As part of efforts to root out sexual abuse in the Catholic Church, newly appointed bishops will take part in training on how to deal with child abuse, it was announced on Monday.
Pope Francis has denounced clerical abuse as “intolerable” and “the most terrible and unclean thing imaginable”.
Members of the sex abuse commission set up by Pope Francis, who has taken a hard line on the issue during his papacy, will deliver the training.
Scores of allegations of sex abuse by clergy have been made against the Catholic Church in recent years, and the Vatican admitted in 2014 that it had defrocked almost 850 priests in the past decade as a result.
Pope Francis has denounced clerical abuse as “intolerable” and “the most terrible and unclean thing imaginable”, and has met with survivors several times.
The panel of experts is made up of clerics and lay people, including women, and has thus far struggled to be fully accepted within the Church’s power structure.
The decision to draw on the expertise of the Pontifical Commission for the Protection of Minors comes after a French monsignor who taught so-called “baby bishops” courses for new Church leaders, caused an uproar by telling them they did not necessarily have to report abuse to civil authorities.
Monsignor Tony Anatrella was later rebuked by the president of the commission, Cardinal Sean O’Malley of Boston, who said bishops had “a moral and ethical responsibility” to do so.
The worldwide sex abuse scandal first came to light in Boston in 2001 when it was revealed that predatory priests were shunted from parish to parish instead of being defrocked and handed over to the police.
Francis has compared the abuse of children by priests to devil worship and vowed a “zero tolerance” approach, setting up the commission in 2014, a year after taking office, to advise him on how to root out sexual abuse within the Church.
But some commission members have complained about the slow pace of change in the Vatican and a British member who went public with his criticisms was put on leave of absence after the panel passed a no-confidence motion in him.
Peter Saunders, head of Britain’s National Association for People Abused in Childhood, who was abused by two priests as a child, called for the commission to go beyond its advisory mandate and speak out on specific cases.
After the commission met over the weekend, it was decided it would participate in two courses in the Vatican for new bishops, including the one that the French monsignor Anatrella spoke to last year.
A priest who once said homosexuals had to live a “celibate life” to be good Catholics has been accused of molesting a 15-year-old boy at a Bronx church about 30 years ago.
But without a change to the statute of limitations on child sex abuse in New York, the alleged crimes committed by the man of the cloth will forever go unpunished.
Father Anthony Giuliano was running two parishes in Dutchess County — about 85 miles from Manhattan — on Aug. 16 when a 43-year-old man told police the priest had molested him in the late 1980s.
The Archdiocese of New York immediately removed him from the two parishes as the NYPD launched an investigation.
“The allegation has been found to be credible,” Reverend Gerald Walsh, the Auxiliary Bishop of the Archdiocese of New York, to parishioners at St. John the Evangelist and St. Charles Borromeo churches, located in Pawling and Dover Plains.
The accuser told Bronx Special Victims Squad detectives that he was working in the rectory of Holy Rosary Church in Baychester between 1987 and 1988 when Giuliano befriended him. The two used to play wrestle, he told cops.
During one session, Giuliano told the teen that he was going to “take him to the back and give him a frontal,” according to police sources.
The teen thought Giuliano was talking about a wrestling maneuver — until the priest told him to lie down on the ground, pulled the teen’s pants and underwear down and molested him, police sources said.
Even if sufficient evidence is found to support the accuser’s claims, New York’s statute of limitations bars authorities from filing charges. Victims of child sex abuse have until age 23 to bring a criminal or civil case.
In June, Albany legislators failed to vote on the Child Victims Act, which would have made it easier for child sex abuse victims to seek justice against their abusers, as well as the Catholic Church and schools. The long-stalled legislation would have created a one-year window for past victims of abuse to bring charges against their tormenters.
The Catholic League called the legislation “a vindictive bill pushed by lawyers and activists out to rape the Catholic Church.”
Meanwhile, investigators are trying to determine if other, more recent victims of Giuliano can be found, police sources said.
The accusations against Giuliano shook residents of Dover Plains, a leafy town of 87,000.
“I’m totally taken aback by this,” said Dover Plains Town Supervisor Linda French. “It’s unbelievable.”
Giuliano said he did nothing wrong.
“This is a shock,” the priest told the Daily News last month when the allegations surfaced. “It never happened.”
When reached Tuesday, he refused to comment. The accuser also declined comment.
In an interview by a SUNY New Paltz student posted online in 2014, Giuliano said that homosexuals should be celibate if they want to be part of the Catholic Church.
“It must be a celibate life like with the priesthood,” he said. “We are celibate for a greater purpose.”
He also questioned Pope Francis’ push to open the Catholic Church to same-sex couples.
“We can’t say this for 2,000 years and then all of a sudden say, ‘Oh, we made a mistake for 2,000 years,’” Giuliano said.
Anne Barrett Doyle, co-director of Bishop Accountability, said the Archdiocese of New York notoriously hides information, preventing a more complete picture of the extent of abuse among priests in the state.
“We know of very few accused priests in New York State,” Doyle said. “We know about more accused priests in the diocese of Manchester, New Hampshire than we do in the Archdiocese of New York.”
The estate of a late Ottawa man has launched a $2-million lawsuit against the Archdiocese of Ottawa for sexual abuse he allegedly suffered as a child in the 1960s.
The unusual statement of claim was filed last month on behalf of the man, whom the Citizen will identify only as John Doe. He died at the age of 63 in November 2014.
According to the claim, Doe was a victim of Rev. Jean Gravel, a Catholic priest at Ottawa’s Saint-Rémi Parish.
Gravel pleaded guilty in September 1967 to charges of gross indecency involving two teenaged boys and resisting arrest.
The new court document contends that Doe was one of those teenaged victims.
Doe’s widow said her husband of 23 years did not tell her about the abuse until he was on his deathbed. He was in hospital for the final month of his life with pulmonary fibrosis, an incurable lung disease.
Only when she asked him about whether he was scared did her husband break down and relate his long-buried story.
“I need to tell you something,” he began. The story poured out over the next two hours.
“The anguish and the fear of having to hold that in for all those years was something I had never, ever seen: I had never seen him like that,” his widow said in an interview.
Her husband, she said, was not afraid of death but of the possibility of an afterlife in which he would have to explain to God why he had disavowed his faith.
“He was terrified, absolutely terrified,” she said. “That, for me, was heart-wrenching.”
Doe, a father of three who worked most of his life for a cleaning company, died two days after that conversation.
“I think until the day he died, he was ashamed,” she said. “He was terrified about what people would think of him.”
Doe’s widow said she launched the lawsuit on his behalf to gain recognition for his suffering: “I think it gives a sense of meaning for what he went through. I think he told me for a reason: because he wanted, at some point, for the church to be responsible.”
Under Ontario law, an estate’s executor has as long as two years to launch a lawsuit on behalf of a deceased person. There’s no provision that limits when a victim of sexual assault can sue for damages.
Lawyer Robert Talach, who has litigated more clergy sex abuse cases than anyone in the country, called it a first-of-its-kind lawsuit.
Lawyer Robert Talach says the lawsuit filed by the estate of an Ottawa man is the first of its kind.
“I don’t know of any case like it,” said Talach, who represents John Doe’s estate.
The Doe case is one of four new lawsuits launched against the Catholic diocese in the three months since the Citizen published its series about clergy sexual abuse.
Three of the cases were filed by people who say they were victimized as children by Rev. Dale Crampton, the most notorious sex abuser in the history of the diocese. Those three victims are seeking a total of $6 million in damages.
The diocese has already paid out more than $740,000 in compensation to 10 of Crampton’s victims who were sexually abused by the priest between 1963 and 1982.
Crampton killed himself in October 2010 by jumping from an Ottawa highrise. At the time, the Ottawa Police Service was investigating sex abuse allegations made against him by five new complainants.
Twenty people have now come forward to say they were victimized by the priest, a two-term school board trustee.
Through interviews and court documents, the Citizen established that members of the Ottawa clergy were warned at least seven times about Crampton’s sexual misconduct, beginning in 1965.
Rev Dale Crampton.
Rev. Jean Gravel was the first priest convicted of a sex crime in Ottawa.
In September 1967, an Ottawa court heard that Gravel locked himself into his second-floor rectory apartment when police attempted to arrest him on two charges of gross indecency. The officers broke down the door, and a scuffle ensued.
Gravel was given a suspended sentence, placed on two years’ probation, and ordered to enter a treatment program for his alcoholism.
He was defrocked in 1970 — an unusual event at the time — and killed himself in August 1980.
The diocese has already been sued twice before for sexual abuse perpetrated by Gravel.
In response to a 2013 lawsuit, the Archdiocese of Ottawa issued a news release that said, “Jean Gravel’s story is tragic as it is scandalous. Ordained a priest in 1950, he exhibited behavioural problems which required diocesan authorities of the time to intervene, seeking his correction and rehabilitation.”
According to the statement of claim filed in the John Doe case, the sexual abuse began in 1962 when the victim was 11 years old. It continued, the claim says, for the following four years and escalated into rape.
To facilitate that abuse, Gravel made Doe “feel that he was special in the eyes of Gravel, the Church, and God,” the claim reads, and ensured the boy’s silence by making him believe his soul was in peril.
The allegations contained in the statement of claim have not been proven in court.
The Archdiocese of Ottawa did not respond to a request for comment on the lawsuit.
Glynn County Sheriff’s Office booking photo of Ken Adkins
Ken Adkins was arrested Friday morning and charged with one count of aggravated child molestation and one count of child molestation, the Georgia Bureau of Investigation reported.
Adkins, 56, who is pastor of the Greater Dimensions Christian Fellowship, turned himself in at 9 a.m. at the Glynn County jail.
A GBI agent told News4Jax that several incidents of molestation were alleged to have occurred at the church, in a vehicle and at the victim’s residence. The Brunswick Judicial Circuit asked the Brunswick police to assist in the investigation, which began Aug. 12 and is ongoing.
Adkins’ attorney, Kevin Gough, said the charges are over an alleged incident that happened six years ago and felt that the investigation and charges were rushed.
“He will ultimately be cleared of any wrongdoing,” Adkin’s wife and co-pastor, Charlotte Adkins, said. “I share my husband’s concern for the alleged victim,” who she said was a young man who was part of the church’s teen ministry.
Gough said he was filing motions for bail, a preliminary hearing, to demand a speedy trial and to see the evidence.
“Mr. Adkins and I have conferred and he is innocent and he looks forward to being cleared of the charges against him,” Gough said. “He looks forward to his day in court.”
Ken Adkins has spoken publicly on Jacksonville political issues, including the city’s proposed human rights ordinance, transgender bathrooms and the city’s crime rate.
According to criminal records, Adkins was arrested in 2003 for obtaining property in return for a worthless check, petty theft in 2002, leaving the scene of an accident resulting in injury in 2001 and multiple grand theft and fraud charges.
This article will be updated throughout the day as more information becomes available.
Survivors of child sexual abuse have accused the Church of England of “acting like Pontius Pilate” as a previously unseen document revealed that bishops were explicitly instructed only to give partial apologies – if at all – to victims to avoid being sued.
Legal advice marked “strictly confidential” and circulated among the most senior bishops, told them to “express regret” only using wording approved by lawyers, PR advisers and insurers.
The guidance – written in 2007 and finally replaced just last year – also warns bishops to be wary of meeting victims face to face and only ever to do so after legal advice.
It speaks of the “unintended effect of accepting legal liability” for sexual abuse within their diocese and warns them to avoid “inadvertently” conceding guilt.
The paper, seen by The Telegraph and confirmed as genuine, advises bishops to use “careful drafting” to “effectively apologise” without enabling victims to get compensation.
Joe tried to contact the Archbishop of Canterbury
Survivors said it showed there was a culture of denial, dishonesty and “blanking” victims in ways which had heightened their pain and ultimately failed to tackle the roots of the abuse crisis.
It highlighted how the teenager – known as “Joe” – revealed his ordeal to a string of leading clerics, three of them later ordained as bishops, who then claimed not to remember anything.
The report singled out the way in which the Bishop of Durham, the Rt Rev Paul Butler, the Church’s then head of safeguarding, cut all contact with Joe, following advice from insurers, after he began legal action. The review condemned this as “reckless”.
Meanwhile Lambeth Palace brushed off around 17 requests for a meeting with the Archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby, without any “meaningful” reply, it shows.
Joe said the newly revealed document “made total sense” in light of his own experience.
“This finally exposes the culture that has been followed,” he said
“The approach to survivors is often a corporate model and this document supports that – it shows a church led by lawyers and insurers, you get the impression that these people are really their masters.
“A diocese is deferential to their bishop and the bishop is deferential to a bunch of lawyers.
“The Church will say ‘our hands are tied’ but they are paying the people who are tying their hands.
“They should say we need to stop this nonsense but they wash their hands like Pontius Pilate.
“Every part of this nexus [the bishops, the lawyers and insurers owners] washes its hands of every other part of it but the nexus is joined at the hip.”
The advice, by the Church’s top legal advisor, Stephen Slack, explains how bishops could find themselves being sued over the actions – or inaction – of their predecessors.
While accepting that they might “understandably want to express their regret”, it adds: “Because of the possibility that statements of regret might have the unintended effect of accepting legal liability for the abuse it is important that they are approved in advance by lawyers, as well as by diocesan communications officers (and, if relevant, insurers).
“With careful drafting it should be possible to express them in terms which effectively apologise for what has happened whilst at the same time avoiding any concession of legal liability for it.”
On the possibility of bishops meeting victims, it adds: “This may be the right course in some circumstances but great care will be needed to ensure that nothing is said which inadvertently concedes legal liability.”
One of Britain’s leading child abuse lawyers, David Greenwood of Switalskis, who represented Joe, said: “With Church organisations you expect a higher standard than just a legalistic approach.
“This is a naïve document, it is legalistic and doesn’t take into account the needs of survivors of child sexual abuse.
“I think this is more naivety than nastiness – but the effect definitely can be nasty.”
Richard Scorer, another leading lawyer representing more than 50 victims in the ongoing Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse, said: “This confirms what we have long suspected which is that when they would offer apologies they were deliberately constructed in a way to avoid any meaningful responsibility.
“I’m sure they will be embarrassed at the language here but it reflects a reality that we have come across time and again with the churches that they will take an apologetic tone but that is combined with an unwillingness to admit responsibility.”
New guidelines produced by the Church of England in June last year effectively repudiate the earlier advice, insisting that the “pastoral response” to victims should be the top priority and must be separated from legal and insurance responses.
But it goes on to add that apologies should be discussed with insurers, communications officer and ecclesiastical lawyers.
Bishop Sarah Mullally met with Joe and apologised for the Church’s handling of the case
A Church of England spokesman said: “The Church of England published new guidance in 2015 emphasising that: ‘The pastoral response to alleged victims and survivors is of top priority, and needs to be separated as far as possible from the management processes for the situation, and from legal and insurance responses.’
“That superseded all previous advice and ensures that the pastoral needs of survivors must never be neglected and pastoral contact can continue whatever legal issues exist.”
He added: “Bishop Sarah Mullally is working closely with the National Safeguarding Team to implement the recommendations of the Elliott Review which have been fully endorsed by the House of Bishops.
“When Bishop Sarah received the review on behalf of the Church of England, as requested by the survivor, she offered an unreserved apology for the failings of the Church towards the survivor.
“Following the publication Bishop Sarah met with him and two members of MACSAS [Minister and Clergy Sexual Abuse Survivors].
“This was an opportunity to apologise in person for the failings of the Church towards him and the horrific abuse he suffered.”
