Tag: Catholic Church

By Patti Mengers

Nearly eight years after John Salveson stood in the state Capitol Rotunda in Harrisburg and entreated Pennsylvania legislators to hold public hearings on House Bill 1137 ‒ the Child Victim’s Act of Pennsylvania, a similar bill passed the House of Representatives on Tuesday.

The 60-year-old Radnor resident, who is president of the Foundation to Abolish Child Sex Abuse, called the passage of House Bill 1947 “a major step forward in our battle to find justice for the victims of child sex abuse in Pennsylvania.”

“House Bill 1947 is not perfect – but it provides an opportunity for justice for child sex abuse victims, who would have the ability, under the law, to bring civil suits against the people who abused them and the institutions which sheltered those abusers,” said Salveson.

The bill, that was approved 180-15 in the House and is now being considered by the state Senate Judiciary Committee, expands the age limit from 30 to 50 for individuals who were abused as children to bring civil lawsuits against their abusers and organizations entrusted with their protection, and would prevent organizations that have acted with gross negligence from claiming immunity. It would be retroactive, allowing past abuse victims to sue.

House Bill 1947 was proposed by state Rep. Ron Marsico,R-105, of Dauphin County but was amended to include past victims by state Rep. Mark Rozzi of Berks County, D-126, who has identified himself as a survivor of Catholic clergy abuse and has been promoting such legislation since he was elected in 2012.

In 2014 Rozzi proposed House Bill 2067 that would have permanently removed the civil and criminal statutes of limitations involving child sexual abuse but it stalled as have similar bills proposed by at least six other Democratic and Republican legislators.

In March state Attorney General Kathleen Kane released a 147-page grand jury report that concluded that hundreds of children were sexually abused over at least four decades by at least 50 priests or religious leaders in the Roman Catholic Diocese of Altoona-Johnstown and that diocesan superiors concealed the abuse.

Salveson feels that grand jury report contributed to the newfound receptivity of House members to the child abuse lawsuit bill along with Rozzi’s “tireless work” and the popularity of “Spotlight,” the Academy Award-winning film about Boston Globe reporters who, in 2002, wrote a series about child sex abuse by nearly 90 priests concealed by the Archdiocese of Boston, that broke open the scandal in Roman Catholic dioceses nationwide.

Of the 11 Delaware County state representatives, only Greg Vitali, D-166, of Haverford opposed House Bill 1947 on Tuesday.

“Current law allows a victim who was assaulted as a child to come forward until he reaches the age of 50 to report the crime. I don’t think this needs to be changed. The proposed legislation would expose the public schools and thus taxpayers to civil judgments against them. Given the problem we are having funding education, this concerns me,” said Vitali.

State Rep. Leanne Krueger-Braneky, D-161, of Swarthmore, voted to add Rozzi’s amendment to House Bill 1947 last Monday, but was on leave Tuesday when the vote on the bill was taken.

“I wholeheartedly support the bill because it is important to get justice. It can take years for victims to work through the trauma and come forward,” said Krueger-Braneky.

Salveson can identify with the suffering of individuals who were sexually abused as children.

In 1989, he distributed letters on the steps of a church where a Long Island, New York, priest who Salveson said abused him for seven years when he was an adolescent, was serving. Salveson had reported the alleged abuser to his bishop in the Diocese of Rockville Centre in 1980, to no avail.

After Salveson distributed the letters recounting his abuse, the priest, who is now deceased, was finally removed from parish work. The alleged abuser then started a counseling practice. A 2003 Suffolk County grand jury report maintained that the diocese failed in its duty to protect children.

According to two Philadelphia grand jury reports issued in 2005 and 2011, there have been dozens of victims of more than 60 priests since the 1940s in the five-county area constituting the Archdiocese of Philadelphia. More than 40 of the suspected pedophiles had connections to Delaware County. Three priests and a male lay teacher named in the second grand jury investigation were able to be prosecuted because of the state criminal statute of limitations being expanded to age 50 in 2006.

“Ninety percent of people who abuse kids never end up in the courtroom because of the statute of limitations,” noted Salveson in 2008.

Civil lawsuits would expose alleged abusers who were unable to be prosecuted.

Salveson is confident that state Sen. Stewart Greenleaf, R-12, of Montgomery County, chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, will help quickly move the bill to the Senate floor for a vote because “he was among the first in the Commonwealth to advocate for progressive laws related to child sex abuse.”

State Sen. Daylin Leach, D-17, of Upper Merion, who represents Haverford and Radnor townships as well as parts of Montgomery County, is minority chair of the judiciary committee. Zach Hoover, Leach’s chief of staff and minority counsel for the judiciary committee, said, broadly speaking, Leach supports House Bill 1947.

“From a policy standpoint, there’s nothing he thinks should be amended, but we are looking into the constitutionality of the portion of the bill that makes the policy retroactive,” said Hoover on Friday.

Salveson, who was formerly president of the Philadelphia chapter of the Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests or SNAP, founded the Foundation to Abolish Child Sex Abuse, an organization to advocate for reform of Pennsylvania legislation affecting sexually abused children, in 2006.

“FACSA will continue to press for the passage of this and other laws to protect children,” said Salveson. “The time is long overdue for Pennsylvania to support those who have been abused, rather than their abusers.”

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By Calla Wahlquist

A Melbourne Catholic priest has compared paedophile priests to adulterous women and said victims of sexual abuse would be “denied healing” because the “baying crowd” of media and lawyers don’t understand mercy, in statements published in a primary school newsletter.

The Malvern East priest Father Bill Edebohls, who under Victoria’s Catholic school structure is head of schools in his parish, made the comments in a homily delivered at St Mary’s church. It was reprinted in full in the March newsletter of St Mary’s primary school in Malvern East, Fairfax Media has reported.

“Part of my concern with the current royal commission on the institutional sexual abuse of minors is that we may in the end gain justice for the victims but they will be denied healing,” the homily says. “Why? Because both the media and the lawyers, like the baying crowd of men in the gospel ready to throw stones, don’t understand the need for a justice that is drenched in mercy.”

He made the comparison to extramarital affairs after recounting the gospel story about Jesus showing mercy to an adulterous woman who was to be stoned to death by saying: “He that is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone at her.”

“For our generation, where adultery is not regarded as a crime – and many have lost the moral sense of the destructive harm adultery does to family and community – and the media dish adultery up night after night as playful entertainment – we probably don’t get the power of the gospel story nor the dramatic effect on the characters in the story,” the homily says.

“Remember this was a sin, a crime that carried the death penalty – by stoning. Maybe to get the real drama and effect of the story we ought to replace the adulterous woman with a paedophile priest. Then we might begin to understand the mob eager to stone and the outrageous and profligate mercy and compassion of God ever ready to forgive.”

Shane Healy, spokesman for the Catholic archdiocese of Melbourne, defended Edebohls, telling Fairfax: “He tried to pick a contemporary example of what might have been a woman adulterer of 2,000 years ago, who would have been looked on entirely differently.”

Edebohls was dean of the Anglican church in Ballarat from 1987 to 1996 before converting to Catholicism and being ordained as a Roman Catholic priest in 2003. At the time he denied the move was triggered by dissatisfaction with the Anglican church’s decision to welcome gay and women clergy, saying: “My journey into the Catholic church has been a lifetime pilgrimage and is not associated with simplistic one-off issue.”

The Catholic church in Ballarat has been the centre of one of the largest investigations in the royal commission, which last month saw Australia’s highest-ranked Catholic, Cardinal George Pell, questioned for four nights in Rome.

Ronald Mulkearns, who was the Catholic bishop of Ballarat between 1971 and 1997 and was accused before the commission of covering up some of the worst cases of sex abuse in the region, died aged 86 this month and was buried in a common grave, in recognition of the controversy surrounding his time as bishop.

Before his death he told the commission he regretted that he didn’t “deal differently with paedophilia”, adding: “We had no idea, or I had no idea, of the effects of the incidents that took place.”

Guardian Australia has contacted Edebohls and the school’s acting principal for comment.

Complete Article HERE!

By Peter Smith

 

The day began with a 30-year-old witness describing how Franciscan Brother Stephen Baker befriended him and his family and repeatedly molested him from his early teens.

But even as prosecutors laid out their case involving the late friar’s molestation of as many as 100 youths at Bishop McCort Catholic High School in Johnstown and elsewhere, the attorneys for three of his former superiors launched a vigorous defense at a preliminary hearing here Thursday.

Their clients, former minister provincials for a Hollidaysburg-based Franciscan province, face charges of conspiracy and endangering the welfare of children for assigning Baker to Bishop McCort and other ministry posts where he had regular contact with youths between 1992 and 2010. The charges followed last month’s release of state grand jury reports about the order and the surrounding Diocese of Altoona-Johnstown.

The attorneys not only argued that the statute of limitations should preclude the Franciscans’ prosecution, but they also managed to exclude a crucial piece of evidence from the hearing — internal notes from 1992 referring to restrictions on Baker’s contact with minors — and to cast doubt on the timing of when the Franciscans learned of another allegation against Baker in 2000.

All this took place Thursday at a day-long hearing before Blair County District Judge Paula Aigner to determine the strength of the prosecutor’s case. With testimony still in progress at day’s end, Judge Aigner recessed the hearing until April 27.

Charged are the Very Revs. Giles Schinelli, 73, who was minister provincial from 1986 to 1994; Robert J. D’Aversa, 69, who was minister provincial from 1994 to 2001; and the Very Rev. Anthony M. Criscitelli, 61, who was minister provincial from 2002 to 2010. They led the Franciscan Friars, Third Order Regulars of the Immaculate Conception Province.

All three sat impassively in dark clerical garb behind their lawyers.

Brother Baker committed suicide in January 2013 at the Hollidaysburg monastery when the enormity of his offenses became publicly known.

Deputy Attorney General Daniel Dye began the day by calling the 30-year-old witness, whose name was not disclosed.

The man said that Brother Baker worked as an athletic trainer and told Bishop McCort students to strip down and get on the training table, where he would fondle them and digitally penetrate them.

He said this practice was commonly known among athletes.

“After a while, it got normal,” he said.

He said that the nickname students gave the practice was “a bro job” because Brother Baker’s nickname was “Bro.” He said he was also abused by Baker in car trips and at the monastery.

But much of Thursday focused on what Baker’s supervisors knew and when they knew it.

Special Agent Jessica Eger of the state Bureau of Criminal Investigation testified about more than 30 documents seized from the order last year via search warrant.

The documents showed that Father Schinelli was aware of an accusation against Baker stemming from Baker’s work in Missouri and sent him for a 1992 psychological evaluation that found no evidence of any sexual pathology or risk to minors.

But handwritten notes by Father Schinelli indicated that the same psychologist recommended Baker have no ministry involving one-to-one contact with minors, nor to take any overnight trips with them — activities the earlier witness said were routine.

However, attorney Charles Porter, representing Father Schinelli, convinced Judge Aigner that these notes should be excluded because they were part of correspondence with the order’s lawyer and were protected by attorney-client privilege. Mr. Dye unsuccessfully argued that such privilege doesn’t apply under the “crime-fraud exception.”

“This is a crime in progress,” he said.

Mr. Porter went on to say Father Schinelli tried unsuccessfully to get more information to evaluate the Missouri allegation. Baker, he said, “duped” the psychologist that his client relied on.

Ms. Eger acknowledged there was no other documentary evidence that Father Schinelli, while in office, knew of any allegations against Baker.

Next up was attorney Robert Ridge, representing Father D’Aversa. Father D’Aversa himself had testified to the grand jury last year that he removed Baker from Bishop McCort after receiving a credible allegation in early 2000 of past abuse by Baker.

As Baker was being reassigned, Father D’Aversa wrote him: “Thank you for your efforts in the educational Apostolate. You have done an excellent job.”

Father D’Aversa put Baker in charge of vocations, through which he engaged in multiple overnight retreats with teens in mid-2000.

But Mr. Ridge questioned prosecutors’ reliance on his own client’s memory. He noted that there is no documentary evidence that Father D’Aversa knew of that allegation until November 2000, when he put Baker on more restrictions.

The hearing ended with testimony about Father Criscitelli’s tenure and conflicting claims about how well those restrictions were actually enforced.

Baker worked at a Catholic gift store known as the Friar Shop at the Altoona Mall. In 2006 when the order was seeking accreditation for compliance with safe-environment standards by an outside firm, the order was told it needed better controls on Baker’s access to children while at the mall. Father Criscitelli, in a document, sought ways to cushion the impact on Baker so as not to “alarm” co-workers.

And as late as 2006, Baker was still volunteering at St. Clare of Assisi Church in Johnstown, despite a 2002 Catholic Church policy against confirmed abusers being in ministry after 2002. The order took pains not to depict Baker’s Friar Shop work as “ministry.”

Some documents showed the order supervisors being sensitive to Baker’s feelings about his ministry restrictions, noting he got very defensive and would submit only when required to psychological care. Baker, according to one mental-health evaluation, felt “aggrieved and violated because of these allegations” and claimed one of his victims was “effeminate” and misunderstood his actions.

One letter from a minister provincial cited the need for restrictions to safeguard the integrity of Baker and the province, and “the resources of the province.”

Such comments infuriated Barbara Aponte of Poland, Ohio, who attended the hearing and who attributes her son’s suicide to his abuse by Baker when he worked at an Ohio Catholic high school.

The documents “always express concern for minimizing (damage to the order’s ) public image and financial liability,” she said. “There’s never a mention in these documents about the welfare of the kids and the safety of the kids.”

Complete Article HERE!

 
Fighting through tears on Tuesday, Todd Belrose recounted 35 years of pain resulting from alleged clergy sex abuse by Father Thomas Andert.

“Sadly, I just found out lately there are many more survivors, and as much as it breaks my heart, it also helps me,” Belsore said.

At a news conference announcing two newly-filed civil suits alleging priest sex abuse, Belrose and a former plaintiff said St. John’s Preparatory School priests should have helped young boys, not hurt them.

“Oh, they helped all right,” said abuse survivor Troy Bromlage. “They helped us drink more, use more and try to kill ourselves because we don’t feel whole.”

Andert was never put on the list of 18 credibly accused abbey monks that the abbey released back in 2003. That was despite the fact he was first accused of past abuse of a 14-year-old prep school student years earlier.

The abbey launched an internal investigation into the charge but later said it found no substantiation of abuse.

Instead, Andert was appointed prior and served as the Abbey’s second-in-command. He also served on the Abbey’s external review board and supervised other monks on restriction.

In February, Andert was reinstated into ministry after the abbey cleared him of past abuse claims.

“I can’t believe that Father Tom is back in a position where other people’s kids can be hurt,” Belrose said.

It’s not the first time Andert has been accused of abuse.

In 1994, he was forced out as headmaster of St. John’s Prep school after abuse allegations were made by a student, Ben Spanier.

Spanier battled depression and anxiety the next 20 years and took his life in December 2014.

“We thought we’d turned the corner here,” said attorney Jeff Anderson, who is representing Belrose and Doe 324 in the civil suits. “This is a turn back to the old ways and old times, it begs the question.”

The abbey released a statement saying, “Saint John’s Abbey denies the allegations set forth by the two Plaintiffs in today’s press conference and fully intends to defend both cases.”

Meantime, the clock is ticking on the Legislature’s Child Victim’s Act.

After May 25, the filing window expires, meaning no more civil suits from decades old abuse cases.

Complete Article HERE!