abuse shows there have been at least 130 claims and substantiated complaints of child sexual abuse against the Ballarat diocese since 1980.

Senior counsel assisting the commission Gail Furness said that number included seven claims jointly held against the Christian Brothers.
She said at least 14 priests of the Ballarat diocese have been the subject of one or more claim or substantiated complaint of child sex abuse. Ballarat bishop Paul Bird said he was not certain that all 14 had been substantiated and he thought it was a lower number, maybe 10 or 12....
http://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2015/may/29/up-to-14-priests-sexually-abused-children-in-ballarat-commission-hears


Paedophile Gerald Ridsdale admits another priest 'may have seen abuse'
Disgraced priest also accepts that he shared a house with George Pell in the 1970s and reveals details of the treatment arranged for him by the church   Oliver Milman Thursday 28 May 2015

....Pell, who is now a senior cleric at the Vatican, was an assistant priest in Ballarat from 1973 to 1983.
Paedophile Gerald Ridsdale says he did not tell George Pell about his child abuse

Ridsdale was a Catholic priest who lived in the St Alipius presbytery in Ballarat, a building that had two bedrooms on the top floor. Ridsdale was convicted of committing more than 140 sexual assaults against children as young as four over three decades until the 1980s.

The extent of the Catholic church’s desire to move Ridsdale to other parishes rather than report him to the police was further detailed in the Thursday hearing.

Despite three senior clerics being made aware of Ridsdale’s offending in Mortlake in the 1970s, he was moved to an administrative position in Sydney. Ridsdale told the hearing over a video link from prison that a boy from a prayer group stayed with him during this time.

Ridsdale was then moved to Horsham in Victoria, where he was an assistant priest from 1986 to 1988 and where he committed further offences....
http://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2015/may/28/paedophile-gerald-ridsdale-admits-another-priest-may-have-seen-abuse


Fran’s Day Care
May 20, 2015 case update:
State’s highest criminal court throws out 1992 convictions of sexual assault at Austin day care.
Court declines, however, to find Dan and Fran Keller innocent in case involving claims of satanic abuse.
https://ritualabuse.us/ritualabuse/articles/frans-day-care/

Texas judge recommends against innocence finding for ex-day care operators in sex abuse case

Texas judge recommends against innocence finding for ex-day care operators in sex abuse case THE ASSOCIATED PRESS   December 02, 2014

AUSTIN, Texas — A judge in Austin has recommended against a finding of innocence for two ex-day care owners who spent 21 years imprisoned on a child sex abuse conviction.

Dan and Fran Keller, who divorced in prison, seek exoneration in a case prosecutors say involved child abuse and satanic rituals. The Kellers were convicted of aggravated sexual assault of a child involving a 3-year-old girl.

The Kellers were released on bond last year when the physical evidence was found to be a mistake by an examining physician.

Judge Wilford Flowers, who presided over the trial, on Monday ruled the Kellers again failed to provide proof of innocence. It's the third such decision by Flowers. His recommendation goes to the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals.

An attorney for the Kellers plans a rebuttal.
http://www.dailyjournal.net/view/story/d0ad50a4181c4ddea5fb1a130e9fe9d1/TX--Ritual-Abuse-Conviction-Challenged/ 

Information on the Keller/Fran’s Day Care Case  http://ritualabuse.us/ritualabuse/articles/frans-day-care/

Fran’s Day Care

Fran’s Day Care
Randy Noblitt, PhD

http://ritualabuse.us/ritualabuse/articles/frans-day-care/

©Copyright R. Noblitt 2009. All rights reserved.

In recent days, an interest in the case of Fran and Dan Keller has reemerged and that reemergence has triggered new interest in the outcries of children that resulted in several investigations, trials, convictions, and tragedies throughout the 1990s. I can speak about Fran’s Day Care with some authority.

In 1992, the Travis County prosecutor’s office contacted me for advice as to how they should proceed with a bizarre case involving multiple child victims of sexual and ritual abuse in a day care. The accused perpetrators were the owners-operators of the nursery, Fran and Dan Keller. The day care was situated in a remote area beyond the suburbs of Austin, Texas. At this time, the legal community was reeling from the McMartin Day Care ordeal which was the costliest prosecution in California history up to that time, and had resulted in two hung juries in a seven-year prosecution. The prosecution, wishing to learn from the mistakes of McMartin, wanted advice regarding how to proceed without contaminating the children’s stories, compromising the alleged perpetrators’ rights, and getting to the truth of the children’s outcries.

Some of the parents whose children attended the preschool became suspicious when their children returned home wearing underwear not their own, or with their clothes inside out or with their hair wet. There were always reasonable explanations: the child had an accident and was changed into clothes on hand for that purpose; or the child splashed water on herself when the children were cleaning up; and so forth. However, when one of the children made an outcry, the parents more closely scrutinized the strange behaviors some of the children had started engaging in and the aforementioned episodes, and they took their concerns to the police. The police took the concerns seriously and collected statements and evidence. The grand jury found a basis for indictment. The Kellers responded to the warrant for their arrest by fleeing the state in disguise, obtaining false identifications in their new personas, and attempting to leave the country. They were apprehended in Las Vegas, Nevada and extradited back to Travis County.

It was at this point that I was introduced to the situation. I was in private practice in Dallas, two hundred miles north of Austin and had no knowledge of what was happening at Fran’s Day Care. The prosecutor, Judy Shipway, contacted me for advice on how to deal with the children, their stories, their parents’ reactions, and the impact of ritual abuse allegations on the court. I advised her to focus on the sexual abuse allegations for which there was substantial support and evidence. I expressed my opinion that introducing the topic of ritual abuse would be exploited by the defense as a means of discrediting the children. I also advised Ms. Shipway to make sure that every child had a therapist and that no therapist treat more than one child from Fran’s Day Care. Finally, I advised the prosecutor to request that the children’s parents not communicate with one another until after the trial to avoid inadvertent contamination of their children’s stories and their own interpretations. These suggestions were all implemented.

I was also invited to review the evidence which included drawings and writings produced by Danny Keller; the confession of co-defendant Doug Perry; the testimony of the children. I was able to describe for the prosecution the kinds of abuses ritually practiced by various groups and individuals and explain the psychological consequences of such abuse. I was able to interpret for the prosecutor the children’s stories in the context of what had been learned from other victims including the use of coercion, duplicity, threats, and other means of controlling survivors of such abuse.

Although several children at the day care were thought to have been sexually and ritually traumatized, some of them were so young that they did not yet speak in complete sentences. Some of them were identified by other victims. Three of the children were selected to represent the whole population. These were slightly older children, five and six years old, and they were able to convey their stories most articulately of all the child victims.

As the trial commenced, the prosecution developed an excellent case against the Kellers. I was surprised only by the defense attorneys’ rather blasé approach to their defense of the Kellers, perhaps operating under the assumption that the children would not be believed. In defense of the Kellers, their attorneys did raise the specter of ritual abuse by introducing into evidence the book Sex Abuse Hysteria: The Salem Witch Trials Revisited (Gardner, 1991), which promoted the idea that sexual and ritual abuse allegations by children were projections of their parents (and other adults’) latent pedophilia. It was at this point that I was asked to take the stand as an expert witness and address the topic of ritual abuse and Gardner’s book.

The case ended with the conviction of the Kellers and their sentencing to 48 years in prison each. They are in prison still, any efforts for appeal having failed to date. Shortly after the trial, the magazine, Texas Monthly, published a piece by Gary Cartwright in which he implied that the Kellers were the true victims in this sorry tale. He did me the courtesy of a call to “fact check” his story, particularly ideas attributed to me, except that it was only after the issue had been published.

Recently, the Fran’s Day Care case was dredged up by the Austin Chronicle, an alternative periodical produced locally in Texas. My son sent me the link in an email with the heading, “Dad, you’re in the news again.” Once more, the perspective was one of advocacy for falsely accused, persecuted, prosecuted, and convicted victims of a malicious or inept legal system that places too much trust in the stories children tell. A particular flaw in this story was the story. It was certainly not founded on anything I witnessed during my participation in the case. Evidence was not withheld from the prosecution to my knowledge. The defense was left flat-footed by their own conviction that the children would not be believed. And the advice I offered may have helped to prevent influence or contamination of the children’s testimony. The children’s stories were credible – Fran and Dan Keller’s defense was not. End of story? Probably not. I doubt that we have heard the last of Fran and Dan or of their day care or of their victims.

Interestingly enough, the Austin Chronicle article, Believing the Children, ended with a reference to one of the child victims, Veejay Staelin, a now 21-year old. Although he declined to be interviewed for the story, he re-asserted that he had been abused by Fran and Dan Keller.