EXCLUSIVE: The final insult – ‘child molester’ Catholic priest who committed suicide to evade justice said it was a ‘gift’ to his victims – after a life ‘serving others’

  • Father Virgilio Elizondo, 80, shot himself in the head after he was accused of molesting a young boy 
  • Notre Dame professor was leading Catholic intellectual but faced ruin before he shot himself in the head at San Antonio, Texas, home 
  • Now his suicide note is revealed and shows how he admitted being ‘a sinner’ but said: ‘I have lived a life dedicated to serving others’
  • Lawyer for the victim tells Daily Mail Online: ‘Giving up your life is not a gift to any abused child, it’s just a manipulation’

By EMMA FOSTER

A Catholic priest who shot himself in the head after he was accused of molesting a young boy left a chilling suicide note in which he claims he took his own life as ‘a final gift’ to anyone he ‘might have hurt’. In the note – which appears to be a veiled admission of guilt – Father Virgilio Elizondo, 80, said he had lived a life ‘totally dedicated to serving others’.Father Virgilio Elizondo

The Notre Dame professor left it near where his body was found, at his San Antonio, Texas, home. Apparently unconcerned by the feelings of his alleged victim, he thanked God for his entire life – ‘especially’ his 52 years of priesthood – during which time his accuser claims Fr. Elizondo sexually assaulted him when he went to him to report abuse by another priest.

The letter – obtained by Daily Mail Online – goes on to describe how Fr. Elizondo felt ‘fatigued and empty’ and was suffering various ailments affecting his kidneys, eyes and knees. Elizondo committed suicide – does the priest ‘beg forgiveness and mercy from those he has hurt or offended.’ Last night the lawyer representing Fr. Elizondo’s alleged victim called priest self-serving and manipulative.

Attorney Thomas J. Henry told Daily Mail Online: ‘His comments about hurting others that he has offended and wanting forgiveness really appears to be not a suicide note but an apology note for his conduct. ‘I think that he takes accountability in a vague way and in a very odd way calls his suicide a farewell gift – a gift to anyone he may have hurt. ‘But those statements are self-serving in the sense that a farewell gift in the face of hurting other people by killing yourself is not what we would think would be appropriate unless the severity of hurting others was so much you felt you had to do this. ‘I think that he has taken a way out that is not responsible in the least with regards to addressing these allegations.

farewell

‘In his position he should have willingly provided sworn testimony about his conduct over the course of time he was a priest. ‘I don’t think saying he took the easy way out is how I would characterize this as much as a manipulation to avoid answering serious questions.’ Fr. Elizondo was found dead from a single self-inflicted gunshot wound inside his home on Monday, according to San Antonio police.

The once respected religious leader and theologian had been embroiled in controversy since last May, when an orphan named only as John Doe filed a lawsuit in which he accused the aging cleric of molesting him when he went to him in 1983 to report sexual abuse by another priest named Father Jesus Armando Dominguez. Fr. Dominguez, who is currently a ‘fugitive from justice’ believed to be in Mexico, according to Henry, molested and performed sex acts on the boy for around two years from 1980 at a local orphanage.

When Fr. Dominguez left the orphanage, the boy tried to report the abuse to Fr. Elizondo but instead of listening ‘he began to fondle the Plaintiff’s genitals, taking advantage of the same sexual liberties Plaintiff complained of with Father Dominguez,’ according to the lawsuit.

Although Fr. Elizondo denied the allegations when he was alive – his suicide note appears to suggest his guilt.

Complete Article HERE!

Christian School Principal Jailed for Child Rape

By Katie Zavadski

Douglas J. Allison

The principal of a tiny Seventh-day Adventist school in Washington state has been arrested for allegedly molesting and abusing two young girls.

The principal of a tiny Christian school in a small Washington town has been charged with sexually assaulting two female students. Prosecutors say Douglas J. Allison, 55, even claimed that one of the young girls asked for it.

Allison was the principal and one of just two teachers at the Mountain View Christian School, a Seventh-day Adventist school that has just a dozen students. He is charged with raping and sexually assaulting a 10-year-old girl and her classmate, who came forward during the investigation.

Seventh-day Adventists are a Christian denomination who believe Christ’s return to Earth is imminent. Unlike most Christians, they observe the sabbath on Saturday.

The denomination was founded in 1863 and has more than 18 million members worldwide, including former Republican presidential candidate Ben Carson.

And the church has built more than 8,000 schools, like the one run by Douglas, around the world. His wife, Judy, who is not under investigation, was the school’s sole other educator.

The Mountain View Christian School’s website has since been suspended, but a cached version shows it billed itself as one “committed to providing quality education in a Christ-filled environment.”

“The Mountain View Christian School family exists to show children Jesus, nurture their love for Him and others, teach them to think, and empower them to serve,” the website read. “We believe that true education develops the spiritual, mental, and physical powers of each student.”

Court documents say that what occurred at Allison’s school was far from holy.

According to an affidavit filed in court, the mother of the 10-year-old was alerted to the alleged abuse by a cousin who attended the same school. The cousin told the alleged victim’s mom that she had “witnessed the teacher tap [Child 1’s] butt, and that it made her uncomfortable.” When the mother asked her daughter about it, she said Principal Allison, known to kids as Mr. A, “had been touching her privates every day at school.”

The document says the girl told Allison to stop it, but he continued to touch her. The girl’s two brothers, in the same classroom, told their mother they hadn’t seen this happen, but the girl said the abuse had been happening every day since the start of fourth grade.

According to the school’s now-defunct website, Doug Allison taught grades 5 to 8, while his wife taught grades 1 to 4. Court documents, however, say that Doug Allison taught grades 4 and up, while his wife taught the three lower classes.

When a detective interviewed the cousin who initially reported the inappropriate touching, she said she’d seen the second alleged victim, aged 11, sit under Allison’s desk and play with his cellphone while the teacher sat at his desk. “She has seen [Child 2] sit under Mr. A’s desk all day long with his cell phone,” interview notes in the complaint read. “About two weeks ago [the cousin] saw [Child 2] sitting on Mr. A’s lap at school.”

“During the ensuing investigation, detectives discovered a second victim, an 11-year-old female student at the school,” the Clallam County Sheriff’s Office said in a press release. “The second victim disclosed to Detectives she had been sexually assaulted in similar fashion by Allison.”

The 11-year-old alleged similar over-the-pants inappropriate touching of her genitals. On one occasion, she said, the teacher showed her the Urban Dictionary definition of the word “ulus” on his phone.

The Dictionary.com definition of the word refers to a traditional knife used by Eskimo women. On the Urban Dictionary website, however, the word is defined as the scientifically impossible “large penis that has been inserted into an anus, so deep and for such a long a period of time, that the penis is partially digested.”

According to the complaint, the 11-year-old’s mother called Allison and allowed police to listen in on her conversation with the principal. When she confronted Allison with the girl’s allegations, the principal allegedly admitted to touching her and said he was under investigation. He said he touched the girl “only a few times,” the complaint alleges. It adds that Allison said he “touched her where she asked” him to.

“She asked you to touch her vagina?” the mother asked.

“Yes, she did,” the teacher allegedly replied.

In a later conversation with police, which was videotaped after his arrest, Allison allegedly confessed to touching the girls over their clothing and digitally penetrating one of them while the class was studying. He also allegedly confessed to making the 11-year-old touch his genitals and let him place his penis in her mouth.

Allison is charged with 12 counts of child molestation and child rape, according to court documents.

In bold, the complaint adds: “It should be noted that Douglas is 55 years old. [Child 1] is 10 years old and [Child 2] is 11 years old.

The school was still advertised on the Sequim Seventh-day Adventist Church’s website Sunday. An associate pastor who teaches a once-weekly Bible study at the school told KOMO News that the church is “very, very sad.”

“Our congregation is grieving. We love our kids, we love our families. We’re praying for complete healing, for complete justice,” Collette Pekar said. “All humans have the potential to do horribly awfully things and just the realization that these things can happen is overwhelmingly sad.”

Calls made to the school number listed on the site were not returned.

“Mr. Allison is a schoolteacher of minor children, and the allegations are that he molested and potentially raped children in front of his class while other children were watching,” prosecutor Michele Devlin told the judge at Allison’s bond hearing. “He is a danger to any other child out there.”

The judge set Allison’s bond at $100,000. It’s not immediately clear whether Allison had an attorney.

A spokeswoman for the Seventh-day Adventist church said Allison was put on leave as soon as the allegations surfaced. “We are taking care of our students by putting in respected and trusted teachers to take over the teaching responsibilities, and providing counseling and care for families that have been affected,” Becky Meharry said.

But when detectives spoke to school officials about the investigation, the chairman of the board, John Gatchet, allegedly said he’d already had a conversation with Allison about not touching students after a parent complained about Allison putting his arms around kids and hugging them earlier in the school year.

A woman who answered the phone at a number listed for Gatchet said he was not available and hung up. Subsequent calls were unanswered. Archie Harris, the school’s superintendent, did not return a request for comment.

But not everyone in the community was quick to distance themselves from Allison.

“As a Christian, God loves the sinner but hates the sin,” Greg Reseck—a teacher at another Seventh-day Adventist school in Port Townsend—told King5. “But even if he’s convicted, I will still consider him my friend.”

Complete Article HERE!

Hospital Funds Diverted to Cardinal’s Villa

By Barbie Latza Nadeau

Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone

A top Vatican cardinal is defending a glitzy renovation to his private apartments, apparently funded by money meant for a children’s hospital.

 

It is hard to imagine two men more different than frugal Pope Francis and the Vatican’s former spendthrift secretary of state Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone. The Pope lives in a spartan 750-square-foot apartment inside the Vatican’s modest Santa Marta guesthouse. Cardinal Bertone, meanwhile, is caught up in a spending scandal surrounding lavish renovations for his penthouse apartment nearly 10 times that size.

Bertone—who served in the Vatican’s No. 2 position as secretary of state from 2006 until Francis essentially retired him in 2013—decided to combine two vacant Vatican-owned rooftop apartments for himself and his three service nuns at an estimated cost of around half a million euro, which was discounted by 50 percent, according to official estimates published by the Italian newspaper Il Tempo.

But despite the considerable savings, the renovations were apparently paid for twice, meaning the discount was likely down to creative—or corrupt—accounting, which is being investigated by a Vatican Tribunal that opened a criminal dossier into the matter last week.

According to journalist Emiliano Fittipaldi, who first broke the news of Bertone’s lavish penthouse being funded by a children’s hospital in his book Greed last year, the renovation cost was funneled through a London-based holding company run by Bertone’s personal friend. “The money destined for sick children was in actuality used for the renovations and then sent on to London,” Fittipaldi wrote. “Bertone’s name is not cited in the magistrates’ document but the Holy See will find it hard to overlook his direct involvement in the scandal.”

Bertone says he can prove he paid around $340,000 for the work out of his own pocket, but the foundation that raises money for the Vatican-owned Bambino Gesu children’s hospital apparently also paid $455,000.

No matter who paid for what, or even where the money came from, it must surely be an embarrassment to Francis that his churchmen are not following his pleas for frugality. By any standard of measure, Bertone’s apartment renovations are over-the-top. According to the estimates that were published in the Italian press, each of the bedrooms has its own private bathroom, and the kitchen facilities are befitting a banquet hall. Bertone spent $22,000 on “eight independent sharable audio programs and audio controls with LCD display for each environment.” That essentially boils down to a sound system where each room in the lavish apartment, including the rooftop chapel, can be programed with its own mood music. This, for a prelate and three nuns who have no official role whatsoever in Francis’s church.

The massive-for-Rome apartment is being floored with 2,400 square feet of expensive herringbone oak parquet which cost the cardinal and the hospital $28,000. A smaller 750-square-foot area is being covered with luxury white Carrara marble at a price tag of $11,000. The double-glaze energy efficient windows cost $80,000 and the front security door is priced at $6,000.

The high-efficiency silent heat pumps cost $32,000 and climate control dehumidifying system comes in at $19,000.

Pope Francis (R) puts ashes on the head of Cardinal Bertone during the Ash Wednesday mass opening Lent, the forty-day period of abstinence and deprivation for Christians, before Holy Week and Easter, on February 10, 2016 in Vatican.
Pope Francis (R) puts ashes on the head of Cardinal Bertone during the Ash Wednesday mass opening Lent, the forty-day period of abstinence and deprivation for Christians, before Holy Week and Easter, on February 10, 2016 in Vatican.

According to deputy director of the Vatican press office Greg Burke, the hospital’s former president Giuseppe Profiti, and its former treasurer Massimo Spina, who were in charge of allocating funds for Bambino Gesu Hospital, are being criminally investigated for misappropriating funds meant for sick children.

Bertone is not under investigation—not yet anyway. But he quickly gave $170,000 to the children’s hospital in December. “It is a donation that reflects my sentimental attachment to the hospital and its little patients,” he said at the time of his generous donation.

The hospital president, Mariella Enoc, apparently didn’t see it quite that way. “Acknowledging that what has happened has been detrimental to the Bambino Gesu, Cardinal Bertone wanted to meet us half way, donating a sum of 150,000 euros,” she said when the donation was made.

Bertone has been on the defensive since the allegations first came to light, pointing out that “scores of other prelates live in even nicer apartments.” In fact, both Nuzzi and Fittipaldi gave examples of countless other cardinals whose lifestyles are in stark contrast to the way Francis has chosen to live. “The apartment is spacious, as is normal for the residences in the ancient palaces of the Vatican, and dutifully restored (at my expense),” he wrote on a blog attached to the diocese of Genoa that he ran before being promoted to secretary of state. “I may temporarily use and after me it will benefit someone else. In the words of the Pope Saint John XXIII, ‘I do not stop to pick up the stones that are thrown at me.'”

Fittipaldi, along with another journalist Gianluigi Nuzzi, are currently on trial for publishing leaked documents they were allegedly given by a Spanish Cardinal and pregnant public relations consultant. Their trial, dubbed Vatileaks II, after the first Vatileaks trial saw Pope Benedict XVI’s butler guilty of leaking documents to Nuzzi, picks up again on April 6.

Complete Article HERE!

Jesus wept: There were 12 reported incidents of Christian pastors molesting kids — in just the last month

By

clergy-sex-abuse

The arrest of a Christian school principal in Port Angeles, Washington for sexually assaulting two pre-teen girls brings to light, once again, what appears to be an epidemic of sexual predators in Christian churches and schools.

According to the Crimes Against Children Research Center, 1 in 5 girls and 1 in 20 boys is a victim of child sexual abuse. The exact number of actual sexual assaults is unknown since many victims never speak up or, in some cases like Florida, the sexual assault is hushed up.

Sexual abuse within the Christian community that either ignores it or attempts to sweep in under the rug became a hot topic in 2015 after it was revealed that popular Christian celebrities Jim Bob and Michelle Duggar attempted to hide the fact that their son Josh had molested several of his sisters when they were younger. The resulting scandal forced the family’s popular reality show off the air after sponsors fled.

According to Christian writer Tom Challies, sexual predators gravitate to churches because Christians are taught to submit to authority in an atmosphere that encourages trust. Church programs also offer easy access to the children of parishioners.

Quoting from writer Deepak Reju’s On Guard: Preventing and Responding To Child Abuse At Church, Challies writes: “Many Christians don’t know how to distinguish likability and trustworthiness. They confuse the two categories, assuming that if someone is courteous and nice, they must also be trustworthy. Moreover, some Christians behave as though the problem doesn’t exist, and some look with suspicion on reports of abuse. They believe children are lying and are more prone to take an adult’s word. Sexual predators know that these dynamics operate in churches, and they know they can get away with a lot on account of it”

Since the beginning of March 2016, there have been 12 assaults — including the Port Angeles principal — reported, or verdicts handed down.

  • According to PennAlive, former pastor Raymond P. Buhrow, 65, of Calvary Temple Holiness Church in South Middleton Township pleaded no contest to molesting two pre-teens between 2009 and 2014.
  • BDN-Maine reports that Lucas Savage, 37, of Youth Haven Ministries in Canaan was taken into custody on March 18, and accused of unlawful sexual contact involving a young girl.
  • Former Las Vegas church pastor Otis Holland — already facing life in prison for sexually assaulting teenage girls in his congregation — was called up on similar charges in a separate case on March 23 in Henderson, reports KOLO.
  • Youth pastor David Thorne, 35, of Goodyear Baptist Church in Picayune has been accused of sexually molesting a 15-year-old who police say may have been a parishioner at his church. Thorne is also sought in Pearl River County on a similar sexual battery charge, the Picayune Item reports.
  • In California, youth pastor Daniel James Moreno, 25, has been charged with seven felony counts of sex crimes with a minor female as well as using force to keep his wife from turning him in, reports the Lompoc Record.
  • Pastor Keith Frye, 54, of  the  Mt. Olive Missionary Baptist Church in Lilbourn, Mo. was taken into custody on March 21, and charged with raping a 4-year-old child, reports KFVS.
  • The Tennessean reports that  Christopher Douglas Ross, 44, of Fairview Church in Lebanon pleaded guilty to two counts of statutory rape with a 15-year-old when he was a youth pastor there.
  • Chad Apsey, a youth minister at Believers Christian Church in Eagle was convicted of sexually assaulting a teen under the age of 15 after the teen turned to the pastor for help with family problems, reports the Lansing State Journal.
  • WCPO reports that Rodney Mathews, 24, a youth pastor at the Versailles Church of Christ was taken into custody on two counts of child seduction and two counts of possession of child pornography, tied to his relationship with a 15-year-old.
  • Scott D. Stockton, 44, a youth pastor and mentor working with several churches in Tonawanda, New York was arrested on child pornography charges on March 28, reports WGRZ.
  • Lloyd Schallenberger, a youth group leader with the First Baptist Church of Richland, in Polk County, Mississippi, was taken into custody for sexually abusing a minor, and having contact with a 9-year-old boy, reports The Ledger.

 
Complete Article HERE!