Elmo actor faces sex abuse claim from fourth accuser, Abuses at infamous Florida boys reform school even more widespread, report says, Merzbacher victim: Archdiocese has much to answer for

Elmo actor faces sex abuse claim from fourth accuser
By Courtney Hazlett, TODAY  12/10/12

A fourth man is accusing Kevin Clash, the puppeteer and actor who for many years portrayed “Sesame Street” character Elmo, of sexual abuse.

In a lawsuit filed Monday in Miami, the accuser — using the name John Doe — claims that Clash befriended him in late 1995 or early 1996, when Doe was 16 or 17. In 1996, he says, Clash flew him from Miami to New York at Clash’s expense. It was during Doe’s stay in New York that the abuse allegedly happened.

In a statement, the victim’s attorney Jeff Herman said, “According to our lawsuit, Kevin Clash knowingly paid to transport a minor across state lines for the purpose of satisfying his sexual interests.”

Herman also represents two other men who’ve accused Clash of sexual abuse: second accuser Cecil Singleton and the third accuser, who is also using the name John Doe.
http://todayentertainment.today.com/_news/2012/12/10/15819226-elmo-actor-faces-sex-abuse-claim-from-fourth-accuser

Abuses at infamous Florida boys reform school even more widespread, report says
By M. Alex Johnson, NBC News 12/10/12

Scientists have found 19 previously unknown grave shafts on the grounds of a notorious Florida reform school, suggesting that many more boys died there amid brutal conditions than had previously been known, the researchers said Monday.

The Arthur G. Dozier School for Boys in Marianna, which was also known as the Florida State Reform School, closed in June 2011 after state investigators and the U.S. Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division confirmed widespread abuse over many decades.

The state attributed its decision to close the school to budgetary reasons. Yet long before then, the institution had been the target of investigations and lawsuits alleging not only physical and mental abuse but also forced labor, rape and even murder of the young charges sent to its care since it opened in 1900.

The prominent writer Roger Dean Kiser, author of “The White House Boys — An American Tragedy,” about the horrors he experienced while incarcerated there in the 1950s as a child, has called the school a “concentration camp for little boys.”….

They’re called the White House Boys because much of the abuse occurred in an 11-room building on the school grounds known as the White House, where former students say they were beaten with leather straps. A group of the former students sued the state in 2010, but the case was dismissed because the statute of limitations had expired….

http://usnews.nbcnews.com/_news/2012/12/10/15823192-abuses-at-infamous-florida-boys-reform-school-even-more-widespread-report-says

Documentation of the Boot Hill Cemetary (8JA1860), at the former Arthur G. Dozier School for Boys, Marianna, Florida
http://goo.gl/KYqJo http://msnbcmedia.msn.com/i/MSNBC/Sections/NEWS/AJDocs/20121210_DozierSchoolReport.pdf

Merzbacher victim: Archdiocese has much to answer for

December 6, 2012

Regarding Baltimore Archdiocese Vice-Chancellor Sean Caine’s recent letter justifying the church’s response to allegations of child sexual abuse, I am glad that in 1993 Maryland’s attorney general made it clear that all abuse cases should be reported (“Archdiocese acted responsibly,” Dec. 2). So much for the Catholic Church being a moral leader.

When I returned to the archdiocese in 1993 to again report the abuse I had suffered, it was through Fr. William Mannion. At that point I had been in touch with 17 other victims of John Merzbacher.

I was never contacted directly by the diocese. Instead I was sent a message from the diocese through Fr. Mannion: “The diocese is going to contact the police and give them your name only.” Eventually I and the other victims reached out to an attorney, who contacted the Baltimore City police. They reported the crimes to the state’s attorney’s office.

The archdiocese knew full well of my fear of contacting the police on my own after the death threats I had received at gunpoint from Mr. Merzbacher. Nor did the diocese contact any other former Catholic Community Middle School students during this time.

For seven years after the trial of Mr. Merzbacher I wrote repeatedly to Cardinal William Keeler and the superintendent of Catholic Schools asking that Eileen Weisman be removed from her position as principal of the Cathedral School. It was only after I contacted the head of the lay board that action was finally taken to remove Ms. Weisman from her position. It wasn’t until seven years after the Merzbacher trial that she was forced to resign, and not only did the diocese allow her to retire but stood by while the parents at the school collected money to dedicate a playground in her name….
http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/opinion/readersrespond/bs-ed-abuse-archdiocese-20121206,0,7429725.story

Philadelphia Priest Trial Painful, Poignant For Catholics

Philadelphia Priest Trial Painful, Poignant For Catholics
By MARYCLAIRE DALE 04/21/12

PHILADELPHIA — Graphic testimony in a Philadelphia clergy-abuse trial this month has ripped open secret church files and reopened old wounds among Catholics as scarred men and women tell jurors that priests groped, molested or raped them as teens.

The testimony has proven both painful and poignant, especially that of a 48-year-old man who said he had been in love with his parish priest during a five-year sexual relationship that began in ninth grade – and jealous when the priest allegedly bedded down at his farmhouse with other teens.

The stories have been told before, in two Philadelphia grand jury reports and in lawsuits filed around the country.

But Monsignor William Lynn’s decision to go to trial on child-endangerment charges stemming from his 12 years as secretary for clergy has brought the grand jury reports to life – and seemingly put the archdiocese on trial. The judge is allowing testimony about more than 20 accused but uncharged priests, because Lynn knew of complaints lodged against them or took part in internal church investigations.

The accused priests were left in ministry, often transferred to unsuspecting parishes.

Nearly a dozen alleged victims have testified, while internal church memos and Lynn’s 2002 grand jury testimony have been read aloud. And jurors will soon hear from a former altar boy who says he was raped by two priests and his fifth-grade teacher….

Lynn is the first U.S. church official charged with helping the church cover up complaints of child sexual abuse. He faces up to 28 years in prison if convicted….

Lynn, 61, is on trial with the Rev. James Brennan, 48, who is charged with sexually assaulting a teen in 1996. Each has pleaded not guilty. Defrocked priest Edward Avery, 69, pleaded guilty to sexual assault charges days before trial, and is serving a 2-1/2 to 5-year prison term.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/04/21/pa-priest-trial-painful-p_n_1443041.html

Trial: Priest joked about abusing 3 boys in week

Trial: Priest joked about abusing 3 boys in week
By MARYCLAIRE DALE 4/3/12

PHILADELPHIA (AP) – Jurors in a landmark priest-abuse trial heard Monday about a priest-turned-camp prowler and another who allegedly bragged about having sex with three boys in one week….

Monsignor William Lynn is on trial for child endangerment and conspiracy. Lynn, 61, is the first Roman Catholic church official in the U.S. charged for his handling of priest-abuse complaints. Prosecutors say he helped the church bury them in secret files, far from the prying eyes of investigators, civil attorneys and concerned Catholics.

In the day’s most startling testimony, a detective read internal church memos about a priest who allegedly “joked about how hard it was to have sex with three boys in one week.” His accuser also stated that the priest had a “rotation process” of boys spending time sleeping with him.

Defense lawyers argue that Lynn tried to address the problem as secretary for clergy from 1992 to 2004, but was blocked by the late Cardinal Anthony Bevilacqua and others in the Philadelphia archdiocese.

The testimony Monday also included a 1992 complaint about a different priest who allegedly molested boys at a church-owned camp three decades earlier.

Several junior counselors complained in the early 1960s that the priest was on the prowl at night, molesting them in their tents. They said it was a well-known secret among teen counselors for several years.

The priest remained in ministry, working at three archdiocesan high schools and serving as assistant superintendent of Catholic schools through 2004. Confronted after a man complained to the archdiocese in 1992, the priest admitted to the “sin” of masturbation and said he had read up on that subject because so many people were mentioning it in the confessional….

His 28-year-old son, Arthur Jr., died of a drug overdose in 2006, after his civil lawsuit against the church accusing his high school principal of molesting him was thrown out because of legal time limits. The former principal, a Franciscan friar, is in prison for stealing nearly $900,000 from the school and the Franciscans, some of which fed the younger Baselice’s drug addiction, according to prosecutors.

Prosecutors are detailing allegations made against nearly two dozen priests since 1948 to show that Lynn and other archdiocesan officials kept suspected predators in jobs around children.

On cross-examination Monday, defense lawyers Jeffrey Lindy and Thomas Bergstrom had detectives concede that Lynn promptly interviewed both complainants and accused priests, and sent the priests to a church-run hospital for mental health evaluations and treatment….

He remained there until 2004, when a church panel reviewing complaints in the wake of the national priest-abuse scandal found the allegations against him credible. The priest only then admitted molesting three boys, and explained earlier denials on the fact he had confessed and moved past it.

The archdiocese restricted his ministry — 40 years after the camp allegations first surfaced.
http://news.yahoo.com/trial-priest-joked-abusing-3-boys-week-205857367.html

recovered memories of alleged priest sex abuse, Orthodox Jewish Child Abuse

Orthodox Jewish Child Abuse: Shattering a Traumatic Silence 8/1/11 Eishes Chayil – Author, ‘Hush’

….Three weeks ago, in Borough Park, 8-year-old Leiby Kletzky walked home from day camp. He got lost. He asked a man for directions. The man seemed safe. He wore a kippa. He did not wear jeans….

The ultra-Orthodox world of Brooklyn came to a terrifying halt. Tens of thousands of Orthodox Jews froze in horror. They recoiled in shock. They gathered together, bound in their mind-bending grief, people weeping in the streets, asking the questions again and again.

….For the hundreds of victims of sexual abuse who have lived through childhood in fear and silence, this is not a new question. They did not know the words sexual, abuse or molestation, but lived day after day through the raw horror of it, leaving old scars still bleeding like open wounds. How does a teacher, a counselor, an uncle, do such a thing? And why did nobody warn us about it, they ask.

I accidentally learned what the words molestation and rape meant at age 23, after telling a therapist I met about something I had witnessed happening to a friend when we were children. Suddenly I realized I had been talking to strangers all my life. After I started meeting with victims and speaking with therapists, I began to encounter the community’s wall of denial. These are things Jews don’t do, I was told. It was easy to say it was all a lie or just faulty memories of childhood.

When I first tried to write about abuse in our community, to use the words needed to describe what was happening to so many children, I was firmly told not to.

Some subjects are better left in silence, the rabbis said. Orthodox Jews did not need such words. Those were words for gentiles. We had built walls and had built them high; the outside world could never enter. But as the walls grew higher and wider, we forgot look inside, to see that the most dangerous enemy always grows from within.

….Children have always gotten hurt in our world — sometimes quickly, walking home from school, sometimes slowly, piece by piece, over years of abuse and terror. Perhaps we live in a world that is black and white, perhaps we want to keep it that way, but we must at least know that there is still a whole lot of gray in it, strangers live among friends and that such words, after all, are very complicated to define.
http://goo.gl/yTEUR

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/eishes-chayil/orthodox-jewish-child-abuse_b_915557.html

2 women sue archdiocese for alleged sex abuse
Separate suits claim recovered memories of 1950s incidents
By Manya A. Brachear, Tribune reporter
August 3, 2011

Two women filed separate lawsuits against the Chicago Archdiocese on Tuesday, alleging they were sexually abused in the 1950s by a priest at St. Peter Damian Catholic Church in Bartlett.
In the suit filed in Cook County Circuit Court, Patricia Vestey and Kathryn Joan Ebeling, both in their 60s, say they repressed memories of abuse at the hands of the Rev. Thomas Barry Horne for several decades. It wasn’t until they learned that others had accused Horne of abuse that their recollections began to surface, the suit said. Horne retired in 1973 and has since died.

Frederic Nessler, the Springfield attorney representing both women, said the archdiocese refused to settle out of court.
http://goo.gl/U8e9D

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/local/ct-met-repressed-catholic-memories-20110803,0,990086.story

Priest Sex-Abuse Case Hits Church of Pope’s Adviser

Priest Sex-Abuse Case Hits Church of Pope’s Adviser
By Alessandra Pieracci and Giacomo Galeazzi / La Stampa / Worldcrunch Thursday, May 19, 2011 (GENOA)

The latest sex-abuse case to rock the Catholic Church is unfolding in the archdiocese of an influential Italian Cardinal who has been working with Pope Benedict XVI on reforms to respond to prior scandals of pedophile priests.
Father Riccardo Seppia, a 51-year-old parish priest in the village of Sastri Ponente, near Genoa, was arrested last Friday, May 13, on pedophilia and drug charges.

Investigators say that in tapped mobile-phone conversations, Seppia asked a Moroccan drug dealer to arrange sexual encounters with young and vulnerable boys. “I do not want 16-year-old boys but younger. Fourteen-year-olds are O.K. Look for needy boys who have family issues,” he allegedly said. Genoa Archbishop Angelo Bagnasco, who is the head of the Italian Bishops Conference, had been working with Benedict to establish a tough new worldwide policy, released this week, on how bishops should handle accusations of priestly sex abuse….

According to investigators, Seppia told a friend — a former seminarian and barman who is currently under investigation — that the town’s malls were the best places to entice minors. In tapped phone conversations the two cursed and swore against God. The priest is charged with having attempted to kiss and touch an underage altar boy and of having exchanged cocaine for sexual intercourse with boys over 18.

Seppia’s defense lawyers are expected to argue that those conversations — monitored since Oct. 20, 2010 — were just words, sex games that were played by adults. It was just a game even when he claimed to have “kissed on the mouth” a 15-year-old altar boy, according to the defense.
http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,2072613,00.html

Archdiocese removes Monsignor Lynn

Archdiocese removes Monsignor Lynn By JULIE SHAW Philadelphia Daily News Feb. 20. 2011

The Archdiocese of Philadelphia announced today that Monsignor William Lynn – who was recently charged with child-endangerment offenses on allegations he covered up sexual abuse by other priests – was placed on administrative leave effective Friday.

Temporarily taking his place at St. Joseph Parish in Downingtown, Chester County, will be Monsignor Joseph McLoone, the pastor of St. Katharine Drexel Parish in Chester, Delaware County….

The Philadelphia District Attorney’s Office on Feb. 10 released a scathing grand-jury report accusing Lynn of endangering children by shielding pedophile priests from detection and shuffling them into unsuspecting parishes. Prosecutors charged Lynn, 60, with two counts of child endangerment.

The grand jury, in its blistering report, also accused two priests, one former priest and a lay teacher of rape and related charges in connection with sexual offenses on two boys between 1996 and 2000. Charles Engelhardt, 64, and Edward Avery, 68, both priests; former priest James Brennan, 47; teacher Bernard Shero, 48; and Lynn were arrested the day the grand-jury report was released.

The arrests are believed to be the first time nationally that a high-ranking church official – Lynn – has been charged on allegations that he concealed priest sex-abuse.
The five accused men, who have posted bail, are scheduled for a preliminary hearing March 3 in Family Court. http://www.philly.com/philly/news/116568633.html

Philadelphia Grand Jury Report on Clergy Sexual Abuse

“By the Archdiocese’s own account, at least 37 priests remain in ministry despite reports that they have engaged in improper behavior with minors.”

IN THE COURT OF COMMON PLEAS – FIRST JUDICIAL DISTRICT OF PENNSYLVANIA – CRIMINAL TRIAL DIVISION – IN RE: : MISC. NO. 0009901-2008 COUNTY INVESTIGATING : GRAND JURY XXIII : C-14
REPORT OF THE GRAND JURY – R. SETH WILLIAMS District Attorney of Philadelphia
REPORT TO THE HONORABLE RENÉE CALDWELL HUGHES, SUPERVISING JUDGE:

We, the Twenty-Third County Investigating Jury, were impaneled pursuant to the Investigating Grand Jury Act, 42 Pa.C.S. § 4541, et seq., and were charged to investigate the sexual abuse of minors by Archdiocesan clergy and employees. Having obtained knowledge of such matters from physical evidence presented and witnesses sworn by the Court and testifying before us, upon our respective oaths, not fewer than twelve of us concurring, we hereby submit this report to the Court.

Overview
In September 2003, a grand jury of local citizens released a report detailing a sad history of sexual abuse by priests of the Archdiocese of Philadelphia.

That abuse was known, tolerated, and hidden by high church officials, up to and including the Cardinal himself. The previous grand jury was frustrated that it could not charge either the abusers or their protectors in the church, because the successful cover-up of the abuse resulted in the expiration of the statute of limitations. Now, measures taken in response to the previous report have led to new information about more recent abuse, which this grand jury was empaneled to investigate. The fact that we received that information, and from the church itself, is some sign of progress; and this time there will be charges. The present grand jury, however, is frustrated to report that much has not changed.

The rapist priests we accuse were well known to the Secretary of Clergy, but he cloaked their conduct and put them in place to do it again. The procedures implemented by the Archdiocese to help victims are in fact designed to help the abusers, and the Archdiocese itself.

Worst of all, apparent abusers – dozens of them, we believe – remain on duty in the Archdiocese, today, with open access to new young prey….

We implore Cardinal Rigali and his staff to review all of the old allegations against currently active priests, and to remove from ministry all of the priests with credible allegations against them. By the Archdiocese’s own account, at least 37 priests remain in ministry despite reports that they have engaged in improper behavior with minors. That should not be acceptable to anyone.

http://www.bishop-accountability.org/reports/2011_01_21_Philadelphia_Grand_Jury_Final_Report_Clergy_Abuse_2.pdf

 

Deposition paints an unflattering portrait of Mahony

Shanley clergy abuse recovered memory case

Deposition paints an unflattering portrait of Mahony – Exchanges between attorney and cardinal about priest convicted of molestation reveal a failure to take responsibility. By Steve Lopez June 20, 2010…

The deposition involved former priest Michael Baker, who is now serving a 10-year sentence for molestation. After he confessed to Mahony in 1986 that he had molested two boys, Mahony sent him to one of the drive-through “treatment” centers used by the church back then. After that, the archdiocese shuffled Baker around to different parishes — some with elementary schools. Despite reports that Baker continued to have contact with minors in violation of church orders, the archdiocese did nothing to stop the priest, who went on to molest other kids. http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-lopezcolumn-20100620-column,0,4523336.column