Pennsylvania Catholic diocese covered up decades worth of child abuse, grand jury says, Pell blames bishop for Australia child abuse cover-up

has graphic descriptions of abuse

Pennsylvania Catholic diocese covered up decades worth of child abuse, grand jury says
A new grand jury report claims two Roman Catholic bishops in a central Pennsylvania diocese helped cover up the sexual abuse of hundreds of children by over 50 priests or religious leaders over a 40-year period.
by Steve Esack and Laurie Mason Schroeder
March 1, 2016

From Boston to Philadelphia to the United Nations, the Catholic Church has been accused of covering up and protecting priests and other religious leaders who sexually abused children.

Now add a slice of western Pennsylvania to the list.

A grand jury report released Tuesday accuses two bishops who ran the Roman Catholic Diocese of Altoona-Johnstown of allowing at least 50 priests and other religious leaders to sexually abuse hundreds of children for decades.

“These predators desecrated a sacred trust and preyed upon their victims … where they should have felt most safe,” state Attorney General Kathleen Kane said.

The report says the late Bishop James Hogan and former Bishop Joseph Adamec kept filing cabinets with 115,042 secret documents detailing victims’ abuse claims. It tells how church officials ordered priests to undergo treatment while transferring them to other parishes, or intervened when local and state police made inquiries starting in the mid-1960s.

The report also outlines a diocesan “payout chart” of $10,000 for victims fondled over their clothes, and up to $175,000 for victims of forced sodomy or intercourse.

The grand jury report uses those documents to explain in extraordinary detail how one priest “hypnotized” children by rubbing his genitals on their feet, another priest choked boys if they refused his advances at his cabin in the woods, and another priest plied a child with alcohol and then raped him until he bled….

After his own 2002 investigation, Northampton County District Attorney John Morganelli was critical of the way the church handled abuse claims before Cullen was installed as bishop in 1998.

Before that, he said, the diocese was focused more on the priest than on the alleged victims.

“Even when priests admitted sexual abuse with minors, they were often sent to treatment centers and continued to function as priests,” Morganelli said in a 2002 report. “A number of the priests had multiple incidents involving more than one victim.”

Like Martin, Morganelli found no basis for criminal charges against church officials who oversaw priests. Also like Martin, he noted the diocese has created a policy requiring the immediate review of allegations against priests and the instant removal of those priests if the allegations are deemed credible….

Every Catholic community — including the Allentown Diocese — has its hidden information.

Such secrets go back centuries to the mid-1600s or early 1700s, when the Vatican created Canon Law 489. It is a legal mechanism that allows Catholic religious orders to keep from public view a trove of documents, including personnel and financial files, that only the local bishop and his trusted few could access, according to testimony from sex-abuse prosecutions and lawsuits that rocked the Los Angeles Archdiocese in 2013.

In 2014, the United Nations accused the Vatican of “systematically” protecting predator priests from being brought to justice for the sexual “torture” of tens of thousands of children around the globe.

In 2012, some of the Philadelphia Archdiocese’s secrets came to light when a 1994 memo was uncovered that showed the archdiocese’s top clergy — including Cardinal Anthony Bevilacqua and Bishop Edward Cullen, who later headed the Allentown Diocese — ordered the shredding of a list of 35 priests suspected of sexually abusing children….
http://www.mcall.com/news/breaking/mc-pa-catholic-priest-abuse-johnstown-altoona-20160301-story.html

Pell blames bishop for Australia child abuse cover-up
1 March 2016

Cardinal George Pell says he was deceived by a senior clergyman over the activities of a paedophile priest.

Australia’s most senior Catholic is presenting evidence from Rome via video link over several days to an Australian Royal Commission into child sex abuse.

On Tuesday Cardinal Pell was questioned about paedophile Gerald Ridsdale, a priest who was repeatedly moved between parishes in the 1970s and 80s.

He accepted no responsibility for the failure to report Ridsdale’s abuse….

Cardinal Pell repeatedly criticised Ronald Mulkearns, who was bishop of Ballarat between 1971 and 1997, for withholding information about Ridsdale.

Cardinal Pell was one of the consultors who gave advice to Bishop Mulkearns from 1977 to 1984.

Particular attention was paid to a meeting of the consultors that Cardinal Pell attended in 1982, where a decision was taken to move Ridsdale for a sixth time.

Counsel assisting the commissioner, Gail Furness, said it was “implausible” that Cardinal Pell and other priests at the meeting did not know the reason for Ridsdale’s relocation.

Cardinal Pell responded: “That is complete nonsense.”….

He said that responsibility for Ridsdale’s relocation lay “overwhelmingly with the bishop”, who used “gentle and euphemistic language” to disguise the truth of Risdale’s actions.

“I can’t nominate another bishop whose actions are so grave and inexplicable … His repeated refusal to act is, I think, absolutely extraordinary,” Cardinal Pell said.

The cardinal provoked gasps from survivors earlier in testimony when he said the news of Ridsdale’s abuse was “a sad story and it wasn’t of much interest to me”.

“The suffering, of course, was real and I very much regret that but I had no reason to turn my mind to the extent of the evils that Ridsdale had perpetrated,” he said….

Cardinal Pell, who is not accused of sexual abuse, denied knowing about paedophile priests who were active in the Ballarat diocese during his time there as a priest in the 1970s and 1980s.

The Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sex Abuse is holding its second round of inquiries into child sex abuse that occurred in the city of Ballarat in Victoria state.

Cardinal Pell was a priest in Ballarat and lived in a seminary with a notorious paedophile priest, Gerald Ridsdale, in the early 1970s.

Ridsdale committed more than 130 offences against young boys while working as a chaplain at Ballarat’s St Alipius school between the 1960s and the 1980s….
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-australia-35692810

Milwaukee archdiocese settles with clergy abuse survivors for $21 million, Edward Heath abuse claims: Five forces investigating ex-PM

Milwaukee archdiocese settles with clergy abuse survivors for $21 million
Aug. 4, 2015 By SCOTT BAUER, Associated Press

MADISON, Wis. (AP) — The Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Milwaukee said Tuesday that it will pay $21 million to more than 300 victims of clergy abuse in a settlement that would end a four-year bankruptcy proceeding.

The proposed deal, which will be part of a reorganization plan submitted to a bankruptcy court later this month, was to be reviewed by a judge overseeing the case at a Nov. 9 hearing. Archbishop Jerome Listecki called the settlement a “new Pentecost,” but an attorney for the victims, along with advocates for those abused by clergy, decried the settlement as a paltry amount.

Milwaukee is one of 12 Roman Catholic dioceses nationwide to file for bankruptcy in the past decade over a flood of abuse claims. The settlement announced Tuesday is among the smallest per-victim payments yet in these cases. The actual amount each victim receives will be determined by an appointee of the bankruptcy court….
http://www.usnews.com/news/us/articles/2015/08/04/apnewsbreak-milwaukee-archdiocese-settles-for-21-million

Edward Heath abuse claims: Five forces investigating ex-PM
August 7, 2015

Edward Heath, who was prime minister from 1970 to 1974, died in 2005

Five police forces are investigating claims of historical child sexual abuse involving former PM Sir Edward Heath.

The Met, Wiltshire, Kent, Jersey and Hampshire forces are conducting separate inquiries into the late MP.

The BBC understands Wiltshire Police halted an inquiry into a brothel keeper in the 1990s after she said Sir Edward was involved in child sexual abuse.

The Sir Edward Heath Charitable Foundation said it was confident he would be cleared of any wrongdoing.
‘Case dropped’

On Tuesday night, Hampshire became the fifth force to say it was investigating “allegations”, but gave no further details.

The BBC’s home affairs correspondent Dominic Casciani says claims made by the brothel keeper, that Sir Edward was a client, meant that she had left herself open to prosecution.

However, the case against her was allegedly discontinued between 1990 and 1995….

Operation Midland: The BBC understands Sir Edward is being looked at as part of the operation examining claims that boys were abused by a group of powerful men at locations across southern England and in London in the 1970s and 1980s. It has focused on the Dolphin Square estate in Pimlico, south-west London.
Operation Whistle: The States of Jersey Police has confirmed Sir Edward forms part of its investigation into historical allegations of abuse. It says some of the allegations relate to abuse “within institutions or by people of public prominence”.
Operation Hydrant: A nationally co-ordinated exercise to collate all allegations of historical abuse involving high profile-figures. The operation has been notified of Sir Edward being named in connection with an allegation of sexual assault in the 1960s….

http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-33770021

Spanish paedophile pardoned in Morocco arrested in Spain, How girls fall into clutches of pimps, Bishop apologises over claims of decades of abuse at Catholic boarding school

Spanish paedophile pardoned in Morocco arrested in Spain  8/5/13
MADRID (Reuters) – Spanish police have arrested a convicted paedophile who was pardoned by Morocco’s King Mohamed VI last week, a source at Spain’s Interior Ministry said on Monday.

Daniel Galvan Vina, who was serving a 30-year sentence in Morocco and was among 48 jailed Spaniards pardoned at the request of Spain’s King Juan Carlos, was arrested in the south-eastern region of Murcia.

He will be taken to Madrid where one of Spain’s top courts will handle the judicial proceedings, according to the source.

Morocco’s interior ministry confirmed in a statement, Galvan has been arrested in Murcia, southern Spain, after the North African kingdom had issued an international arrest warrant against him.

The pardon was revoked by King Mohamed VI on Sunday following a protest in front of parliament on Friday over the decision to release Galvan, who had raped and filmed at least 11 children aged four to 15.

The king has promised an investigation into Galvan’s release and said he did not know the gravity of the paedophile’s offences when the royal pardon was issued….
http://news.yahoo.com/spanish-paedophile-pardoned-morocco-arrested-spain-165729292.html

How girls fall into clutches of pimps
Henry K. Lee Saturday, August 3, 2013
The 15-year-old girl, a chronic runaway from an Oakland group home, could not escape the clutches of her alleged pimp in Hayward. In response to his demands, the young prostitute insisted in text messages that she was getting “dates” from the online ad he had posted but apologized for not making him any money.

After he dropped her off at the La Quinta Inn & Suites on Hesperian Boulevard last week, the girl solicited an undercover police officer for sex – and was promptly arrested as part of a nationwide FBI-led crackdown on child prostitution. Authorities in the Bay Area rescued 11 other children who were allegedly being forced to work as prostitutes and arrested 21 suspected pimps.

The 15-year-old’s alleged pimp…. were charged by Alameda County prosecutors with human trafficking of a minor for commercial sex.

Although details of the girl’s case are sealed because of her age, the 15-year-old shared one trait with many other exploited children – she had run away from a foster care or group home.

Of the children reported missing who are likely sex trafficking victims, 60 percent were in foster care or group homes, according to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children.

It isn’t surprising that the majority of child victims come out of such settings – they may have been born into a dysfunctional environment and endured instability all their young lives, said Detective Angela Irizarry of the Hayward Police Department….
http://www.sfgate.com/crime/article/How-girls-fall-into-clutches-of-pimps-4705407.php

Bishop apologises over claims of decades of abuse at Catholic boarding school
ONE of Scotland’ s most senior Catholic clerics has apologised for decades of physical and sexual abuse of pupils at a church boarding school.
By Auslan Cramb, Scottish Correspondent
04 Aug 2013

The Rt Rev Hugh Gilbert, Bishop of Aberdeen, expressed his “horror and shame” during a mass at Fort Augustus and said abuse by monks at the former Fort Augustus Abbey School was a terrible tale of broken trust and integrity.

His statement followed a television documentary that found evidence of physical and sexual abuse by monks at the Highland school, and its prep school in East Lothian.

The Benedictine order that ran the schools, has already apologised, but Bishop Gilbert’s address was the first time a senior cleric had spoken publicly about abuse at the abbey school, which closed in 1998….

Alleged victims who attended the school told a BBC Scotland programme they were molested and beaten by monks over a period of three decades from the 1950s.

Five men claimed they were raped or sexually abused by Father Aidan Duggan, an Australian monk who taught at Carlekemp, the East Lothian prep school, and Fort Augustus between 1953 and 1974….
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/scotland/10221629/Bishop-apologises-over-claims-of-decades-of-abuse-at-Catholic-boarding-school.html