FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. — A retired Roman Catholic priest accused of sexually abusing dozens of boys for decades was sentenced to 15 years in prison Monday.Earlier this month, Father Neil Doherty pleaded no contest in a deal that reduced the sex abuse charges from capital felonies to second-degree felonies. He will also have to register as a sex offender.The plea comes after several more alleged victims came forward and were planning to testify in the case. Doherty, who maintains his innocence, is now 69, appears frail and struggles with health problems. His attorney, David Bogenschutz said he …
News & Events
Orange County prosecutors say a dropped molestation investigation is being reopened so officials can re-examine the actions of a former Los Angeles elementary school teacher who has been charged with molesting a dozen students.Spokeswoman Susan Kang Schroeder told the Los Angeles Times on Friday that the allegations of four youths against Robert Pimentel will be forwarded to Los Angeles prosecutors.Pimentel, a former teacher at George de la Torre Jr. Elementary School, was arrested Wednesday on charges of molesting 12 students following a 10-month police investigation.Kang Schroeder says the 2…
PROVIDENCE, R.I. — A judge agreed on Friday to delay the release of documents related to a disgraced Roman Catholic organization called the Legion of Christ to give it time to appeal his earlier ruling unsealing them. Superior Court Judge Michael Silverstein gave the Legion until Feb. 15 to ask the state Supreme Court to intervene in the tug-of-war over the records, which are from a lawsuit filed by a woman contesting the will of a wealthy aunt who left the Legion $60 million. The judge had ruled on Wednesday that the public had a right to access the documents despite concerns from t…
A state senator on Friday sought to get rid of the statute of limitations preventing some victims of child molestation from suing their abusers. Sen. Jim Beall, D-San Jose, said current law requires that victims sue by their 26th birthday, or within three years of the date they discovered their psychological trauma was linked to sexual abuse during their youth. He said Senate Bill 131, if approved, would help victims whose repressed memories of the abuse did not surface until after their deadline to file a lawsuit expired. “Existing law requires action for damages suffered as a result of child…
The Archdiocese of Milwaukee is hemorrhaging money on legal and professional fees as a result of its bankruptcy and will be unable to pay its monthly operating expenses beginning in April unless the judge suspends those payments, it says in court documents filed Thursday. The archdiocese filed a motion asking U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Susan V. Kelley to allow it to suspend all payments to attorneys and consultants, except $125,000 for work on its plan of reorganization. And it would continue to pay its own attorneys to challenge sex-abuse claims with proceeds from its insurance carriers. “Withou…
BEMIDJI – Two days before the first of three victims of alleged sexual abuse at Central Elementary School in Bemidji came forward, John Thorn Wangberg resigned after a 30-year teaching career.Wangberg, 58, of rural Cass Lake, was arraigned Wednesday on two felony counts of sexual conduct in the second degree and a gross misdemeanor charge of non-consensual sexual conduct in the fifth degree. The felony charges allege that Wangberg engaged in sexual contact with victims between the ages of 5 and 7 on school property. The first victim reported the alleged abuse on March 16, 2011 – two days afte…
Saying the move is long overdue and flanked by high-profile reform advocates, state Reps. Louise Williams Bishop and Michael P. McGeehan, both D-Phila., today announced a renewed push to update archaic statute-of-limitations laws in child sexual abuse cases at a Capitol Rotunda news conference. Bishop and McGeehan said their respective bills are patterned after ones they introduced in the last two-year legislative session but died after being inexplicably bottled up in the committee process. Bishop has reintroduced her legislation, now known as H.B. 237, which would abolish the statute of li…
A former Long Beach priest who entered a plea of no contest to sexual assault charges — including lewd acts involving a child — was sentenced Wednesday and ordered to register as a sex offender. Luis Jose Cuevas, 68, who served the North Long Beach Catholic community for seven years, entered the no-contest plea in December. He was charged with eight misdemeanor counts of sex assault involving two women and one felony count of a lewd acts involving a child. The girl, 17, accused the priest of repeatedly groping her at the church during a period of two years. He was sentenced to five years …
LOS ANGELES — A Los Angeles elementary school teacher accused of sexually abusing 20 students and one adult was arrested Wednesday, police said. Eight counts of continual sexual abuse and seven counts of lewd acts upon a child have been filed against Robert Pimental for abuse that took place at George De La Torre Jr. Elementary in the Wilmington area, police said. In addition to the 15 felonies, misdemeanor charges are expected, said Officer Christopher No. His bail has been set at $12 million, and an arraignment date hasn’t been set. Pimental, 57, left his fourth-grade teaching position i…
An unlicensed therapist and respected member of an ultra-Orthodox Jewish community in Brooklyn was sentenced on Tuesday to 103 years in prison for repeatedly sexually abusing a young woman, beginning the attacks when she was 12. The therapist, Nechemya Weberman, 54, a member of the Satmar Hasidic community of Williamsburg, did not react as the judge sentenced him. The victim, now 18, who delivered an impassioned statement asking for the maximum sentence to be imposed, dabbed away tears.“The message should go out to all victims of sexual abuse that your cries will be heard and justice wil…
Prevention is nearly always preferable to treatment when it comes to our health, and the stakes are even higher in cases of child abuse. But is it even possible to identify children at risk of abuse before it’s too late? That’s the question the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force (USPSTF) addressed, in a comprehensive review of the available data on ways to detect maltreatment of children. The task force is a government-funded group of independent experts that considers all the available evidence on a range of health topics, then grades studies on their reliability and validity before making …
A Roman Catholic bishop apologized Tuesday for “inadequate or mistaken” responses to clergy sex abuse when he served as a top advisor to Cardinal Roger M. Mahony in the late 1980s. “Like many others, I have come to a clearer understanding over the years of the causes and treatment of sexual abuse,” Bishop Thomas J. Curry, who oversees Santa Barbara and Ventura counties for the Archdiocese of Los Angeles, said in a statement. Internal church files released this week show Curry and Mahony, who was then archbishop, discussed how to conceal child molestation by priests from law enforcement, incl…
Church abuse victims Tuesday made a renewed call for criminal prosecutions following the release of confidential files that show top Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Los Angeles officials tried to cover up the allegations.”We’ve always been called ‘alleged victims.’ I think today the word ‘alleged’ will be left out and I think today you guys you will truly see and understand that we were victims — truly victims of manipulative men who made cold, calculated decisions as how to protect themselves and save face in the community,” said Manuel Vega, who was abused from age 10 to 15.The Survivors Netw…
Statute of limitations is the main stumbling block to prosecuting Cardinal Roger M. Mahony and aides in the sex abuse files from the 1980s released this week, experts say.
Standing a few feet outside the doors of the Los Angeles Archdiocese headquarters, clergy abuse victims who settled with the church in a landmark $660-million settlement called for the release of the documents it agreed to make public in 2007.The demands come in the wake of internal Catholic church records released Monday in a separate claim. Those memos, written in 1986 and 1987 by Archbishop Roger M. Mahony and Msgr. Thomas J. Curry, then the archdiocese’s chief advisor on sex abuse cases, displayed a concerted effort by officials to shield abusers from police.Flanked by people who said they…