Catholic church in Maryland slammed after sex abuse report

Kurt Rupprecht speaks about the abuse he suffered after the release of the redacted report on child sexual abuse in the Catholic Archdiocese of Baltimore by the Maryland Attorney General’s Office on Wednesday, April 6, 2023, in Baltimore.

By LEA SKENE

While the Catholic Archdiocese of Baltimore has long touted its transparency in publishing the names of clergy credibly accused of sexual abuse, a report released this week by the Maryland attorney general’s office raises questions about the integrity of the church’s list.

Following the report’s long-awaited release Wednesday, victims and advocates called on the Baltimore archbishop to address discrepancies — their latest demand for transparency in a decadeslong fight to expose the church’s coverup tactics.

They also celebrated a major step toward potential legal recourse: state legislation passed Wednesday that would eliminate the existing statute of limitations on civil litigation against institutions like the archdiocese in cases of child sexual abuse. Similar proposals failed in recent years, but the attorney general’s investigation brought renewed attention to the issue this legislative session. The bill has been sent to Gov. Wes Moore, who has said he supports it.

The report reveals the scope of over eight decades of abuse and coverup within the Archdiocese of Baltimore. More than 150 Catholic priests and others associated with the archdiocese sexually abused over 600 children and often escaped accountability, the investigation found.

The report also names 39 people who aren’t included on the archdiocese’s list, which officials first published in 2002 and have continued to update since.

The Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests, known as SNAP, said in a statement Wednesday that some omissions “might be understandable,” but called for the archbishop to “err on the side of being more transparent” for the sake of victims and others.

The archdiocese acknowledged the discrepancies Thursday, saying none of the 39 people are currently serving in ministry in the Baltimore area, and at least 33 have died. Archdiocese spokesperson Christian Kendzierski said most didn’t make the list because they are laypeople, including deacons and teachers; they were never assigned to ministry in the Archdiocese of Baltimore; or they were first accused posthumously and received only a single, uncorroborated allegation.

Kendzierski said the archdiocese is reviewing its list “in light of the Attorney General’s report” and expects to add more names soon. The report recommended expanding the list to include non-priests, which officials are also reviewing.

When Cardinal William Keeler released the Baltimore list in 2002, his decision earned the diocese a reputation for transparency at a time when the nationwide scope of wrongdoing remained largely unexposed. But years later, a Pennsylvania grand jury accused Keeler himself of covering up abuse allegations in the 1980s.

While Baltimore was among the first, other dioceses across the country have since published similar lists.

“But there’s always the concern that even credibly accused people have been left off these lists,” said Terence McKiernan, president of BishopAccountability.org, which tracks clergy abuse nationwide. “Now, in Baltimore, we have confirmation that’s what was happening.”

Several of the clergy members not on the church’s list admitted to abusing children and teens, according to the report. Sometimes they were asked to leave the ministry but often avoided serious consequences. In some cases, church officials agreed to financial settlements with victims — actions that suggest the allegations were considered credible, McKiernan said.

For example, one victim repeatedly contacted church officials in the late 1990s and early 2000s to report abuse he experienced in the 1930s at the hands of Father Alphonsus Figlewski, who would take altar boys on Baltimore’s streetcars and touch them inappropriately, according to the report. The diocese ultimately engaged in mediation and reached a settlement, the report says — but Figlewski was never listed as a credibly accused priest.

One of the church officials who reviewed the case, Father Michael Kolodziej, was himself later accused of abuse and included on the list.

Allegations in another case surfaced in 1968 and Father Albert Julian admitted to having an “almost uncontrollable sexual attraction toward young people of the opposite sex” and said he “had yielded to temptation from time to time,” according to the report, which cites a 1970 letter from the archdiocese to Vatican authorities. Julian received psychiatric treatment and was assigned to desk work “where he would not be exposed to temptation,” the report says. He requested to leave the church in 1970 and get married.

Further allegations against Julian came to light in 2002, but he was never listed on the archdiocese’s list.

Yet another priest, Father Thomas M. Kelly — whose heavy drinking, overt racism and “bad habit of pawing women” came up during a 1971 meeting of his colleagues and superiors — was hospitalized for psychiatric treatment and allowed to continue ministering, according to the report. In 1982, he caused a car crash that killed another priest and escaped criminal charges. He died in 1987.

When a woman reported in 2006 that Kelly had sexually abused her as a child in 1971, church officials deemed her account not credible, the report says. He also was never included on the archdiocese’s list.

“They talk about being transparent, but it’s time for this diocese to take responsibility,” said David Lorenz, director of the Maryland chapter of SNAP.

Lorenz and others advocated strongly for the legislation passed Wednesday to eliminate the statute of limitations for civil lawsuits.

Currently, victims of child sex abuse in Maryland can’t sue after they turn 38. The bill, if signed into law by Moore, would eliminate the age limit and allow for retroactive lawsuits. However, the measure includes a provision that would pause lawsuits until the Supreme Court of Maryland can determine whether it’s constitutional.

The Maryland Catholic Conference, which represents the three dioceses serving Maryland, opposed the measure, contending it was unconstitutional to open an unlimited retroactive window for civil cases.

“While there is clearly no financial compensation that can ever rectify the harm done to a survivor of sexual abuse, the devastating impact that the retroactive window provision will potentially have by exposing public and private institutions — and the communities they serve — to unsubstantiated claims of abuse, cannot be ignored,” the group said in written testimony.

Several other states have passed similar legislation in recent years, and in some cases, the resulting lawsuits have driven dioceses into bankruptcy. Just last month, the Diocese of Albany sought bankruptcy protection amid a deluge of lawsuits following a 2019 law change in New York that allowed more people to sue.

Barry Salzman, a New York attorney who has represented numerous victims of church sex abuse pro bono in recent years, said the Maryland legislation is unique in entirely eliminating a statute of limitations.

“I see this as another jurisdiction coming on the right side of things,” he said. “It would be a dramatic change.”

Complete Article HERE!

Maryland AG report into Archdiocese of Baltimore alleges 156 Catholic clergy members and others abused more than 600 children

Maryland Attorney General Anthony Brown speaks during a news conference on April 5, 2023.

By and

A report from Maryland Attorney General Anthony Brown released Wednesday alleges 156 Catholic clergy members and others abused at least 600 children over the course of more than six decades.

“From the 1940s through 2002, over a hundred priests and other Archdiocese personnel engaged in horrific and repeated abuse of the most vulnerable children in their communities while Archdiocese leadership looked the other way,” the report reads. “Time and again, members of the Church’s hierarchy resolutely refused to acknowledge allegations of child sexual abuse for as long as possible.”

The report lists descriptions of graphic sexual and physical abuse allegations: It includes stories of how some alleged abusers provided victims with alcohol and drugs and describes in vivid detail how they coerced and forced victims to perform sexual acts.

The report’s list of abusers includes clergy members, seminarians, deacons, teachers and other employees of the Archdiocese.

Forty-three priests who “served in some capacity or resided within the Archdiocese of Baltimore” committed sexual abuse in locations outside Maryland, the report alleged. Of these 43 priests, 40 of them allegedly committed sexual abuse in only one other location, while the other three allegedly committed sexual abuse in two other locations outside Maryland, the report says.

The investigation began in 2018 and has since received “hundreds of thousands of documents,” including treatment reports, personnel records, transfer reports and policies and procedures.

The Maryland Attorney General’s Office said more than 300 people contacted the office after it opened an email address and telephone hotline for people to report information about clergy abuse, and investigators interviewed hundreds of victims and witnesses.

“Today certainly in Maryland is a day of reckoning and a day of accounting,” Brown said during a news conference Wednesday.

Brown said he met with survivors and advocates Wednesday morning to hear their stories.

“While each of those stories is unique, together, they reveal themes and behaviors typical of adults who abuse children, and those who enable that abuse by concealing it,” Brown said. “What was consistent throughout the stories was the absolute authority and power these abusive priests and the church leadership held over survivors, their families and their communities.”

Most of the abusers listed in the report are dead and no longer subject to prosecution, the attorney general said.

“While it may be too late for the survivors to see criminal justice served, we hope that exposing the Archdiocese’s transgressions to the fullest extent possible will bring some measure of accountability and perhaps encourage others to come forward,” Brown said.

Some victims waited to report their claims of abuse until later in life, according to the report. Because Maryland recognizes a statute of limitations defense in civil cases, “victims have no recourse if they are over the age of 38,” the report reads.

Some victims did not come forward until their parents had died to “spare them the pain of knowing about the abuse,” the report reads, while others never intended to tell but were persuaded to come forward with the help of others. Others repressed their memories and recollections of abuse emerged only many years later, according to the report.

The Archbishop of Baltimore apologized on behalf of the Archdiocese after allegations of abuse surfaced in the report.

“To all survivors, I offer my most earnest apology on behalf of the Archdiocese and pledge my continued solidarity and support for your healing. We hear you. We believe you and your courageous voices have made a difference,” Archbishop William E. Lori wrote in a statement Wednesday.

“The report details a reprehensible time in the history of this Archdiocese,” Lori added, and wrote it “will not be covered up, ignored or forgotten.”

The Archdiocese began making “radical changes” in the 1990s to “end this scourge,” Lori wrote. Instances of abuse have fallen every year and every decade since cases of abuse peaked during the 1960s and 1970s, he wrote, saying, “The Archdiocese is not the same organization it was.”

“Make no mistake, however: today’s strong record of protection and transparency does not excuse past failings that have led to the lasting spiritual, psychological and emotional harm victim-survivors have endured,” the Archbishop’s statement reads.

The Archdiocese of Baltimore has paid $13.2 million to 303 victims of abuse since the 1980s, according to the Archdiocese’s office.

The payments include money for both counseling and settlements, the Archdiocese’s executive director of communications, Christian Kendzierski, said in an email to CNN.

The report contains “a full accounting” of abuse in the Archdiocese and “details of repeated tortuous, terrorizing, depraved abuse.” It lists and details 156 abusers “determined to have been the subject of credible allegations of abuse.”

More than 600 children are known to have been abused by those 156 people, the report reads, but “the number is likely far higher.”

The report reveals the names of all but 10 of the 156 alleged abusers listed in the report.

Brown said those 10 names were obtained through the grand jury process and could not be disclosed without permission or a court order.

“I should emphasize that because they’re redacted today doesn’t mean they will always be redacted,” Brown said.

The report does not constitute criminal indictment, according to the attorney general.

The report recommends that Maryland amend the statute of limitations for civil actions involving child sex abuse.

“Our judicial system should provide a means for victims who have suffered these harms to seek damages from the people and institutions responsible for them,” the report reads.

Maryland’s Senate passed a bill in March that would repeal the state’s civil statute of limitations in certain civil actions relating to child sexual abuse. The bill is working its way through the House.

Complete Article HERE!

US bishops’ document on trans health care ‘harms people,’ queer Catholics say

The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops has released a document on trans health care that queer Catholics say is harmful.

By John Ferrannini

LGBTQ Roman Catholics are responding to a document from the United States bishops about how the church’s health care services should respond to requests for gender-affirming care.

The document, issued March 20, predictably does not recognize that what it terms as “gender dysphoria” and “gender incongruence” should be treated with surgical intervention, stating, “Catholic health care services must not perform interventions, whether surgical or chemical, that aim to transform the sexual characteristics of a human body into those of the opposite sex or take part in the development of such procedures.”

Written by the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops’ committee on doctrine — which includes Diocese of Oakland Bishop Michael Barber — the document cites Pope Francis, who wrote in “Amoris Laetitia” (a binding document of church doctrine) that “biological sex and the socio-cultural role of sex (gender) can be distinguished but not separated.” Unlike homosexuality, the church’s most recent catechism does not address this issue.

The Catholic Church is the largest non-governmental provider of health care in the nation. Barber’s office did not immediately respond to requests for comment for this report but the Archdiocese of San Francisco did respond when the B.A.R. reached out Monday, stating that it “stands in solidarity with Pope Francis and the USCCB.”

“The Catholic Church has always viewed the body and soul as integral to the human person. A soul can never be in another body, much less be in the wrong body,” Peter Marlow, the executive director of communications and media relations for the archdiocese, stated. “Any technological intervention that does not accord with the fundamental order of the human person as a unity of body and soul, including the sexual difference inscribed in the body, ultimately does not help but, rather, harms the human person. Particular care should be taken to protect children and adolescents who are still maturing and who are not capable of providing informed consent.”

Paul Riofski, a gay man who’s the co-chair of Dignity SF — an affinity group for LGBTQ Catholics — told the Bay Area Reporter that “this document is just really misguided.”

“It’s just another example of the leadership of the USCCB going their own way, apart from the pastoral approach, when you deal with decisions on an individual basis, and look at how people can live fully as a Christian, a Catholic and a human being,” Riofski said. “It [the document] totally denies modern medical and scientific knowledge. It totally disregards the reality of intersex people, the fact that when you look at human biology many people are born without XX or XY chromosomes and the definition of ‘gender at birth’ is determined by the medical professional who delivers the baby.”

Intersex is an umbrella term for differences in sex traits or reproductive anatomy. People are born with these differences or develop them in childhood. There are many possible differences in genitalia, hormones, internal anatomy, or chromosomes.

Riofski said that the committee has failed to consider anything beyond its foregone conclusions.

“There’s nothing in God’s creation as narrow as gender is portrayed,” Riofski said.

Sara Mullin, a nonbinary person who is also a member of Dignity SF, agreed.

“I do not get the sense these particular bishops consulted with transgender and transsexual people or the science behind standards of care for trans people,” Mullin said.

Mullin also said that the document doesn’t consider the consciences of individuals.

“It takes for granted it’s not possible for a transgender person to undertake surgical or medical transition in a way that’s thoughtful, kind to oneself, and prayerful in its discernment,” Mullin said. “I think it’s concerning the conference thinks people undertaking medical transition are in best case out of a delusion and, worst case, out of maliciousness against their own body.”

New Ways Ministry, a national LGBTQ Catholic advocacy group, issued a statement of its own. Executive Director Francis DeBernardo wrote that “the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops’ new document on transgender health care states its intention as continuing Jesus’ healing ministry. Yet, in neglecting the experiences of trans people and in not attending to contemporary science, it harms people instead of healing them.”

DeBernardo clarified that it’s up to each bishop to determine the policies in their own dioceses.

“Thankfully, this document is limited in its power at this point,” DeBernardo said.

“Whether it becomes a national policy remains to be seen. Each bishop can still determine for himself if the recommendations in this document are helpful for the pastoral care of the transgender people in their communities,” he added. “We hope that local bishops will turn to transgender people and to the wider medical community to decide what policies about transgender healthcare they will pursue.”

A trans man who lives in the Bay Area who did not wish to be identified by name told the B.A.R. that “I feel I was naturally born this way and if I need surgery to match the inside of what I feel, that’s what I need.”

Though he isn’t Catholic — he was a Seventh-day Adventist and Latter-day Saint when he was younger — he feels that conservative Christians often “don’t like LGBTQ people. They don’t want us to have rights and be OK with ourselves and our bodies. They don’t see it — as what I said — a surgery to match the inside of how we feel. They think of it as a religious thing, and it’s only because they don’t understand anything about it.”

Complete Article HERE!

‘It crucifies you every time’

— The ‘crushing’ new tactic the church uses to block claims by abuse survivors

Strategy used to deny compensation is a ‘stark example’ of Catholic clergy prioritising the advice of lawyers over moral leadership

By

In the small workshop behind his home in the Victorian country town of Broadford, Craig Waters was huddled on the floor, rocking back and forth. He’d been back there for hours, crying and alone, trapped anew in childhood nightmares.

Waters was trying to process what the Catholic church had just told him: it was threatening to thwart his attempt to receive justice for the horrors he says he experienced as an eight-year-old boy at St Brendan’s Catholic primary school in western Sydney.

There, a Catholic nun he dubs “the witch” would take him away from his friends at lunchtime, lead him to a small dark room off the main assembly hall and shut the door.

“I remember always dreading the moment that she turned around and looked at me, as that was when she seemed to be at least 10 foot tall, her eyes looked like they were black holes in her face,” he later said in a witness statement seen by Guardian Australia.

“The witch” administered what were described as “evil lessons”. He was a boy, the nun said, which meant he had an evil thing in his pants.

It was the mark of the devil, the cause of his evil ways, and must be dealt with, she told him.

The sexual abuse Waters alleges he suffered repeatedly in that room sent him spiralling into teenage homelessness and drugs, shattered his relationship with a disbelieving, devoutly Catholic mother and led to long-term psychiatric harm.

The abuse only stopped when another nun stumbled into the room. “The witch”, Waters later found out, was subsequently moved and promoted to a deputy principal position.

It took half a century for Waters, with his family’s support, to confront his past and sue the church, seeking an apology and acknowledgment of the harm done to him.

The church, he says, responded with unexpected aggression. It informed his lawyers at Maurice Blackburn that it would try to prevent a court from even considering his allegations at trial: it would use the death of Waters’ abuser, Sister Agnes Francis, to claim it could no longer have a fair trial.

The same church that engineered a decades-long cover-up of industrial-scale clergy abuse was now effectively telling Waters that his delay in coming forward had left it in an unfair position.

“I’m 62 this year, and I couldn’t even tell you the last time I cried,” Waters says. “Probably when my dad died, and that was back in ’86. And I was broken down in tears, I was sobbing.

Craig Waters
Waters in the workshop behind his home.

“To know that they can, just with the flick of a switch, think they can turn off a person’s life like that – it’s crushing, it’s soul-destroying. It’s like saying, ‘Yeah, we know something happened to you but we don’t give a rat’s arse, so we’ll just close the book and you can go and die for all we care.’

“That’s what they do, they kill you. They kill you a little bit inside when they do that.”

Waters and his lawyers stared the church’s threat down. His legal team were eventually able to secure him a confidential settlement. But a Guardian Australia investigation has revealed that Waters’ treatment is far from isolated.

A pattern of delay and denial

In interviews with 13 lawyers working on separate abuse cases, analysis of court records and in discussions with survivors and their advocates, the Guardian has found that the church is now routinely using the deaths of clergy to either have survivors’ claims thrown out or to force them to accept paltry settlement amounts.

The strategy is being used even in cases where the dead priest or brother was a notorious paedophile who had previously abused other children and where the church had failed to act to remove the perpetrator. In one case it has been accused of sitting on its hands for almost two years, deliberately waiting for one of the worst Catholic school offenders in New South Wales to die without seeking any response to a new survivor’s allegations – and then using his death to argue it cannot receive a fair trial.

The approach has prompted a damning intervention from Francis Sullivan, who once led the Catholic response to the child abuse royal commission.

He describes it as “another layer of abuse” for survivors and a “stark example” of the church again prioritising the advice of lawyers and insurance companies over any sense of moral leadership.

“The royal commission very bluntly said the church leaders failed in their leadership, their moral leadership, and it was a damning finding,” Sullivan, the former chief executive of the Catholic church’s truth, justice and healing council, tells Guardian Australia.

“And I said it all along that church leaders – whether they’re religious orders, or whether they were bishops – did not exercise their moral leadership, but too often just took the advice of lawyers and insurance companies, whose job is to tell them what the law states, not what the moral law says.

“This is another stark example.”

The Marists and the case of Mark Peters

When the abuse survivor Mark Peters* first notified the Marist Brothers of his plans to sue in 2020, the man he accused was still very much alive. Brother Francis “Romuald” Cable, one of NSW’s worst Catholic school offenders, remained behind bars, serving lengthy jail sentences for abusing two dozen children at Marist schools throughout the 1960s and 70s.

After learning of Peters’ intention to sue, the Marist Brothers had almost two years to put his allegations to Cable and get his version of events. Instead, the Marists did nothing, blaming their inaction on a 2015 statement from Cable’s lawyers that he did not wish to speak to anyone from his old Catholic order.

Francis Cable
Longtime abuser Francis Cable outside a Sydney court in 2014.

After Cable died in September 2022 the Marists claimed they were now no longer able to have a fair trial because Peters’ allegations had never been put to him.

The argument has been described as “perverse” by Peters’ lawyers.

During the child abuse royal commission, the Marists faced criticism for thwarting and delaying justice for abuse survivors. The royal commission found that between 1962 and 1993 the Marists had a deliberate policy of concealing abuse complaints from police. In Cable’s case, the Marists’ failures to act on clear evidence that he was abusing children – including his own admissions – were described as “extraordinary and inexcusable”.

The Marists’ application for a permanent stay was heard in the NSW supreme court this month and is now awaiting judgment.

An analysis of court records suggest there are 13 cases where the church or other institutions, mostly the Marists and the Christian Brothers, are seeking or threatening permanent stays in abuse cases.

Ross Koffel, the managing principal of Koffels Solicitors and Barristers, has been representing abuse survivors for 13 years. He is unable to speak about specific cases, including Peters’, whom his firm is representing, but says the same tactic is now being employed right across the country.

It is also being used as a threat to lowball survivors in settlement negotiations, he says.

“It’s on everyone’s lips all over Australia,” Koffel tells Guardian Australia. “Everyone is aware of it. So it’s used either as a threat or to try to reduce the amount of the quantum of the damages, to say, ‘Now listen here, if you don’t accept this sort of money, then we will put on a stay application.’”

The impact on survivors, he says, is tragic.

“There is no regard for the victim,” he says. “None whatsoever. It is incredible. It is callous, and it is driven by money alone.”

Opening the floodgates: the GLJ decision

The church’s approach in such cases relies heavily on a key decision made by NSW’s highest court last year.

That decision ruled that the death of the Lismore priest Father Clarence Anderson left the diocese unable to fairly defend itself against the allegations of a woman known as GLJ, who alleges that she was abused as a 14-year-old girl in 1968.

Court documents seen by Guardian Australia show the church had known of other abuse complaints against Anderson before GLJ’s abuse but failed to remove him from circulation.

Instead he was moved between parishes, first from Kyogle to Macksville, then to Maclean and Lismore. Church records show there were complaints of abuse against Anderson in all four parishes.

GLJ’s lawyers, Ken Cush & Associates, are appealing against the decision to the high court. They are arguing, among other things, that the decision conflicts with significant reforms to remove time limits for abuse claims enacted after the royal commission across all states and territories.

Those reforms recognise the significant barriers facing survivors, who take 22 years, on average, to come forward.

“The legislature’s emphatic policy is that claims for historical child sexual abuse should be permitted to proceed to trial notwithstanding the lengthy passage of time,” GLJ’s lawyers told the high court.

The case, due to be heard this year, will be keenly watched.

Jeremy Roche, a compensation law partner at Attwood Marshall Lawyers, says firms that act for survivors are hoping for a “morally and legally acceptable decision”.

“Most abuse victims cannot speak about the abuse until decades later, and their much older paedophile abusers are often dead by the time they do,” he says. “If an abuser’s death becomes yet another unfair barrier to abuse claims, abuse survivors lose out again and we are all going to suffer as a community.”

Many believe that legislative reform will be needed to address the problem, regardless of what the high court decides.

Guardian Australia understands that multiple law firms, academics and survivors have approached the NSW attorney general, Mark Speakman, to complain about the church’s actions.

Speakman’s office told the Guardian last year that he had asked his department to monitor the GLJ case and to provide him with further advice on the matter.

‘The keepers of the secrets’

In instances where clergy have died, the church is also raising the lack of any documentary evidence as a compounding factor in the unfairness they face.

How can they respond to allegations when the alleged perpetrator is dead and there is no documentary evidence about complaints that may have been made about them?

But, well before any of the current court cases, the royal commission showed that many arms of the church deliberately did not keep records of abuse complaints.

Its final report said problems with “records and record-keeping were raised directly or indirectly in virtually all of the royal commission’s case studies, as well as in our private sessions”.

John Ellis
Abuse survivor and lawyer John Ellis: ‘It is immoral for the … institutions to rely on the delay by survivors in coming forward.’

The Marists, for example, were found to have kept accusations or admissions of sexual misconduct by their brothers out of written records until 1983.

“Before 1992, there was nothing kept in writing concerning the transfer of brothers nor, before 1983, were written records kept of allegations against, or admissions by, brothers,” the royal commission found.

John Ellis, a lawyer and an abuse survivor whose unfair treatment in the courts prompted an apology from George Pell, calls the latest tactic from the church immoral, given its shameful history in thwarting justice.

“In circumstances where there has been strong evidence in the royal commission of religious bodies being aware of abuses and covering them up, creating a situation where the leaders of the religious bodies became ‘the keepers of the secrets’, it is immoral for the same institutions to rely on the delay by survivors in coming forward … [and] the death of those ‘secret keepers’ to defeat the claims of survivors,” he says.

The Marists deny their use of stays was part of any deliberate strategy, sayingthey review cases on their merits and are guided by “legal precedents and considerations”.

“Where the accused is not able to respond to the allegations, and a fair trial will not be possible due to the absence of the accused’s response, it is accepted that an application for a permanent stay of proceedings is able to be considered,” a spokesperson says.

The order says the national redress scheme, which offers capped amounts of compensation, is an alternative to claims that cannot be pursued in court due to the “effluxion of time”.

Craig Waters
Waters says his civil claim was never about money.

The order also denies the approach is at odds with the royal commission findings, saying: “The royal commission recommended that the courts retain their inherent jurisdiction to grant a permanent stay because it recognised that there will be occasions when a fair trial would not be possible.”

Waters says his civil claim was never about the money. It was about an apology and an acknowledgment of the horrors he had suffered.

“At the same time, I didn’t want to relive it,” he says. “Every time you relive it, it crucifies you every time.”

Complete Article HERE!

Top Expert Resigns From Vatican Committee Against Child Sex Abuse

Father Hans Zollner, the Vatican’s Chair of the Steering Committee of the Centre for the Protection of Minors, looks on as he attends a news conference at the Pontificial Gregorian University in Rome February 5 , 2013. Father Zollner and Father Robert Oliver were presenting the publication of the acts of a major symposium in Rome in 2012 on how the Roman Catholic Church can better protect children from sexual abuse by members of the clergy.

By Reuters

Father Hans Zollner, one of the leading members of the Vatican committee against child sexual abuse, said on Wednesday he had resigned from the group, citing concerns over the way it was operating.

Zollner was one of the founding members of the Pontifical Commission for the Protection of Minors, which Pope Francis established in 2014 as part of efforts against the decades-old scandal of paedophilia within the Roman Catholic Church.

His abrupt departure represents a sharp blow to its image and comes after several members resigned early on, complaining the commission had no real power and met with internal resistance.

“Over the last years, I have grown increasingly concerned with how the commission, in my perception, has gone about achieving (the goal of protecting children and vulnerable persons)”, the Jesuit priest said in a statement.

Zollner said his resignation was effective March 14. He added that he could not live with problems “particularly in the areas of responsibility, compliance, accountability and transparency”.