Child abuse inquiry says orphanages were places of 'threat and abuse', Spiritual Leader Raped 2 Women During Ceremonies

 

Child abuse inquiry says orphanages were places of 'threat and abuse'
11 October 2018

 

Scottish Child Abuse Inquiry
Children at Smyllum Park orphanage were sexually abused and beaten with leather straps, hairbrushes and crucifixes, the Scottish Child Abuse Inquiry has found.

 

Nuns belonging to the Daughters of Charity of St Vincent de Paul ran the Catholic Children's home near Lanark, as well as Bellevue House, Rutherglen.

Lady Smith, who is chairing the inquiry, has published a report on evidence heard during the case study.

 

She said the homes were places of fear, threat, and excessive discipline.

The judge said emotional, physical and sexual abuse took place.

The children found "no love, no compassion, no dignity and no comfort," she said.

 

A total of 54 witnesses told of their experiences at Smyllum Park, which closed in 1981, and Bellevue House, which closed in 1961, and 21 written statements were submitted.

 

What did the inquiry report say?

Lady Smith's interim report into the Smyllum and BelleVue case studies concluded:

 

Children were abused while in the care of the Daughters of Charity of St Vincent de Paul
They were sexually abused in Smyllum by priests, a trainee priest, nuns, members of staff and a volunteer. The abuse was, in some cases, prolonged.
There was also problematic sexual behaviour by other children.

Children were hit with implements, the punishment being either excessive or for reasons which the child could not fathom.
The implements used included leather straps, the "Lochgelly Tawse," hairbrushes, sticks, footwear, rosary beads, wooden crucifixes and a dog's lead.

For some children, being hit was a normal aspect of daily life.
The physical punishments meted out to children went beyond what was acceptable at the time whether as punishment in schools or in the home.
Children who were bed-wetters were abused physically and emotionally.
They were beaten, put in cold baths and humiliated in ways that included "wearing" their wet sheets and being subjected to hurtful name-calling by Sisters and by other children.

Many children were force-fed.
Children were used as unpaid labour.

Many children were forced to queue in a state of undress for a bath and shared bathwater that was too hot or cold and dirty.

There was no system for marking children's birthdays. Some children didn't know when their birthday was.
Children were abused for being left-handed and forced to use their right hands instead.

Some were abused for being Protestants and one child was told the Jewishness would be knocked out of him....

 

121 - Number of complaints of alleged historical abuse at Smyllum made to the Order between 1998 and 2002 That's 37 complaints against individual sisters, 23 complaints against lay staff, four complaints against priests and two complaints against scout leaders)

 

26 - Number of complaints of alleged abuse at Bellevue made to the Order between 1998 and 2002 (That includes 18 complaints against individual sisters and five complaints against lay staff)

 

99 - Number of civil actions raised against the Order in relation to Smyllum

18 - Number of civil actions raised against the Order in relation to Bellevue....

 

https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-scotland-45812269

 

Spiritual Leader Raped 2 Women During Ceremonies, Prosecutors Say
By Michael Gold Oct. 10, 2018

A 42-year-old woman went to a Brooklyn apartment in August 2016 to meet a self-described spiritual leader for what she thought was a “church ceremony.” She had met him at a religious goods store.

 

During the ceremony, the man, Nigel Kennedy, started chanting and poured a drink that tasted like alcohol into the woman’s mouth, prosecutors said. She passed out briefly, then regained consciousness and felt someone on top of her. The next morning she awoke naked on an unfamiliar bed, feeling nauseous and dizzy, and realized she had been raped, prosecutors said.

 

Mr. Kennedy, 51, pleaded not guilty on Wednesday in State Supreme Court in Brooklyn to charges of rape and sexual abuse. He is accused of drugging and raping two women in Brooklyn during separate religious ceremonies two years apart....

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/10/nyregion/spiritual-leader-rape-brooklyn.html

 

 

 

 

Child Abuse Wiki   http://childabusewiki.org

Ritual Abuse Research  https://ritualabuse.us 

Articles by Neil Brick   http://neilbrick.com 

Nuns charged in Smyllum Park child abuse investigation, The ghosts of St. Joseph's orphanage: BuzzFeed News reveals extent of child abuse

 

"In the United States, however, no such reckoning has taken place. Even today the stories of the orphanages are rarely told and barely heard, let alone recognized in any formal way by the government, the public, or the courts. The few times that orphanage abuse cases have been litigated in the US, the courts have remained generally indifferent. Private settlements could be as little as a few thousand dollars. Government bodies have rarely pursued the allegations."

 

Nuns charged in Smyllum Park child abuse investigation
Police examining claims of abuse over decades at Catholic home charge 12 people Severin Carrell Scotland editor
Thu 23 Aug 2018

Police in Scotland have arrested and charged nuns and a number of other former staff in an investigation into alleged child abuse at a Catholic children’s home.

 

The nuns are among 12 people who have been charged by detectives investigating detailed allegations of systematic physical and sexual abuse of children over many decades at Smyllum Park in Lanark.

Police Scotland said another four former staff at the Catholic institution would be reported to the Crown Office, Scotland’s prosecution service, later on Thursday.

 

The force would not release any further details about the identities of those charged or the offences they face, pending final decisions by prosecutors.

“Twelve people, 11 women and one man, ages ranging from 62 to 85 years, have been arrested and charged in connection with the non-recent abuse of children,” it said....

 

The allegations of abuse at Smyllum Park, including unsubstantiated claims of “satanic” rituals at the home, have been at the centre of a long-running official public inquiry into child sexual abuse at children’s homes in Scotland.

The Scottish child abuse inquiry (SCAI) has been told by former residents that lay staff and nuns at the home, run by the Daughters of Charity of St Vincent de Paul until it closed in 1981, repeatedly beat and punched them, verbally abused and humiliated them for wetting beds and left them without food and that some male and female staff sexually abused the children in their care.

 

It is alleged that at least one child, a boy aged six, died as a result of a severe beating that prevented him from recovering from an infection some days later.

Gregor Rolfe, a lawyer for the Daughters of Charity, told the SCAI last year that one male former member of staff may have sexually abused children whom he took on holidays. Those allegations were reported to nuns but not passed to the police....

 

The families of former residents were horrified to discover that the remains of up to 400 children were buried in a large plot of unmarked graves in a cemetery nearby.

More than 11,000 children were placed at Smyllum Park from its opening in 1864 to its eventual closure 117 years later. Some were orphaned, but others were from families unable to look after them. Death certificates revealed that many of the children died from tuberculosis, pneumonia and pleurisy.

Smith is expected to release a special preliminary report on Smyllum Park in coming weeks. Her full report is not expected until some time after October 2019.

 

The Scottish Daily Mail reported on Thursday that police had also begun a separate investigation into the Sisters of Nazareth, another Catholic order that ran children’s homes that are under scrutiny by Smith’s inquiry.

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2018/aug/23/nuns-charged-in-investigation-into-child-abuse-at-smyllum-park

 

 

 

The ghosts of St. Joseph's orphanage: BuzzFeed News reveals extent of child abuse
Christine Kenneally, BuzzFeed Aug. 27, 2018

In the 1990s, Burlington Free Press journalists including Sam Hemingway reported extensively on allegations of child abuse by former residents of St. Joseph's Orphanage in Burlington. Two decades later, Christine Kenneally, a reporter for the online news site BuzzFeed News, has spent four years revisiting the scandal of child abuse at Catholic orphanages around the United States.

 

Much of Kenneally's report focuses on abuse at the Burlington orphanage, which was located on North Avenue. With BuzzFeed News' permission, the Free Press publishes this excerpt.

It was a late summer afternoon, Sally Dale recalled, when the boy was thrown through the fourth-floor window.

“He kind of hit, and— ” she placed both hands palm-down before her. Her right hand slapped down on the left, rebounded up a little, then landed again.

 

For just a moment, the room was still. “Bounced?” one of the many lawyers present asked. “Well, I guess you’d call it — it was a bounce,” she replied. “And then he laid still.”

Sally, who was speaking under oath, tried to explain it. She started again. “The first thing I saw was looking up, hearing the crash of the window, and then him going down, but my eyes were still glued— .” She pointed up at where the broken window would have been and then she pointed at her own face and drew circles around it. “That habit thing, whatever it is, that they wear, stuck out like a sore thumb.”....

 

A nun was standing at the window, Sally said. She straightened her arms out in front of her. “But her hands were like that.”

There were only two people in the yard, she said: Sally herself and a nun who was escorting her. In a tone that was still completely bewildered, she recalled asking, Sister?

 

Sister took hold of Sally’s ear, turned her around, and walked her back to the other side of the yard. The nun told her she had a vivid imagination.

We are going to have to do something about you, child.

Sally figured the boy fell from the window in 1944 or so, because she was moving to the “big girls” dormitory that day. Girls usually moved when they were 6, though residents of St. Joseph’s Orphanage in Burlington, Vermont, did not always have a clear sense of their age — birthdays, like siblings and even names, being one of the many human attributes that were stripped from them when they passed through its doors. She recounted his fall in a deposition on November 6, 1996, as part of a remarkable group of lawsuits that 28 former residents brought against the nuns, the diocese, and the social agency that oversaw the orphanage.

 

I watched the deposition — all 19 hours of grainy, scratchy videotape — more than two decades later. By that time sexual abuse scandals had ripped through the Catholic Church, shattering the silence that had for so long protected its secrets. It was easier for accusers in general to come forward, and easier for people to believe their stories, even if the stories sounded too awful to be true. Even if they had happened decades ago, when the accusers were only children. Even if the people they were accusing were pillars of the community.

 

But for all these revelations — including this month’s Pennsylvania grand jury report on how the church hid the crimes of hundreds of priests — a darker history, the one to which Sally’s story belongs, remains all but unknown. It is the history of unrelenting physical and psychological abuse of captive children. Across thousands of miles, across decades, the abuse took eerily similar forms: People who grew up in orphanages said they were made to kneel or stand for hours, sometimes with their arms straight out, sometimes holding their boots or some other item. They were forced to eat their own vomit. They were dangled upside down out windows, over wells, or in laundry chutes. Children were locked in cabinets, in closets, in attics, sometimes for days, sometimes so long they were forgotten. They were told their relatives didn’t want them, or they were permanently separated from their siblings. They were sexually abused. They were mutilated.....

 

In the United States, however, no such reckoning has taken place. Even today the stories of the orphanages are rarely told and barely heard, let alone recognized in any formal way by the government, the public, or the courts. The few times that orphanage abuse cases have been litigated in the US, the courts have remained generally indifferent. Private settlements could be as little as a few thousand dollars. Government bodies have rarely pursued the allegations....

https://www.burlingtonfreepress.com/story/news/2018/08/27/buzzfeed-report-catholic-orphanages-reveals-decades-child-abuse/1108320002/

Ritual Abuse Conference - Dr. Randy Noblitt and Neil Brick
https://ritualabuse.us/smart-conference/2018-conference/ 

 

Changes in Awareness of Severe Abuse and Child Abuse Crimes Over Twenty Five Years by Neil Brick

https://ritualabuse.us/smart-conference/2018-conference/changes-in-awareness-of-severe-abuse-and-child-abuse-crimes-over-twenty-five-years/ 

 

The Credibility of Ritual Abuse Allegations by Dr. Randy Noblitt
https://ritualabuse.us/smart-conference/2018-conference/the-credibility-of-ritual-abuse-allegations/ 

 

 

Child and Ritual Abuse Conference Helps Educate Survivors and Their Helpers

https://www.webwire.com/ViewPressRel.asp?aId=227656

Weiner investigated for child abuse, Hunter Catholic diocese had nuns who didn't think child sexual abuse was a crime

Anthony Weiner investigated for child abuse
Compiled by Tony Hicks  09/01/2016

Child welfare workers are investigating Anthony Weiner, after news surfaced he sent an inappropriate selfie of himself in bed next to his 4-year-old son, Jordan.

Sources reportedly told the New York Post the Administration for Children's Services were looking into the matter, after the former congressman sent the photo to a woman.

The married 51-year-old resigned from Congress in 2011 after it was revealed he was sexting a woman who was not his wife. A bid to become mayor of New York was derailed by a similar controversy.

An agency worker visited the home of Weiner and his estranged wife Huma Abedin's home, a worker there reportedly told the Post, though Weiner denied being contacted by the ACS....

Abedin, who announced Monday she is leaving Weiner, is a longtime trusted aide to presidential candidate Hillary Clinton....
http://www.mercurynews.com/celebrities/ci_30317222/anthony-weiner-investigated-child-abuse 


Hunter Catholic diocese had nuns who didn't think child sexual abuse was a crime JOANNE MCCARTHY 31 Aug 2016

THE Catholic Church has paid more than $25 million to Hunter child sex abuse survivors, the royal commission has heard on a day when a nun said she didn’t think the rape of a boy was a crime, and an abuse survivor told of wanting to grab knives and kill a paedophile priest when he was just 13.

“I didn’t do it. I should have,” Hunter man Gerard McDonald, 52, told the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse about Father Vince Ryan on the first day of the 43rd public hearing, considering church responses to child sexual abuse in Maitland-Newcastle diocese.

The diocese has substantiated 158 claims by survivors involving 31 perpetrators. There have been 78 claims from former students of Marist Brothers schools at Maitland and Hamilton, and St Pius X College, Adamstown. The royal commission heard 56 per cent of claims involved priests.

The diocese has paid more than $25.7 million in compensation, with one victim of Vince Ryan paid $2.9 million, and another 12 Ryan victims paid a combined $2.9 million. The Newcastle Herald is aware of many other survivors of abuse who have not reported abuse or sought compensation.

“There is a long and disturbing history of suffering by children in the Diocese of Maitland-Newcastle inflicted by diocesan priests and members of religious orders,” said counsel assisting the royal commission, Stephen Free, in his opening address.

The public hearing at Newcastle Courthouse will consider the case of Vince Ryan and Marist Brothers Romuald (Francis Cable), Patrick (Thomas Butler) and Dominic (Darcy O’Sullivan), who sexually abused boys over three decades.

It will hear evidence about how senior clergy, including Monsignor Patrick Cotter, and senior Marist Brothers including former principals Brother Christopher Wade and Brother Alexis Turton, responded after receiving child sex serious allegations....
http://www.theherald.com.au/story/4134529/history-of-suffering-revealed-at-the-royal-commission/ 


Child Abuse Wiki

Ritual Abuse
http://childabusewiki.org/index.php?title=Ritual_Abuse

Recovered Memories
http://childabusewiki.org/index.php?title=Recovered_Memories

Dissociative Identity Disorder
http://childabusewiki.org/index.php?title=Dissociative_Identity_Disorder

800 dead babies are probably just the beginning The corpses found in an Irish septic pit resulted from a larger problem

800 dead babies are probably just the beginning
The corpses found in an Irish septic pit resulted from a larger problem.
By Martin Sixsmith June 6
Martin Sixsmith’s book, Philomena, published by Penguin Books, was adapted for the screen last year.

The discovery of a grave containing the remains of as many as 800 babies at a former home for unmarried mothers in Ireland is yet another problem for the Irish Catholic Church. The mother and baby home at Tuam in County Galway was run by the nuns of the Sisters of Bon Secours and operated between 1925 and 1961. It took in thousands of women who had committed the “mortal sin” of unwed pregnancy, delivered their babies and was charged with caring for them. But unsanitary conditions, poor food and a lack of medical care led to shockingly high rates of infant mortality. Babies’ bodies were deposited in a former sewage tank....

During 10 years of research into the Catholic Church’s treatment of “fallen women” — I wrote about one of them in my book, Philomena, later turned into a feature film starring Dame Judi Dench — I discovered that the girls were refused medical attention, including painkillers, during even the most difficult births; the nuns told them the pain was the penance they must pay for their sin. In the home where Philomena gave birth, an unkempt plot bears the names of babies and mothers, some as young as 15. There are undoubtedly many more there who have no memorial.

For those who survived, the psychological trauma has endured. Philomena and thousands like her were forced to look after their babies for up to four years, bonding with them before they were taken away to be adopted. Many went to families in the United States in return for substantial “donations”; lack of proper vetting meant some were handed over to abusive parents. The mothers were told they were moral degenerates, too sullied to keep their babies. The nuns said they would burn in hell if they spoke to anyone about their children or what had been done with them....

The warped code of honour behind the decades of silence had been inculcated by an all-powerful Catholic Church. For much of the late 20th century, the Irish civil authorities were in thrall to the hierarchy; Archbishop John Charles McQuaid threatened pulpit denunciations if the government contradicted his policies. So the state connived in the mother and baby homes, paying the nuns at Tuam and all the other homes a per capita rate for every inmate....
http://www.washingtonpost.com/posteverything/wp/2014/06/06/800-dead-babies-are-probably-just-the-beginning/

Catholic diocese to file for bankruptcy protection

Catholic diocese to file for bankruptcy protection
Matt Volz, Associated Press January 31, 2014

HELENA, Montana (AP) — The Roman Catholic Diocese of Helena planned to file for bankruptcy protection Friday as part of a proposed settlement of $15 million for hundreds of victims who say clergy members sexually abused them over decades while the church covered it up.

Diocese spokesman Dan Bartleson said the bankruptcy reorganization plan comes after confidential mediation sessions with the plaintiffs' attorneys and insurers, resulting in the deals to resolve the abuse claims.

The settlement details are being worked out, but the U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Montana would be responsible for approving and supervising the disbursement of $15 million to compensate the 362 victims identified in the two lawsuits.

In addition, at least $2.5 million will be set aside for victims who come forward later, Bartleson said....

The Helena diocese is the 11th in the nation to seek bankruptcy protection in the face of sex-abuse claims

The two lawsuits filed in 2011 claim clergy members groomed and then abused the children from the 1940s to the 1970s. They claim the diocese shielded the offenders and knew or should have known the threat they posed to children....

In one of the lawsuits, the plaintiffs said they were repeatedly raped, fondled or forced to perform sexual acts while at school, on the playground, on camping trips or at the victims' homes.

The second lawsuit, filed a week after the first in 2011, contained similar allegations against priests, but also alleged that nuns at the Ursuline Academy in St. Ignatius abused dozens of Native American children....
http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2014/01/31/catholic-diocese-files-for-bankruptcy-protection/5078991/ 

Los Angeles Archdiocese Is Accused of Failing to Release All Abuse Records, Kesgrave/Stowmarket: Inquiries into historic child abuse allegations at three former schools, Ireland finally admits state collusion in Magdalene Laundry system

Los Angeles Archdiocese Is Accused of Failing to Release All Abuse Records
By LAURIE GOODSTEIN and JENNIFER MEDINA February 4, 2013

The Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Los Angeles released 12,000 pages of internal files last Thursday on priests accused of sexually abusing children, saying that it was finally abiding by a settlement it signed with victims six years ago to make the painful history public.

But it now appears that the files the church released with much fanfare are incomplete and many are unaccounted for, according to the abuse victims’ lawyers. In addition, on many documents the names of church supervisors informed of abuse allegations were redacted by the archdiocese, in apparent violation of a judge’s order.

At issue is whether the survivors of abuse and the public will ever learn which church officials were responsible for mishandling or covering up allegations of sexual abuse.

Abuse victims had insisted that the Archdiocese of Los Angeles release the records as part of a settlement in 2007, which provided $660 million to more than 500 victims. Other Catholic dioceses that have settled with victims have released similar records.

“We know we have not gotten a complete disclosure,” said Jeff Anderson, who is among the lawyers representing the victims. “They have removed things that should not have been removed, some of which we have seen before, so we know that they exist. It’s more deception, deceit and secrecy.”

But J. Michael Hennigan,  a lawyer for the Los Angeles Archdiocese, said in an interview that while there were probably a few errors, there was no intention to withhold information.

“I would be surprised if we did this job perfectly,” he said. “The team that worked on this worked under pressure sometimes late into the night.”

The Archdiocese of Los Angeles fought for six years all the way to the State Supreme Court to block the release of the documents. Early in January, Judge Emilie H. Elias overturned a previous decision, and ordered the archdiocese to lift the redactions of the names of certain kinds of officials: archbishops and bishops, vicars for clergy members and directors of treatment facilities, as well as pastors, “church agents” or employees who had supervisory responsibility over an accused priest and were made aware of complaints or suspicions about him.

But on many pages it appears that the names of supervisors, like pastors in parishes or the supervisors of religious orders, are missing.

For example, the file on Carlos Rodriguez, a priest serving in a parish in Central Los Angeles, includes a letter to him from his religious order, the Vincentian Fathers and Brothers, informing him that he is being sent to a treatment center in Maryland. Mr. Rodriguez was accused of molesting several teenage boys over the years. But while the letter makes clear that the writer is the priest’s religious superior, the name is redacted. Other documents in the file are similarly missing names of religious order supervisors.... 
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/05/us/los-angeles-archdiocese-is-accused-of-failing-to-release-all-priest-abuse-records.html


Kesgrave/Stowmarket: Inquiries into historic child abuse allegations at three former schools
Colin Adwent Crime Correspondent Monday, February 4, 2013

THREE former Suffolk schools are now at the centre of criminal investigations into historic child abuse allegations.
  
The accusations, which relate to alleged physical and sexual assaults, are said to have occurred between the late 1970s and run through to the 1990s.

A solicitor representing ex-pupils of one of the schools - Oakwood School in Stowmarket - has said the number of claimants has reached three figures.

Andrew Grove, who is based in Cambridge, said: “We now have 100 complainants on the civil claim relating to Oakwood School.”

Last week detectives said they were re-opening the 1992 inquiry into alleged abuse at Kesgrave Hall independent school.

The investigation, codenamed Operation Garford, comes after former students’ calls for it to be re-opened were backed by Central Suffolk and North Ipswich MP Dr Dan Poulter.

Responding to the new inquiry, Dr Poulter said: “I am pleased that Suffolk Police are conducting a full and thorough investigation into the alleged child abuse at Kesgrave Hall school, following my intervention.

“A number of people have written to me raising concerns about abuse when they or their family members were pupils at the school, and I would again urge anyone who has been the victim of abuse to come forward and immediately contact Suffolk police.”

Four people were suspended in 1992 during the Kesgrave Hall inquiry. No charges were ever brought. The school closed in 1993.

However, a woodwork teacher Alan Stancliffe, was convicted and jailed in 1999 and again in 2007 for indecent assaults on three ex-pupils....
http://www.eadt.co.uk/news/kesgrave_stowmarket_inquiries_into_historic_child_abuse_allegations_at_three_former_schools_1_1857903

Ireland finally admits state collusion in Magdalene Laundry system

Taoiseach Enda Kenny fails to formally apologise for involvement over female enslavement causing more outrage
Henry McDonald in Dublin     The Guardian, Tuesday 5 February 2013

After more than seven decades of exploitation and a 10-year struggle for justice, Ireland on Tuesday admitted its role in the enslavement of thousands of women and girls in the notorious Magdalene Laundry system, but stopped short of issuing a formal apology from the government.

A long-awaited report headed by Senator Martin McAleese said there was "significant state involvement" in how the laundries were run – a reversal of the official state line for years, which insisted the institutions were privately controlled and run by nuns.

But the Irish Premier Enda Kenny's failure to give the women and their supporters a full, formal, public apology in the Dail on Tuesday afternoon has infuriated the victims and their supporters, who said such an approach risked undermining Ireland's attempt to right a historic wrong. Instead Kenny stated his "regret" about the stigma hanging over the women.

"The stigma that the branding together of all the residents, all 10,000, in the Magdalene Laundries, needs to be removed, and should have been removed long before this," Kenny said. "And I really am sorry that that never happened, and I regret that it never happened."

Claire McGetterick of the Justice For Magdalenes group said last night: "Frankly their country has failed them again".

Labelled the "Maggies", the women and girls were stripped of their names and dumped in Irish Catholic church-run laundries where nuns treated them as slaves, simply because they were unmarried mothers, orphans or regarded as somehow morally wayward.

Over 74 years, 30,000 women were put to work in de facto detention, mostly in laundries run by nuns. At least 988 of the women who were buried in laundry grounds are thought to have spent most of their lives inside the institutions....
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/feb/05/ireland-magdalene-laundry-system-apology

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

pope refused defrocking of convicted priest, church is still fighting claims

also Sex abuse victims say church is still tenaciously fighting claims Shanley recovered memory case

Future pope refused defrocking of convicted priest MATT SEDENSKY AP 5/30/10
The future Pope Benedict XVI refused to defrock an American priest who confessed to molesting numerous children and even served prison time for it, simply because the cleric wouldn't agree to the discipline. The case provides the latest evidence of how changes in church law under Pope John Paul II frustrated and hamstrung U.S. bishops struggling with an abuse crisis that would eventually explode.

Documents obtained by The Associated Press from court filings in the case of the late Rev. Alvin Campbell of Illinois show Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, following church law at the time, turned down a bishop's plea to remove the priest for no other reason than the abuser's refusal to go along with it.
"The petition in question cannot be admitted in as much as it lacks the request of Father Campbell himself," Ratzinger wrote in a July 3, 1989, letter to Bishop Daniel Ryan of the Diocese of Springfield, Ill....

Campbell's misdeeds date back at least 15 years before his defrocking.
As an Army chaplain, he was reprimanded and ultimately left the service after abusing at least one boy, according to military and church correspondence. An Army letter in his file said he had exploited his rank and position as a chaplain "by engaging in indecent homosexual acts" with a child under 16 who had been under his supervision....
Campbell became a pastor upon his return to the diocese. In at least three instances after returning to diocesan work, he was forced to depart jobs as parish pastor or administrator "for reasons of health," a euphemism for sexual abuse used within the church that Ryan himself put in quotes.

After workers at a rape crisis center alerted authorities that they were treating one of Campbell's victims, police found he had been plying boys with video games, bicycles, watches and other gifts to get them to the waterbed in his second-floor rectory bedroom. Ryan sent Campbell to a New Mexico treatment facility after the arrest.

Campbell was sentenced to 14 years in prison in 1985, after admitting to molesting seven boys during his time as pastor of St. Maurice Parish in Morrisonville, Ill. He was released in 1992 after serving about seven years for sexual assault and sexual abuse.
Ryan apparently waited four years after Campbell went to prison, according to church files, before asking for the priest's defrocking. It's unclear what accounted for the delay.
http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/R/REL_POPE_CHURCH_ABUSE?SITE=AP&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT



describes allegations of abuse
Sex abuse victims say church is still tenaciously fighting claims - Even after convictions, some lawsuits have dragged on for more than a decade; church official blames complexities of judicial system
May 30 2010 .... The pressure Caruso experienced in battling the Catholic Church is not unusual, say those suing Catholic dioceses, priests and nuns over abuse. Despite the church’s pledge to handle victims with compassion — a position repeated this month by Pope Benedict — it too often plays a game of courtroom chicken with stall tactics, hostile discovery sessions and intrusive psychological probes that unnerve vulnerable clients, say victims and their lawyers.

“They don’t want to pay out the money,’’ said Jack Lavers, a Newfoundland lawyer who has worked both sides of the liturgical legal landscape. “There are (cases) that do start and never seem to finish.”
Seemingly relentless legal campaigns — especially against victims like Caruso, whose abuser had been convicted — appear to clash with church reforms adopted two decades ago after the Mount Cashel orphanage sex scandal. Pastoral outreach for victims of clergy abuse was among the recommendations in the 1992 “From Pain to Hope” report commissioned by the Canadian Council of Catholic Bishops. Counselling and empathy for the abused were again recommended in a 2007 CCCB task force....

Sharp said each victim’s circumstances are unique and claims of harsh treatment “may very well be” in some cases. But London-area victims are “immediately” offered counselling with a professional of their choice as soon as they report abuse. “In our diocese we are committed to keep these things moving as quickly and fully as we possibly can,” said Sharp, who estimates he still has 20 active Sylvestre cases....
Lavers said courtroom reality is that plaintiffs often get worn down and agree to accept smaller sums or drop their cases completely....

The 65-year-old native of St. John’s, Nfld., is among a group claiming physical and emotional abuse at the Belvedere Orphanage — a female counterpart of Mount Cashel. More than 30 women are suing the Congregation of the Sisters of Mercy and the province of Newfoundland. Her case is now 13 years old....
http://www.thestar.com/news/ontario/article/816223--sex-abuse-victims-say-church-is-still-tenaciously-fighting-claims?bn=1

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