Catholic Hierarchy – Page 206

April 12, 2016April 12, 2016

Effort to reform child sex abuse crime laws clears a hurdle in House

Rep. Mark Rozzi, D-Berks County, and a victim of sex abuse as a child, speaks at the Crime Victim Awareness Rally in the Rotunda at the Pennsylvania State Capitol in Harrisburg, Pa., Apr. 11, 2016.

The laws that govern how long victims of child sex abuse have to bring their predators to justice came one step closer to being reformed on Monday.

A bill that would reform the statute of limitations cleared a hurdle in the House as lawmakers approved an amendment to House Bill 1947, which would eliminate civil and criminal statutes of limitations to most sex crimes, especially child sex abuse cases – all going forward.

The House agreed to attach an amendment introduced by Rep. Mark Rozzi (D-Berks) that would retroactively raise the age limit for civil lawsuits in sex abuse cases from 30 to 50.

Speaking before a House session that was notably boisterous with chatter all day, Rozzi brought the chamber to a hushed silence as he spoke about friends and victims who had either committed suicide or suffered decades of anguish after being sexually abused by priests.

Rozzi’s amendment would raise the age limit for victims to seek charges – retroactively — from 30 to 50.

“This amendment allows past victims to likewise bring civil lawsuits,” he said.

House Bill 1947 was introduced by House Judiciary Committee chairman Rep. Ron Marsico (R-Dauphin) last week. The bill moved swiftly out of committee.

Under current law, victims of child sexual abuse are barred from seeking civil action after they reach the age of 30.

Victims can bring criminal charges against offenders until they reach 50 years of age — but only if the victim turned 18 years old after Aug. 27, 2002. The law allows victims older than that to report until their 30th birthday.

“This is a matter of fairness and justice for some,” said Rozzi, himself a survivor of clergy sex abuse.

In a poignant speech about his friend who committed suicide at the age of 44 after years of dealing with the ravages of abuse, Rozzi appealed to House colleagues to approve his amendment, speaking candidly and with graphic details about the horrors of children who have had priests squeeze their genitals or insert fingers into their anus.

He urged his colleagues to read the grand jury report out of the Altoona-Johnstown Diocese, “if you have the stomach to.”

he report released in early March found systemic and widespread clergy sex abuse of hundreds of children, and concealment by church officials. The Altoona-Johnstown report mirrors earlier grand jury investigations into the Archdiocese of Philadelphia.

“Mr. Speaker, we know this problem will never go away, not while archaic and arbitrary statutes exist,” Rozzi said.

Victims advocates say victims of child sex abuse typically are not ready to come forth about their abuse long after it has happens – in many cases, decades after when the statute of limitations have expired.

Just hours earlier on Monday, hundreds of survivors of abuse and crimes and advocates filled the Main Rotunda of the Capitol calling for a reform to the state’s laws.

Marsico’s bill – HB 1947 – would eliminate all statutes – civil and criminal – in cases of sexual abuse going forward. His bill also would waive the sovereign immunity clause that prevents child sex-abuse victims from suing state and local entities, such as school districts.

Two other amendments were withdrawn: one would have lifted expired civil statutes for a period of time.

While Rep. Tom Murt (R- Montgomery/Phila.) argued that as many as eight states had lifted expired civil statutes without the flood of false claims, he was withdrawn his amendment for the benefit of victims.

“I resent anyone saying this issue is driven by special interests,” he said. “It is driven by victims….some who have suffered in silence and humiliation and shame. The shame is not theirs. The shame is ours if we do not take action on this issue to help these victims and help victimization of any other children.”

He said he was withdrawing his amendment in order for Marsico’s bill to move quickly from the House in the hope that Senate colleagues would provide retroactivity measures to the bill.

Rozzi said that while his amendment did not help everyone, it “at least opens the door.”

Rozzi urged House colleagues “to stand with me” on this issue.

“It is way past time to do the right thing,” said Rozzi, who received a nearly full-House standing ovation.

The bill, which will now be reprinted to reflect the amendments, will be taken up for third reconsideration later this week, possibly as early as Tuesday.

Complete Article HERE!

April 9, 2016April 9, 2016

As Pennsylvania confronts clergy sex abuse, victims and lawmakers act

By Laurie Goodstein

Maureen Powers, who said she was sexually abused by a priest as a child, decided to finally report her case.

Nearly 15 years after Boston suffered through a clergy abuse scandal dramatized in the movie “Spotlight,’’ Pennsylvania is going through its own painful reckoning.

From the state Capitol in Harrisburg to kitchens in railroad towns, people say they have been stunned to read evidence that priests they knew as pastors, teachers, and confessors were secretly abusing children — findings a grand jury report called “staggering and sobering.”

Victims are coming forward for the first time to family and friends, and alumni of parochial schools are pulling out their yearbooks, marveling at how smiling faces hid such pain.

By the age of 12, Maureen Powers, the daughter of a professor at the local Roman Catholic university, played the organ in the magnificent hilltop Catholic basilica here and volunteered in the parish office.

But she said she was hiding a secret: Her priest sexually abused her for two years, telling her it was for the purpose of “research.”

By her high school years, she felt so tied up in knots of betrayal and shame that she confided in a succession of priests. She said the first tried to take advantage of her sexually, the second suggested she comfort herself with a daily candy bar, and the third told her to see a counselor. None of them reported the abuse to the authorities or mentioned that she could take that step.

So when a Pennsylvania grand jury revealed in a report in March that the Diocese of Altoona-Johnstown, which includes Loretto, engaged in an extensive coverup of abuse by as many as 50 church officials, Powers, now 67, decided to finally report her case.

She called the office of the Pennsylvania attorney general and recounted her story, including the name of her abuser, a prominent monsignor who was not listed in the grand jury report.

“I just felt like now, someone will believe me,” said Powers, who retired after 30 years in leadership positions at the YWCA in Lancaster.

She was not alone. Powers was among more than 250 abuse survivors and tipsters who called a hotline set up by the Pennsylvania attorney general, Kathleen G. Kane. Twenty agents were needed to answer the phones, and a voice mailbox was set up to handle the overflow.

Multiplying the outrage, the grand jury report supplied evidence that the police, district attorneys, and judges in the Altoona and Johnstown area colluded with bishops in the coverup, quashing the pleas of parents who tried to inform on priests who sexually abused children. Some of those officials are named in the report, and some still hold public office.

“It really hit home for me when I realized that these victims are my friends, my classmates,” said state Representative Frank Burns, a Democrat, whose district includes part of Johnstown and who attended Bishop McCort High School, where the grand jury found that the abuse was rampant.

“Our region is devastated by drugs, suicide, alcoholism, and then you wonder — is this abuse tied into all of this?”

In the state capital, calls for full disclosure and accountability suddenly have new momentum. State Representative Mike Vereb, a Republican and a former police officer from Philadelphia, wrote a letter recently to the US attorney for the Western District of Pennsylvania calling for an investigation under the federal Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act, known as RICO.

“This failure was colossal. It was nothing less than organized crime,” Vereb said in an interview in his office, where he keeps his old nightstick on his desk. “There was no chance, if you were a victim, that you were going to get justice.”

A flurry of negotiations has begun over bills that had been stalled for years to extend the statute of limitations for both civil and criminal cases of child sexual abuse. Abuse victims and their advocates have long argued that just as there is no statute of limitations on murder, there should be none on the sexual abuse of children.

The legislator leading the charge to extend the statute of limitations is state Representative Mark Rozzi, a Democrat from Berks County. Still boyish at 44, he is haunted by memories of being raped by a priest in middle school — a priest he later learned went on to sexually abuse some of his friends.

He said he decided to run for office in 2013 after the second of those friends committed suicide. On Good Friday a year ago, a third friend also took his own life.

Complete Article HERE!

April 9, 2016April 9, 2016

Victim raped by upstate priest wants N.Y. to fix sex abuse statute

BY MICHAEL O’KEEFFE

Kevin Braney went through hell in the basement of a church rectory.

Braney says he was a devout 15-year-old altar boy when Msgr. Charles Eckermann first raped him in a rectory storage room at St. Ann’s Church in Manlius, a suburb of Syracuse. Braney says Eckermann assaulted him at least a dozen times in 1988 and 1989 on a mattress the priest had stashed in the storage room.

Msgr. Charles Eckermann was defrocked and sentenced to a life of prayer and penance by the Vatican after a probe showed the sex abuse claims against him were credible.

“I was taught to trust and believe priests because they were the closest thing to God on Earth, and he told me if I defied him, I was defying God,” Braney said. “He said he had a divine right to abuse me.

“He told me he would put my genitals in a vise if I resisted,” added Braney, now an executive at a mental health agency in Boulder, Colo., and an advocate for sexual abuse victims. “He said he would kill me if I said anything.”

Eckermann, now 84, was defrocked and sentenced to a life of prayer and penance by the Vatican in October 2014 after an investigator hired by the Diocese of Syracuse deemed Braney’s allegations credible. But Braney, 43, is unable to pursue criminal charges or civil litigation against Eckermann or the church because New York’s statute of limitations bars child sex abuse victims from proceeding with cases after their 23rd birthday.

That’s why Braney supports the Child Victims Act, a bill sponsored by Queens Assemblywoman Margaret Markey that would eliminate the statute of limitations in sex abuse cases and open a one-year window for victims of past sexual abuse to file civil suits.

“The best thing for the Catholic Church would be for the law to change and let justice run its course,” Braney said. “It would bring closure for the victims and their families and it would let the church move forward and heal the damage caused by the sex-abuse scandal.”

St. Ann's Church — The alleged abuse took place in St. Ann’s Church in Manlius, N.Y., in 1988 and 1989.

The Child Victims Act faces stiff opposition from the Catholic Church, including the Diocese of Syracuse, but diocesan spokeswoman Danielle Cummings called Braney “courageous” for speaking out about the abuse.

Kevin Braney says he’s still tormented by the abuse he suffered as a teen.

Church officials weren’t always so sympathetic, Braney said. When he finally found the guts to tell another priest about Eckermann’s abuse, the priest hit him in the face.

Church officials were reportedly put on notice about sexual misconduct by Eckermann, who served on the Syracuse board of education and was a high school teacher and principal, four years before he began abusing Braney.

Braney says he was also raped by another priest, the Rev. James Quinn, in 1989 during a rehearsal for his confirmation.

“He took me to a room in the rectory and raped me,” Braney said. “I was frozen. I was disconnected from my body. I just wanted it to end. I remember I focused on a clock. It was 4:23 in the afternoon.”

Eckermann could not be reached for comment. Quinn died in 2013.

Braney says he dealt with the internal demons unleashed by the sexual abuse by throwing himself into sports and his studies. He became a star lacrosse player at Brown University and moved to the Denver area, where he earned a doctorate in education at the University of Colorado. He later became the principal of Boulder High School.

Braney was working with teens who had been abused — when the memories he repressed for decades came flooding back about four years ago.

Braney’s pain became public in March 2013, when police were called to his home during an argument with his former wife. He told the Boulder cops who arrested him on suspicion of domestic violence that he was dealing with the stress that came from his abuse. The police told Braney — who later pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor for damaging property — to contact Syracuse-area prosecutors or police.

The Onondaga DA’s office investigated Braney’s claims, but prosecutors told Braney they could not file charges because the statute of limitations had expired.

Current Syracuse bishop Robert Cunningham has apologized to Braney for the abuse and the diocese has paid for therapy. But Braney wants more: He wants transparency. He wants the diocese to publicly identify clergy who also face credible allegations of abuse.

Cummings said the diocese is reluctant to do so because other victims who have come forward have asked to keep details of their abuse — including identities of the abusers — private.

Braney said that practice puts the responsibility for transparency on victims and survivors.

“It perpetuates the shame and secrecy,” Braney said. “Most of all it protects pedophiles.”

Complete Article HERE!

April 8, 2016April 8, 2016

Catholic Archdiocese Vs. Insurer in Priest Sex Abuse Cases

By DAVE COLLINS

The Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Hartford has taken its dispute with an insurance company to trial, seeking reimbursement of more than $1 million in payments made to settle sexual misconduct cases involving priests and minors.

Testimony began Friday in a bench trial before U.S. District Judge Janet Bond Arterton in New Haven.

The case is one of many around the country in which insurance companies have balked at paying claims related to lawsuits against church officials seeking to hold them responsible for sexual assaults of minors by clergy — accusations that in many instances date back decades and involve priests who have since died.

A key issue in the Connecticut case and others is whether insurance companies can deny claims under assault and battery exemptions in liability policies. Many policies don’t cover intentional acts, but church officials have argued that they did not know about the alleged assaults.

The archdiocese sued Interstate Fire & Casualty Co. in 2012, claiming the Chicago-based insurer breached its policy by refusing to reimburse the archdiocese for payments made in four settlements from 2010 to 2012 after previously reimbursing payments made in other abuse settlements.

“The foregoing activities of Interstate constitute unfair trade practices, because they offend public policy and they are immoral, unscrupulous and unethical,” the lawsuit states.

Lawyers for the insurer argue in court documents that the settlements weren’t covered by the policies. A spokeswoman and a lawyer for Interstate Fire & Casualty declined to comment.

The company has faced lawsuits in other states after refusing to reimburse church officials for priest abuse settlements.

And In a 2014 ruling, the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco said in a 2014 ruling that Interstate Fire’s liability policy for the Diocese of Phoenix did not cover settlements of priest sexual abuse cases because of the policy’s assault and battery exception.

The four cases at the center of the Hartford archdiocese lawsuit involved claims of sexual misconduct against minors in the 1970s and 1980s. Two cases involved sexual abuse claims against the Rev. Ivan Ferguson, who died in 2002 after serving as a church grammar school principal in Derby and other positions with the archdiocese.

A spokeswoman and a lawyer for the archdiocese declined to comment.

The archdiocese has settled many claims of sexual abuse by priests. It agreed in 2005 to pay $22 million to 43 people who said they were sexually abused by priests, including Ferguson.

Elsewhere in the country, the Diocese of Honolulu sued First Insurance Co. of Hawaii in January for refusing to cover priest abuse settlements. And in 2014, the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis sued some 20 insurance companies to try to force them to cover its liabilities for clergy sex abuse claims. The lawsuit was put on hold after the archdiocese filed for bankruptcy last year in the wake of priest abuse claims.

Interstate Fire & Casualty has since been acquired by Munich, Germany-based Allianz Group.

April 3, 2016April 3, 2016

Hospital Funds Diverted to Cardinal’s Villa

By Barbie Latza Nadeau

Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Complete Article HERE!