Cardinal George Pell: Vatican treasurer sexual offences trial, Cyril Smith and Knowl View predators free rein in Rochdale, ‘Satanic Christian’ couple

–  Cardinal George Pell: Vatican treasurer faces historical sexual offences trial

– ‘Three Girls’, Cyril Smith and Knowl View – why did predators have free rein in Rochdale?

–  ‘Satanic Christian’ couple in child porn case caught by FBI Cincinnati task force

Cardinal George Pell: Vatican treasurer faces historical sexual offences trial
Australia’s most senior Catholic has said he will plead not guilty to all charges

Melissa Davey
Tue 1 May 2018

Cardinal George Pell, Australia’s most senior Catholic and the controller of the Vatican’s finances in Rome, has pleaded not guilty after he was ordered to stand trial over historical sexual offence allegations.

Pell has always denied the allegations against him, but it was the first time he had been required to enter a formal plea.

Many of the most serious allegations were dismissed in the Melbourne magistrates’ court on Tuesday, with witnesses described as unreliable and lacking credibility. But a number of charges were ordered to go to trial. Further details of the nature of the charges are unable to be reported for legal reasons….

https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2018/may/01/cardinal-george-pell-stand-trial-historical-sexual-offence-charges

‘Three Girls’, Cyril Smith and Knowl View – why did predators have free rein in Rochdale?

The Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse made a damning assessment of institutional attitudes in the town, going back decades.

By Damon Wilkinson 15 APR 2018

….But over the last forty years, the close-knit communities that make up Rochdale have been rocked by a string of child sexual abuse scandals.

‘Three Girls’. Satanic Abuse. Cyril Smith and Knowl View.

At times it seems abusers have had free rein in the town. Why? Has there been a series of conspiracies and cover-ups as some believe?

Or merely a perfect storm of disregard – the toxic mix of paedophile networks, self-serving politicians, small-town poverty and government neglect?

On Thursday a long-awaited report lifted the lid on the widespread sexual abuse carried out by former Rochdale MP Cyril Smith and several other predatory paedophiles.

….Monsters loomed in places where children were supposed to be protected – at Cambridge House, a boys’ hostel, and Knowl View, a residential school for boys with learning and behavioural difficulties, from the 1960s to the 1990s.

Public places became playgrounds for perverts too; the bus station, the Smith Street public toilet – in view of council’s offices – where lads of primary school age were prostituted for just a few pence.

It’s a chilling precedent of the the town’s most recent abuse scandal – in which young girls were molested by much older men under the nose of the authorities.

The Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse did not look at that most recent child grooming scandal. But it made a damning assessment of institutional attitudes in the town, going back decades.

Based on the harrowing testimony of dozens of victims of abuse at Knowl View, Cambridge House and Smith Street toilets, plus evidence from social workers, teachers, politicians and council officers, the IICSA’s findings lay bare how young, often vulnerable victims were let down time and time again by the very people who were supposed to be protecting them.

But how was this allowed to happen?

Certainly Cyril Smith has cast a shadow over the town. 29 stone at his heaviest, he was long celebrated as a political giant.

How distressing must that reputation have been to his victims, who knew what he was really capable of?

Stories have abounded in Rochdale that Smith had local police ‘in his pocket’ – using political influence to quash investigations that he was a serial molester of boys.

In 1970 a Lancashire constabulary probe into Smith was dropped on the advice of the Director of Public Prosecutions, who felt the allegations concerned – which dated from Cambridge House in the mid 60s – were ‘stale’, lacked corroboration, and the ‘character of the complainants would likely render their evidence suspect’.

….But what is abundantly clear from the report is that allegations of sexual assault were simply not taken seriously by those in authority, a culture that permeated the council from top to bottom for years, and allowed Smith and others to repeatedly get away with their sickening crimes.

From social workers and education workers to former council leaders Richard Farnell – suspended by the Labour Party after the report concluded he lied about what he knew about Knowl View – and Paul Rowen, who has been accused of having ‘turned a blind eye’ to the problems at Knowl View, there was a ‘careless and wholly inadequate response’ to the issue.

In regards to Knowl View the inquiry found there was a ‘total lack of urgency on the part of the authorities to address the problem and treat the matters involved for what they were – serious sexual assaults’….

https://www.manchestereveningnews.co.uk/news/greater-manchester-news/three-girls-satanic-abuse-cyril-14529169

‘Satanic Christian’ couple in child porn case caught by FBI Cincinnati task force
Kevin Grasha April 20, 2018

A special agent and police officer working for an FBI Cincinnati task force helped uncover “systematic” sexual abuse of children by a woman and man who claimed they were a “Satanic Christian” couple, court documents show.

The couple sexually abused six children who were in their care and produced multiple images of child pornography, officials said. Federal prosecutors in a news release called the couple’s behavior “depraved” and said it “represented ongoing, systematic and horrific abuse of multiple children.”

The victims ranged in age from 6 months to 14 years.

Sherri Smith, of Osceola, Indiana, and her boyfriend, Joseph Williams, of Watervliet, Michigan, were sentenced this week in federal court in Michigan. Smith was sentenced to 60 years in prison; Williams was sentenced to 80 years.

According to court documents, Williams contacted members of the FBI Cincinnati task force through the website, Motherless.com. Communications then continued through messaging apps.

In a February 2017 message, according to court documents, the person “stated that ‘they’ were a ‘Satanic Christian’ couple and were into ‘older/younger (very younger) and incest.’”

Williams’ home was described as a “child pornography house of horrors.” Among items seized was a reproduction of a young girl’s buttocks and genitals, court documents say.

Both Smith, 48, and Williams, 53, pleaded guilty to federal child pornography charges.
https://www.cincinnati.com/story/news/crime/crime-and-courts/2018/04/20/satanic-christian-couple-child-porn-case-caught-fbi-cincinnati-task-force/536316002/

Westminster child abuse claims: “Watson said “clear intelligence suggesting a powerful paedophile network linked to parliament and No 10”., Sasha Wass QC to lead island sex abuse inquiry, head investigation into alleged cover-up on St Helena and Ascension

Westminster child abuse claims: what do we know?
Police are investigating possible murders linked to Elm Guest House in south-west London after claims of a cover-up
Matthew Weaver Wednesday 19 November 2014

What do we know about politicians and child abuse at Westminster?

A number of allegations have been made. So far the only politician to have been implicated is the Liberal MP Cyril Smith, who died in 2010, but other unnamed politicians were also alleged to have been involved in a Westminster paedophile ring. Smith is alleged to have abused boys at Knowl View residential school in Rochdale and at Elm Guest House, in Barnes in south-west London, in the 1970s and 80s. Greater Manchester police are investigating allegations of abuse by Smith at Knowl View, where Smith was a governor. Other MPs were said to have attended the Elm Guest House. After claims made by the Labour MP Tom Watson in 2012, the Metropolitan police launched Operation Fairbank into child abuse at the guesthouse. Watson said there was “clear intelligence suggesting a powerful paedophile network linked to parliament and No 10”.

A dossier of evidence of an alleged paedophile ring, involving several MPs, including Smith, and other public figures, was handed to the Home Office in 1983, by the Conservative MP Geoffrey Dickens, who died in 1995. The 40-page dossier has since been destroyed or lost, according to a Home Office review. The Crown Prosecution Service has conceded that Smith should have been prosecuted after rejecting claims against him in 1970, 1998 and 1999.

What happened at Elm Guest House?

At least three MPs were reported to have been questioned in 1982 after a police raid on the guesthouse. It was reported at the time that it was being used as a brothel where children as young as 10 were abused. Two children living in the house were taken into care. The guesthouse was reported to have been used as a brothel for two years before it was raided. Officers found whips, chains and ropes. “They catered for every kind of perversion,” an officer told the News of World at the time. The owners of Elm Guest House, Haroon and Carol Kasir, were subsequently convicted of running a brothel….
http://www.theguardian.com/society/2014/nov/19/westminster-child-abuse-claims-elm-guest-house

Sasha Wass QC, prosecutor in Rolf Harris trial, to lead island sex abuse inquiry

Sasha Wass QC, has been brought into to head an investigation into an alleged cover-up on St Helena and Ascension  Paul Peachey crime correspondent  Thursday 20 November 2014

….Sasha Wass QC, has been brought in after a review of child safety on St Helena and Ascension – two tiny and remote islands in the South Atlantic with a combined population of some 5,500 – revealed that a number of paedophiles had escaped prosecution amid claims of police incompetence and corruption.

The Foreign Secretary, Philip Hammond, said yesterday that Ms Wass would travel to the island to investigate a series of claims by whistleblowers against senior police, some brought over from Britain to run the tiny force.

Social workers said they raised concerns about a paedophile officer but were snubbed and told not to rock the boat and “enjoy the view” on St Helena, famous as the island prison of Napoleon.

The announcement by Mr Hammond came a week before the start of what could be a protracted employment tribunal starting in London brought by two of the whistleblowers who say they were hounded off the island. One of them had her home searched by police and was threatened with prosecution for perjury.

They have said that entrenched abuse on the island was worse than the scandal on Pitcairn, another isolated and tiny British territory, where six men jailed for child sex abuse in 2004.

….Experts from the child protection charity, the Lucy Faithfull Foundation, said in a report there had been a “malaise” in the upper ranks of the police force. It criticised its handling of child sex abuse allegations and highlighted how victims were often castigated when coming forward to make claims. It said there were “a number of ‘serial’ offenders, a number of ‘serial’ victims, and a number of women whose children were very much at risk of repeat victimisation.”
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/crime/sasha-wass-qc-prosecutor-in-rolf-harris-trial-to-lead-island-sex-abuse-inquiry-9873772.html

Yazidi sex slaves, Deaf school clergy abuse, Chinese doomsday cult, Female genital mutilation, Knowl View – Cyril Smith, Manchester child sex grooming gangs

– Thousands of Yazidi women sold as sex slaves ‘for theological reasons’, says Isil
– Deaf school group to honor Delavan man who helped expose priest abuse
– Wife axed in suspected ritual killing
– Chinese court sentences cult members to death
– Ancient ritual of female child abuse must end, activists say
– Child abuse inquiry to examine claims John Major’s government failed to act
– Greater Manchester police ‘failed to pursue child abuse gang claims’

Thousands of Yazidi women sold as sex slaves ‘for theological reasons’, says Isil
Article in Islamic State’s English-language online magazine Dabiq not only admits selling Yazidi women into sex slavery but justifies it according to the theological rulings of early Islam

By Richard Spencer 13 Oct 2014

Islamic State jihadists have given detailed theological reasons justifying why they have taken thousands of women from the Iraqi Yazidi minority and sold them into sex slavery.

A new article in the Islamic State English-language online magazine Dabiq not only admits the practice but justifies it according to the theological rulings of early Islam.

“After capture, the Yazidi women and children were then divided according to the Sharia amongst the fighters of the Islamic State who participated,” the article says.

It says there is a difference between women from Muslim sects the jihadists regard as heretical, who can be considered as “apostates”, and the so-called mushrikin – polytheists and pagans.

“Their women could be enslaved, unlike female apostates.”

The women were seized when the group swept across parts of northern Iraq in early August….
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/islamic-state/11158797/Thousands-of-Yazidi-women-sold-as-sex-slaves-for-theological-reasons-says-Isil.html

Deaf school group to honor Delavan man who helped expose priest abuse
By Annysa Johnson of the Journal Sentinel
Oct. 13, 2014

Arthur Budzinski, a deaf man who helped expose one of the Archdiocese of Milwaukee’s most notorious child sexual abusers, the late Father Lawrence Murphy, will be honored Saturday by the Wisconsin School for the Deaf Alumni Association….

Budzinski was among dozens of boys molested by Murphy as children at the archdiocese’s St. John’s School for the Deaf in St. Francis between 1950 and 1974. One church psychologist estimated Murphy may have molested as many as 200 deaf children before he died in 1998.

Budzinski was among a group of alumni who had been pushing the church since the 1970s to remove Murphy and confront its failure to protect children. Their work has been documented by the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel and New York Times and was featured in the 2012 Alex Gibney documentary, “Mea Maxima Culpa: Silence in the House of God.”

He is among the 575 men and women who have filed sex abuse claims in the Archdiocese of Milwaukee bankruptcy alleging they were molested by priests and others connected to the church as children….
http://www.jsonline.com/news/milwaukee/deaf-school-group-to-honor-delavan-man-who-helped-expose-priest-sex-abuse-b99370308z1-279044571.html

Wife axed in suspected ritual killing
12/10/2014 by Staff Reporter

A 35-YEAR-OLD Binga man last Tuesday allegedly chopped off his wife’s head with an axe and hid it in a cardboard box under his bed.

The gruesome murder happened in Siabua village in Binga. Villagers who spoke to NewZimbabwe.com said they suspect Wonder Munsaka committed the crime for ritual purposes….
http://www.newzimbabwe.com/news-18356-Wife+axed+in+ritual+killing/news.aspx

Chinese court sentences cult members to death
5 cult members killed woman in Zhaoyuan McDonald’s
By Tim Hume CNN Oct 13, 2014
(CNN) – Two members of a banned Chinese doomsday cult were sentenced to death Saturday for the brutal murder of a woman in a McDonald’s restaurant in May, Chinese state media reported.

Zhang Fan and Zhang Lidong were among five members of the Church of Almighty God, or “Quannengshen,” tried on murder charges in August over the killing in Zhaoyuan, Shandong Province, the state-run Xinhua agency reported.

Three fellow cult members, Lyu Yingchun, Zhang Hang and Zhang Qiaolian, were sentenced to life, 10 and seven years in prison respectively for their roles in the attack. The four Zhangs were related, according to the report.

A court statement said the victim, a 37-year-old woman named Wu Shuoyan, was attacked after refusing to give her phone number to the group, who were allegedly attempting to recruit new members.

Zhang Fan and Lyu called her an “evil spirit,”….

inked to kidnappings, violence and extortion, the Church of Almighty God has been on a list of 14 banned religious groups issued by China’s Ministry of Public Security since 1995.

Founded in the 1990s in Henan Province, the group believes that Jesus has been reincarnated as Yang Xiangbin, the wife of the group’s founder, Zhao Weishan. The couple fled to the United States in 2000, Xinhua reported.

The group, also known as Eastern Lightning (“Dongfang Shandian”), preaches that the righteous are engaged in an apocalyptic struggle against China’s Communist Party — which it refers to as the “great red dragon.”

Belonging to a tradition of heterodox, quasi-Christian Chinese religious movements, the cult was estimated as having between several hundred thousand and one million members, according to Emily Dunn, an Asian studies academic at the University of Melbourne who wrote her doctoral thesis on the group….

In a statement provided to CNN in June, Hong Kong-based members of the group responsible for its English-language website said it was “very natural” for the Chinese Communist Party to blame the group for the McDonald’s death because the party slandered and then suppressed those that disagreed with it….
http://www.kspr.com/news/nationworld/chinese-court-sentences-cult-members-to-death/21051646_29084212

Ancient ritual of female child abuse must end, activists say
By Katy Migiro, Thomson Reuters Foundation 10/13/2014

Africa can end female genital mutilation (FGM) in 20 years, activists said on Friday as they launched a continent-wide campaign, calling the ancient ritual a form of child abuse aimed at controlling women’s sexuality.

NAIROBI (Thomson Reuters Foundation) – FGM, a practice involving the partial or total removal of the external female genitalia, can cause hemorrhage, shock, complications in childbirth, fistula and death….

“Unless the violence stops, we will not rest.”

Some 30 million African girls are at risk of FGM over the next decade. This includes tens of thousands of girls from diaspora communities in Europe and North America who are often taken abroad to be cut….

In Kenya, 27 percent of women undergo FGM, although it reaches 98 percent in some communities, such as the Somali.
http://www.catholic.org/news/international/africa/story.php?id=57268

Child abuse inquiry to examine claims John Major’s government failed to act

Information about abuse at children’s home frequented by Cyril Smith was allegedly received but not acted upon
Rajeev Syal The Guardian, Tuesday 14 October 2014

The independent inquiry into the apparent failure of politicians and public bodies to investigate historical sex abuse will examine allegations that John Major’s government failed to act when it was informed of widespread abuse at a children’s home frequented by the late paedophile MP Cyril Smith.

The inquiry has been told that in 1995, detailed claims of rape and sexual grooming of pupils at Knowl View school were sent to the office of Gillian Shephard, the then education secretary.

But instead of intervening, senior civil servants referred the dossier back to the council, the Guardian has learned. Shephard, who is now a baroness, confirmed that her office received the file but insists she knew nothing about it.

Paperwork from the Department for Education about the dossier has been passed on to the Home Office institutional abuse enquiry, headed by Fiona Woolf. She is examining allegations that figures in Westminster and Whitehall were implicated in the failure to protect children.

The same paperwork has also been referred to Greater Manchester police, the force that has launched a criminal investigation into an alleged coverup of child abuse at a Knowl View and the decision not to prosecute Smith.

Dozens of former pupils from Knowl View have come forward to say they were abused at the school. Smith, who died in 2010, is alleged to have assaulted several children at the school….
http://www.theguardian.com/society/2014/oct/14/child-abuse-inquiry-claims-john-major-government-refused-act-cyril-smith

Greater Manchester police ‘failed to pursue child abuse gang claims’
Detectives say they identified offenders and victims more than a decade ago but no action was taken, says ITV investigation
Jamie Orme The Guardian, Tuesday 14 October 2014

Child sex grooming gangs have avoided prosecution due to a failure by one of the country’s biggest police forces to pursue claims against them, it has been alleged, threatening to reignite the debate over institutional neglect of young victims of sexual abuse.

Greater Manchester police (GMP), the third largest force in England and Wales, has been accused by serving and former detectives of attempting to cover up failings to tackle gangs of Asian men who were abusing young girls, according to an ITV News investigation.

A former detective constable with the force has come forward to reveal she named and identified offenders and victims more than a decade ago in an internal report but no action was taken.

Responding to the claims, GMP chief constable Sir Peter Fahy told ITV that officers had developed a “mindset” that victims in sexual abuse cases were “unreliable” but, while this had since changed, it was still present within the courts….

The claims against GMP come just months after a damning report found at least 1,400 children were subjected to sexual exploitation in Rotherham between 1997 and 2013, with “blatant” collective failings by the council and South Yorkshire police blamed for the abuse….

Another GMP detective, who has remained anonymous, looked at the issue six years later and revealed there was reluctance by senior officers to investigate sexual abuse claims despite her warnings the problem was spiralling out of control….
http://www.theguardian.com/society/2014/oct/14/greater-manchester-police-failed-pursue-child-abuse-gangs

Jerry Sandusky’s adopted son to detail sexual abuse in Oprah interview, Are Child Sexual Abuse Cases More Common Than We Think?, Ex-senior judge Butler-Sloss to head child sex abuse inquiry, investigation into Knowl View ‘cover-up’

Jerry Sandusky’s adopted son to detail sexual abuse in Oprah interview

Matthew Sandusky previously told investigators that he suffered seven
years of sexual abuse at the hands of his adopted father
On Thursday, he will speak out in his first TV interview since Jerry
Sandusky was convicted and sentenced to 30-60 years in 2012

By Lydia Warren 8 July 2014

‘At bedtime, his ritual began,’ he says in a 30-second preview clip for the show. Ahead of the show’s airing, OWN explained that Matthew would be sharing ‘a deeply personal account of the grooming, methodical control and manipulation he faced as a child’….

Sandusky, who retired in June 30, 1999 as Penn State’s defensive coordinator,  was convicted in 2012 of molesting 10 boys over 15 years, some in the football  team’s showers on campus. The 70-year-old is now serving a 30- to 60-year state prison sentence….

The interview comes two weeks after Pennsylvania’s attorney general released a review of the prosecution but found no evidence of political interference by  then Governor Tom Corbett.

The report, however, did reveal three years of ‘inexplicable delays’ to
prosecute the former Penn State football coach on child abuse charges.
The pedophile’s home was not searched and the report notes that it took a full year, from March 2009 until March 2010, for the office to recommend charging Sandusky when ‘Victim 1’ came forward….
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2685127/Jerry-Sanduskys-adopted-son-sexual-abuse-Oprah-interview.html

The Leonard Lopate Show
Are Child Sexual Abuse Cases More Common Than We Think?
Tuesday, July 08, 2014

Court documents reveal surprising leniency in trials of child molestors, claims Cheit

In the early 1990s, a new narrative emerged that child sex abuse cases were part of a “moral panic” that produced a witch hunt, and the children who testified were not reliable and easily swayed by prosecutors. But Ross Cheit reveals that the issue had not been blown out of proportion at all. His book The Witch Hunt Narrative, shows that child sex abuse convictions were regular occurrences and that the crime occurred far more frequently than many believed.
http://www.wnyc.org/story/behind-narrative-child-sex-abuse-convictions/

Ex-senior judge Butler-Sloss to head child sex abuse inquiry 8 July 2014

Retired senior judge Elizabeth Butler-Sloss has been named as the chairwoman of a wide-ranging review into historical child sex abuse. The inquiry will examine how state institutions handled their duty of care to protect children from paedophiles…..

It comes after Mark Sedwill, the Home Office’s top civil servant, answered MPs’ questions about historical child abuse allegations. He was asked by the Commons Home Affairs Select Committee how his department lost or destroyed 114 files that could have shed light on alleged abuse. Mark Sedwill: “I am concerned about all material that we can’t find” Mr Sedwill told the committee the files, which relate to the 1980s and 1990s, were discovered missing after an expert investigator was drafted in to look into the Home Office’s handling of paedophile allegations in February last year.

He said the investigator discovered they were missing after he trawled a database of 750,000 files using search terms including “child abuse”, “paedophilia” and “PIE”, an anagram for the Paedophile Information Exchange….

Lady Butler-Sloss’s broader, independent inquiry, will look at how seriously public bodies and other important institutions have taken their duty of care to protect children from sexual abuse.

The probe aims to address public concern over failings exposed by recent child sex abuse cases involving celebrities such as Jimmy Savile and Rolf Harris…. http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-politics-28203914

Police announce wider investigation into Knowl View ‘cover-up’  7 July 2014

Police have said there will be a wider investigation into an alleged cover-up  of sexual abuse claims at a school linked to the late MP Cyril Smith. Greater Manchester Police (GMP) has been looking at claims of abuse at Knowl View residential school for boys in Rochdale from the 1970s….

The Crown Prosecution Service has also released letters detailing why Cyril Smith was not prosecuted in 1998 and 1999, however much of the detail was released in 2012. On both occasions the files were passed to prosecutors but no charges were brought. Seven men have alleged they were abused by the former Rochdale MP at a residential school in Greater Manchester, police have said. Greater Manchester Police has said the men claimed they were abused by Smith at Knowl View in Rochdale in the 1970s and 1980s. Smith’s family said he had always denied the abuse claims. http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-manchester-28203463