Pope should be tried over the church’s sex abuse scandals: Corrigan, Gang rape in Cambodia, George: Any ties to sexual abuse could disqualify papal candidate

- Pope should be tried over the church’s sex abuse scandals: Corrigan
- Cardinals Start to Ponder Subtleties of a Big Task
- George: Any ties to sexual abuse could disqualify papal candidate
- Gang rape widespread in Cambodia

Pope should be tried over the church’s sex abuse scandals: Corrigan  Thursday Mar 07, 2013

An international lawyer says that the Roman Catholic Church and Pope can be sued in the International Court of Justice over hundreds of filed sexual abuses cases.

The comments come as the leader of Catholic church Pope Benedict XVI has officially resigned, ending an eight-year pontificate shaped by struggles to move the church past sex abuse scandals. Meanwhile international lawyers are looking into former Pope Benedict XVI’s legal status to see whether the former pontiff is liable to a legal action over failing to stop child sex abuse by church priests….

Corrigan: Well, if it goes to the International Court of Justice I think certainly the Roman Catholic Church can be sued.

Priests, bishops, archbishops, all along the hierarchy have been sued successfully in the past and there are a number, maybe even hundreds of sexual abuse cases which have been filed against the church, many of which have been upheld and sometimes they are dealt with internally through Canon law and internal secrecy which is supposed to protect the victim but also certainly has the appearance of protecting the church and sort of hiding this problem which needs to be brought up in the open and there have been numerous priests and other religious figures who have been convicted of sexual abuse of children and women and others.

So certainly the church can be sued….
http://www.presstv.ir/detail/2013/03/07/292357/pope-could-be-sued-over-sexual-scandal/

Cardinals Start to Ponder Subtleties of a Big Task
By DANIEL J. WAKIN March 4, 2013 VATICAN CITY….

On Monday, a senior American cardinal made a rare mention of the clerical sexual abuse scandal in that discourse. Cardinal Francis George, the archbishop of Chicago, said the new pope “obviously has to accept the universal code of the church now, which is zero tolerance for anyone who has abused a child.” Speaking in answer to a question at a news conference, Cardinal George said, “There’s a deep-seated conviction, certainly on the part of anyone who has been a pastor, that this has to be continually addressed.”….
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/05/world/europe/cardinal-george-of-chicago-urges-zero-tolerance-of-sex-abuse.html

George: Any ties to sexual abuse could disqualify papal candidate
By Manya A. Brachear, Chicago Tribune reporter March 7, 2013

ROME — Days before Pope Benedict XVI resigned and Roman Catholic cardinals descended on Rome to select his successor, Scottish Cardinal Keith O’Brien was, for all intents and purposes, fired.

As one of the cardinal electors for the next pope, O’Brien, who later apologized for sexual misconduct with other clergy, could have had a say in the next pope. Technically, he could have become the next pontiff.

But in an exclusive interview with the Tribune before the American cardinals’ moratorium, Chicago’s Cardinal Francis George said there are attempts to vet candidates to avoid surprises. He also said ties to anyone guilty of sexual misconduct — whether intended or unintended — could put a man’s candidacy in question if it could distract from his spiritual mission.

David Clohessy, executive director of the Chicago-based Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests, also known as SNAP, said that kind of vetting should have been taking place for decades. On Wednesday, Clohessy’s group issued a list of a dozen cardinals whose selection as pope would cause further offense to victims of sex abuse by priests….
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/religion/ct-met-sex-abuse-0307-20130307,0,7784915.story

Gang rape widespread in Cambodia
Published on Mar 7, 2013

In a recent survey, five percent of men reported they participated in gang rape in Cambodia, one of the highest rates in the Asia-Pacific region. Still, fewer than 20 gang-rape cases were prosecuted in Cambodia last year. A law against domestic violence, passed in Cambodia in 2005, has led to a 15 percent reduction in violence in the home. There is increasing recognition that sexual violence needs to be tackled in the Southeast Asian nation. Al Jazeera’s Aela Callan reports from Phnom Penh, Cambodia’s capital. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SyxhEfBubGI

A Pedophile in Plain Sight, Gang of men who groomed young girls

A Pedophile in Plain Sight
By ERIC L. LEWIS January 12, 2013

JUST after Christmas, Poly Prep Country Day School, the venerable Brooklyn institution, settled a lawsuit alleging a more than 40-year cover-up of the predatory pedophilia of its legendary football coach, Philip Foglietta. The terms of the settlement have not been disclosed, but the lawsuit charged that school administrators were repeatedly informed from the 1960s until his forced retirement in 1991 that Mr. Foglietta was sexually abusing boys — on campus, in his apartment and during trips. Mr. Foglietta, who died in 1998, fondled and raped dozens, if not hundreds, of children….

But many of us also knew that Coach Phil showered with the fifth graders. We knew that he hung around the locker room and checked that each of us had thoroughly rinsed off. Most of us knew he invited kids for car rides to Coney Island in his green Chevy Impala and for overnight stays at the apartment he shared with his mother. Most of those kids were young and small, often boys who had lost their fathers. He didn’t bother kids whose fathers were in local politics (my dad was in the State Senate) or allegedly high up in the mob (a couple of Gambino grandsons went to our school). Those boys were never offered a ride in the green Impala.

One of the plaintiffs in the lawsuit was the younger brother of a classmate. The brothers’ dad died suddenly in 1970, when my classmate and I were in seventh grade. Both brothers were slight; only the younger one played football. My classmate, Scott Smith, went to Cornell, made a fortune in finance, and is now Poly’s chairman of the board. His younger brother, Philip, never went to college and slid into multiple addictions. According to the lawsuit, he was sexually assaulted hundreds of times….

But there is little doubt that senior administrators were told about the abuse on multiple occasions. The lawsuit recounts specific meetings between boys, their parents, the headmaster and the athletic director. That athletic director, who went on to become dean of students and assistant headmaster, reportedly witnessed abuse in the showers and walked away. In 1991, the headmaster allegedly told one of the victims that Coach was a bitter, sick old man who should be left alone. Coach Phil was powerful, intimidating, successful, not to be trifled with. And so for a quarter-century, he freely abused vulnerable boys, virtually in plain sight….

Pedophilia remains endemic, a powerful, difficult-to-treat compulsion. Prosecutions are rare, and victims who come forward years later are often barred from court by inflexible rules. Statutes limiting lawsuits should be altered to recognize that these crimes emerge slowly. Every school should have an investigative protocol available to parents online. There should also be at least one experienced person in every institution to whom incidents can easily be reported on a confidential basis.

Sexual abuse of children presents itself in confusing, ambiguous ways, so pedophilia education should be a mandatory part of the curriculum, repeated in elementary, middle and high school, at age-appropriate levels of detail. Abused children need to understand that they have done nothing wrong, that it is safe to come forward….
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/13/opinion/sunday/at-poly-prep-a-pedophile-in-plain-sight.html

Gang of men ‘who groomed young girls for sex drove terrified victim, 14, to the woods at night and threatened to cut her head off’

Nine men groomed and abused vulnerable girls, court hears
Jury told they used ‘extreme physical and sexual violence’
Girls given so many drugs that they were ‘barely aware’, it’s claimed
One girl said she was forced to miscarry after home abortion
The abuse was alleged to have taken place over eight years

By Arthur Martin and Keith Gladdis

15 January 2013

Girls as young as 11 were groomed and raped by a child sex ring before being sold to abusers across Britain, a court heard yesterday.

Nine men, mostly of Asian heritage, befriended vulnerable girls with gifts of perfume, alcohol and drugs before subjecting them to a ‘living hell’ for eight years.

The six girls were subjected to ‘extreme physical and sexual violence’ while they were repeatedly raped by numerous abusers.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2262723/Gang-men-groomed-young-girls-sex-drove-terrified-victim-14-woods-night-threatened-cut-head-off.html

Sexual violence is not a cultural phenomenon in India – it is endemic everywhere

Sexual violence is not a cultural phenomenon in India – it is endemic everywhere
Cases are not discussed nearly enough for how prevalent the crimes are
Owen Jones
Sunday 30 December 2012

….Rape and sexual violence against women are endemic everywhere. Shocked by what happened in India? Take a look at France, that prosperous bastion of European civilisation. In 1999, two then-teenagers – named only as Nina and Stephanie – were raped almost every day for six months. Young men would queue up to rape them, patiently waiting for their friends to finish in secluded basements. After a three-week trial this year, 10 of the 14 accused left the courtroom as free men; the other four were granted lenient sentences of one year at most.

Shocked? Again, let us Brits not get all high and mighty, either. Amnesty International conducted a poll in the United Kingdom a few years ago. Only four per cent of respondents thought that the number of women raped each year exceeded 10,000. But according to the Government’s Action Plan on Violence Against Women and Girls, 80,000 women are raped a year, and 400,000 women are sexually assaulted. It is a pandemic of violence against women that – given its scale – is not discussed nearly enough….

http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/comment/sexual-violence-is-not-a-cultural-phenomenon-in-india–it-is-endemic-everywhere-8433445.html

Legacy of Native American Schools, Abuse as child linked to longer term homeless

Abuse as a child linked to longer term homeless

ADELE HORIN 19 Apr, 2012

TWO-THIRDS of people in a national study of homelessness suffered physical or sexual violence as children or had been neglected or emotionally abused. About one-third had been sexually assaulted. The study by the Melbourne Institute of Applied Economic and Social Research was commissioned by the federal government….

The research is based on interviews with 1682 people flagged by Centrelink and another group that had not been flagged as homeless but identified by the researchers as having characteristics that also made them highly vulnerable. It found those exposed to violence or abuse as children were much more likely to experience longer periods of homelessness over their lifetime. This was also true for people who had been in foster or residential care as children. ”It’s clear the experience of trauma as children affects the length of time they are homeless,” a researcher, Rosanna Scutella, said. Contrary to expectations, the study found homelessness was not usually a short, one-off experience. Rather most of the people in the study had long, if broken, histories of homelessness, and found it difficult to make a permanent escape. They cycled between homelessness, marginal housing and stable housing. http://www.bellingencourier.com.au/news/national/national/general/abuse-as-a-child-linked-to-longer-term-homeless/2526979.aspx

Soul Wound: The Legacy of Native American Schools

U.S. and Canadian authorities took Native children from their homes and tried to school, and sometimes beat, the Indian out them. Now Native Americans are fighting the theft of language, of culture, and of childhood itself.  By Andrea Smith March 26, 2007

….Dolphus is one of more than 100,000 Native Americans forced by the U.S. government to attend Christian schools. The system, which began with President Ulysses Grant’s 1869 “Peace Policy,” continued well into the 20th century. Church officials, missionaries, and local authorities took children as young as five from their parents and shipped them off to Christian boarding schools; they forced others to enroll in Christian day schools on reservations. Those sent to boarding school were separated from their families for most of the year, sometimes without a single family visit. Parents caught trying to hide their children lost food rations….

“Native America knows all too well the reality of the boarding schools,” writes Native American Bar Association President Richard Monette, who attended a North Dakota boarding school, “where recent generations learned the fine art of standing in line single-file for hours without moving a hair, as a lesson in discipline; where our best and brightest earned graduation certificates for homemaking and masonry; where the sharp rules of immaculate living were instilled through blistered hands and knees on the floor with scouring toothbrushes; where mouths were scrubbed with lye and chlorine solutions for uttering Native words.”….

The schools were part of Euro-America’s drive to solve the “Indian problem” and end Native control of their lands. While some colonizers advocated outright physical extermination, Captain Richard H. Pratt thought it wiser to “Kill the Indian and save the man.” In 1879 Pratt, an army veteran of the Indian wars, opened the first federally sanctioned boarding school: the Carlisle Industrial Training School, in Carlisle, Penn.

“Transfer the savage-born infant to the surroundings of civilization, and he will grow to possess a civilized language and habit,” said Pratt. He modeled Carlisle on a prison school he had developed for a group of 72 Indian prisoners of war at Florida’s Fort Marion prison. His philosophy was to “elevate” American Indians to white standards through a process of forced acculturation that stripped them of their language, culture, and customs.

Government officials found the Carlisle model an appealing alternative to the costly military campaigns against Indians in the West. Within three decades of Carlisle’s opening, nearly 500 schools extended all the way to California. The Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) controlled 25 off-reservation boarding schools while churches ran 460 boarding and day schools on reservations with government funds.

Both BIA and church schools ran on bare-bones budgets, and large numbers of students died from starvation and disease because of inadequate food and medical care. School officials routinely forced children to do arduous work to raise money for staff salaries and “leased out” students during the summers to farm or work as domestics for white families. In addition to bringing in income, the hard labor prepared children to take their place in white society — the only one open to them — on the bottom rung of the socioeconomic ladder….

Rampant sexual abuse at reservation schools continued until the end of the 1980s, in part because of pre-1990 loopholes in state and federal law mandating the reporting of allegations of child sexual abuse. In 1987 the FBI found evidence that John Boone, a teacher at the BIA-run Hopi day school in Arizona, had sexually abused as many as 142 boys from 1979 until his arrest in 1987. The principal failed to investigate a single abuse allegation. Boone, one of several BIA schoolteachers caught molesting children on reservations in the late 1980s, was convicted of child abuse, and he received a life sentence. Acting BIA chief William Ragsdale admitted that the agency had not been sufficiently responsive to allegations of sexual abuse, and he apologized to the Hopi tribe and others whose children BIA employees had abused….

Dolphus, now director of the South Dakota Coalition Against Sexual and Domestic Violence, sees boarding school policies as the central route through which sexual abuse became entrenched in Native communities, as many victims became molesters themselves. Hopi tribe members testified at a 1989 Senate hearing that some of Boone’s victims had become sex abusers; others had become suicidal or alcoholic….

A 2001 report by the Truth Commission into Genocide in Canada documents the responsibility of the Roman Catholic Church, the United Church of Canada, the Anglican Church of Canada, and the federal government in the deaths of more than 50,000 Native children in the Canadian residential school system.

The report says church officials killed children by beating, poisoning, electric shock, starvation, prolonged exposure to sub-zero cold while naked, and medical experimentation, including the removal of organs and radiation exposure. In 1928 Alberta passed legislation allowing school officials to forcibly sterilize Native girls; British Columbia followed suit in 1933. There is no accurate toll of forced sterilizations because hospital staff destroyed records in 1995 after police launched an investigation. But according to the testimony of a nurse in Alberta, doctors sterilized entire groups of Native children when they reached puberty. The report also says that Canadian clergy, police, and business and government officials “rented out” children from residential schools to pedophile rings….

While some Canadian churches have launched reconciliation programs, U.S. churches have been largely silent. Natives of this country have also been less aggressive in pursuing lawsuits. Attorney Tonya Gonnella-Frichner (Onondaga) says that the combination of statutes of limitations, lack of documentation, and the conservative makeup of the current U.S. Supreme Court make lawsuits a difficult and risky strategy.

Nonetheless, six members of the Sioux Nation who say they were physically and sexually abused in government-run boarding schools filed a class-action lawsuit this April against the United States for $25 billion on behalf of hundreds of thousands of mistreated Native Americans. Sherwyn Zephier was a student at a school run from 1948 to 1975 by St. Paul’s Catholic Church in Marty, S.D.: “I was tortured in the middle of the night. They would whip us with boards and sometimes with straps,” he recalled in Los Angeles at an April press conference to launch the suit. http://www.amnestyusa.org/node/87342

CDC : 10.5 percent of all high school-age girls have been sexually assaulted

Indiana Tops Nation For Sex Assaults Of High School-Age Girls April 9, 2012  BLOOMINGTON, Ind. (CBS)

In Indiana, girls have a higher chance of becoming the victim of sexual assault than almost any other place in the country.

As WBBM Newsradio’s Michele Fiore reports, 10.5 percent of all American high school-age girls have been forced into sexual intercourse, according to a report by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention….

The Herald-Times also pointed out that researching the issue is a challenge, given that up to 50 percent of sexual assaults against women are never reported, and Indiana is one of three states – along with Mississippi and New Mexico – where law enforcement is not required to report sexual violence to the FBI.

Researchers also emphasized that 80 percent or more of rape and sexual assault involves people who know each other, not strangers, the newspaper reported. http://chicago.cbslocal.com/2012/04/09/indiana-tops-nation-for-sex-assaults-of-high-school-age-girls/

Rape Statistics: Over 17 Percent Of High School-Age Girls In Indiana Experience Sexual Assault The Huffington Post   By Carolyn Gregoire 04/9/2012

According to recent national research conducted by the U.S. Centers of Disease Control and Prevention, 10.5 percent of all high school-age girls have been sexually assaulted. And in the state of Indiana, those numbers are considerable higher than nearly anywhere else in the country. 17.3 percent of girls in grades nine through 12 in the state have reported experiencing rape or sexual assault.

But these statistics may not even reflect the true scope of the issue. CBS Chicago noted that because 50 percent of sexual assaults against women are unreported, it’s difficult to estimate the actual number of instances. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/04/09/indiana-sexual-assault-17_n_1412507.html

National Sexual Assault Awareness and Prevention Month, Susan Powell’s Parents: Josh Powell’s Dad Knows What Happened To Missing Daughter

“Rape and sexual assault inflict profound suffering upon millions of Americans every year.  Nearly one in five women has been raped, and still more have endured other forms of sexual violence or abuse.”

Susan Powell’s Parents: Josh Powell’s Dad Knows What Happened To Missing Daughter 4/4/2012

….Josh Powell, the primary “person of interest” in the missing person case, killed himself and his two sons by setting fire to his home earlier this year. Despite evidence suggesting Josh played a role in Susan’s disappearance, he was never arrested by authorities in West Valley City, Utah. As a result, Susan Powell’s family believe the authorities are at least partially responsible for the death of her two sons, Braden, 5, and Charles, 7….

Court documents unsealed on Friday revealed that Susan Powell left a letter in a safety deposit box saying she did not trust her husband and that if she were to die, “it may not be an accident, even if it looks like one,” the Associated Press reported.

Authorities also found Susan Powell’s blood on a floor next to a sofa, which appeared to have been recently cleaned and had two fans set up to dry it.

Josh Powell, who is described in the documents as “unwilling to help” the investigation, said he took his two sons on a late-night camping trip the night Susan Powell disappeared. Investigators found Susan’s cell phone in her husband’s car, which he “did not have an answer” to explain, the Associated Press reported.

Susan’s purse, keys and credit cards were among some of the other belongings found in the couple’s bedroom. The documents also show that Susan Powell had several life insurance policies, totaling $1.5 million in value. “There is direct evidence. There is circumstantial evidence. There is motive,” Pierce County prosecutor Mark Lindquist told ABC News. “There is everything but the body.”

The court documents also detail an apparent obsession Steven Powell had with his daughter-in-law. In a cabinet belonging to Steven Powell, authorities found several images of Susan, some of which showed her in her underwear, while others featured her face copied onto other women’s naked bodies. Another image depicted Steven Powell masturbating to an image of his daughter-in-law. According to Susan Powell’s personal journals, she did not want anything to do with Steven Powell, whom she described as a pedophile.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/04/04/susan-powell-josh-powell-charles-judy-cox-steven-utah_n_1403293.html

Presidential Proclamation — National Sexual Assault Awareness and Prevention Month, 2012

BY THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

A PROCLAMATION

Though we have come far in the fight to reduce sexual violence, the prevalence of sexual assault remains an affront to our national conscience that we cannot ignore.  This month, we stand with survivors of sexual assault, join together to break the silence, and recommit to ending this devastating crime.

Rape and sexual assault inflict profound suffering upon millions of Americans every year.  Nearly one in five women has been raped, and still more have endured other forms of sexual violence or abuse.  Tragically, these crimes take their greatest toll on young people; women between the ages of 16 and 24 are at greatest risk of rape and sexual assault, and many victims, male and female, first experience abuse during childhood.  The trauma of sexual violence leaves scars that may never fully heal.  Many survivors experience depression, fear, and suicidal feelings in the months and years following an assault, and some face health problems that last a lifetime.

It is up to all of us to ensure victims of sexual violence are not left to face these trials alone.  Too often, survivors suffer in silence, fearing retribution, lack of support, or that the criminal justice system will fail to bring the perpetrator to justice.  We must do more to raise awareness about the realities of sexual assault; confront and change insensitive attitudes wherever they persist; enhance training and education in the criminal justice system; and expand access to critical health, legal, and protection services for survivors.  As we fight sexual assault in our communities, so must we combat this crime within our Armed Forces.
http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2012/04/02/presidential-proclamation-national-sexual-assault-awareness-and-preventi