Judge confirms that KC diocese must pay $1.1 million in breach of contract case, Former teacher Charles Napier charged with child abuse
August 20, 2014 Comments Off on Judge confirms that KC diocese must pay $1.1 million in breach of contract case, Former teacher Charles Napier charged with child abuse
Judge confirms that KC diocese must pay $1.1 million in breach of contract case
By JUDY L. THOMAS The Kansas City Star 08/14/2014
The Kansas City-St. Joseph Diocese must pay the $1.1 million ordered by an arbitrator last spring for violating the terms of a 2008 settlement with priest sexual abuse victims, a judge has ruled.
Calling the award a “scathing indictment of the defendant,” Jackson County Circuit Judge Bryan Round said in his ruling that “there can be no doubt that the diocese, through its leadership and higher-level personnel, failed in numerous respects to abide by the terms” of the 2008 agreement. Those terms included immediately reporting any abuse or suspicion of abuse to law enforcement authorities — something the diocese failed to do in the child pornography case of the Rev. Shawn Ratigan in 2010….
The plaintiffs pointed to the diocese’s failure to immediately report Ratigan after finding hundreds of disturbing images of young girls on the priest’s laptop computer in late 2010. They contended that the diocese broke the 2008 agreement by failing for almost a year to report allegations and concerns about Ratigan‘s behavior to police, withholding evidence of possible child pornography from law enforcement for months and leaving another credibly accused priest in a parish for nearly two years.
A Jackson County judge in 2012 found Finn guilty of failing to report suspicions of child abuse to police or state child welfare authorities in the Ratigan case. Finn was sentenced to two years of probation for the misdemeanor. Ratigan pleaded guilty to state and federal child pornography charges and is serving 50 years in prison.
In issuing the award, Hanover found that the diocese had breached five of 19 non-monetary terms of the 2008 agreement. He said he hoped “that I am dead wrong in my opinion that this diocese as presently constituted will not mend its ways.”….
In his ruling, Round rejected all of the diocese’s arguments and said the arbitrator’s findings could be best summarized by a passage from the award.
The diocese, the award said, “was and is constitutionally incapable of placing the preservation and protection of the clergy culture in a subordinate position to any other consideration, including the timely reporting to law enforcement of a priest involved in the use of diocesan children as pornography models.”
http://www.kansascity.com/news/local/article1225077.html
Former teacher Charles Napier charged with child abuse
19 August 2014
Charles Napier, 67, from Sherborne, Dorset, is accused of indecently assaulting 21 boys aged between eight and 13.
The alleged offences are said to have taken place between 1968 and 1973.
Mr Napier, who is the half-brother of MP John Whittingdale, will appear at Westminster Magistrates Court in London on 2 September….
http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-28852916
Jesse Friedman is 100% guilty of sexually abusing children, reinvestigation by Nassau County district attorney concludes, Charles Napier arrest: Half-brother of Tory MP John Whittingdale questioned over ‘sexual assault’ by police probing alleged VIP paedophile ring, Leicester paedophile arrest: second as part of “Operation Pallial”
June 27, 2013 Comments Off on Jesse Friedman is 100% guilty of sexually abusing children, reinvestigation by Nassau County district attorney concludes, Charles Napier arrest: Half-brother of Tory MP John Whittingdale questioned over ‘sexual assault’ by police probing alleged VIP paedophile ring, Leicester paedophile arrest: second as part of “Operation Pallial”
Jesse Friedman is 100% guilty of sexually abusing children, reinvestigation by Nassau County district attorney concludes
The subject of the documentary ‘Capturing the Friedmans’ is in fact a ‘psychopathic deviant’ who molested 17 children in his parents’ Long Island home, a 172-page report finds. By Dareh Gregorian / NEW YORK DAILY NEWS Tuesday, June 25, 2013
He’s guilty as sin.
That’s the conclusion reached by the Nassau County District Attorney’s three-year reinvestigation into the case of Jesse Friedman, the subject of the documentary “Capturing the Friedmans.”
Friedman, his supporters and the makers of the Academy Award-nominated documentary have long maintained he was railroaded into pleading guilty to charges he molested 13 kids in the late 1980s, and were expecting the report to exonerate him.
It did the opposite.
Friedman, they found, was labeled a “psychopathic deviant” by his own shrink, and had actually sexually abused a total of 17 children.
“The District Attorney concludes that Jesse Friedman was not wrongfully convicted,” the blistering 172-page report says.
“In fact, by any impartial analysis, the investigation process prompted by Jesse Friedman . . . has only increased confidence in the integrity of Jesse Friedman’s guilty plea adjudication as a sex offender.”
The panel said it interviewed three of Friedman’s now-adult victims. “Each confirmed that he was sexually abused by Jesse Friedman. Each told their separate story, marked by pain and recovery,” and “recounted years of shame and humiliation,” the report said….
At a Monday afternoon press conference, (Jesse) Friedman said, “It’s painful when people lie about you and it’s really painful when the district attorney lies about you.”….
The exhaustive report also took aim at the makers of “Capturing the Friedmans,” director Andrew Jarecki and producer Marc Smerling. It accused them of using misleading, out-of-context snippets of interviews to further their campaign to exonerate Friedman, 44….
One said he was “tricked” into the statement by Jarecki’s “manipulative” questioning, the report said.
The director also suppressed a statement from Friedman’s uncle – who’d said in the movie that he thought Jesse was innocent – that his nephew was indeed a molester and “cannot tell right from wrong,” the report said….
Lawyer Ron Kuby, who’s represented (Jesse) Friedman pro bono for almost a decade, maintained the report ignored the facts….
Arnold Friedman pleaded guilty four months later.
With the charges against him piling up – he was hit with over 100 counts of sodomy – Jesse, then 19, eventually copped a plea as well.
Arnold was sentenced to 10-30 years in prison, and died behind bars of a heart attack in 1995. Jesse was sentenced to 6-18 years behind bars, and was released after serving 13 years….
The review found none of that was true: police generally didn’t ask leading questions, and there’s no record of any child being visited 15 times. The victim who said he’d been hypnotized was unreliable and likely wasn’t.
The children had shown signs of abuse, but they weren’t immediately recognized as such, the report said. Some were scared of attending the class, one developed a stutter and another started losing his hair….
(Jesse) Friedman also went on Geraldo, against his lawyer’s advice, and said then that he’d been sexually abused by his father, and forced “to pose in hundreds of photos for my father in all sorts of sexual positions (with) the kids.”
He “reveled in public discussions of his guilt,” the report says.
He’s since denied he was ever abused by his father, or that his father abused any of his students, but the panel found those claims “not credible.”….
The panel said it interviewed Jesse’s uncle, Howard Friedman, who told them, “Jesse is guilty, and you’re going to ask me how I know. Because Arnold told me.”
He said his brother had tearfully confessed to him after his arrest that he and Jesse had “misbehaved with children,” but swore him to secrecy “until he was dead and Jesse was out of prison.”
He told the panel he’d lied about Jesse’s innocence when he was interviewed for “Friedmans,” and said he felt like “a huge rock had been lifted from my chest” after he made the admission, the report said.
It also said he’d come clean before – he told Jarecki what his brother had told him a couple of years ago, but the director had never mentioned the startling admission to the review team….
It was a documentary loaded with fiction. The Nassau County DA’s office blasted the 2003 film “Capturing the Friedmans” as misleading, and accused the moviemakers of interfering with the probe they were responsible for reopening. The report said the filmmakers misrepresented comments from an investigator and the judge presiding over the case, and took at face value comments by one victim that he was “hypnotized,” when there’s no evidence of such.
The report also claimed filmmakers Andrew Jarecki and Marc Smerling would not hand over some of the evidence under their control, and refused to hand over the unedited versions of interviews with Jesse Friedman, his family members and another co-defendant in the case.
Jarecki told the Daily News his investigation was far more thorough than the DA’s “superficial” probe. He said they provided investigators with more than 1,700 pages of exonerating evidence, and “they never even asked us a single question about it.”
http://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/jesse-friedman-100-guilty-child-abuse-article-1.1380786
Charles Napier arrest: Half-brother of Tory MP John Whittingdale questioned over ‘sexual assault’ by police probing alleged VIP paedophile ring By Keir Mudie 26 Jun 2013
In a Sunday People picture exclusive, the arrest was made in connection with claims made by campaigning MP Tom Watson in the House of Commons last year
The half-brother of senior Tory MP John Whittingdale was arrested today on suspicion of sexual assault by police probing an alleged VIP paedophile ring. Charles Napier, 65, from Sherborne, Dorset, was arrested at the home he shares with his elderly mother, at around 8.30am in connection with the historical allegation of sexual abuse….
The arrest was made in connection with the Met’s Operation Fairbank which was set up to investigate claims made by campaigning MP Tom Watson in the House of Commons last year. Operation Fairbank – set up to investigate historical allegations of child abuse – was set up to investigate the claims. This arrest is part of a new strand of Operation Fairbank entitled Operation Cayacos, which has now reached the criminal threshold….
http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/charles-napier-arrest-half-brother-tory-1998917
Leicester paedophile arrest: second as part of “Operation Pallial” Wed 26 Jun 2013
Operation Pallial was launched last November after detectives identified 140 allegations relating to 18 care homes in North Wales. The arrest of a 62-year-old man in Leicester is the second arrest conducted by Operation Pallial.
The first took place on April 23 and the man from Ipswich, Suffolk – accused of “a number of serious sexual offences against a number of individuals” – was bailed until the end of July.
A report published in April, which outlined phase one of the inquiry, revealed that the alleged victims in the case were aged between seven and 19.
The report said a total of 84 people – 75 male and nine female – had been named by complainants.
Of these, 16 were named by more than one alleged victim and 10 may now be dead.
The large number of alleged victims and care homes, and the duration of the period involved, is much wider than previously thought….
The NCA (National Crime Agency) was selected at the request of North Wales Police to ensure the inquiry’s independence. It was set up to re-examine claims of sex crimes and look again at the original police investigations into abuse at care homes in North Wales.
The investigation is being carried out by 31 officers drawn from Soca, the Child Exploitation and Online Protection Centre (Ceop) and police forces from across England.
Detectives are hoping to develop forensic leads through scientific advancements which might not have been previously available. In 2000 the Waterhouse Inquiry was established to study claims linked to homes in the former council areas of Gwynedd and Clwyd since 1974. Following Waterhouse, eight people were prosecuted and seven were convicted.
Around 140 compensation claims were settled on behalf of the victims. But victims have since said that the inquiry examined only a fraction of the abuse which took place.
http://www.itv.com/news/central/2013-06-26/leicester-paedophile-arrest-second-as-part-of-operation-pallial/