Tag: Clergy Abuse Survivors

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

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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!

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Secret archive of paedophile crime kept by Catholic Church’s insurers

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Victims of some of the worst sexual abuse perpetrated by the Catholic Church are being denied access to a vast archive of clergy crime, as the church continues to ensure the offending is kept secret, despite the files being handed over to the royal commission.

The nearly 2000 files – which include evidence about at least 63 offenders – have been amassed by the church’s insurers, but the church appears intent on paying millions of dollars in victims compensation settlements to ensure the documents are not made public.

Church keeps sex abuse files secret: Gerald Ridsdale outside court with George Pell.
Church keeps sex abuse files secret: Gerald Ridsdale outside court with George Pell.

Angry victims and their lawyers have called on Catholic Church Insurance Ltd to make the archive public to enable investigation of potential criminal cover-ups and to assist victims in dealing with their abuse and to seek compensation.

The information was collected in the 1990s as the insurance company took steps to manage the risk posed by an increasing number of victims coming forward to claim compensation.

The insurer’s inquiries aimed to determine exactly when church authorities were first alerted to a paedophile behaviour by clergy. The dates were vital as the insurer did not have to provide coverage for crimes committed after the date church authorities had official “knowledge” an individual was an abuser.

Convicted paedophile priest Gerald Ridsdale giving evidence at the Royal Commission into Institutional Response to Child Sexual Abuse in Ballarat.
Convicted paedophile priest Gerald Ridsdale giving evidence at the Royal Commission into Institutional Response to Child Sexual Abuse in Ballarat.

Such information is also of extraordinary value to victims seeking to find out what the church knew about their alleged abuse and subsequent liability, as well as for criminal investigations into the concealment of crimes.

The Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sex Abuse last week confirmed it has received the files, but declined to comment further about requests to make the information public.

Michael Glennon
Convicted paedophile and former Catholic priest Michael Glennon.

A spokeswoman for the Catholic Church referred all queries on the matter to the insurance company, while a spokesman for CCI said the insurer declined to comment.

During its 1990s efforts to obtain this information, Catholic Church Insurance called for specific complaints to be detailed and undertook its own investigations, often interviewing high-level church authorities about potential risks and the offenders who spoke freely as the information was considered highly confidential. Transcripts of the interviews were then filed away.

Dioceses were also asked to provide lists of potential offenders and the date the crimes were first reported to Catholic Church Insurance. Special forms titled “Special Issues Incident Report” were sent to dioceses to record specific instances of abuse.

“We need to have updated information on all matters which may give rise to criminal sexual misconduct. Your cooperation is requested in completing this form in relation to all known incidents which may later become subject to claims or litigation,” says the wording on one of the forms since made public.

Lawyers representing abuse victims say they now know to seek access to the documents using legal procedures, but when they zero in on particularly damning records, the church settles.

“The settlements have happened on dozens and dozens of occasions,” said lawyer Jason Parkinson from Porters Lawyers, which has run more than 800 cases against the church and is dealing with some 200 ongoing matters.

“Whenever we have been seeking documents that will assist their case against the Catholic Church, the insurance documents are never produced and whenever we get close the matters are settled,” he said. “The material we are after from the insurers are the records which show who and when, which priests and brothers were sexually assaulting children.

“The legal exceptions to providing that information should only be in relation to commercial-in-confidence and perhaps trademark protection but this relates to conspiracies to commit the most heinous of crimes short of manslaughter and murder – the sexual abuse of children.”

His call is backed by Anthony Foster whose two daughters Emma and Katie were raped by paedophile priest Kevin O’Donnell. Emma committed suicide, Katie is in a wheelchair after being hit by a car.

Mr Foster described it as “shocking” that the information was being kept secret.

“This should be made public. The whole sordid affair should be opened up. The more transparent it is the more victims will come forward,” he said. “This is all about providing openness, which is the opposite of how these crimes occurred in the first place – behind closed doors.”

Evidence of the archive first surfaced in the 2014 Victorian parliamentary inquiry into the handling of child abuse by religious and other organisations. Then Catholic Church Insurance boss Peter Rush admitted to the inquiry there was a list of clergy for which the insurer would not provide cover.

Mr Rush confirmed two names on the list were serial paedophiles Gerald Ridsdale and Father Michael Glennon. Ridsdale is serving eight years jail for abusing 53 children. Glennon died in prison after being sentenced to at least 10 years for abusing children as young as seven.

Mr Rush promised to provide the list to the inquiry but it has not been made public. The insurance company has refused to provide any details of the handover.

Further evidence of the extent of the archive has emerged in the ongoing Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse, with various examples of the transcripts and forms posted publicly as exhibits.

Some provide examples of potential criminal cover-ups by those who were aware of crimes and shifted paedophiles to other areas where they continued their abuse.

One transcript held by Catholic Church Insurance is a 1993 interview with the then Bishop of Ballarat Ronald Mulkearns about Ridsdale.

Discussing responses to complaints about Ridsdale, the bishop describes the paedophile as “an extraordinarily talented fellow” and “an excellent pastor”. Bishop Mulkearns argues he was not responsible for Ridsdale going on to abuse more children because he had referred Ridsdale to a counsellor who then authorised him to return to duties.

Another example of the value of such information to victims can be found in a CCI document where the insurer’s representative interviews another priest about the activities of paedophile Father Ron Pickering.

That conversation reveals Pickering – who abused Victorian children and then escaped justice by fleeing to the United Kingdom – had substantial assets in Australia including a tenanted shop in Melbourne, a farm and a property in Victoria, and a house with five acres in Tasmania – something victims may have found important when seeking compensation.

An unreported crime is exposed in another insurance document relating to Father Barry Robinson who had admitted to abuse in the United States and Chile before being returned to Victoria and allowed to work as a fill-in priest as recently as 2010. When it emerged he was still working the church defended his work as a fill-in priest arguing Robinson had never been convicted.

A Catholic Church Insurance risk management claim form reveals Robinson had previously also confessed to sexually abusing a child in the United Kingdom – an unreported incident. Robinson died in 2014.

The full scale of the archive only became apparent last year when the royal commission openly made a specific request to access the files in relation to a number of dioceses and paedophiles of which the church “had prior knowledge”.

Catholic Church Insurance failed to meet the two-month deadline to provide the information. At a directions hearing in Sydney in July 2015, the commission heard there were 1960 files that related to 63 offenders.

Complete Article HERE!

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Church abuse survivor speaks out: ‘my parents trusted I was safe and I wasn’t’

By Matt Markovich

Mary Lynch
Mary Lynch

Eight women who were molested by a local priest as children have settled a lawsuit with the Seattle Archdiocese for $9.1 million.

The eight cases happened between 1968 and 1975, but attorneys say there’s the potential of many more cases involving former priest Michael Cody.

“When a priest gives you attention, you think it’s a really good thing — you’re special — and that’s really powerful,” said Mary Lynch, one of the women who settled with the church this week.

Lynch says 45 years ago, when she was just 8-years old, she was left alone several times with Cody, who her devout Catholic parents trusted faithfully and implicitly.

“I was put in a situation that my parents trusted I was safe and I wasn’t,” Lynch said.

She says Cody knew who to target .

“He was very good at manipulating the families that he should have been serving,” Lynch said.

Cody is one of 77 clergy the Seattle Archdiocese acknowledge sexually abused parishioners — abuse that goes back decades. In 1962 a priest wrote the Archbishop that “father Cody’s character is really pathological … he is now mentally and emotionally seriously sick.”

But the Archdiocese hid cody’s issues, moving him from parish to parish, from St. James in Seattle to Bellingham, LaConner, and eventually St. Charles in Burlington, where he met Lynch.

“If they hadn’t continued to move him from place to place, he would have never been at St. Charles in the first place,” Lynch said.

Lynch’s case is one of the eight settled this week for $9.1 million. All of the cases involved Cody.

“Now with this settlement we are hoping that they will find some measure of closure and hoping they will move forward in their lives,” said Greg Magnoni with the Seattle Archdiocese.

Lynch says she still has her faith, but she hasn’t been to church in 15 years. She says she’s speaking out to inspire others to do the same.

“He took away a lot of my self esteem, and you just have to kind of go to that raw core to move forward,” she said.

The settlement payouts come from church assets and liability insurance. Michael Cody was removed from the priesthood in 2005 and died last November in Las Vegas.

Complete Article HERE!

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‘Father Cody is dangerous’: Seattle Archdiocese settles sex abuse case for $9.1 million after damning letters surface

By Justin Wm. Moyer

Left: Michael Cody. Right: Jeri Hubbard.
Left: Michael Cody. Right: Jeri Hubbard.

After being sued by eight women who alleged they were molested by a priest four decades ago, the Seattle Archdiocese has settled for $9.1 million.

The settlement, reported by the Seattle Times, came Wednesday after a damning psychiatrist’s letter, among other documents, surfaced last year reporting Michael Cody, the priest at the center of the suit, was a pedophile who needed to “be removed from parish work as soon as possible.” The letter, part of correspondence among church officials expressing concerns about Cody, was written in 1962; the women were abused between 1968 and 1975.

“He told me that he was suffering from an abnormal sexual attraction toward young girls,” psychiatrist Albert M. Hurley wrote. “… He has molested at least eight girls twelve years of age or younger. As you know, there have been complaints about his hostility and temper in the various parishes where he has served. He also complains of feelings of severe depression, during which time he prays that God will allow him to die rather than continue this behavior.”

Hurley was explicit about his diagnosis, saying Cody was a pedophile who showed “sadistic tendencies” to boys he knew and talked of killing others and himself.

“It is likely that if external controls on his acting out are made, and this cycle of aggression and depression sufficiently interrupted, then he can once again assume a useful and productive life,” the psychiatrist wrote.

The interruption never came. Cody — who stopped serving as a priest in 1979, was defrocked in 2005 and died last year — served in a number of parishes in Washington state, where he “preyed on children for years,” as the Seattle Times put it. In a deposition in 2013, the priest, then 82, said estimating how many children he abused “would only be a guess.” In a 1988 mental-health evaluation, he said he had molested up to 40 girls and one boy.

“At a time when I didn’t feel special, he befriended me and made me feel special,” Jeri Hubbard, 63 — who Cody had sex with repeatedly when she was a troubled 16-year-old runaway living in his rectory — told the Seattle Times. “Instinctively, I kind of knew it wasn’t right. But I didn’t know what to do and I didn’t want him to get in trouble.” When she questioned the arrangement, Cody said her no one would believe her if she told them. (She settled with the archdiocese in a separate case last year.)

A psychiatrist’s letter about diagnosing Father Michael Cody with “pedophilia.”
A psychiatrist’s letter about diagnosing Father Michael Cody with “pedophilia.”

In the wake of the settlement, the archdiocese, as so many in the Catholic Church have, sought to put the past behind it — and find out if other victims are out there.

In January, the Archdiocese published a list of 77 priests, brothers, nuns and deacons accused of assaulting children while serving or living in Western Washington, the Seattle Times reported.

“Our first priority is the protection of children and healing for past victims,” Seattle Archbishop Peter Sartain said, as the Associated Press reported. “It is my firm commitment to build on the good efforts of the past and continue to take steps that will truly help victims of clergy sexual abuse to heal. This $9 million settlement demonstrates our ongoing commitment to acknowledge and address the devastating impact of clergy sexual abuse, and to encourage victims to come forward.”

An attorney for the women said the settlement prevents the archdiocese from facing the terrible details of the Cody case and from acknowledging that the priest remained on the job despite the fact an archbishop knew of his crimes.

“The evidence regarding Father Cody is overwhelming, and I don’t think the Archdiocese wants more bad publicity,” Michael T. Pfau said. “The direct involvement of former Archbishop Thomas Connelly in placing this pedophile in parishes with full knowledge of his danger to children is truly disturbing.”

The psychiatrist’s letter was part of a so-called “secret file” on Cody kept by the church. Advocates for those abused by priests say such files only contribute to a decades-old problem.

“These records illustrate a pattern of secrecy,” Mary Dispenza, Northwest director of the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests and herself a victim of clergy abuse, said earlier this month. “Most bishops are still dragging their feet about releasing them because they’ll be embarrassed or ashamed, and past bishops might be implicated.”

“I was pissed,” Hubbard, one of Cody’s victims, said when she learned of the file. “The church knew he was a pedophile years before he ever came … And they let that happen.”

Complete Article HERE!

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3 Franciscan friars to surrender in child endangerment case

Attorney General Kathleen Kane
Attorney General Kathleen Kane announced criminal conspiracy charges against several leaders of the Franciscan Order on March 15, 2016, in Johnstown, Pa.

Three Franciscan friars charged with allowing a suspected sexual predator to hold jobs where he molested more than 100 children in Pennsylvania are set to surrender on child endangerment and criminal conspiracy charges.

Robert D’Aversa, 69; Anthony Criscitelli, 61; and Giles Schinelli, 73, have arraignments scheduled for 10 a.m. Friday.

The friars served successively as ministers provincial who headed a Franciscan religious order in western Pennsylvania from 1986 to 2010. In that role, each assigned and supervised the order’s members including the late Brother Stephen Baker, who allegedly molested scores of children, most of them at Bishop McCort High School in Johnstown where he was assigned from 1992 to 2000.

Schinelli has been removed as pastoral administrator at the San Pedro Center, a Catholic retreat in Winter Park, Florida, while D’Aversa likewise has been removed as pastor of St. Patrick Catholic Community in Mount Dora, Florida, according to the Orlando Diocese.

The Archdiocese of Saint Paul and Minneapolis said Anthony Criscitelli was removed is pastor of St. Bridget Parish Community in Minneapolis.

Orlando Bishop John Noonan issued a statement Wednesday saying he supported the decision of the Rev. Patrick Quinn, the current minister provincial of the Hollidaysburg-based Franciscan order, to remove D’Aversa and Schinelli from their Florida assignments.

“We pray for all the people involved in this investigation and for those who are suffering,” Noonan’s statement said.

Baker killed himself at the Franciscan monastery by plunging two knives into his heart in January 2013. That occurred nine days after Youngstown, Ohio, church officials announced settlements involving 11 students who accused Baker of molesting them at schools there in the late 1980s.

News coverage of those settlements prompted students from Bishop McCort to file lawsuits alleging they were abused by Baker, who worked as a religion teacher, coach and athletic trainer at the school about 60 miles east of Pittsburgh. Eight-eight of those victims settled their claims against the Altoona-Johnstown Diocese and the Franciscan order for $8 million in October 2014, with several other former students settling individual claims since.

The attorney general charged the friars because Schinelli assigned Baker to work at the school, even after an abuse allegation surfaced in 1988 and counselors told the Franciscans in 1991 that Baker should have no one-on-one contact with students.

D’Aversa and Criscitelli are charged because under their watch Baker continued working at the school or had access to its facilities, events and students. The attorney general alleges D’Aversa also didn’t alert police about a “credible” abuse allegation against Baker in 2000, which prompted his removal from McCort.

All three friars are represented by prominent Pittsburgh defense attorneys.

James Kraus declined comment Thursday on behalf of Criscitelli. Bob Ridge, who represents D’Aversa, and Charles Porter Jr., who represents Schinelli, didn’t immediately return calls.

Thomas Farrell, who represents the Franciscan Friars, Third Order Regular, Province of the Immaculate Conception, also didn’t return a call. Quinn, who heads the order, also didn’t return a message seeking comment Thursday.

Complete Article HERE!