LONDON — The British police and the country’s leading child welfare group drew a horrific picture of more than 200 cases of sexual abuse of children as young as 8 by the television host Jimmy Savile in a report released on Friday, and prosecutors admitted for the first time that they could have brought Mr. Savile to trial before his death in 2011 but failed to do so. The depiction of what Peter Spindler, a police commander, called a “vast, predatory and opportunistic” record of misconduct offered the latest gruesome indictment in a scandal that has plunged the British Broadcasting Corpor…
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After years of delay, orchestrated by some of the most able lawyers in the country, the Catholic Church may soon reveal more truth about how it dealt with priests who sexually abused hundreds of children in the sprawling Archdiocese of Los Angeles. A court order issued Monday, in a case joined by the Los Angeles Times and the Associated Press, requires the release of more than 30,000 pages of documents, with the names of abusers and their superiors un-redacted. Considering previous actions by higher courts, Judge Emilie Elias’s decision is likely to survive appeals and the deluge of new facts …
PARIS (Reuters) — Germany’s Roman Catholic bishops on Wednesday canceled a study into the sexual abuse of minors by priests, prompting the investigator to accuse them of trying to censor what was to be a major report on the scandals. The independent study, examining church files that sometimes date to 1945, was meant to shed light on undiscovered cases after about 600 people filed claims against priests in 2010 following a wave of revelations of sexual abuse. The German scandals were part of a series of abuse scandals that also shook the Catholic Church in Ireland, Belgium, the Netherland…
Once again, our most trusted and most powerful religious and social institutions are fighting to keep their secrets and their sins safe from disclosure. Luckily, courts continue to recognize how important the exposure of secrets is to accountability and child protection. On Monday, California Superior Court Judge Emilie Elias ordered the Archdiocese of Los Angeles to release the names of priests and church officials contained in the Archdiocese’s internal records on the sexual abuse of children. The records were originally ordered to be released as part of a groundbreaking…
Yeshiva University has declined to say if it will make public the results of an investigation into sexual abuse allegations at its Manhattan high school despite former students’ fears about the scope, openness and motivation behind the probe.In a statement to the Forward, released January 8, a Y.U. representative promised “a full and completely independent investigation,” but declined to say what will happen to the work now being conducted by an international law firm hired by the university. In a follow-up statement issued the next morning, the representative said that after the investigation…
Vermont’s Roman Catholic Diocese of Burlington agreed Wednesday to settle 11 priest sexual abuse lawsuits moments before the trial in one of those cases was set to get under way in federal court in Burlington.The other cases were preparing to go to trial in Chittenden Count Superior Court. The first of those had been scheduled for March.”We settled it,” Burlington lawyer Jerome O’Neill, the lead attorney for the alleged victims in the cases, said Wednesday. “It was a negotiation that had been going on for a long time and the diocese this morning accepted our demand and agreed to pay it…
LOS ANGELES — The Boy Scouts of America must release two decades of files detailing sexual abuse allegations after the California Supreme Court refused the organization’s bid to keep the records confidential.The decision came after a Santa Barbara County court ruled last year that the files must be turned over to attorneys representing a former Scout who claims a leader molested him in 2007, when he was 13. That leader later was convicted of felony child endangerment.The former Scout’s lawsuit claims the files, which date to 1991 and involve allegations from across the nation, will expose a “c…
A judge’s ruling Monday requiring the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Los Angeles to release thousands of pages of confidential records, including the names of church higher-ups, is an important victory for the public and victims of sexual abuse. The battle over the clergy files has dragged on for far too long. In 2007, the church agreed to settle hundreds of claims against it for $660 million. That deal also required the release of clergy personnel files, which include internal memos, Vatican correspondence and medical records. But the release of the files has been on hold. Last year…
Another victim’s parent is coming forward to tell her daughter’s story. It’s been weeks since we first brought you the story of a popular Bemidji coach and teacher accused of allegedly sexually abusing multiple kindergartners. Now, the mother says, it’s time for something to be done to put the accused behind bars. It’s hard for these mothers to not get emotional; “my daughter is scared,” said one anonymous mother, “she is frightened.” They say their daughters were allegedly abused by their teacher, John Wangberg, abo…
A Superior Court judge has ruled the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Los Angeles must release the names of high-ranking church officials in 30,000 pages of confidential records about priests accused of abusing children. In making the order Monday, Judge Emilie H. Elias reversed a key part of a 2011 ruling by a retired judge who said he feared including the names of the hierarchy could be used to embarrass the church further. Elias said the public’s right to know how the archdiocese, the largest in the nation, handled molestation allegations outweighed such concerns. She also reversed …
On a Saturday night in the summer of 1998, an undercover officer logged in to a child-pornography chat room using the screen name Indy-Girl. Within minutes, a user named John introduced himself and asked her, “Are you into real life or just fantasy?” Indy-Girl said that because of the “legality of it” she had never acted on her fantasies. But she soon revealed an adventurous spirit. She was a bisexual college sophomore, she said, and had learned about sex at an early age. “My mother is very European,” she explained. John, a thirty-one-year-old soldier stationed in Fort Campbell, Kentucky,…
SPRINGFIELD – The Illinois Senate gave final legislative approval Thursday to legislation requiring local schools to conduct child abuse awareness education for both teachers and students.The measure, known as Erin’s Law, was cosponsored by state Sen. Kyle McCarter, R-Lebanon. “This should be a priority… It’s a measure we all should support; it’s an investment in our young people we need to make,” McCarter told colleagues.House Bill 6193 requires schools to provide continuing professional development at in-service training programs on sexual abuse and assault awareness and prevention. It …
It’s been almost two years since a Philadelphia grand jury probe of Catholic clergy sex abuse of children resulted in charges against four priests and a teacher. On Monday – after last year’s landmark, three-month trial ended in the first criminal conviction of a church administrator for covering up the crimes of deviate priests – the last two defendants, the Rev. Charles Engelhardt and former parochial schoolteacher Bernard Shero, are to go to trial. Prosecutors, defense lawyers, and Common Pleas Court Judge Ellen Ceisler will begin winnowing a large group of candidates down to a ju…
A Colorado man suing the Catholic Diocese of Bismarck for negligence over sexual abuse by a priest who has said he suffered in the 1970s has lifted his anonymity. Colorado resident Steven Crochet, 46, is alleging in civil documents filed in U.S. District Court in Hawaii that he was abused by the Rev. Maurice G. McNeely, who at the time was under the supervision of the Diocese of Bismarck, at an Army base in Hawaii in the mid-1970s. Crochet said he was an alter boy at a Fort Shafter chapel where McNeely ministered to soldiers and families. The complaint claims McNeely forced Crochet to perform …
Just as we think we know what an abuser looks like, we think we know what an abusive religious community looks like. We may think it is highly insular — like the Satmar Hasidic community in the Williamsburg neighborhood of Brooklyn, a prominent member of which was convicted last month of sexually abusing a young girl sent to him for help. Or it is hierarchical and bureaucratic: if the Roman Catholic Church did not have so many bishops and archbishops who refused to dismiss or defrock molesters in their ranks, would so many pedophile priests have been able to carry on for so long? But we don’t …