Chicago bishop who didn't report child abuse allegations to police is living on archdiocese property

 

"Rather than being disciplined..these priests were moved around and the allegations against them not reported to police, "at the expense of I can't imagine how many children," who would have been spared otherwise.

 

"As heinous as the sexual abuse crimes were," he said, "the cover-up is worse."

 

Chicago bishop who didn't report child abuse allegations to police is living on archdiocese property
By Marlena Baldacci and Dakin Andone, CNN
Sat September 8, 2018

(CNN)A bishop who admitted he never reported suspicions of child sexual abuse by priests is currently living in a historic mansion owned by the Archdiocese of Chicago.

In a 2007 deposition, Auxiliary Bishop Raymond Goedert told lawyers he never alerted law enforcement to allegations of sexual abuse by Catholic clergy before providing the lawyers with the names of 25 clergy members who he knew had been accused of such behavior.

Today, 90-year-old Goedert is living at the Archbishop's Residence, an historic three-story building made of "smooth red brick" with 19 chimneys, three of which are in use, according to the archdiocese's website, which calls it "perhaps the largest and best-preserved building of its type in the Chicago area."
Paula Waters, spokeswoman for the Archdiocese of Chicago, said Goedert, who is retired, remains in "good standing because he never had a charge against him."....

 

"He retired as a priest in good standing; he has been living at the house in good standing," Waters said. "He's not ministering to anyone now, and he followed procedures at the time for what they were supposed to do regarding priests facing child sex abuse allegations." ....

 

While Goedert himself has not been accused of wrongdoing, an attorney who deposed him and who has represented alleged victims of priest abuse told CNN that the bishop's actions -- not reporting the allegations of abuse -- point to a larger issue of how the Catholic Church handles child sexual abuse allegations.

 

The issue has been highlighted by the recent release of a Pennsylvania grand jury report detailing decades of sexual abuse by priests.

"He was just the one in Chicago that was following the playbook," said the lawyer, Marc Pearlman, who has represented hundreds of sex abuse victims in the Chicago area....

 

Pearlman, one of the attorneys who deposed Goedert, told CNN his first impression of Goedert was that he was a "nice old man."
"I say that not in defense of him, but that's what makes this (scandal) so disturbing and alarming," Pearlman told CNN on Friday.
"This is not about Bishop Goedert. There are hundreds, if not thousands, just like him in every archdiocese," Pearlman continued. "He was just the one in Chicago that was following the playbook. It doesn't matter if it's Chicago, Joliet, Los Angeles, Boston. Everyone had a Father Goedert who did the same thing."

 

Rather than being disciplined, Pearlman said, these priests were moved around and the allegations against them not reported to police, "at the expense of I can't imagine how many children," who would have been spared otherwise.

 

"As heinous as the sexual abuse crimes were," he said, "the cover-up is worse."
https://www.cnn.com/2018/09/08/us/chicago-catholic-bishop-never-reported-abuse/index.html

 

 

 

Child Abuse Research  https://ritualabuse.us 

 

Articles by Neil Brick  http://neilbrick.com

 

Child Abuse Wiki  http://childabusewiki.org 

Woody Allen Child Abuse Allegations, Larry Nassar: 265 young women say they were abused by former USA Gymnastic doctor

Woody Allen, Mia Farrow, Dylan Farrow: A Timeline
A look at major events in the complicated history of Mr. Allen and the Farrow family.
By Sopan Deb and Deborah Leiderman
Jan. 31, 2018

Woody Allen is facing new criticism — including from some actors in his films — over allegations by his adopted daughter Dylan Farrow that he molested her in 1992 when she was a child. The Allen-Farrow story has its roots in the 1970s and encompasses several major events in the lives of Mr. Allen; his former partner Mia Farrow; and their daughter Dylan....

December 1991
Mr. Allen adopts Dylan Farrow and Moses Farrow, one of Ms. Farrow’s sons, who she adopted in 1980. Mr. Allen, who is 56, begins an affair with Ms. Farrow’s 21-year-old daughter, Soon-Yi Previn around this time.

Jan. 13, 1992
Ms. Farrow discovers nude photographs of Soon-Yi Previn in Mr. Allen’s apartment. He later testifies in court that he thought the affair would remain secret....
March 18, 1993

After a seven-month inquiry by a team of child abuse investigators at Yale-New Haven hospital, Mr. Allen’s lawyers say he has been cleared of molesting Dylan Farrow. Ms. Farrow’s legal team calls the confidential report “incomplete and inaccurate.” The report, which was commissioned by Connecticut law enforcement, was never officially released, but media outlets reported some of its contents....

June 7, 1993
Mr. Allen loses the custody battle. Acting Justice Elliott Wilk of the State Supreme Court says Mr. Allen is “self-absorbed, untrustworthy and insensitive.” He denies Mr. Allen visitation rights with Dylan Farrow.

Sept. 24, 1993

Frank Maco, a state’s attorney in Connecticut, announces that while he has “probable cause” to prosecute Mr. Allen, he would decline to press charges to spare Dylan Farrow the trauma of a trial. Mr. Maco says he believed that Dylan had been molested....

October 2017
The New York Times, and then Ronan Farrow in The New Yorker, publish stories about sexual harassment, abuse and rape allegations against Harvey Weinstein.

Mr. Allen says he feels “sad for Harvey” and warns against “a witch hunt atmosphere.” He later calls Mr. Weinstein “a sad, sick man.”....
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/31/movies/woody-allen-mia-farrow-dylan-farrow-a-timeline.htmlhttps://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/31/movies/woody-allen-mia-farrow-dylan-farrow-a-timeline.html


Larry Nassar latest: 265 young women say they were abused by former USA Gymnastic doctor, judge says
It was previously believed the total number of victims was closer to 200
Andrew Buncombe New York

More than 265 people have come forward to say they were sexually abused by the disgraced former gymnastics doctor Larry Nassar, a judge has said.

As Nassar’s third sentencing hearing got underway on Wednesday in Eaton County, Michigan, Judge Janice Cunningham said dozens of women and girls were expected to deliver statements in court. “Some of the victims have chosen not to be identified,” she said.

During a seven-day hearing that concluded last week in nearby Ingham County, more than 150 young women delivered powerful statements confronting Nassar and telling him of the devastating impact he had on their lives.....
As the hearing continued, it was reported that the entire board of directors of USA Gymnastics, which Nassar served as a team doctor for 20 years, had stood down after being told they would otherwise be fired.

Last week, Nassar was sentenced to between 40 to 175 years in prison when he appeared before Ingham County Circuit Court Judge Rosemarie Aquilina....

Around 140 victims have filed a lawsuit against Nassar, USA Gymnastics (USAG) and Michigan State University (MSU), claiming the institutions knew about allegations of abuse years ago and failed to act.

USAG said last week after Olympic officials threatened to decertify the organisation as the sport’s US governing body that its entire board had resigned and sponsors have already backed away ahead of the 2020 Olympic Games.

The United States Olympic Committee, which has been criticised by victims as well, has announced an independent investigation into both its own conduct and that of USAG.
The Michigan attorney general’s office, which prosecuted Nassar, is pursuing a criminal probe into the college over its handling of allegations against Nassar. The university’s president and athletic director stepped down in the wake of Nassar’s sentencing last week....
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/larry-nasser-abuse-sentence-victims-latest-court-judge-michigan-judge-janice-cunningham-a8187926.html

Child Abuse Allegations Plague the Hasidic Community

Child Abuse Allegations Plague the Hasidic Community
By Elijah Wolfson On 3/3/16

....It’s widely accepted by child abuse experts and advocates that some kids are particularly vulnerable. Usually, they are disadvantaged in some way—family problems, rejection by their peer group—that perpetrators can exploit, particularly if they are teachers who also happen to be religious authorities.

....It was widely known that if you ratted out someone in the community for abuse, the community would turn its back on you. Gena Diacomanolis is the senior director of Safe Horizon’s Jane Barker Brooklyn Child Advocacy Center, where, over the past decade, she says, they have made tremendous strides in the Haredi communities. But the biggest barrier remains the pressure the community puts on individuals who want to come forward with stories of abuse.

“I can tell you tons of stories where they were so fearful of going forward,” she says. “I had one dad who said his son was sexually abused at school.” He decided not to press charges, Diacomanolis recalls. “He said, ‘I don't want you to think I don't love my child, but if I go forward, I won't find a marriage for my daughter.’”

Diacomanolis also says families are often harassed when they come forward. One client who charged her husband with abusing their child “left her house, and the whole block was papered with things saying terrible things about her.”

One mother who found out her son had been sexually abused by a teacher at United Lubavitcher Yeshiva Ocean Parkway (another Hasidic school in Brooklyn) says when she complained to the yeshiva’s principal, she was shunned. “I got thrown out of the community,” she says. “You can’t imagine what was said to me. The phone calls I got. I was an outcast. I was threatened.”

....Protecting the Predators

Chabad has a global network of synagogues, schools and other facilities that is often used to shelter abusers on the run. When rumors of abuse begin to bubble up, teachers are shuttled from school to school, city to city—like Reizes, shipped from Brooklyn to Miami and then back. In March 2008, eight students accused Malka Leifer, principal of the Adass Israel school for girls in Elsternwick, a suburb of Melbourne, Australia, of sexual abuse. Just days later, she hopped on a plane and fled to Israel. In September 2015, Australia’s Supreme Court awarded over $1 million in compensation to a 28-year-old abused by Leifer from 2003 to 2006.

According to court documents, it was discovered during the course of the trial that there was a concerted effort by the community to protect Leifer: The school’s president at the time, Yitzhok Benedikt, and board member Mark Ernst played key roles in arranging her escape to Israel. The two men are facing criminal charges; Leifer was arrested in Israel last year and is now fighting extradition to Australia.

In recent years, Australia has emerged as the country most willing to confront child abuse in the Hasidic world. In 2013, the government formed the Royal Commission Into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse, and in early 2015 it began a large investigation into the Hasidic community. Weeks of hearings led to a report detailing alleged abuses—and how yeshivas and rabbinical leadership cover up that abuse and systematically ostracize survivors and their families.

....In New York, survivors of most cases of child molestation have five years after they turn 18 to get the district attorney to prosecute. (In cases of sexual misconduct, legal proceedings must begin within two years after the offense was committed, regardless of the child’s age at the time of the alleged crime.) Many child abuse experts say that window is not nearly big enough for young men just starting to understand what happened to them. It’s no surprise that most of the abuse Newsweek uncovered happened long ago—no 10-year-old has the wherewithal to talk to the press about his abusive teacher. It takes a 25-year-old who has finally received a proper education to understand what was done to him 15 years ago.

For almost a decade, Assemblywoman Margaret Markey, from Queens, has been trying to pass a bill that would eliminate the statute of limitations on both criminal and civil cases of sex crimes against children. But she has faced fierce opposition from two political powerhouses: the New York State Catholic Conference and Agudath Israel of America.

The Hasidic world is starting to take allegations of abuse more seriously, and many of the individuals who talked on the record with Newsweek for this story say they finally feel comfortable speaking publicly about their personal histories with abuse because of the community support that has emerged in recent years.
http://www.newsweek.com/2016/03/11/child-abuse-allegations-hasidic-ultraorthodox-jewish-community-brooklyn-432688.html   

Police bungle half of online child abuse cases, Two French soldiers suspended over child abuse allegations in Burkina Faso

Police bungle HALF of online child abuse cases: Examination of serious allegations was ‘superficial’ and basic police work not carried out, damning reports find

     Experts say that 38 per cent of investigations involving vulnerable children are riddled with ‘inconsistencies’
    While half of police probes into child abuse on the internet branded 'inadequate' in series of reports
    In some cases, basic police work such as taking photographs of the scene were not undertaken
By Arthur Martin for the Daily Mail  1 July 2015

More than half of police investigations into child abuse on the internet are branded ‘inadequate’ by a damning series of reports published today.

Experts also say that 38 per cent of probes into all cases involving vulnerable children are riddled with ‘weaknesses and inconsistencies’.

In many cases investigations into child abuse or neglect were poor and plagued by delay, HM Inspectorate of Constabulary concluded.

Researchers found that the examination of serious allegations by officers were ‘superficial’ and crucial leads were not pursued.

In some cases, basic police work such as taking photographs of the scene, analysing mobile phones, or referring a child for medical attention were not undertaken.

During interviews with children, officers used ‘oppressive questioning’ techniques and in some cases were hostile towards the victims they were meant to be helping.

The findings are from three HMIC reports which warn that the police must reassess their approach to child protection or risk failing a new generation....
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3146630/Police-bungle-HALF-online-child-abuse-cases-Examination-allegations-superficial-basic-police-work-not-carried-damning-reports-find.html  

Two French soldiers suspended over child abuse allegations in Burkina Faso
By Andrew V. Pestano July 1, 2015

PARIS, July 1 (UPI) -- Two French soldiers have been suspended and an investigation has been launched due to allegations of child sexual abuse in Burkina Faso.

The soldiers are suspected of "committing acts of a sexual nature," according to a statement by France's Ministry of Defense, adding that an investigation has been launched by the Chief of Staff of the French Army, Gen. Jean-Pierre Bosser....

About 3,000 French soldiers are stationed in Burkina Faso, Mali, Chad, Mauritania and Niger as part of an anti-terrorism operation.

In another similar incident, a leaked United Nations report in April alleged 16 French peacekeepers abused children in the Central African Republic by exchanging goods, such as food, for sex between December 2013 and June 2014....
http://www.upi.com/Top_News/World-News/2015/07/01/Two-French-soldiers-suspended-over-child-abuse-allegations-in-Burkina-Faso/3721435747266/ 

Former British Home Secretary Leon Brittan Death and Child Abuse Allegations, Gary Glitter trial, child abuse images

New Allegations Of Child Abuse Emerge After Former British Home Secretary Leon Brittan's Death  Dina Spector Jan. 26, 2015

Leon Brittan's death last week has reignited claims that the former home secretary was involved in the cover-up of a secret Westminster paedophile ring that operated in the 1970s and 1980s.

Days after Brittan's death, Labour MP Tom Watson said he spoke to several people who allege they were raped by the late politician. One male victim was a child when he was allegedly raped by Brittan.

"Many have urged me over the past two years to reveal allegations against Brittan using parliamentary privilege," Watson told the Mirror. "This allows MPs to say things that are not subject to libel laws. Some will ask why I’ve waited until his death to speak out. The reason is simple. I didn't want to prejudice any jury trial he might one day face."

Brittan's death also underlines how slowly and ineffectually the British police are moving in their investigation of the Westminster child-abuse ring. The prime suspects are literally dying. Former MP Cyril Smith — another accused child abuser — died in 2010. Peter Hayman, the former deputy director of MI6 who was convicted of gross indecency, died in 1992....

Brittan remains the subject of an investigation into the disappearance of a 40-page dossier naming eight senior civil servants and politicians who were allegedly involved in a secret paedophile ring.

In 1983, Brittan was handed a dossier written by conservative MP Geoffrey Dickens while serving as home secretary in Margaret Thatcher's government. Dickens died in 1995. In July last year, Brittan was surrounded by allegations that he failed to properly investigate the claims. Brittan maintained that he handled the documents correctly.

Last year, he told the Daily Mail that he gave the names to the Director of Public Prosecutions.... http://www.businessinsider.com/leon-brittan-death-and-child-abuse-allegations-2015-1

Gary Glitter breaks down in tears over child abuse images  28 January 2015 

Gary Glitter broke down in tears as he explained to jurors why he had been in possession of child abuse images.

Sobbing uncontrollably, the 70-year-old said he had been in a bad place in his life, and was struggling financially, with alcohol and with drugs.

He issued a tearful apology to his fans, saying: "I lost my own dignity, and I am so sorry. I am very sorry."

Glitter, on trial under his real name Paul Gadd, denies 10 charges relating to three girls between 1975 and 1980.

In November 1997, when he went to pick up a Toshiba laptop he had handed to a PC World branch in Bristol, he was arrested, Southwark Crown Court in London heard.

The engineer who examined the machine had discovered images on it related to child abuse.

Mr Gadd subsequently admitted responsibility for a "large number" of images - depicting a full range of sexual activity taking place between men and very young children - being on his computer.

He was jailed for four months in 1999 for the collection of 4,000 images....

I did not try to rape her or any other child."....

He is also charged with four counts of indecent assault on a fan in 1977 at hotels in Leicester and Birmingham when she was aged 12 and 13; plying the same girl with alcohol, and having unlawful sexual intercourse with her.

Two further charges allege he indecently assaulted a girl of 13 on a date between October 1979 and December 1980, in his dressing room at a venue in Watford where he was performing. http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-31015347

Reverend Paul Flowers Co-op Bank boss, Drug Scandal and Child Abuse Allegations

Crystal Methodist in link to school described as 'sweet shop for paedophiles' as plans for Amsterdam holiday with male prostitutes is revealed

    Flowers was vice-chairman of Rochdale Council's social services committee
    It oversaw Knowl View School for boys with behavioural problems
    Now subject to an investigation into the sexual abuse of former pupils
    School closed in 1995, after staff member alerted council bosses to problems
    Rochdale Council is conducting an inquiry into Flowers's years as councillor
    Texts reveal he planned Amsterdam trip with rent boys after MoS expose
    He took coke, crack and weed before leading Remembrance Day service

By Nick Craven, Ross Slater and Ben Ellery

30 November 2013

Shamed Co-op Bank boss Paul Flowers was linked to a special school at the centre of one of Britain’s worst child sex abuse scandals, The Mail on Sunday can reveal.

Methodist minister Flowers was vice-chairman of Rochdale Council’s social services committee which oversaw Knowl View School, during a time when it was described as a ‘sweet shop for paedophiles’.

Yet a series of damning reports – at least one sent to Flowers – about the crimes at Knowl View were hidden from the public.

The residential unit for boys  aged seven to 16 with learning and behavioural problems is now subject to a police investigation into the sexual and physical abuse of former pupils.

Meanwhile Rochdale Council is conducting its own inquiry into Flowers’s years as a councillor in the light of his drug-taking, exposed by The Mail on Sunday last month.

The Knowl View scandal broke last year after the Crown Prosecution Service accepted that the school’s founder, the late Liberal MP Cyril Smith, who knew Flowers through the council, should have been prosecuted for child abuse.

The school, founded in 1969, eventually closed in 1995, after a member of staff alerted council bosses to ongoing problems....
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2516192/Crystal-Methodist-link-school-described-sweet-shop-paedophiles.html


Sleaze shame: The fall from grace of Co-op Bank boss and reverend Paul Flowers
From drug-taking and drink-driving to sex offences and fiddling expenses - not to mention being a bungling bank boss - the fall from grace of Paul Flowers has been extraordinary

By: Dominic Midgley
Published: Sat, November 23, 2013

It is hard to think of a man who has fallen further and faster than the Reverend Paul Flowers. This time last week he was a pillar of the community as a Methodist minister, a trustee of Aids charity the Terrence Higgins Trust and chair of governors at a primary school....
http://www.express.co.uk/news/uk/444658/Sleaze-shame-The-fall-from-grace-of-Co-op-Bank-boss-and-reverend-Paul-Flowers