News & Events

This data­base con­tains in­form­a­tion on about 5,000 men and a hand­ful of wo­men who were ex­pelled from the Boy Scouts of Amer­ica between 1947 and Janu­ary 2005 on sus­pi­cion of sexu­al ab­use. The dots on the map in­dic­ate the loc­a­tion of troops con­nec­ted in some way to the ac­cused. The timeline be­low shows the volume of cases opened by year; however, an un­known num­ber of files were purged by the Scouts pri­or to the early 1990s

The top official at the Loyal Order of Moose and Moose International retired on Thursday, one week after he was accused of molesting a boy in Franklin County more than 30 years ago. William B. Airey, 71, left voluntarily and was not asked by the organization’s board to step down, spokesman Kurt Wehrmeister said yesterday. Airey could not be reached at his Aurora, Ill., home for comment. In their statement on his departure and his appointed successor, officials with the Moose organization, based in Aurora, did not address the lawsuit filed last week in Franklin County Common Pleas Court…

The Citadel’s internal investigation into the handling of a complaint about child molester Louis “Skip” ReVille has been delayed up to three months.Special Counsel Joe McCulloch said the school’s Board of Visitors had hired two firms to conduct the investigation. But one of those firms had become too expensive. The board has replaced it with another firm, but the switch has delayed the investigation, which originally was to be completed by the end of the year.The board replaced Manuel, Daniels, Burke International LLC with Margolis, Healy & Associates, McCulloch said. Consultant Anne Frank…

WORCESTER — A Roman Catholic priest who was indicted in Massachusetts on child pornography charges is in custody in Los Angeles.A spokesman for the Worcester District Attorney’s office says Lowe Dongor, who is also accused of stealing from his former parish in Fitchburg, is being held as a fugitive and could be returned to Massachusetts shortly.A grand jury handed up indictments in March charging the Rev. Lowe Dongor with possession of child pornography and larceny of more than $250.The DA’s spokesman, Tim Connolly, said Dongor was recently brought to Los Angeles from his native Philippines, w…

 VATICAN CITY — From its 17th century palace, the Congregation of the Doctrine of the Faith monitors compliance with Roman Catholic moral teaching and matters of dogma for the oldest church in Christendom. These issues have little bearing on most of the world’s 1.2 billion Catholics. Faith, for them, rests in parish life and the quality of their pastors. In the 1980s, for example, when the CDF punished theologians who dissented from the papal ban on birth control devices, the 85 percent of Catholics who support contraception did not change their opinion. But as the CDF accelerates a…

Former Holy Redeemer head football coach Joseph J. Ostrowski agreed Tuesday to plead guilty and serve 25 years in federal prison for producing child pornography and engaging in what U.S. Attorney Peter J. Smith called the “sextortion” of youths in more than a dozen states. Ostrowski, 28, of Wilkes-Barre, “persuaded and tricked” computer users into “engaging in sexually explicit acts” that he viewed over Skype, the video chat service, according to one of two indictments returned against him earlier this year. Ostrowski extorted and attempted to extort nude photographs, images and live…

LONDON — A report published Wednesday examining the sexual abuse crisis that has shaken the British Broadcasting Corporation strongly criticized the editorial and management decisions that led to the cancellation of a broadcast last year that would have exposed decades of sexual abuse, some of it on BBC premises, by Jimmy Savile, a network fixture who had been one of Britain’s best-known television personalities.  The 200-page report by Nick Pollard, a former head of the Sky News channel who began his broadcast career as a BBC reporter, traced in detail what it described as “a chain of …

Excerpted from the MD Mama blog on Boston.com.In the wake of the news that a known sexual offender raped and molested children for years, many of them in a day care north of Boston, it’s hard not to be scared as a parent. You can’t help thinking: Could this happen to my child?It certainly brings home the fact that if your child is in day care you should be asking lots of questions — not just when you choose the day care, but on a regular basis. You should be sure that the day care is licensed; the Department of Early Education and Childcare has an online database and you can also call if you…

PORTLAND, Maine — An investigation by the Roman Catholic Diocese of Portland has substantiated an allegation of sexual abuse of a minor brought against a Catholic brother who served at an Aroostook County parish in the early 1970s.In a statement issued Saturday morning, the diocese said evidence was found to back up a claim by a Maine man who said Brother Paul L. Gauvin , now 73, sexually abused him in the early 1970s when he was an altar server at St. Thomas Aquinas Parish in Madawaska.  Gauvin was the director of religious education at the parish at the time, according to Dave Guthro…

The judge in the Archdiocese of Milwaukee bankruptcy case dismissed two sex abuse claims on Thursday, the latest in a string of victories for the archdiocese, and is expected to rule on four others early next year.Abuse victims and their attorneys blasted the latest efforts by the archdiocese to throw out claims as “wrong, legally and morally.””It’s totally contrary to everything Archbishop Listecki said he would do,” said attorney Jeffrey Anderson, a reference to Jerome Listecki’s comments when the bankruptcy was filed in January 2011 that victims would be compensated fairly.Archdiocese…

LOS ANGELES — A California appellate court has upheld a Santa Barbara judge’s order saying the Boy Scouts of America must surrender decades of confidential files detailing alleged child sex abuse.A lawsuit alleges that a local Scouts official tried to keep a boy’s mother from reporting his 2007 abuse by a volunteer leader to police.The youth group denies the allegations.”The BSA believes confidentiality of the files helps to encourage prompt reporting,” spokesman Deron Smith told the Times.Lawyers for the former Scout who was sexually abused by a volunteer leader in 2007 say the files they se…

Authorities busted a Long Island Boys Scouts leader Wednesday on charges of trafficking in vile child pornography online.Nassau County investigators arrested Edward Orenchuk III at his Garden City home after finding hundreds of images on his computer depicting children as young as 5, authorities said.They said Orenchuk, 23, is a Boy Scouts of America Troop #243 assistant scout master and works as a page at the Garden City Public Library.”This defendant’s regular contact with children in a position of authority makes these charges that much more disturbing,” said Nassau District Attorney…

A Maui man is suing the Roman Catholic Church in Hawaii and the religious order that runs Damien Memorial School on Oahu, under a new state law providing a two-year window for child sexual abuse victims to file civil actions, no matter how long ago the abuse occurred in Hawaii.The man, referred to as John Roe No. 5 to protect his privacy, was 14 or 15 years old, after entering Damien as a freshman in 1986, when the sexual abuse began, according to the lawsuit filed Tuesday in 1st Circuit Court on Oahu.The lawsuit identifies his abuser as Brother John Paul Medvit, who was a teacher at Damien…