— 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 Christopher Knaus

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.

“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.

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”.

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”.

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.”

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By OSV News

The vice president of the German bishops’ conference, Bishop Franz-Josef Bode, has become the first Catholic bishop in Germany to resign in connection with the abuse scandal. The Vatican announced March 25 that the pope had accepted his resignation. Bishop Bode resigned over “errors made in the handling of clergy sexual abuse cases,” KNA agency reported.

The move by the bishop of the northern German Diocese of Osnabrueck was met both with respect and regret by fellow bishops. To date, Pope Francis has rejected the resignations of other German bishops over the abuse scandal, including Cardinal Reinhard Marx of Munich and Archbishop Stefan Hesse of Hamburg. The pope has yet to decide on the resignation offer submitted by Cardinal Rainer Maria Woelki of Cologne.

Bishop Bode, 72, said he was resigning primarily because of his own mistakes in the reappraisal of sexual abuse cases. He also said his “increasingly poor health” would prevent him from remaining in his post until he reached 75, the age at which canon law requires bishops to submit their resignation to the pope, as reported by KNA.

Bishop Bode became an auxiliary bishop in Paderborn in 1991 and was appointed bishop of Osnabrueck in 1995. He has recently pushed ahead with reforms of the German Catholic Church’s “Synodal Path” and said he wanted to swiftly implement in his diocese resolutions approved during the final assembly of the German Synodal Way March 9-11, including providing blessing ceremonies for same-sex couples and remarried divorcees. He also advocated giving laypeople and women more important roles in the Catholic Church.

Bishop Bode said the report published in September 2022 on the reappraisal of sexualized violence “once again clearly showed me my own mistakes in dealing with cases of abuse,” he told KNA. He acknowledged his responsibility as a bishop and that he had not paid enough attention to the victims for a long time. “Today, I can only ask all victims again to forgive me.”

The president of the bishops’ conference, Bishop Georg Baetzing, expressed “great regret and respect” at Bishop Bode’s resignation. “I would have liked to see you at our side in the German Bishops’ Conference for more years. At the same time, I understand your decision and the consequences it entails. From the bottom of my heart, I express my thanks and appreciation for your work, both personally and on behalf of the German Bishops’ Conference,” Bishop Baetzing wrote to Bishop Bode.

Bishop Baetzing added that Bishop Bode had taken responsibility for the “issue of sexual abuse which has accompanied us all for a long time.”

Groups representing victims were critical, however. “Bishop Bode should have resigned earlier,” Matthias Katsch of the victims’ association “Eckiger Tisch” (Square Table) told Germany’s KNA agency.

The German government’s independent commissioner for sexual abuse issues, Kerstin Claus, told KNA that it should be clear that Bishop Bode was “by far not the only Catholic functionary who has not lived up to his responsibility in this matter.”

— John J. Voglio frequently mingles with children and teenagers at events, said a board member for Mary F. Clancy Charities in New York City.

By Corky Siemaszko and Kate Martin

A defrocked New York priest “credibly accused” of sexually abusing a minor runs a charity that provides scholarships to Catholic schools for underprivileged children, according to public records.

John J. Voglio, 65, is president of Mary F. Clancy Charities, which was founded in 2000 by another former priest, John Harrington, who was also accused of sexually abusing a minor, according to the Archdiocese of New York.

Voglio frequently mingles with children and teenagers who attend charity events, a member of the organization’s board of directors told NBC News.

“He’s very good with the kids,” Madelaine Cavegn said. “They like him very much.”

Voglio does not mention on the charity’s website that he is a former priest, and he did not return several phone calls seeking comment about his activities.

Voglio has never been charged with a crime so was never required to register as a sex offender in Massachusetts, New York or New Hampshire, all places where he once worked as a priest or brother.

Cavegn, however, acknowledged that she and some of the other board members are aware Voglio used to be a priest.

“I can’t divulge any of that,” Cavegn, 88, responded when asked whether she knew why Voglio had been laicized. “But do you know that he never had a chance to defend himself?”

Cavegn described Voglio as a devoted leader of the charity.

“He’s like a missionary,” Cavegn said. “He is very involved. Before we give out any grants, he conducts all the interviews with the schools.”

Another director on the board, John Crapanzano, said “the charity is very active” and Voglio “is very much involved in the day-to-day operations.”

“We’ve diversified our activities in recent years to include a food pantry in the Bronx to help needy families,” Crapanzano, 77, said. “We also helped build a playground for the kids at a Bronx school.”

David Clohessy, a sex abuse victims advocate at the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests (SNAP), said someone like Voglio should not be running this kind of charity.

“Credibly accused child molesting clerics, especially if they’ve been defrocked, belong in no position of power or leadership, especially one that is connected in any way with children,” Clohessy said.

Mitchell Garabedian, a lawyer whose pursuit of pedophile priests was dramatized in the Oscar-winning movie “Spotlight,” said it does not surprise him that Voglio continues to be involved in activities that could allow him to remain close to children.

“Experience has taught me that it is common for credibly accused priests and religious brothers to continue to work at organizations, for instance, schools, camps, churches, hospitals, boy scouts and clubs,” Garabedian said in an email.

The Archdiocese of New York provided no explanation for his removal from the priesthood in its “List of Archdiocesan Clergy Credibly Accused of Sexual Abuse,” which was first published in 2019 and updated at least once in recent years. He had been ordained in 1987.

In 2002, a Massachusetts man told New Hampshire investigators that Voglio had seduced him 20 years earlier at a Salesian Brothers summer camp in that state, according to a report prepared by Paul Brodeur, a former investigator with the New Hampshire Attorney General’s Office. The accuser said he was 12 when the abuse occurred in 1982.

Voglio was a Salesian Brother at the time and working as a camp counselor, the report states.

“The fondling and oral sex went on beginning within a few days of arriving and continued to the end of two weeks,” the accuser, whose name was blacked out, said in the report.

The accuser “advised that he had not seen VOGLIO again but did received a Xmas card from him the Xmas of 1982 postmarked Ohio,” the report states. “VOGLIO spoke about going on to to become a priest with the Selesian’s (sic).”

NBC News has reached out for comment to the Salesians of Don Bosco, an international Roman Catholic religious congregation of men based locally in New Rochelle, New York. No one from the group responded.

Joseph Zwilling, a spokesman for the Archdiocese of New York, said it does not keep track of laicized priests or closely monitor donations from charitable organizations to its individual schools.

“To the best of our knowledge, Voglio has not visited any of the schools,” Zwilling said.

Voglio has also moonlighted as a “Catholic priest on call,” advertising to perform weddings through a business called “John Voglio Weddings,” according to his LinkedIn and Facebook pages.

Zwilling, after being made aware of Voglio’s side job, said the former reverend is not allowed to perform Catholic weddings.

“He is no longer a Catholic priest,” he said.

Voglio also claimed on the charity’s website that he is a “member of a local branch of the Kiwanis Club in the Bronx” and has organized “yearly fundraisers” for an organization that helps disadvantaged children around the world and is involved in youth activities.

Ben Hendricks, a spokesman for Kiwanis International, said “a thorough review of our current and past membership shows that Mr. Voglio is not, and has never been a member of Kiwanis International.”

Voglio was still a priest when he took over the leadership of Mary F. Clancy Charities, Inc., which bears the name of a New York City-area social worker who provided the “initial funds” to start the organization, according to its website.

Harrington, like Voglio, also landed on the New York archdiocese’s 2019 list of credibly accused clergy.

Voglio was paid a little over $31,000 in salary and compensation by the charity, according to the latest available 990 report for the fiscal year ending in May 2020. A 990 Form is a tax document nonprofits are required to file with the IRS.

The charity, which Voglio appears to be running out of a Yonkers, New York, apartment just north of the Bronx, has nearly $700,000 in assets, the report shows. Records indicate Voglio lived at the Yonkers address and also has a home in Garnerville, a small town about 30 miles north of New York City.

Mary F. Clancy Charities claims on its website that it supports other groups that work with troubled families, but the 990 filing in 2020 does not indicate the organization gave out any grants in 2019, which it would have been required to report if it had done so.

The charity reported it held a “golf outing” and a “cigar night” that raised $39,222. But the cost of putting those together was exactly $39,222, making the net income from the two events zero.

Voglio took over the reins of the charity in 2006 from Harrington, who died three years later, according to the website. In 2011, Voglio took the private charity public “in order to be able to actively raise money to expand the scope of the foundation,” the website states.

On the website, Voglio named five groups that have received funds from his charity: Catholic Home Bureau Maternity Services; the STEPS Program of Edwin Gould; Incarcerated Mothers and their Children; Catholic Community Services of Rockland Inc.; and Rosalie Hall.

Before the Gould organization became part of another charity called Rising Ground in 2018, it received a $15,000 gift from Mary Clancy Charities in 2011 and a $5,000 gift in 2015, said Rising Ground spokesman Adam Brill.

“Since then, we’ve had no contact from Mary Clancy Charities,” Brill said in an email.

Catholic Community Services of Rockland Inc., whose actual name is Catholic Charities Community Services of Rockland, did not respond to emails seeking comment.

Rosalie Hall, a home for teen parents in the Bronx, is part of a New York City organization called Catholic Guardian Services, which did not respond to requests for comment.

The entity identified on the 990 report as Catholic Home Bureau Maternity Services also appears to be run by Catholic Guardian Services.

NBC News could not locate an organization in New York called Incarcerated Mothers and their Children.

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