Goddard child sex abuse inquiry, Former MI5 chief ‘involved in child sex abuse cover-up’, Enoch Powell named by bishop in police sex abuse probe, Australian police are investigating Vatican finance chief George Pell over sexual abuse allegations

– Goddard child sex abuse inquiry: What to expect as hearings begin
– Former MI5 chief ‘involved in child sex abuse cover-up’
– Enoch Powell named by bishop in police sex abuse probe
– Report: Key Vatican aide investigated for child abuse
Australian police are investigating Vatican finance chief George Pell over sexual abuse allegations


Goddard child sex abuse inquiry: What to expect as hearings begin
Jul 27, 2016

Multi-million pound investigation will see churches, police and individuals put under the spotlight
Preliminary hearings have begun in the long-awaited inquiry into historic child sexual abuse.

The independent investigation, chaired by New Zealand high court judge Dame Lowell Goddard, is the largest ever undertaken in Britain, with speculation that it could last for up to a decade.
What will the inquiry look at?

“The inquiry is unprecedented in both size and scope,” says Goddard. With a first-year budget of £17.9m and 155 staff members, it will focus on whether public bodies and other non-state institutions have failed in their duty of care to protect children from sexual abuse in England and Wales.

The police, health service, the Crown Prosecution Service and religious bodies will all be put under the spotlight during the hearings. At the end of the investigation, Goddard and her colleagues promise to demand accountability, support victims and make recommendations for the future.

“There is no doubt that the inquiry’s task is immense,” Goddard recently wrote in The Guardian. “But the scale and magnitude of the problem of child sexual abuse means there is no easy fix. This is the opportunity to get to the heart of one of the biggest challenges for our generation.”….

Former MI5 chief ‘involved in child sex abuse cover-up’
23 July 2015

The former head of Britain’s intelligence service urged the government to cover up allegations of child sexual abuse against a senior MP, freshly uncovered documents have revealed.

Writing to cabinet secretary Sir Robert Armstrong in 1986, MI5 director general Sir Antony Duff said “the risk of political embarrassment to the government is rather greater than the security danger”.

The correspondence was about an unnamed MP who was alleged to have “a penchant for small boys,” but Duff said he accepted the politician’s denial of the abuse.

The documents, originally thought to have been lost or destroyed, were discovered in a Cabinet Office storeroom of “assorted and unstructured papers,” The Times reports.

The discovery comes months after an official review into whether allegations of child abuse were covered up by the Home Office in the 1980s found no evidence that records were deliberately removed.

However, in a supplementary report “quietly” released yesterday, the authors of the report condemned the government’s record keeping and called for an extensive search of Whitehall archives.

The freshly unearthed files also include documents about senior Westminster figures including Margaret Thatcher’s former parliamentary secretary Sir Peter Morrison, former home secretary Leon Brittan, and former minister Sir William van Straubenzee. The contents of those documents have not been revealed.

There are also papers relating to former MI6 chief Sir Maurice Oldfield and his alleged connection to the abuse scandals at the Kincora boys’ home in Northern Ireland….

Enoch Powell named by bishop in police sex abuse probe
30 March 2015

A Church of England bishop has reported Enoch Powell to police investigating allegations of a Westminster paedophile network.

The claims against the late Conservative MP, who made the infamous Rivers of Blood speech, are said to relate to “ritual satanic abuse” and were reported to a clergyman by a young person during a counselling session in the 1980s.

The information was passed on to the Bishop of Durham, Paul Butler, who is responsible for “safeguarding” in the Church of England. He reported Powell to the police last year, but is not thought to have had any corroborating material.

Powell’s supporters have described the allegations as “absolute nonsense”….

http://www.theweek.co.uk/goddard-inquiry/59321/goddard-child-sex-abuse-inquiry-what-to-expect-as-hearings-begin

Report: Key Vatican aide investigated for child abuse
Australian police are investigating Vatican finance chief George Pell over sexual abuse allegations, according to the Australian national broadcaster ABC. The cardinal denied the claims as “totally untrue.”

Complaints against Pell go back to late 1970s, when he served as a priest in his home town of Ballarat, Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) reported on Wednesday.

Two men told the company that Pell molested them in a Ballarat swimming pool when they were children. Another person alleged that he had seen Pell exposing himself to young boys in a beach changing room in the 1980s.

ABC claims it had obtained eight police statements from the alleged victims, witnesses and family members. Police and prosecutors have yet to decide whether the documents warrant formal charges against the 75-year old cardinal, according to the reporters.

‘Smear campaign’

Victoria police declined to comment, according to the AFP news agency.

At the same time, Pell accused ABC of running a “scandalous smear campaign” against him.

“The cardinal does not wish to cause any distress to any victim of abuse,” his Rome office said in a statement. “However, claims that he has sexually abused anyone, in any place, at any time in his life are totally untrue and completely wrong.”

Pell already faced allegations of pedophilia in 2002, but was later cleared of any wrongdoing. He also came under fire earlier this year, when the authorities probed numerous child abuse cases in Australia….

http://www.dw.com/en/report-key-vatican-aide-investigated-for-child-abuse/a-19430249 

India’s Marital Rape Crisis, The litany of child abuse by Catholic priests, Police failed to investigate abuse – Melbourne archdiocese

Rape within marriage remains legal in several countries in Asia, Africa and the Middle East, including Singapore, China, Egypt, Lebanon and Morocco. And even in countries where spousal rape is technically a crime, strong legislation and adequate punishment is often severely lacking. In several states in the U.S., including Ohio, Oklahoma and Connecticut, marital rape is “semi-legal,” according to a June report by The Daily Beast. Sexual violence within marriage is also an “infrequently prosecuted” crime in America.

The litany of child abuse by Catholic priests 
Priest after priest in the Melbourne archdiocese of the Catholic church was caught abusing children. And for decades bishop after bishop ignored these crimes. In Melbourne over the past 35 years, 454 people made claims or substantiated complaints about child sexual abuse by priests, religious employees or volunteers.

Detective told child abuse victim she must have been ‘asking for it’, inquiry hears  Royal commission hearings into Melbourne archdiocese hears police failed to investigate abuse, despite questions about conduct of priest involved

India’s Marital Rape Crisis Reaches ‘Tragic Proportions’
One-third of men in India, where spousal rape is legal, admit to having forced a sexual act on their wives.

Dominique Mosbergen  Senior Writer, The Huffington Post  11/24/2015

….By 2013, new legislation was passed that strengthened punishments for sex crimes. Violations such as stalking and voyeurism were added to the penal code, and police officers were made criminally accountable for failing to record sexual offenses. Last year, Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government pledged “zero tolerance” for violence against women and vowed to strengthen the criminal justice system to crack down on these crimes.

But despite these promises, and though some laws pertaining to sexual assault by strangers have indeed been beefed up, the archaic law that permits a husband to rape his wife still exists.

“Sexual intercourse or sexual acts by a man with his own wife, the wife not being under 15 years of age, is not rape,” states a 2013 amendment to the Indian Penal Code of 1860.

With such a law in place, registering a case of sexual assault against a husband in India can be exceedingly difficult, if not impossible.

This has resulted in a marital rape crisis of “tragic proportions” in the country, with men assaulting their wives with impunity and women enduring the abuse under a shroud of silence, according to activists including Mihira Sood, a Delhi-based attorney who specializes in women’s rights.

“Marital rape is an extremely widespread problem,” Sood told HuffPost. “[It’s] compounded by the fact that it is not recognized as an offense, either by the law as well as by much of society that is conditioned to see it as an inevitable part of marriage.”

Since marital rape is not a crime, exact statistics are hard to come by. The limited data that is available, however, provides a horrifying glimpse into the enormity of the problem.

Last year, the United Nations Population Fund and the International Center for Research on Women surveyed more than 9,200 men across seven Indian states. One-third of them admitted to having forced a sexual act on their wives, while 60 percent said they’d used some form of violence to assert dominance over their partners.

Another 2014 report, by researcher Aashish Gupta of the Rice Institute, found that women are 40 times more likely to be sexually assaulted by their husband than a stranger. Gupta concluded that fewer than 1 percent of sexual assaults within marriage are reported to police….

Rape within marriage remains legal in several countries in Asia, Africa and the Middle East, including Singapore, China, Egypt, Lebanon and Morocco. And even in countries where spousal rape is technically a crime, strong legislation and adequate punishment is often severely lacking.

In several states in the U.S., including Ohio, Oklahoma and Connecticut, marital rape is “semi-legal,” according to a June report by The Daily Beast. Sexual violence within marriage is also an “infrequently prosecuted” crime in America….

In 2013, a panel of lawmakers told parliament that the move “has the potential of destroying the institution of marriage.” Home Affairs Minister Haribhai Chaudhary said in April that “the concept of marital rape, as understood internationally, cannot be suitably applied in the Indian context due to various factors,” including illiteracy, poverty, social custom, religion and the widespread perception that “marriages are sacrosanct.” The Indian government, he said, would not be considering any amendment to its laws regarding marital rape despite a United Nations recommendation to do….

Dismantling a deeply entrenched system of patriarchy in the country is a major challenge women’s rights activists face in their fight against marital rape, said Priya Nanda, a director at the International Center for Research on Women.

“From the girl who has to stop doing homework to make tea for her father or is pulled out of school to marry, to the girl who is not given rightful access to her inheritance, or men in institutions of power, you see male privilege everywhere,” Nanda said over Skype from her New Delhi office. “At every level, we encounter the forces of patriarchy. It is deeply internalized, by men and women alike, and extremely difficult to challenge.”….

Women largely shared similar views on these matters, the report found. About 65 percent of female respondents agreed that “there are times when a woman deserves to be beaten,” while 9 out of 10 women surveyed said wives should “obey” their husbands….

This view that wives are duty-bound to have sex with their husbands is, in fact, codified in law.

The Hindu Marriage Act of 1955 states that a married person can take his or her spouse to court to demand the “restitution of conjugal rights” if the partner refuses to have sex with them….
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/india-marital-rape_564d8c21e4b00b7997f9469e

The litany of child abuse by Catholic priests that no longer shocks the world
Once the evidence revealed at the royal commission in Melbourne would have made headlines everywhere. Now it merely fits into a devastating pattern

David Marr Tuesday 24 November 2015

Priest after priest in the Melbourne archdiocese of the Catholic church was caught abusing children. And for decades bishop after bishop ignored these crimes.

The priests were caught abusing as soon as they left the seminary. They kept abusing despite “treatment” and despite being shifted from parish to parish. The church knew what was going on and for a very long time no one called the police.

But Melbourne fits the now familiar pattern of the Catholic world. Gail Furness SC, piling up the numbers in her dry opening address to the 35th case study of the royal commission, might have been talking of Chicago, Brussels or Caracas.

In Melbourne over the past 35 years, 454 people made claims or substantiated complaints about child sexual abuse by priests, religious employees or volunteers. Of those, 335 made claims against priests. Seven accused priests accounted for 54% of all claims.

What sets the city apart from cities in Europe and America is how little the church has had to pay. Furness puts the bill for damages plus legal and medical costs at not quite $18m….

Absent but everywhere was George Pell. Though other bishops living and dead will have their reputations raked over by the commission, the hearings over the next month will essentially assess the record of the man who now sits in Rome as the treasurer of the Catholic church.

The cardinal has broken with the church’s legal team and its gentle determination not to cross-examine victims. After turning all his career for help to the top end of town, Pell has engaged the Melbourne mega-advocate Allan Myers to test his accusers….

But now they are looking at the years in between: at his first, crucial post in Melbourne from the mid 1980s as an auxiliary bishop under archbishop Frank Little.

Early in that time Little sent Pell to deal with crazed Father Peter Searson who was terrifying children in the poor parish of Doveton with guns, knives, perpetual confession, hanging around their toilets and much other weird behaviour.

That he did nothing effective to deal with Searson in those years hangs over Pell’s reputation today. Parents, parishioners and teachers all wanted the priest gone. Complaints about the priest went back a decade. But beyond dressing Searson down once or twice, Pell appears to have done little….

Pell will also be answering to the commission for his dealings with paedophile priests Billy Baker of North Richmond, Kevin O’Donnell of Oakleigh, and Ronald Pickering, who fled Gardenvale for London where Pell sent him each month the stipend of a retired priest….
http://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2015/nov/24/the-litany-of-child-abuse-by-catholic-priests-that-no-longer-shocks-the-world

Detective told child abuse victim she must have been ‘asking for it’, inquiry hears

Royal commission hearings into Melbourne archdiocese hears police failed to investigate abuse, despite questions about conduct of priest involved

Melissa Davey   Tuesday 24 November 2015

A detective told a teenager who was repeatedly the victim of sexual abuse she must have been wearing a “neon sign” above her head “asking for it”, and that there was not enough evidence to investigate her case.

Julie Stewart, now 40, gave evidence before the royal commission into institutional responses into child sexual abuse on Wednesday that she was sexually abused by a family member between the age of five and eight.

She was then sexually abused by the parish priest at the Holy Family church in Doveton, Victoria, Peter Searson, from when she was in year three, the commission heard….

On Tuesday, the commission heard complaints had been made about Searson from his time as a parish priest at Our Lady of Mount Carmel parish in Sunbury in 1977, to the decade when he was a parish priest at Holy Family parish in Doveton. In 1997 he was charged with unlawful assault of an altar boy, and was released on a good behaviour bond without conviction after pleading guilty….
http://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2015/nov/25/detective-told-child-abuse-victim-she-must-have-been-asking-for-it-inquiry-hears

Ex-trooper: Duggars hid full extent of abuse, Up to 14 priests sexually abused children in Ballarat, commission hears, Paedophile Gerald Ridsdale admits another priest ‘may have seen abuse’

Ex-trooper: Duggars hid full extent of abuse
Doug Stanglin, USA TODAY May 28, 2015

A former Arkansas state trooper claims the Duggar family concealed the extent of their son’s alleged fondling of underage girls when the patriarch of the family turned to him for help disciplining the teenager more than a decade ago, In Touch reports.

The trooper, Hutchens, is currently serving 56 years in an Arkansas prison on child pornography charges. He spoke with In Touch on Wednesday through a local law firm, the publication says….

According to the police report, Jim Bob Duggar, the family patriarch, told police that he brought his son to then-State Trooper Joseph Hutchens, a personal friend, for a “stern talk” after Josh purportedly had gone through a Christian counseling program in 2003.

The report states that Hutchens said there was nothing more to do about the allegations, given that Josh Duggar had gone through a counseling program.

Michelle Duggar, Josh’s mother, later told police that her son did not go through such a program but instead had stayed at a Little Rock home that a family friend was remodeling.

In Touch says that Hutchens’ failure to report the abuse caused the police to halt their 2006 investigation because the statute of limitations had run out….

Hutchens disputes Duggar’s account of the incident, saying Jim Bob Duggar only told him about a single incident of abuse.

He maintains that Jim Bob and Josh Duggar told him Josh had inappropriately touched one girl through her clothing while she slept. They said “it only happened one time,” the former state trooper told In Touch.

Hutchens told In Touch that the Duggars’ original account of the incident played a part in his decision not to report the alleged abuse….
http://www.usatoday.com/story/life/people/2015/05/28/jim-bob-duggar-state-trooper-josh-duggar-fondling-sex-abuse/28058841/

Up to 14 priests sexually abused children in Ballarat, commission hears
Child sex abuse royal commission told there have been at least 130 claims and substantiated complaints of child sexual abuse against the diocese since 1980
Australian Associated Press Thursday 28 May 2015

As many as 14 priests have been found to have sexually abused children in Victoria’s Ballarat diocese, the child sexual abuse royal commission has heard.

Data before the royal commission into institutional responses to child sexual abuse shows there have been at least 130 claims and substantiated complaints of child sexual abuse against the Ballarat diocese since 1980.

Senior counsel assisting the commission Gail Furness said that number included seven claims jointly held against the Christian Brothers.
She said at least 14 priests of the Ballarat diocese have been the subject of one or more claim or substantiated complaint of child sex abuse. Ballarat bishop Paul Bird said he was not certain that all 14 had been substantiated and he thought it was a lower number, maybe 10 or 12….
http://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2015/may/29/up-to-14-priests-sexually-abused-children-in-ballarat-commission-hears

Paedophile Gerald Ridsdale admits another priest ‘may have seen abuse’
Disgraced priest also accepts that he shared a house with George Pell Victoria’s Ballarat diocesein the 1970s and reveals details of the treatment arranged for him by the church   Oliver Milman Thursday 28 May 2015

….Pell, who is now a senior cleric at the Vatican, was an assistant priest in Ballarat from 1973 to 1983.
Paedophile Gerald Ridsdale says he did not tell George Pell about his child abuse

Ridsdale was a Catholic priest who lived in the St Alipius presbytery in Ballarat, a building that had two bedrooms on the top floor. Ridsdale was convicted of committing more than 140 sexual assaults against children as young as four over three decades until the 1980s.

The extent of the Catholic church’s desire to move Ridsdale to other parishes rather than report him to the police was further detailed in the Thursday hearing.

Despite three senior clerics being made aware of Ridsdale’s offending in Mortlake in the 1970s, he was moved to an administrative position in Sydney. Ridsdale told the hearing over a video link from prison that a boy from a prayer group stayed with him during this time.

Ridsdale was then moved to Horsham in Victoria, where he was an assistant priest from 1986 to 1988 and where he committed further offences….
http://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2015/may/28/paedophile-gerald-ridsdale-admits-another-priest-may-have-seen-abuse

Fran’s Day Care
May 20, 2015 case update:
State’s highest criminal court throws out 1992 convictions of sexual assault at Austin day care.
Court declines, however, to find Dan and Fran Keller innocent in case involving claims of satanic abuse.
https://ritualabuse.us/ritualabuse/articles/frans-day-care/