A former high school student from Racine, Wisconsin, filed a lawsuit against his former teacher for producing and possessing pornographic images of the student but also included anyone who downloaded the porn as defendants. This lawsuit is part of a trend where victims of child pornography are suing their perpetrators under a federal statute that provides for damages of at least $150,000 for each image produced or possessed. That means any person who downloaded the internet porn containing images of the student is subject to this lawsuit. This is the third such lawsuit that has been…
News & Events
Complaint – Racine math teacher sued for child pornography
Joseph T. Clazmer, a math teacher at a Racine ,Wisconsin high school, is facing a lawsuit for depicting a minor child in sexually explicit productions for the purpose of distribution on the internet.
In the audience will be 200 men who are survivors of sexual
abuse. One of the themes of the show is
that sexual abuse of boys is a much larger problem than most realize. According to the National Center for Victims
of Crime, it is estimated that one in six boys will experience an episode of
sexual abuse before his eighteenth birthday.
Most are abused by either a family member or someone outside of the
family whom they know and trust.
An recent op-ed authored by Martha Escutia discussed the case of Fr. Alejandro Castillo, a priest at Our Lady of Guadalupe in Ontario, California accused of abusing a minor parishioner. The case of Fr. Castillo now reads as an eerily familiar pattern of failure in properly handling credibly accused priests among clergy and an avoidance of the justice system. News released yesterday announced that Castillo, charged with molesting a 12-year-old minor parishioner, won a reduced bail, from $1million down to $300,000. Prosecutors argued in vain to the judge that Castillo is a flight risk, as he has family in Mexico, and still poses a danger to children.
“Last Friday, a judge in San Diego ordered the Diocese of San Diego to release over 10,000 documents detailing the Diocese’s failings in its handling of child sexual abuse by its clergy. The documents come from personnel files of individual offending priests credibly accused who were known child abusers yet were moved from parish to parish, diocese to diocese, and often never removed from ministry. We commend the court for ordering these documents released, but we do so with regret that this order did not come sooner. Over the years that the church was allowe…
Milwaukee Archbishop Wants to Settle Lawsuits By Jay Olstad MILWAUKEE – Facing tough economic choices, the Archbishop of Milwaukee, Jerome Listecki wants to settle a dozen sex abuse lawsuits that may push the Diocese into bankruptcy. “In our minds, the best way to do it is go to mediation and bring both sides together in hopes of coming to a successful resolution,” said Listecki. The Archdiocese of Milwaukee will enter into mediation with several sexual abuse victims Monday in Chicago. The victims accuse the Diocese of moving pedophile priests from church to church without telling…
US judge asks Vatican to serve court paper to pope By DINESH RAMDE (AP) – 1 hour ago MILWAUKEE — A federal U.S. judge is asking the Vatican to cooperate in serving the pope and two other top officials with court papers that stem from decades-old allegations of sexual abuse by a priest in Wisconsin. The request is an incremental step in a lawsuit that accuses the officials of conspiring to keep the allegations against the Milwaukee priest quiet. The Vatican is not obliged to comply with the request. When faced with similar requests the Vatican has made service difficult, time-consum…
In the Terry Kohut case, involving the St. John’s School for the Deaf, a Federal Court in Wisconsin issued letters rogatory which request the Vatican’s assistance in serving Terry Kohut’s lawsuit on Cardinals Ratzinger (the current Pope), Sodano, and Bertone.
A deaf man is one step closer to forcing Pope Benedict and two of his top aides to answer for..
CNN aired a powerful documentary last weekend, “What The Pope Knew”, that features many of our courageous clients. In the documentary, Jeff Anderson is interviewed and provides insightful commentary on the Catholic hierarch’s failures in handling the childhood sexual abuse crisis, and the strength of our clients in coming forward to expose pedophile priests. Jeff described the church’s policies and procedures to handle child sexual abuse by clergy as being institutionally deficient: “the whole process is designed to avoid scandal.” Many of our courageous clients are…
The Lawsuit charges that St. John’s Evangelical Lutheran Church and hierarchical leaders of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA) knew/or should have known..
The Roman Catholic Diocese of Oakland is facing a fifth lawsuit over a former priest accused of sexually abusing multiple children.
Martha Escutia, a lawyer and former state senator in California, is partnering with our firm to combat the clergy childhood sexual abuse crisis in the Latino community. She will appear on CNN this evening as a panelist discussing “What The Pope Knew”, a documentary that aired last weekend on CNN and will air tomorrow globally on CNN Spanish channels. Ms. Escutia recently authored a compelling op/ed piece for the Latino community newspapers in Southern California. Ms. Escutia’s op/ed is a call to Latino Catholics to make child safety a priority by making it safe for those… (Con traducción en español)
Mañana CNN presentará un documental sobre la participación del Papa Benedicto XVI en los abusos sexuales contra menores por parte del clero. Lo que el Papa Sabía se presentará hoy a las 9 de la noche. Hasta ahora, la mayoría de los reportajes sobre el Papa y su papel en el abuso sexual a manos del clero se ha enfocado en casos particulares. El documental de CNN es mucho más amplio e incluye las decisiones que tomó el Papa cuando era arzobispo en Alemania y cuando estaba a cargo del departamento del Vaticano se suponía debía manejar los reportes de abuso sexual perpetrados por el…