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CROOKSTON, Minn. — A Minnesota woman filed suit Thursday in state district court in Crookston alleging negligence by the Catholic Diocese of Crookston by allowing the late James Porter to serve as a priest in Bemidji 44 years ago when she says he sexually assaulted her many times in her home and in the church. The lawsuit, citing damages to “Doe 4”of more than the statutory minimum of $50,000, also claims a Massachusetts diocese and a former New Mexico Catholic treatment center for priests, were negligent in allowing Porter to move to Minnesota. Porter was removed from the priesthood…

(St. Paul, MN) –   A Minnesota man will get a chance at justice due to the Child Victims Act, recently passed by the legislature allowing survivors of child sexual abuse to hold their abuser and any institution that allowed the abuse to happen, accountable in court. “The Child Victims Act passed into law now gives this survivor a chance for hope, healing, and an opportunity to help protect others” said attorney Jeff Anderson, who represents Plaintiff John Doe 150. Since filing the first civil lawsuit involving Fr. Stitts in the early 1990s, Anderson has represented numerous survivors of sexual abuse by Stitts.

Survivors of child molestation would have more time to file lawsuits against institutions that employed their abusers under a proposal making its way through the California Legislature. Currently, most victims can file lawsuits against religious or civic institutions that employed their abusers until they turn age 26. But a court ruling prevented such suits by people who turned 26 before 2003 and discovered between 2005 and 2011 that the molestation caused injury or trauma. The legislation by state Sen. James Beall Jr. (D-San Jose) would extend the statute of limitations for those victims. …

In what’s being touted as a first-of-its-kind voluntary airing of a Catholic religious order’s culpability in the church’s sexual abuse crisis, a branch of the Capuchin Franciscans on Tuesday issued an independent auditrecounting its own history of sexual abuse of young people and coverups that spanned decades. The audit was commissioned last June by the 10-state St. Joseph Province of the Capuchin Order, which has several ministries in Milwaukee and Wisconsin. It lists 23 current, former and deceased friars with confirmed allegations of sexual abuse of minors, many of them occurring in Wisco…

This week in Geneva, the United Nation’s Committee on the Rights of the Child is hearing closed-door testimony about official Catholicism’s compliance with the 1989 Convention on the Rights of the Child. One of almost 200 signatories to the convention, the Holy See (the formal name of the Vatican state) is fifteen years late in delivering a report describing whether it has acted to “protect the child from all forms of physical or mental violence” as the convention requires. Victims of sexually abusive priests, their advocates, various American grand juries, Irish government investigators and t…

McKINNEY, Tex. — Kelley Currin, a divorced mother of four, started a romantic relationship in January with a middle-aged teacher in a supervisory position at the middle school that employed them. The district rules are clear on relationships between consenting adults when one has decision-making power over the other: they are not allowed. So in the fall, Currin, who teaches seventh-grade science, will transfer to a nearby school.  Currin, 43, laughed ruefully at the incongruity of her situation. She was sexually abused by her swim coach, Rick Curl, for five years in the 1980s beginning w…

 GREEN BAY, Wis. (AP) — The Catholic Diocese of Green Bay says its investigation has cleared a retired priest of sexual abuse allegations. The diocese issued a statement Saturday saying an investigator it hired concluded the allegations were unsubstantiated. So Bishop David Ricken has lifted all restrictions on public ministry against the Rev. Justin Werner. Werner was accused in April of abusing a minor in the 1970s at St. Edward Parish in Mackville, near Appleton. Werner denied the allegation. Werner is in his 80s and has been a priest more than 50 years, according to a letter to mem…

  BANGOR, Maine — An Augusta man who claims he was abused in the 1980s by a Catholic priest has asked the Maine Supreme Judicial Court to consider what the bishop knew and when he knew it about the conduct of the Rev. Raymond Melville. Justices heard oral arguments in the case Tuesday at the Penobscot Judicial Center. It was the second time the court has considered the case, originally filed in February 2007 in Kennebec County Superior Court. The state’s high court four years ago affirmed 5-2 that under Maine law charitable groups such as churches, museums and sports organizations are …

WASHINGTON (AP) – Child prostitutes would be considered victims of abuse rather than juvenile offenders and be referred to child welfare officials under legislation in Congress aimed at extending care to them before they become ensnared in the criminal justice system. “In much of the country today if a girl is found in the custody of a so-called pimp she is not considered to be a victim of abuse, and that’s just wrong and defies common sense,” Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., said during a Senate Finance Committee hearing Tuesday, where lawmakers heard a 25-year-old woman recount how the child welfare…

A Robbinsdale Cooper High School hall monitor who also helped with the football program was charged Tuesday with sexually assaulting a 17-year-old student last week after the girl’s father walked in on the man and his daughter naked in her bedroom. Tajreed E. Rich, 41, of Minneapolis, was charged with third-degree criminal sexual conduct and was in the Hennepin County jail. He was fired from the school Monday. Robbinsdale police Capt. Jim Franzen said police received a call Friday from the girl’s parents the day of the alleged assault, and later arrested Rich. Rich had been employed at Coop…