New York joined more than a dozen states this year in significantly extending statutes of limitations for filing lawsuits over sexual abuse.
August 14, 2019 Comments Off on New York joined more than a dozen states this year in significantly extending statutes of limitations for filing lawsuits over sexual abuse.
He Says a Priest Abused Him. 50 Years Later, He Can Now Sue.
A new law has created a “look-back window,” during which claims that had passed the statute of limitations can be revived.
By Rick Rojas Aug. 13, 2019
Major institutions across New York State, from the Catholic Church to the Boy Scouts of America to elite private schools, are bracing for a deluge of lawsuits now that adults who said they were sexually abused as children will be entitled to pursue formal legal action.
New York joined more than a dozen states this year in significantly extending statutes of limitations for filing lawsuits over sexual abuse. Previously, the state had required that such suits be filed before a victim’s 23rd birthday.
Under the new law in New York, the Child Victims Act, which was approved by the Legislature in January, accusers will be able to sue until they are 55.
The new law includes a one-year period, known as a look-back window, that revives cases that had expired, in many instances decades ago, under previous statutes of limitations.
The one-year period begins on Wednesday, and the impact could cause major financial stress for many institutions in New York, including the state’s eight Catholic dioceses, which have faced a series of scandals involving abuse by clergy….
In lobbying for the new law, advocates for abuse victims have highlighted the toll of sex abuse on children, and the decades it can often take before they are able to speak up about it, if they can at all.
It took Charlie d’Estries years to process the sexual encounters that he said he remembered having with a priest as a boy. They were naked together, as he recounted it, and their relationship became sexual. Still, for decades, Mr. d’Estries, 64, did not describe it as abuse, and refused to see himself as a victim.
But last year, when Mr. d’Estries returned to his Catholic school on Long Island for a reunion, a nun he had known as a student offhandedly called him “Billy’s buddy,” a reference to the priest.
In a moment, he said, everything shifted. He was deeply shaken. He realized he had been abused. He was a victim. And he wanted justice, he said.
But he discovered he could not sue until the law changed….
This year, far more than in past years, legislatures in nearly 40 states introduced proposals to expand statutes of limitations. New laws were enacted in 18 states and the District of Columbia. New Jersey was among them, passing a law that includes a two-year look-back window that opens later this year.
“The significance of it is a switch in the balance of power,” said Marci A. Hamilton, the chief executive of Child U.S.A., a think tank focused on child protection at the University of Pennsylvania. “There was a severe imbalance of power that led to their abuse in the first place. The culture shut them out of the legal system until now. For them, this is validation.”….
Lawmakers in New York had tried and failed for well over a decade to expand the state’s statutes of limitations, which were regarded as among the most restrictive in the country. “We used to call New York a ‘shut down state,’” Mr. Amala said.
Each time, the law’s supporters were thwarted in the Legislature by opposition from the Catholic Church, the Boy Scouts, Orthodox Jewish groups and the insurance industry.
In years of jostling over the legislation, the look-back window had been the single most disputed element.
The New York Catholic Conference said before the law passed that the look-back window would “force institutions to defend alleged conduct decades ago about which they have no knowledge and in which they had no role.” (Many of the clergy members named as credibly accused of abuse are dead, infirm or no longer affiliated with the church.)
The State Assembly had passed the legislation multiple times, but before this year, the Senate never took it up for a vote. The political calculus in New York changed, however, after Democrats won control of the Senate in November…..
In future cases, the Child Victims Act allows prosecutors several more years to bring criminal charges, and decades more to victims weighing lawsuits. But advocates and lawyers stressed that the new law does not apply retroactively, meaning that virtually every abuse survivor older than 23 must bring any claims through the look-back window.
In the Rockefeller University case, the endocrinologist, Dr. Reginald Archibald, who died in 2007, is accused of abusing scores of boys and teenagers….
The Rockefeller University Hospital, through a spokesman, declined to comment. In a statement last year, the hospital acknowledged reports of “certain inappropriate conduct during patient examinations,” and sent a letter alerting about 1,000 former patients to the allegations.
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/13/nyregion/child-victims-act-lawsuit.html
Bill Cosby’s accuser has her dramatic, detailed day in court, How a Priest Got Away With the Murder of a Nun for 2 Decades, East Coast Child and Ritual Abuse Conference in Connecticut – August 2017
June 7, 2017 Comments Off on Bill Cosby’s accuser has her dramatic, detailed day in court, How a Priest Got Away With the Murder of a Nun for 2 Decades, East Coast Child and Ritual Abuse Conference in Connecticut – August 2017
describes violence
– Bill Cosby’s accuser has her dramatic, detailed day in court
– The Other ‘Keepers’: How a Priest Got Away With the Murder of a Nun for 2 Decades
“She was later found strangled and stabbed more than 30 times, including nine wounds across her chest in the shape of an inverted cross, a satanic symbol. She was partially covered in an altar cloth, which had absorbed much of her blood. Blood was also smeared across her forehead as if her last rights had been administered.”
– East Coast Child and Ritual Abuse Conference in Connecticut – August 2017 https://ritualabuse.us/smart-conference/
Bill Cosby’s accuser has her dramatic, detailed day in court
Steven Zeitchik June 6, 2017
In the nearly three years since women began stepping forward en masse to accuse Bill Cosby of sexual assault, none ever achieved what most abuse victims wish for: a day in court. No longer.
Andrea Constand took the witness stand at the Cosby trial Tuesday and faced off against her alleged attacker in a dramatic moment that has long been called for by survivors of sexual violence.
With that, the 44-year-old massage therapist from Toronto embarked on an emotional and detailed account of a friendship that began when she met Cosby while running operations for the women’s basketball team at Philadelphia’s Temple University in 2002, and continued through half a dozen dinners and social engagements in which he mentored her for a sports broadcasting career, till the night in January 2004 when she says he gave her with three pills and penetrated her with his fingers.
The testimony offered a full account, under oath, of a narrative similar to what other women had expressed only in scattered op-eds and TV appearances, often about encounters dating back many decades.?
Cosby is charged with three counts of aggravated indecent assault against Constand and could face a decade in jail if he’s found guilty. But for a moment in a suburban courthouse Tuesday afternoon, legal outcomes took a back seat to the importance of testimony, as a woman offered a first-person lens onto the evolving dynamic between a mega-celebrity and his alleged sexual assault victim.
“He was a Temple friend, somebody I trusted, a mentor, and somewhat of an older figure to me,” Constand said of the entertainer, who served as a trustee at the Pennsylvania school.After meeting Constand via a mutual friend, Cosby started calling her on her university-issued cellphone about issues such as renovations to the team’s facilities. Constand described the ways Cosby would soon come to inquire about her personal life and eventually act like a patron. He would introduce her to important people….
But Constand also recounted details that raised red flags, at least in retrospect. In an Ontario lilt, she told of the time he invited her to his show at Foxwoods Resort Casino in Connecticut and asked her to his room to share “baked goods,” then lay back on the bed and brushed his knee against her leg. Or a series of awkward dinners, in which Cosby would invite her to his mansion and have the chef prepare a meal that she would then eat by herself, with Cosby popping in only occasionally to check on her.
Constand appeared upbeat and relaxed as she entered the courtroom, and increasingly serious and impassioned as her testimony wore on. By the time she got to the January 2004 night, the tension had become almost cinematic.
“What are they — are they natural? Are they herbal?” she recalled saying when Cosby handed her three blue pills after a dinner at his home.
“He said ‘put them down [your throat]. They’re your friends; they’ll take the edge off,’” she said.
Constand was dubious. So many, she asked? She says he nodded and she told Cosby she trusted him — in their conversations about basketball they had discussed herbal supplements — and swallowed them all.
Things soon went awry, she testified: “I began slurring my words. I told Mr. Cosby I had trouble seeing him — that I could see two of him. My mouth was very cottony.” She said stood up and found that her legs could barely support her.
He led her to the couch, helped her lie down and provided a pillow for support, and she lost consciousness, she testified. An indeterminate amount of time later, she said, she was jolted awake by physical contact: “I felt Mr. Cosby’s hands groping my breasts under my shirt. I also felt his hand inside my vagina moving in and out. I felt him take my hand and place it on his penis and move it back and forth.”
Why didn’t she stop him? a prosecutor asked.
“I wasn’t able to.”
Push him away?
“In my head I was trying to get my hands to move or my legs to move but I was frozen and those messages didn’t get there.”
She said she could only retreat into her own mind. “I wanted it to stop,” she said on the stand, her voice cracking. “I felt really humiliated. I just wanted to go home.”Constand said she was finally was able to summon the strength at about 5 a.m. She rose and prepared to walk out the door, back to her car. She said Cosby was waiting for her in the kitchen, and offered her a muffin and tea. She had a few bites and sips, then left…..
http://www.latimes.com/nation/la-na-billcosby-trial-day-2-story.html
The Other ‘Keepers’: How a Priest Got Away With the Murder of a Nun for 2 Decades
by Sal Bono June 6, 2017
As Netflix spotlights the mysterious 1970 murder of Sister Cathy Cesnik in The Keepers, the docuseries has fueled fresh interest in the savage killing of another nun a decade later.
There are striking similarities between the murder of Sister Cathy in Baltimore and the 1980 killing of Sister Margaret Ann Pahl in Ohio: Both slain nuns, decades of unanswered questions, allegations of a cover-up by authorities in a staunch Catholic community — and a priest at the center of it all.
The Keepers, which follows citizen sleuths trying to crack the unsolved murder of Sister Cathy, suggests the chaplain of Archbishop Keough High School — Father A. Joseph Maskell — was involved in the murder after at least one student confided to the nun that he was sexually abusing her.
Neither sexual abuse nor murder charges were ever brought against him, leading his former students to speculate whether there had been a cover-up by authorities. A judge refused to re-open the case years later since the statute of limitations had passed and Maskell passed away in 2001….
The Murder of Sister Margaret Ann Pahl
On April 5, 1980, the day before Sister Pahl was to celebrate her 72nd birthday, she was found murdered in the chapel of Toledo Mercy Hospital in Toledo, Ohio.
She had ministered over the sick and terminally ill inside the hospital, and worked as the chapel’s caretaker. On the morning of her death, she was inside the chapel preparing for the following day’s Easter services.
She was later found strangled and stabbed more than 30 times, including nine wounds across her chest in the shape of an inverted cross, a satanic symbol. She was partially covered in an altar cloth, which had absorbed much of her blood. Blood was also smeared across her forehead as if her last rights had been administered.
The grisly scene was made to look like a satanic ritual. It also appeared as if she’d been sexually assaulted, although that allegation remains unclear.
Two police officers were inside the hospital settling in for breakfast when a nurse came running to them frantic about the nun’s bloodied body. As the officers raced to the chapel, so did two chaplains at the hospital, Reverend Jerome Swiatecki and Father Gerald Robinson.
The Investigation
As the police kicked off their investigation, they questioned hundreds of hospital staffers, other Sisters of Mercy, the Catholic clerics who worked with her, as well as Father Robinson.
Robinson, who presided over Sister Pahl’s funeral, was questioned by police after they found a letter opener in his desk. At the time, the news of the sword-shaped letter opener, which authorities say fit the size of some of the stab wounds, was never made public.
Cops also reported he’d appeared cold and aloof after seeing the nun’s slain body.
The priest, who grew up in Toledo, was viewed as a pillar of the community….
The priest was never charged after police cited insufficient evidence, and Yonke, as well as multiple news outlets, speculated about a possible cover-up during the investigation.
“The police chief was a devout Catholic and very influential,” Yonke said. “There was pressure applied not to charge him.”….
As the Catholic Church came under fire in the early 2000s over rampant claims of abuse at the hands of priests, a woman wrote a letter to the Toledo dioceses in 2003 saying that she had been subjected to ritualized sex acts by members of clergy from the city.
In her letter, which was later passed to police, the woman named Father Gerald Robinson as one of her abusers.
“In that letter… Father Robinson was mentioned. We decided to reopen the case then,” Toledo Police Detective Steve Forrester told Inside Edition in 2004. “We re-interviewed all the old witnesses from 1980.”
By analyzing blood transfer patterns, an obscure new technology seldom used at the time, they could study the patterns of blood from objects when they are laid down.
The technology sparked outrage with Robinson’s lawyer, John B. Thebes, who told The New York Times in 2004: “It’s not DNA. It’s not blood spatter, which is blood you find on walls or other surfaces. It’s an imprint of some kind. Something happened that changed the nature of this case, and I don’t know what it is.”
Police also determined that the sword-like letter opener discovered in Robinson’s desk was the murder weapon.
In 2004, Robinson, who lived next door to the police station, was arrested and charged with the 1980 murder.
The Toledo dioceses banned Robinson from performing any priest activities and duties following his arrest. They also refused to pay any of his legal expenses….
Robinson was convicted of murder and sentenced to 15 years to life in prison. He continued to claim innocence, though he failed in a series of appeals….
http://www.insideedition.com/headlines/23706-the-other-keepers-how-a-priest-got-away-with-the-murder-of-a-nun-for
East Coast Child and Ritual Abuse Conference in Connecticut – August 2017
August 11 – 13, 2017
Special low income prices and reduced rates available before June 10, 2017
DoubleTree Hotel near Bradley International Airport Windsor Locks, CT
Internet conference information: https://ritualabuse.us/smart-conference/
Please write smartnews@aol.com for more information.
For those looking for more information about the strong accuracy and validity of ritual abuse research: http://childabusewiki.org/index.php?title=Ritual_Abuse
Ritual abuse exists all over the world. There have been reports, journal articles, web pages and criminal convictions of crimes against children and adults. https://ritualabuse.us/ritualabuse/
Has additional articles and research about child and ritual abuse.
Articles by Neil Brick http://neilbrick.com
Satanic Cult Sex Offender Jailed 18 Years, Priest removed for sex abuse works at pregnancy center for teens
May 12, 2016 Comments Off on Satanic Cult Sex Offender Jailed 18 Years, Priest removed for sex abuse works at pregnancy center for teens
Malawi: Satanic Cult Sex Offender Jailed 18 Years – Student Tells Malawi Court He Indulged in Occult
9 May 2016 Nyasa Times (Leeds)
By Maurice Nkawihe
There were shocking revelations when Mzuzu Second Grade Magistrate convicted and imposed jail term on Chibavi Community Day Secondary student Peter Mhango for repeatedly defiling an eight-year-old girl.
Mhango was sentenced to 18 years imprisonment with hard labour on Wednesday last week, but shocked the court when he revealed that he was a member of a Satanic sex cult and that his under-dealings were a fulfillment of a covenant with the devil.
It was revealed in court that Mhango had been defiling the girl, who happen to be a relation, on several occasions between 2015 and 2016….
The victim’s friend then reported to her grandmother and revealed that Mhango had been having cult sex sessions with her friend (the victim). When the victim was quizzed on the issue she admitted. The matter was reported to Luwinga Police who referred the victim to Mzuzu Central Hospital. Medical report indicated defilement has been taking place.
Mhango voluntarily pleaded guilty to the charge.
However, it was during mitigation that Mhango revealed that he had been defiling the victim in order to feed the spiritual demon which has been tormenting him since he was in standard five.
He said defiling children was a fulfillment of the covenant he made when he joined the Satanic Cult….
http://allafrica.com/stories/201605100764.html
Priest removed for sex abuse works at pregnancy center for teens
Niraj Warikoo, Detroit Free Press May 9, 2016
Catholic priest removed in 2009 from two churches amid allegations he abused teen is now a director at Eastpointe center for teens that he cofounded
A Catholic priest removed from churches in metro Detroit after he was accused of sexually abusing a teenager is now the development director of a new Catholic center in Eastpointe he cofounded that counsels pregnant teenagers, prompting calls for him to step down.
The Rev. Kenneth Kaucheck, 69, was banned from public ministry by the Archdiocese of Detroit in 2009 after church officials determined he had sexual misconduct in the 1970s with a 16-year-old girl he was counseling as a priest.
http://www.freep.com/story/news/local/michigan/macomb/2016/05/08/priest-removed-sex-abuse-works-teens-pregnancy-center/83871114/
Catholic Church saves $62 million on sexual abuse claims, Priest warned police officer to drop investigation or lose job, child abuse hearing told, Lord Janner: Judge rules dementia sufferer is unfit to plead in child sex abuse trial
December 8, 2015 Comments Off on Catholic Church saves $62 million on sexual abuse claims, Priest warned police officer to drop investigation or lose job, child abuse hearing told, Lord Janner: Judge rules dementia sufferer is unfit to plead in child sex abuse trial
Catholic Church saves $62 million on sexual abuse claims
The Catholic Church avoided paying up to $62 million in compensation to sexual abuse victims by creating the controversial Melbourne Response program, which capped payments at $50,000 for each victim.
Internal documents also show church leaders ordered written records about sex abuse be “kept to a minimum” to avoid losing lawsuits, and hired one of the country’s best spin doctors in a bid to prepare for the scandal in the early 1990s….
In August 1996, Archbishop Pell discussed the idea of creating a special trust to “avoid an open-ended call on funding for counselling fees” for abuse victims, to only days later canvass suggestions of how the church could financially support three paedophile priests set to be released from prison.
Meetings also describe plans for multimillion-dollar property deals and commissioning a new painting of the archbishop, while senior leaders were also expressing concern about “being seen to apply the maximum penalty” against paedophile priests, the protection of church assets and their own exposure to liability in sexual abuse lawsuits…. http://www.theage.com.au/victoria/catholic-church-saves-62-million-on-sexual-abuse-claims-20151205-glgavf.html
Priest warned police officer to drop investigation or lose job, child abuse hearing told
Father Peter Taffe ‘told officer Denis Ryan he would be out of a job’ if he pursued an investigation into the Mildura parish priest Monsignor John Day
Australian Associated Press Sunday 6 December 2015
A Victorian priest warned a police officer to drop his investigation into a colleague over child abuse allegations, an inquiry has heard.
Father Peter Taffe told the police officer he would be out of a job if he pursued an investigation into the Mildura parish priest Monsignor John Day, the child abuse royal commission was told.
Senior counsel assisting the commission, Gail Furness SC, said 140 people had made child sex abuse claims against priests and others in religious orders in the diocese of Ballarat since 1980. Ninety per cent of the claims were against seven priests, including 78 against Gerald Francis Ridsdale and 15 against Day.
Furness said a man had told Mildura assistant priest Taffe in January 1972 his son had been abused by Day. She said Taffe’s first words had been: “I thought he was over all this.”
A former Mildura police officer, Denis Ryan, had already been investigating complaints against Day, she said, and would tell the commission Taffe had warned him in December 1971: “Drop the inquiry into Monsignor Day or you’ll be out of a job.”
Ryan wrote to then Ballarat bishop Ronald Mulkearns setting out allegations from seven complainants. The inquiry was told Mulkearns had said he had been assured police were satisfied there was no substance to the charges, and it was impossible to move Day out of Mildura.
“Any such move would be tantamount to a public declaration that I consider him guilty,” he said….
Furness said Mulkearns had told another Mortlake victim’s mother: “How am I to take the word of a child over one of my priests?” http://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2015/dec/07/priest-warned-police-officer-to-drop-investigation-or-lose-job-child-abuse-hearing-told
Lord Janner: Judge rules dementia sufferer is unfit to plead in child sex abuse trial
Court hearing on 87-year-old peer’s mental health is told former Labour grandee is suffering from ‘advanced and disabling’ dementia
By David Barrett, Home Affairs Correspondent
07 Dec 2015
Lord Janner has been declared unfit to plead in a criminal trial over a range of sex abuse charges dating back 50 years, a senior judge has ruled.
In a hearing at the Old Bailey on the 87-year-old’s mental health, Mr Justice Openshaw said the peer was suffering from “advanced and disabling” dementia.
He detailed reports from four leading psychiatrists and psychologists which had been commissioned by both prosecution and defence – all of which agreed the peer’s mental health was very poor. Janner did not attend the latest court hearing….
Janner is accused of 15 counts of indecent assault and seven counts of a separate sexual offence against a total of nine alleged victims in the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s.
Twenty-one of the offences relate to complainants who were aged 16 or under at the time…. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/law-and-order/12036837/Lord-Janner-Judge-rules-dementia-sufferer-is-unfit-to-plead-in-child-sex-abuse-trial.html
Two of Bill Cosby’s accusers join push to have entire deposition unsealed, Vatican delays trial of pope’s ex-diplomat accused of child porn, pedophilia, Only Half of Abused Children Evaluated for Occult Fracture
July 14, 2015 Comments Off on Two of Bill Cosby’s accusers join push to have entire deposition unsealed, Vatican delays trial of pope’s ex-diplomat accused of child porn, pedophilia, Only Half of Abused Children Evaluated for Occult Fracture
Two of Bill Cosby’s accusers join push to have entire deposition unsealed
Beth Ferrier and Rebecca Lynn Neal, ‘Jane Does’ in the 2005 case, join motion as Neal also spoke out against National Enquirer for pulling an interview with her
Nicky Woolf
Monday 13 July 2015
Two more of Bill Cosby’s accusers have joined a motion to have the whole of a deposition unsealed from a 2005 case in which the former comedian testified to having given a woman the sedative quaaludes before having sex with her.
Bill Cosby’s defenders split after revelation comedian drugged women
One of them has also attacked the National Enquirer for allegedly suppressing a 2005 interview with her in exchange for an exclusive from Cosby about his daughter’s drug use.
Beth Ferrier and Rebecca Lynn Neal were unidentified witnesses – known as “Jane Does” – in a 2005 case in which Cosby was sued by Andrea Constand, the first of more than two dozen women to come forward with allegations of sexual abuse against the comedian.
Last week a judge granted a motion by the Associated Press to unseal part of Cosby’s deposition. Constand has now been joined by Ferrier and Neal in a motion to have the rest of the deposition, which has so far been barred from public view, unsealed.
In a statement Gloria Allred, the lawyer representing both Ferrier and Neal, said she was concerned the partial testimony, “if believed”, would cause reputational damage to her clients.
….“The National Enquirer, more than any other publication, was unflinching in our aggressive coverage of allegations against Mr Cosby beginning in 2000 when everyone else avoided the story,” a spokesman told the Wrap. “We continue to remain aggressive in our reporting today and stand by the integrity of our coverage of this story which we have taken the lead on for more than a decade.”
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/jul/13/bill-cosby-deposition-quaaludes-motion-unseal
Only Half of Abused Children Evaluated for Occult Fracture
Jenni Laidman July 13, 2015
Despite some 20 years of recommendations to perform a skeletal survey on infants and toddlers with injuries associated with abuse, hospital personnel failed to conduct such surveys in roughly half of suspected abuse cases, according to results from a study published online July 13 in Pediatrics.
Joanne N. Wood, MD, MSHP, from the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia and the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, and colleagues examined data from 4486 children younger than 2 years with a diagnosis of abuse or injuries often associated with abuse at 366 hospitals from 2009 to 2013.
The study indicated that 48% of children with an abuse diagnosis and 51% of infants with traumatic
brain injury were evaluated with a skeletal survey for occult fracture. Only 53% of infants with femur fractures were examined for further fractures, the researchers found.
Previous studies suggest that skeletal surveys would have revealed occult fractures in approximately 25% to 30% of the children in the study, which means about 1 in every 7 or 8 children might have had an undiagnosed occult fracture, the authors report….
http://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/847835
Vatican delays trial of pope’s ex-diplomat accused of child porn, pedophilia
By Faith Karimi, Delia Gallagher and Hada Messia, CNN
Sat July 11, 2015
A former papal ambassador accused of sexually abusing minors has been hospitalized in an intensive care unit — pushing back his trial once set to start Saturday in Vatican City.
Jozef Wesolowski, 66, was under house arrest in Vatican City when he fell ill Friday night and was rushed to a public hospital.
A judge held a short hearing and adjourned Wesolowski’s trial to a yet undetermined date, the Vatican Press Office said. It did not provide any details on his condition.
Wesolowski, 66, is the highest-ranking Catholic official arrested for alleged sexual abuse of minors.
In addition to sexual abuse allegations, he is accused of possession of child pornography during his time as papal nuncio — or ambassador — to the Dominican Republic. The maximum punishment for these crimes could be 9 years in prison, although sentencing is entirely at the discretion of the judges.
The Vatican, which operates as a city-state, has its own judicial system. This is the first trial on charges of sex abuse to be heard by the Vatican tribunal, which is composed of 3 lay Italian judges….
Before arriving in the Dominican Republic seven years ago, Wesolowski was nuncio to Bolivia, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan.
He began his career as a priest in Poland in 1972, and became a bishop in 2000….
http://www.cnn.com/2015/07/11/europe/vatican-sex-abuse-trial/
Woman Says Dennis Hastert Abused Her Brother, Paying to Hide ‘Misconduct’, Catholic Archdiocese in Minnesota Charged Over Sex Abuse by Priest, Ex-PSU student sues school over fraternity allegations
June 9, 2015 Comments Off on Woman Says Dennis Hastert Abused Her Brother, Paying to Hide ‘Misconduct’, Catholic Archdiocese in Minnesota Charged Over Sex Abuse by Priest, Ex-PSU student sues school over fraternity allegations
– Woman Says Dennis Hastert Abused Her Brother in High School
– Hastert Case Is Said to Be Linked to Decades-Old Sexual Abuse
– U.S. Accuses Ex-House Speaker J. Dennis Hastert of Paying to Hide ‘Misconduct’
– Catholic Archdiocese in Minnesota Charged Over Sex Abuse by Priest
– Ex-PSU student sues school over fraternity allegations
Woman Says Dennis Hastert Abused Her Brother in High School
By JULIE BOSMAN and DAVE PHILIPPS JUNE 5, 2015
YORKVILLE, Ill. — As an enthusiastic young teacher and wrestling coach at the high school here, former House Speaker J. Dennis Hastert reliably had one student at his side, former classmates say. Stephen Reinboldt, a smart, slender, likable student who rose to become class president, was the wrestling team’s equipment manager. For four years, he arrived at practice early and stayed late, traveled with Mr. Hastert to overnight tournaments, even when only one wrestler was competing, and went for long rides in the coach’s sports car, sometimes driving it.
On Friday, Mr. Reinboldt’s younger sister, Jolene Burdge, said her brother, who died in 1995, was also sexually abused by Mr. Hastert, but hid the fact for years because he thought no one would believe him.
“Mr. Hastert had plenty of opportunities to be alone with Steve because he was there before the meets,” Ms. Burdge said on ABC’s “Good Morning America.” “He was there after everything because he did the laundry, the uniforms.”
The allegation comes a week after Mr. Hastert, who served for eight years as House speaker, was indicted on charges of making cash withdrawals, totaling $1.7 million, to evade detection by the authorities and lying to investigators.
Two people briefed on the F.B.I. investigation told The New York Times that Mr. Hastert was using the money to pay a former student hundreds of thousands of dollars to hide the fact that Mr. Hastert sexually abused him decades ago….
Ms. Burdge said she tried for years to get news organizations, including ABC News, and advocacy groups to pursue the story. She began in 2006 after it was revealed that Mr. Hastert had covered up claims that Representative Mark Foley, a Florida Republican, had sent sexually explicit emails to congressional pages.
She said she had given up on exposing Mr. Hastert. Then, two weeks ago, just before Mr. Hastert was indicted, she was contacted by the F.B.I….
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/06/us/sister-says-her-brother-was-a-victim-of-ex-speaker-hastert.html
Hastert Case Is Said to Be Linked to Decades-Old Sexual Abuse
By MICHAEL D. SHEAR and MICHAEL S. SCHMIDT MAY 29, 2015
WASHINGTON — J. Dennis Hastert, who served for eight years as speaker of the House of Representatives, was paying a former student hundreds of thousands of dollars to not say publicly that Mr. Hastert had sexually abused him decades ago, according to two people briefed on the evidence uncovered in an F.B.I. investigation.
Federal prosecutors on Thursday announced the indictment of Mr. Hastert, 73, on allegations that he made cash withdrawals, totaling $1.7 million, to evade detection by banks. The federal authorities also charged him with lying to them about the purpose of the withdrawals.
The former student — who was not identified in court papers — told the F.B.I. that he had been inappropriately touched by Mr. Hastert when the former speaker was a high school teacher and wrestling coach, the two people said Friday. The people briefed on the investigation spoke on the condition of anonymity because they did not want to be identified discussing a federal investigation.
It was not clear when the suspected behavior, which was first reported by The Los Angeles Times, occurred. Mr. Hastert was a high school teacher and coach in Yorkville, Ill., from 1965 to 1981, and the indictment said the recipient of the payments was from Yorkville and had known Mr. Hastert for decades….
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/05/30/us/politics/hastert-indictment.html
U.S. Accuses Ex-House Speaker J. Dennis Hastert of Paying to Hide ‘Misconduct’
By MONICA DAVEY MAY 28, 2015
CHICAGO — J. Dennis Hastert, the former speaker of the House of Representatives, has been charged with lying to the F.B.I. and making cash withdrawals from banks in a way that was designed to hide that he was paying $3.5 million to someone for his “misconduct” from years ago, a federal indictment released on Thursday said.
Mr. Hastert, 73, the longest-serving Republican speaker, had worked as a lobbyist since leaving office. The indictment, announced by the United States attorney for the Northern District of Illinois, said Mr. Hastert, who was once a high school teacher and wrestling coach in Yorkville, Ill., had so far paid $1.7 million to the person, who had lived in Yorkville and had known Mr. Hastert for most of his or her life. Mr. Hastert worked in Yorkville from 1965 to 1981.
In 2010, during meetings between Mr. Hastert and the unnamed individual, the two discussed “past misconduct” by Mr. Hastert against the person, according to the indictment….
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/05/29/us/ex-house-speaker-j-dennis-hastert-indicted-on-federal-charges.html
Catholic Archdiocese in Minnesota Charged Over Sex Abuse by Priest
By MITCH SMITH JUNE 5, 2015
CHICAGO — Prosecutors in Minnesota filed criminal charges on Friday against the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis, accusing church leaders of mishandling repeated complaints of sexual misconduct against a priest and failing to follow through on pledges to protect children and root out pedophile clergymen.
The charges and accompanying civil petition, announced by the Ramsey County prosecutor, John J. Choi, stem from accusations by three male victims who say that from 2008 to 2010, when they were under age, a local priest, Curtis Wehmeyer, gave them alcohol and drugs before sexually assaulting them.
The criminal case amounts to a sweeping condemnation of the archdiocese and how its leaders have handled the abuse allegations — even after reforms were put in place by church leaders to increase accountability — and the charges are among the most severe actions taken by American authorities against a Catholic diocese.
“Today, we are alleging a disturbing institutional and systemic pattern of behavior committed by the highest levels of leadership of the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis over the course of decades,” Mr. Choi said in a statement….
The charging documents also say that archdiocese officials knew that Mr. Wehmeyer used a boys’ bathroom at a parish elementary school instead of the staff restroom; tried to give an elementary-age boy a tour of the rectory in violation of policy; and took camping trips with boys where some of the sexual abuse was said to have occurred.
The archdiocese placed Mr. Wehmeyer in a monitoring program for priests facing complaints of abuse or other problems, but prosecutors said in court documents that the supervision and follow-through was “lax or nonexistent.”….
An Ohio judge in 2003 convicted the Archdiocese of Cincinnati of failing to report sexually abusive priests in the 1970s and ’80s. The judge fined the archdiocese $10,000, the maximum allowed, after the archbishop entered a no-contest plea….
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/06/us/catholic-archdiocese-in-minnesota-charged-over-sex-abuse-by-priest.html
describes graphic situations
Ex-PSU student sues school over fraternity allegations
Susan Snyder, Inquirer Staff Writer Monday, June 8, 2015
James Vivenzio says he thought pledging a fraternity at Pennsylvania State University would mean brotherhood and honor.
Instead, the 21-year-old from Great Falls, Va., says, he was force-fed buckets of liquor mixed with urine, vomit, and hot sauce; made to guzzle hard alcohol until he vomited; burned on the chest with a cigarette; and once was beaten by a member of Kappa Delta Rho after he failed to participate in a ritual.
And the university, he contends in a lawsuit filed Monday in Philadelphia Common Pleas Court, failed to act after he reported the abuse more than a year ago, including his telling the school about the existence of private Facebook pages fraternity members allegedly used to post revealing photos of females who may have been aware they were being photographed.
“It is not an understatement to say that I was afraid somebody could die unless the abuse, the Facebook . . . and all that was going on, were shut down permanently,” Vivenzio said Monday, reading from a statement at a news conference in his lawyer’s office in Center City. “I’m no hero and I’m certainly no martyr.”
The filing came the same day that Kappa Delta Rho’s national office announced it had expelled 38 of the 100 or so members of its Penn State chapter and put the rest on alumni status. Penn State last month suspended the chapter for three years after a university investigation found evidence of hazing, underage drinking, and sexual harassment.
The lawsuit seeks compensatory and punitive damages and names the university, the fraternity, and the fraternity’s national office as defendants….
http://www.philly.com/philly/education/20150609_Frat_whistle-blower_sues_Penn_State.html
Pope Accepts Resignation of Bishop Who Failed to Report Priest’s Suspected Child Abuse, True Detective season two: the secret occult history of the United States transportation system
April 22, 2015 Comments Off on Pope Accepts Resignation of Bishop Who Failed to Report Priest’s Suspected Child Abuse, True Detective season two: the secret occult history of the United States transportation system
Pope Accepts Resignation of Bishop Who Failed to Report Priest’s Suspected Child Abuse
By Taylor Wofford 4/21/15
Pope Francis on Tuesday accepted the resignation of Bishop Robert Finn of the Diocese of Kansas City-St. Joseph, Missouri, who in 2012 pleaded guilty in Clay County circuit court to a misdemeanor charge of failure to report suspected child abuse by one of the priests in his diocese. The announcement was given a single sentence in the Vatican Information Service’s emailed morning news bulletin, listed under “Other Pontifical Acts.”….
In December 2010, Finn failed to contact police when a computer technician informed him that he had discovered hundreds of lewd photographs of young girls on the laptop of Shawn Ratigan, a priest in Finn’s diocese, some of which were believed to have been taken by Ratigan. According to The New York Times,
Bishop Finn sent Father Ratigan to live in a convent and told him to avoid contact with minors. But until [the following] May the priest attended children’s parties, spent weekends in the homes of parish families, hosted an Easter egg hunt and presided, with the bishop’s permission, at a girl’s First Communion, according to interviews with parishioners and a civil lawsuit filed by a victim’s family.
Ratigan was arrested after the second-ranking officer in the diocese, Monsignor Robert Murphy, contacted the police about the material on Ratigan’s laptop in mid-May 2011.
Ratigan later pleaded guilty to five child pornography charges in 2012 and was sentenced to 50 years in prison. Two weeks after Ratigan’s arrest, Finn removed another priest, Michael Tierney, from his parish after finding “recent reports of Father Tierney’s sexual abuse of minors in the early 1970s were credible,” according to a law firm asked by Finn to conduct an independent investigation into the diocese’s handling of the incident….
While Finn has resigned from his post in the diocese, he will remain a Catholic bishop with all attendant rights, including being allowed to practice Mass. “He’s still a bishop in good standing,” Smith said…. http://www.newsweek.com/pope-francis-accepts-resignation-kansas-city-bishop-who-failed-report-sexual-323941
True Detective season two: first trailer
Watch Colin Farrell, Vince Vaughn, Rachel McAdams and Taylor Kitsch in the new True Detective trailer
09 Apr 2015 The first teaser trailer for the hotly anticipated second season of HBO’s True Detective has been released.
Starring Colin Farrell, Vince Vaughn, Taylor Kitsch and McAdams, the new season is set in Seventies California, and will tell the story of a mob boss (Vaughn) who joins with law enforcement officials to investigate a strange murder case….
The first season of the show, which was set in the Nineties, starred Woody Harrelson and Matthew McConaughey as partners investigating a Louisiana murder case: it’s storyline dealt with the disturbing topic of satanic child abuse.
Writer Nic Pizzolatto has said the new season will continue these dark themes, exploring “the secret occult history of the United States transportation system”.
Season two of True Detective premieres on June 21…. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/tvandradio/11526242/True-Detective-Season-Two-first-trailer.html
Saalfelden murder ‘was Nazi ritual killing’, Priest indicted in Poland for child abuse
October 23, 2014 Comments Off on Saalfelden murder ‘was Nazi ritual killing’, Priest indicted in Poland for child abuse
Saalfelden murder ‘was Nazi ritual killing’ 21 Oct 2014
The murder of a young woman in Saalfelden, Pinzgau, on October 9th was not a case of domestic violence but a ritual killing – according to a report from broadcaster ORF Salzburg.
The body of a 20-year-old woman was found in a pool of blood in a man’s bathroom and police initially believed that she had been murdered by her boyfriend. A suspect, also 20, was arrested at the scene.
However the report from ORF Salzburg quotes unnamed sources who said the man raped and stabbed the woman, who was an acquaintance of his, and cut Nazi symbols into her skin with a knife…. http://www.thelocal.at/20141021/saalfelden-murder-was-nazi-ritual-killing
Priest indicted in Poland for child abuse
22.10.2014 A Polish priest accused of child abuse in both the Dominican Republic and Poland has been formally indicted in his native country.
Father Wojciech G.’s case has been referred to a district court in Wolomin, 12 miles east of the capital, according to Przemyslaw Nowak, spokesman for a public prosecutor’s office in Warsaw.
Nowak has confirmed that the priest stands accused of 10 offences, 8 of which relate to the sexual abuse of boys below the age of 15.
“Two acts were committed in 2000-2001 in Poland, the others at various times over the years 2009-2013, in the Dominican Republic,” he outlined on Wednesday.
Nowak also revealed that the priest is accused of possession of pornographic material involving minors, as well as the possesion of a firearm and ammunition without the necessary permits.
“We have ample evidence in this case, including the testimonies of over 100 witnesses, and over a dozen reports by experts,” he noted.
Father Wojciech G. was arrested near Krakow in February 2014, and he has remained in police custody since then.
The clergyman has denied any wrongdoing since accusations first surfaced in 2013 in the Dominican Republic, where he had served as head of a parish in the highland town of Juncalito…. http://www.thenews.pl/1/9/Artykul/185041,Priest-indicted-in-Poland-for-child-abuse-
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