Satanic ritual murderers jailed for 17 years, Stuart Hall denies sexual abuse of three girls, In Roman Catholic Child Molestation Files, Judge Weighs How Many Priest Names Can Be Blacked Out

Satanic ritual murderers jailed for 17 years
The mother of a teen girl killed during a so-called satanic ritual hugged and kissed the mother of her daughter’s killer at the Johannesburg Magistrate’s Court yesterday.
29 March 2012 PULENG MASHABANE

JOHANNESBURG – The mother of a teen girl killed during a so-called satanic ritual hugged and kissed the mother of her daughter’s killer at the Johannesburg Magistrate’s Court yesterday.

Kirsty Theologo’s mother Sylvia and Myrtle Moody comforted each other after Lester Moody  and co-accused Jeremy King pleaded guilty to murdering Kirsty, 18.

They were sentenced to 17 years  imprisonment, with five years suspended.

“I’m glad they showed remorse, admitted and spoke out about it. But no sentence will bring her back,” Sylvia Theologo said….

In statements read to the court by their lawyer, Rod Montano, King and Moody admitted to planning to “sacrifice” Theologo three weeks ahead of the incident.

Two evening meetings were held, one at Wagner’s apartment and another at the minor’s home, to discuss the “sacrifice” which Wagner said he had seen in his dream….

http://www.citizen.co.za/citizen/content/en/citizen/local-news?oid=268878&sn=Detail&pid=146826&Satanic-ritual-murderers-jailed-for-17-years

Stuart Hall denies sexual abuse of three girls
Former It’s a Knockout presenter, 83, pleads not guilty to three charges of indecent assault in the 1970s and 80s

Helen Pidd and Tamsin Rutter
guardian.co.uk, Monday 7 January 2013
The veteran BBC broadcaster Stuart Hall has appeared in court charged with indecently assaulting a nine-year-old girl 30 years ago.

Hall, 83, who is best known for presenting It’s a Knockout, is accused of touching the girl in Cheshire in 1983. He is also accused of indecent assault involving a 16- or 17-year-old girl in the autumn of 1974 in Blackpool and a 13-year-old girl in 1984.

Standing in the dock at Preston magistrates court wearing a dark suit and striped tie, he said he was not guilty of all charges. He also confirmed his Cheshire address and his full name, James Stuart Hall….

http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2013/jan/07/stuart-hall-denies-sexual-abuse

In Roman Catholic Child Molestation Files, Judge Weighs How Many Priest Names Can Be Blacked Out
By GREG RISLING 01/07/13 LOS ANGELES — The Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Los Angeles must release the names of church leaders and pedophile priests identified in thousands of pages of internal documents recounting sexual abuse allegations dating back decades, a judge ruled Monday.

The decision by Superior Court Judge Emilie Elias overturned much of a 2011 order by another judge that would have allowed the archdiocese to black out the names of church higher-ups. Victims, as well as The Associated Press and Los Angeles Times, argued for the names to be public.

Elias said she weighed the privacy rights of priests and others – including those who are mentioned in the documents but were not accused of any wrongdoing – versus the public’s interest in learning details of the child abuse that prompted the archdiocese to agree to a record $660 million settlement with victims in 2007.

“Don’t they have the right to know what happened in their local church?” Elias said before ruling from the bench.

The documents include letters and memos between top church officials and their attorneys, medical and psychological records, complaints from parents and, in some cases, correspondence with the Vatican about abusive priests. There are approximately 30,000 pages and it wasn’t immediately clear how soon they would be released….

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/01/07/roman-catholic-child-molestation-files_n_2425444.html

A Troubled Silence, Jury breaks without verdict in Philadelphia church abuse case

Op-Ed Contributor – A Troubled Silence
By RICHARD B. GARTNER June 7, 2012

THE revelation this week of alleged widespread child abuse at the elite Horace Mann School in New York City, most of it occurring during the 1970s and ’80s, is only the most recent instance of men coming forward, many years after the fact, with horrific stories of sexual molesting from their childhood.

Most of those accused of the abuse in the Horace Mann case are dead, but under New York State law, if alive they would most likely be safe from justice. The state’s statute of limitations on child abuse is five years from the victim’s 18th birthday. After age 23, the victim has no recourse.

Yet young adults, particularly men, who suffer the aftereffects of abuse are rarely in an emotional state to bring charges. Given what we now know about why it takes victims so long to come forward, the law needs to be changed.

Many people cast a skeptical eye on those who wait so long to reveal instances of child abuse, particularly when it happened to them as teenagers. They assume that accusers are making it up, blaming what were at most minor incidents for their troubles.

But in my decades of experience working with abuse victims, I have found that men spend years putting their emotions in a deep freeze or masking post-traumatic reactions with self-defeating behaviors like compulsive gambling and substance abuse. Eventually, they are forced by internal or external events to find treatment….

Finally, since boyhood abuse was not part of the public conversation until recently, many boys and men assumed their experiences were repulsive and aberrant. And a man who has not talked about it might feel it would be humiliating to first disclose it in middle age or later. Needless to say, the decades spent trying to bury the memories rarely work….

Things may be changing, thanks, in part, to the recent spate of abuse revelations. Many older victims have gained the courage to come forward. In my own practice, I received almost as many calls from sexually abused men in December and January, soon after allegations surfaced about abuse by the former Penn State assistant football coach Jerry Sandusky, as I usually get in a year. With Mr. Sandusky’s trial set to begin next week, I expect to get even more calls.

But more needs to be done. Every year since 2005, Margaret M. Markey, a New York State assemblywoman, has introduced a bill to extend the statute of limitations for five more years, a modest increase; it would also create a one-year window for adults up to age 53 to bring charges against alleged abusers. The bill has passed the Assembly four times but has consistently been blocked from coming to the floor of the Senate, largely thanks to fierce lobbying by the Roman Catholic Church….

Richard B. Gartner is a psychologist and psychoanalyst and the author of “Beyond Betrayal: Taking Charge of Your Life After Boyhood Sexual Abuse.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/08/opinion/in-light-of-child-abuse.html

Jury breaks without verdict in Philadelphia church abuse case
June 7, 2012 PHILADELPHIA (Reuters)

A Philadelphia jury ended its fifth day of deliberations on Thursday without reaching a verdict in the child sex abuse trial of a Roman Catholic monsignor, the highest-ranking U.S. clergyman to stand trial in the church’s wide-ranging pedophilia scandal. Monsignor William Lynn, who supervised hundreds of priests in the Philadelphia Archdiocese for 12 years as secretary of the clergy, is accused of conspiracy and child endangerment. If convicted on all charges, he faces the possibility of 21 years in prison….

Prosecutors say Lynn, 61, covered up child sex abuse allegations, often by transferring priests to unsuspecting parishes.

Lynn’s motive was to avoid scandal and any potential loss of money for the church, they argued. His job was to supervise 800 priests, which included investigating sex abuse claims, from 1992 to 2004.

The defense said Lynn tried to handle documented cases of pedophile priests, making a list in 1994 of 35 accused predators and writing memos to suggest treatment and suspensions. He was hampered because he could only make recommendations to the head of the archdiocese, Cardinal Anthony Bevilacqua, who died in January at age 88, the defense said….

The Philadelphia jury also is deliberating the fate of the Reverend James Brennan, 48, who is charged with child endangerment and the attempted rape of a 14-year-old child in 1996.
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/sns-rt-us-usa-crime-churchbre8561g8-20120607,0,7146796.story

97% of rapists never spend a day in prison, Testimony Begins In Child Sex-Abuse Trial For Philadelphia Catholic Priests, Archdiocese

Reporting Rates

Sexual assault is one of the most under reported crimes, with 54% still being left unreported.

What happens to Rapists When They are Caught and Prosecuted?

54% of rapes/sexual assaults are not reported to the police, according to a statistical average of the past 5 years. Those rapists, of course, never spend a day in prison. Factoring in unreported rapes, only about 3% of rapists ever serve a day in jail. http://rainn.org/get-information/statistics/reporting-rates

Testimony Begins In Child Sex-Abuse Trial For Philadelphia Catholic Priests, Archdiocese

By MARYCLAIRE DALE 03/27/12

PHILADELPHIA — Prosecutors aired dozens of confidential church documents in court Tuesday to try to prove the Philadelphia archdiocese routinely buried complaints that priests were molesting children.

Monsignor William Lynn is the first Roman Catholic official in the U.S. charged with endangering children by keeping accused priests in parish work.

The letters and memos read in court Tuesday centered on now-defrocked priest Edward Avery. Avery, known as the Smiling Padre, adopted six Hmong children and moonlighted as a disc jockey at parties and nightclubs throughout his three-decade church career.

According to the documents, a medical student told the archdiocese in 1992 that Avery had molested him after a DJ gig when the priest and the high school freshman were drinking heavily at a West Philadelphia nightclub. It happened again at age 19 when the two shared a motel bed on a ski trip to Vermont with Avery’s brother, he said.

Avery denied the allegations to Lynn, but then said they “could” have happened. A four-day evaluation at a church-owned hospital showed he may be bipolar and have alcohol and psycho-sexual problems. Avery was admitted to St. John Vianney in Downingtown for nearly a year of sex therapy and mental health treatment.

Avery’s parishioners were told that their outgoing, energetic pastor was on a “health leave” but heard no mention of the abuse allegation. Lynn’s lawyers said the documents show that Cardinal Anthony Bevilacqua gave those orders.

St. John Vianney never diagnosed Avery as a pedophile but said he should not be around adolescents or work as a DJ.

Lynn next recommended that Avery go to a Philadelphia parish with a tough pastor, although that parish had a school attached. Bevilacqua instead sent Avery to work as a hospital chaplain, with residency at St. Jerome’s Parish. The northeast Philadelphia parish was home to many of the city’s police and firefighters and had an elementary school.

Avery, 69, admitted last week that he sexually assaulted a fifth-grader there in 1999, forcing the altar boy to strip naked after Mass in the church sacristy. Instead of going on trial with Lynn, Avery pleaded guilty to sexual abuse and conspiracy and will serve 2 1/2 to five years in prison….  http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/03/27/philly-sex-abuse-case_n_1381982.html

Dioceses oust abusers had pledged to monitor, child abuse witness death threats

Dioceses oust abusers they had pledged to monitor By RACHEL ZOLL (AP) 7/4/10
NEW YORK — At the peak of the Roman Catholic clergy sex abuse crisis, the discipline plan American bishops adopted prompted dioceses to remove nearly all accused clergy from the priesthood. Some of the men, however, were considered too old or sick to be kicked out. Instead, bishops barred those clerics from functioning as priests and promised to keep watch over them in supervisory programs that would keep the men far from children.
But interviews with canon lawyers, church child protection officials and experts who advise them found that, eight years after the plan was approved, few of those diocesan programs exist. Church leaders are more likely to oust a cleric from the priesthood than monitor him. http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5hlHdJHra37XaI5cjan-Cm_WJNdhQD9GOCFV80

Child abuse witnesses get death threats  04 Jul 2010 Police investigating claims of child abuse by Belgian clergy say they are probing death threats against witnesses and magistrates. The threats have been made to witnesses who gave information to the police and to the magistrates who may end up judging the case. Last month, police raided a meeting of Catholic bishops as part of a probe into allegations of child abuse by priests in Belgium.  http://www.presstv.ir/detail.aspx?id=133423&sectionid=351020605