William Sargant patient experiments, Wisc. Church Members Charged With Abuse. Leslie Kenton

articles:
My electric shock nightmare at the hands of the CIA’s evil doctor
Wisconsin Church Members Charged With Abusing Infants
‘My father’s relationship with me ultimately destroyed him’: Writer Leslie Kenton reveals the secret incest she endured

My electric shock nightmare at the hands of the CIA’s evil doctor By Celia Imrie 2nd April 2011

…. Trembling, I slid the already opened letter from its envelope and read the fatal words: ‘Celia is very good and advanced for her age, but sadly she is going to be too big ever to become a dancer.’ ….Over 18 months I lost an astonishing amount of weight. It was noticed first at six months by our nanny, known as Pop, when we had to try on summer clothes for our annual family holiday near Bognor Regis, West Sussex. After that I realised I was being watched at mealtimes.  I would look at myself in the mirror and, even though I was something near a skeleton, I didn’t think I had gone far enough. In despair and I am sure with some embarrassment – my father being an eminent doctor – my parents brought in a child psychologist.  I was 5ft 2in and weighed 4st. What was the problem? Why couldn’t they make me eat?

….I was sent for a brief spell in the local hospital, where, bewildered by a condition they had not seen before, staff simply offered me three meals a day, which I politely refused.  After a few weeks, I was released to spend Christmas with my family. I was happy to come home, but, far from being cured, I now knew that in future I must find even better ways of avoiding eating. I became sly. I worked out every way to dispose of food. I was so successful at it that soon I was little more than a carcass with skin.

Desperate now, my parents decided to send me away to St Thomas’ Hospital in London, to enter one of the special wards belonging to the Department of Psychological Medicine. And once there I was placed under the care of world-famous psychiatrist William Sargant. I was 14.

Now, more than 20 years after his death, Sargant is notorious for his work for MI5 and the CIA, particularly its covert MK-ULTRA mind control programme. Even then, Sargant was a world expert on brainwashing. Today his books are said to be studied by Al Qaeda. His work has links to the mysterious death of CIA biochemist Frank Olson after being given LSD; the Jonestown massacre in Guyana, where 900 people killed themselves; and to the mind-bending and occasionally lethal drug experiments performed on unwitting human guinea pigs at the Porton Down research centre in Wiltshire.

Sargant’s methods were simple: electric-shock treatment and insulin-induced comas leading to continuous narcosis, or deep-sleep therapy, complete with tape recorded ‘brainwashing’ orders being played at the patients from beneath their pillows. And to think that all this came free on the NHS!….After Sargant left the ward, the nurses would start preparing the horrors he had prescribed for the day  -  the electro-convulsive therapy….I remember also the famous Narcosis Room, a ward where patients were forced into a drug-induced sleep for days while tapes played instructions to them from under the pillow….

I do recall being given massive doses, three tumblers a day, of Largactil, an anti-psychotic drug. The effect of this drug was startling. My hands shook uncontrollably for most of the day and I’d wake up to find clumps of my hair on the pillow. But the worst consequence was that everything I saw was multiplied by four. When Sargant came into the room, I saw four of him. It was horrific and terrifying. Even simple tasks such as picking up a glass of water became impossible. The drugs had turned me into a victim….The Happy Hoofer, by Celia Imrie, is published by Hodder & Stoughton      http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-1372700/My-electric-shock-nightmare-hands-CIAs-evil-doctor.html

Wisconsin Church Members Charged With Abusing Infants Mar 26, 2011  by Lisa Holewa The pastor and seven members of a small church in central Wisconsin have been charged with using wooden rods to spank infants as young as 2 months old for “being emotional, grumpy or crying,” the Dane County Sheriff’s office said….

The investigation into the Aleitheia Bible Church began last November, when former members contacted authorities with concerns about how children were being treated, according to the sheriff’s office. Six church members pleaded innocent to charges of child abuse during an appearance Thursday in Dane County Circuit Court. They were booked and released….The victims included 12 children ranging in age from infancy to 6 years old, according to the sheriff’s office.

“During interviews with detectives, Phil expressed his belief that the Bible dictates the use of a rod over a hand to punish children. He stated that children only a few months old are ‘worthy’ of the rod and that by ‘one and a half months,’ a child is old enough to be spanked,” according to the sheriff’s office release….The children often were punished when they cried or failed to sit still during church services, a former church member told authorities. “Phil was very strict about children being quiet during church,” the complaint states

….John Caminiti told investigators in November that he does not allow his family to communicate with people outside his religious beliefs and has punished his wife and son by confining them to their rooms until they corrected their disobedience, according to the Wisconsin State Journal. http://www.aolnews.com/2011/03/26/members-of-aleitheia-bible-church-in-wisconsin-charged-with-abus/

Black Earth pastor, brother charged with child abuse for spanking kids with dowels, rods By DEVIN ROSE  The head pastor of a Black Earth church and his brother have been charged with a total of 12 counts of child abuse, according to a criminal complaint filed Friday in Dane County Circuit Court. http://host.madison.com/wsj/news/local/crime_and_courts/article_dcf65a46-51d5-11e0-8db1-001cc4c03286.html

‘My father’s relationship with me ultimately destroyed him’: Writer Leslie Kenton reveals the secret incest she endured By Louette Harding  31st January 2010

In her new memoir, beauty guru Leslie Kenton reveals for the first time that she was raped aged 11 by her own father, and describes the secret incest that lasted until she was 13….‘I was not enamoured of the world I grew up in,’ she told an interviewer in 1993 when asked about her father, the American jazz band leader Stan Kenton, and her mother Violet. ‘I felt alienated.’ Two years later, she revealed a childhood suicide attempt. Now we learn in Love Affair the full extent of the horrors and the secret incest at its heart….

During the summer of 1952, she met him on tour, sharing his hotel room, sleeping back to back. He was drinking heavily while she, though aged only ten, was trying to police him, this six-foot four-inch man. He was, in many ways, treating her as a substitute for Violet. One night the final boundary was crossed and he raped his daughter. It was the beginning of an incestuous relationship that lasted until she was 13.

During visits, the days were as sunny as ever. They shared a unique exhilaration when together. Some nights he left her alone. ‘I believe he tried his best to resist touching me. Then, drowning in a sea of alcohol, he would come to my bed, only to deny the next morning that he’d been there.’ This was not cynical. Stanley had become so skilled in keeping secrets he could hide his guiltiest one even from himself. ‘He was born into guilt. As a child he was taught by his mother, “There’s something wrong with you, Stanley.”’ From talking to relatives, Leslie has learnt of a highly dysfunctional family with a history of manipulation, neglect and bizarre cult-like rituals.

‘I do not know how to express the damage that a family like this does. This is a disease that’s passed on. Some people survive it and others are deeply damaged.’ Leslie thinks Stanley experienced a condition known as dissociative identity disorder, involving selective amnesia, which she also developed as she blocked out the incest.

Her body, though, provided mute testimony. She suffered intense fevers and pains. ‘I believe my body was processing a lot of trauma and getting it out. I had the same recurring dream where I was being chased across rooftops and I was terrified, and I looked behind only to see myself come up over the side of the building.’ She ripped the flesh from the soles of her feet, tore at one of her nails. ‘There was no way I could stop doing that.’….

Despite the disassociation, he was [unconsciously] terrified of someone finding out,’ Leslie reasons. He raged and screamed at his daughter. ‘One night he shook me to the point where it didn’t matter to me if he killed me. Something broke in me and my relationship with him broke.  Love Affair: The Memoir of a Forbidden
Father-Daughter Relationship by Leslie Kenton – Vermilion
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/home/you/article-1246717/Leslie-Kenton-reveals-incestuous-relationship-father.html

clergy abuse – Unrepentant – Disrobing the Emperor – Kevin Annett

Unrepentant – Disrobing the Emperor – Kevin Annett
January 2011

In 1992, Kevin Annett was an ordained minister with the United Church of Canada in Port Alberni on British Columbia’s Vancouver Island, a logging town half populated with native Indians. He discovered a history of abuse….among the native children in the church’s residential school….He later discovered that such was the case in more than 140 schools run by the major churches with the complicity of the Canadian government. Refusing to remain silent, Kevin Annett was defrocked by his church and lost his family and livelihood. For 15 years,  he has conducted a one man campaign for justice for the survivors of this crime, and for the bringing to trial of those responsible.
http://www.hiddenfromhistory.org/RecentUpdatesampArticles/Oct272010BookReleaseDisrobingtheEmperor/tabid/142/Default.aspx

Feature length documentary film: “UNREPENTANT: Kevin Annett and Canada’s Genocide”  (January 2007). View the Promotional Trailer (2:36, 7 MB)
http://www.hiddenfromhistory.org/Home/tabid/36/Default.aspx

For 15 years (Kevin Annett) has conducted a one man campaign for justice and the revision of colonial laws for a race of subjugated people. ISBN: 978-1-84694-405-5 28 Jan 2011
http://www.o-books.com/book/detail/1122/Unrepentant

San Diego clergy abuse allegations, How Good People Turn Evil, Facebook

has :

Documents from the San Diego Settlement
Unsealed Calif. church docs show abuse allegations
Facebook’s Child Pornography Problem
Understanding How Good People Turn Evil – Zimbardo

Documents from the San Diego Settlement
On October 22, 2010, Judge William C. Pate ordered the release of documents relating to the sexual abuse of children by priests in the Diocese of San Diego. This document release was a nonmonetary provision of the San Diego settlement, as ordered on August 29, 2008 by Judge Emilie Elias, of the Los Angeles Superior Court.

On this page, we present all the documents released by Judge Pate’s order, and during this week, we will post the crucial documents individually for easier download. Some of these documents are also available from the website of the Zalkin Law Firm, which was our source for many of the files. The text of Judge Pate’s order and the files for ten of the priests were provided by attorney Anthony DeMarco.
http://www.bishop-accountability.org/docs/san_diego/

Unsealed Calif. church docs show abuse allegations
Sunday, October 24, 2010 AP Online By GILLIAN FLACCUS
SAN DIEGO – Attorneys for nearly 150 people who claim sexual abuse by Roman Catholic priests made nearly 10,000 pages of previously sealed internal church documents public Sunday, revealing at least one previously unknown decades-old case in which a priest under police investigation was allowed to leave the U.S. after the Diocese of San Diego intervened. After a three-year legal battle over the Diocese of San Diego’s internal records, a retired San Diego Superior Court judge ruled late Friday that they could be made public. The records are from the personnel files of 48 priests who were either credibly accused or convicted of sexual abuse or were named in a civil lawsuit.

The 144 plaintiffs settled with the diocese in 2007 for nearly $200 million, but the agreement stipulated that an independent judge would review the priests’ sealed personnel records and determine what could be made public.
The files show what the diocese knew about abusive priests, starting decades before any allegations became public, and that some church leaders shuffled priests from parish to parish or overseas despite credible complaints against them.

“We encourage all Catholics, all members of the community, to look for these documents,” attorney Anthony DeMarco said at a news conference. “These documents demonstrate years and years and decades of concerted action that has allowed this community’s children to be victimized, and it is not until the community looks at these documents that this cycle is ever going to be ended.”
http://newsystocks.com/news/3763283
Welcome to LuciferEffect.org, official web site of The Lucifer Effect: Understanding How Good People Turn Evil (Random House, 2007). In this book, I summarize more than 30 years of research on factors that can create a “perfect storm” which leads good people to engage in evil actions. This transformation of human character is what I call the “Lucifer Effect,” named after God’s favorite angel, Lucifer, who fell from grace and ultimately became Satan.

Rather than providing a religious analysis, however, I offer a psychological account of how ordinary people sometimes turn evil and commit unspeakable acts. As part of this account, The Lucifer Effect tells, for the first time, the full story behind the Stanford Prison Experiment, a now-classic study I conducted in 1971. In that study, normal college students were randomly assigned to play the role of guard or inmate for two weeks in a simulated prison, yet the guards quickly became so brutal that the experiment had to be shut down after only six days. – Philip Zimbardo
Professor Emeritus    Stanford University http://www.lucifereffect.com/

Facebook’s Child Pornography Problem By James R. Marsh  October 24, 2010 An ongoing FoxNews.com investigation has revealed that Facebook is failing to prevent child predators from posting suggestive and potentially illegal photographs of children on its website. The world’s largest social network employs content filters that automatically scan for basic keywords commonly associated with child exploitive material. Those filters, if they are properly employed, should flag much of the offensive material found on the site, cybersecurity experts say. But in a lengthy telephone interview on Oct. 6, FoxNews.com took two Facebook executives on a click-by-click tour of their own website, bringing them face-to-face with some of its vile contents and forcing them to admit that their efforts to block child predators were not working.

During a 90-minute phone interview with Facebook spokesman Simon Axten and the company’s chief security officer, Joe Sullivan, the two executives were guided by FoxNews.com through the site’s seamy subculture – an encounter that left Sullivan sounding dumbfounded, unaware of and unable to explain the extremely graphic content on the site. http://www.childlaw.us/2010/10/facebooks-child-pornography-pr.html

Paedophile priests still play active church role – England and Wales

Shanley clergy abuse recovered memory case
http://ritualabuse.us/research/memory-fms/shanley-recovered-memory-case/

- Channel 4 News report finds many of the Catholic clergy jailed in England and Wales remain in the priesthood – Riazat Butt The Guardian, 15 September 2010  More than half of the Catholic clergy jailed for paedophile activity in England and Wales remain in the priesthood – with several receiving financial support from church authorities, raising serious questions about depth of church commitment to child protection and overshadowing the start of the papal visit. There are also claims the church has breached guidelines it agreed to in 2001 by not punishing offenders appropriately and that it has even relaxed some of the rules on how to treat them….at least 14 of the 22 priests who have served a year or more behind bars are still members of the clergy and 10 of these appear in the most recent edition of the Catholic Directory, the official yearbook of the church. Only eight of the 22 men have been dismissed from their positions.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/sep/15/paedophile-priests-active-church-role

Sex Slavery children, Church cover-ups, Vatican report and rules

Seduction, Slavery and Sex By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF July 14, 2010
“The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo” series tops the best-seller lists. More than 150 years ago, “Uncle Tom’s Cabin” helped lay the groundwork for the end of slavery. Let’s hope that these novels help build pressure on trafficking as a modern echo of slavery….Because trafficking gets ignored, it rarely is a top priority for law enforcement officials — so it seems to be growing. Various reports and studies, none of them particularly reliable, suggest that between 100,000 and 600,000 children may be involved in prostitution in the United States, with the numbers increasing. http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/15/opinion/15kristof.html

Predatory Priests, Church Cover-Ups and the Belgian Abberation July 14, 2010
By Barbara Blaine and Rita Nakashima Brock
The clergy sex abuse and cover-up crisis continue not only across Europe but also across the globe. Nowhere, however, has the recent crisis been more acute than in Belgium. Over the span of just a few weeks, the New York Times reported on Tuesday, July 13, a bishop has resigned, police have conducted an unusual raid on three church facilities to collect evidence, and hundreds of men and women have stepped forward reporting the horrors they say they experienced as children at the hands of Belgian clerics.

A painfully familiar, almost formulaic pattern of criminal behavior has emerged in the many stories of sexual abuse by priests this past year. It’s the same appalling pattern Americans have seen in case after case in the U.S. And it suggests that, whether through quiet Vatican fiat or a stunningly homogenous and twisted clerical culture, Catholic officials over decades and across national boundaries have engaged in the same destructive (and self destructive) behaviors when it comes to predator priests.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/rita-nakashima-brock-ph-d/predatory-priests-church_b_646398.html

UN panel says Vatican’s report on protecting children’s rights is almost 13 years overdue
FRANK JORDANS AP Press Writer July 15, 2010 GENEVA (AP) — The Vatican has failed to send the United Nations a report on child rights that is now almost 13 years overdue, the head of a U.N. panel has told The Associated Press. Like all countries that have signed the 1989 Convention on the Rights of the Child, the Vatican is required to submit regular reports on its efforts to safeguard child rights. But the U.N. Committee on the Rights of the Child, despite sending repeated reminders, has received no explanation from the Holy See for why it missed a 1997 deadline, according to the committee’s chairwoman Yanghee Lee. In the years since, the Vatican has come under intense scrutiny over its handling of child sex abuse allegations around the world and recently admitted that up to one in 20 priests may be implicated….While the Vatican delivered an initial report in 1995, the second, third and fourth reports are now overdue, according to Lee. http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/nation-world/sns-ap-un-un-vatican,0,3457711.story

Vatican revises its rules on clerical sex abuse, but critics see few substantive changes
NICOLE WINFIELD AP Writer July 15, 2010 VATICAN CITY (AP) — The Vatican revised its in-house rules to deal with clerical sex abuse cases Thursday, targeting priests who molest the mentally disabled as well as children and doubling the statute of limitations for such crimes. Abuse victims said the rules are little more than administrative housekeeping since they made few substantive changes to current practice, and what is needed are bold new rules to punish bishops who shield pedophiles….The new rules extend the statute of limitations for handling of priestly abuse cases from 10 years to 20 years after the victim’s 18th birthday, and the statute of limitations can be extended beyond that on a case-by-case basis. Such extensions have been routine for years but now the waivers are codified. But the new rules make no mention of the need for bishops to report clerical sex abuse to police, provide no canonical sanctions for bishops who cover up for abusers, and do not include any “zero tolerance” policy for pedophile priests as demanded by some victims.
http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/nation-world/sns-ap-eu-vatican-church-abuse,0,6196498.story

Polanski free, Church accepts liability for sex abuse, Belgian Clergy Inquiry

Polanski free after Swiss reject extradition
By Hui Min Neo (AFP) 7/12/10 GENEVA — Swiss authorities said that Roman Polanski was a free man Monday after rejecting a request to extradite the film director to the United States to answer for a child sex case dating back to 1977. “The Franco-Polish film-maker will not be extradited to the United States and the measures of restriction on his liberty have been lifted,” Justice Minister Eveline Widmer-Schlumpf told reporters at a press conference.
http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5jCGJhS900g2cGdXBg_7ZYhZVP9qg

describes crimes
Dominic Lawson: Let’s not forget what Polanski did
The film director has been treated with extraordinary indulgence
Tuesday, 29 September 2009
A man who drugged and sodomised a 13-year old girl would not usually receive the uncritical support of the political and literary establishments.
http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/dominic-lawson/dominic-lawson-lets-not-forget-what-polanski-did-1794717.html

Church accepts liability for sex abuse LISA MARTIN AND ANGELA HARPER July 12, 2010
AAP The Catholic Church is being praised for its readiness to avoid a court battle over the rape and sexual abuse of young girls at a Queensland primary school. A former teacher, 61, has admitted to a series of sexual abuse charges involving 13 girls in classes he taught between January 2007 and September 2008. Lawyers for some of the victims say Toowoomba Bishop William Morris has formally accepted legal liability for the abuse and the church will enter into mediation with the victims.
http://news.smh.com.au/breaking-news-national/church-accepts-liability-for-sex-abuse-20100712-106zr.html

Abuse Took Years to Ignite Belgian Clergy Inquiry By DOREEN CARVAJAL and STEPHEN CASTLE
July 12, 2010 WESTVLETEREN, Belgium — Behind an aggressive investigation of the Roman Catholic hierarchy in Belgium that drew condemnation from the pope himself lies a stark family tragedy: the molestation, for years, of a youth by his uncle, the bishop of Bruges; the prelate’s abrupt resignation when a friend of the nephew finally threatened to make the abuse public; and now the grass-roots fury of almost 500 people complaining of abuse by priests….A public pledge by Archbishop André-Joseph Léonard of Brussels that the Bruges resignation marked an end to cover-ups prompted more than 500 people — mostly men — to come forward in just two months.
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/13/world/europe/13belgium.html

Church Office Failed to Act on Abuse Scandal, Archbishop apologises

Church Office Failed to Act on Abuse Scandal  By LAURIE GOODSTEIN and DAVID M. HALBFINGER
July 1, 2010 In its long struggle to grapple with sexual abuse, the Vatican  often cites as a major turning point the decision in 2001 to give the office led by Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger the authority to cut through a morass of bureaucracy and handle abuse cases directly. The decision, in an apostolic letter from Pope John Paul II, earned Cardinal Ratzinger, now Pope Benedict XVI, a reputation as the Vatican insider who most clearly recognized the threat the spreading sexual abuse scandals posed to the Roman Catholic Church. But church documents and interviews with canon lawyers and bishops cast that 2001 decision and the future pope’s track record in a new and less flattering light.

The Vatican took action only after bishops from English-speaking nations became so concerned about resistance from top church officials that the Vatican convened a secret meeting to hear their complaints — an extraordinary example of prelates from across the globe collectively pressing their superiors for reform, and one that had not previously been revealed. And the policy that resulted from that meeting, in contrast to the way it has been described by the Vatican, was not a sharp break with past practices.

It was mainly a belated reaffirmation of longstanding church procedures that at least one bishop attending the meeting argued had been ignored for too long, according to church documents and interviews. The office led by Cardinal Ratzinger, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, had actually been given authority over sexual abuse cases nearly 80 years earlier, in 1922, documents show and canon lawyers confirm. But for the two decades he was in charge of that office, the future pope never asserted that authority, failing to act even as the cases undermined the church’s credibility in the United States, Australia, Ireland and elsewhere.                                   http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/02/world/europe/02pope.html

Archbishop apologises to sex abuse victims Jul 3, 2010 Melbourne’s Catholic Archbishop has apologised to church sex abuse victims for what he describes as an unacceptable evil. In a letter to parishioners, Archbishop Denis Hart said continuing reports of abuse, including the latest investigations in Europe, are causing great distress and shame for the Church. He offered a sincere and unreserved apology for what he describes as a grave evil.
http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2010/07/03/2943947.htm

The Sexual Revolution and Children – How the Left Took Things Too Far 07/02/2010
By Jan Fleischhauer and Wiebke Hollersen Germany’s left has its own tales of abuse. One of the goals of the German 1968 movement was the sexual liberation of children. For some, this meant overcoming all sexual inhibitions, creating a climate in which even pedophilia was considered progressive….One of the few leaders of the left who staunchly opposed the pedophile movement early on was social scientist Günter Amendt. “There is no equitable sexuality between children and adults,” Amendt said, expressing his outrage over the movement. Alice Schwarzer, the founder of the political women’s magazine Emma, also spoke out against the downplaying of sex with children and defined it as what it really was: outright abuse.
http://www.spiegel.de/international/zeitgeist/0,1518,702679,00.html

Stern: Terrorism Expert No Longer in ‘Denial’ About Her Rape, clergy abuse

clergy abuse articles : Italy, Ireland, Belgium

Books of The Times – Violence Expert Visits Her Dark Past By DWIGHT GARNER
June 24, 2010 Jessica Stern is among the world’s experts on violence and evil, a woman who spends her time thinking about bad men and bad deeds. She has lectured at Harvard about terrorism and is the author of a respected book, “Terror in the Name of God: Why Religious Militants Kill” (2003). During the Clinton administration she was on the staff of the National Security Council….

“Denial” is Ms. Stern’s plainspoken and very raw account of why, long before 9/11, she was driven to study terrorism and to put herself repeatedly into danger as she flew around the world, like some scholarly twin of the former CNN war correspondent Christiane Amanpour,  interviewing committed terrorists. Central among the reasons, it turns out, was her own experience of terror. On Oct. 1, 1973, when Ms. Stern was 15 and her sister 14, the two of them, alone in a suburban house in leafy Concord, Mass., were raped by a man who cut the house’s telephone lines before walking inside and leading them upstairs.

Ms. Stern describes that evening in brutal detail. It was a night that changed her and taught her a dire lesson: “Shame can be sexually transmitted.” The crime wasn’t properly investigated. The police didn’t believe her when she said the rapist was a stranger. Because her story and those of others were not publicized or taken seriously enough by the police, the same man was able to rape some 44 girls — an incredible, heart-collapsing number — from 1971 to 1973. “The entire community,” she writes, “was in denial.”  http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/25/books/25book.html

Terrorism Expert No Longer in ‘Denial’ About Her Rape  Andrea Stone  Senior Washington Correspondent 6/25/10 WASHINGTON (June 22) — Jessica Stern, one of the world’s foremost authorities on terrorism, never made the connection between her chosen profession and the terror she suffered as a teenager. Stern was 15 and her sister Sara 14 when a blue-eyed stranger carrying a small handgun entered their home in Concord, Mass., on the evening of Oct. 1, 1973. The man threatened to kill them. Then he raped them. There was no one for the girls to turn to — their mother was dead, their father on a business trip in Europe, the baby sitter had left them alone. The police refused to believe the girls didn’t know the man. They were in denial. Worse, their father refused to cut short his trip to rush home.

A few months later — his daughters’ rapist still at large — he told police they had gotten over it. He was in denial. But it took more than 30 years for Stern to discover that she, too, was in denial….Stern knew from therapy that she suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), a diagnosis she had denied for years….Stern was not content to confine herself to the personal. She talked to a fellow victim and met a veteran who was injured in Iraq and suffers from PTSD. While she doesn’t equate rape with being maimed by a roadside bomb — “I was not a victim of terrorism. That is much more serious and has a political element” — she was struck by how many symptoms she shared with the soldier….

Connecting her trauma to a wider circle, she wrote: Denial helps the bystander. We don’t want to know what the boys we send to Iraq have done to others out of terror, or what others have done to them. We would rather not know about terror or be confronted with evil. This is as true about Abu Ghraib as it is about personal assaults and more private crimes, the crimes that occur inside families. But the victim, too, cannot bear to believe. She may bury or disassociate from or disown her pain.
http://www.aolnews.com/nation/article/terrorism-expert-jessica-stern-no-longer-in-denial-about-her-rape/19524354

Abuse Loosens Church’s Culture of Silence in Italy
By RACHEL DONADIO June 26, 2010 ROME — One afternoon last month, a rare thing happened in Rome’s main courthouse: for perhaps the first time ever, an Italian bishop took the witness stand in the case of a priest accused of the sexual abuse of children.
Soon after, another rare thing happened. The leader of the Italian bishops’ conference acknowledged at a news conference that it was “possible” that bishops in Italy had covered up abuse, while his deputy said that in the past decade, 100 Italian priests had faced church trials in connection with the sexual abuse of minors.
http://www.presstv.ir/detail.aspx?id=132214&sectionid=351021820

Irish priest resigns over abuse case 27 Jun 2010 A priest in charge of protecting children in a rural diocese in Northern Ireland has been forced to resign over a case of child sex abuse filed against another priest under his authority. Earlier, an Irish Examiner report said Fr Bermingham in charge of the Diocese of Cloyne, in County Cork had received a note from a woman claiming abuse by a priest under his ministration. Bermingham had hushed up the matter and let his colleague know of the note before referring him to the police.

Bermingham said he had turned in the abuse statement which he received in May 2009 to the police and the Health Service Executive in the Irish Republic right away….This spring, a group of deaf men in Verona were granted a rare hearing on national television to denounce the priests they said serially molested them as children in a school for the deaf. “We just want justice,” said one of the men, Gianni Bisoli.
http://www.presstv.ir/detail.aspx?id=132214&sectionid=351021820

Pope denounces ‘deplorable’ raid on Belgian church – Raids come amid fresh claims of sex abuse in Catholic Church Agence France-Presse June 27, 2010
VATICAN CITY – Pope Benedict XVI on Sunday accused Belgian police of “deplorable methods” for raiding a bishops’ meeting as part of a pedophilia probe, as Brussels said the Vatican was overreacting….Thursday’s raids came amid new claims of child abuse by members of the Catholic Church in Belgium, one of the countries rocked by recent revelations of pedophilia by priests in Europe and North America. http://www.montrealgazette.com/life/Pope+denounces+deplorable+raid+Belgian+church/3208676/story.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

Church to overhaul Legionaries order, Conn. lawmakers pull statute-of-limitations bill

also Rescuing girls from sex slavery

Catholic Church to overhaul disgraced Legionaries order 05/02/2010 VATICAN CITY—The Roman Catholic Church will overhaul the ultra-conservative Legion of Christ whose late founder Marcial Maciel was disgraced after abuse scandals, the Vatican said Saturday. Maciel’s “conduct… had consequences in the life and the structure of the Legion that are so serious as to require a journey of profound restructuring,” a statement said. Pope Benedict XVI will name an interim leader within weeks, said Vatican spokesman Federico Lombardi, in a major shakeup at a time when the Church faces intense pressure to crack down on abusers and their protectors in the hierarchy….

The Mexican-born Maciel, who died in the United States in January 2008 aged 87, was accused of molesting eight seminarians and secretly fathering children. The Vatican said that many members of the order had been unaware of Maciel’s misconduct as he “created around him a defence mechanism that shielded him for a long time”….

Maciel founded the Legion of Christ in 1941 and ran it with an iron fist, requiring a vow of secrecy and barring any criticism of the order’s superiors including himself. Before Maciel’s fall from grace, he and his order enjoyed the adulation of Benedict’s predecessor John Paul II. Just weeks before the Polish pope died in 2005 he hailed Maciel’s and the Legionaries’ work throughout the world as the Church battled tough competition from evangelical groups, notably in its Latin American stronghold….

Maciel’s “very serious and objectively immoral actions confirmed by incontestable testimonies … show a life without scruples nor authentic religious sentiments,” the Vatican said. Last month in Mexico the order asked for forgiveness from two brothers claiming to be Maciel’s sons who said he had abused them. Last year the order confirmed a report in The New York Times that Maciel had also secretly fathered a daughter. http://newsinfo.inquirer.net/breakingnews/world/view/20100502-267620/Catholic-Church-to-overhaul-disgraced-Legionaries-order

Conn. lawmakers pull statute-of-limitations bill HARTFORD By SUSAN HAIGH Associated Press 4/30/10
Lawmakers on Friday pulled a bill that would have extended the statute of limitations for lawsuits involving sexual abuse, saying they didn’t believe they had enough votes to pass the measure this legislative session.

Disappointed proponents said they would revive the issue next year. They also suggested that some kind of resolution could likely be reached in the coming months regarding victims of the late Dr. George Reardon, a former St. Francis Hospital and Medical Center physician who is believed to have victimized hundreds of children beginning in the 1950s. Some of his victims have been limited in pursuing lawsuits against the Hartford Archdiocese, the hospital or others because of the state’s statute of limitations, which gives childhood sex abuse victims until age 48 to file lawsuits….

Michael Culhane, executive director of the Connecticut Catholic Conference, called the bill “horrendous” and said he was pleased it was withdrawn. Earlier this month, Roman Catholic bishops warned of potentially disastrous financial fallout….Scores of people claim Reardon molested them in his office at the hospital and took inappropriate photographs as part of a bogus “growth study.” Reardon resigned from the hospital in 1993 amid the molestation accusations but never faced criminal charges. He died in 1998. The owner of his former home in West Hartford discovered more than 50,000 photo slides and more than 100 movie reels of child pornography in a hidden storage space while renovating the house in May 2007. Authorities said evidence links the images to Reardon. http://www.thehour.com/story/485788

Rescuing girls from sex slavery By Ebonne Ruffins, CNN April 30, 2010 Kathmandu, Nepal (CNN) ….By raiding brothels, patrolling the India-Nepal border and providing safe shelter and support services, Koirala and Maiti Nepal have helped rescue and rehabilitate more than 12,000 Nepali women and girls since 1993. According to the U.S. State Department, some 10,000 to 15,000 women and girls from Nepal are trafficked to India and then sexually exploited each year. http://www.cnn.com/2010/LIVING/04/29/cnnheroes.koirala.nepal/