Child sexual abuse

It’s not just the Catholic ratbags who were covering up the buggering of little boys. The archbishop needs to swing for this.

The Archbishop of York is to set up an independent inquiry into allegations that a senior Church of England clergyman abused choirboys and school pupils.

It will look into claims that the Very Rev Robert Waddington, a former dean of Manchester Cathedral who died in 2007, sexually assaulted young choristers in the 1980s, while Lord Hope, then archbishop of York did not report the abuse claims to police or child protection authorities in 1999 and 2003.

Dr John Sentamu today said he was taking the allegations of abuse with the “utmost seriousness”, calling child abuse a “a heinous and personally damaging crime”.  Read more »

Police in NSW colluded with the Catholic Church to cover up the actions and crimes of their pedo priests.

They should spend less time persecuting poofters and more time cleaning up their own house.

A ”Catholic mafia” within the ranks of Newcastle police colluded with church leaders to cover up sex abuse in the Maitland-Newcastle diocese, an inquiry into the abuse has been told.

Detective Chief Inspector Peter Fox told the inquiry on Monday that while on leave his office had been raided, he and other police had been pulled off investigations into the alleged cover-up of child sex abuse and a colleague told him about a ”Catholic mafia” within the ranks of Newcastle police.

”I just didn’t trust other police,” he said.  Read more »

It appears that despite the new Pope the Catholic Church in Australia is back to its old ways of ignoring or helping through silence to cover up their legacy of child sex abuse:

Catholic Church leaders in Australia are showing “ignorance and arrogance” and little “will to know”, the Victorian inquiry into how the churches handled sex abuse heard on Thursday.

Caroline Taylor, professor of social justice at Edith Cowan University, said church leaders, judges and lawyers too readily followed misleading stereotypes about child sex abuse.

She said grooming was still rife, that predators were very clever with new technology and particularly targeted the children of very devout families.  Read more »

Wouldn’t it be grand if the new Pope really made a difference and addressed the awful legacy of child abuse perpetrated and covered up by his church:

The Catholic Archbishop of Adelaide, Philip Wilson, is among a number of senior church figures who have been ordered to appear at the NSW Commission of Inquiry into the alleged cover-up of child sex abuse by the Catholic Church in the Maitland-Newcastle region.

The summonsing of the archbishop, along with the secretary of the Australian Catholic Bishop’s Conference, Father Brian Lucas, came during the formal opening of the inquiry by Commissioner Margaret Cunneen SC on Wednesday.

The inquiry will examine allegations that members of the Maitland-Newcastle diocese covered up the abuse of young children by the now-deceased priests Father Denis McAlinden and Father James Fletcher.  Read more »

I find these files to be brutal and painful reading. The behavior described in these files is terribly sad and evil. There is no excuse, no explaining away what happened to these children. The priests involved had the duty to be their spiritual fathers and they failed.
— Archbishop of Los Angeles

The problem may not be the priests – but the system of sexual repression that the Church fosters. | Cartoon by David Reddick; source & courtesy – aintnogod.com

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It looks like the ultra-Orhodox Jewish community have been acting as bad as Catholics when it comes to covering up child abuse:

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 will be done,” Justice John G. Ingram of State Supreme Court said before imposing the sentence, which was close to the longest the law allows. Justice Ingram praised the young victim’s “courage and bravery in coming forward.”  Read more »

The Catholic Church in Australia has reinstated a predator priest after giving him 18 months gardening leave. He preyed on vulnerable adults not kids, so he gets reinstated. If it was kids he had been rooting then they would have quietly moved him on and said nothing.

A leading Australian priest who sexually preyed on a disabled and vulnerable woman on Sydney’s north shore for 14 years has been allowed to return to preaching and running community groups at one of the nation’s busiest churches.

The recent decision by the Catholic Church to allow Father Tom Knowles to return to full duties at St Francis’ in Melbourne’s central business district after about 16 months of “administrative leave” has outraged his victim and victims’ groups.  Read more »

Julia Gillard has come out strongly today announcing the terms of reference for a Royal Commission to look into the child sex abuse in an institutional context including crimes committed and covered up by the Catholic Church:

Prime Minister Julia Gillard said too many people have turned a blind eye to the shocking crime of child sexual abuse, as she announced the terms of reference for the royal commission in Sydney on Friday.

Ms Gilllard said that it is clear that too many children had been subject to sexual abuse in institutions and were not provided with a safe childhood.

Describing child abuse as a ”hideous, shocking and vile crime”, Ms Gillard said, ”I believe our nation needs to have this royal commission.”

Ms Gillard said to survivors of child sexual abuse, ”we want your voices to be heard. Even if you felt for all of your life that no one’s listened to you.”

The prime minister said the Royal Commission would focus only on child sex abuse in institutional contexts.  Read more »

Another Catholic priest has been charged in Australia, this time with concealing a child sex crime:

A retired Hunter priest has become the second Catholic priest in Australia to be charged with concealing a child sex crime.

The retired priest, 81, was charged at Charlestown police station this morning with misprision of a felony – failing to disclose a serious crime – relating to child sex offences committed by another man in the Hunter in the mid 1980s.

Strike Force Georgiana Detective Sergeant Kristi Faber also charged the retired priest with one count of accessory before the fact relating to the offences.

He became only the second Catholic priest in Australia to be charged with concealing child sex crimes after Detective Faber charged former Toronto priest Tom Brennan in August last year with concealing the child sex crimes of another Hunter priest in the late 1970s.Father Brennan died of cancer in October before the matter went to trial.

He denied the charges.

The charging of Father Brennan made international news and was described as a ‘‘milestone in Australia’’ by Dr Bernard Barrett of the victims’ advocate group Broken Rites.

The priest charged this morning worked in Maitland-Newcastle diocese parishes in the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s.

The strange thing for us to contemplate is this…why no charges for any priests in New Zealand so far?

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The Teacher’s unions all say on of the worst aspects of charter schools is that registration of teachers isn’t compulsory. They use this citing the danger to the pupils of unregistered teachers.

Presumably then this guy was a registered teacher when he committed his crimes against children. How did registration go in protecting his victims?

A woman who was sexually abused as a child by a deputy principal cried as she told the perpetrator how much he had destroyed her life.

“I was not murdered but the woman I could have become doesn’t exist because Norm violated me,” the woman told Rotorua District Court today during the sentencing of 65-year-old Norman John Foote.

Foote, who is a former deputy principal now living in Rotorua, was sentenced to nine years’ jail after he was previously found guilty of two charges of sexually violating the girl by unlawful sexual connection and four charges of either doing an indecent act on the girl or indecently assaulting her.

The offences were committed over a nine-year period in the 1990s, starting when the complainant was a child.

Foote had also previously been jailed for possessing more than 1000 images of child pornography.

Foote sexually abused the girl while he was deputy principal of an East Coast school. He is no longer employed in schools.