MINNEAPOLIS – A Minnesota judge on Tuesday ordered the handover of confidential national Boy Scout records on sexual abuse from 1999 to 2008 in a move attorneys said could add to the body of evidence showing that the organization failed to take adequate steps to protect young people from molesters in its ranks. Ramsey County District Judge Elena Ostby issued the order in a lawsuit involving former suburban Minneapolis scoutmaster Peter Stibal II, who is serving a 21-year prison sentence for molesting four scouts in his troop. The lawsuit was filed by one of his victims. That victim’s…
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(St. Paul) In a civil lawsuit against the Boy Scouts of America (BSA) and convicted sex offender and former Scoutmaster, Peter Stibal, Ramsey County District Judge Elena L. Ostby has ordered the release of previously secret records relating to sexual abuse within the BSA from the years 1999 to 2008. The records, referred to by the BSA as the “Perversion Files”, are an internal system maintained for over 80 years to track adult leaders who sexually abuse boy scouts. The pe…
PHILADELPHIA — A jury convicted a priest and teacher today in a pivotal church-abuse case that rocked the Philadelphia archdiocese and sent a church official to prison for child endangerment. The verdict upholds the stunning account from a troubled 24-year-old policeman’s son that he was sexually abused as a boy by two priests and his sixth-grade teacher. One priest took a plea deal before trial, while the jury convicted the Rev. Charles Engelhardt and former teacher Bernard Shero of all but one count. The 2009 complaint describing the abuse led to the landmark conviction last year of Monsig…
LOS ANGELES — The Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Los Angeles has said the names of church leaders who made key decisions on how to deal with cases of sexual abuse by priests will not be blacked out in some 30,000 soon-to-be-released pages of confidential personnel files. The names of any bishops, vicars for clergy and supervisory parish priests will be included in all the documents and they will be turned over to lawyers for abuse victims soon, archdiocese attorney Michael Hennigan said Wednesday. Vicars for clergy are responsible for priestly discipline and often made significant decis…
During the first month of 2013, the issue of sexual violence and abuse has loomed large in the media and public consciousness. From reports into Jimmy Savile “grooming a nation” to the rape and murder of a young woman on a bus in India, there has scarcely been a day when the issue has not featured in public debate; and rightly so.For the girls I have interviewed over the past seven years who have been subjected to sexual, physical and emotional abuse within their relationships, peer groups and street gangs, such concern is long overdue. Take 17-year-old “Becky”. She had been sexually exploited…
A former California state senator has called for an independent investigation into what she says is “alleged rampant sex abuse” of Latino students in the LAUSD. Former California Democratic State Senator Martha Escutia, an attorney and child sex abuse survivors advocate, has called for the investigation in the wake of what she said was a “pattern of alleged sexual abuse” perpetrated against students by teachers and other employees at LAUSD schools. “There’s a pattern of all these sexual abuse scandals popping up everywhere in poor, minority neighborhoods,” she said at a press confere…
JACKSON, Miss. — A woman who was sexually abused as a child is on a 50-state mission to urge lawmakers to make education about child sex abuse part of schools’ curriculum.For 2½ years beginning at age 6, a neighbor raped Erin Merryn, now 27, of Schaumburg, Ill. A teenage cousin started molesting her when she was 11. Now, she’s the force behind “Erin’s Law” legislation, which her home state enacted earlier this month.”I never had to run out of a burning building and I knew how to say no to drugs when I was approached in high school, but when two men were molesting and raping me I didn’t know wh…
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 …
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 …