Today, Amnesty International issued its annual global report on the state of human rights and named the Vatican in its list of countries with human rights violations. In its report, Amnesty International specifically cited the Vatican for its failure to remove priests accused of sexual abuse from ministry, not co-operating with authorities, and not giving victims the proper relief, saying “The Holy See did not sufficiently comply with its international obligations relating to the protection of children.”
News & Events
On Wednesday our law firm filed a lawsuit in Chicago against the Vatican. The lawsuit is an attempt to hold Vatican officials accountable for their direct role in covering up the sexual abuse of children perpetrated by Fr. Daniel McCormack. Some wonder why we filed this suit. After all, didn’t the Archdiocese of Chicago settle with this survivor?
Yesterday the Creditors’ Committee in the Archdiocese of Milwaukee Bankruptcy
proceedings asked the Court to hire a forensic accounting firm to scrutinize the
Archdiocese and Archbishop Timothy Dolan’s transfer of millions of dollars in
the years leading up to the bankruptcy. The forensic accountants the
Creditor’s Committee is recommending are experts in reviewing financial affairs
of organizations, including transfers of money by the organization.
In spite of the fact that the Philadelphia Archdiocese secretly continued to allow three dozen credibly acused offenders to remain…
At a conference in Milwaukee this week, Diarmuid Martin, the Archbishop
of Dublin, Ireland, provided a powerful message to those in attendance
when he said, “Only the truth sets us free.” And, that the church must
be “willing to tell the truth and take ownership of the truth, even when
the truth is unpleasant.”
The news from
Philadelphia today is that Cardinal Justin Rigali has suspended two additional
priests because of credible allegations that they have engaged in sexual abuse
of children.
On March 16, criminal investigators from the United Kingdom’s Child
Exploitation and Online Protection Centre cracked what is being
described as the World’s largest paedophile ring ever.
Detectives have arrested 184 people from the Netherlands, UK,
Australia, Italy, Canada, New Zealand and Thailand during the three-year
investigation. According to the report by the BBC, members of the
network used private channels and secret systems to share pornographic
films and images. The operation chief, Peter Davies, said “Not only is
it one of the largest operatio…
In August of 2010, we filed a lawsuit against Pastor
Derstine, Gospel Crusade Inc. and Gospel Crusade Fellowship Inc., for sexual
abuse of Plaintiff, a minor, by Gerald Derstine at the Strawberry Lake Retreat
in Minnesota.
Earlier today the Archdiocese of Philadelphia placed 21 of
the 37 priests named in the recent Philadelphia Grand Jury Report and accused
of sexually abusing children, on administrative leave.
The
U.S. District Court for the Central District of California issued an unprecedented opinion today allowing our client’s case using the Alien Tort Statute to go forward. You can find the entire text of the opinion on our site. In denying Defendant Cardinal Roger Mahony’s and the Archdiocese of Los Angeles’ motion to dismiss for lack of subject matter jurisdiction, the Court permitted Plaintiff’s…
Today, our firm and Anthony DeMarco, an attorney in Los Angeles, filed a suit on behalf of a courageous survivor who was abused as a young boy by a Salesian priest, Fr. Gerald Wertz, at St. John Bosco High School in Bellflower, California. You can find a copy of the lawsuit here. Importantly, Fr. Gerald “Jerry” Wertz is still considered to be in ministry, and is residing in the Salesian Provincial House in San Francisco, adjacent to a high school with over 1,000 students.
In a recent blog post Archbishop Dolan is incorrect in claiming that we accused him of secretly “hiding” the assets referred to in his blog. The fact is, we simply stated that we had questions about certain financial moves made by the Archdiocese. Indeed, what he did wasn’t hidden. In fact, he and his financial advisors brazenly “moved” the assets out of the control of the Archdiocese in broad daylight—after the Wisconsin Supreme Court allowed some victims of clergy sexual abuse to sue the Archdiocese. We think we have grounds to be suspicious…
A case
filed today in Philadelphia by our office, as well as attorneys Dan Monahan
and Marci Hamilton, is brought on behalf of a courageous survivor who was
sexually abused as a child. The suit names ten defendants, including the
Archdiocese and Archdiocesan officials, alleging a conspiracy to endanger
children by actively concealing sexually abusive priests, and continuing the
priests in ministry despite known credible allegations of child abuse.
In
Philadelphia, three priests and a parochial school teacher are being charged for
sexually abusing two children and the Secretary for Clergy for the Archdiocese of Philadelphia is being
charged for endangering the welfare of children by knowingly allowing dangerous
priests to continue in ministry roles where they had access to children.
That is exactly what the Vatican stated when it was faced with accepting service of Terry Kohut’s lawsuit relating to the sexual abuse of hundreds of boys by Fr. Lawrence Murphy at the St. John’s School for the Deaf in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. According to a document filed in United States District Court for the Eastern District of Wisconsin, the Vatican accepted service of the legal documents involved with the lawsuit and then, four days later, the Vatican contacted FedEx and asked FedEx to retrieve the package because the package was “undesired and unwanted.”